s studio. Hearing people coming, Teodora hides herself
in Ernesto's bedroom, where she is discovered by her husband's attendants.
Don Julian, wounded and enfevered, now at last believes the worst.

Ernesto seeks and slays Don Julian's assailant. But now the whole world
credits what the whole world has been whispering. In vain Ernesto and
Teodora protest their innocence to Don Severo and to Dona Mercedes. In vain
they plead with the kindly and noble man they both revere and love. Don
Julian curses them, and dies believing in their guilt. Then at last, when
they find themselves cast forth isolate by the entire world, their common
tragic loneliness draws them to each other. They are given to each other by
the world. The insidious purpose of the great Gallehault has been
accomplished; and Ernesto takes Teodora for his own.

VII

BLANK VERSE ON THE CONTEMPORARY STAGE

It is amazing how many people seem to think that the subsidiary fact that a
certain play is written in verse makes it of necessity dramatic literature.
Whether or not a play is literature depends not upon the medium of
utterance the characters may use, but on whether or not the play sets forth
a truthful view of some momentous theme; and whether or not a play is drama
depends not upon its trappings and its suits, but on whether or not it sets
forth a tense and vital struggle between individual human wills. _The
Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ fulfils both of these conditions and is dramatic
literature, while the poetic plays of Mr. Stephen Phillips stand upon a
lower plane, both as drama and as literature, even though they are written
in the most interesting blank verse that has been developed since Tennyson.
_Shore Acres_, which was written in New England dialect, was, I think,
dramatic literature. Mr. Percy Mackaye's _Jeanne d'Arc_, I think, was not,
even though in merely literary merit it revealed many excellent qualities.

_Jeanne d'Arc_ was not a play; it was a narrative in verse, with lyric
interludes. It was a thing to be read rather than to be acted. It was a
charming poetic story, but it was not an interesting contribution to the
stage. Most people felt this, I am sure; but most people lacked the courage
of their feeling, and feared to confess that they were wearied by the
piece, lest they should be suspected of lack of taste. I believe thoroughly
in the possibility of poetic drama at the present day; but it must be drama
first and foremost, and po