MONNA VANNA. In 1902 Maurice Mae terlinck, who for a dozen years had been com posing tenuous dramas of the imagination, ex pressive of vague fears, and symbolic of the coming of death, turned in 'Monna Vanna' to more usual type of play. In place of an airy plot but half suggested, he developed a close knit story; in place of shadowy figures uttering childlike phrases and implying as much by their silence as by their talk, he presented living figures engaged in rhetorical debate; and in place of the merest impressionism of mood, he displayed a sudden practical interest in prob lems of conduct. Two such problems, in par ticular, he considered: first, as to whether a woman might ever honorably sell her honor; and, second, as to whether her husband's dis belief in the purity of her motives might ever justify her leaving him for one who could understand her. Monna Vanna, in order to save the lives of 30,000 starving Pisans, be sieged by the Florentines, consents to yield her honor to the commander of the enemy. But the latter, her boyhood lover, refuses to profit from the advantage he has taken of her, and, assailed by the state he serves, returns with her to Pisa as her guest. Her husband,
who has raged against her decision to go to Prinzivalle in the first place, refuses to believe that this warrior has spared her. She can rescue him from death only by falsely pro claiming his guilt and her own desire for ven geance, thus gaining possession of the keys to his dungeon, from which she will flee with him at the earliest opportunity. Thus Maeterlinck, like Shakespeare in 'Measure for Measure' and Phillips in 'Pietro of Siena,' though he raises the question of a woman's right to barter her honor for the life or lives of others, does not venture to exact of her the price. Such is his procedure, also, in two other plays, Joyzelle) and 'Marie-Magdeleine.' Neither of these has been so successful upon the stage as 'Monna Vanna,' which may be read in the Em.lish versions of A. I. du Pont Coleman (1W3), Charlotte Porter (1904) and Alfred Sutro (1907). The piece is discussed in the monographs on Maeterlinck by Gerard Harry, M. J. Moses, Edward Thomas and Una Clark.