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 decision. For Elena-Emilia there is also human release. So does the masterful Capek, abound, ing round a play that emotionally and suspensively seemed already full-circled.

Such work of the theater stirs the pride, quickens the zest of those who still love it, unashamed and unflagging, as seat—from time to time—of the arts. Yet Capek and “The Makropoulos Secret” would not so prevail unless they carried freight of matter to engage the mind, quicken the imagination, stir the spirit—matter, moreover, intrinsically human in content and implication, by the playwright and the stage vitalized. “The Makropoulos Secret” is the secret of life unending. The mystery of Emilia Marty, born Elena Makropoulos, is the mystery of endless existence dovetailing into the daily lives of men and women that are mortal. Her spell is the spell of a woman persisting and all-knowing, case-hardened in the virtue and vice, the experience and the sensation, of a life that has ceased to begin and wax, to waver and decline—a life that is perpetual. The secret once disclosed, the mystery once dispelled, it is as though a flood of light were bathing every facet of Elena-Emilia, pouring into every devious nook and dark corner of her