About the work
Paracelsus is a one-act verse play by Arthur Schnitzler, written in 1898 and first published that November in the journal Cosmopolis. It premiered on 1 March 1899 at the Burgtheater in Vienna.
Plot
In sixteenth-century Basel, the armourer Cyprian invites his old acquaintance Paracelsus, the physician and magus, into his home. Paracelsus hypnotises Cyprian's wife Justina, whom he once loved; under hypnosis she reveals a secret from her past. Once awake, Justina chooses to stay with her husband – but the line between truth and suggestion stays open.
Cultural significance
The play anticipates questions about hypnosis and the unconscious that psychoanalysis would soon take up; Sigmund Freud later praised how precisely Schnitzler had grasped unconscious processes.