_Francesca_ is infinitely
conscious that she is a wife; _Giovanni_ is suspicious. It would
seem that Pellico's play is the first that realized the theatrical
possibilities of the story; research has brought to light no play
manuscript previous to his.

In the handling of his details, Pellico's incongruities and
artificialities are many. _Paolo_ returns from knightly deeds in Asia,
to find his father dead--the _Malatesta Verucchio_ who died in 1312,
twenty-seven years after _Giovanni_ committed the murder; therefore
Pellico gives to the deformed brother the power that history does not
wholly accord. The dramatist would avoid the indelicacy he finds in
the reading incident, recounting it only in a situation during
which _Francesca_ holds aloof in a wild effort to stifle her love.
Throughout the play, there is this ruthless twisting, in a desire to
conceal wrong and unpardonable sin.

Turning to Uhland's fragmentary ideas, which even he himself was
doubtful whether he could handle, an atmosphere confronts us as
mediaevally German as the "Der arme Heinrich" of Hartmann von Aue,
which was the inspirational source for Longfellow's "The Golden
Legend." Uhland shows heaviness in conception, and a conventionality,
thoroughly at variance with the tragedy's original passion. Romantic
as he is, he has robbed the story of its warm southern nature, and has
thrown his Dante aside to deal with false situation. He seems willing
to let fact and spirit go. _Paolo_ is a knight who tilts and worships
a glove. Uhland thinks, and he is not alone in his belief, that
_Francesca_ had been promised to _Paolo_ before _Giovanni_ was wedded
to her; yet if _Paolo's_ marriage with _Orabile_, in 1269, is to be
recognized as correct, historically, logical deductions from dates
would discountenance the statement. Neither have I found commentaries
to support the theory that _Paolo_ was older than _Giovanni_, as
Uhland sets forth in his play. The servant in Boccaccio here becomes
a jealous lover. It is interesting to note the variations of this
counter-element in the many play versions of the story--the element
that urges _Giovanni's_ suspicion to quick action--the dramatic force
of _Pepe_ in Boker; the disappointed motherhood and embittered love of
_Lucrezia_ in Stephen Phillips; the inborn savagery of _Malatestino_
in D'Annunzio; the innocent unconsciousness of _Concordia_ in
Crawford, which finds similarity in a scene in Maeterlinck's "Pelleas
and M