A common element in Arthur Schnitzler's post World War I plays is the necessity for human beings to face up to reality.

In The Sisters, or Casanova in Spa the young protagonist is required to deal with an ethical question in a mature, realistic manner.

In The Way to the Pond, the enlightened Baron, with his insistence on individual responsibility, accepts circum-stances as they are, whether they involve his going to war or his daughter's emancipated attitude.

Seduction Comedy, Schnitzler's retrospective of Austrian society on the eve of World War I, examines a world on the brink of collapse, a world in which people on all levels of society continue playing their games, frivolous or corrupt, to the very outbreak of hostilities in August, 1914.