The modern Italian drama also receives very brief and inadequate
treatment. Of the modern Italian dramatists only two of importance have
biographies—Pietro Cossa and Paolo Ferrari. Cossa is given twenty-four
lines, and Ferrari only seven lines! The two eminent comedy writers,
Gherardi del Testa and Ferdinando Martini, have no biographies. Nor has
either Giuseppe Giacosa or Gerolamo Rovetta, the leaders of the new
school, any biographical mention. And in d’Annunzio’s biography only
seventeen lines are devoted to his dramas. What sort of an idea of the
modern Italian drama can one get from an encyclopædia which contains such
indefensible omissions and such scant accounts of prominent writers? And
why should the writer who is as commonly known by the name of Stecchetti
as Samuel Clemens is by the name of Mark Twain be listed under “Guerrini”
without even a cross reference under the only name by which the majority
of readers know him? Joseph Conrad might almost as well be listed under
“Korzeniowski.” There are few enough non-British writers included in the
_Britannica_ without deliberately or ignorantly hiding those who have
been lucky enough to be admitted.
Crossing over into Germany and Austria one may look in vain for any
indication of the wealth of dramatic material and the great number of
important dramatic figures which have come from these two countries.
Of all the recent German and Austrian dramatists of note, _only two_
are so much as given biographical mention, and these two—Sudermann
and Hauptmann—are treated with a brevity and inadequacy which, to my
knowledge, are without a parallel in any modern reference work on the
subject. Hauptmann and Sudermann receive just twenty-five lines each,
less space than is given to Sydney Grundy, Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, T.
W. Robertson, H. J. Byron; and less than a third of the space given to
Shaw and W. S. Gilbert! Even Sims is given nearly as much space!
In these comparisons alone is discernible a chauvinism of almost
incredible narrowness. But the biographies themselves emphasize
this patriotic prejudice even more than does the brevity of space.
In Sudermann’s biography, which apparently ends in 1905, no mention
whatever is made of such important works as _Das Blumenboot_, _Rosen_,
_Strandkinder_, and _Das Hohe Lied_ (_The Song of Songs_), all of which
appeared before the _Britannica_ was printed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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