“ The egotism of the Ferrara husband outraged at the gentle wife because she is as gracious toward those who rendered her small courtesies, and seemed as thankful to them as she was to him for his gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name, opens up for inspection the heart of a husband at a time when men exercised complete control over their wives, and could satisfy their jealous, selfish instincts by any cruel methods they chose to adopt, with no one to say them "nay." ”

“ In several of them the poet displays his familiarity with the life and spirit of the Renaissance--a period portrayed by him with a fidelity more real than history--for he enters into the feelings that give rise to action, while the historian is busied only with the results growing out of the moving force of feeling. ”

“ Reduced to the simplest possible lines of interpretation, it symbolizes the inevitable fate which drives a truth-seeking soul to see the falsity of ideals once thought absolute, yet in the face of the ruin of those ideals courage toward the continuance of aspiration is never for a moment lost. ”