e can offer.
He shall interred be with noise of cannon,
As doth befit so militant a nature.
Prepare these obsequies.
[Papal officers lift body of GAOLER.]

A PAPAL OFFICER
But this is not
Savonarola. It is some one else.

CESARE
Lo! 'tis none other than the Fool that I
Hoof'd from my household but two hours agone.
I deem'd him no good riddance, for he had
The knack of setting tables on a roar.
What shadows we pursue! Good night, sweet Fool,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

POPE
Interred shall he be with signal pomp.
No honour is too great that we can pay him.
He leaves the world a vacuum. Meanwhile,
Go we in chase of the accursed villain
That hath made escapado from this cell.
To horse! Away! We'll scour the country round
For Sav'narola till we hold him bound.
Then shall you see a cinder, not a man,
Beneath the lightnings of the Vatican!
[Flourish, alarums and excursions, flashes of Vatican lightning, roll
of drums, etc. Through open door of cell is led in a large milk-white
horse, which the POPE mounts as the Curtain falls.]

Remember, please, before you formulate your impressions, that saying
of Brown's: 'The thing must be judged as a whole.' I like to think that
whatever may seem amiss to us in these Four Acts of his would have been
righted by collation with that Fifth which he did not live to achieve.

I like, too, to measure with my eyes the yawning gulf between stage and
study. Very different from the message of cold print to our imagination
are the messages of flesh and blood across footlights to our eyes and
ears. In the warmth and brightness of a crowded theatre 'Savonarola'
might, for aught one knows, seem perfect. 'Then why,' I hear my gentle
readers asking, 'did you thrust the play on US, and not on a theatrical
manager?'

That question has a false assumption in it. In the course of the past
eight years I have thrust 'Savonarola' on any number of theatrical
managers. They have all of them been (to use the technical phrase) 'very
kind.' All have seen great merits in the work; and if I added
together all the various merits thus seen I should have no doubt that
'Savonarola' was the best play never produced. The point on which all
the managers are unanimous is that they have no use for a play without
an ending. This is why I have fallen back, at last, on gentle readers,
whom now I hear asking why