II
Since Charles Lamb's essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, considered
with reference to their fitness for stage representation," there has
been a great deal of argument as to whether the beauty of words,
especially in verse, is necessarily lost on the stage, and whether a
well-constructed play cannot exist by itself, either in dumb show or
with words in a foreign language, which we may not understand. The
acting, by the Sicilian actors, of "La Figlia di Jorio," seemed to me to
do something towards the solution of part at least of this problem.
The play, as one reads it, has perhaps less than usual of the beauty
which d'Annunzio elaborates in his dramatic speech. It is, on the other
hand, closer to nature, carefully copied from the speech of the peasants
of the Abruzzi, and from what remains of their folk-lore. The story on
which it is founded is a striking one, and the action has, even in
reading, the effect of a melodrama. Now see it on the stage, acted with
the speed and fury of these actors. Imagine oneself ignorant of the
language and of the play. Suddenly the words have become unnecessary;
the bare outlines stand out, perfectly explicit in gesture and motion;
the scene passes before you as if you were watching it in real life; and
this primitively passionate acting, working on an action so cunningly
contrived for its co-operation, gives us at last what the play, as we
read it, had suggested to us, but without complete conviction.
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