g _Zaza_ one evening and d'Annunzio's _Francesca da Rimini_ the
next. Her repertory further includes _La Dame aux Camelias_, _Hamlet_,
_Romeo and Juliet_, _La Figlia di Iorio_, Giuseppe Giacosa's _Come le
Foglie_, Sicilian folk-plays, and plays by Arturo Giovannitti. When I
first saw Mimi Aguglia she was little more than a crude force, a great
struggling light, that sometimes illuminated, nay often blinded, but
which shone in unequal flashes. Experience has made of her an actress
who is almost unfailing in her effect. If you asked her about the
technique of her art she would probably smile (as Mozart and Schubert
might have done before her); if you asked her about her method she
would not understand you ... but she understands the art of acting.

Watch her, for instance, in the second act of _Zaza_, in the scene in
which the music hall singer discovers that her lover has a wife and
child. No heroics, no shrieks, no conventional posturings and
shruggings and sobbing ... something far worse she exposes to us, a
nameless terror. She stands with her back against a table, nonchalant
and smilingly defiant, unwilling to return to the music hall with her
former partner, but pleasantly jocular in her refusal. Stung into
anger, he hurls his last bomb. Zaza is smoking. As she listens to the
cruel words the corner of her mouth twitches, the cigarette almost
falls. That is all. There is a moment's silence unbroken save by the
heartbeats of her spectators. Even the babies which mothers bring in
abundance to the Italian theatre are quiet. With that esoteric
magnetism with which great artists are possessed she holds the
audience captive by this simple gesture. I could continue to point out
other astounding details in this impersonation, but not one of them,
perhaps, would illustrate Aguglia's art as does this one. If no
training is necessary to produce effects of this kind, I would
pronounce acting the most holy of the arts, for then, surely, it is a
direct gift from God.

_September 5, 1917._

III

The New Isadora

_"We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,
Thou art noble and nude and antique;"_

Swinburne's "Dolores."

I have a fine memory of a chance description flung off by some one at
a dinner in Paris; a picture of the youthful Isadora Duncan in her
studio in New York developing her ideals through sheer will and
preserving the contour of her feet by wearing carpet slippers. The
lat