hteen making her debut as Marie Stuart. At
this time the naturalism of the French method was gradually displacing
the artificial elocution and academic poses of the Italian school of
acting. Madame Ristori seems to have tried to combine simplicity with
style, and the passion of nature with the self-restraint of the artist.
'J'ai voulu fondre les deux manieres,' she tells us, 'car je sentais que
toutes choses etant susceptibles de progres, l'art dramatique aussi etait
appele a subir des transformations.' The natural development, however,
of the Italian drama was almost arrested by the ridiculous censorship of
plays then existing in each town under Austrian or Papal rule. The
slightest allusion to the sentiment of nationality or the spirit of
freedom was prohibited. Even the word patria was regarded as
treasonable, and Madame Ristori tells us an amusing story of the
indignation of a censor who was asked to license a play, in which a dumb
man returns home after an absence of many years, and on his entrance upon
the stage makes gestures expressive of his joy in seeing his native land
once more. 'Gestures of this kind,' said the censor, 'are obviously of a
very revolutionary tendency, and cannot possibly be allowed. The only
gestures that I could think of permitting would be gestures expressive of
a dumb man's delight in scenery generally.'

The stage directions were accordingly altered, and the word 'landscape'
substituted for 'native land'! Another censor was extremely severe on an
unfortunate poet who had used the expression 'the beautiful Italian sky,'
and explained to him that 'the beautiful Lombardo-Venetian sky' was the
proper official expression to use. Poor Gregory in Romeo and Juliet had
to be rechristened, because Gregory is a name dear to the Popes; and the

Here I have a pilot's thumb,
Wrecked as homeward he did come,

of the first witch in Macbeth was ruthlessly struck out as containing an
obvious allusion to the steersman of St. Peter's bark. Finally, bored
and bothered by the political and theological Dogberrys of the day, with
their inane prejudices, their solemn stupidity, and their entire
ignorance of the conditions necessary for the growth of sane and healthy
art, Madame Ristori made up her mind to leave the stage. She, however,
was extremely anxious to appear once before a Parisian audience, Paris
being at that time the centre of dramatic activity, and after some
consideration left Ita