This being too much for him, they part in the mood of revenge, and, after Lucrezia has made a desperate effort to force a poisoned ring on him, they both find themselves in gaol. When the curtain rises on Savonarola’s cell, he has been in prison three hours. “Imprisonment,” says the stage direction, “has left its mark on both of them. Savonarola’s hair has turned white. His whole aspect is that of a very old, old man. Lucrezia looks no older than before, but has gone mad.” How like nine-tenths of the prison scenes one has seen on the stage! But never on the stage has one heard a prison soliloquy half so fine as Savonarola’s, from its opening sentence: Alas, how long ago this morning seems This evening!-- down to its close: What would my sire have said, And what my dam, had anybody told them The time would come when I should occupy A felon’s cell? O the disgrace of it!-- The scandal, the incredible come-down! It masters me. I see i’ my mind’s eye The public prints--“Sharp Sentence on a Monk!” What then? I thought I was of sterner stuff Than is affrighted by what people think. Yet thought I so because ’twas thought of me; And so ’twas thought of me because I had A hawk-like profile and a baleful eye. Lo! my soul’s chin recedes, soft to the touch As half-churn’d butter. Seeming hawk is dove, And dove’s a gaolbird now. Fie, out upon ’t! I do not think that anyone has produced a more unforgettable line of heroic decasyllabic verse than: The scandal, the incredible come-down! Savonarola’s fame will be increased as a result of that exquisitely inappropriate line. It is infinitely regrettable that Brown did not live to write the fifth act of his masterpiece. Mr. Beerbohm has attempted a scenario for a fifth act, and it contains many admirable things. But Mr. Beerbohm lacks Brown’s “magnifical” touch, though he does his best to imitate it in the lines in which he makes Lucrezia say that she means: To start afresh in that uncharted land Which austers not from out the antipod, Australia! Good as this is, it seems just to verge on parody. It is grotesque where Brown would have been moving. The play as a whole, however, will find a place among the minor classics. It is far, far better than going to the pantomime. It is as good as the pantomime ought to be. “Maltby and Braxton” is something new in literature--a comic ghost story. There are plenty of funny stories about ghosts that did not exist. This is a funny story about a ghost that did exist. It is a story of the jealousy of two novelists of the ’nineties, and tells how one of them was pursued by the ghost of his jealous rival to a week-end at a duchess’s. It is a nightmare seen objectively--everybody’s nightmare.