The second glaring instance of a blind-alley theme is that of Monna Vanna.  We have all of us, I suppose, stumbled, either as actors or onlookers, into painful situations, which not even a miracle of tact could possibly save.  As a rule, of course, they are comic, and the agony they cause may find a safety-valve in laughter.  But sometimes there occurs some detestable incident, over which it is equally impossible to laugh and to weep.  The wisest words, the most graceful acts, are of no avail.  One longs only to sink into the earth, or vanish into thin air.  Such a situation, on the largest possible scale, is that presented in Monna Vanna.  It differs from that of Measure for Measure in the fact that there can be no doubt as to the moral aspect of the case.  It is quite clear that Giovanna ought to sacrifice herself to save, not one puling Claudio, but a whole city full of men, women, and children.  What she does is absolutely right; but the conjuncture is none the less a grotesque and detestable one, which ought to be talked about and thought about as little as possible.  Every word that is uttered is a failure in tact.  Guido, the husband, behaves, in the first act, with a violent egoism, which is certainly lacking in dignity; but will any one tell me what would be a dignified course for him to pursue under the circumstances?  The sage old Marco, too—­that fifteenth-century Renan—­flounders just as painfully as the hot-headed Guido.  It is the fatality of the case that “he cannot open his mouth without putting his foot in it”; and a theme which exposes a well-meaning old gentleman to this painful necessity is one by all means to be avoided.  The fact that it is a false alarm, and that there is no rational explanation for Prinzivalle’s wanton insult to a woman whom he reverently idolizes, in no way makes matters better.[1] Not the least grotesque thing in the play is Giovanna’s expectation that Guido will receive Prinzivalle with open arms because he has—­changed his mind.  We can feel neither approval nor disapproval, sympathy nor antipathy, in such a deplorable conjunction of circumstances.  All we wish is that we had not been called upon to contemplate it.[2] Maeterlinck, like Shakespeare, was simply dallying with the idea of a squalid heroism—­so squalid, indeed, that neither he nor his predecessor had the courage to carry it through.

Pray observe that the defect of these two themes is not merely that they are “unpleasant.”  It is that there is no possible way out of them which is not worse than unpleasant:  humiliating, and distressing.  Let the playwright, then, before embarking on a theme, make sure that he has some sort of satisfaction to offer us at the end, if it be only the pessimistic pleasure of realizing some part of “the bitter, old and wrinkled truth” about life.  The crimes of destiny there is some profit in contemplating; but its stupid vulgarities minister neither to profit nor delight.