have made him ponder it well during a trip he made abroad at the time,
and Boker, meanwhile, must have been cutting the cloth to suit the
actor's ideas. Barron, one of Barrett's biographers, claims that "Mr.
Barrett saw great possibilities in the work, and with his practical
assistance the play was suitably changed, new situations were
effected, a more picturesque colouring was given the scenes and story,
and all that was repellant in the too close following of Dante [!]
was removed." The play was given by Barrett, at Haverly's Theatre,
Chicago, on September 14, 1882, Otis Skinner playing _Paolo_, and
Marie Wainwright appearing as _Francesca_. In Winter's estimate of the
performance, we find the dominant characteristics being "moderation"
and "balanced growth." He says of _Lanciotto_: "Alertness of the brain
sustained it, at every point, in brilliant vigour, and it rose in
power, and expanded in terrible beauty, accordingly as it was wrought
upon by the pressure of circumstances and the conflict of passions."

The memory of this must have affected the interpretation of Mr.
Skinner, when, as _Lanciotto_, in his revival of the piece at the
Chicago Grand Opera House, August 22, 1901, with Aubrey Boucicault
as _Paolo_, Marcia Van Dresser as _Francesca_, and William Norris as
_Pepe_, he met with such success. "D'Annunzio gives us the soldier and
the brute," he wrote me in 1904. "Boker's hero is an idealist--almost
a dreamer." The fact is, Boker was recalling his memories of _Othello_
and _Richard III_, if not of _Hamlet_, as Skinner suggests. In another
respect did the Barrett performance affect the later revival. The
portrayal of _Pepe_, by Norris, was based on what he called "the James
tradition," Louis James having, as Winter wrote, "a laughter that is
more terrible than malice."

Lawrence Barrett's interest in the American drama was never very