An. I loved Luciano and I love him still ! [Man, you have
worked your own undoing ! If ever mortals can command
success it is towards misery. He who demands unhappiness
will have it. It is the one certain gift that fortune has
for men

We have come now to the end of a rather lengthy
analysis of a not very conspicuous play. A needless
task, some may think ; but as national types are not
to be sought for in beautiful faces, so interest and
nobility are not always found in company. As an acting



ITALIAN PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS 55

play, ' Diritti deU' Anima ' has not proved a favourite ;
but, as a prologue to the theatre, it could hardly be
improved.
We have now, I think, clearly before us the three
cardinal points of an Itahan serious play : a some-
what clumsy — at any rate, a deliberate — Ibeginning; a
tendency in the body of the play for the catastrophe
to be produced by reason and argument, rather than
by events ; and, in the end, a perpetual hauling in of
the sheet to fetch sail past the Islands of the Blest, out
into the wide Sea of Misery.
We are not here using metaphor without a purpose.
It is not only the imhappiness, but the aimlessness, of
the end which strikes an English theatre-goer so forcibly.
