they see before them on the stage; he wishes to make their blood fiery; wishes to raise them above all cool, calm, and critical contemplation. His whole temperament, which drives along in the direction of superabundance; his art, which only fulfils its purpose in ecstasy; require impassioned actors and an impassioned audience. To create the ideal atmosphere which Verhaeren demands for his dramas would require an actor of kindred genius who should have no fear of being called emotional, and who would hurl the verses down like cataracts, emphasising like a demagogue and at the same time unfolding all the magnificence of the rhythm. For the poet asks for nothing save a feeling of enthusiasm corresponding to that which first created the poem in him. His intention is not to convince by logic, not to dazzle by pictures, but to whip up and carry along with him into that ultimate dizzy feeling which to him is alone identical with the highest form of the feeling of life--into passion. In Germany _Le Cloître_,[1] as staged by Max Reinhardt, and again in the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna, has conquered the interest of a literary public and triumphed unreservedly over the obstacle of its own strangeness. There has been an exemplary production of _Philip II._ in the Munich Künstlertheater; _Hélène de Sparte_ on the other hand has not yet found the setting it demands. As bodied forth in Paris by Ida Rubinstein, with decorations of a grandiose barbarism by Bakst, with a ground-colouring of music, it was effective more by the external magnificence of this somewhat sensationally advertised _mise en scène_ than by its poetic qualities, smothered as they were by the accessories. A production which shall do justice to the play, leaving its pure lyric line unbedizened with glaring arabesques, is still waiting as a task for some actor-manager of genius who possesses that highest and rarest quality of being able to subordinate himself to the utterance, who is anxious not to ruin a noble simplicity by a spurious plenitude. FOOTNOTES: [1] A version of _Le Cloître_, by Mr. Osman Edwards, was successfully produced by Miss Horniman at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester in 1910. PART III COMPLETING FORCES LES VISAGES DE LA VIE--LES FORCES TUMULTUEUSES--LA MULTIPLE SPLENDEUR--TOUTE LA FLANDRE--LES HEURES CLAIRES --LES HEURES D'APRÈS-MIDI--LES HEURES DU SOIR--LES RYTHMES SOUVERAINS --LES BLÉS MOUVANTS 1900-1914 COSMIC POETRY ... Les vols Vers la beauté toujours plus claire et plus certaine. É.V., 'Les Spectacles.'