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; he has some of the great lyrical feeling of Tennyson, and he has that which distinguishes the poet from the dramatist—­the power to describe situation.  One cannot deny the appeal of his girl-Francesca, nor the beauty of many of his haunting lines; but no warm impression of the situation is gained, and the characters are peculiarly inactive at inopportune times.  Mr. Phillips’s talent was predominantly undramatic; he was too much the poet to allow his feeling to be guided by historical material.  Yet, as acted, the play was charmingly simple.

On the other hand, D’Annunzio, in his drama, saturates himself with the history of Italy.  In bulk, his play has not the slightest claim to simplicity; the main object of the dramatist seemed to have been to overweight the scenes with the licentious and rude Italy of the thirteenth century; extraneous side-issues burden the progress of the plot.  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.

That his drama on Francesca was definitely constructed for theatrical effect, was openly avowed by Marion Crawford.  At the beginning of the French version made for Mme. Bernhardt, he placed material that showed his intention of dealing with fact in the manner of a novelist, and regardless of the sweetness of Dante.  To him, Concordia is fourteen, since he considers 1289 as the date of the tragedy, and, with his details from Boccaccio’s commentary, he has coarsened Francesca, making her bitterness full of the spleen that could only accompany maturity.  A striking point is to be noted in the strong vein of Catholicism that colours many of the speeches.

Paolo’s wife, Orabile, moves through the D’Annunzio play with only slight mention—­to show the husband’s avoidance of her—­to draw attention to her deep-rooted aversion to Francesca.  Mr. Crawford also brings her on the scene, and has Paolo the cause of her death, wittingly distorting history, since Orabile died many years after the murder of her husband.