Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/227

 10* S.I. MARCH 5, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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fortifications and embankments raised on natural dunes."

Finally, where the anti-climax exists "in adding as a second simile the embankment of the Brenta at Padua" I fail to recognize. Quality rather than quantity was in Dante's thought in connexion with the "duri mar- gini," and his travels furnished him with illustrations of it. Either reference would have served his purpose ; both are given with, presumably, the very pardonable vanity of the travelled author. The claims of Ghent to identity with Guizzante are too nebulous for serious consideration. Simi-

of either, but the rather a deepening of their guilt, to admit that "the events are partly invented by the dramatists, partly his-

torical"; that * torical Dante "

our Dante and that

is not the "Gemma

his- is a

character entirely created by the imagination of the dramatists, who, nevertheless, are not alone in giving an illegitimate child to Dante, for certain critics, rightly or wrongly, have cast doubts on the legitimacy of Dante's daughter Beatrice/' And it is from the "doubts" of these "certain critics" that an unwarrantable slander is made "the central 1 episode of the drama." Verily these dra-

larly, the variants Guzzante = Guizzante are matists have out-Boccaccioed Boccaccio ! It inconsiderable. As G rattan said of the ' ' " curosity " of an Irish witness, "The word is not murdered ; only its eye is knocked out." 4. Let me appropriately, as I judge, in this column lodge an indignant protest against the slanderous treatment meted out to Dante by Sardou and Moreau in their joint drama bearing his name and staged last year in London and Manchester. I have already done so in the local press, and have

reaped the thanks of Bishop Casartelli,

Prof. Valgimigli, and others. The play itself

I have not seen, but I gleaned its merits (or

rather demerits) from various critiques and

from the booklet "presented by Sir Henry

Irving" to those who saw it. The latter

purports to be " some explanatory notes by

an Italian Student," and is divided into 'A

Note on the Story,' a ' Synopsis of Dante's

Life,' l The Symbolical Conception of Sardou

and Moreau's " Dante," ' ' The Central Episode

of the Drama,' and a ' Prologue,' containing

'The Episode of Count Ugoliuo ' and a detailec

synopsis of the four acts of the play. It is

in the first and fourth of these chapters that

lie the venom and travesty to which I take

indignant exception. Here is a sample of

both :

" Ainong the girl friends of Beatrice was one Pia

dei Tolomei, who has been forced into a loveless

marriage with Nello della Pietra, a depraved and

ferocious Florentine magnate. The unhappy young wife has, through her intimacy with Beatrice, be- come acquainted with Dante, and at the death of Beatrice the mutual bereavement of the two has gradually developed into an ardent mutual love. During Nello's absence on affairs of state, a child, Gemma, has been born to Pia and Dante."

The Pia is, of course, the Pia of 'Purg.,' v. 133 :

Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia ; Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma ;

and there is in the passage quoted a sufficiency of 'truth to give it a semblance of fact. But the calumny and perversion of history are doubly monstrous ; and it is no justification

is sheer trifling with common honesty, in the face of such allegations, to assert boldly, as ' Sardou explained in an interview, ' There- is more of the soul than of the body of Dante in our drama.' " There is vastly too much of the latter, and vastly too little of the former, in it. As for the facts of the case, the only one in the above passage which approaches truth is the relationship between Pia and Nello. But of the friendship between Pia and Beatrice, and still less of the guilty inti- macy between Pia and Dante, no shred of historic evidence exists, so far as I know. The poet was ignorant, as Scartazzini says Dante non ne sapeva nulla " of Pia's mys- terious death ; that he was equally ignorant of any personal acquaintance with her in life may be inferred with similar certitude from the silence of history. Further, the identifi cation of her with the "Donna Gentile" of the ' Convito ' and ' Vita Nuova ' is as arbi- trary as it is baseless, and founded only, as the playwrights admit, upon a wretched "play on words," the " bella pietra" of the ' Canzoniere.' I hope to deal with this Pia when these notes reach her place in the 'D. C.'; meanwhile let this much be said here as a permanent protest against this recent attempt to besmirch the memories of the great Florentine and the hapless Siennese. Such pieces as Sardou's 'Dante' not only

grossly distort history and sully the grandest of characters, but they are not calculated to purify the stage a triple indictment which should discredit them in the eyes of all lovers of historic truth and moral beauty.

J. B. McGovERN. St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.

"SILLY BILLY." (See 7 th S. vi. 486.)

ADMIRERS of the ' D.N.B.' and of the late Sir Leslie Stephen will enjoy an article in the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1903 r