During many years our stage has seen nothing like the success of the Sicilians. They presented themselves at the Shaftesbury Theatre with little in the shape of preliminary paragraphs to "boom" them. Most of their repertoire consisted of works unknown to London playgoers. Several of their plays were performed in a puzzling dialect. Even the judicious step of offering a fairly full synopsis of the plays was neglected. Notwithstanding all this, the theatre was well patronized during two seasons and the audiences have exhibited enthusiasm. What is the meaning of all this; why should these village folk, playing what in the main seem to be simple peasant melodramas, have troubled the senses of Londoners? The obvious answer is that the affair is a triumph of pure acting. One pauses to inquire whether this is true. In the case of most of their plays the judgment of the audience concerning the acting must be very rough and ready--so far, at least, as the performance is fulfilling its true purpose of presenting in action the ideas of the author. How are we to know, when watching a play in Sicilian dialect and provided with a printed "argument" comprised in about a couple of hundred words, whether the players are doing anything like their duty to the author? By-the-by the poor Censor had to admit that he passed their plays on the strength of these inadequate synopses! Yet there was absolute conviction in most of us that their work was sincere and at times quite tremendous as a matter of pure acting. The word "tremendous" must be confined to the efforts of Signora Mimi Aguglia Ferrau and Signor Grasso. The others form a very good company, but it is only in respect of these two that one employs the word "genius," which cautious writers use very rarely, though there are journalists who lavish it upon everybody a thumb-nail's thickness above mediocrity. Concerning the lady there is no doubt at all. She is a little woman, with a rather strongly featured, intelligent face, brilliant teeth and big eyes who has, to begin with, the rare gift of filling the stage. There is a perceptible difference whenever she is present. She may be one of a crowd of twenty, and saying and doing nothing, but her presence is felt. At her command is a delightful roguish comedy and a horrible realistic tragedy. In _Malia_ she is a Phèdre burnt up with unslakable passion, a rustic Phèdre, no doubt, but Bernhardt never gave more strongly the idea of "_Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée_." There are tricks in her work; she is fond of standing her profile parallel with the footlights, and of exhibiting the whites of her large eyes; she is conscious of the extraordinary eloquence of her shoulders and back, and likes to exhibit distress by the play of them. There is often excess in violent contrast of light and shade.