Act I. opens with a glow of colour and sunshine —
the springtide fSte at Florence, A young painter is at
his easel; who could it be but Giotto? A cloaked
figure crosses the stage scowling ; it is Malatesta, who
has moved house from Rimini to Florence. And that
fair-haired girl ? Gemma, Dante's daughter, " grown
up." And that cowled monk? Dante himself, the
exile returned, in disguise. After an aifecting interview
between father and daughter (in which Sir Henry
reaches an unusual pitch of simple tenderness) a
woman's shriek is heard from Malatesta's house. The



1 64 DRAMA AND LIFE

scene rapidly changes to the interior, and we see
Malatesta wiping his bloody sword, and the dead
bodies of the lovers half-hidden behind a curtain. In
the confusion, Pia's husband, Nello della Pietra, carries
off Gemma, pursued by Dante; and the spectator's
mind begins to get as confused as the turmoil of the
scene.
In Act II. we see the actress (Miss Lena Ashwell),
who was Gemma a moment ago, turned to Pia once
more. Confusion worse confounded ! As Pia she dies
in the foul air of the marshes, and immediately
reappears as Gemma in the convent of San Pietro.
Comic business (rather ignoble) of quarrelling nuns ;
a touch of Boccaccio rather than of Dante, but a
vulgarised Boccaccio. Enter Dante and Bernardino,
leading a rescue party. Dante, hiding with Gemma
behind the arras, nearly suffers the fate of Polonius.
The sword of one of the soldiery, probing the arras,
has pierced his side, and he is left for dead on the
floor.
But in Act III. he is alive again, mourning over the
tomb of Beatrice in the Campo Santo at Florence.
