CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
 John 3 tambiagh 
 
PN 1861.H66 1 Un,Ve "' ,y UIW,ry 
 
 Ll»lnfl dramatists: Plnero, Ibsen, D'Annu 
 
 3 1924 026 100 507" 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026100507 
 
OF THIS EDITION BUT TWO HUNDRED 
 COPIES WERE PRINTED. 
 
 This book is Number.. 
 
 ISA. 
 
Arthur Wing Pinero. 
 
LIVING 
 DRAMATISTS 
 
 PINERO, IBSEN, D'ANNUNZIO 
 
 Collected by 
 OSCAR HERRMANN 
 
 Introduction by 
 WILL W. MASSEE 
 
 Pen Sketch by 
 FREDRICK EHRLICH 
 
 BRENTANO'S. NEW YORK 
 i 905 
 
Copyright, 1905 
 
 BY 
 
 WILL W. MASSEE 
 
 Issued from the AVON PRESS, New York City 
 
Introduction. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE editors have brought 
 together the following essays 
 in order that students and 
 lovers of the drama may 
 have a set of studies which discuss 
 three prominent dramatic authors of 
 the 19th Century with more care and 
 study than they ordinarily receive at 
 the hands of the magazine writers. 
 
 Three writers have been selected 
 who in the opinion of the editors 
 have reached the acme of their art 
 in their respective countries. And 
 notwithstanding the great dissimi- 
 larity in matters of detail and local 
 color that characterize these three, it 
 will be found, however, that in all 
 three we find a careful adherence to 
 dramatic laws and a truly rational 
 grasp of dramatic construction. The 
 great fundamental laws of reality, the 
 strong grasp of the eternal verities, 
 the clear, calm vision that penetrates 
 to the heart of things — all are here 
 seen — and it is because of all these 
 that the authors under discussion are 
 taken as the highest representatives of 
 
their art at the end of the 1 9th Century. 
 These are A. W. Pinero, Henrik Ibsen 
 and Gabriele D'Annunzio. 
 
 Before proceeding to form an 
 estimate of any dramatist's work, 
 the reader should disabuse him- 
 self of one haunting and mistaken 
 impression. A merely "literary" play 
 has no value for stage purposes. An 
 author may attain very great distinc- 
 tion as a writer of literature, and he 
 may put this literature into dramatic 
 form, yet literature alone cannot give 
 a man a high rank as a dramatist. 
 Milton, Hugo, and Browning were 
 very great poets, they put some of 
 their greatest poetry into dramatic 
 form and yet none of these authors 
 has attained the rank of even success- 
 ful dramatic writers. While we can 
 usually find good literature in all 
 great plays, we must remember that 
 the real substance of a great drama 
 depends upon something apart from 
 this, separated from which no drama 
 — I use the word drama in the sense 
 of an acting play — can live. 
 
 Prof. Brander Matthews says : 
 " The history of the drama is the 
 long record of the effort of the drama- 
 
list to get hold of the essentially 
 dramatic and to cast out everything 
 else. The essence of the drama is 
 a representation of a human will 
 exerting itself against an opposing 
 force; and the playwright has ever 
 been seeking the means of presenting 
 his conflict without admixture of any- 
 thing else."* 
 
 The likeness of the English play 
 and the Scandinavian play to the 
 Italian play is due in part, as Prof. 
 Matthews says, to the fact that in all 
 the modern languages the drama has 
 reached an advanced period of its 
 evolution, when it has definitely 
 specialized itself and when it has 
 been able to disentangle itself from 
 the other and non-dramatic elements 
 with which it was perforce com- 
 mingled in the more primitive 
 periods. 
 
 With our attention fixed upon the 
 dramatists under discussion, the 
 editors regard the situation to be 
 something like this. Here are three 
 authors who wrote plays primarily to 
 be acted on the stage, to interest an 
 audience and to win its sympathy. In 
 
 * " The Development of the Drama" by Brander Matthews. 
 
sum, their desire was to produce a 
 drama that would make a successful 
 acting play. To study the essence 
 of their dramas will involve the study 
 of the dramaturgic art of each play- 
 wright; if his work as a craftsman, as 
 a dramaturgic artist, be weak, his 
 play will fail of success. 
 
 These essays were written only 
 after long and careful original study 
 of the authors under discussion, and 
 this study was furthered by the help 
 that comes from seeing all of the 
 more important plays produced on 
 the stage. And yet the reader must 
 remember that experience has taught 
 the world the fact that no final judg- 
 ment should be passed on a con- 
 temporary writer until time, the great 
 leveller of all things, sets its true 
 value upon his work and genius. 
 
 W. W. M. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 i. ARTHUR WING PINERO, Win W. Massee. 
 «. HENRIK IBSEN, . . . Henry Davwott. 
 3. 6ABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO, J. M. Shiihan. 
 
Arthur Wing Pinero. 
 
MR. ARTHUR WING 
 PI NERO is regarded 
 alike by critics and cultivat- 
 ed playgoers as the leading 
 author among living English drama- 
 tists; this position he has held, with 
 few if any close rivals, for the past 
 dozen years. Why he has been given 
 this enviable position we shall seek to 
 answer. 
 
 Though Mr. Pinero has been a 
 most prolific and notable author for 
 the past quarter of a century, he is 
 still a comparatively young man. 
 His early life was uneventful. He 
 was born in a house on the Old Kent 
 road in London, in 1854. His early 
 life up to his eighteenth year was not 
 unlike that of the son of any well- 
 to-do English barrister. His con- 
 nection with the stage proper, though 
 of great value, was of comparatively 
 short duration. It commenced in the 
 summer of 1874, with Mr. and Mrs. 
 R. H. Wyndham at the Theatre 
 Royal, Edinburgh, where on a salary 
 
of twenty shillings a week, he played 
 the groom's part in "The Woman in 
 White." After two years in the 
 provinces he emigrated to London, in 
 his opinion, "The Mecca of the 
 country actor," and appeared in the 
 Globe Theatre in the character of 
 Mr. Darch in Wilkie Collins' "Miss 
 Gwilt." A few months later he joined 
 the Henry Irving forces at the 
 Lyceum; during Irving's first Hamlet 
 tour, he played Claudius to the 
 English tragedian. A story is cur- 
 rent that at this time Pinero was 
 suffering keenly from the effects of 
 having had his lines cut down again 
 and again with the blue pencil. Re- 
 hearsal was in progress, and up in a 
 corner on a "profile" — a scenic "pro- 
 perty" — sat the young actor. Irving, 
 whose propensity for shortening is 
 well-known, cast anxious glances at 
 the sad face of his young assistant. 
 Finally walking toward him said to 
 him sympathetically, "Ah, my boy, 
 if you sit there you will cut yourself." 
 " Oh, it doesn't matter, Mr. Irving," 
 said Mr. Pinero, "our parts are cut 
 so much in this theatre that a cut or 
 two more really makes no difference." 
 
He remained at the Lyceum until 
 1 8 8 1 . This was followed by a short 
 engagement with the Bancroft com- 
 pany, which terminated for good his 
 life as an actor. 
 
 Unimportant as these early engage- 
 ments may appear to be, most impor- 
 tant they will prove when it comes to 
 an examination of the detail of his 
 work. There is no dramatist who 
 has been at the same time so minute 
 and copious in what we call stage 
 " business," no one so careful in the 
 stage construction of his plays. But 
 this early experience had a far deeper 
 significance. Consciously or uncon- 
 sciously he had absorbed those 
 theories and principles of the true 
 drama which it had taken our race 
 centuries to learn. In the successful 
 drama he knew that there must be a 
 great human emotion, that this emo- 
 tion by force of nature must lead, 
 against strong opposing forces, to 
 some definite action; that emotion 
 and action in drama can not be sepa- 
 rated, but must be bound together by 
 definite and certain relations. And 
 with this in mind he built up each 
 detail with reference to every other 
 
detail of the play. He developed 
 the story according to a well defined 
 process of dramatic evolution, and a 
 nice adjustment of dialogue and ac- 
 tion. Scene on scene, he develops 
 the causes leading to the great action, 
 step by step he works out the results; 
 knowing that every important scene 
 and every important effect must be 
 realized on the stage and not left to 
 the imagination of the audience. 
 
 In 1877, four years before our 
 author left the stage, he produced his 
 first play entitled " Two Can Play at 
 that Game.',' During the next three 
 years, this was followed by " Two 
 Hundred a Year," "Daisy's Escape," 
 "Hester's Mystery," and "Bygones." 
 These pieces were his lesser experi- 
 ments, and. those in somewhat welU 
 worn paths, but they gave him a 
 reputation as a writer of comediettas. 
 After these five trifles he established 
 his claim to strength and originality 
 by writings "The Money Spinner." 
 Though this was his first attempt at 
 a serious play, it showed promise of 
 better things; and though from this 
 time he has had some failures, his 
 success has been permanent. 
 
In the next year, 1881, he alter- 
 nated "The Money Spinner "with a 
 comedy called "Imprudence." This 
 was funny and amused the audience 
 immensely, but it was slow in action, 
 a little rude in the fun, and brought 
 no particular credit to the author. 
 During this same year "The Squire," 
 a much better and stronger play, was 
 produced. It was well received in 
 England and did wonderfully well in 
 the provinces. It was revived with 
 marked success in 1888, and is con- 
 sidered by many of the critics one of 
 Pinero's best plays. " The Squire " 
 recalls the memorable controversy 
 which arose over its likeness to "Far 
 From the Madding Crowd." The 
 whole subject of plagiarism was 
 threshed over anew by some of the 
 best known writers in England. Mr. 
 Pinero, in his defense, quoted La 
 Bruyere, the famous character writer 
 of the Seventeenth Century. " 'We 
 are come into the world too late to 
 produce anything new, nature and 
 life are preoccupied, and description 
 and sentiment have been long ex- 
 hausted.' Yet the author who imi- 
 tates his predecessors only by 
 
furnishing himself with thoughts and 
 elegancies out of the same general 
 magazine of literature, can with little 
 more propriety be reproached as a 
 plagiary, than the architect can be 
 censured as a mean copier of Angelo 
 or Wren, because he digs his marble 
 from the same quarry, squares his 
 stones by the same art and unites 
 them in columns of the same orders." 
 While this seemed to sum up in a 
 common sense way the whole subject, 
 many were not convinced until the 
 note book was found, which estab- 
 lished the priority of "The Squire's" 
 inception to the publication of " Far 
 From the Madding Crowd." In 
 1883, "Lords and Commons," said 
 to be taken from the moral romances 
 of Marie Sophia Schwartz, met with 
 indignation and contempt on the one 
 hand and praise on the other. Wm. 
 Archer was among those who praised 
 the piece. "The Rocket" and "The 
 Rector," which followed in close 
 succession, both failed as good acting 
 plays. "Low-water," a failure, 
 " Ironmaster," a dramatization of 
 George Ohnet's " Le Maitre de 
 Forges," and "In Chancery," a fan- 
 
tastical comedy, were all produced the 
 following year. The last two, though 
 showing no remarkable strength, were 
 well received on the stage and both 
 were revived ten years later — a very 
 good test of the popularity of the 
 play. 
 
 Though not his most distinguished 
 achievement, certainly his most 
 characteristic work has been in the 
 domain of farcical comedy. " The 
 Magistrate," produced in 1885, be- 
 gan the famous series of Court farces. 
 These mark in a way an era in the 
 history of the English stage, and 
 show our author creating a really new 
 and original order of English Comic 
 play. "The Magistrate" is of 
 especial interest in being the first of 
 his work in which his individuality 
 found absolutely independent ex- 
 pression. Though his early plays 
 had always shown good workmanship 
 and knowledge of the world, smart 
 dialogue and telling situations, yet 
 they were conventional in sentiment, 
 trite in comedy, wrought on tradi- 
 tional lines, inculcating no philosophy 
 and making no intellectual appeal 
 whatever. But with the advent of 
 
" The Magistrate " we have a farce 
 overflowing with good, honest fun, 
 and with all of the briskness of the 
 Palais-Royal pieces without any of 
 their objectionable features. Prior to 
 the publication of this farce the Court 
 Theatre, which was under the manage- 
 ment of Messrs. John Clayton and 
 Arthur Cecil, was at a low ebb; play 
 after play had been produced without 
 success. When application was made 
 to Mr. Pinero for a new piece, he 
 read to them " The Weaker Sex," but 
 the managers who had failed with so 
 many serious plays, felt doubtful 
 about its success. This being re- 
 jected, Mr. Pinero gave them " The 
 Magistrate" which he had just com- 
 pleted. The piece was produced, its 
 success was immediate, and the luck 
 of the theatre promptly turned. 
 Everywhere it was hailed as a piece 
 which gave a healthier tone to a lead- 
 ing form of amusement. The Court 
 Theatre was crowded night after night 
 for more than a year, the play being 
 presented over 300 times. Three 
 companies carried the play to the 
 provinces; it had an exceptionally 
 long run in New York, as well as in 
 
Boston, and in the latter city it is now 
 being performed every year, being 
 included in the regular season of 
 classic comedies. As the play is the 
 most important of all of his humor- 
 ous work, I shall outline the plot in 
 detail. Mrs. Pasket, with the not 
 unusual objection that ladies have to 
 letting their actual age be known, has 
 married Mr. Pasket, an exceptionally 
 mild and philanthropic magistrate, 
 and led him to believe that she is five 
 years younger than she really is. To 
 carry out this story she has repre- 
 sented Cis Farringdon, her son by a 
 former marriage, as being only four- 
 teen instead of nineteen. The boy 
 is' precocious even beyond his own 
 age, but dressed by his mother as a 
 youth, he is petted by the ladies and 
 treated only as a child. He, how- 
 ever, indulges in all of the pleasures 
 of a young man — has a room at 
 Hotel des Princes, where he gives 
 suppers and runs riot. To this hotel 
 he inveigles Mr. Pasket to come one 
 evening and sup with him. On the 
 same evening Mrs. Pasket learns that 
 Colonel Lukyn, the boy's godfather, 
 has been asked to dine at the house. 
 
 ii 
 
In order to warn him not to betray 
 the son's age, she and her sister suc- 
 ceed in finding him at the Hotel des 
 Princes where he is dining with an 
 old friend Captain Vale, the be- 
 trothed of Mrs. Pasket's sister. 
 Her request is granted, but it gets 
 very late and the landlord warns them 
 that the place is being raided for 
 keeping open after hours. The lights 
 are turned out. In attempting to 
 escape, Pasket and Cis, unknown to 
 the other party, have sought refuge 
 in the same room. These two finally 
 get out by the fire-escape, but the 
 rest are arrested because the Colonel 
 in his indignation has committed 
 assault on the police. The next 
 morning they appear in the Police 
 court before Mr. Pasket himself, who 
 in a nervous state of mind sentences 
 them to seven days. In the last 
 act, a brother magistrate rehears the 
 case and frees the prisoners, on the 
 plea that the prisoners were guests of 
 the youth. This is the story of the 
 plot. Though the motive is not a 
 strong one, it is so well elaborated, 
 the dialogue is so smart, and every- 
 thing capable of producing laughter 
 
is so well treated, that the piece 
 becomes one of the most amusing 
 productions that the English stage 
 has had during the latter half of the 
 century. In almost all farces the 
 leading characters have certain foibles 
 such as conceit and ambition, which 
 we are very often glad to see worked 
 upon. But in this case the very 
 power and essence of the humor lies 
 in the fact that in the unsuspecting 
 magistrate the amusing weakness 
 should be combined with an amica- 
 ble humanity. With ingenuity, with 
 oddity or drollery the author gives 
 the magistrate an absurd side and 
 places him in absurd situations, and 
 these very situations instead of 
 making us wince endear us the more 
 to the character. In a lesser degree, 
 perhaps, we have the same sympathy 
 for Mrs. Pasket, and even Captain 
 Vale who must stand outside in the 
 rain while the interview is going on 
 inside. One of the most amusing 
 scenes a faire, the escape of the 
 Magistrate and Cis, is not brought 
 on the stage, but the Magistrate's 
 description is one of the funniest and 
 most brilliant pieces of work I have 
 
 >3 
 
ever seen from a comic play. Note, 
 too, with what skill this is done. 
 The appearance of the Magistrate, 
 after his success in climbing fire- 
 escapes, leaping fences, and strug- 
 gling through muddy pools of water, 
 suggests everything but the scene 
 itself, which is too complicated to put 
 on the stage. 
 
 Mr. Pinero has called this a farce, 
 but is it not rather a comedy? It 
 certainly lacks all the gross absurdi- 
 ties of his other farces. To me, the 
 very thing that places it far and away 
 above the farce form, is the "sweet 
 reasonableness" of the comic situa- 
 tions all of which might reasonably 
 have happened. The whole play has a 
 certain ease and swing, a smartness 
 and spontaneity of dialogue, a con- 
 sistency and marked individuality of 
 the characters, wrought out by one 
 who knows to a nicety the conditions 
 of the comedy effect. 
 
 The success of "The Magistrate" 
 brought forth three more pieces, two 
 of which form a part of the famous 
 Court series, " The Schoolmistress," 
 "The Hobby Horse " and "Dandy 
 Dick." Successful as these were, no 
 
 H 
 
comic piece written later proved to 
 have the lasting qualities of " The 
 Magistrate." "The Schoolmistress," 
 however, was a success, and says 
 much for the author's skill as a play- 
 wright. The theme is the futility of 
 keeping a young couple apart; and 
 the weakness of trying to cover up a 
 social position. The construction is 
 distinctly weaker than " The Magis- 
 trate;" in the last act he is too slow 
 in gathering up the threads of the 
 plot. The improbabilities are glaring 
 even for farce, and are scarcely within 
 the bounds of possibility; he has 
 gone further than any farce writer can 
 and maintain success. And yet it is 
 brilliantly written; there is a wealth 
 of witticisms and genuine comic dia- 
 logue, and it is by this that the play 
 can stand. 
 
 The " Hobby Horse," which fol- 
 lowed in the fall of the same year at 
 the St. James, was not a success. 
 Mr. Solomon, an editor of Pinero's 
 plays, says this was because the theme 
 broke away from conventionality. A 
 young clergyman, for whom the deep 
 sympathy of the audience was enlist- 
 ed, is permitted to fall innocently and 
 
 15 
 
honorably in love with a married 
 woman whom he thought to be single; 
 he is made to suffer pain on her ac- 
 count without the husband being 
 conveniently killed off in the last act 
 to prepare the way for the clergyman's 
 expected matrimonial happiness. 
 This is the plot which Mr. Solomon 
 says the playgoers were not prepared 
 to look favorably upon in the fall of 
 1886. The piece has one truly 
 humorous scene where the curate is 
 hired to take charge of the home for 
 decayed jockeys. There are several 
 other scenes which are models of 
 adroit construction, and there are one 
 or two highly entertaining characters. 
 And yet the play has the symptoms 
 of a succes forc6. It ran one hun- 
 dred nights and was taken off. The 
 reason given for its partial failure is 
 not I think the correct one. The 
 fact that the piece stiffens into drama 
 at the last would not be so serious 
 a mistake if the play had not started 
 as a laughable farce. The weakness 
 lies in the incongruity of the piece. 
 We accepted the absurdities in "The 
 Schoolmistress," but in "The Hobby 
 Horse" in an important scene when 
 
 16 
 
the squire's own wife, perfectly 
 recognizable through a veil, attends 
 her husband to the train disguised as 
 a lady companion, the absurdity is 
 too thin to hold. Still another glaring 
 weakness is the undue development 
 of the two broken down and most 
 unsavory racing characters. Even 
 for farce, the play is highly artificial 
 and devoid of genuine human interest 
 and leaves the reader unsatisfied and 
 disappointed. 
 
 "Dandy Dick" was the third farce 
 which Mr. Pinero wrote for the old 
 Court Theatre. This piece is second 
 only to " The Magistrate." The 
 incidents, though absurd, come nearer 
 to the possible than in any farce since 
 the first masterpiece. The play cen- 
 ters around a dean, who, while being 
 a paragon of dignity and decorum, is 
 driven by an indiscreet act into a most 
 undignified dilemma. The character 
 of Georgiana is at the same time one of 
 the most absurd and one of the most 
 ingenius creations in all farce. As 
 soon as the story opens, the play 
 strikes a note, almost a high-pitch 
 scream, and this note is sustained to 
 the end. "The Amazons," the last 
 
 '7 
 
of the Court series, was written in 
 1 894. Nothing so shows the author's 
 versatility as his writing this fresh bit 
 of farcical romance immediately after 
 his completion of "The Second Mrs. 
 Tanqueray." It is difficult to com- 
 pare it to the other farces, for in 
 addition to its social satire there is a 
 gentle strain of the poetical running 
 through it. It is below "The Magis- 
 trate," and not so rollicking as 
 "Dandy Dick;" but for its freshness, 
 its delicate humor, and quaint pretti- 
 ness it excels the latter. Certainly 
 there is no cleverer mingling of 
 romance, comedy and satire to be 
 found in modern English drama. 
 
 "The Magistrate," "The School- 
 mistress," "Dandy Dick" and "The 
 Amazons" form a small group of the 
 best of his farces, which entitles the 
 author to take very high rank as a 
 farce writer. Where in modern drama 
 do we find a group of equal worth 
 coming from one author? The mod- 
 ern French dramatists, whose forte is 
 farce, cannot produce such a man, 
 unless it be possibly Labiche. Here 
 we have four truly comic plays, never 
 for a moment stiffening into the 
 
 18 
 
drama, and never for a moment sink- 
 ing into broad farce. He made no 
 attempt at a criticism of life, he 
 sought to solve no problem of mor- 
 ality, sociology or psychology, which 
 is the great temptation of the man of 
 letters in this uneasy and impatient 
 age; he merely permitted himself, for 
 the most part, to dally with the vari- 
 ous foibles in the lightest and gentlest 
 spirit of satire. 
 
 Why were these pieces hailed by 
 the critics as giving a healthier tone 
 to our comic drama? The situations 
 of very many of the best French 
 farces and comedies turned on the 
 violation of the Seventh Command- 
 ment. Pinero's method was the 
 placing of a character, generally a 
 dignified and serious character, in an 
 incongruous and irrelevant position 
 and working out the consequences 
 with relentless logic. The reason 
 that the mirth arising is so genuine 
 and enduring lies in the fact that 
 these very absurd situations are 
 treated seriously and consistently. 
 For positive ingenuity, if not origin- 
 ality, where in the comic do we get 
 such ideas as the wild youth, Cis, 
 
 19 
 
whom the women all pet; the hus- 
 band of the schoolmistress who is 
 secretly housed in the girls' boarding- 
 school; the deacon's sporting sister 
 in "Dandy Dick;" and Lady Castle- 
 jordan who attempts to make three 
 boys of her three girls who have all 
 the qualities of the true woman. 
 Note that not one of the plots is built 
 on the plan of many of the best known 
 French farces. That is the telescope 
 method, where any amount of scenes 
 may be packed together without hurt- 
 ing in the least the play, so long as 
 it can be produced in the proper 
 time. It is needless to say that this 
 is distinctly a less artistic and less 
 ingenious method than the plot for- 
 mations of Pinero. Another salient 
 merit of this group is that in addition 
 to being full of incident, and genuinely 
 amusing incident, they all contain from 
 one to three characters so clean-cut and 
 well defined, and so filled with human 
 interest that they long remain in the 
 memory. Among those most easily 
 recalled are Mr. Pasket, Peggy Hess- 
 lerigge, Deacon Jedd and Lady Noe- 
 line. Though we scarcely ever expect 
 a good acting farce to be read, these 
 
pieces are so brilliantly written that 
 the real enjoyment received will well 
 repay the reading. The comedy is 
 not so subtle and quiet as in some of 
 his later comedies, but for brilliancy 
 of wit, for clash of repartee, and for 
 comic effects of unfailing ingenuity, 
 I know of nothing better in our 
 tongue. There is a swing and go 
 about the movement of these farces, 
 an open-hearted honesty about their 
 gayety that makes us better for the 
 reading. 
 
 Pinero's next work was "Sweet 
 Lavender," a domestic drama, which 
 was destined to become one of the 
 most popular plays of modern times. 
 The production showed several 
 things; first, that a great plot is not 
 essential for a splendid play, next it 
 is an admirable retort to the disciples 
 of Zola who thought that a play 
 could not be healthy without being 
 insipid. It is a play that must be 
 studied by itself in that the prepon- 
 derance of kindly human nature 
 makes it rather an idyl or a sort of 
 modern fairy tale than an actual and 
 realistic study of life. We usually 
 think of Pinero as the dramatist for 
 
the select class of intelligent and 
 cultivated playgoers, yet we must 
 remember that from first to last he 
 has had an abiding faith in the 
 "crowd." He has always believed 
 that the most mischievous and mis- 
 leading of affectations is the affecta- 
 tion of despising the approval and 
 support of the great public, and that 
 the author's most substantial claim 
 upon constituents rests in his power 
 of legitimately interesting a great 
 number of people. 
 
 The reason for the success of 
 "Sweet Lavender" is not far to seek. 
 The play introduces us to good 
 women and honest men. The senti- 
 ment is offset by the genial humor 
 and refined wit in which nothing has 
 been sacrificed to vulgarity to create 
 laughter. The "golden-hearted, 
 weak-natured, down-at-the-heel" 
 Dick Phenyl is one of the most 
 admirable and thoroughly human 
 characters in the entire range of his 
 work. It is a play in which the 
 tone is so sweet and healthy that 
 one leaves it with an entirely clean 
 taste in one's mouth. 
 
 Let us turn now to our author's 
 
first great serious drama. Writers 
 on Pinero have attempted to show 
 the great influence of Ibsen upon his 
 serious plays. But a close examina- 
 tion of the two kinds of work will 
 •disclose no essential likeness. The 
 play which critics believed to have 
 the nearest resemblance to Ibsen's 
 work was the "Profligate," and the 
 "Profligate" was written and rehearsed 
 before Pinero had ever read or seri- 
 ously discussed a play of the great 
 Scandinavian. I believe that the line 
 of the serious social drama, from 
 Dumas, fils, to Clyde Fitch, is a direct 
 one, but I further believe that the 
 direct influence of one author upon 
 another is much less conscious than 
 is generally supposed. Occasionally 
 we get a confession like that from 
 Mr. Howells, where he attributes his 
 change of life to Tolstoi, but these 
 are the rare instances. It has been 
 held by many critics that "The Main- 
 travelled Roads" of Hamlin Gar- 
 land was written under the direct 
 influence of Zola and Howells, yet 
 Mr. Garland told me recently that at 
 that time he had been reading little 
 or none of the so called realism and 
 
 23 
 
that the influence leading up to the 
 writing of these scathingly realistic 
 studies proved to be something quite 
 apart from that supposed by the 
 critics. It is more likely that the 
 various literary, social and political 
 movements come unconsciously; the 
 change is "in the air" and the author 
 will select a certain theme or a certain 
 treatment of the theme without know- 
 ing exactly why. 
 
 The movement of what we call the 
 serious drama began with Dumas, fils, 
 in 1 852, when heproduced"La Dame 
 aux Camelias", a play which has been 
 in the highest favor ever since. Six 
 years later, in his preface to "Le Fils 
 Naturel," he says, "Le theatre n'est pas 
 lebut,cen'estquelemoyen. L'homme 
 moral est determine, l'homme social 
 est a faire. L'oeuvre qui ferait pour 
 le bien ce que "Tartuffe" a fait 
 contre le mal, a talent egal, serait 
 superieure a. "TartufFe;" voila ce que 
 je veux dire. Par la comedie, par la 
 tragedie, par le drame, par la bouffbn- 
 nerie, dans la form qui nous con- 
 viendra le mieux, inaugurons done le 
 theatre utile, 2m risque d'entendre crier 
 les apotres de Vart pour I'art, trois 
 
 z 4 
 
mots absolument vides de sens." A 
 half dozen years later Ibsen began 
 writing his series of modern social 
 dramas, sounding the highest note in 
 our modern dramatic writing, and 
 becoming at once "one of the most 
 potent dramatic influences in our day." 
 In Germany, in Russia, and in Italy 
 the dramatists were beginning to pose 
 modern social problems. This same 
 wave came to England a little later 
 than to the countries on the continent. 
 But here as elsewhere the modern 
 problem play was not accepted un- 
 hesitatingly. There was constantly 
 kept up a battle of the different 
 "schools." Realism clashed with con- 
 ventionalism, naturalism with ro- 
 manticism. The dramatic atmosphere 
 was full of agitation and uncertainty, 
 the criticisms of the pessimists were 
 loud, because there was no British 
 author to assert his artistic independ- 
 ence. Plays to be played at all had 
 to be written for a particular company, 
 often for the particular actor, and fre- 
 quently the ideas in no small part had 
 to be "worked out" according to the 
 exigencies of managerial expediency. 
 Such was the condition of affairs, 
 
 25 
 
when in April, 1889, Pinero produced 
 the "Profligate" ' at the Garrick Theatre. 
 The theme is that of a man who 
 has woefully sinned and whose re- 
 demption is worked out by the purity 
 of a woman's love, and in all proba- 
 bility never had a more human play 
 been written to illustrate it. Though 
 the critics and playgoers criticised ad 
 finitum various details of the piece, 
 the drama as a whole brought from 
 every quarter respectful consideration 
 often mixed with the highest praise. 
 It must be remembered that in the 
 earlier performances of "The Profli- 
 gate" the ending of the play had 
 been changed contrary to the con- 
 ception of the dramatist. He had 
 ended the play with the suicide of 
 the penitent profligate just as the wife 
 was returning, with pity and forgive- 
 ness in her heart, to share his life 
 again. The changed ending brought 
 about a reconciliation before the hus- 
 band takes the poison. The change 
 found many advocates, chiefly among 
 whom were Clement Scott and Wm. 
 Archer. Yet there were others who 
 thought differently; and my belief is 
 that were the play revived the 
 
 26 
 
original ending would be the chosen 
 one. Kipling, it will be remembered, 
 changed his ending to "The Light 
 that Failed" simply to satisfy the 
 American readers. The ending of 
 "Diana of the Crossways" of Mere- 
 dith brought forth a shower of criti- 
 cism because the author made the 
 heroine betray her lover. Of course 
 this brings up the whole subject of 
 logical and illogical endings. All 
 will agree that the term "logical" is 
 used with too much looseness in liter- 
 ary criticism. The critic should first 
 tell us what he means by the word 
 "logical" as applied to life. He may 
 mean a life in which we may expect 
 a certain amount of consistency or 
 uniformity. The plot, for example, of 
 the comic opera is admitted by all to 
 be fantastic and illogical; it would not 
 serve its purpose if it were not. On 
 the other hand, many would say that 
 life is not logical but emotional, and 
 those who take this view would agree 
 that the correct ending of "The Profli- 
 gate" would be wholly a matter of 
 personal equation. If we accept the 
 first meaning of the term, the changed 
 ending seems to me not only not logi- 
 
 27 
 
cal but positively flat. From the very 
 beginning the play points to some sort 
 of a tragic ending. When Hugh Mur- 
 ray is discussing the past excesses of 
 Dunstan, Mr. Cheal replies; 
 
 "Tut, tut, that's all past. Marriage 
 is the real beginning of a man's life." 
 
 Hugh Murray: "No, sir, it is the 
 end of it — what comes after is either 
 heaven or hell." 
 
 This is the note right through the 
 piece. Though the character of Dun- 
 stan is being purified by his marriage 
 to a pure woman, he reveals later on 
 his true mental suffering; "But you 
 know — because you read my future 
 — you know what my existence has 
 become. The Past has overtaken me ! 
 I am in deadly fear ! " We could no 
 more change, logically, the ending of 
 "The Profligate" than we could 
 change the ending of "Mrs. Tan- 
 queray" or "Iris." 
 
 Let me now return to our subject. 
 In spite of the fact that this was a 
 serious drama, dealing with a serious 
 moral problem, in spite of the fact 
 that playgoers were still taught to 
 accept no play without an abundance 
 of comic relief, "The Profligate" was 
 
 28 
 
performed 150 times within a few 
 months with profit to both author 
 and manager. More than this, it 
 had impressed the audiences deeply 
 at the time of presentation, and it 
 had sent them home with much to 
 think over, to discuss, and to remem- 
 ber. It showed that there existed in 
 England a public of men and women 
 ready and even eager to accept the 
 serious treatment of serious themes. 
 " The Profligate " marks an impor- 
 tant point in both Mr. Pinero's work 
 and the history of our modern Eng- 
 lish drama, being the " Dame aux 
 Camelias" of the time. Though his 
 earlier work had been on the whole 
 the reverse of the serious, leaving out 
 any serious moral or social problems, 
 yet certain merits stand out in all of 
 his previous plays — dialogue unpre- 
 cedently witty and humorous, charac- 
 ter drawing clear and firm, and well- 
 nigh perfect stagecraft. Though 
 "The Profligate" is not so closely 
 knit together as some of the later 
 plays, though many of the details are 
 not so carefully worked out, there is 
 no mistaking the essential struggle, 
 and we commence now to see less of 
 
 29 
 
the conscious workman in the stage- 
 craft. Compared to his previous 
 work it shows a stronger and surer 
 human quality. The style, too, has 
 more polish, a more enduring quality, 
 a quality which we shall see in its 
 sustained perfection in "Mrs. Tan- 
 queray" and "Iris." 
 
 "The Weaker Sex," "The Cabinet 
 Minister" and "The Times, "' are all 
 characteristic of a certain kind of work 
 which will not bear favorable criticism. 
 We all enjoy comedy where laughter 
 and tears mingle, but we feel a certain 
 incongruity where we have a mixture 
 of farce and serious drama. This we 
 believe to be the weakness of these 
 plays. The funny situations would 
 fit in well with a "Dandy Dick" play; 
 the serious situations, which stiffen 
 into drama, would be admirably suited 
 to "The Profligate" or "The Benefit 
 of Doubt;" but when you mix the 
 two elements, you cannot possibly 
 make a strong and unified play. We 
 must keep in mind our definition: 
 "The drama is the representation of 
 the human will exerting itself against 
 an opposing force." Now, the themes 
 of these plays could be worked out 
 
 3° 
 
with success if treated either humor- 
 ously or seriously, but "the presen- 
 tation of the conflict must be without 
 an admixture of anything else." 
 
 In "The Weaker Sex," the incon- 
 gruity is in the play itself. The 
 brilliantly written first act promises a 
 fund of laughter and amusement for 
 the rest of the play, but soon the 
 main interest is centered in the 
 fortunes of Lady Vivash and her 
 daughter, which interest at the very 
 last stiffens into serious drama. In 
 "The Times" the fault is more often 
 an incongruity of scene. One of the 
 several examples is in an essentially 
 pathetic scene, where poor Mrs. Bom- 
 bas and her weak, vain husband are 
 made, when troubles are thickening 
 around their disappointed ambitions, 
 to lose themselves in the reminis- 
 cences of their former unpretentious 
 happiness. They recall event after 
 event in the struggle for success. 
 
 Mrs. Bombas : " Our first half- 
 past seven dinner party, do you 
 remember? " 
 
 Bombas : " Oh, lor', yes ; Clara, 
 never mind that." 
 
 Mrs. B: "Part of the food was 
 
 3> 
 
sent in, I recollect, and part of it was 
 done at home." 
 
 Bombas : " To this day, I regret 
 the part that was done at home. Do 
 you remember where the cook's cap 
 was found ? " 
 
 Mrs. B : "Be quiet ! " 
 
 This is rather a cheap and inartis- 
 tically placed joke. 
 
 "The Cabinet Minister," a suc- 
 cessful Court farce, was too sketchy 
 and could easily be condensed into 
 three acts. Here, again, one is con- 
 constantly halting between two 
 opinions to know whether you are 
 getting farce or a serious play of 
 manners; here were bits of pathos 
 which were positively comic. Pinero, 
 we are told, consciously aimed at this 
 this sort of construction ; whether 
 worked out consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, no permanently successful 
 play can be built on that plan. But in 
 spite of this fault it is obvious that the 
 playwright is rapidly gaining ground. 
 In none of his previous work has the 
 satire been so brilliant and pungent, 
 and the repartee so quick. The 
 characters are clearly and strongly 
 done and are full of human interest. 
 
No one will forget the remark of 
 Lady Vivash, "A woman's first love 
 is her religion, and if its object be 
 worthy, it will sanctify her whole 
 life." 
 
 "Lady Bountiful," a serious drama, 
 appeared just before " Mrs. Tan- 
 queray." Though not a success, it 
 is interesting in that it is a forerunner 
 of many of the successful plays of 
 manners which appeared after "Mrs. 
 Ebbsmith." Many and various are 
 the reasons for the failure of "Lady 
 Bountiful." The essential struggle 
 of the hero and heroine is unnatural 
 and overdrawn. It never for a 
 moment appears that the writer has 
 the central motive of the play well in 
 mind. It reminds us of many of 
 Shakespere's early plays, where he 
 has simply started in writing without 
 knowing exactly how things were to 
 come out. The two principal situa- 
 tions are hackneyed and conven- 
 tional—especially the one involving 
 the delivery of the two letters. 
 Certain portions of it, however, are 
 splendidly done. One beautifully 
 written scene is where Dennis is 
 cheerily prattling to his little one in 
 
 33 
 
the cradle,- utterly blind to the fact 
 that the mother is calmly and peace- 
 fully passing away. 
 
 Leaving "The Second Mrs. Tan- 
 queray" for a later paragraph, we 
 shall now speak of "The Notorious 
 Mrs. Ebbsmith," a play which im- 
 mediately followed. Though this 
 play is far and away better than 
 "Lady Bountiful," it is distinctly 
 below " Mrs. Tanqueray." I feel 
 that Pinero thought that he had 
 found a greater plot than in the suc- 
 cessful play just preceding it; it cer- 
 tainly was a great but difficult theme 
 for a drama. While the play furnishes 
 one character which is admirably 
 suited to any first-rate actress, the 
 treatment of the theme is such that 
 the play can never attain decided 
 success. A woman of an exceptional 
 character of strength and purpose, of 
 a beautiful nature and lofty soul, is 
 allied to a man despicably weak — 
 morally and intellectually below her. 
 The emotional conflict would 
 have been much stronger had he 
 conceived the man with the same 
 lofty ideals as the woman, but due to 
 our lack of respect and sympathy for 
 
 34 
 
him, we are not sorry that she is not 
 to succeed in her plan. The play is 
 redundant with almost faultless pass- 
 ages of diction. Gertrude, the rector's 
 sister, asks Agnes to go with her to 
 Ketherick, in North Scotland. 
 
 "The very spot for a woman who 
 wants to shut out things. Miles and 
 miles of wild moorland ! For com- 
 pany, purple heath and moss-covered 
 granite, in summer; in winter, the 
 moor-fowl and the snow glistening on 
 top of the crags. Oh, and for open- 
 air music, our little church owns the 
 sweetest little peal of old bells — Ah, 
 I can't promise you their silence ! 
 Indeed, I am very much afraid that 
 on a still Sunday you can even 
 hear the sound of the organ quite a 
 long distance off. I am the organist 
 when I'm at home. That's Ketherick. 
 Will you come ? " 
 
 There are a half-dozen well-wrought 
 and effective scenes — the burning of 
 the Bible is perhaps the strongest. 
 As the whole third act in which this 
 occurs is so strong, the fourth act 
 comes as a slight drop to the play. 
 I should outline the interest in the 
 play something after this fashion : 
 
 35 
 
The first two acts promise a play 
 of more true dramatic interest than 
 the "Mrs. Tanqueray." It would 
 seem that the author had grasped a 
 strong emotional idea, but he had not 
 clearly in mind how it was to termin- 
 ate. He has the dramatic emotion 
 and this leads up to the dramatic 
 action, but in portraying the results 
 of the action he does not succeed. 
 He fails to see the play as a unity; 
 the ending he gives is a possible one, 
 but he does not convince us, as he 
 does in "Mrs. Tanqueray," that it is 
 the inevitable one. The play is, in 
 many respects, powerful, but it is not 
 convincing. Had he written with a 
 firmer hand and a clearer vision, it 
 would not have been so unsatisfying 
 and indefinite. 
 
 The four years following the pro- 
 duction of "Mrs. Tanqueray" and 
 "Mrs. Ebbsmith " came four stage 
 successes, one after the other — "The 
 Benefit of Doubt," "The Princess 
 
 36 
 
and the Butterfly," "Trelawny of 
 the Wells," and "The Gay Lord 
 Quex." Nothing confirms the true 
 dramatic gift of our author as this 
 group of highly interesting and bril- 
 liantly written plays, gently satirizing 
 certain phases of our modern English 
 society. Though no one of these 
 would stand strictly the highest test of 
 comedy — that is, applying the defini- 
 tion in the narrower sense, as an amus- 
 ing play where the interest is gained 
 by the clash of character upon charac- 
 ter — yet the distance between this 
 group and such plays as "Le Gendre 
 de M. Poirier" is very slight. "The 
 Benefit of Doubt," excepting the last 
 act, is a faultless piece of construction; 
 "The Gay Lord Quex" is a most 
 brilliant acting play; and the other 
 two comedies contain two of the most 
 natural and human women characters 
 to be found in the whole range of his 
 work. Rose in " Trelawny " forms 
 one of an interesting group of charac- 
 ters of stage life of which "Adrienne 
 le Couvrier "' and " Magda " are 
 excellent examples. 
 
 Notice, too, in this group, his 
 superb treatment of climax scenes, 
 
 37 
 
those scenes which not only mark 
 the moment of greatest interest but 
 marking, in a way, the turning point 
 of the whole play. In "The Benefit 
 of Doubt" there is a splendidly man- 
 aged scene where Theophila, half 
 intoxicated, talks over with John the 
 idea of leaving for Paris, while the 
 jealous wife is at the time in a neigh- 
 boring room. This was almost the 
 same device which Shakespere used 
 in "Othello," when, concealing the 
 hero near by, the author makes 
 Cassio tell to Iago his affairs with 
 Bianca. The scene, as written by 
 Pinero, has been criticised as being 
 too theatrical for what has preceded; 
 to me it seems perfectly consistent 
 throughout and forms a fitting climax 
 to the powerful and brilliant acts 
 going before. In "The Trelawny" 
 the important scene is where Rose 
 and her theatrical friends are dis- 
 covered by Sir William huddled 
 together in the drawing room. This 
 scene, though very effective, is more 
 conventional, and we think of the 
 night escapades in the midst of dark- 
 ness in "The Magistrate" and "Dan- 
 dy Dick." The climax scene in 
 
 38 
 
" The Princess and the Butterfly" is 
 where Fay, just returning from a 
 late theatre party, discovers that her 
 guardian is about to take his depar- 
 ture for the duelling ground. This 
 is the least spectacular scene of the 
 group, but its quiet and suppressed 
 power is unfailingly dramatic. The 
 scene, however, that stands out in 
 the mind, very much as the famous 
 "screen scene" in the " The School 
 for Scandal," is the "boudoir scene" 
 in " Lord Quex." While this may 
 not be the most dramatic, it is by 
 far the most effective acting scene 
 that our author has drawn. I have 
 pointed out these dramatic move- 
 ments in detail because it is in the 
 handling of important scenes that we 
 can very often test the strength or 
 weakness of a dramatic author. At 
 the moment of greatest emotional 
 excitement the characters are brought 
 to a test; a test upon which others 
 are forming their judgment, and in 
 the result of which lies the fate of 
 the whole play. 
 
 In unity he shows a distinct mas- 
 tery over his earlier plays. There is 
 a beginning and an end, and the 
 
 39 
 
essential struggle and conflict are un- 
 mistakable. The unity may be a 
 unity of theme, or of story, rather 
 than of plot, but in any case there is 
 a distinct dramatic unity. A detailed 
 study of the style, plot and characters 
 of these pieces would bring out the 
 fact that the author is no longer the 
 apprentice trying his hand, but the 
 successful dramatist, succeeding with 
 any theme that presents itself to him 
 for dramatic treatment. 
 
 In 1893, just fifteen years after the 
 production of his first play, Pinero 
 produced "The Second Mrs. Tan- 
 queray." Before considering this 
 play, let us turn to Pinero, the man. 
 Our author has never written to the 
 reviews on the elevation of the drama, 
 nor has he lectured a la Caine on 
 dramatic art. When forced to go to 
 the theatre upon the first performance 
 of his plays, the agony being over, he 
 is found suffering from a bad head- 
 ache — the result, he always claims, of 
 the difference between what he in- 
 tended his play to be and what it is. 
 At the time of writing "The Second 
 Mrs. Tanqueray," he wrote to Mr. 
 Salaman, who was getting some of 
 
 40 
 
the early comedies ready for publica- 
 tion: "How the ghosts of those dead- 
 and-gone plays haunt me ! I am too 
 full of my new work just now to bear 
 with other things patiently. Heavens! 
 I pray that some of my work in the 
 future may be better, more truthful, 
 and more serious than the old stuff." 
 From a man with such habits of 
 work, with such habits of thought, 
 from one who has served his appren- 
 ticeship so faithfully, who endeavored 
 always to produce the very best that 
 was in his power; from such a man, 
 if he have the slightest native gift for 
 playmaking, we can reasonably expect 
 a very great play. Pinero does not 
 disappoint us. On May 27, 1893, 
 a day long to be remembered in the 
 annals of the English stage, " The 
 Second Mrs. Tanqueray " was pro- 
 duced at the St. James Theatre. Our 
 author was hailed unanimously not 
 only as the greatest of living drama- 
 tists, but as an author of a play which 
 was also a piece of literature. 
 
 In the superb first act the author 
 poses a problem of the greatest inter- 
 est. Aubrey's experiment has all of 
 the effects of plausibility. The woman 
 
 4' 
 
who caught his heart on the rebound, 
 fascinated him immediately by her 
 warmth and gratitude. Dumas fils 
 once said if we could combine Bal- 
 zac's knowledge of human nature 
 with Scribe's dramaturgic ability we 
 should get our greatest and most 
 faultless drama. This play was a 
 triumph not only of construction, 
 but of characterization and dialogue. 
 For the strong human qualities there 
 is nothing to equal it outside of the 
 great masterpieces. Paula is a charac- 
 ter drawn so adequately, with so cer- 
 tain knowledge, that I should know 
 her as I know a woman of flesh and 
 blood after a long acquaintance. The 
 author dares to draw her as she 
 really is, in all the pathetically good 
 instincts, and also the littleness and 
 bitterness of her artificially developed 
 soul. Nothing can better show the 
 artistic cunning and subtlety of 
 character development than to con- 
 trast Paula at the table in the first act, 
 when she remarks, "I like fruit when 
 it's expensive," with the scene in the 
 fourth act, where she almost shrinks 
 from the loose familiarity of the 
 Orreyeds, in whose company she 
 
 4 2 
 
once took delight. Our author re- 
 garded the development of character 
 in action as "the highest achievement 
 in drama, and the only means through 
 which a play can live." One of the 
 great dramatic movements of the 
 play, is her meeting with Captain 
 Ardale, made more powerful and im- 
 pressive because it follows her frantic 
 but successful efforts in winning the 
 love and confidence of Ellean. 
 Throughout all of these scenes we 
 sympathize with her acutely, which 
 is only another proof of the strong 
 human quality of the work. Nowhere 
 do we find a better example of the 
 tragic, with a clever balance of high 
 comedy. In a smaller way this idea 
 was carried out in the "porter scene" 
 in "Macbeth." The gossiping aunt 
 in Suderman's "Magda" is a modern 
 example of the same thing. Pinero 
 accomplishes it by a clever bit of 
 society characterization lightly touch- 
 ed in here and there. Cayley helps 
 largely, too. In the last act, just 
 before Paula goes to her chamber for 
 the last time, we hear Cayley singing 
 softly as he approaches the house. 
 It is one of the finest strokes in the 
 
 43 
 
whole play that the author thus used 
 the humor to relieve the awful effect. 
 It is in this play that he has 
 attained the high water-mark of 
 dramatic construction. The struggle 
 is the struggle to live down the past. 
 But the future proves to be "but the 
 past entering through another gate." 
 The play, which is a tragedy in form, 
 manner and style, is a powerful work, 
 relentless in teaching and gloomy in 
 story. Here we have the portrayal 
 of a human emotion, leading slowly 
 but inevitably to some definite and 
 decided action. The line of dramatic 
 interest is as straight as an arrow, 
 never deviating to the right or left 
 for one instant. Every act, every 
 scene, every word, and every gesture 
 is carrying you one step further to 
 that one, inevitable end. At the 
 very outset of the first act you get 
 the impression that Aubrey's social 
 friends may not like Paula. Cayley, 
 who suggests the raisonneur of the 
 French drama and the chorus of the 
 Greek tragedy, says : " You may dive 
 in many waters, but there is one 
 social dead sea. Why, for years I've 
 been sitting, watching ... on the 
 
 44 
 
shore of that same sea ... for some 
 of my best friends to come up." The 
 more superficial would take this only 
 as a clever bit of philosophy, but it 
 is one of those many strokes which 
 conveys its exact meaning with refer- 
 ence to the evolution of the dra- 
 matic idea. Again, when Cayley and 
 Aubrey have talked over the whole 
 affair, Cayley says, "I'm like an old- 
 fashioned play-goer. I love to see 
 certain characters happy and comfort- 
 able at the finish." What a world 
 of irony there is, too, in the descrip- 
 tion of the lovely dinner-party of 
 which Paula had dreamed. But that 
 was only the dream; she awoke in a 
 fit of the shivers. And the idea of 
 this scene, like a hot metal thread, 
 continues unrelentingly to the end of 
 the last act. But to point out the 
 scenes and actions leading up to the 
 final action would be to reiterate every 
 passage in the play. It is one of the 
 most compact dramas ever written, 
 and there is not a line that does not 
 have its bearing on the dramatic effect 
 and movement. 
 
 It would be a difficult problem to 
 pick out the playwrights who have 
 
 45 
 
attained perfection in sheer dramatur- 
 gic art. From the glorious Greek 
 period to the present time the names 
 could be counted on the fingers of 
 one hand. I should name Sophocles' 
 "CEdipus," Shakespere's "Othello," 
 Ibsen's "Ghosts," and Pinero s "Mrs. 
 Tanqueray." These plays are admit- 
 tedly different in theme and treatment; 
 but for that one thing which we call 
 dramatic construction each attains the 
 highest perfection. 
 
 "Iris," which is Mr. Pinero's most 
 recent work, stands among his serious 
 dramas second only to "Mrs. 
 Tanqueray." Here, as in "The Pro- 
 fligate" and "Mrs. Tanqueray," he 
 deals strongly with strong situations; 
 digging deep into the foundations of 
 character and social structure, he pre- 
 sents these situations in such a way 
 that no one can feel the same after 
 reading the three great dramas. Iris 
 forms one of his series of feminine 
 types of which Theopola, Mrs. 
 Ebbsmith and Paula are members. 
 
 He has given us a masterly por- 
 traiture of human weakness. Iris' 
 real love was a love of ease; her one 
 policy was to drift, to follow life 
 
 4 6 
 
along the line of the least resistance. 
 She lets herself become involved 
 through sheer indolence of character, 
 and then makes a spasmodic effort to 
 extricate herself. But it is all drift, 
 drift, drift; she is forever charming 
 and helpless — a beautiful, wasteful 
 woman, without moral nerve or back- 
 bone. There are times when she 
 seems to be morally color blind. In 
 the presence of the returned Trenwith 
 she is pathetically unable either to 
 understand her own degradation or 
 to view the matter through the eyes 
 of " Laurie." She is surprised at his 
 inability to accept her now. She 
 is stunned to find that he can 
 leave her. The crisis of her fate is 
 when Trenwith begs her, during the 
 Italian tour, to come with him to 
 Columbia. She is a little tempted, 
 but she knows her own nature suffi- 
 ciently to point out to him why she 
 cannot go. 
 
 While the play is powerful and 
 gripping, showing the work of a 
 matured master-hand, it lacks the 
 perfection of construction so notice- 
 able in "The Magistrate," "The 
 Benefit of the Doubt," and " Mrs. 
 
 +7 
 
Tanqueray." In the first and third 
 acts he indicates the episodes as dis- 
 tinguished from the acts by a momen- 
 tary drop of the curtain. While this 
 interesting innovation indicates with 
 correctness and dramatic truth the 
 gradual passing of time, it is not the 
 highest and best form of dramatic 
 construction. A still more obvious 
 fault in the construction is the gulf 
 between acts three and four. At the 
 end of the third act we leave Iris an 
 almost new woman. There is only 
 the check-book incident to make us 
 think otherwise. In this scene I felt 
 for the moment that the woman's new 
 love had transformed all the characters 
 of the play — even Maldonados* de- 
 ceit I did not see through. Certain 
 I was that this love had transformed 
 Iris. Now, in the opening of the 
 fourth act two years are supposed to 
 have elapsed, and not only the condi- 
 tions are changed but a psychological 
 catastrophe has taken place. We are 
 almost stunned. We commence ab- 
 solutely a new era without adequate 
 preparation or warning. The break- 
 ing of the furniture at the very end 
 of the last act does not serve to 
 
 48 
 
Mrs. Patrick Campbell 
 
strengthen the play; on the contrary 
 one feels a drop in the tone. The 
 whole drama leaves one with a vague 
 sense of almost physical pain and 
 discomfort — a feeling akin to that 
 upon reading "Ghosts." This is due 
 in a great part to the feeling that poor 
 Iris was too weak and too lovely to 
 receive such treatment, and does 
 not quite deserve the tremendous 
 punishment. 
 
 What does Pinero wish to teach ? 
 It seems that he wishes to teach that 
 weakness is as bad as crime, that self- 
 indulgence has its consequences as 
 awful as vice. We personally forgive 
 her and blame Trenwith for not doing 
 so, but nature and life are sterner in 
 their judgments. The same kind of 
 moral Shakespere tried to teach in 
 the story of "King Lear," and such 
 was the lesson from Balzac's "Pere 
 Goriot." These two old men are 
 made to perish as miserably as Mac- 
 beth, the murderer. These two pro- 
 found writers believed that a man 
 must be strong in intellectual charac- 
 ter; he must not only be moral, he 
 must act discreetly and nobly, and 
 be able to read character wisely and 
 
 49 
 
well. It was simply indiscretion that 
 brought their heroes down. Read 
 " Lear," read " Goriot," and read 
 " Iris," and then ponder over life's 
 problems. Each is slightly different 
 in point of view, but the lesson is the 
 same. They teach the awful conse- 
 quences of weak indiscretion, of 
 doting old age, and of feebleness of 
 character. 
 
 " The Profligate," " Mrs. Tan- 
 queray," and " Iris " are something 
 more than serious social plays. They 
 are tragedies, the tragedy in each 
 case being the failure on the part ot 
 the individual to achieve his mission. 
 But what adds to the depth of pathos 
 and subtlety of charm is the sugges- 
 tion of what might have been if they 
 had not been tragedies. The happi- 
 ness which glimmers through them, 
 the hopes, loves, and ambitions of 
 which they are made, these things 
 fascinate us and win our sympathy, 
 so that we are the more willing to 
 suffer with our heroes, even if we are 
 at the same time all the more sensi- 
 tive to their suffering. Of course this 
 could not be done were there not a 
 very great vividness given to the 
 
 50 
 
leading characters of the play, and 
 each with a different note of pathos. 
 If the characters were too wicked, if 
 the situations were unrelieved, they 
 would revolt us for this reason. 
 
 Over no playright since Ibsen has 
 there been so much live, earnest dis- 
 cussion. There is a disagreement 
 on almost every point of his serious 
 plays. The very fact that we do dis- 
 agree is a good point and it is a very 
 strong proof that he is getting charac- 
 ter and action very near to real life. 
 
 " Mrs. Tanqueray," " Lord Quex," 
 and "Iris" have had to stand the 
 brunt of the discussion on the moral- 
 ity of our author's work. Ever since 
 the appearance of "Lord Quex" and 
 "Iris" there has been an opinion 
 current among those not familiar 
 with the stage that our author tends 
 toward the immoral in the presenta- 
 tion of themes. No impression could 
 be more erroneous. In almost every 
 play since the production of " The 
 Profligate " he has set forth moral 
 problems in a masterly way; he is not 
 always convincing, he does not always 
 attempt to solve the problems, but 
 you do get the teaching if you wish 
 
 5' 
 
to learn the lesson. In "Mrs. Tan- 
 queray" he does not present a false, 
 alluring philosophy. He wins our 
 sympathy for Paula, not by showing 
 that such a woman can escape the 
 consequences of the past, but by 
 employing all the resources of an 
 experienced playwright to prove that 
 she cannot. "Lord Quex," written 
 in a lighter vein, is none the less 
 moral. The character of Quex as pre- 
 sented by Mr. Hare shows that the 
 conversion, as affected by the asso- 
 ciation with a pure and innocent girl, 
 is a real one. The author does not 
 depict adultery as a common, ordinary 
 affair of life, nor does he make virtue 
 ridiculous, undesirable, and not worth 
 while. In "Iris" he handles the 
 problem with entire sincerity and out- 
 spokenness, and without vulgarity. 
 Never for a moment do we feel that 
 he is trifling or dallying with the 
 questionable and indelicate. \He has 
 no more desire to make vice attrac- 
 tive than he has to disguise the conse- 
 quences of sin. In all his moral plays 
 there is no glorification of the un- 
 clean ; on the contrary, he shows that 
 rotten society, that cultivated Bohe- 
 
 5 2 
 
mia, together with lying and deceit, 
 and the disregard for social laws, will 
 bring about their own revenge and 
 their own eternal consequences. 
 
 It is as a master of his craft, above 
 all things else, that we think of Mr. 
 Pinero. Other playwrights of our 
 time may be more keenly on the alert 
 for the dramatic story; others, though 
 I doubt it, may be more subtle de- 
 lineators of character, others more 
 profound thinkers, but not one has 
 an equal mastery of stagecraft, or so 
 nice a sense of adaptation of dramatic 
 means to dramatic ends. We have 
 pointed out his inimitable skill in 
 handling great and important scenes; 
 let us now turn to his treatment of 
 first acts. They are, first of all, 
 Scribe-like in their clearness. But 
 introductions must not only be clear, 
 there must be elements that promise 
 an interesting play — in this he never 
 fails. Only very rarely does he 
 resort to the feather-duster-and- 
 servant method of exposition. The 
 introduction of Dick in " Sweet 
 Lavender" is faultless in its interest 
 and humor. In the " Mrs. Tan- 
 queray," notice with what ease and 
 
 53 
 
naturalness he poses a problem of 
 great interest. In "The Weaker Sex," 
 he has on the stage a large poster 
 which aids in the exposition. Here 
 is a remarkably short act, and not one 
 point is omitted which will help the 
 reader to see the exact position of 
 characters and events. In "The 
 Cabinet Minister," we see the rapid 
 introduction of fourteen characters 
 together with the lucid unfolding of 
 an intricate situation, and though 
 this act, too, is very short, all is 
 ready for the action when it closes. 
 But it is in the first act of " The 
 Benefit of the Doubt" that he reaches 
 his high-water mark. The exposition 
 is full and clear; you are not only 
 introduced to the bare events of the 
 play, but the flavor and color are put 
 before you in an inimitable style. 
 With event added to event, and scene 
 added to scene, we are put in touch 
 with every character. No element 
 of excellence is wanting — dialogue, 
 stagecraft, interesting dramatic move- 
 ment and situation, all are there in 
 perfection. We see here the Augier 
 method, except that the student has 
 outdone the master. This splendid 
 
 54 
 
first act will stand the test of years as 
 a perfect example of dramaturgic art. 
 We have tried to point out that 
 our author possessed, to a greater 
 degree than any other author except 
 Ibsen, that quality which is called 
 dramatic technic. But the difference 
 between the two dramatists is that 
 the one appears to be largely the 
 self-conscious, the other the uncon- 
 scious workman. For the sheer skill 
 of building the acting play, for the 
 sheer dramaturgic power — and for the 
 moment I do not wish to include 
 either subject-matter or theme — 
 Ibsen stands not only the greatest of 
 his time, but second only to Sopho- 
 cles, Shakespere and Moliere. He 
 has so much of that native gift of the 
 true dramatist that even from the 
 scholar and critic he is able to con- 
 ceal his art. With Pinero, on the 
 contrary, excepting "Mrs.Tanqueray" 
 and "The Benefit of the Doubt," 
 you feel that the skilled dramatist is 
 at work, a dramatist who has an 
 infinite knowledge of the stage and 
 who has mastered, great and small, 
 every detail of his art, yet you are 
 again and again impressed with the 
 
 J5 
 
fact that it is the hand of the self- 
 conscious artist. Just as you feel 
 that Stevenson was conscious of every 
 word and every phrase that he put 
 down, you somehow know that Pinero 
 has studied every act, every scene, 
 and every line with scrupulous and 
 painstaking care. I believe it is due 
 to this fact that so many of his seri- 
 ous plays fail in their power to con- 
 vince. Ibsen loses himself in his 
 subject, so anxious is he to carry con- 
 viction to every heart. Our author 
 has given us only a few plays where 
 you feel quite sure that he has sub- 
 merged himself entirely in his subject, 
 and for that reason you do not feel 
 the conviction which is so character- 
 istic of the Ibsen plays. 
 
 The fact that Pinero's plays are 
 almost as interesting to read as they 
 are to see, speaks much for his style. 
 The language of his dramas is a 
 model of brevity, decision and 
 pointedness. His own practical ex- 
 perience as an actor had taught him 
 the value of the right word in the 
 right place as compared to mere fine 
 writing. As he himself has said, 
 "More dramatic authors have died 
 
 56 
 
from fine writing than from any 
 other cause." Brilliancy is probably 
 the characteristic word which we 
 should apply to his style as a whole. 
 No one gets his effects with fewer 
 strokes; he seems to do this by mere 
 instinct, but he has confessed that it 
 is the result of the most infinite pains. 
 In his serious dramas he strikes a 
 deeper note; his style becomes ripe 
 and individual and well suited to the 
 theme. Here and there are classical 
 passages, classical in their restraint, 
 sobriety and clearness of form. 
 Maldonado, who finds that his efforts 
 to gain the love of Iris are futile, says: 
 "You'll laugh at me — no, that's not 
 your way; you'll stab me with those 
 steel-gray eyes of yours, tighten 
 your lips till the sight of their thin, 
 red line stings me like whipcord. 
 All the same, you've got to hear 
 it — I love you. . . . The idea of 
 your wanting to break away from me 
 one day is insupportable. What did 
 I ask you to call me that day in Ken- 
 sington — beloved? Fool! And yet 
 this morning, notwithstanding all that 
 has passed since then, I'd give half 
 of everything I have in the world if 
 
 57 
 
you'd speak that word. I will give 
 it; 1 lay it at your feet. Iris! 
 [Drawing her to him.] Iris! you 
 devil in marble !" 
 
 In "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," 
 when Aubrey and his wife are sitting 
 amidst the hopeless ruin of their 
 fortunes discussing the probability or 
 possibility of beginning again, Paula 
 says: "Of course I'm pretty now — 
 I'm pretty still — and a pretty woman, 
 whatever else she may be, is always — 
 well, endurable. But even now 1 
 notice that the lines of my face are 
 getting deeper; so are the hollows 
 about my eyes. Yes, my face is cover- 
 ed with little shadows that usen't to 
 be there. Oh! I know I'm 'going 
 off.' I hate paint and dye and those 
 messes, but, by-and-by, I shall drift 
 the way of others; I shan't be able to 
 help myself. And then, some day — 
 perhaps very suddenly, under a queer, 
 fantastic light at night or in the glare 
 of the morning — that horrid, irre- 
 sistible truth that physical repulsion 
 forces on men and women will come 
 to you, and you'll sicken at me." 
 
 Aubrey— "I—" 
 
 Paula — "You'll see me then, at 
 
 58 
 
last, with other people's eyes; you'll 
 see me just as your daughter does 
 now, as all wholesome folks see 
 women like me. And I shall have no 
 weapon to fight with — not one serv- 
 iceable little bit of prettiness left to 
 defend myself with ! A worn-out 
 creature — broken up, very likely, 
 some time before I ought to be, my 
 hair bright, my eyes dull, my body 
 too thin or too stout, my cheeks 
 raddled and ruddled — a ghost, a 
 wreck, a caricature, a candle' that gut- 
 ters, call such an end what you like! 
 And this is the future you talk about! 
 I know it — I know it! Oh, Aubrey! 
 Oh! Oh!" 
 
 Our author began writing in 1877; 
 during that time he wrote and pro- 
 duced 35 plays. The range of his 
 art is no less remarkable than the 
 quality of his work. In fantastic farce, 
 in comedy, in razor edge satire, in 
 sentimental drama and in tragedy, he 
 has consistently surpassed any other 
 living writer of the English stage. 
 In a succession of successful plays, 
 with their various types of characters 
 all clear cut and perfectly differenti- 
 ated, he has shown us contemporary 
 
 59 
 
life as it is really lived, "illumined 
 by the wit and invention of genius." 
 
 To pick out his work that is last- 
 ingly important is obviously a diffi- 
 cult task. One of the best tests of 
 his work is in the fact that play after 
 play has been revived again and again 
 with success. Many plays have been 
 translated and produced in Germany, 
 France, Italy, and Russia. "The 
 Magistrate," "Dandy Dick," "The 
 Amazons," "Sweet Lavender," "The 
 Princess and The Butterfly," "Lord 
 Quex," and "The Second Mrs. Tan- 
 queray" will always, I think, have a 
 large audience. " The Profligate " 
 and "Iris" will probably make a last- 
 ing appeal to a smaller circle of play- 
 goers. 
 
 What of the future? Mr. Pinero's 
 greatest serious play is "Mrs. Tan- 
 queray;" his greatest comedy, "The 
 Magistrate." While he has never 
 portrayed a character which was in 
 its conception and treatment on as 
 high a social plane as Beatta in "The 
 Joy of Living" by Sudermann, he has 
 kept closer to the typical and further 
 from the exceptional than the Ger- 
 man author. We can safely say that 
 
 60 
 
he will never produce anything of 
 the nature of Ibsen's most typical 
 plays; he is too innate an optimist, 
 he lives too much in the open air to 
 ever succeed. We may expect the 
 treatment of sober themes, alternated 
 now and then with romantic farce. 
 Great themes full of originality have 
 not as yet pressed themselves upon 
 him. If, as he grows older, some 
 great problem of human life appeals 
 strongly to him, his equipment is 
 such that we may reasonably expect 
 one of the greatest dramas produced 
 at the first quarter of the twentieth 
 century. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Two or three unsuccessful attempts 
 have been made to give a complete 
 and correct iist of the plays of Mr. 
 Pinero. I have deemed it wise to 
 give the list as approved by Mr. Rice, 
 the author's secretary. 
 
 Date of 
 Produc- 
 No. Name. Theatre. tion: 
 
 i. "Two Can Play at that Game," Lyceum, 1877 
 
 2. "Two Hundred a Year," . Globe, Oct., '77 
 
 3. "Daisy'« Escape," . . . Sept., '79 
 
 6l 
 
No. 
 
 Name. 
 
 Theatre 
 
 Date of 
 Produc- 
 tion. 
 
 4- 
 
 "Hester's Mystery," 
 
 . Folly, 
 
 June, 
 
 '80 
 
 5- 
 
 
 
 Sept. 
 
 ,'8o 
 
 6. 
 
 "The Money Spinner," 
 
 St. James 
 
 ',Nov. 
 
 ,'8o 
 
 7- 
 
 "Imprudence," 
 
 . . Folly, 
 
 Aug., 
 
 •8 1 
 
 8. 
 
 "The Squire," 
 
 St. James 
 
 ', Dec. 
 
 ,'8i 
 
 9- 
 
 "Girls and Boys," . 
 
 Toole's, 
 
 Oct., 
 
 '82 
 
 IO. 
 
 "The Rector" . . 
 
 Court, 
 
 Mar., 
 
 •83 
 
 ii. 
 
 "Lords and Commons,*' 
 
 Hay'ket, 
 
 Nov., 
 
 •83 
 
 12. 
 
 "The Rocket," . 
 
 . Gayety, 
 
 Dec, 
 
 •83 
 
 '3- 
 
 "Low Water," . 
 
 . Globe, 
 
 Jan., 
 
 '84 
 
 »4- 
 
 "Ironmaster," 
 
 St. James 
 
 ',May, 
 
 '84 
 
 '5- 
 
 "In Chancery," . 
 
 Gayety, 
 
 Dec, 
 
 '84 
 
 16. 
 
 "The Magistrate," . 
 
 Court, 
 
 Mar., 
 
 '85 
 
 T 7- 
 
 "Mayfair," . . . 
 
 
 ',Nov. 
 
 ■85 
 
 18. 
 
 " Schoolmistress,*' 
 
 . Court, 
 
 Mar., 
 
 '86 
 
 •9- 
 
 "Hobby-Horse," . . 
 
 St. James 
 
 ,Oct. 
 
 •85 
 
 20. 
 
 "Dandy Dick," . . 
 
 Court, 
 
 Oct., 
 
 •87 
 
 21. 
 
 "Sweet Lavender,'' 
 
 Terry's, 
 
 Mar , 
 
 '88 
 
 22. 
 
 "The Weaker-Sex," 
 
 . Court, 
 
 Mar., 
 
 '89 
 
 n- 
 
 "The Profligate," . 
 
 Garrick, 
 
 Apr., 
 
 '89 
 
 24. 
 
 "The Cabinet Minister,' 
 
 . Court, 
 
 Apr., 
 
 '90 
 
 25. 
 
 "Lady Bountiful," . 
 
 Garrick, 
 
 Mar., 
 
 '9' 
 
 26. 
 
 "The Times," . . 
 
 . Terry's, 
 
 Oct., 
 
 - 9 1 
 
 *7. 
 
 "The Amazons," 
 
 Court, 
 
 Mar., 
 
 '93 
 
 28. 
 
 "The Second Mrs. Tanque 
 
 ray," St. James 
 
 '.May 
 
 '93 
 
 29. 
 
 ' ' The Notorious Mrs. Ebbs 
 
 nith," Garrick, 
 
 Mar., 
 
 '95 
 
 3°. 
 
 "The Benefit of the Dou 
 
 it," Comedy, 
 
 Oct., 
 
 '95 
 
 3'- 
 
 ' ' The Princessand the Butt 
 
 erfly" St. James 
 
 ,Mar. 
 
 '97 
 
 3*. 
 
 "Trelawny of the Wells,' 
 
 Court, 
 
 J i ">.i 
 
 '98 
 
 33- 
 
 "The Beauty Stone," 
 
 . Savoy, 
 
 May, 
 
 '98 
 
 34. 
 
 "The Gay Lord Quex," 
 
 Globe, 
 
 Apr., 
 
 '99 
 
 35- 
 
 "Iris," 
 
 Garrick, 
 
 Sept., 
 
 '01 
 
 62 
 
Henrik Ibsen. 
 
Hekrik Ibsen 
 
THERE are several reasons 
 why an analysis of the dra- 
 maturgic art at the basis of 
 Ibsen's plays presents more 
 difficulties than those which confront 
 the student in considering any other 
 dramatist of the Nineteenth Century. 
 The chief of these difficulties arises 
 from the overwhelming importance 
 of content as compared to form; for 
 whether we agree with him or not, 
 one's mind is so taken up with the 
 social and ethical ideas that Ibsen 
 brings into prominence — especially 
 in the later plays — that we have no 
 attention left for the machinery that 
 sets the play in motion. Paradoxi- 
 cally enough, the very excellence of 
 this technical side is another source 
 of difficulty; for Ibsen's dramaturgic 
 art stands that final test of all art 
 which requires the concealment of the 
 means employed to produce any 
 effect. Behind the apparent simplic- 
 ity of the best plays lies a fund of 
 constructive skill which only the ex- 
 
 69 
 
pert in dramaturgic matters discerns, 
 so inextricably are the various parts 
 bound together and so direct is the 
 impression that the work produces. 
 
 This mastery of his art was not 
 attained by Ibsen at once, and for 
 this reason a chronologic survey of 
 his work is of peculiar interest as 
 showing the evolution of a character- 
 istic and unconventional technical 
 form from one which is at first imita- 
 tive of the form employed in contem- 
 porary dramatic literature.. In the 
 following study I have attempted to 
 trace this development from play to 
 play as far as this is possible in so 
 confined a space. Before passing to 
 the plays themselves, however, an 
 outline of the chief facts of Ibsen's 
 career may not be out of place. 
 
 Henrik Ibsen was born in 1828, 
 in the small Norwegian town of 
 Skien. His father was one of the 
 most prominent figures in the com- 
 mercial and social life of the place, 
 a position which he lost when the 
 future dramatist was eight years old. 
 Owing to a failure in business, the 
 family was obliged to pass from its 
 previous prosperity to a life of econ- 
 
 7° 
 
omy and retirement on a farm just 
 outside the town. Ibsen's period of 
 formal education was a very brief one 
 and there was left to him no chance 
 of choosing a congenial profession — 
 such as that of a painter, for which he 
 seems to have shown some talent. 
 The restricted circumstances of his 
 family made it imperative to choose 
 one that should give immediate sup- 
 port, and so at the age of sixteen he 
 was apprenticed to a pharmacist at 
 Grimstad. This was a town of less 
 than a thousand inhabitants, and 
 Ibsen remained here until he was 
 nearly twenty-two, by which time he 
 had written and published his first 
 play. The whole period of his child- 
 hood and youth was one in which 
 the darker and unpleasant side of 
 things had been strongly emphasized, 
 and it is partly for this reason that 
 the pessimistic mood so characteristic 
 of much of Ibsen's work is to be 
 found from the first. 
 
 In 1850 Ibsen went to Christiania, 
 where he came in touch with some 
 of the younger writers of the time. 
 Here he successively attempted play- 
 writing, lyric poetry, political satire, 
 
 71 
 
criticism and editorial work, but all 
 with doubtful success. One of his 
 earliest plays, "The Warrior's Tomb" 
 (unpublished) was performed at 
 Christiania about this time, and 
 through not successful, it brought 
 the author to the notice of some in- 
 fluential people who enabled him to 
 obtain the appointment of "theatre- 
 poet" at Bergen. This office, which 
 was practically that of stage manager 
 of the Bergen theatre, Ibsen held for 
 five years. He then returned to 
 Christiania to assume the same posi- 
 tion at the "Norwegian Theatre" in 
 that city. Here it was that Ibsen 
 served his apprenticeship as a drama- 
 tist, and it is no exaggeration to say 
 that he never could have attained his 
 later dramaturgic skill if it had not 
 been for his close connection with 
 the actual stage. The repertory of 
 the theatres with which he came in 
 such close touch was, as we shall see, 
 a strong influence on the technique 
 of his own earlier plays. 1 Several of 
 Ibsen's early works, written while he 
 was stage manager, were produced 
 
 1 It is significant that the plays of the contemporary French 
 dramatists, especially Scribe, made up the bulk of the plays 
 performed. 
 
 7 2 
 
under his own direction. This was 
 the case with " Lady Inger of Oes- 
 traat," "The Feast at Solhaug" and 
 " The Vikings at Helgeland." 
 
 In 1864 Ibsen left Norway, and 
 he has lived in Germany and Italy 
 almost without interruption up to a 
 few years ago. During this period 
 of over thirty years, his life has been 
 without external incident. Ibsen is 
 the poet and dramatist, and almost 
 nothing else. This is why the best 
 sources for our purpose are the plays 
 which he began to publish from now 
 on, at almost regular intervals. 
 
 In a brief consideration of the 
 dramaturgic characteristics of nearly 
 two dozen plays, all that can be ex- 
 pected,is a notice of the chief technical 
 interest in each and the connection 
 between one play and its followers. 
 Even the barest outline of the plot 
 of each play is out of the question. 
 In what follows, I have also avoided 
 as far as possible all discussion of 
 the ethical, moral or social questions 
 which they bring up. 
 
 It was while reading Cicero and 
 Sallust for an examination that Ibsen 
 found the subject for his first play. 
 
 73 
 
This was "Catalina" a drama in three 
 acts, written in irregular verse and 
 published in 1850. The play shows 
 the usual defects of a dramatic piece 
 constructed without the practical 
 knowledge of one who has been in 
 actual contact with the stage. As we 
 now have it, the play is in the form 
 revised by the author in 1 871, and 
 we cannot tell how far this differs 
 from the form in which it was first 
 written. But even as it stands it is a 
 good example of the crudeness and 
 inexpertness of a beginner. The 
 struggle is wholly internal, and, as 
 one of the critics has said, "Action 
 has been reduced to a minimum and 
 dramatic situations are almost want- 
 ing." The usual conventions of the 
 monologue and the aside are em- 
 ployed — especially the former, in 
 which there is for the most part 
 elaborate self-analysis." In the charac- 
 terization of the play the author sub- 
 stituted for real men and women, in- 
 carnations of good or evil principles. 
 The two female figures between which 
 the hero stands, Furia, his evil genius, 
 
 3 Cf. the very first speeeh of Catalina and that of Furia at 
 the end of the first act. 
 
 74 
 
and Aurelia, his good angel, are 
 dramatically vitiated by the abstract 
 and formal manner in which they 
 are constrasted as the personifications 
 of the two contending principles 
 struggling for the soul of Catalina. 
 ( The device of placing his chief 
 character between two women is one 
 which Ibsen employs again and again 
 in his later plays.) Formally, es- 
 pecially in its scenic arrangement, 
 " CataHna " seems to have been 
 written in imitation of the romantic 
 dramas of Holberg and Ochlenschlae- 
 ger, which were themselves modelled 
 upon the Shaksperean form. One 
 is often reminded in the piece of the 
 Roman plays of Shakspere, particu- 
 larly so in the first act, where we have 
 five short scenes changed with the 
 frequency common in the imitations 
 of the Elizabethan drama. 
 
 The only interest which "Catalina" 
 has for the student of Ibsen's mind 
 and art is indicated by what the 
 author says in the preface to the 
 second edition : "Many things and 
 much upon which my later work has 
 turned — the contradiction between 
 endowment and desire, between 
 
 75 
 
capacity and will, at once the entire 
 tragedy and comedy of mankind and 
 of the individual — may here be dimly 
 discerned." 
 
 Between "Catalina" and "Lady 
 Inger of Oestraat" Ibsen wrote three 
 plays, " The Warrior's Tomb," 
 "Norma; or, a Politician's Love" 
 and "St. John's Night," none of 
 which has been published. 
 
 The technical advance which 
 "Lady Inger," a prose drama in five 
 acts, shows over Ibsen's first play is 
 perhaps to be accounted for, by the 
 fact that it was written for an actual 
 theatre and after Ibsen had learned 
 his craft. This play is in many ways 
 the opposite of the kind of play which 
 we saw "Catalina" to be. The sub- 
 ject, taken from the national history, is 
 „a truly tragic one, and the action is set 
 against a highly colored background. 
 What is very significant is the fact 
 that the technical management of the 
 plot is remarkably like that employed 
 in the typical Scribe plays. In 
 "Lady Inger" everybody supposes 
 some other character to be somebody 
 else, and the most important state 
 secrets are disclosed to the most out- 
 
 76 
 
of-the-way persons in a highly im- 
 probable manner. Lady Inger sup- 
 poses her son to be the outlawed 
 pretender; her daughter Elina does 
 not know that Nils Lykke is the 
 betrayer of her sister ; Nils Lykke 
 wrongly supposes Olaf Skaktavl to 
 be the outlaw he has been sent to 
 capture, and so on throughout the 
 play. Other elements of the Scribian 
 technique are to be seen in the eaves- 
 dropping scenes, monologues and 
 asides, all present in abundance. 
 Here, for the first time, we can see 
 the beginning of Ibsen's tendency 
 toward the concentration so character- 
 istic of his later plays. The whole 
 action takes place in one night — a 
 manner of keeping to the unity of 
 time which is to be found in 
 "Ghosts," "Rosmersholm " and, 
 most strikingly, in "John Gabriel 
 Borkmann." Another hint of his 
 later methods lies in the way in 
 which Ibsen carries out the exposi- 
 tion. It is only toward the end of 
 the play (Act IV.) that we first find 
 out what the whole play is really 
 about, for not before this point are 
 the motives of the chief figures in the 
 
 77 
 
action made clear to us. The art 
 with which this obscurity is gradually 
 removed is one of the most striking 
 things about the technique of the 
 play and forecasts the later analytic 
 method of the dramatist. In this re- 
 spect "Lady Inger" stands midway 
 between the earlier and later plays. 
 Ibsen's next published work, "The 
 Feast at Solhaug," is a three-act play 
 written in mingled prose and verse. 
 It was the most successful of all the 
 earlier productions, having been per- 
 formed to crowded houses at Bergen 
 and elsewhere for what was then a 
 long run. As in "Lady Inger" the 
 national literature supplied the basis 
 for the play, which finds its motive 
 in the love of a married woman 
 for the lover of her sister. Here 
 also the technique shows some simi- 
 larity to that of the conventional play 
 in which the interest is sustained by 
 the device of "the misunderstanding" 
 — that is, by not having a proper ex- 
 planation given at the proper time. 
 The whole piece, with its choruses, 
 songs, declamations and its highly 
 lyric tone, gives one the impression 
 of an opera rather than a play; and 
 
 78 
 
this, together with the sudden, happy 
 ending, may account to some extent 
 for its success on the stage. The 
 work has some interest, as containing 
 the suggestions of characters which 
 Ibsen developed more fully in later 
 plays. Margit, Signe and Gudmund 
 suggested the chief figures in " The 
 Vikings at Helgeland," while the 
 faintly outlined figure of Margit's 
 husband is a study for the Tesman 
 of "Hedda Gabler." 
 
 G. Brandes says of the play: "We 
 feel that 'The Feast at Solhaug' is 
 written by a young romanticist, who 
 has purposely deprived his sub- 
 ject of its tragic sting in order that 
 all may end in lyric calm, but in 
 whom, nevertheless, dwells the spirit 
 of the tragedian who will become 
 great only on the day when merciless 
 love of truth has made him indiffer- 
 ent to all cheap final harmony." 
 
 "The Vikings of Helgeland" 
 (1858), a play in four acts and in 
 prose, is the first work of the master 
 hand, though the chief motive is to 
 be found in the less important play 
 which preceded it. The familiar 
 story of Siegfried and Brynhilde is 
 
 79 
 
here dramatically treated in its hu- 
 man rather than mythological aspect, 
 as the story of Sigurd and Hjbrdis. 
 Aside from its great literary merits, 
 "The Vikings" is one of the best 
 constructed of the group of plays 
 which preceded the social dramas. 
 The plot is developed in a direct and 
 striking manner by a series of simple 
 scenes and situations which place the 
 chief characters in the clearest light, 
 undimmed by the symbolism which 
 Wagner introduced into his treat- 
 ment of the motives and to which 
 Ibsen himself turned in his latest 
 work. 
 
 Technically, the play is a master- 
 piece, though the author has not yet 
 entirely cut loose from the method 
 of "misunderstanding" which we saw 
 him employing in his former plays. 
 (Thus the death ofThorolf is due to 
 the misinterpretation that Hjbrdis 
 gives to Ornulf s motive in rescuing 
 her son.) As usual with Ibsen, the 
 exposition and clearing up of the 
 ground motive come late; not until 
 the third act do we discover Sigurd's 
 love for Hjbrdis. But the perfect 
 art with which this scene is prepared 
 
 80 
 
is one of the most striking things in 
 the play. Combined with this art 
 are flashes of thought and touches of 
 pathos which give the play a certain 
 indefinable elevation and seriousness 
 that are new in Ibsen's work. "The 
 Vikings of Helgeland" holds a unique 
 place in northern literature as one of 
 the very few successful attempts at 
 putting into a dramatic form fit for 
 the actual stage the sagas of Teu- 
 tonic mythology. 
 
 (Of the next plays, " Love's Com- 
 edy" was published in 1862, and 
 " The Pretenders," begun earlier, 
 was published in 1864. It has been 
 thought best to consider the latter 
 play first for the reason that it in a 
 sense precedes the former in time, 
 and for the more important reason 
 that it represents the close of the 
 first stage of Ibsen's development as 
 a playwright; " Love's Comedy " 
 marks the beginning of a new manner 
 and a new content.) 
 
 " The Pretenders," an historical 
 drama (in prose) in five acts, is not 
 only marked by a closer similarity of 
 subject to the foregoing plays, but is 
 also like them in general tone. The 
 
 81 
 
influence of Shakspere is plainly 
 visible in form and in manner. The 
 development of the plot, with respect 
 to both time and place, is carried out 
 somewhat in the method of the early 
 Elizabethan "History," so that there 
 is no trace of the concentration of 
 action which we found in " Lady 
 Inger" and which is strongest in the 
 social plays. This fact causes a 
 slight sluggishness in the movement 
 of "The Pretenders;" the plot seems 
 somewhat long-spun, as is unavoid- 
 able in an action extending over so 
 long a period of time. The usual 
 method of retarded exposition is em- 
 ployed in this play (cf. Act III., 
 which contains the death-scene of 
 Bishop Nicholas). On the whole it 
 may be said that the play is not as 
 good, technically, as "The Vikings" 
 owing to the lack of directness in the 
 treatment of the plot. 
 
 From another point of view, how- 
 ever, "The Pretenders" is perhaps 
 one of the greatest plays that Ibsen 
 has written. The analysis of charac- 
 ter in it is as deep and as true as 
 Shakspere's. Duke Skule, Hukon, 
 Bishop Nicholas and the women in 
 
 82 
 
the play are drawn with an art that 
 fixes them indelibly in one's mind. 
 The power and sententiousness of 
 the idea of "the king's thought" is 
 emphasized by the striking manner 
 in which it is made to motivate the 
 play. In the scene between Skule 
 and the Scald and in the great scene 
 between Hakon and Skule (Act II), 
 Ibsen has touched the highest point 
 of character analysis and of literary 
 expression powerful in its directness. 
 
 In its dramaturgic side, " The 
 Pretenders" is the last of the group 
 of plays written under the influence 
 of external models, for the most part 
 romantic in tone. It stands at the 
 end of what have been called his 
 "synthetic" plays, as opposed to the 
 "analytic" technique of the later 
 social plays. The former group are 
 for the most part constructed on the 
 plan indicated by a rise to a climax 
 and a descent to a catastrophe; in 
 the latter the climax has been reach- 
 ed before the action begins, and what 
 we see in the play is the culminating 
 point of this action. 
 
 Before passing to the next group 
 plays, we come to "Love's Comedy" 
 
 83 
 
(1862), a three-act, satiric comedy, 
 written in verse. In subject it stands 
 as a preliminary study of one aspect 
 of the social life of his time which 
 Ibsen treated in the plays written 
 during the second half of his drama- 
 tic career. On the side of technique 
 "Love's Comedy" is not as signifi- 
 cant, owing to the satiric and didactic 
 aim of the piece. There are few 
 dramatic situations in it, and though 
 there is an abundance of wit and 
 humor and delightful character 
 sketches, the play as a play is weak- 
 ened by the fact that the action is 
 subordinated to a satire on the con- 
 ventionalities of courtship. The 
 means employed to carry on what- 
 ever action there is, consists of the 
 series of contrasts between the several 
 engaged couples, and Falk and Svan- 
 hild. This method, which carries 
 with it a certain lack of unity in plot, 
 is at bottom the same as that em- 
 ployed in many modern farces. 
 
 "Love's Comedy" is a good in- 
 stance of what is to be lost in looking 
 only at the dramaturgic side of some 
 of Ibsen's plays. AH the poetic and 
 symbolic meaning which the comedy 
 
 84 
 
has as a satire must be neglected in 
 looking upon it as an acting play. 
 In tone and treatment trie play is 
 closer to " Peer Gynt " and the 
 group of dramatic poems than it is 
 to the, social plays. 
 
 "Brand" (1866) and "Peer Gynt" 
 (1867), the dramatic poems which 
 revealed Ibsen as the greatest poet 
 of Norway, were written in the inter- 
 val between the first and last periods 
 of his dramatic activity. It is enough 
 to mention the fact that they were 
 first planned as epics to understand 
 why nothing more than a word about 
 them is possible in a study which has 
 for its title "The Dramaturgic Art 
 of Ibsen." By a tour de force 
 they have both been acted in Nor- 
 way and elsewhere, but it is not as 
 plays that they hold their place in 
 Scandinavian literature, any more 
 than the second part of " Faust " 
 does in German literature. What 
 Jaeger says of "Brand" applies with 
 equal force to "Peer Gynt" : 
 
 "'Brand' was first begun by Ibsen 
 as an epic poem; when he afterwards 
 gave preference to the dramatic form, 
 he considered dramatic requirements 
 
only in so far as they were fitted to 
 his polemical aim. He gave little 
 attention to probability or to strict 
 dramatic motive; those matters were 
 of little consequence in the ideal 
 sphere in which his hero was 
 placed ..." 
 
 One other work of Ibsen is to be 
 noticed before passing to the social 
 dramas; this is "Emperor and Gali- 
 lean," published in 1873, but begun 
 much earlier. It is called by the 
 author "A world-historic drama" and 
 is divided into two five-act prose 
 dramas, "Caesar's Apostasy" and 
 "The Emperor Julian." Like the 
 two dramatic poems, this massive 
 work was not intended for the stage 
 and the same considerations apply in 
 a measure to the dramaturgic art of 
 all three. The following summary 
 of the technical element of the play 
 is condensed from Lothar's biographic 
 study of Ibsen : 
 
 Ibsen's technique misses fire here. 
 The first part does, in a way, offer 
 some stage possibilities. The scenes 
 proceed in rapid succession; Julian 
 as prince at the court, the conflict 
 between his Christian faith and 
 
 86 
 
heathenism, his triumph in Gaul, his 
 elevation to the throne — all these are 
 scenes that can be made effective on 
 the stage. The second part, however, 
 with its persecution and philosophic 
 quarrels, is tiresome, vague and con- 
 fused. 3 Throughout the work Ibsen 
 attempted to reproduce the speech 
 and thought of the period as faith- 
 fully as possible. But this local color 
 and the philosophic content of the 
 piece are not sufficient to give the 
 work that dramaturgic completeness 
 which characterizes the best of Ibsen's 
 dramas. Intellectually one of his 
 deepest and richest works, it is techni- 
 cally one of Ibsen's weakest produc- 
 tions. On the whole, " Emperor and 
 Galilean " is more important as mark- 
 ing a stage in the development of 
 Ibsen's mind than as a step forward 
 in his dramaturgic art. 
 
 3 The whole construction of "Emperor and Galilean" is 
 influenced by the Roman plays of Shakspere ; this is es- 
 pecially noticeable at the end of act IV. of the first part. 
 
 87 
 
THE SOCIAL PLAYS. 
 
 At the age of forty Ibsen had not 
 yet written a single one of his social 
 dramas. His reputation, based on his 
 two great dramatic poems, was very 
 small outside of his own country. 
 About this time, however, Ibsen 
 seems to have passed through an in- 
 tellectual crisis which lead him to a 
 new field of dramatic activity. From 
 now on social problems and social 
 ideals supply the materials for the 
 dramaturgic art of the master hand. 
 Beginning with " The League of 
 Youth " and coming down to his 
 latest work, "When We Dead 
 Awake," Ibsen has produced the series 
 of plays — thirteen in number — that 
 has made him the most important 
 dramatist of the nineteenth century. 
 What gives a certain unity of content 
 to the whole body of the social 
 dramas is the fact that the subject of 
 each is connected with that of some 
 other of the plays in the group.* 
 
 "The Young Men's League" 
 (1869), a comedy of character in five 
 
 4 This fact makes a strict chronological treatment not only 
 more convenient but also more significant for an adequate 
 conception of the 'development of Ibsen's art. ' 
 
acts, was written to satirize a certain 
 phase of political life in provincial 
 Norway. In its choice of subject 
 the play marks an epoch in the 
 dramatic literature of Scandinavia. 
 This epoch-making character is less 
 marked in respect to its technique, 
 which is still that of the Scribe com- 
 edy. Ibsen wrote to a friend at the 
 time the play was written : " As you 
 see, the piece is nothing more than 
 an ordinary comedy." The pro- 
 tagonist of the play is a demagogue, 
 Stengaard, who recalls the figure of 
 Rabagas in Sardou's play (written 
 two years later). Another interest- 
 ing connecting link with the contem- 
 porary French comedy is to be found 
 in the character of Dr. Fjeldbo, who is 
 practically the "raisonneur" of Dumas' 
 plays. The most striking resemblance 
 to its French models, however, lies in 
 the mechanism of the plot of "The 
 Young Men's League." Misplaced 
 letters, misunderstandings and the 
 other tricks of the Scribe play are the 
 means employed to carry on the action. 
 The chief interest in the play lies 
 in the satiric character sketches, in 
 which we can foresee some of the 
 
 89 
 
figures of the later plays. Outside 
 of this " The Young Men's League " 
 strikes one as being insignificant in 
 its technique, and conventional and 
 unnatural in the complications and 
 unfolding of its plot. The figure 
 of Stengaard carries the play through 
 and gives it a certain unity of motive 
 by having everything that happens re- 
 volve about him. The plot is built up 
 in the synthetic manner and we have 
 no trace of the later analytic method/ 
 An interval of eight years lies 
 between Ibsen's first and second social 
 drama, "The Pillars of Society" 
 (1877). Here the satiric note of 
 " The Young Men's League " is 
 completely suppressed. The drama- 
 tist has become very serious in his 
 view of the conventions and false- 
 hoods at the basis of the society he 
 depicts. As a stage-play, the work 
 is a great advance over its prede- 
 cessor. In it we begin to see clearly 
 the method which we have termed 
 analytic. If we think of the plot as 
 it would probably be treated by a 
 French dramatist, we can see the dif- 
 
 6 The play has many merits which this hasty summary fails 
 to bring out, but these are not on its dramaturgic side. 
 
 90 
 
ference between the synthetic and 
 analytic methods more plainly. In 
 other hands Consul Bernick's crime 
 and John Jbnnesen's act of self- 
 sacrifice in taking the blame of it 
 upon himself would have been the 
 climax of the play. With Ibsen this 
 scene is made to happen long before 
 the play begins, and his drama is 
 really the last act of a long story. 
 The events that are supposed to have 
 happened before are told us through 
 the course of the first three acts, and 
 though the exposition is not com- 
 plete till more than half the play is 
 over, we are never at a loss to under- 
 stand the motives behind the action 
 in any given scene. 
 
 The sudden conversion of the 
 principal character is a way out of the 
 difficulty of ending the play which 
 strikes one as slightly melodramatic. 
 This is emphasized by the way in 
 which Ibsen has constructed the last 
 scene. Still less satisfactory is the 
 moral tag attached to the end of this 
 scene : " The Spirits of Truth and of 
 Freedom — these are the Pillars of 
 Society." 
 
 " A Doll's House " (1879) is the 
 
 9> 
 
best known of all the Ibsen plays, and 
 everything that can be said about it has 
 been said over and over again. 6 In 
 the development of Ibsen's dramatur- 
 gic art "A Doll's House" stands out 
 alongside of " Ghosts " as his best 
 acting play, and this fact points to the 
 masterly technical skill with which 
 it is built. Here also, as in " The 
 Pillars of Society," the play repre- 
 sents the culminating point in a 
 rather long story which is told us 
 with Ibsen's peculiar method of ex- 
 position. 
 
 As for the truth of the treatment 
 of the last act, it is well to point out 
 that most discussion of it usually re- 
 volves around the ethical and psy- 
 chological questions which the play 
 brings up, and that this is somewhat 
 beside the mark in a dramaturgic 
 study. Whatever conclusion one may 
 come to, as far as the social problem 
 in the play is concerned, the manner 
 in which this problem is placed be- 
 fore the spectator removes all doubts 
 as to Ibsen's complete mastery of 
 the technique of the stage. "A Doll's 
 
 e The germ of the character of Nora is to be found in the 
 Selma of " The Young Men's League." 
 
 9 2 
 
House " is the work of Ibsen's ma- 
 tured art, and, as one of the critics 
 has summed it up, " The play is 
 planned and constructed as logically 
 as a mathematical problem." 
 
 "Ghosts" (1881) followed "A 
 Doll's House." In the fundamental 
 idea at the basis of both plays each 
 forms a complimentary picture to the 
 other. Mrs. Alving is in a sense a 
 Nora that has not left her husband, 
 and the problem of marriage is 
 brought over into the problem of 
 maternity and heredity. 
 
 From a dramaturgic point of view, 
 the brilliancy of the technique of 
 "A Doll's House "gives place in 
 " Ghosts '' to a simplicity and direct- 
 ness that make the play the highest 
 point in Ibsen's art. A closer analy- 
 sis of the structure of this drama 
 discloses a remarkable similarity in 
 method and in tone to the "CEdipus 
 Rex," the highest peak in ancient 
 classic tragedy. The same inevitable 
 movement is produced by almost the 
 same means, the difference consisting 
 chiefly in the fact that the modern 
 idea of heredity is substituted for the 
 Greek conception of fate. It is one 
 
 93 
 
of the most suggestive studies in 
 dramaturgic methods, to follow, in 
 " Ghosts," the manner in which the 
 elements in that part of the plot 
 which precedes the actual play are 
 unfolded; how, little by little, almost 
 every word in the dialogue becomes 
 a link in the chain of action and how 
 the growing horror of "the recog- 
 nition " is seen dawning in the minds 
 of the helpless victims of "fate." The 
 concentration in time and place and 
 in the number of characters is one of 
 the means by which the directness and 
 force of " Ghosts " is attained. Its 
 construction offers a beautiful illus- 
 tration of the principle of " economy 
 of attention." 
 
 The chorus of hostile criticism with 
 which " Ghosts " was received when 
 it first appeared led Ibsen to write 
 his next play : " An Enemy of the 
 People" (1882), in which the chief 
 figure was the author's mouthpiece.' 
 This fact gives the play a certain 
 biographic value and accounts for 
 the polemical tone which predomi- 
 nates in it. But, artistically, this leads 
 
 * Someone has called " An Enemy of the People " the par- 
 abasis of " Ghosts." 
 
 94 
 
Miss Mary Shaw 
 
. fgzs ' 
 
 ■R*H 
 
 ■< *■ 
 
to a lack of balance and proportion 
 in the conception and execution of 
 the work, and as a result, though one 
 of Ibsen's wittiest and keenest, it is 
 not one of his best plays. (In Dr. 
 Stockman's attack upon the hypocrisy 
 and cowardice of " the compact 
 majority " that "is always wrong" the 
 "personal equation" of the author is 
 plainly evident. ) 
 
 Considered as an acting play, "An 
 Enemy of the People " shows Ibsen's 
 technique to be as skillful as ever ; 
 particularly so in his management of 
 the dialogue and in his ability to lead 
 up to striking situations to be found 
 most frequently at the end of the 
 act. His peculiar method of ex- 
 position is not employed in this play, 
 for the reason that the plot is some- 
 what synthetic in character and is 
 developed in the play itself. On the 
 whole the great merit of the play lies 
 in the strong character drawing and 
 in the manner in which the characters 
 are made to condition the plot. (In 
 this sense the play stands the test 
 which we apply to pure comedy.) 
 
 Two years after " An Enemy of 
 the People " came " The Wild Duck " 
 
 95 
 
(1884), where we have the first clear 
 signs of Ibsen's later symbolism. It 
 was written at a period of the au- 
 thor's life when the indignation of 
 Dr. Stockman's attitude, had calmed 
 down. He begins to ask himself 
 whether it is all worth while, and as 
 a result the play is one of the most 
 pessimistic of the social dramas. In 
 his despondent mood it appears to 
 him that falsehood is an absolute ne- 
 cessity for the average man, and the 
 quixotic Gregers Werles (in whom 
 we can discern a caricature of Ibsen 
 himself) becomes only a busybody 
 whose fate it is " to be the thirteenth 
 at the table." 
 
 The first act is, from beginning to 
 end, well constructed, employing the 
 conventional exposition of the usual 
 French play — an unusual thing in Ib- 
 sen's later plays. During the second 
 and third acts, however, nothing hap- 
 pens, and the action does not advance 
 a single step. All we have is a mi- 
 nutely realistic picture of the interior 
 of the Ekdal household. Towards 
 the end of the play the symbolism 
 becomes strongly pronounced, and 
 the interest lags considerably. As a 
 
 96 
 
work of literature " The Wild Duck " 
 has been called a masterpiece, but as 
 a play it is, as Gosse says, " posi- 
 tively ill-made in its revolt against 
 the 'well-made' drama." 
 
 In " Rosmersholm " (1886) Ibsen 
 produced what is, all things consid- 
 ered, the profoundest of his social 
 studies. The play represents " the 
 high-water mark " of Ibsen's thought. 
 There is a double contrast in the 
 play — that between the political par- 
 ties represented by Mortensgard and 
 Rector Kroll, and the still deeper 
 contrast between the ideals of life 
 that Rosmer and Rebecca stand for. 
 Any adequate notice of either of 
 these underlying motives would lead 
 us too far, and we must content our- 
 selves with simply mentioning them. 
 
 In its technique " Rosmersholm " 
 is nearest to "Ghosts." The same 
 methods of construction, the same 
 manner of exposition, and the same 
 sombre and intense tone characterize 
 both plays. What distinguishes them 
 is the element of symbolism which, 
 though not as pronounced as in " The 
 Wild Duck " and in the later plays, 
 is still present, and results in a lack 
 
 97 
 
of the directness so eminently char- 
 acteristic of " Ghosts." 
 
 The figure of Rebecca West is one 
 of Ibsen's greatest creations. " He 
 had never before equalled the sub- 
 lime calm, the unerring knowledge of 
 human nature with which this char- 
 acter is represented, explained, and 
 indirectly judged. . . . He whose 
 special task it had long been to show 
 spuriousness in the seemingly genu- 
 ine, to listen for the hollow ring in the 
 apparently solid substance, has here 
 overcome his old distrust, and has 
 believed in the purifying of this wo- 
 man with the sullied past, has demon- 
 strated for us the sound kernel, the 
 purity, and, in the end, the great- 
 ness which exist in this criminal, liar, 
 and murderess. . . ." — (G. Brandes, 
 1898.) 
 
 "The Lady from the Sea "(1888) 
 is, from a dramaturgic point of view, 
 one of the most unsatisfactory of 
 Ibsen's later plays. Symbolism, to- 
 gether with the semi-obscurity that 
 generally accompanies it, becomes the 
 dominating trait in his artistic meth- 
 ods. The idea which Ibsen had in 
 view as to the dramatic theme is 
 
 98 
 
what one of the characters calls " the 
 saving power of liberty with respon- 
 sibility." But the essential truth of 
 the conclusion of " The Lady from 
 the Sea " is vitiated by this very 
 idea ; for, as has .been acutely re- 
 marked, "there are few things less 
 capable of calming a woman who is 
 longing for a free, adventurous life, 
 with all its mysteries, than the offer 
 of such moral advantages as free 
 choice with responsibility." 
 
 Owing to its construction, the play 
 may be said to move along at no per- 
 ceptible rate. In many long scenes 
 hardly anything happens, and every- 
 thing is subordinated to the symbolic 
 idea. The picture of the two young 
 girls and their relation to Ellida 
 Wangel is one of the few human 
 touches that the play contains. Every- 
 thing else seems to be part of another 
 world — at least such is the impres- 
 sion one receives in reading the play. 
 
 The technique of " Hedda Gab- 
 ler " (1890) stands out more clearly 
 than that of the play preceding it, 
 for the reason that there is no par- 
 ticular problem in it to engross one's 
 attention; nor are there more than 
 
 99 
 
the slightest touches of the symbol- 
 ism permeating " The Lady from 
 the Sea." " Hedda Gabler" is a 
 powerfully executed picture of a 
 woman at war with herself and with 
 the emptiness of her environment. 
 The struggle which the contradic- 
 tory elements in Hedda's character 
 give rise to, is set in a series of 
 original situations, closely knit to- 
 gether by the dramaturgic skill that 
 shows Ibsen at his best. In the art 
 with which dialogue is made to 
 reveal the character and motives of 
 the men and women in a play, 
 " Hedda Gabler " has not been sur- 
 passed by any other modern drama. 
 Merely as a piece of character paint- 
 ing, the figure of Tesman stands out 
 as real as life. 
 
 Of special interest is the method 
 Ibsen employs for the expository 
 scene. The Tesmans return from 
 their honeymoon, and the prepara- 
 tions for entering upon their married 
 life offer the dramatist an excellent 
 opportunity of setting forth the rela- 
 tions of the characters as they appear 
 on the scene. The spectator is 
 very soon in touch with everything 
 
that happens as the action moves 
 along. There are several slight im- 
 probabilities in the play, such as the 
 finding of Lbvborg's lost manuscript 
 by Tesman and the sudden change 
 of Lbvborg's attitude to Thea ; but 
 these (due in a measure to the un- 
 avoidable compactness and conden- 
 sation of all dramatic forms ) are 
 hardly noticed in the acting. 
 
 " Hedda Gabler " was a departure 
 from the symbolism of its predeces- 
 sor. In "The Master Builder" 
 (1892) this symbolism is the domi- 
 nating note, pervading the play from 
 beginning to end, and giving it a cer- 
 tain undefined and elusive character. 
 Owing to this vagueness " The Mas- 
 ter Builder " leaves one with an im- 
 pression which it would be hard to 
 set down in words. It can easily be 
 inferred from this lack of definiteness 
 that with an ordinary theatre audience 
 a play constructed on such a plan 
 must of necessity fail to accomplish 
 its purpose ; and this is what has hap- 
 pened wherever the piece has been 
 produced. If we make the stage 
 " the testing ground " for our judg- 
 ment of the dramaturgic qualities of 
 
 101 
 
a play, one must admit, however re- 
 luctantly, that " The Master Builder" 
 as a play is not to be compared with 
 the masterpieces of Ibsen's art. 
 
 Yet, when one recalls the play, this 
 conclusion strikes one as being most 
 unsatisfactory, for it is a work that one 
 does not easily forget. As Brandes 
 says, in an "impressionist" criticism 
 rather unusual for him : " This is a 
 play that echoes and re-echoes in our 
 mind long after we have read it. 
 And when we have read it once, we 
 read it again with increasing admira- 
 tion. Great in its art, profound and 
 rich in its symbolic language, these 
 are the words that rise to our lips ; 
 and impressed without being touched 
 or softened, we fall to brooding and 
 pondering over its power." 
 
 As we come to Ibsen's latest plays 
 a note of sadness is heard. In " Lit- 
 tle Eyolf" (1894) this sad> almost 
 wierd note is sounded most distinctly. 
 The play deals with the relation of 
 parents to a child, and in developing 
 his theme Ibsen has given us one of 
 the most uncommon and, at the same 
 time, truest of his characters — Rita, 
 the mother of little Eyolf. In its 
 
 102 
 
construction, the first act is admirable 
 for simplicity and power." The fol- 
 lowing acts are, from a technical point 
 of view, on a lower scale. This is 
 owing to the fact that the interest be- 
 comes centered in the problem which 
 the play brings up rather than in the 
 dramatic situations. How are hus- 
 band and wife to find peace after the 
 breaking up of their happiness ? This 
 becomes the question which the dra- 
 matist sets himself to solve in the 
 second and third acts. In giving us 
 his solution Ibsen was compelled to 
 emphasize the psychological elements 
 in his theme at the expense of ex- 
 ternal action. This accounts for the 
 slower movement. The tendency 
 towards symbolism is not marked, 
 though we see it appearing in two or 
 three places, where the concrete phy- 
 sical fact is given a spiritual and 
 higher meaning. 
 
 For straightforwardness and di- 
 rectness " John Gabriel Borkman " 
 (1896) is one of Ibsen's best plays. 
 It differs from " The Master Build- 
 er " and " Little Eyolf " in the ab- 
 
 " Cf. the scene of the rat-woman, and especially the end 
 of the act, where the child's death is brought in with the 
 greatest skill and effect, 
 
 IO3 
 
sence of the haunting symbolism of 
 the former and the sad tenderness of 
 the latter — a loss amply compensated 
 by the gain in firmness of form and 
 structure. In its dramaturgic art it 
 is perhaps the work most typical of 
 Ibsen's method of building up a 
 play. Concentration is the word that 
 comes to one's mind as most fitly de- 
 scribing this method of construction. 
 This concentration is most noticeable 
 in the way in which Ibsen deals with 
 the time of the action. We have in 
 " John Gabriel Borkman " the rare 
 instance of an action which does not 
 extend over a period of time longer 
 than that taken up by its actual per- 
 formance. There is another interest- 
 ing point about the technique of this 
 play — one that brings out Sarcey's 
 theory of the " scenes a /aire " in a 
 striking manner. Granting the dra- 
 matic theme, it inevitably follows that 
 the scene between the sisters in Act I., 
 the meeting of Ella and Borkman in 
 Act II., and the scene between hus- 
 band, wife, and son in the powerful 
 third act, all become indispensable 
 links in the development of the strug- 
 gle underlying the play. As such 
 
they give the play a strength and a 
 closeness of structure to be found 
 only in the most effective acting 
 dramas. 9 
 
 " A dramatic epilogue " is the sub- 
 title employed by Ibsen in his last 
 play, "When We Dead Awake" 
 (1899). It represents the final step 
 in the most extraordinary series of 
 modern dramas, and stands as a sym- 
 bolic foreshadowing of the " third 
 kingdom " to follow the destructive 
 analysis of the worn-out social ideal 
 against which Ibsen has been preach- 
 ing. From this point of view it 
 could serve as the text for indefinite 
 speculations on the philosophy of 
 life that Ibsen stands for. Consid- 
 ered as an acting play, "When We 
 Dead Awake" offers a less fertile 
 field. It is in effectiveness not up to 
 the level of the plays written imme- 
 diately before it, owing, again, to the 
 pervading symbolism of the work. 
 Most of the effects are attained by 
 the same means that Ibsen employed 
 
 I have purposely avoided all mention of the richness of 
 the ideas and of character creation which " John Gabriel 
 Borkman" contains in order to emphasize its surpassing dra- 
 maturgic technique. This one play is enough to entitle its 
 author to the highest place in his art. Criticism becomes a 
 piling up of epithets of praise. 
 
 IO5 
 
in "The Lady from the Sea" and 
 in "The Master Builder." The 
 similarity to these plays is further 
 emphasized by the resemblance of the 
 chief characters in each. Rubek and 
 Irene, in " When We Dead Awake," 
 instantly recall Solness of " The 
 Master Builder" and Ellida Wangel 
 of "The Lady from the Sea."' The 
 whole play suggests *so much more 
 than it actually contains that all dis- 
 cussion of its technique strikes one 
 as being somewhat beside the mark. 
 
 106 
 
FHE following summary is in- 
 tended to indicate the charac- 
 teristic elements of Ibsen's dramatur- 
 gic art with special reference to the 
 technical methods that point him out 
 as an innovator in form. For lack of 
 space only the most obvious points are 
 touched upon, and these in the most 
 cursory manner. 
 
 The difference between the syn- 
 thetic and analytic methods of treat- 
 ing a dramatic theme has been hinted 
 at before, and all that is necessary 
 here is to point out that the latter 
 method is the one with which Ibsen's 
 name is associated in the technique 
 of the stage. 
 
 Combined with this method we 
 find a concentration in time, place, 
 and action which we saw to be the 
 most striking trait of the best social 
 plays. In several plays the " uni- 
 ties " are conformed to more closely 
 than in the work of any other mod- 
 ern dramatist. 
 
 Ibsen's peculiar method of retarded 
 exposition is also conditioned by the 
 analytic treatment of a plot. Since 
 the play is frequently the culminating 
 point in a series of events that have 
 
 107 
 
happened before the curtain rises, ex- 
 position becomes a very difficult task, 
 which is overcome, as we saw in 
 "The Pillars of Society," by having 
 the facts disclosed bit by bit through 
 the course of several acts. The ab- 
 sence of the monologue and the 
 " aside" in Ibsen's technique makes 
 it necessary for him to place his ex- 
 pository narration in dialogue form, 
 a thing which would tend to make 
 the dialogue stiffand unnatural. But 
 this stiffness is avoided by a device 
 which consists in having the exposi- 
 tory dialogue placed on the lips of 
 his characters when they are in a 
 state of tension or excitement, so 
 that the spectator, interested in the 
 emotion, is not required to listen to 
 "an otherwise bald and unconvincing 
 narrative." This is frequently at- 
 tained by representing the chief char- 
 acters as meeting after a separation (cf. 
 "The Pillars of Society," "Ghosts," 
 "Hedda Gabler," "John Gabriel 
 Borkman," etc.) 
 
 Finally, there are several devices 
 which Ibsen employs as a means of 
 placing the symbolic idea of his play 
 in strong relief. One of these, which 
 
 108 
 
the German critics call " das Schlag- 
 wort,' 1 serves the same purpose that 
 the leit-motive of Wagner's music 
 does in the symbolism of the music- 
 drama. This device consists in the 
 recurring use of a single phrase or 
 word, and will be best understood 
 by the following examples from the 
 later plays of Ibsen : In " A Doll's 
 House" it is "the miracle"; in 
 "Ghosts," "the joy of life" and 
 "the sun" ; in "The Wild Duck" 
 it is "life's lie"; in " Hedda Gab- 
 ler" it is the cry for "the beautiful" 
 as symbolized by " wine leaves in 
 the hair'; in "Little Eyolf" it 
 is " the law of change ", and in 
 " John Gabriel Borkman " it appears 
 in " the crime of having destroyed a 
 woman's love." 
 
 109 
 
Gabriele D'Annunzio. 
 
Gabriele D'Annunzio. 
 
D'ANNUNZIO is the leading 
 playwright of modern Italy. 
 He is, however, better known 
 in the world of letters as a 
 writer of novels. His "Trionfo della 
 Morte" and his "IlPiacere" have 
 given him continental fame. The 
 former of these is known to Ameri- 
 can readers through the translation ot 
 Cole and the zealous efforts of Mr. 
 Comstock, who suppressed it as an 
 indecent publication. His "Le Vir- 
 gine" and "II Fuoco" are not so 
 well known. While we are not here 
 concerned with a discussion of his 
 novels, it is, however, necessary to 
 state that it is only through , his 
 novels that we can hope to com- 
 pletely know D'Annunzio. His 
 philosophy of life, his attitude 
 towards its problems, his conception 
 of the duty of man, his vision of the 
 scheme of terrestrial things, his hopes, 
 his aspirations, his self and all the 
 inner workings of his extraordinary 
 mind are all detailed therein. And 
 
 117 
 
wonderful, indeed, and strange is 
 that revelation. Quite different is 
 it from the Anglo-Saxon mind, and 
 quite different also from that of the 
 most renowned of Italians, the world 
 poet, Dante. While Dante is essen- 
 tially Italian, he has also that per- 
 ception of the universal — that hard 
 and firm grasp of the essential facts of 
 life, that all-perceiving mind — which 
 makes him akin to spirits of all 
 times and a denizen of all nations. 
 But D'Annunzio is essentially and 
 wholly Latin or Grseco-Latin in its 
 individual type. His imagination is 
 steeped in the gorgeous coloring of 
 the semi-tropical south, and all the 
 products of his pen are tinged with 
 colors of deep vermillion and glow- 
 ing red, and resplendent blue. His 
 mind is like a dissolving prism, 
 where all the colors of the rainbow 
 are held in isolation, his perceptions 
 are effected in juxtaposition to these 
 colors. His soul has lived in the 
 country of art, his studios are filled 
 with works of art, his meditations 
 upon these works have been long 
 and fatiguing. Poetry, painting, 
 music, architecture, sculpture, land- 
 
 1.8 
 
scape, and the literature of all nations 
 are the subjects on which his mind 
 is perpetually employed. His per- 
 ception of the outer world is essen- 
 tially that of the artist. It remains 
 to be seen whether this perception of 
 things is broad enough. The per- 
 ception of the real nature of things 
 and their relations may be rendered 
 defective by committing the mind to 
 a false philosophy, by insufficient 
 observation, by too narrow a view, 
 and by various other things. The 
 mind of D'Annunzio has studied the 
 works of all the masters of all lands, 
 in all countries, everywhere. He is 
 an indefatigable worker. But, alas 
 for him! while he has studied all the 
 works of all the masters, he has failed 
 in the study of that thing which has 
 made the masters great. He does 
 not know man. Away out there in a 
 deserted monastery, over which a 
 thousand years their cloudy wings 
 expand, he has set up his habitation 
 far removed from the haunts and 
 eyes of busy men, far away out of 
 the reach of the steam whistle and 
 American tourists, his two pet aver- 
 sions. Around him clings the 
 
 J19 
 
memory of old days, the neighboring 
 hills produced the marble wrought 
 into colossal life and undying forms 
 of art by the genius of Michaelangelo. 
 To the right rolls the blue Adriatic, 
 mirroring in its bosom the clear blue 
 sky that has made Italy the paradise 
 of the world. In solitary grandeur 
 the most remarkable figure in Italy 
 spends his working day. A few appre- 
 ciative friends come to dine, to smoke 
 a cigarette, and discuss literary values 
 over their coffee, and when these are 
 gone, DAnnunzio ascends into his 
 tower and lays bare the workings of 
 his morbid soul for the delight and 
 fall of his countrymen, and for the 
 disgust and admiration of the world. 
 Man he does not know, but he comes 
 close to knowing a man, and that 
 man is D'Annunzio. It is not that 
 great, bold, virile type that Titian 
 drew and immortalized in his portrait 
 of Tiziano Vecelli. It has, however, 
 some of the exterior ornament of 
 Titian, the satin, and furs and triple 
 loops of gold. The patrician blood 
 is there. There is that quick sensi- 
 bility, that disdain of the " profanum 
 vulgus," that comes from the Roman 
 
 120 
 
heritage. There is lacking, however, 
 that great, that divinest attribute of 
 human genius, that broad, deep, piti- 
 ful, sympathetic, and intimate view 
 of the whole human soul, that power 
 which Shakespeare alone of all mortals 
 possessed in most abundant supply. 
 It is but natural, then, that D'Annun- 
 zio's view of life is lyrical and per- 
 sonal. It is individual. He looks 
 from his gray tower over the shores 
 of the Adriatic, but it is through a 
 colored glass — and that which gives 
 the color to the glass is what gives 
 D'Annunzio his peculiar position 
 among moderns. Old Homer, stand- 
 ing on the shore of the iEgean Sea and 
 counting the fleets of the Argives and 
 telling of the anger of the Far-Darter 
 and the fierce wrath of Achilles, is 
 the opposite side of the picture — the 
 scene of greatest possible contrast. 
 That clear perception, that universal 
 sympathy, that broad, childlike objec- 
 tive view of man and the world is the 
 greatest possible opposite to the view 
 of D'Annunzio. 
 
 He does not see life clearly — he 
 does not see it whole. What he 
 does see, he sees with lightning rap- 
 
idity, but it is through a transparent 
 veil that intercepts the angle of vision 
 and distorts the pictures. Rapid and 
 acute is his vision in his own way. 
 He sees life, as he says, through the 
 mouth of Teodata, in lightning vision 
 like a seer. " La vita vi si rivela 
 per apparizioni fulminee come a una 
 veggente." 
 
 It is true that the child is father to 
 the man ; and D' Annunzio the boy 
 foreshadowed his future self. A 
 wild, young scapegrace at school, a 
 writer of very charming verses at the 
 age of sixteen, a wild, dissolute life in 
 Rome, and then an assiduous with- 
 drawal into himself, into the inner 
 country of the spirit and as yet no 
 return to the world of things — though 
 there are faint glimpses that give us 
 hope. 
 
 We are, then, dealing with an ana- 
 lytical psychologist, devotee of the 
 " Culte du Moi," and therefore a 
 lyric poet. A lyric poet D'Annun- 
 zio is of a very high type. He is of 
 the type of Shelley and of Tennyson, 
 but only when these are at that point 
 where the epicurean melancholy of 
 the south overcomes the virility of 
 
the Saxon genius. All the characters 
 that he draws are therefore more or less 
 faithful transcripts of himself. Nearly 
 all his men are lyric poets and artists, 
 as far removed from life as D'Annun- 
 zio is from Shakespeare. They are 
 always sicklied o'er with the pale 
 cast of thought, introspective, morbid 
 analysts of self, with the eye perpetu- 
 ally turned on the ego and unalterably 
 fixed on their own mental processes. 
 Hence arises that great lack of humor, 
 that want of objectivity. D'Annun- 
 zio is as great a humorist as Zola; 
 he is as equally deficient in a sense of 
 humor. But this is a national trait. 
 Even in Dante we can search in vain 
 for any trace of humor. Boccacio is a 
 shining exception. And a little imita- 
 tion of the latter by D'Annunzio con- 
 vinced him that he was not to deviate 
 from the prevailing national type. 
 
 We now come to a consideration 
 of D'Annunzio as a dramatist. If 
 ever a dramatist had an opportunity 
 of a fair presentation of his works to 
 the world it is he. The illuminating 
 genius of Duse, that great soul-awing 
 and all pervading epic voice, first pro- 
 claimed his genius in Italy and in 
 
 123 
 
America. And signal indeed was her 
 triumph. But we must first carefully 
 determine whether it was the soul of 
 Duse that inspired dramatic vitality 
 into the words of DAnnunzio or 
 whether it was the genius of D'An- 
 nunzio that transfused the soul of the 
 actress and permeated it. For our 
 part, we believe that Duse's art has been 
 permanently injured by the influence 
 of D'Annunzio; she has forever lost 
 her former sanity and universality. 
 D'Annunzio's career as a dramatist 
 began in 1897 with the publication of 
 a one-act drama in five scenes. This 
 is "A Dream of a Spring Morning." 
 It is a part of a quadruple scheme 
 which includes a dream of or play 
 about each of the four seasons. The 
 next and probably the best of his 
 dramas,"La Citta Motta,'' appeared in 
 the following year. In the subsequent 
 year appeared the second of the dreams 
 or one-act tragedies, " Dream of an 
 Autumn Sunset." In the same year 
 at a latter date appeared " La Gio- 
 conda." This was followed by the 
 publication of" La Gloria," in 1900; 
 and the latest production from his 
 pen was "Francesca," in 1901. La 
 
 124 
 
Gioconda, La Citta Morta and Fran- 
 cesca were all three played at the Vic- 
 toria Theatre in New York, during 
 the last visit of Eleonora Duse. 
 
 125 
 
DREAM OF A SPRING 
 MORNING. 
 
 One needs but read the stage 
 directions for this piece to attain an 
 insight into the mind of the author. 
 As an interpreter of landscape he is 
 admirable. He sees in the arrange- 
 ments of flowers and foliage, in the 
 rising sun playing on the wild woods, 
 visions of endless joy. He can put 
 nothing on a stage unadorned and 
 crude, but everywhere either nature 
 or art must shed the lustre of their 
 beauty all around. The severe genius 
 of Ibsen, that power of hiding art, is 
 foreign to D'Annunzio. He is pro- 
 fuse in his directions, and all the 
 surroundings must be symbolical. 
 All the graces of the young spring 
 must be diffused around the scene 
 and these graces of spring and the 
 symmetrical forms of all the objects 
 around must arouse the image of a 
 thoughtful face beneath a fresh gar- 
 land. His mind is full of apprecia- 
 tion of nature, but he seems like one 
 lost in the profusion of his fancies. 
 He lacks that great dramatic power 
 of vital condensation, his genius is 
 
 iz6 
 
too profuse. He is not content with 
 striking the keynote for the mind of 
 the reader but must also fill in the 
 full diapason of harmony. 
 
 127 
 
ARGUMENT. 
 
 In an old Tuscan Villa, a gardener, 
 Panfilo, and a maid, Simonetta, tell 
 us of the events that have transpired ; 
 after the manner of the French play 
 or after the manner of Ibsen. It is 
 the method of " Camille " and the 
 " Doll's House." Their conversa- 
 tion shows us that the lady of the 
 villa, the beautiful Isabella, is insane, 
 and rendered so by the anguish and 
 the memory of her unlawful lover, 
 Giuliano, slain in her arms at Poggio 
 Gherardi by the fierce Duke of that 
 place. He lay in her arms during 
 the long, terrible night; she clasped 
 his bleeding body to her while his 
 life blood flowed out, and the horror 
 of the scene and the dead weight of 
 the bloodless corpse on her bosom 
 all night, puts to flight forever her 
 mind and leaves her in a state of 
 agony that appals the reader. The 
 brother of the slain man, Virginio, is 
 in love with the sister of the insane 
 woman, Beatrice. In the house is 
 also an old nurse, Teodata, who has 
 charge of the insane woman. A doc- 
 tor pays the latter daily visits. Our 
 
 128 
 
sympathies are touched when they 
 tell us that she must see no red 
 flowers for they awaken in her the 
 memory of the bloody tragedy. One 
 escaped the attention of the gardener, 
 who had orders to pluck them all as 
 soon as they appeared. The woman 
 sees it, trembles violently, plucks it, 
 puts it into her bosom and hugs it 
 tightly in memory of the bloody 
 scene. The doctor consoles the 
 nurse by telling her that the sight of 
 her lover's brother may restore her 
 mind, and that she perhaps is not so 
 unhappy — that she lives in another 
 world subject to laws not understood 
 by us. We have here evidence of 
 the modern cast of the mind of 
 D'Annunzio. He has been a stu- 
 dent of abnormal pyschology — of 
 the byways of the brain — of the 
 subliminal and morbid con- 
 sciousness. He exclaims, "How 
 much has the novelist learned' from 
 morbid psychology!" He also 
 strikes here the same note he strikes 
 in La Citta Morta and Francesca — 
 the blind power of Destiny — its irre- 
 sistible force — and the acceptance of 
 its sway by the human mind. It is 
 
 129 
 
not the Greek conception of fate, 
 which was to be fought to the end; 
 it is a power, irresistible and impelling, 
 which cannot be withstood. This 
 is discordant with our modern phi- 
 losophy; and no poet can without dan- 
 ger to his fame oppose universal ideas. 
 These spring up out of the character 
 of the race, the course of its history 
 and the common perceptions of its 
 men of genius. It is impossible for 
 us to conceive of life as our remote 
 ancestors may have done — we cannot 
 believe in blind, impelling, irresistible 
 fate. It is impossible to do so in 
 Christian society. To begin with, 
 we have been cut off from the foun- 
 tain head of our primeval instincts by 
 the conversion of our ancestors to 
 Christianity. Morever, modern soci- 
 ety is not constituted simply on the 
 fatalistic principle. It supposes the 
 individual to hold the power over 
 his destiny. Our fate is not in the 
 stars — it is in our right hands and 
 free wills. 
 
 The conversation of the doctor 
 and nurse is interrupted by the 
 appearance of Isabella. She repeats 
 the love song of the gardener heard 
 
 130 
 
through the open window, and asks 
 the doctor if he heard the song. She 
 is clothed in a delicate green dress 
 and talks at times rationally, and at 
 times as in a dream full of visions. 
 She says that she put on the dress so 
 that she might not fright the little 
 plants but become as one of them. 
 She hears the neighing of a horse and 
 thinks it is her sisters lover. She 
 loudly calls for her sister, but the 
 doctor tells her the sister may have 
 gone to meet her lover — the brother 
 of the slain. She wishes to see her 
 sister's happiness, she longs for one 
 look at her love-transfigured face. 
 To do this unseen she hides in a 
 bush, and seems with her green robes 
 to be a part of the foliage. A thorn 
 pierces her bare arm and she sees a 
 drop of blood. She rushes out terri- 
 fied and trembles violently. She is 
 infinitely pitiful here and rouses our 
 deepest sympathy. As she departs 
 Beatrice, her sister, and Virginio, the 
 slain man's brother, enter. He has 
 just come from Fontelucente, the 
 home of his mother, who yet retains 
 her sorrow for the slain brother, her 
 ever loved son. He assures Beatrice 
 
 131 
 
that his mother bears no ill will 
 against the woman in whose arms her 
 son was slain. She indeed loves her 
 who loved her son; she loves Beatrice 
 also for the tender care she takes of 
 her sister, and invites her to Fontelu- 
 cente. Both hope that the sight of 
 Virginio may heal the insane sister 
 who now appears before them. Isa- 
 bella does not recognize the brother, 
 but tells him how lovely is his bride. 
 This is intensely touching, for as yet 
 the relations between Virginio and 
 Beatrice have assumed no definite 
 shape. He is there for Isabella's 
 sake. But Isabella, having known 
 the joy of love, wishes to compensate 
 her sister for her long hours of grief 
 for herself. She tells her not to fear 
 to leave her alone, for she has her 
 green robe that makes her close to 
 the heart of the plants and 6ne with 
 them. Isabella starts to leave after 
 having put a garland on her head, but 
 Beatrice rushes and tells her Virginio 
 is not come to make her his bride. 
 Beatrice tells the insane woman it is 
 Virginio, the dead man's brother. 
 She takes his head in her hands and 
 he, terrified at the vision, almost 
 
 132 
 
faints. She, feeling the dead weight, 
 leaps back and cries out, "Ah, egli 
 muore, anch' egli muore." "No, no, 
 non lo vedi? non lo vedi?" screams 
 Beatrice. The insane woman says, 
 "Once before I felt the weight of the 
 dead upon my hands." She asks in 
 frenzied terror if he is come to take 
 away the bloodless corpse. In a seem- 
 ingly endless outburst she relates the 
 whole tragic story of the murder — how 
 she supported his dying body on her 
 breast — how she received the torrents 
 of blood flowing from his mouth and 
 wounds, and, in an agonizing manner, 
 she asks pardon of his mother. In 
 the vehemence of her emotion, her 
 limbs tremble and she falls to the 
 ground. Beatrice and the nurse run 
 to support her. She holds out her 
 supplicating hands to Virginio and 
 begs him to ask his mother not to 
 curse her. He stands aghast — bereft 
 of speech. The doctor comes and 
 lifts her up to take her away to be 
 one with the flowers. Beatrice and 
 Virginio go out, and we are left to 
 guess what becomes of them. Isa- 
 bella picks up the garland left fallen 
 by Beatrice, and a light breaks over 
 
 133 
 
her face as she asks for her sister, 
 She stands dazed, uncured, and only- 
 repeats the song of the gardener. 
 " Per una ghirlandetta." 
 
 The whole poem is well called a 
 dream. Confused images rise up 
 before us. We do not know what 
 kind of being Virginio is. He is 
 akin to that unsubstantial stuff of 
 which our dreams are made. Virginio 
 is one of those unreal symbolical men 
 that D'Annunzio loves to draw. A 
 creature of the imagination — a child 
 of spring — " il parto humano della 
 Primavera," containing in himself, 
 "tutta l'ebrezza del mondo." He is 
 the counterpart of the young man in 
 "La Gloria," the twin brother of the 
 Sirenetta in "La Gioconda." The 
 sad picture of Isabella is effective 
 but aerial. Two unseen beings rise 
 up before us, though they are not 
 brought upon the scene. To change 
 the dream to the reality of the drama 
 we should see the sad mother of 
 Fontelucente and the fierce Duke of 
 Poggio Gherardi. The catastrophe 
 has occured before the play begins; 
 we see the result of it, as in "Ghosts" 
 and "CEdipus Rex." D'Annunzio 
 
 «34 
 
we know to be an admirer of Sopho- 
 cles and he must also know Ibsen. 
 The play has some special excell- 
 ences. The insane woman is tenderly 
 touched, the doctor while totally dif- 
 ferent from the modern man is kindly 
 and sympathetically drawn. The gar- 
 dener and Simonetta are not essen- 
 tially connected with the plot. The 
 play lacks the necessary dramatic con- 
 densation. It is like all his plays, full 
 of long unreal discourses. There is 
 lacking through the whole perform- 
 ance the qualities that make a good 
 drama. The great dramatist must 
 create ideal types. It is his business 
 to produce what Aristotle calls the 
 effect of ideal probability. The fact 
 that some of the characters excite 
 our sympathy and interest does not 
 atone for their unreal, impossible ex- 
 istence. We feel them all to be 
 externalized reflections of the poet 
 himself. 
 
 His morbidity — an element run- 
 ning through all his plays, appears 
 in this his first work. He dilates 
 and expatiates on the woman bearing 
 on her breast through the long night 
 the bloody corpse oozing out streams 
 
 >35 
 
of blood which covers her and mats 
 her hair and grows cold upon her. 
 And yet through it all we feel that 
 D'Annunzio has the sense and 
 knowledge of what constitutes im- 
 pressive tragedy, though he lacks the 
 power to effect it. 
 
 >'3<5 
 
LA CITTA MORTA. 1898. 
 
 This play was first produced by 
 Mme. Sara Bernhardt at the Renais- 
 sance Theatre in Paris. One needs 
 but read the author's directions for 
 the setting to know that he is a man 
 of wide culture, and an almost pas- 
 sionate lover of the departed glories 
 of ancient Greece. I have seen 
 crowds of my fellow citizens go in 
 raptures over subjects taken from 
 periods of Roman rule. " Caesar," 
 " Antony and Cleopatra," (both 
 by Shakespeare and Sardou) and 
 even such productions as " Quo 
 Vadis," "Ben Hur" and the "Sign 
 of the Cross" seem to have a charm 
 for the great mass of the people. 
 It is probably the external trappings 
 of armor, the pomp, the show, the 
 glitter that captivates their imagina- 
 tion. D'Annunzio's admiration for 
 classical antiquity is of a wholly 
 different kind. He creates with the 
 aid of Homer and Sophocles and 
 jEschylus an atmosphere of antiquity 
 for himself to which the general mind 
 is an entire stranger. He is on speak- 
 ing terms with Kassander and Anti- 
 
 137 
 
gone, with Agamemnon, Klytemnestra 
 and Electra. 
 
 The following play is quite charac- 
 teristic and therefore deserves some 
 study. The scene opens in the 
 ancient city of Pelops, the home and 
 resting place of the unhappy sons of 
 Atreus. To this place has come 
 Leonardo, a young enthusiastic Itali- 
 an archeologist, and his sister, Bianca 
 Maria. Leonardo has come to dig 
 for the bodies of the buried Atridse 
 and in particular for those of the 
 King of Men and the unhappy pro- 
 phetess Cassandra who fell under the 
 blows of Klytemnestra on their return 
 from Troy. He has been digging 
 for two years and still his search has 
 been in vain. Day after day he goes 
 out, and, on his knees, with his body 
 bent over the ground, he digs with 
 his fingers for the buried dead fearing 
 to use a spade lest he should break 
 the coveted objects. Day after day 
 he returns home weary in body and 
 spirit from the fruitless search. His 
 sister soothes him, and forgetting his 
 troubles he lays his head on her 
 knees and sleeps. Two other per- 
 sons are also there, Alessandro and 
 
 '3« 
 
his blind wife Anna. He is a poet 
 and has come here for inspiration. 
 In the whole course of my reading I 
 have never seen grouped together 
 four such abnormal and morbid 
 people. And yet at the very outset 
 they hold our attention with fetters 
 of iron and sustain it to the terrible 
 end. ifEschylus and Sophocles can 
 hold it no better, but while these 
 inspire a sense of awe and elevation, 
 D'Annunzio in the very first scene 
 surrounds us with a sense of pervad- 
 ing gloom and depression that seems 
 appalling and crushing. In language 
 at once powerful, harmonious, melli- 
 fluous and intense, and with a setting 
 of sepulchral gloom and terror, he 
 transports us to a region away out of 
 the world into a place of nightmares 
 and of dreams. An immense sadness 
 is engendered by everything around. 
 The scorching, unpitying, unrelent- 
 ing sky, the clouds of blinding dust, 
 the dry desiccating wind, parching 
 and burning up every vestige of ver- 
 dure, all combine to give the scene 
 an aspect of terrific loneliness and 
 awe. The gloomy forebodings of the 
 blind woman, her horrible dreams, 
 
 '39 
 
the sensitiveness of the young girl 
 divining some terrible catastrophe, 
 all prepare us for some awful tragedy. 
 
 D'Annunzio's method in the open- 
 ing scene is the method of Augier 
 and Dumas, combined with the real- 
 ism of Zola and a few favorite devices 
 of his own. We need but to read 
 the first few pages of his "Triumph of 
 Death" to know what the final out- 
 come will be. He has a habit of 
 intimating at the beginning of his 
 plays and novels the final catastrophe. 
 He never takes one unexpected like 
 Ibsen; he has not yet acquired the 
 art of concealing his art. This of 
 course is to be expected where charac- 
 ters are made to order without any 
 relation to real life and where they 
 are but the externalization of the 
 author himself. 
 
 The play opens with a discourse 
 between Anna, the blind wife, and 
 Bianca Maria. They both refer to 
 some great change that has taken 
 place in Leonardo. The sister com- 
 plains of his estrangement from her 
 and of the lack of the confidence 
 which he formerly reposed in her. 
 She attributes it to his devotion to 
 
 140 
 
his work and the resulting weariness. 
 But Anna hints at a different cause. 
 In her own husband, Alessandro, she 
 divines the beginning of a passion 
 for Bianca Maria, and suspects that 
 the latter^ does not wholly oppose its 
 growth. She therefore concludes that 
 it is for this reason Leonardo is angry 
 with his sister. Both, however, are 
 entirely ignorant of the cause of the 
 dreadful change that has come over 
 Leonardo. 
 
 In his portrayal of Anna we cannot 
 but see the modernness of D'Annun- 
 zio. He has at various times avowed 
 his debt to the student of pathologi- 
 cal and experimental psychology, and 
 in his plays and novels he exhausts 
 all their findings. He makes the 
 blind Anna take hold of Bianca 
 Maria's hand and then suddenly ask 
 her if she has seen her husband. 
 The sensibility of Anna's hands will 
 be able to determine the muscular 
 reaction of Bianca Maria's thoughts. 
 Nor is it difficult to discern a resem- 
 blance between the ethical creed of 
 D'Annunzio and Sudermann. Beata 
 in " Es Leben Das Leben," might 
 well have been the prototype of 
 
Alessandro. The gospel of both is 
 the joy of living and the language at 
 times has a marked similarity. It is 
 but the repetition of the old pastoral 
 sentiment, the belief in unbridled 
 license, the same nerveless resigna- 
 tion of the soul to the body, the 
 same indolent and voluptuous spirit 
 powerless against the riot of the 
 pulses, the same melting and intoxi- 
 cating fervor, that mar the beauty of 
 Tasso's "Aminta," Fletcher's "Faith- 
 ful Sheperdess" and Pinero's "Iris." 
 This anti-social creed is laconically 
 summed up by Tasso, " Si ei piace, 
 ei lice." If it pleases, then it's 
 lawful. 
 
 This is the first Drama of 
 D'Annunzio, and to my mind it 
 reveals his aspiration for a national 
 drama. It is paradoxical, though 
 nevertheless a true statement, that 
 while Italy affords more material for 
 dramatic situations than almost any 
 other country, yet the Italians them- 
 selves have never taken advantage of 
 them. It may be that they lack the 
 dramaturgic principle or that they 
 have neglected the portrayal of 
 actual facts, or that they have been 
 
 142 
 
encumbered with some undramatic 
 theories. That Italian history is full 
 of dramatic situations is so apparent 
 that he who runs may read. Students 
 of Shakespeare well know how many 
 of his plots arose in Italy, witness the 
 "Merchant of Venice," "Romeo and 
 Juliet," and "Othello." 
 
 What then is D'Annunzio's idea 
 of a national drama as revealed by 
 this first work? To my mind his 
 conception of the drama is an effort 
 at a fusion of the ideals of antiquity 
 with modern methods. In this play 
 I believe he has been under the 
 influence of both Sophocles and 
 ZEschylus. But at the same time I 
 believe he has missed the point which 
 made both of these men great. They 
 represented in an ideal way the active 
 life of the society in which they lived. 
 iEschylus who fought at Marathon, 
 Sophocles who served as a general 
 with Pericles, fill their tragedies with 
 the patriotic sentiment of their age, 
 but D'Annunzio, whose aim it is to 
 evoke moods of the soul, dreads 
 nothing so much as any forms of 
 social and national activity. His 
 appeal is to a certain small section of 
 
 Hi 
 
society, to that section that followed 
 Paul Bourget in his unregenerate 
 days. D'Annunzio lacks the element 
 of the universal. He has no sym- 
 pathy with the great masses of his 
 countrymen. He hates them with 
 a hate of hate, a scorn of scorn. His 
 tastes are aristocratic, the levelling 
 influence of democracy he compares 
 to the "Gran Bestia." His art is as 
 far removed from reality as it can 
 possibly be. Art for art's sake is 
 his cry, and so he secludes himself in 
 a tower remote from the haunts of 
 men. So fastidious is he that in 
 driving into Florence, he orders his 
 coachman to avoid those portions of 
 the city where the enterprise of 
 modern industry has raised on the 
 foundations of decrepit palaces, 
 houses useful and adapted to the 
 needs of men. He reminds us of 
 the pathetic earnestness with which 
 Mr. Charles Morice, the chief philos- 
 opher of the French symbolists, utters 
 his lamentations over the exacting 
 tyranny of public duties. "To think," 
 he cries, " that the poet should be 
 obliged to break off in the middle of 
 a stanza in order to go and complete 
 
 i 44 
 
a period of twenty-eight days train- 
 ing in the army. The agitations of 
 the streets, the grinding of the 
 government machine, journals, elec- 
 tions; never has there been such a 
 hubbub, the turbulent and noisy 
 aristocracy of commerce has sup- 
 pressed in public preoccupation the 
 preoccupation of Beauty ; and trade 
 has killed whatever might have been 
 allowed by politics to live on in 
 silence." 
 
 The fundamental idea in this 
 drama expresses an anti-social senti- 
 ment. It was the idea that I objected 
 to in "II Sogno di Primavera," the 
 idea of fatality. In the Attic drama 
 the universal underlying idea of the 
 greater tragedians is misfortune, neces- 
 sarily entailed on families and people 
 by the curse of hereditary sin. This is 
 the idea in the "Agamemnon," and in 
 the "Antigone," both of which are so 
 much in the mind of D'Annunzio. In 
 the Shakesperean tragedy the funda- 
 mental idea is misfortune brought 
 about by the weakness and corrup- 
 tion of the human will, and this 
 idea was the natural product of the 
 Christian religion which descended to 
 
 '45 
 
Shakespeare through the ancient mira- 
 cle plays and moralities. D'Annun- 
 zio has renounced the Christian and 
 all other religions, and he therefore 
 falls back on fate. The underlying, 
 universal idea in this play is Destiny, 
 blind and impelling, and the charac- 
 ters accept this with a nerveless resig- 
 nation as something against which it 
 is hopeless to combat. Bianca Maria 
 says, "lo vi leggeva dianzi 1 'Anti- 
 gone. Di tratto in tratto mi pareva 
 di leggere il mio Destino," and Anna 
 says to her in answer, " Una forza 
 imperiosa s'e levata dentro di te, a 
 a un tratto; e non t'e piu possible 
 reprimerla. Se pure tu riuscissi a 
 troncarla, rimetterebbe mille germogli 
 dalle radici. E necessario che tu le 
 ceda." With these words Anna 
 practically tells Bianca Maria that the 
 latter can have her husband since fate 
 so wills it; and when some of Bianca 
 Maria's hair gets entangled in Ales- 
 sandro's ring and he cannot loose it he 
 soberly says "Ma sono inestricabili. 
 Quali nodi sa comporre il Caso." 
 
 Leonardo finally discovers the 
 sepulchres of the unhappy sons of 
 Atreus and Cassandra lying by the 
 
 146 
 
side of Agamemnon. He rushes in 
 and relates the wonderful discovery 
 to his sister, to Anna and to her hus- 
 band Alessandro. With breathless 
 fervor he tells of his discovery. It 
 would be difficult in the whple range 
 of literature to find so magnificent a 
 dream so splendidly, so eloquently 
 described. The majesty and impet- 
 uousity of D'Annunzio's style as 
 here shown can scarcely be paralleled. 
 I doubt if he has ever succeeded as 
 well in any other of his works. 
 
 It is a curious literary coincidence 
 that Italy, once the home of the im- 
 provised non-literary drama, should 
 witness to-day in D'Annunzio the lit- 
 erary drama in its highest perfection. 
 Surely he is a grand master in the 
 use of words. Had he the dramatic 
 insight and the sanity of Augier com- 
 bined with his own magnificent style, 
 he would be the greatest living dra- 
 matist. But D'Annunzio is not sane. 
 iEschylus and Sophocles roused pity 
 and terror and wonder by the ideal na- 
 ture of the tragic situation. D'Annun- 
 zio endeavors to do the same thing 
 by novelties of thought and expres- 
 sion. It is the exaggeration of the 
 
 H7 
 
individual to supply the defect of the 
 universal of which Seneca affords so 
 striking an example. 
 
 In the second Act, the poet Ales- 
 sandro confesses his love for Bianca 
 Maria. She is necessary, he says, 
 for the efflorescence of his genius. 
 He does this in as cold-blooded a 
 manner as though he were not en- 
 cumbered with a wife. Although she 
 is blind, she is a truly lovable woman. 
 But the young girl is necessary to 
 give expression to his genius. This 
 surely is poetic license run riot. 
 Suderman makes the dying Beata 
 proclaim her creed in these words: 
 "My dear friends, you all go on 
 wishing each other a long life, but 
 which of us is really alive ? Which 
 of us really dares to live?" Alessan- 
 dro says " Non pensate voi, Bianca 
 Maria che sia necessario manifestare 
 le verita interiori quando questi 
 domandano d' essere espresse, per 
 coloro che sono risoluti a vivere 
 senza languire e senza mentire." 
 We must not, he says, suppress our 
 natural desires, for what new joys, 
 what new delights may they not 
 open up to us ? We must realize 
 
 1+8 
 
ourselves fully. This is D'Annun- 
 zio's path to the attainment of the 
 "Uebermensch." He who hides, he 
 who dissimulates, he who suppresses 
 his desires, that man lies in the face 
 of life. The young girl with a sense 
 of compassion for the man's wife, 
 though willing enough to yield to 
 him, says that it cannot be. And 
 then with the utmost cruelty and in- 
 humanity he declares that he would 
 blast a thousand lives so that he 
 might live with her. A poet indeed 
 with a vengeance ! The most sacred 
 ties must be ruthlessly broken so 
 that the possession of Bianca Maria 
 may give an incalculable fecundity to 
 his genius, and hasten it to perfect 
 maturity. He will not renounce his 
 intention for a thousand wives, for 
 Destiny so wills it. She tells him 
 that she is only a simple girl atten- 
 tive to her brother and that it is his 
 imagination that transfigures her. 
 He replies that she is the spirit of 
 poetry and that all the divine 
 "afflatus" that is in him will dry up 
 unless the divine voluptuousness that 
 is in her fan the flame to life and 
 make it burst out in eternal poetry. 
 
 M9 
 
And when this high mission is out- 
 lined to the imagination of the young 
 girl she asks in a human way what 
 is to become of the loved ones. He 
 replies " Lasciate che il destino si 
 compia." Let destiny be fulfilled. So 
 the divinations of the blind wife were 
 right. But as for Leonardo, he as 
 yet knows nothing of this unholy 
 passion. He bears on in silence his 
 own load of grief. 
 
 Alessandro's ethical system is quite 
 characteristic of D'Annunzio; but 
 only in a Mormon state is it practic- 
 able. It is a selfish doctrine and 
 subversive of society. It is therefore 
 anti-social and cannot be too strongly 
 condemned. Its merits can be de- 
 bated safely only in the study, for 
 there it may do no harm, but its 
 application in society would destroy 
 the State. We see that D'Annunzio 
 is incapable of reconciling the princi- 
 ples of liberty and authority. This 
 is a necessary outcome of the "Culte 
 de Moi." The poet begins to turn 
 his gaze inward; he shifts the sphere 
 of observation from the life and char- 
 acter of society to the seclusion of 
 his own mind. He finds there a 
 
 150 
 
longing for the "Uebermensch" a 
 desire for self realization, and to 
 attain the "Uebermensch" we must 
 not be too scrupulous about the 
 means we use. O exaggeration of 
 the individual! O absence of Art! 
 And yet D'Annunzio is on record as 
 a devotee of Art. That cannot be 
 artistic which is untrue, which sub- 
 verts the natural order of things. Is 
 woman's place in creation that of 
 stimulating man's mental life and 
 bringing it to fruition irrespective of 
 the rights of society, or is her office 
 for the perpetuation of the race? Is 
 such a distorted view of the order of 
 things artistic, or is DAnnunzio 
 deserving of the name of poet? Is 
 this true poetry? It is of the highest 
 importance that we should be able to 
 form an opinion on the matter, since 
 we have Matthew Arnold's authority 
 for the statement that "in poetry, 
 when it is worthy of its high destin- 
 ies, our race, as time goes on, will 
 find an ever surer and surer stay." 
 Poetry which is to fulfil a duty of 
 that kind must be of a different type 
 from that of D'Annunzio. It must 
 resemble the high moral, true and 
 
 '5' 
 
eternal stamp of that kind which we 
 find in Shakespeare and in D'Annun- 
 zio's own illustrious countryman 
 Dante. But D'Annunzio has broken 
 with the artistic principles of the 
 past. For him old things have passed 
 away, all things have become new. 
 The individual is supreme, religion 
 is powerless. Art alone, mystical, 
 symbolic, individual, can supply the 
 void in the human imagination, can 
 reconstruct old worn out society. 
 We feel like exclaiming with Max 
 Nordau, "Do not trust these artists; 
 they are charlatans, who, so far from 
 being apostles and prophets, are to 
 be classed as 'Mattoides,' 'Circulars,' 
 'Graphomaniacs' and other varities of 
 hysterical patients." 
 
 Alessandro nothwithstanding his 
 fervent stream of poetry is a despic- 
 able character. He does not even 
 sympathize with the poor wife whom 
 he is deserting. He rather chooses 
 to look on her blindnesss and neglect 
 her many beautiful qualities. This 
 is D'Annunzio's greatest fault, an 
 absolutely hard, unsympathetic, un- 
 pitying nature. In his "Trionfo" he 
 exhibits the same pitiless cruelty in 
 
 1,-2 
 
depicting the defects of Gioconda. 
 He rivals Zola in this. We do not 
 find this among the great artists. 
 Shakespere indeed exhibits the anger 
 and infirmities of Lear but D'An- 
 nunzio would omit to describe every- 
 thing but the old wrinkled face and 
 the gray hairs and the toothless 
 gums. The morbid has an irresistible 
 attraction for him whether it be in- 
 cest, murder, blood, gaping, yawning, 
 sores, oozing out blood and corrup- 
 tion, human miseries and infamies in 
 all their vilest and most hideous forms. 
 The province of criticism should 
 be constructive, not destructive. I 
 should not detract one iota from the 
 merits of D'Annunzio, and he has 
 real merits, and a splendid apprecia- 
 tion of true art. He would, himself, 
 make an excellent critic. The man- 
 ner in which he has interwoven the 
 "Agamemnon" of iEschylus and 
 the " Antigone " of Sophocles in the 
 structure of his play is truly admir- 
 able, even though mechanical. It 
 savors a little of the method of Scribe, 
 but the literary appreciation mani- 
 fested is quite out of the reach of 
 Scribe. 
 
 "53 
 
We now come to the essential 
 struggle in this most extraordinary 
 drama. We learn the cause of 
 Leonardo's uneasiness and we find 
 that it is not due to his intense pas- 
 sion for archaeological research, nor 
 to the exhalations of the woeful 
 sepulchres of those whose tragic 
 destiny was so powerfully drawn by 
 iEschylus. It is due to an unlawful 
 passion for his sister which has sud- 
 denly taken hold of him and which 
 he is powerless to resist. In a speech 
 interminably long Leonardo disbur- 
 dens himself of this terrible secret to 
 Alessandro, who has now woke to 
 all the intoxication of his own passion 
 for the young girl. It is a moment 
 of intense dramatic effect, the strong- 
 est scene that D'Annunzio has ever 
 drawn. Let us examine into the 
 philosophy of the situation. We 
 see a man possessed of an unholy 
 desire for his sister. He labors 
 against it with all his might — it fills 
 him with horror, disgust and shame. 
 He struggles against it, but all in 
 vain. The demon-like desire cannot 
 be overcome. What are our feel- 
 ings ? The man seems to be bat- 
 
 '54 
 
ding earnestly against the temptation, 
 and therefore to a certain extent he 
 has our sympathy. But we ask, is 
 it possible for an idea, an abstract 
 idea, to exercise this power over the 
 mind? If philosophy can answer 
 this question affirmatively, the dram- 
 atist is saved; if philosophy denies 
 it, the action of the dramatist is very 
 reprehensible. 
 
 The theme, or a similar one, has 
 been handled by many competent 
 dramatists, notably Sophocles. But 
 while in Sophocles, CEdipus, uncon- 
 scious of his guilt, excites our intensest 
 sympathy; in D'Annunzio, Leonardo 
 excites our horror and disgust. 
 Sophocles is sane, wholesome, healthy, 
 but D'Annunzio is gruesome, morbid, 
 absolutely disgusting. If this theme 
 cannot be handled so as not to out- 
 rage our moral feelings, it should 
 never be touched at all. I do not 
 deny the abstract power of such an 
 idea, and the supporters of D'An- 
 nunzio may claim that such a thing 
 may happen, and that such a thing has 
 happened as a matter of fact, but the 
 individual is abnormal in whom it 
 happens. But if such things have 
 
 '55 
 
happened, the stage is not the place 
 to parade them. I should choose 
 rather to oppose the argument of 
 those who say that such themes are 
 matters for the stage with the argu- 
 ment that iEschylus uses in answer 
 to Euripides in the " Frogs " (Aris- 
 tophanes). Euripides asks : 
 
 But after all what is the horrible mischief? 
 My poor Sthenoboeas, what harm have they 
 done? 
 
 ^Eschylus replies: 
 
 The example has followed, the practice has 
 
 gained, 
 And women of family, fortune and worth 
 Bewildered with shame, in a passionate fury 
 Have poisoned themselves for Bellepheron's 
 sake. 
 
 Euripides : 
 
 But at least you'll allow that I never invented 
 
 it, 
 Phaedra's affair was a matter of fact. 
 
 iEschylus: 
 
 "A fact with a vengeance! but horrible facts 
 
 Should be buried in silence, not bruited 
 abroad, 
 
 Nor brought forth on the stage, nor em- 
 blazoned in poetry. 
 
 Children and boys have a teacher assigned 
 them; 
 
 The bard is a master for manhood and youth 
 
 Bound to instruct them in virtue and truth, 
 
 Beholden and bound." 
 
 156 
 
Yet the disgusting idea is adroitly 
 handled. Nothing but D'Annun- 
 zio's intellectual force could handle 
 it as well. It could have occurred 
 only to a man of genius, however 
 perversely that genius may have been 
 employed. How is it possible, then, 
 that Sophocles can handle this same 
 idea and fill us not with disgust, but 
 with wonder and pity and awe? 
 Why on the contrary do we shudder 
 at D'Annunzio's treatment while ad- 
 miring his wonderful intellectual 
 power? I believe the reason to be, 
 that while Sophocles had a splendid 
 imagination, he had also a great, 
 keen, moral, wholesome sense, a 
 hatred of the vulgar. He took a 
 theme that existed in the minds of 
 his countrymen and handled it in 
 a strictly moral and sane manner. 
 D'Annunzio, on the contrary, search- 
 es the corners of his imagination 
 and, relying purely on his native 
 power, experiments with the subject 
 as an athlete would test his strength. 
 He has no sense of the fitness of 
 things. He lacks the moral sense, 
 paints the disgusting thing in all its 
 details, and exhibits an irresistible 
 
 i57 
 
tendency to gravitate towards the 
 morbid and gruesome. 
 
 I have dwelt already on this play 
 beyond the limits allowed by this 
 paper. It remains but to see how 
 D'Annunzio solves the situation. 
 He is placed between two alterna- 
 tives. Either Leonardo or Bianca 
 Maria shall die. It seems to me that 
 D'Annunzio's solution, however un- 
 just, is the only logical one. 
 
 Alessandro loves her; Anna is con- 
 templating suicide, and Leonardo is 
 oppressed by his fierce thought. 
 The abyss has opened between all 
 four who once lived in unsuspect- 
 ing peace and purity. The tragic 
 situation demands a solution. Leo- 
 nardo drowns his sister. He says he 
 drowned her to save her from the 
 horror of his temptation and to purify 
 his own soul. He kills her so that 
 he could love her as in the old days, 
 and that Alessandro could similarly 
 love her. He disposes of Anna by 
 making her recover her sight. This 
 solution offends our sense of poetic 
 justice, though it rivals the ingenuity 
 of Scribe. 
 
 We lay down the play with mixed 
 
 158 
 
feelings. As a work of literary style 
 it is simply magnificent. The Italian 
 language is here handled as no other 
 since Dante has handled it. A tragic 
 atmosphere pervades the whole, and 
 that pervading sense of gloom that 
 encompassed us at the opening re- 
 mains to the end. There is a pow- 
 erful appeal to the emotions all 
 through, but there is an accompany- 
 ing impression of the impossibility 
 and unreality of the whole. All the 
 accidentals of real tragedy are present 
 — the tone, the atmosphere, the grav- 
 ity, the dignity — but the great ele- 
 ment of sanity, of absolute truth, is 
 lacking. Our prejudices are shocked, 
 but our admiration is elicited. We 
 repeat what is said before, that D'An- 
 nunzio has a brilliant intellect in- 
 clined to the morbid but without 
 any definite sane moral equilibrium. 
 In dramatic power the play shows a 
 decided improvement over the first 
 " Sogno." 
 
 159 
 
SOGNO D'UN TRAMONTO 
 
 D'AUTUNNO. 
 
 The consideration of this one-act 
 drama should be taken in connection 
 with the first " Sogno," but I have 
 chosen to follow strictly the chrono- 
 logical order. I do not believe that 
 either of these Sogni is yet trans- 
 lated into English, so I shall briefly 
 give the argument of this one. On 
 the shore of the Brenta overlooking 
 Venice dwells Gradeniga, the most 
 serene widow of one of the latest 
 Doges. Nothing remains but the 
 vestiges of her former beauty. By 
 the aid of a Slavonian sorceress she 
 has killed the Doge, her husband, so 
 that she might live with a yoking 
 man. The latter after a while wearies 
 of her on account of her lost beauty 
 and he falls a prey to the wiles of a 
 Venetian courtesan, Pantea, leaving 
 the Dogaressa frantic with jealousy 
 and despair. 
 
 From the towers of the palace of 
 the Dogaressa the barge of the 
 naked courtesan can be seen upon 
 the river surrounded by thousands 
 of boats filled with people all capti- 
 
 160 
 
vated with her charms. In her anger 
 and despair the Dogaressa sends for 
 the sorceress, who, by mystic rites 
 and dire imprecations, causes the bark 
 of the courtesan to take fire. The 
 countless crowds around the boat of 
 the courtesan fight by the light of the 
 moving conflagration for the posses- 
 sion of Pantea. The bloody pro- 
 cession moves up the river fighting, 
 shouting, screaming in demoniac rage 
 and abandoned voluptuousness. The 
 burning barge of the courtesan passes 
 along in front of the ducal palace, 
 and by the illumination of the flames 
 Gradeniga sees the dead, charred 
 bodies of Pantea and her lost lover, 
 who died defending the courtesan 
 from the burning and impelling pas- 
 sion of the pleasure-loving people. 
 The curtain falls and we see the 
 Dogaressa, spent with grief and ter- 
 ror, her bloodless and despairing 
 features lit up by the incarnadined 
 illumination and expressing all the 
 grandeur and all the beauty of the 
 tragic vision. 
 
 We can truly call the first play a 
 dream, but this is a horrible night- 
 mare. In the first dream we were 
 
 161 
 
content to be drenched with blood, 
 but here we revolt at the thought of 
 an entire populace leaving their homes 
 and, driven by lustful passions, going 
 out to the stream and fighting to the 
 death for the possession of a dancing, 
 naked courtesan. And while this 
 bloody spectacle is happening on the 
 river, we see in the ducal palace a 
 disgusting, murdering, faded old wo- 
 man, still burning with unquenchable 
 passion for her lost lover. There 
 she stands, holding in her hand a 
 wax figure, made by the sorceress to 
 represent Pantea. She takes the 
 golden pins from her hair and stabs 
 them into the wax image, hoping 
 that in so doing Pantea will feel the 
 force of each in her flesh. Having 
 exhausted her own supply of pins 
 she grasps at the heads of her atten- 
 dants for more, and in pulling them 
 out drags by the roots bunches of 
 their hair. They scream with pain. 
 She dismisses her attendants to the 
 shore to bring her news of Pantea. 
 " Is she beautiful ? " she screams. 
 And be their answer yes or no she 
 tears and pulls and drags them, until 
 our hearts sink within us, and we ask: 
 
 162 
 
What could D'Annunzio have eaten 
 to give him such a nightmare? 
 
 We have seen Qeopatra as out- 
 lined by Shakespere and by Sardou. 
 We all know how she treats the slave 
 that brings her news of Antony and 
 his Roman wife. We have seen her 
 fury, but we do not shudder at it. 
 Now imagine an old wrinkled Cleo- 
 patra, a murderess, an abandoned old 
 voluptuary, and multiply sevenfold 
 the ire and frenzy of the Egyptian 
 queen, and you have a faint impres- 
 sion of the presiding deity of the 
 ducal palace, her grace, the most 
 serene widow of one of the last of 
 the Doges. This is the method of 
 D'Annunzio. The exaggeration of 
 the individual, the morbid in art. 
 D'Annunzio, I am almost certain, 
 had Cleopatra in mind when writing 
 this. In order to see how he has 
 treated the theme let us search our 
 memory and the literature of the 
 world for a similar theme. Instantly 
 we think of the second idyll of 
 Theocritus. 
 
 Let us, in imagination, transport 
 ourselves back to Syracuse about 
 2000 years ago. Let us follow The- 
 
 163 
 
ocritus as he breaks from the revelers 
 and wanders out into the night. The 
 moon rides high in the heavens and 
 he catches a glimpse of a deserted 
 girl shredding the magical herbs into 
 the burning brazier and sending up- 
 ward to the lady " Selene " the song 
 which was to charm her lover home. 
 " The magical image melted in the 
 burning, the herbs smouldered, the 
 tale of love was told, and slowly the 
 singer ' drew the quiet night into her 
 blood.' ' Her lay ended with a pas- 
 sage of softened melancholy. 
 
 " Do thou farewell and turn thy 
 steeds to Ocean, lady, and my pain 
 I will endure even as I have declared. 
 Farewell, Selene beautiful; farewell, 
 ye other stars that follow the wheels 
 of night." 
 
 This beautiful Grecian girl in her 
 heartrending despair excites our in- 
 tensest sympathy. The last of the 
 Great Greeks has lifted that popular 
 superstition into the realm of Art 
 and made it a thing of beauty. This 
 superstition yet exists among the 
 women of the islands, as M. Fauriel 
 has shown in his beautiful collection, 
 " Chants Populaires de la Grece." 
 
 164 
 
But D'Annunzio, while handling the 
 theme in a powerfully effective man- 
 ner, excites our disgust by fusing the 
 superstition in the alembic of his own 
 morbid imagination and giving it to 
 us in its most hideous aspect. 
 
 What greater contrast to the sweet 
 melancholy of the lovely young Gre- 
 cian girl, deserted by her lover, can 
 be imagined than the old wrinkled 
 Dogaressa, the murderess of her hus- 
 band. How infinitely sad and tender 
 are the words of poor Simaetha, as 
 from the depths of her abandoned 
 heart she apostrophizes her magic 
 wheel and the silent moon and ac- 
 cepts her gloomy fate. 
 
 " My magic wheel draws home to 
 me the man I love and do thou fare- 
 well and turn thy steed to Ocean, 
 lady, and my pain I will endure even 
 as I have declared. Farewell, Selene 
 beautiful; farewell, ye other stars that 
 follow the wheels of night." 
 
 On the contrary how vulgar, coarse, 
 and demoniacal the words of Grade- 
 niga, as with sacrilegious hands she 
 takes the consecrated host and the 
 tooth of her husband, or the hair of 
 the courtesan, and hurls dire impre- 
 ss 
 
cations on her lost lover and hi" 
 mistress: 
 
 "Ah, che il fiicco dell' inferno ti divori! 
 
 Schiavona, Schiavona, invoca tutti gli angeli e 
 tutti e dimoni! Fa ch'ella sia fulminata in 
 mezzo alia sua gioia, Impreca, Impreca." 
 
 1 66 
 
LA GIOCONDA. 
 
 D'Annunzio here takes up again 
 the theme that was secondary in "La 
 Citta Morta." Owing to the course 
 of events in that drama, he was un- 
 able to solve it there. He does not 
 leave us longer in doubt about his 
 position. In the "La Citta Morta," 
 we spoke at length of Alessandro, the 
 man who was married to a woman, a 
 blind woman, who kept his spirit 
 from reaching its perfect maturity; 
 who hindered the efflorescence of the 
 divine afflatus within him. It was 
 not till I had read this play three or 
 four times that I perceived the repe- 
 tition of the same character here. 
 Silvio is a reincarnation of Ales- 
 sandro. He too is married to a 
 good, noble, unselfish and supremely 
 lovable woman. But he too, like 
 Alessandro, feels that she is an im- 
 pediment and a drag to his ascending 
 genius, and he finds that only Gio- 
 conda can help him to express him- 
 self in artistic masterpieces. What 
 is he to do? He is placed in the 
 same dilemma as Alessandro. But 
 he is a little better than the latter. 
 
 ,6; 
 
Alessandro was supremely brutal and 
 selfish; he was ready to sacrifice a 
 thousand lives and all that was bound 
 to him by the most sacred ties to 
 attain Bianca Maria. But Silvio, 
 unable to live with Silvia and with- 
 out Gioconda, at first unselfishly 
 decides to kill himself. In this way 
 lay his triumph over his situation. 
 This is the philosophy of the " Tri- 
 umph of Death." The situation is 
 exactly parallel. But while in the 
 " Triumph " Giorgio Aurispa is suc- 
 cessful in his suicidal attempt, in this 
 drama Silvio is not. He has failed 
 to kill himself, much to our sorrow. 
 And, of course, we await the final 
 result. We should expect in real 
 life from any man who was not an 
 absolutely selfish, thankless brute 
 that he would forsake the insolent 
 Gioconda and for the rest of his life 
 live only to bless and praise and love 
 the faithful wife, who nursed him 
 when the hand of death was out- 
 stretched above his pillow. But no; 
 no sooner has he recovered, than he 
 once again leaves his wife, even after 
 she has given one more supreme proof 
 of her love — her very hands — the 
 
 168 
 
most beautiful and choice possession, 
 except her soul, that she possesses, 
 and gives himself up — soul and 
 body— to the other woman. This 
 play should have been called the 
 " Triumph of Life " instead of " La 
 Gioconda." D'Annunzio, we are in- 
 formed, has in contemplation a book 
 of this title, and unless all signs fail 
 we may expect to see the develop- 
 ment of this idea. 
 
 D'Annunzio must have some good 
 reason for this solution of the prob- 
 lem. And this reason will be closely 
 connected with his ethical creed, and 
 a necessary consequence thereof. I 
 believe that he justifies this conclu- 
 sion on the following grounds: The 
 one supreme thing in life is art. He 
 who feels within himself the artistic 
 impulse, the impulse to create forms 
 of beauty, knows no laws that can 
 hinder really or apparently the ex- 
 ternal realization of this impulse. If, 
 therefore, human society has estab- 
 lished any conventions or any laws, 
 yea, if even the gods themselves have 
 sanctioned any customs that hinder 
 the devolopment and externalization 
 of this artistic impulse, all these con- 
 
 169 
 
ventions, laws, and customs are to be 
 disregarded, yea, even to be ruthlessly 
 trampled upon, even though the heart- 
 strings of multitudinous human be- 
 ings are to be rent and burst by the 
 operation. One is tempted to ask 
 whether this be true art, or an indi- 
 vidual conception of it. We are 
 tempted to believe that it is the 
 latter. Not so thought the great 
 artists of the past, those mighty 
 spirits who still speak to us from 
 their urns. They did not under- 
 stand it thus, and when we find an 
 individual in our own time setting at 
 naught the beliefs of the masters we 
 are inclined to doubt his mission. 
 The principle underlying the solution 
 of the problem is too far-reaching in 
 its results. It is opposed to the 
 well-being of the state. It is anti- 
 social and therefore untrue and in- 
 artistic. That principle which cor- 
 rupts and disintegrates society by 
 destroying the family cannot be a 
 productive principle in real art. 
 When thirty thousand Greeks ap- 
 plauded the performances of their 
 dramatic masters it was without 
 violence to their prejudices, it was 
 
 170 
 
not in opposition to their ethical and 
 social creed. This play is important 
 as showing us the extent of D'An- 
 nunzio's power. We at first are 
 deceived as to his real possibilities. 
 The splendor of his language, its 
 variety, its harmony, its force, its 
 directness, its clearness, its majesty, 
 its classical dignity, all its various 
 phases of power and beauty and 
 novelty at first bewilder and deceive 
 us. We, by a false analogy, also 
 conclude that his power of original- 
 ity, of invention, of suggestion, of 
 situation, is equally varied. But we 
 are soon undeceived. We cannot 
 always subsist on a verbal diet, and 
 when we become satiated with glow- 
 ing metaphors and novelities of ex- 
 pression we cast about for the essential 
 things. It is, therefore, with a feeling 
 of disappointment we avow that 
 D'Annunzio's range is extremely 
 limited. All his men are nearly 
 alike, selfish, morbid, introspective, 
 antisocial and of a mental stock of 
 ideas exactly proportionate. Giorgio 
 in the " Trionfo " is the prototype 
 of Alessandro ; Alessandro is the 
 prototype of Silvio, with the only 
 
 171 
 
distinction that the former is a poet 
 and the latter a sculptor. Anna in 
 "La Citta Morta" is the Silvia of 
 " La Gioconda," and La Gioconda 
 herself is a harsher reproduction of 
 Bianca Maria, who more closely 
 resembles Francesca Doni. 
 
 The play is also important in 
 showing another well-marked charac- 
 teristic of D'Annunzio's genius. I 
 refer to his creative power as exhibited 
 in his male and female characters. 
 A thorough study of his works will 
 soon convince us that he is much 
 happier, saner, better and more varied 
 in the delineation of female charac- 
 ters. He has created some beautiful 
 women. Anna, Silvia Settala, Sa- 
 maritana, the old nurse, and Francesca 
 da Rimini herself have some admir- 
 ably beautiful traits. He seems to 
 have confined his observation and 
 his study of human nature to the 
 gentler sex. Only once does he give 
 us a character that is distinctly mas- 
 culine, and that one, strange to say, is 
 the deformed husband of Francesca 
 da Rimini. We note also with 
 pleasure that this power is steadily 
 increasing as time goes on, and per- 
 
 172 
 
haps when his vision of life has 
 become extended and the bounds of 
 his experience widened, and when he 
 shall have ceased to be completely 
 absorbed in his own mental processes 
 and desisted from continually drawing 
 his own features before the mirror, he 
 may create some male types who shall 
 possess the sane ruddy drop of human 
 blood in their veins. When this hap- 
 pens we may look for real Italian 
 poetry. Unless it does happen we 
 shall have to look to some other suc- 
 cessor to Goldoni who shall in Italy 
 flush the silent Memnon into song. 
 
 I have dwelt at length in this 
 paper on D'Annunzio's philosophy 
 of life. There are, however, other 
 methods of approach to a work of 
 art. And here it may not be amiss 
 to consider for a moment his tech- 
 nique. He is unique in this respect. 
 He relies on words more than on 
 situations. No other dramatic writer 
 within my knowledge loads his plays 
 with so much explanation. If the 
 disposition of the objects about a 
 room is to be considered, if the ap- 
 pearance of a landscape is the point 
 at issue, D'Annunzio interprets them 
 
 i73 
 
for us. We are to see in the statues 
 that adorn Silvia's home the reflection 
 of the qualities of the soul of the 
 occupant; we are to see in the 
 autumn trees now turning to gold 
 and brown and laden with their weight 
 of rich fruit mirrored in the water 
 below, the suggestion of a woman 
 admiring the last traces of her fading 
 beauty. Nothing, not even the voice, 
 or dress, or words of the speaker 
 are to be left to our interpretation. 
 Everywhere the author obtrudes him- 
 self and settles everything for us. 
 All his dramatis personce are ex- 
 ceedingly voluminous in speech, and 
 often tiresome in their endless dis- 
 courses. At times their loquacity 
 interferes with the action of the play 
 and tries the patience of the hearer 
 or reader. This is especially true of 
 "La Citta Morta" and "Francesca." 
 There is that insistence on detail, 
 that dwelling on minutias, that ac- 
 cumulation of non-essentials, that 
 lack of condensation that character- 
 izes all the ultra Wagnerians. And 
 D'Annunzio is an ardent worshipper 
 of Wagner. 
 
 Elsewhere I have spoken of his 
 
 '74 
 
powers of observation and his inter- 
 pretative ability. I have hinted at 
 his marked ability in the appreciative 
 and sympathetic interpretation of 
 nature and poetry and music. His 
 observation of life, his view of the 
 world is keen and quick, but his 
 vision is distorted and colored by his 
 philosophy and by his imagination. 
 It remains but to speak of his imagi- 
 nation. He has an active and bril- 
 liant imagination, original, glowing, 
 ardent, but exceedingly abnormal and 
 morbid. 1 1 is the imagination of a mys- 
 tic freed from the restraint of morality. 
 But it is bold, quick and intense. 
 
 We shall take leave of " La Gio- 
 conda " with a parting remark, and 
 that is, that it can never appeal to a 
 cosmopolitan people like ours. It is 
 the story of an artist, and it is a truism 
 that none of the arts or professions 
 can be successfully exploited on the 
 stage. The appeal is to a small 
 portion of the community owing to 
 the lack of the universal element in 
 the subject. But it is also pleasing 
 to note the saner tone of this play, 
 its approach to reality and its truth as 
 compared with his previous works. 
 
 '75 
 
LA GLORIA. 
 
 I must confess that this play is 
 somewhat of a puzzle. It has the 
 illusive quality of a dream, the un- 
 defined characteristics of a reverie. 
 It is an allegorical or symbolic repre- 
 sentation of an abstract idea, the idea 
 of glory; or it may represent the 
 instability of fortune, the precarious 
 tenure of political leadership, or the 
 fluctuations of popular support. In 
 general terms it may be denominated 
 an allegorical use of objects of sense 
 in order to convey to the mind of 
 the hearer or reader an image of some 
 unseen spiritual force in life. 
 
 The production of the drama is 
 coincident with the author's entrance 
 into politics. His observation of the 
 leaders of parties, his inquiry into 
 the methods of party management, 
 the fugitive character of political as- 
 cendency, the incipient or half-formed 
 dreams of an independent and mighty 
 Italy freed from the bonds of the 
 triple alliance and independent of it, 
 with the Eternal City as its centre, 
 or the impossibility of a compromise 
 between servile flattery of the mob 
 
 176 
 
and the pursuit of glory, any one of 
 these or a combination of them all 
 may be found as a motive of the 
 drama. At times it looks like the 
 manifesto of a very patriotic party 
 organized for the express purpose of 
 rousing Italy from innocuous desue- 
 tude and the intolerable burden of 
 exorbitant taxation, and of flashing 
 once more from the seven hills of 
 Rome the triumphant Eagle of the 
 Mistress of the World, and rousing 
 the sons of Italy to a realization 
 of their possible glory. Ruggero 
 Flamma may have been suggested 
 by a Rienzi or a Kosciusko. The 
 dying Cesare Bronte may have been 
 suggested by a Crispi or a Wolsey. 
 
 It breathes at times D'Annunzio's 
 fierce scorn of the vulgar herd; at 
 times it seems to show the impossi- 
 bility of attaining glory except by 
 completely shutting the ears to the 
 voice of popular demands and riding 
 rough-shod over their necks. At 
 one time it typifies the hatred and 
 jealousy of the crowd towards the 
 virtue and the nobility of soul that 
 they know is forever beyond reach, 
 and then again it seems to be the 
 
 177 
 
author's idea of the method of yoking 
 the people to the chariot of a tri- 
 umphant leader. This method, as 
 understood by him, is none other 
 than an appeal to their passions, and 
 their very worst and basest passions 
 at that. 
 
 The mysterious youth who appears 
 and attempts to slay Flamma may 
 be young Italy or young Rome, who 
 wishes to vindicate herself on him for 
 his apparent preference of the paths 
 of glory to those of expediency. At 
 the end a note of despair dominates, 
 and the general conclusion reached is 
 that it is impossible to attain glory in 
 the field of politics; that glory must 
 be gained in other fields. The clos- 
 ing sentiment is a protest against the 
 power of the people. It is the dying 
 voice of an arrogant Nero, the insane 
 anathema of a tyrannous Louis XV, 
 or the last, scornful challenge of a de- 
 feated leader despising the popular 
 power. "Io so il fiato della belva, il 
 suo lezzo, l'atrocita del suo contatto, 
 I'enormita delle sue vendette. Uc- 
 cidimi." 
 
 It is difficult to perceive D'An- 
 nunzio's motive in the tragedy. At 
 
 178 
 
times it seems to be written in defence 
 of himself and reminds one of Ibsen's 
 " Enemy of the People." Be the 
 motive what it may, it is rather dis- 
 appointing to see D'Annunzio join 
 the ranks of the Symbolists. This 
 influence may have come from the 
 French ; I doubt that Ibsen has had 
 much to do with it. D'Annunzio 
 may have been captivated with the 
 pronunciamento of the French Sym- 
 bolists : " Art alone, mystical, sym- 
 bolic art, can supply the void in the hu- 
 man imagination," and experimented 
 with it. The result should not leave 
 him long in doubt as to its efficacy in 
 the field of dramatic art. It is at all 
 times painful to see in our day an 
 example of the exaggerated art which 
 arises out of the exhaustion of nature. 
 D'Annunzio may have been misled 
 by the faulty conception of the right 
 aim in poetry expressed by M. Mal- 
 larme, a French Symbolist. The 
 latter says: "To name an object is to 
 destroy three-quarters of the enjoy- 
 ment of a poem. . . . The true 
 goal of poetry is suggestion. Sym- 
 bolism consists in the artistic employ- 
 ment of this mysterious principle." 
 
 179 
 
This same doctrine is enunciated in 
 M. Paul Verlaine's "Art Poetique " 
 in the following stanza : 
 
 " II faut aussi que tu n'ailles point 
 Choisir tes mots sans quelque meprise: 
 Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise, 
 Ou l'Indecis au Precis se joint." 
 
 After pondering on the meaning of 
 D'Annunzio for several hours, we 
 come to the conclusion that we need 
 the interpretative insight of a D'An- 
 nunzio society as potently as ever we 
 needed that of a Browning society. 
 
 180 
 
Miss Eleanor Duse 
 
FRANCESCA DA RIMINI. 
 
 We now come to a consideration 
 of D'Annunzio's latest play, " Fran- 
 cesca da Rimini." It is somewhat of 
 a relief to come back to real life after 
 having been employed in trying to 
 give a local habitation and a name 
 to the fanciful motive of "La Gloria." 
 There is an ever-living interest in 
 the tragic fate of the unhappy pair 
 immortalized by Dante in the fifth 
 Canto of the "Inferno." And we are 
 glad to find D'Annunzio taking up 
 the theme. It is native to his soil. 
 The land incarnadined with their 
 blood is his land; their sad fate can 
 be told effectively only by a native 
 of that land, inseparably connected 
 with their doleful memory. The play 
 is now accessible to English readers 
 through the admirable and sympa- 
 thetic translation of Arthur Symons; 
 and its dramatic qualities, its strength, 
 and its weakness are evident to those 
 who are fortunate enough to have 
 seen the presentation of it by Signora 
 Eleanora Duse. It was first played 
 in Rome by the same company in 
 December, 1901. 
 
 181 
 
The play is written in blank verse 
 and marks a new departure in D'An- 
 nunzio's efforts. Were it within the 
 scope of this theme to consider its 
 purely literary merits, I should at- 
 tempt to show that it teems with mag- 
 nificent and truly poetic sentiments. 
 Nothing can exceed the beauty of 
 the lines in which Francesca's brother, 
 Ostasio, tells the Notary Ser Toldo 
 Berardengo of his sister's beauty. 
 
 Ah, ch'ella vale 
 un regno! Com'e bella! 
 Non v'e spada che sia diritta quanto 
 lo squardo de'suoi ochoi, s'ella guarda. 
 
 Quand'ella carnmina e i capelli 
 le cadono d'intorno alia cintura 
 e pe'ginocchi forti (e forte se 
 bene pallida) e scrolla un poco il capo 
 ella da gioia come 
 
 le insegne al vento quando si fa oste 
 sopra una ricca citta con arnesi 
 forbiti. Par talora 
 ch'ella rechi in sul pugno 
 l'aquila da Polenta 
 come falcon maniero, per gittarla 
 a grande preda. 
 
 Ah! is she 
 Not worth a kingdom? How beautiful she is! 
 There never was a sword that went so straight 
 As her eyes go, if they but look at you. 
 
 182 
 
When she walks, and her hair 
 Falls all about her to her waist, and down 
 To her strong knees (she is strong though very 
 
 pale) 
 And her head sways a little, she gives forth joy 
 Like flags that wave in the wind 
 When one sets forth against a mighty city 
 In polished armor. Then 
 She seems as if she held 
 The eagle of Polenta 
 
 Fast in her fist, like a trained hawk, to fling him 
 Forth to the prey. 
 
 This play seems to have taken 
 with the American people better than 
 any other of D'Annunzio's plays. 
 Few, however, outside of those who 
 have read the play know how much 
 abbreviation the play has undergone. 
 The first act was cut very freely, and 
 nearly a third of the second act was 
 altogether omitted. And notwith- 
 standing this the action of the play, 
 especially in the second act, seemed 
 to have been perceptibly interfered 
 with and decreased. In the second 
 act the conversations are intolerably 
 long, and can be as little appreciated 
 by English-speaking audiences as 
 the interminable discourses in the 
 " Citta Morta" or the long speech 
 about the Desert in " La Gioconda." 
 
 183 
 
A little experience will probably 
 show D'Annunzio that a successful 
 drama must be more condensed, that 
 suggestion is an effective instrument 
 on the stage, and that it is only neces- 
 sary for the purposes of the drama- 
 tist's art to strike the essential notes 
 and leave the audience to fill out the 
 harmony. The ominous ending of 
 the first act, wherein Francesca gives 
 Paul a blood-red rose, sounds by 
 suggestion and anticipation the final 
 catastrophe. This is the method of 
 his novels. The end is hinted at 
 and foreshadowed by the opening 
 scenes. As a piece of stagecraft and 
 dramatic insight it is intensely effec- 
 tive and powerfully moving. It is 
 full of the sound of fate. It is preg- 
 nant of mournful outcome. It is 
 heavy with sanguinary forebodings. 
 
 The play is a fairly exact picture 
 of the thirteenth century, a century 
 of blood, superstition, fierce cruelty, 
 and withal of daring deeds. In the 
 second act D'Annunzio gives us a 
 view of this fierce life. On the stage 
 it has not taken very well. There is 
 a mechanical and unreal undertone to 
 the attempt, and a far-off suggestion 
 
 184 
 
and remoteness about it with which 
 the modern mind has so little in 
 common that its appeal must neces- 
 sarily be restricted to Italians or to 
 students of this bloody period. 
 
 D'Annunzio's method in the trage- 
 dy is the method of the writer of 
 romances rather than of stage pro- 
 ductions. There is the same ex- 
 pansion of detail, that exaggeration 
 of particulars and that unnecessary 
 protrusion of the lyrical note, so 
 characteristic of D'Annunzio in all 
 his novels. The first representation 
 of the play on the stage at Rome 
 consumed over five hours and a half. 
 It bids fair to rival the length of 
 Victor Hugo's "Cromwell." But it 
 has genuine dramatic genius in it, not- 
 withstanding the fact that the action 
 does move so slowly. The most 
 effective part in the whole play is the 
 scene at the end of the third act 
 where Dante's line, " La bocca mi 
 bacio tutto tremante," is enacted. 
 The fourth act is very powerful with 
 a tendency to the morbid and the 
 gruesome. In it DAnnunzio de- 
 parts from the historical sources and 
 gives us a picture of a young fiend 
 
 185 
 
in human shape, the one-eyed Mala- 
 testino. The part was played by a 
 woman, for what reason I do not 
 know. D'Annunzio in this play ex- 
 hibits a genuine growth of dramatic 
 power, and an expansion of view 
 and breadth of sympathy that was 
 entirely absent in his other plays. 
 There is even an attempt at humor, 
 but the humor is purely local. It is 
 not universal, however, but essentially 
 Italian humor, and apart from the 
 appearance and tone of the Jester 
 might be very serious. The charac- 
 ter of Francesca is well drawn, and 
 her sister Samaritana is another one 
 of those clinging beautiful creatures 
 like Bianca Maria in her earlier days. 
 All through the play the fierce, rough, 
 warlike Gianciotto arouses our sym- 
 pathy and reconciles us to the tragic 
 ending. D'Annunzio successfully 
 lays the blame where it belongs, on 
 the fierce, unscrupulous father and 
 brothers of Francesca in the house 
 of Polenta. 
 
 We now take leave of D'Annunzio. 
 l,t is not safe to draw any general 
 conclusions as to his future. Criti- 
 cism of our contemporaries is not in 
 
 1 86 
 
fact or reality criticism but merely 
 conversation. It is, however, plea- 
 sant to note the growth of power and 
 sanity that is exhibited in " Frances- 
 ca" and "La Gioconda" as com- 
 pared with the blood-red and saffron- 
 dyed morbidity of "La Citta Morta" 
 and "II Sogno D'un Tramonto 
 D'Autunno." It is also well to note 
 that if D'Annunzio is not altogether 
 pleasing to foreigners, he has the 
 good wishes and appreciation of a 
 large body of his own countrymen. 
 Their standards are not our standards, 
 but our tastes should be broad, catho- 
 lic and universal, and our sympathies 
 as boundless as the unconfined seas. 
 We should therefore accept what is 
 given and hope that a new dawn of 
 drama, coincident with the stirring 
 of the springs of national life, is 
 opening up for Italy in the person 
 of Gabriele D'Annunzio. 
 
 187