FOREIGN DRAMA ON ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STAGE 151 



for Salvini in 1866; and finally Civil Death (La Morte Civile) by the 

 same author. 



This is a goodly list of plays by Italian authors, but no one of 

 them awakens a slumbering memory in the American play-goer, 

 excepting the last. La Morte Civile was one of the most powerful 

 and popular plays of Salvini's entire career. In 1880 in the heyday 

 of his fame, an English version of this play was made by Charles 

 Coghlan and called A New Trial, but there is no evidence that it 

 made a lasting impression, and the inference is that it was not so 

 much the play itself as the superb acting of Salvini as Conrad the 

 Outlaw which made La Morte Civile second only to Othello in the 

 great actor's repertory. 



Simultaneously with the native Italian plays, there were to be 

 found on the Italian stage in the nineteenth century many dramas 

 translated from the French, German and English. The plays of 

 Scribe, then in his prime, were given frequently. One of Salvini's 

 favorite parts was Orosmane in Voltaire's Zaire, though he never 

 appeared in this play in America. His best-known plays of non- 

 Italian origin were The Gladiator from the French of Soumet; Ingo- 

 mar, the Barbarian from the German of Friedrich Halm; David 

 Garrick by the prolific English playwright, Thomas W. Robertson; 

 and lastly, Shakespeare's Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King 

 Lear, Coriolanus and Othello, in the last of which he won his greatest 

 success and most enduring fame not only in England and America, but 

 also in his native land. 



As with Salvini, so with Ristori and Rossi. Both actors, of course, 

 went through a thorough and complete classical training in the Italian 

 repertory, but Ristori's fame rests chiefly on her impersonation of 

 Racine's Phedre, Schiller's Mary Stuart and especially Shakespeare's 

 Lady Macbeth. Rossi, likewise, achieved renown in foreign plays, 

 in the Cid of Corneille, in Goethe's Faust, and as Louis XI in Dela- 

 vigne's historical drama of that name, a play which was one of the 

 most impressive in the repertory of Sir Henry Irving. All three 

 actors seemed to favor non-Italian plays. 



Salvini tells us that in 1853, or ten years after he went upon the 



