George H. Boker

“ One gets one's fool in one's own family,
Without much searching.
MALATESTA. Pepe, gently now.
Lanciotto, you are waited for. The train
Has passed the gate, and halted there for you.
LANCIOTTO. I go not to Ravenna.
MALATESTA. Hey! why not?
PAOLO. For weighty reasons, father. Will you trust
Your greatest captain, hope of all the Guelfs,
With crafty Guido? Should the Ghibelins
Break faith, and shut Lanciotto in their walls—
Sure the temptation would be great enough—
What would you do?
MALATESTA. I'd eat Ravenna up!
PEPE. Lord! what an appetite! ”

“ FRANCESCA. What ails Ritta?
GUIDO. The ailing of your sex, a running tongue.
Francesca, 'tis too late to beat retreat:
Old Malatesta has me—you, too, child—
Safe in his clutch. If you are not content,
I must unclose Ravenna, and allow
His son to take you. Poh, poh! have a soul
Equal with your estate. A prince's child
Cannot choose husbands. Her desires must aim,
Not at herself, but at the public good. ”

“ PAOLO. [Preventing him.] Hold, homicide!
LANCIOTTO. But think,
You and Francesca may live happily,
After my death, as only lovers can.
PAOLO. Live happily, after a deed like this!
LANCIOTTO. Now, look ye! there is not one hour of life
Among us three. Paolo, you are armed—
You have a sword, I but a dagger: see!
I mean to kill you.
FRANCESCA. [Whispers to PAOLO.] Give thy sword to me.
PAOLO. Away! thou'rt frantic. I will never lift
This wicked hand against thee.
LANCIOTTO. Coward, slave! ”

“ RITTA. In Count Paolo, lady,
Perchance there was no meditated fraud.
FRANCESCA. How, dare you plead for him?
RITTA. I but suppose:
Though in your father—O! I dare not say.
FRANCESCA. I dare. It was ill usage, gross abuse,
Treason to duty, meanness, craft—dishonour!
What if I'd thrown my heart before the feet
Of this sham husband! cast my love away
Upon a counterfeit! I was prepared
To force affection upon any man
Called Lanciotto. ”

“ Put Guido's blood aside, and yet, I say,
Marry you shall.
LANCIOTTO. 'Tis most distasteful, sir.
MALATESTA. Lanciotto, look ye! You brave gentlemen,
So fond of knocking out poor people's brains,
In time must come to have your own knocked out:
What, then, if you bequeath us no new hands,
To carry on your business, and our house
Die out for lack of princes?
LANCIOTTO. Wed my brothers:
They'll rear you sons, I'll slay you enemies.
Paolo and Francesca! Note their names ”

“ Silvio Pellico, who wrote the first drama on "Francesca da Rimini" known to modern playgoers, lived his early life in an intensely religious atmosphere, and suffered imprisonment later because of his patriotic tendencies; it is not surprising, therefore, to find in his play—first a national appeal that was to win it applause from all Italy, and then, more important still, a purity of tone that struggled most nobly against an inevitable, passionate end. Paolo is the one who, after some scruples, succumbs; Francesca is infinitely conscious that she is a wife; Giovanni is suspicious. ”

“ Your strength, your courage, your renown—by heaven,
We'd e'en change persons, to the finest hair.
LANCIOTTO. You should be flatterer to an emperor.
PAOLO. I am but just. Let me beseech you, brother.
To look with greater favour on yourself;
Nor suffer misty phantoms of your brain
To take the place of sound realities.
Go to Ravenna, wed your bride, and lull
Your cruel delusions in domestic peace.
Ghosts fly a fireside; 'tis their wont to stalk
Through empty houses, and through empty hearts.
I know Francesca will be proud of you.
Women admire you heroes. ”

“ And there's a merry end of things!
[Music, &c., within.]
Here come Ravenna's eagles for a roost
In Rimini! The air is black with them.
When go they hence? Wherever yon bird builds,
The nest remains for ages. Have an eye,
Or Malatesta's elephant may feel
The eagle's talons.
LANCIOTTO. You're a raven, croaker.
PEPE. And you no white crow, to insure us luck.
MALATESTA. There's matter in his croak.
PEPE. There always is;
But men lack ears.
MALATESTA. Then eyes must do our work.
Old Guido shall be looked to. ”

“ Exeunt PAOLO and FRANCESCA, with PAGES.
RITTA. O! misery, misery!—it is plain as day—
She loves Paolo! Why will those I love
Forever get themselves ensnared, and heaven
Forever call on me to succor them? ”

“ ACT IV SCENE I. The Same. An Apartment in the Castle. Enter LANCIOTTO. LANCIOTTO. It cannot be that I have duped myself,
That my desire has played into the hand
Of my belief; yet such a thing might be.
We palm more frauds upon our simple selves
Than knavery puts upon us. Could I trust
The open candour of an angel's brow,
I must believe Francesca's. ”

“ LANCIOTTO. Array this lump—
Paolo, hark! There are some human thoughts
Best left imprisoned in the aching heart,
Lest the freed malefactors should dispread
Infamous ruin with their liberty.
There's not a man—the fairest of ye all—
Who is not fouler than he seems. This life
Is one unending struggle to conceal
Our baseness from our fellows. ”

“ In fact, Boker had not as yet found himself; he was more the book-lover than the student of men he afterwards became.
"Read Chaucer for strength," he advises Stoddard on January 7, 1850, "read Spenser for ease and sweetness, read Milton for sublimity and thought, read Shakespeare for all these things, and for something else which is his alone. Get out of your age as far as you can." ”

“ I tell you, Lanciotto, you and I
Must have a patent for our foolery!
"She smiled; he kissed her full upon the mouth!"—
There's the beginning; where's the end of it?
O poesy! debauch thee only once,
And thou'rt the greatest wanton in the world!
O cousin Lanciotto—ho, ho, ho! [Laughing.]
Can a man die of laughter? Here we sat;
Mistress Francesca so demure and calm;
Paolo grand, poetical, sublime!—
Eh! what is this? Paolo's dagger? Good! ”

“ Mark the simplicity of that! 'Tis called
"The Babe's Confession," spoken just before
His father strangled him.
LANCIOTTO. Most marvellous!
You struggle with a legend worth your art.
PEPE. Now to the second stanza. Note the hint
I drop about the baby's parentage:
So delicately too! A maid might sing,
And never blush at it. Girls love these songs
Of sugared wickedness. They'll go miles about,
To say a foul thing in a cleanly way.
A decent immorality, my lord,
Is art's specific. Get the passions up,
But never wring the stomach.
LANCIOTTO. Triumphant art!
PEPE. [Sings.] ”

“ But the revitalizing power that was given Shakespeare, has been bequeathed to none who have followed Dante. The one beauty of the Francesca story is the simple element that permeates the dark motive. The genius required to deal with it lies in this: to make one conscious of the tragedy in a touch that recalls the beauty of spring.
It is strange that no other poet than Dante has succeeded in catching this beauty. No poet, writing directly on the theme, has the subtle feeling which may be compared with that of the Italian. Richard Le Gallienne is infinitely superior to Hunt ”

“ Yet D'Annunzio has taken care that this does not affect his central theme. On the stage, the scenes appear cumbersome, and the action moves slowly; but, after analyzing the book, it may be claimed for this "Francesca da Rimini," that it reflects the age in which the tragedy occurred. Much artistic construction is shown in the contrast of the Polenta and Malatesta families, and, repellent as he is at times, D'Annunzio has moments of great poetic fervour; his fire swings forth in many of Francesca's speeches, that alternate with the languor of her symbolic nature. ”

“ Stephen Phillips, in his Francesca drama, ignores altogether Italian temperament; save for the fact that he occasionally mentions the Tyrant of Rimini, Pesaro and Florence, and that he adheres to historic names, there is more of the English hamlet romance in the piece, than Italian passion. And that cannot be said of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." Perhaps one may claim for Phillips some of the simplicity of Dante, but there is not the humanity. Undeniably, the English poet is happy in phrase and imagery, but his genius is not so dramatic as it is poetic ”

“ Writing of the Philadelphia of 1868, Leland says:
[It was] "the Philadelphia when 'Emily Schaumbeg' was the belle and Penington's 'store' was the haunt of the booklover, when snow fell with old fashioned violence, and Third Street was convulsed by old-fashioned panics, when everybody went mad over Offenbach, when one started for New York from the Walnut Street Ferry, when George Boker was writing his dramas and George Childs was beginning to play the public Maecenas." ”

“ That itch to take the bribe he dare not touch;—
Here goes a priest with heavenward eyes, whose soul
Is Satan's council-chamber;—there a doctor,
With nature's secrets wrinkled round a brow
Guilty with conscious ignorance;—and here
A soldier rivals Hector's bloody deeds—
Out-does the devil in audacity—
With craven longings fluttering in a heart
That dares do aught but fly! Thus are we all
Mere slaves and alms-men to a scornful world,
That takes us at our seeming. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These young men were not quickly received, and they regarded the utilitarian spirit of the time as against them. To Stoddard Boker once confessed: "Were poetry forged upon the anvil, cut out with the axe, or spun in the mill, my heaven, how men would wonder at the process! What power, what toil, what ingenuity!"
Boker's correspondence with Stoddard began in a letter, dated September 5, 1849, announcing overtures made by the London Haymarket Theatre for his new tragedy, "Anne Boleyn," which he was contemplating sending them in sheets. ”

“ It has become the inspiration for Maeterlinck in "Pelléas and Mélisande," who has viewed the Italian passion through a mirage of mysticism.
Into "The Divine Comedy," the account of Francesca and Paolo is dropped, keen, sensitive and delicate, as though the poet, a friend of those concerned, wished to cover the hard fact of illicit love in an ecstacy of human feeling. Dante, the supreme master of his age, the incomparable lover of Beatrice, differentiated this tragedy from countless incidents of like character which marked his age. ”

“ But Boker was not wholly wed to theatrical demands; he still approached the stage in the spirit of the poet who was torn between loyalty to poetic indirectness, and necessity for direct dialogue. On January 12, 1853, he writes to Stoddard:
Theatricals are in a fine state in this country; every inducement is offered to me to burn my plays as fast as I write them. Yet, what can I do? If I print my plays, the actors take them up, butcher, alter and play them, without giving me so much as a hand in my own damnation. ”

“ Phillips as a dramatist has the fault of being diffuse; Boker's style is prosaically plain. Were it not for over-elaboration, D'Annunzio's play might supplant all others because of its spirit. Could we take from Phillips his simplicity, from D'Annunzio his Italian intensity, and from Boker his proportion, and could we add these to Crawford's realization of situation, toned away from his melodramatic tendencies, an ideal drama on "Francesca da Rimini" might be constructed. ”

“ But it is Dante who dominates them everyone.
To me, after tracing in part the development of this Italian tragedy, there remains the charm of Dante's simplicity, and were one to ask, who, among the moderns, have partially reflected his passion, I should turn to Keats' insatiable thirst for beauty in his sonnet, "A Dream, After reading Dante's Episode of Paolo and Francesca," and his account of it in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats (February 14, 1819) , and to Carlyle's appreciation of tragedy and love, in "The Hero as a Poet." ”

“ Dear old Charley, you are the only man living with whom I can play the fool through a long letter and be sure that I shall be clearly understood at the end. To say that this privilege is cheerful is to say little, for it is the breath of life to a man of a certain humour.
The "Francesca" note, therefore, is typical of Boker's enthusiasm. When Stoddard read the play, we wonder whether he saw in it any similarities to Leigh Hunt's poem on the same subject? For once he had detected in Boker's verses the influence of Hunt. There are critics who claim Boker had read closely Hugo's "Le Roi s'Amuse." ”

“ 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 "Pelléas and Mélisande" between father and little son. ”