The play might be truthfully called The Triumph of Art, for, if it poses any problem at all, it is this: What will an artist, a sensuous, weak decadent, do when confronted by the choice of relinquishing his wife or his mistress? The latter is surpassingly beautiful, and, as he tells his friend, the painter, in Act I, she is his sole inspiration, the guiding pillar of flame for his art. "She has a thousand statues in her," in that marvellous body that "is like a look." He loves his wife, too, but she does not reveal to him his entire creative self. She is a staff to lean upon, not an electric impulse in his life. To the everyday observer all this seems a variation of an old story. Lucio is tired of Silvia, his wife, and dazzles himself with the sophistries of art--base sensuality being the real reason for his behaviour. But this supposition is only a half-truth. Lucio has a species of accursed temperament that needs must feed upon the exquisite surfaces of beautiful things. He is a true artist of mediæval times, loving colour and form for their own sake; art for art is his motto, as it was Benvenuto Cellini's, as it was George Eliot's Tito Melemo. Lucio's most eloquent speech describes the appeal Gioconda makes to his artistic nature, the creative ardour she arouses. This speech is of much significance. Despicable as is the man,--and we never doubt his ultimate desertion of his wife,--there is no denying the grim truth with which he is depicted. That he is not sympathetic is hardly our affair. It is bad art to preach, and that D'Annunzio never does. He simply sets before us, with consummate address, a few episodes in the life of an unhappy family, leaving us to draw our own inferences. His men and women are genuinely alive, and, given their various temperaments, they act as they inevitably would in the world of the living. The character of the wife, Silvia, is beautiful despite the dissonance of the fatal untruth she utters. Without mawkish sentimentality, she divines the eternal child that is the basis of every artist, and so she forgives her husband. As portrayed by Duse, one feels that lurking in the sanctuary of her innermost being there is the sad, bitter suspicion that her sacrifice will be in vain. But she stops not to count the cost, and, at the end of Act I, when the emotional, weak-spined fellow, touched by her sacrifice, casts himself sobbing at her knees, her great heart surrenders, and she pets and pities him. The exquisite tenderness, soft credulity, and suppressed sweetness of Duse here sound like a strain of marvellous music. The chords of human sympathy sing melodiously. And her every movement has the actuality of life.