pronounced. He sought Boker's "Francesca da Rimini," as he sought W.D.
Howells' "Yorick's Love" (given at Cleveland, Ohio, October 26, 1878),
because the rôles therein suited his temperament. Between him and
Boker, there was some misunderstanding of short duration, about
royalties, but this was bridged over, and Boker's final attempts at
playwriting were made for him. The reader is referred to Vol. 32,
n.s. Vol. XXV, no. 2, June, 1917, of the _Publications of the Modern
Language Association of America_, for statements as to Boker's
"profits" from the stage.

After Otis Skinner's revival of "Francesca da Rimini," it was played
for a while by Frederick Ward and Louis James in association (1893)
and by Frank C. Bangs in 1892.

Hosts of dramas have been written on "Francesca da Rimini," and
every poet has essayed at one time or another to surpass Dante's
incomparable lines. Music scores have glorified this passionate love
story, while marble and canvas have caught the external expression of
it. In its portrayal, actual history has taken on legendary character,
and so "Francesca da Rimini" now ranks as a theme with the history
of Lancelot and Guinevere, of Tristan and Isolde. It has become the
inspiration for Maeterlinck in "Pelléas and Mélisande," who has viewed
the Italian passion through a mirage of mysticism.

Into "The Divine Comedy," the account of Francesca and Paolo is
dropped, keen, sensitive and delicate, as though the poet, a friend of
those concerned, wished to cover the hard fact of illicit love in an
ecstacy of human feeling. Dante, the supreme master of his age, the
incomparable lover of Beatrice, differentiated this tragedy from
countless incidents of like character which marked his age. Had the