The Project Gutenberg EBook of Representative Plays by American
Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini, by George Henry Boker

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Title: Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini

Author: George Henry Boker

Release Date: July 23, 2004 [EBook #13005]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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FRANCESCA DA RIMINI

_A TRAGEDY_

Francesca, i tuoi martiri a lagrimar
mi fanno triato e pio.--DANTE.

_Inferno, v. 75 seq._

[Illustration: GEORGE HENRY BOKER]

GEORGE HENRY BOKER

(1823-1890)

The name of George Henry Boker suggests a coterie of friendships--a
group of men pledged to the pursuit of letters, and worshippers at the
shrine of poetry. These men, in the pages of whose published letters
and impressions are embedded many pleasing aspects of Boker's
temperament and character, were Bayard Taylor, Richard Henry Stoddard,
and Charles Godfrey Leland, the latter known familiarly in American
literature as "Hans Breitmann." These four, in different periods of
their lives, might have been called "the inseparables"--so closely did
they watch each other's development, so intently did they await each
other's literary output, and write poetry to each other, and meet
at Boker's, now and again, for golden talks on Sundays. Poetry was
a passion with them, and even when two--Boker and Taylor--were sent
abroad on diplomatic missions, they could never have been said to
desert the Muse--their literary activity was merely arrested. One of
the four--Stoddard--often felt, in the presence of Boker, a certain
reticence due to lack of educational advantages; but in the face of
Boker's graciousness--a quality which comes with culture in its truest
sense,--he soon found himself writing Boker on matters of style, on
qualities of English diction, and on the status of American letters--a
stock topic of conversation those days.

Boker was a Philadelphian, born there on October 6, 1823,--the son
of Charles S. Boker, a wealthy banker, whose financial expertness