In the final act D'Annunzio, we feel, has Shakespeare before him. The scene of Othello is evoked at once, not in incident, but because of the spiritual, tragic atmosphere. Francesca is asleep; she moans, for she dreams. Her maidens are sent away. Her slave is called, but comes not. Tricked by this plotted absence, Paolo enters. The lovers are soon caught and slain by Giovanni, who breaks his sword across his knee. Every detail is admirably managed. Not the least potent factor is the absence of all remorse shown by Francesca. The victim of deceit, she does not hesitate to deceive in return. In her love passages, Duse was truthful to a degree. She invested Francesca with just the proper poise, dignity, and suppressed melancholy. Francesca da Rimini is the first of D'Annunzio's dramatic efforts that attracted popular favour. It is an interesting rather than a great play, though full of inspiring poetry. It was first given, December 9, 1901, at Teatro Costanzi, Rome, by the Duse Company, with the exception that Gustavo Salvini was the Paolo on that occasion. IV Compared to La Gioconda, The Dead City is a highly polished specimen of the static drama; there is little that is dynamic until the scene before the last. And the theme, thunder-charged as it is with symbolism, is fitter for reading than for publication before the footlights. The play is literature first, drama afterward. Sarah Bernhardt produced it in Paris. Incest as a subject for dramatic treatment is no new thing. The Greeks employed it as a leit-motive of horror, and in the Œdipus of Sophocles, the Hippolytus of Euripides--we recall with grateful memories Bernhardt's puissant Phèdre in Racine's paraphrase of the Greek dramatist--and in the Bible itself this dire theme may be encountered, though no modern has had the courage to set the episode of Tamar and Amnon in the Book of Samuel. Later, in the flush of the seventeenth-century dramatic renascence, John Ford wrote his masterpiece, The Brother and Sister. In that play, admired of Charles Lamb, is set forth with a wealth of realism undreamed of by D'Annunzio and the Greeks the details of a lamentable passion, and so cunning is the art of Ford that we find ourselves pitying the unhappy pair, Giovanni and Annabella, poor play-things of the gods. Of Wagner's Die Walküre it is unnecessary to speak. Music, as Henry James remarks, is a great solvent. But mark the handling of the young Italian poet. Obsessed by the Greeks, he has constructed his tragedy on antique lines. Crime is hinted at; we even see an adulterous love--for evil passions hunt in couples throughout this dream-like story--in development; almost is a catastrophe precipitated. The incest, however, is potential. It is only an idea. It scourges the two men like whips in the hands of the avenging Furies. And it finally dooms an innocent creature, hopelessly involving at the same time the happiness of three survivors.