ir repertoire consisted of works unknown to London playgoers. Several
of their plays were performed in a puzzling dialect. Even the judicious
step of offering a fairly full synopsis of the plays was neglected.
Notwithstanding all this, the theatre was well patronized during two
seasons and the audiences have exhibited enthusiasm.

What is the meaning of all this; why should these village folk, playing
what in the main seem to be simple peasant melodramas, have troubled the
senses of Londoners? The obvious answer is that the affair is a triumph
of pure acting. One pauses to inquire whether this is true. In the case
of most of their plays the judgment of the audience concerning the
acting must be very rough and ready--so far, at least, as the
performance is fulfilling its true purpose of presenting in action the
ideas of the author.

How are we to know, when watching a play in Sicilian dialect and
provided with a printed "argument" comprised in about a couple of
hundred words, whether the players are doing anything like their duty to
the author? By-the-by the poor Censor had to admit that he passed their
plays on the strength of these inadequate synopses! Yet there was
absolute conviction in most of us that their work was sincere and at
times quite tremendous as a matter of pure acting. The word "tremendous"
must be confined to the efforts of Signora Mimi Aguglia Ferrau and
Signor Grasso. The others form a very good company, but it is only in
respect of these two that one employs the word "genius," which cautious
writers use very rarely, though there are journalists who lavish it upon
everybody a thumb-nail's thickness above mediocrity.

Concerning the lady there is no doubt at all. She is a little woman,
with a rather strongly featured, intelligent face, brilliant teeth and
big eyes who has, to begin with, the rare gift of filling the stage.
There is a perceptible difference whenever she is present. She may be
one of a crowd of twenty, and saying and doing nothing, but her
presence is felt. At her command is a delightful roguish comedy and a
horrible realistic tragedy. In _Malia_ she is a Phedre burnt up with
unslakable passion, a rustic Phedre, no doubt, but Bernhardt never gave
more strongly the idea of "_Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee_."

There are tricks in her work; she is fond of standing her profile
parallel with the footlights, and of exhibiting the whites of her large
eyes; she is conscious of the ex