theme of the Rimini story, none approaches D'Annunzio's tragedy in the suggesting of an act that is centuries old, in the imaging of an epoch long past, in the reconstruction, one might say, of the bloodiest, darkest and at the same time one of the most beauty-loving ages of all history. As Maurice Hewlett in his Richard Yea and Nay surpassed all novelists in giving to the twelfth-century story of the lion-hearted king the darkest, most realistic setting, so D'Annunzio in his "Francesca da Rimini" has surpassed all dramatists in the most terribly graphic delineation of that thirteenth century, when Dante wrote and Petrarch sangthe thirteenth century with all its tears and terror, its poetry and passion, its madness and blood. Each scene might be a painting by an old Italian master, so graphic, so faithful to detail, so suggestive is it of a long vanished age. One realizes Signor D'Annunzio's wonderful art in this respect even in reading the play, but the impression of reality is complete when it is seen on the stage. Such faithfulness to detail is observed that the lovers are made to read from the old French romance of Lancelot du Lac, and the words they repeat are the actual words of the book, put literally into Italian. No pains were spared in this episodic portrayal of life in a medieval Italian city: costumes and architecture were faithful in every detail. The wealth of characters in D'Annunzio's play, soldiers, archers, musicians, jesters, merchants, maids, and so onthis very profusion gives an intensely vivid impression of teeming life and activity. Like Rostand's masterpiece, "Cyrano de Bergerac,' like many of Shakespeare's plays, D'Annunzio's 'Francesca da Rimini' is so full of life, movement and complexity, of men, women and events, as to seem in all verity a palpitating segment of the living world." And these are Italians that D'Annunzio has projected against his minutely con structed, technically perfect background of dark and somber realism—Italians with genuine racial instincts, fierce, bloodthirsty, beauty-loving, passionate, luxurious. If Boker's "Francesca da Rimini" was objected to as an acting play on the score of blood-thirstiness, by the same token, the amount of bloodshed being criterion, D'Annunzio's play should not be tolerated on the stage. From the moment when Ostasio in the first act wounds his defenceless brother, until the last act, when Gianciotto slays with avenging sword his wife and brother, a crimson tide of blood wells up and suffuses every scene. Nor does D'Annunzio, like Phillips, follow the Greeks in the belief that deeds of blood had better take place off the stage, for the fighting, slaughtering and murdering take place before the very eyes of the spectators; as George Moore would say, "right bang in front of the audience!” D'Annunzio sticks to Boccaccio's version of the story and the play opens at the house of Guido de Minore, father of Francesca, discovering Ostasio, her brother, engaged in discussion with a notary concerning the trick that is to be played upon her. He muses over his sister in the following beautiful passage: "Ah! she were worth a crown! How beautiful! Ostasio's scruples are at last overruled by motives of political expediency, and it is decided that the innocent Francesca is to be tricked into her marriage with the deformed Gianciotto. Paolo, armed with the power of attorney, is to compass the fraud, with the connivance of his brother, Francesca's father and her brother. The full sympathy of the spectator is at once enlisted in behalf of the innocent and helpless girl. Francesca and her lovely little sister, Samaritana, accompanied by their female slaves, now enter and the sisters grieve over their coming separation in a passage of touching tenderness. Francesca says to Samaritana: "Peace, peace, dear soul, My little dove. Why are you troubled? Peace. You also, and ere long Shall see your day of days And leave your nest as I have left it; then Empty beside my bed: and I no more 999 The maids suddenly call out, "Madonna Francesca! Madonna Francesca!" summoning her to the balcony to catch a glimpse of her future husband -Paolo the Beautiful. She starts to mount the stairs, fears to look the future in the face, and overcome with emotion turns to Samaritana and bursts into tears. Paolo now appears beyond the closed gate, and Francesca, pale with intense feeling, plucks from the near-by rose-bush a full-blown, blood-red rose and offers it to him. Words cannot picture what D'Annunzio calls the "melodious grace of that mystic hour." In the second act are disclosed the battlements of the Malatesta fortress, overlooking the city of Rimini. The signal for the coming battle is momentarily expected, and Francesca, unable to breathe shut up in her room among her trembling women, has ascended to the summit of the tower, that she may "hear the twanging of the bows." Paolo soon joins her and is bitterly upbraided for the base and cruel fraud he has practiced upon her. His remorse is deep and sincere, and he asks how he must die to expiate his sin. Francesca answers, "Like the slave at the rudder in the galley, the name of which is despera tion." While she is speaking the bells of Santa Columba peal forth the signal for the battle, and Paolo gives Francesca his helmet, resolved to prove his penitence by exposing himself to every possible danger. Francesca perceives in this ordeal the judgment of God, and prays to heaven that in view of so much bravery the soul of her brother-in-law may be purged from all stains of treachery, through God's love. In the heat of the conflict, while the air is filled with missiles, an arrow passes through Paolo's beautiful hair. Francesca cries out and seizes his head in her hands. So unnerved is Paolo by her touch that he confesses his love for her, his dread of the future. Francesca forbids him ever again to give countenance to the thought. Just at this moment Gianciotto appears and announces Paolo's election as Captain of the People by the Florentines. Francesca brings a cup of wine to her husband, who drains it. She then refills it and offers it to Paolo with the words: a "O brother of my lord, drink of the cup symbol of deepest, most portentous significance. The third act opens upon a scene of surpassing loveliness, the very jewel of the play. This is the bedchamber of Francesca, panelled with pictures from the romance of Tristan, while upon the pale-blue curtains of the bed are embroidered some lines from a love song. Soon a traveling merchant enters of whom Francesca buys many beautiful dress stuffs, all the while artfully inquiring news of Paolo, in whose train the merchant has come to Rimini from Florence. As soon as the merchant retires, Paolo enters and then begins the beautiful love scene in which the lovers are swept away upon the wings of the wind of destiny. They stand side by side at the lectern and read alternately from the story of Launcelot and Guinivere. Their foreheads bow closer toward each other, their cheeks are almost touching, and as he reads the lines: "The Queen doth look upon the knight She takes him by the chin, and upon the lips he makes the same movement toward Francesca and touches her lightly upon the lips. I recall with vividness the moving impression, as of quick nature itself, given by the sad, deprecating and yet tender tone with which the divine Duse says the two words, "No, Paolo," as she turns her face from him. For dramatic effectiveness this situation is unequaled throughout the play. The beauty of this scene, in milieu, stage setting and in poetic art is worthy of one who claims the same country as Dante, and by contrast with the fierce din and clangor of battle in the preceding act its loveliness is made the more apparent. If the "grim-visaged war" of Guelph and Ghibelline seems a lurid image of the fierce Italy of Rienzi and Mattarazzo, this fair scene of youth and love might be an illuminated page from the bright, insouciant Italy of Romola or Boccaccio. Malatestino, brother to Gianciotto and Paolo, a savage and cruel youth, has been nursed back to health by Francesca, through a long illness occasioned by his wounds, and in particular the loss of an eye. Her gentle nursing has awakened in him the most passionate love, but when he addresses his words of "wild, baneful desire" to her, she repulses him with such horror that he is angered beyond bounds. He darkly insinuates that his one eye has seen very clearly the veiled love of the beautiful Paolo and the perfidious Francesca. Gianciotto presently enters and is left alone with Malatestino, who gradually betrays to him by hint and insinuation his suspicions of Paolo and Francesca. It is his cunning that devises the stratagem of a feigned departure, in order to entrap the guilty pair. In breathless suspense the spectator now awaits the fall of the avenging sword. The fifth act shows the same scene as the third. Francesca, fully dressed lies upon the bed asleep. Her, women are conversing in low tones in the semi-darkness, breathing more freely now that the crook-back and the blind one are gone. Francesca awakens in fright, with the cry, "Paolo!" and it is but a few moments before Paolo himself appears. He takes Francesca into a mad embrace, and all else is forgotten in the insatiable passion of their kisses. But suddenly a tremendous knocking comes at the door, and Gianciotto's terrible voice is heard calling, "Francesca! Open! Francesca!" She goes slowly to the door, bidding Paolo escape through the trap-door, but unknown to her, as she opens the door Paolo's mantle catches in the handle of the trap-door and holds him fast. Gianciotto lunges at him with tremendous force and pierces instead Francesca, who hurls herself between the two. Paolo catches her sinking form and as he closes her dying lips with his own he receives Gianciotto's sword. The lame one bends down in silence, and as the lovers fall to the floor, locked in each other's arms, Gianciotto lets himself fall upon one knee and over the other breaks in twain the bloody sword. Of all the interpreters of the Da Rimini story, D'Annunzio has followed Boccaccio's version closest. Not only has he aroused in the beginning of the play the spectator's warmest sympathy for the lovely Francesca, who is deceived by all those nearest her into her marriage with Gianciotto, but in the end he still follows Boccaccio. Gianciotto's blow is intended for Paolo alone, according to Boccaccio, but by ill-hap pierces Francesca, who tried to intercept it; whereupon Gianciotto in desperation turned again upon Paolo and slew him. Although Orabile, Paolo's wife, plays no part in D'Annunzio's play, yet her name is several times mentioned. flame of speech. It leaps from the heart of the situation, revealing all the definite realities of the passion. About it there is no trace of modernity, of modern subtilty. "Behind all its lyrical outcries," says the translator, Arthur Symons, "there is a hard grip on the sheer facts of the age. By a great sweep we are borne back to Italy, Dante and the Pre-Renaissance." François Villon, the French lyrist, once wrote these lines: I have already spoken of D'Annunzio's is tense, strong, yet beautiful, a veritable wonderful art in his realistic presentation of Italian life in the thirteenth century. This is genuine devotion to art which gives as much care to the picturing of medieval life as to the development of human character. But it would seem that this feature is so stressed that the story in D'Annunzio's hands becomes less a tragedy of love than a tragedy of blood. Everywhere passion, license, deception, hatred, treachery and bloodshed reign supreme. A brother wounds his unarmed brother, a son poisons his father, a captor kills his defenseless prisoner, a brother sells his beautiful sister for a troop of a hundred horsemen. The third act is the only one in which blood does not freely flow before your eyes; and this act well nigh redeems the play, for it is a very jewel shining forth from its dark and somber setting of falsehood, treachery and blood. This act, with its keen touches of delicate humor, its subtle revelations of womanliness, best reveals the fascinating character of D'Annunzio's Francesca. Of the play in its entirety one might say, without fear of misinterpretation, that it is Shakespearean in luxuriance and complexity, in character and motive, in movement and action. The poetry "Where is the Queen of Herod's kiss, Alas for lovers, pair by pair! Ah, no, Monsieur Villon, the wind has not blown them all away, since a Phillips, a Crawford and a D'Annunzio live to catch and image in imperishable beauty that Francesca da Rimini who is the darling of the world. ARCHIBALD HENDERSON. Chapel Hill, N. C. JUDICIAL SUPREMACY. BY HON. WALTER CLARK, LL.D., *Note: Late in November the distinguished Chief Justice of North Carolina, Hon. Walter Clark LL.D. delivered an address before the Economic Club of Boston which was received with marked approval. Justice Clark is one of the strongest, clearest and most fundamental thinkers and advocates of pure democracy in public life in America to-day and he is one of the ablest of our leading judges. He served for fourteen years as associate justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, and then was nominated for the most honorable position in the state, that of Chie Justice. He was opposed by the railway corpora tions and the tobacco trust but he was elected by the largest majority ever given to a candidate in the state. The address delivered in Boston was so timely and so clearly did it present a very serious question that affects in a vital way the life of democratic government that we requested Justice Clark to put the substance of this address into a paper for THE ARENA that the many thousands of serious minded men and women all over the nation might be brought face to face with a situation the gravity of which it would be difficult to overestimate. This he has done, and we herewith present it, A T THE last session of Congress there was presented to the world one of the most singular spectacles known to history. The evils of our railroad managements, which are manifold and serious, had engaged the thoughts of the people. In sympathy with their just demands the President had recommended to Congress the enactment of remedial legislation. The House of Representatives after full debate passed a bill for Railroad Regulation. It went to the Senate. In that body it was discussed and debated. The necessity for such legislation and the public demand for it were admitted by all. As to the justice and propriety of the measures proposed, there was slight difference of opinion. But there was elaborate and long discussion. Over what? Why, whether the subordinate Federal judges would issue their mandate to stop the execution of an Act of the American Congress, passed by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States and approved by the President, and if they did so whether such mandates would be approved by the majority of the Supreme Court. Nowhere else on the globe at any time has such a spectacle been presented. In no other country in all time has it ever been claimed that the judges thereof had power to impose their veto upon the action of the law-making power. Elsewhere the judges have been bound by the laws and are not superior to them. The text-books tell us that the supreme power in any government is the lawmaking power. The courts are not authorized to legislate. They have no power save what is conferred by the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof. Yet there were 90 Senators, the representatives of 45 sovereign States turning over volumes of reports and guessing and prophesying as to what urging all friends of free institutions to give it the careful consideration it so richly deserves. Editor of THE ARENA. five elderly lawyers would or would not permit, if the Congress should enact it. And the final action taken, shriveled and reduced in dimension, weakened and inconsistent, to evade, if possible, the apprehended judicial veto is still but a guess for no one yet knows, or can foretell, what approval or disapproval a majority of the court may place upon the formulated enactment of the lawmaking power. Not all the world besides, with all their armies and navies combined, can control, or hinder, or negative the will of the 90,000,000 of the American people, expressed by their Congress and Executive, as to the management of their domestic affairs. Only God in heaven has power to say them nay. Whence then comes this power of five men to nullify legislation or to shape it by fear of nullification? They are placed in the judicial office by no vote of the people, and holding for life, are not responsible to that public opinion which is the corner-stone of a Republican government. So vast a power as that of setting aside the will of a great people duly expressed in the enactment of their laws challenges attention. It is not a sufficient reply to say that it has been done. The question remains was it ever rightfully done, when and by whom was the power conferred, is it binding on this generation and is its continuance safe. We should throw the lead and sound the depths ere the noble ship strikes the reef. One of the great fundamental ideas of all Republican constitutions is that the legislative, executive and judicial departments shall remain separate and distinct from each other. The Federal Constitution and the Constitutions of most, but not of all, the States give the Executive a veto upon legislation but this is |