THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.-BY BONAZZA.

The Shepherds saw Judea like a gem
Flashing her lights o'er humble Bethlehem.
Unto those simple watchers of the fold

Came echoes of the feasting: did they hold

Vain longings in their hearts? Did they condemn, But human-like, what God had planned for them Aspiring to the power, and the gold?

But lo! unto their watching eyes was given.

The glory of earth's one sweet night of heaven!
So we, repining oft, for things afar,

The worldly things, that vain and empty are,
Forget the little city of our heart

Where lies our heaven, glorious, and apart.

THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE IN THE STATE
OF NEW YORK, 1903.

SIR HENRY IRVING'S DANTE.

BY J. J. WALSH, M.D., Ph.D.

EW YORK has recently been entertained by another visit from the distinguished English actor, Sir Henry Irving. Most of his New York season was taken up with the presentation of "Dante," a drama written especially for him by the wellknown French playwright, M. Victorien Sardou, in collaboration with M. E. Moreau, a name unfamiliar as yet to Englishspeaking playgoers. There is There is no doubt that Mr. Irving is physically an almost ideal impersonation of the great Florentine poet. Probably very few men since Dante's time have been so well adapted to body forth satisfactorily to the mind's eye his human personality as he actually moved among his contemporaries. It is evidently this that has tempted Sir Henry into an almost unpardonable error at the height of his great career. For, beyond Mr. Irving's satisfying counterfeit presentment of the great poet, not only is there nothing to say in favor of the play, but there is very much to be said against it. The story, as told upon the stage, is an absolute satire upon the life of one of the greatest men that ever lived. That it is so beautifully staged and so artistically presented only adds to the almost unspeakable wrong that is done to the name of a man among men, one of the exceptional characters of the race.

When the play was first produced in England last spring it evoked in the columns of the London Tablet a deserved protest from Mr. D. Moncrieff O'Connor, who condemned severely the unwarranted representation of Dante, as forgetful of all his own high thoughts-poetical, religious, and political-in his solicitous anxiety for the fate of an unworthy woman and his illegitimate child. Mr. O'Connor said, with commendable directness:

"The outrage which M. Sardou has perpetrated in the play now being performed at Drury Lane on one of the most hal

to attach to that memory, are painfully emphasized by the genius and splendor with which that outrage has been presented. That English public opinion should allow, without emphatic protest, the character of Dante to be traduced by the calumny of a vulgar intrigue, must deeply wound all capable of being touched by what is most ennobling and elevating in man. But that English scholarship, so rich in consecrations to Dante, so loyal in sympathy, so profound in appreciation, should have been unmoved by this pitiable insult is as deplorable as it is incomprehensible. It is too ample a tribute to the genius of Sir Henry Irving.

"Is it to be permitted that what is highest and most commanding in letters should be maligned and belittled to make a Roman holiday'? Is it to be permitted that one on whom for centuries has been concentrated the study of brilliant thought is to be falsified and wronged to tickle the ears of the groundlings'?"

The indignity that is thus heaped upon Dante in the play is all the more to be deplored as Dante's personal character has always been considered of the loftiest. "Dante," said Carlyle, "speaks to the noble, to the pure and great, in all times and ages. He burns as a pure star fixed there in the firmament, out of which the great and the high of all ages kindle themselves. He is the possession of all the chosen of the world for uncounted time." In a previous passage of his lecture on The Hero as Poet, Carlyle had said: "True souls in all generations of the world who look on this Dante will find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his thoughts, his woes, and hopes, will speak always to their sincerity; they will feel that this Dante, too, was a brother." If there is anything that the play of MM. Sardou and Moreau attempts to accomplish it is to smirch the essential purity of Dante's character, and to impugn his sincerity as a man.

It is a question how far a dramatist is bound to respect the truth of historical details as they are known, and how far he is constrained to fidelity in the representation of the characters of historical personages whom he selects to put on the stage. When the personages selected, however, are of the importance of Dante, and are so closely bound up with the life of the age in which they lived as to make any misrepre

times, then it would seem that the dramatist must forego an appeal to historical interest and deliberately choose imaginary characters if he wants to produce certain effects, or else must not depart so far from the known facts as to make his work a satire on the theme he has selected without in some way giving his audience a hint as to the truth in the matter.

It is well known that Mr. Irving, realizing the eminent suitability of his personal appearance for the satisfactory presentation of Dante on the stage, has long had in mind the desire to add this to his roll of characters before the close of

his career. There is a stage tradition in London that some years ago he asked Mr. Tennyson, the late Poet Laureate, to write for him a drama the principal character of which should be the great Florentine poet. Tennyson appreciated very fully the nature of the task thus asked of him, and is said to have replied, after giving the subject serious thought, that it would require the genius of another Dante properly to present the character of the great Italian in dramatic form; that in English a Shakspere might have attempted it with some hope of success, but that no lesser dramatist could possibly succeed even in a minor degree.

Mr. Irving found in the French playwright, M. Sardou, a more complacent employee than the late Laureate. Even. Sardou, however, seems to have realized eventually his incapacity for the difficult task and preferred to share his responsibility with another. Hence the appearance of a second name, that of M. Moreau, on the playbills as co-author of the present dramatic version of Dante. We doubt if this name has been heard outside of France before in relation to dramatic writing.

It seems curious at first that M. Sardou should admit as a collaborator in so important a work, a comparatively unknown playwright. It might have been thought that a play with Dante for its subject represented the opportunity of a lifetime for M. Sardou, and with the chance to have his work staged by so distinguished an actor as Sir Henry Irving, would have proved a source of inspiration sure to result in a really great dramatic work.

If there is anything that the play of Dante as presented is not, it is certainly not a great drama. It is not only false to history and to personal characterization of the individuals