ients are unchanging since "Prometheus"; no human agony
has ever grown old or lost its pity and terror. The great plays of the
past were made out of great stories, and the great stories are repeated
in our days and can be heard wherever an old man tells us a little of
what has come to him in living. Verse lends itself to the lifting and
adequate treatment of the primary emotions, because it can render them
more as they are in the soul, not being tied down to probable words, as
prose talk is. The probable words of prose talk can only render a part
of what goes on among the obscure imageries of the inner life; for who,
in a moment of crisis, responds to circumstances or destiny with an
adequate answer? Poetry, which is spoken thought, or the speech of
something deeper than thought, may let loose some part of that answer
which would justify the soul, if it did not lie dumb upon its lips.

THE SICILIAN ACTORS

I

I have been seeing the Sicilian actors in London. They came here from
Paris, where, I read, "la passion parait decidement," to a dramatic
critic, "avoir partout ses inconvenients," especially on the stage. We
are supposed to think so here, but for once London has applauded an
acting which is more primitively passionate than anything we are
accustomed to on our moderate stage. Some of it was spoken in Italian,
some in the Sicilian dialect, and not many in the English part of the
audience could follow very closely the words as they were spoken. Yet so
marvellously real were these stage peasants, so clear and poignant their
gestures and actions, that words seemed a hardly needless accompaniment
to so evident, exciting, and absorbing a form of drama. It was a new
intoxication, and people went, I am afraid, as to a wild-beast show.

It was really nothing of the kind, though the melodrama was often very
crude; sometimes, in a simple way, horrible. But it was a fierce living
thing, a life unknown to us in the North; it smouldered like the
volcanoes of the South. And so we were seeing a new thing on the stage,
rendered by actors who seemed, for the most part, scarcely actors at
all, but the real peasants; and, above all, there was a woman of genius,
the leader of the company, who was much more real than reality.

Mimi Aguglia has studied Duse, for her tones, for some of her attitudes;
her art is more nearly the art of Rejane. While both of these are great
artists, she is an improviser, a creature of wild moods,