s
really something quite different, something much inferior; here we have
at least a great emotion, a desperate sincerity, with all the
thoughtfulness which can possibly accompany passion.

V

Dumas, in a preface better than his play, tells us that "La Princesse
Georges" is "a Soul in conflict with Instincts." But no, as he has drawn
her, as he has placed her, she is only the theory of a woman in conflict
with the mechanical devices of a plot. All these characters talk as
they have been taught, and act according to the tradition of the stage.
It is a double piece of mechanism, that is all; there is no creation of
character, there is a kind of worldly wisdom throughout, but not a
glimmer of imagination; argument drifts into sentiment, and sentiment
returns into argument, without conviction; the end is no conclusion, but
an arbitrary break in an action which we see continuing, after the
curtain has fallen. And, as in "Fedora," Duse comes into the play
resolved to do what the author has not done. Does she deliberately
choose the plays most obviously not written for her in order to extort a
triumph out of her enemies? Once more she acts consciously, openly,
making every moment of an unreal thing real, by concentrating herself
upon every moment as if it were the only one. The result is a
performance miraculous in detail, and, if detail were everything, it
would be a great part. With powdered hair, she is beautiful and a great
lady; as the domesticated princess, she has all the virtues, and
honesty itself, in her face and in her movements; she gives herself with
a kind of really unreflecting thoughtfulness to every sentiment which is
half her emotion. If such a woman could exist, and she could not, she
would be that, precisely that. But just as we are beginning to believe,
not only in her but in the play itself, in comes the spying lady's maid,
or the valet who spies on the lady's maid, and we are in melodrama
again, and among the strings of the marionettes. Where are the three
stages, truth, philosophy, conscience, which Dumas offers to us in his
preface as the three stages by which a work of dramatic art reaches
perfection? Shown us by Duse, from moment to moment, yes; but in the
piece, no, scarcely more than in "Fedora." So fatal is it to write for
our instruction, as fatal as to write for our amusement. A work of art
must suggest everything, but it must prove nothing. Bad imaginative work
like "La Gioconda" is r