Page:They Knew What They Wanted.pdf/20

xii tions. The Italian speaks English as well as he is able and without any conformity to rule or standard.

As Mr. Richard Bennett very cannily points out, there can be no regulation or tabulation of the foreigner’s English. It depends upon too many personal factors in the life of the individual foreigner—his instinct for articulate expression; his residence among English-speaking folk; his actual experience with, and education in, the language; the proportion of his version of it which he has, so to speak, picked up bodily, and the proportion which he has literally translated from his native tongue. Furthermore, particularly in the matter of pronunciation, there can be little doubt that his English is decidedly affected by the specific locality of his birth and up-bringing in the “old country.” I am citing Mr. Bennett (whose authority I am ready to uphold against any philologist whatsoever) because he is an actor of genius with an actor’s genius for the hearing and mimicry of speech.

Of the story of this play, I have this to say. It has been generously related to the legend of Paolo and Francesca, to the dirtiest anecdotes of the Gallic pornographica, and to its superb contemporary of the New York theatre, Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms.” On that last score, Mr. O’Neill and I can readily, as they say, “get together” and agree that no two plays could possibly bear less resemblance to each other than this simple comedy of mine and his