vorced. The production
of Alfieri's tragedies began with the sketch called 'Cleopatra,' in
1775, and lasted till 1789, when a complete edition, by Didot, appeared
in Paris. His only important prose work is his 'Auto-biography' begun in
1790 and ended in the year of his death, 1803. Although he wrote several
comedies and a number of sonnets and satires,--which do not often rise
above mediocrity,--it is as a tragic poet that he is known to fame.
Before him--though Goldoni had successfully imitated Moliere in comedy,
and Metastasio had become enormously popular as the poet of love and the
opera--no tragedies had been written in Italy which deserved to be
compared with the great dramas of France, Spain, and England. Indeed, it
had been said that tragedy was not adapted to the Italian tongue or
character. It remained for Alfieri to prove the falsity of this theory.

Always sensitive to the charge of plagiarism, Alfieri declared that
whether his tragedies were good or bad, they were at least his own. This
is true to a certain extent. And yet he was influenced more than he was
willing to acknowledge by the French dramatists of the seventeenth
century. In common with Corneille and Racine, he observed strictly the
three unities of time, place, and action. But the courtliness of
language, the grace and poetry of the French dramas, and especially the
tender love of Racine, are altogether lacking with him.

Alfieri had a certain definite theory of tragedy which he followed with
unswerving fidelity. He aimed at the simplicity and directness of the
Greek drama. He sought to give one clear, definite action, which should
advance in a straight line from beginning to end, without deviation, and
carry along the characters--who are, for the most part, helplessly
entangled in the toils of a relentless fate--to an inevitable
destruction. For this reason the well-known _confidantes_ of the French
stage were discarded, no secondary action or episodes were admitted, and
the whole play was shortened to a little more than two-thirds of the
average French classic drama. Whatever originality Alfieri possessed did
not show itself in the choice of subjects, which are nearly all well
known and had often been used before. From Racine he took 'Polynice,'
'Merope' had been treated by Maffei and Voltaire, and Shakespeare had
immortalized the story of Brutus. The situations and events are often
conventional; the passions are those familiar to the stage,--j