The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-11-16
...NEW YORK THEATRES.
BY ALFRED CECIL.
Spnora Duse Concludes Her Engagement With Francesca da Rinini-Miss Gilman in the "Mocking Bird

z EW YORK. November 15.-The
 theatres are all from the stand
 | v point of the box-office doing good business. from that of dramatic art, Duse in the morbid dramas of D, Annun- zio and Martin Harvey. in plays abound ing with pathos. There Is so much in one's daily walk from cradle to grave to take the laugh out of ones makeup. to crush the inner man, that the powerful plays referred to are not dramatic wares that attract the largest part of the com munity. What we all want is to leave the playhouse cheered. toned up, good humored, not cast down by playhouse gloom. Yet there are some people who find a funeral interesting and these revel in horrors. But. as 1t is Signora Duse concluded her season this afternoon. She played for the week signor d'Annunzio's tragedy. .Franceca da Rimini,'' which raised riot In the theater in Rome, where it was produced last winter. tho Italians reading a political meaning be- tween the lines of the play. There were no two opinions, even In that Italian po- litica1 center, of the literary merits of Signor dAnnunzio's drama, and once the fierce storm that 1t had raised was past there was enthusiastic plaudits for the poetic charm and dramatic skill shown in ] the telling of this familiar tale of love and life in Italy in the thirteenth century. Slgnor dAnnunzio follows in the main, the plot of the Dante poem, and tells the love story with Infinite pathos. But he has added characters and incidents of his | own to outline more clearly the dramatic | picture, and he hesitates at no details, no matter how gruesome, to impress upon us the cruelty that characterized tho en- mites of the day. For instance. in the scene between Francesca and Malates- | tino, who conceived a lawess passion for lis sster-in-law. the youths vengefuI character is emphasized to the audience by the suffering of an unfortunate prison- | CT who Is being tortured in a nearby | chamber, and whose cries are heard now and again through the greater portion of the act The poor victim is finally releas- ed through Francesca's entreaties-Mala- testino considerably ordering his head cut off, which he brings upon the stage wrapped in cloth.
 There are those who may cry out against the introduction of such horrors upon the stage just as the audience at the premiere of M. Sardou's La Tosca-" at the Porte St. Martin. hissed the intro ducdon of La Tosca's lover upon the scene, fresh from the torture chamber, his bleeding forehead bruised and burned from the band of hot iron that had been crushed down upon it. But Signor d'An- nunzio like M. Sardou will ask how are you to rightly understand the human pas sions dealt with in a play if you are not put in close touch with the controlling characters of the men and women of the period who people the mimic stage?
 If there is plenty of blood running through the five acts of Francesca" which holds up the mirror to the period that 1t fully reflects. there Is much of del- icate tender sentiment in the love epi- sodes with which the story Of Paola and | Francesca abounds, and 1t Is unnecessary to say that Signor d'Annunzio has treated