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Commedia dell’Arte, its Structure
and Tradition

Commedia dell’Arte, its Structure and Tradition chronicles a series of

discussions between two renowned experts in commedia dell’arte –
master practitioners Antonio Fava and John Rudlin.
These discussions were recorded during three recent visits by
Fava to Rudlin’s rural retreat in south west France. They take in
all of commedia dell’arte’s most striking and enduring elements – its
masks, its scripts and scenarios, and most outstandingly, its cast of
­characters. Fava explores the role of each stock Commedia character
and their subsequent incarnations in popular culture, as well as their
roots in prominent figures of their time. The lively and wide-ranging
conversations also take in methods of staging commedia dell’arte for
contemporary audiences, the evolution of its gestures, and the collec-
tive nature of its theatre-making.
This is an essential book for any student or practitioner of ­commedia
dell’arte – provocative, expansive wisdom from the modern world’s
foremost exponent of the craft.

John Rudlin is the author of Commedia dell’Arte: An Actor’s Handbook

and Commedia dell’Arte: A Handbook for Troupes.

Antonio Fava is a world-renowned teacher, practitioner and scholar of

commedia dell’arte, based in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Arlecchino is on trial. Le Docteur presides. Pulcinella stands ominously
behind the accused, dangling a large bunch of keys.
Commedia dell’Arte, its
Structure and Tradition
Antonio Fava in Conversation
with John Rudlin

John Rudlin and Antonio Fava

First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2021 John Rudlin and Antonio Fava
The right of John Rudlin and Antonio Fava to be identified as
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance
with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-64856-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-12660-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

eResource: www.routledge.com/9780367648565
For Dina, Trish
and theatre-makers and theatregoers everywhere
Contents

List of figures viii

Preface xi
Prologue xiii

1 The mask 1

2 The personnages 6

3 Performance location 35

4 The scenarios 38

5 Collective creation 41

6 Gestural evolution 43

7 Closed forms 49

8 Multilingualism 52

9 Anachronism 54

Appendix A: The Pulcinella Saga61

Appendix B: Il Pozzo66
Appendix C: The mystical mask69
Index 74
List of figures

Detail of an engraving of a scene from Colombine Avocat pour et

­contre in Le Théâtre Italien by Evaristo Gherardi, Brussels, 1697. The
engravings were made by Gabriel Huquier between 1729 and 1731 and
­published as Théâtre Italien. Livre des Scènes Comiques inventés par
Gillot.

1.1 Grande Zanni mask, from left to right: natural leather recently
made; natural leather darkened after several years of use;
natural leather blackened by many years of use. Atelier Fava.
This image can be seen in colour via the book’s eResource page
www.routledge.com/9780367648565. 2
1.2 Pantalone dancing in an inn: 17th century engraving by
unknown hand. 3
1.3 Pedrolino/Pierrot with back turned: engraving by Du Bosc,
after Watteau, 18th century. 5
2.1 Brighella: 17th-century engraving. 8
2.2 Arlecchino: engraving by Mitelli, 17th century. 11
2.3 Il Magnifico: engraving by Joullain, in Riccoboni,
Histoire du Théâtre Italien, 18th century. 13
2.4 Il Dottore: engraving by Joullain, in Riccoboni,
Histoire du Théâtre Italien, 18th century. 17
2.5 Arlecchino disguised as a doctor. Engraving by
Claude Gillot, 18th century. 20
2.6 A Bolognese Doctor. Lithograph, 19th century. 21
2.7 Angelo Constantini as Mezzettino. Acquatint by
Yves Barret, 19th century. 22
2.8 Francesco Andreini: engraving by A. Fiedler after the
fresco by Bernardino Poccetti, Church of the Santissima
Annunziata, Florence, in Comici Italiani by Luigi Rasi,
19th century. 24
 List of figures ix
2.9 Antonio Fava as Il Capitano Bellerofonte
Scarabombardone da Rocca di Ferro. 25
2.10 Pulcinelli cooking maccaroni: etching by F.G. Shmidt
from G.B. Tièpolo, 18th century. Grimaldi, Rome, 1899. 26
2.11 The last rites: Tartaglia as a notary at Pulcinella’s
deathbed, after Ghezzi. in Pulcinella e il Personaggio
del Napoletano in Commedia by Benedetto Croce. 32
6.1 Domenico Biancolelli as Arlecchino: engraving,
18th century. 44
9.1 Zanni skinheads: montage, Atelier Fava. 59
A.1 Antonio Fava as Pulcinella. 63
B.1 Antonio Fava as Pulcinella in Il Pozzo. 67

Engravings, acquatint and etching all from the Archivio Fava-

Buccino. Photographer: Marcello Fava.
Preface

‘It gets dark quite early in Reggio Emilia in August. The station
taxi-driver looks at me disbelievingly when I give him the name
of the student residence on the outskirts of town where I am
supposed to be staying for the next four weeks while attending
Antonio Fava’s summer course in commedia dell’arte. ‘Vacanza –
chiuso – clo-zed’ he says, but still takes me there, hoping perhaps
for a return fare to a cheap hotel. Sure enough, there isn’t a light
on, but I pay him off courageously and am standing forlornly in
the porch when suddenly a car pulls up, and a small, dark ball of
energy (later to be identified as Dina Buccino, Antonio’s partner
in life and work) says “quick, put your bags in here and jump in –
we’re going to see Antonio perform!”
At first sight, Reggio is not a very prepossessing town, espe-
cially when compared with the splendours of neighbouring Parma,
Bologna, and Ferrara. Prosciutto crudo (the pig population is
three times that of the human one), and Parmigiano Reggiano
are what it is famous for. But behind the rather blank facades
lie exquisite renaissance courtyards, and it was in one of those
that Antonio was performing. The concert had already started
and when we arrived and Antonio was providing comic interludes
between madrigals. Dressed in a baggy white tunic, he was asleep
– Zanni’s only relief from the primordial hunger that afflicts him
– alternately snoring and farting. All at once, train-lag vanished,
and it wasn’t dark any more: the irreverent elemental light of a
Commedia lazzo, this was what I had come for…
Next day, in intense heat and humidity, the course started.
Immediately one realised why the original 16th-century masks were
made of leather – they absorb your sweat. Not very hygienic, but
very practical. And practical is what we had to be: forty of us from
fourteen different countries, speaking eight different languages.’
xii Preface
I wrote the above as the opening of my programme note for Antonio’s
production of Love is a Drug for the Oxford Stage Company, which
toured England in 1995. The note records the beginning of a dialogue
which has continued up to the present day, with the following pages
comprising a further episode.
One of our subsequent encounters was when we shared a plat-
form together at the international conference ‘Crossing Boundaries:
Commedia dell’Arte Across Gender, Genre, and Geography’ in 2013
at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I remember then allud-
ing to the Arab saying that a teacher is a candle that burns down so
that others might see, and Antonio vehemently denying that this was
the case with him. Then he later wrote to me to say that he was, how-
ever, scandalised by the systematic way in which some former students
have ‘stolen’ his work. He said he felt ‘cloned, copied, plagiarised’, and
that his teaching was often not even credited, the worst example is
that of an American student emailing his notes on each day’s teaching
for use in a simultaneous workshop back home. ‘And what do they
go on to do?’ he continued, ‘they invent a sort of ‘commedia’ that has
no other existence, is alien, idiotic, rotten at the core. The result is
the humiliation and amateurisation of a great historical phenomenon
which led to the creation of the modern professional actor. Ignored
today by theatres everywhere in the world, Commedia thus pays a
very dear dramatic price and finishes up in the hands of ignoramuses
and incompetents. I have a whole encyclopedia in my head about what
commedia dell’arte is and what it is not. If I took time just to write it
out, it would run to several volumes. Obviously, there wouldn’t be any
readers patient enough to take it all in, but it would be ideal if we could
eventually condense it into a single ‘conversational’ book.’
These conversations document the recorded discussions we had
at my home in Charente over three sessions lasting 2/3 days each
between 2017 and June 2019. Our language was French, which I have
subsequently translated into English, the lingua franca which Antonio
believes is vital to future world-wide study and development of the
form.
The illustrations are from Antonio’s personal collection; most have
never been published in an English edition.
The endnotes have been added post hoc, as have the appendices.
Translations and explanations in square brackets […] have also been
added later by me, often in consultation with Antonio.

John Rudlin
Prologue

JR: Here we are, then, eventually. What is our aim in these

conversations?
AF: To reconsider a kind of theatre that was once simply the theatre,
found more entertaining than any other kind and which, in con-
sequence, is being variously re-interpreted. In order to perform
commedia dell’arte one has an obligation to study the form from
its inception right up to the present day. I consider it to be a voca-
tion. Such consideration, incidentally, does not entail being a slave
to the past, but we’ll come on to that.
Let’s begin with the name: commedia dell’arte is a term first
used by the playwright Carlo Goldoni towards the end of the 18th
century and it is open to misinterpretation. The word ‘commedia’
itself simply means ‘theatre’ – of all kinds, not just ‘comedy’, and
the word ‘arte’ has nothing to do with ‘art’. The simplest translation
would be ‘professional’. A more meaningful overall nomenclature
would be the earlier ‘commedia mercenaria’, but ‘mercenary’ has
unfortunate overtones in other languages: here it just meant that
the plays were performed for money, i.e. professional. ‘Commedia
improvvisa’ is another earlier term and one which it might be pref-
erable to use today.
JR: In English, some scholars are now content to reduce the nomencla-
ture to just ‘Commedia’.
AF: As shorthand possibly. For me the word ‘Commedia’ on its own
would preferably be with reference to a particular scenario as per-
formed. For the form as a whole I still prefer the whole phrase.
Anyway, professional theatre is what we are talking about here, in
a form that has changed and developed throughout its existence,
but always on the basis of an underlying structure. It is that struc-
ture that I now want to insist upon. It is based on solid foundations
with the following pillars: the mask; the personnages; performance
xiv Prologue
location; the scenario; collective creation; gestural evolution;
closed forms; multilingualism and, finally, anachronisms.
JR: Let’s begin at the beginning…
AF: In the beginning there were only zannis, and what they performed
were called zannesca, comedie degli zanni, or zannata: zanni plays.
JR: How did they develop into the full form?
AF: 1560 enter the woman: it is she that imposes the mask as an object
on the fledging commedia dell’arte. And, if you invent Isabella, the
role of the attractive young woman, you must also invite on stage
Flavio, the handsome young man, who must not have his face
covered either. The female servant, furthermore, was required to
expose more than just her face. Who was left to wear the leather
mask, then? The old, the stupid and the grotesque. In the baroque
period there were definitively five Masks: the two old men, the
Magnifico (Pantalone) and the Doctor; the two male servants
(zannis) and the Captain, making, with the addition of the Lovers,
a company of seven. The old, the young, the servants and the
intruder. The Lovers could be reduplicated and there could also
be a servetta – a female servant, making a troupe of nine. As time
went by different actors changed the names in order to make a
name for themselves, but the tipi fissi [fixed types] remained basi-
cally the same.
Commedia dell’arte then dominated the European stage for
more than two centuries, but the thing which nearly killed it off,
like the huge meteorite which is supposed to have destroyed the
habitat of the dinosaurs, was the French revolution. What hap-
pened in Europe at that moment was precisely the same sort of
step-change: taste in art and all other cultural forms altered rad-
ically, first in France and then in monarchies throughout Europe
whose aristocrats did not want to find themselves following their
French counterparts to the scaffold. They preferred to change
their constitutions.
JR: So commedia dell’arte became a profession that one could no
longer profess to.
AF: It was inevitably a victim. Until then patronage had been extended
by royalty, by the aristocracy and even rich merchants to troupes
to be disbursed amongst individuals by mutual agreement, after
production and other costs had been met. In Italy the amounts
offered reflected a certain rivalry between Dukes, who each
wanted to boast of having the best company under their wing. The
Duke of Mantua was particularly magnanimous. That’s how the
Renaissance had developed: there were lots of little States whose
 Prologue xv
Dukes wanted to be the biggest, the best, the most beautiful. The
intensity of competition was incredible, not only in the beaux arts,
but also in the sciences. That is why the French revolution was
such a disaster: all that smacked of the Ancien Régime was swept
away by fear. Since la commedia dell’arte had always been pro-
tected and provided for by that régime, it now became necessary
for audiences to distance themselves from it. The exception was
in the South of Italy, where Pulcinella survived as he always has
done. There were new themes for him to explore, but he retained
the same identity.
JR: And, under various guises, commedia dell’arte also survived in the
Parisian foires… but that’s another story. Let’s go on to examine
your sense of structure, then.
1 The mask

AF: As an object the commedia dell’arte mask is a false countenance

made of leather. It is commonly thought that it was black, ab
origine, but this is not the case: it was of natural tan colour when
new, only becoming blackened with use and age. In the olden
days, performing in the open air or by candle-light, it might take
two or three generations of wear for a mask to blacken totally.
Furthermore, the mask-makers of the time did not have the means
to introduce different colours. With today’s stage illumination
by electricity, the darkening process is speeded up considerably,
and one also needs to introduce some subtlety of tone. When I
dye a mask that I have made, it is in anticipation of the hue that
the leather would have adopted after 10 years or so. Incidentally,
the comici dell’arte would never have requested a new mask to be
made black: a lot of servants were slaves at the time, but black
slaves had no place in commedia dell’arte. Ariane Mnouchkine
was quite wrong to make such a supposition.1
Furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever for the misap-
prehension going round present-day mask-makers that Brighella’s
mask should be olive-green. Where the green supposition has
come from I do not know, but it is the kind of theorisation with
no historical basis in actual Commedia performance that I find
unacceptable. (See Figure 1.1)
JR: I think there’s been a mistranslation somewhere along the line.
‘Olivatre’ in French when referring to facial complexion would
perhaps be better rendered ‘sallow’ than ‘olivaceous’ in English.
AF: Even olive-brown due to the natural tanning process, but not
green. I repeat, as the leather ages, with temperature and sweat,
the mask passes through all the colours by which a white European
face is normally known. Green is not one of them. Commedia
mask-makers never made fantastical masks.
2 The mask

Figure 1.1 Grande Zanni mask*

*This image can be viewed in colour via the eResource link found in the preliminary
pages of this edition www.routledge.com/9780367648565 and on the book’s webpage on
Routledge.com.

JR: In the 18th century Brighella did acquire green frogging on his
costume…
AF: A green-faced Brighella is on my no-no list, and that’s that.
JR: I’m interested to discover what else you are going to put on your
no-no list…
AF: All in good time… It is not usually understood that the first
mask to be found in commedia dell’arte was make-up, that of
the infarinato, [literally ‘the enfloured one’, the white-faced fool].
His make-up was white2, heavily so, made popular again in the
19th century, particularly by the French Pierrots. In the early days
of playing in the street in the broad light of day, actors wanted to
show a face that was not their own: that of the character, not of the
actor. The white face also more readily enabled women’s parts to
be played by men, as was the tradition. (See Figure 1.2)
JR: Traces of the floured face can still be found in early cinema: the
Keystone Cops, Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd,
Stan Laurel, for example, Why?
AF: Because the principals needed to stand out from the crowd in both
cases – the sunlit streets of the Italian carnivals and the film lots
of Hollywood.
 The mask 3

Figure 1.2 Pantalone dancing in an inn

JR: And early black-and-white one and two-reelers were filmed

outdoors…
AF: Yes.
JR: …Hollywood becoming the movie-making centre it did because
of the exceptional quality of the light in the days before pollution.
But why then did those white-faced comici dell’arte end up wear-
ing the mask?
AF: The facial mask alone is not a sufficient disguise: the head needs
to be considered as a whole: the wig or hat, facial hair, the chin
below the half-mask line, the cheeks even in the case of the doc-
tor’s quarter-mask. Today there is a whole line of theatrical inves-
tigation, altogether modern, specific to our times, which is based
on the presumption that all you need is the mask and that if you
put it on, and little else in terms of dressing head or body – are
practically naked, in fact – it will dictate to you how your body
should behave. I’ve seen this several times on the internet as street
performance being practised in the name of commedia dell’arte;
it makes about as much sense as promenading naked except for a
pair of shoes.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 BRICK HORIZONS

Here the old map a woodland marks,

With rivers winding through the hills;
And prints remain of spacious parks,
And gabled farms and watermills.

But now we see no fields to reap,

No flowers to welcome sun and rain:
The hillside is a cinder heap,
The river is an inky drain.

The modern town of red brick streets,

Row beyond row, and shelf on shelf,
On one side spreads until it meets
A town as dreary as itself;
And on the other side its arms
Of road and tramway are out-thrust,
And mutilate the fields and farms,
And shame the woods with noise and dust.

Here, from the scenes we love remote,

Dwell half the toilers of the land,—
The soul we think of as a vote,
The heart we speak of as a hand.

Dull sons of a mechanic age

Who claim but miss the rights of man,—
They have no dreams beyond their cage,
They know not of the haunts of Pan.

Here, wandering through mills and mines

And dreary streets each like the last,
Enclosed by brick horizon lines,
I found an island of the past.
A few sad fields, a few old trees,
In that new world of grime and smoke
Told me the time was springtime; these
Alone remembered and awoke.

And in the grass were stars and bells,

The immemorial blossomings
That spring to greet us from the wells
Of Beauty at the heart of things.

A lark sang overhead, its note

Had the same joy with which it fills
The morning, when we hear it float
Through crystal air on thymy hills.

We mar the earth, our modern toil

Defaces old and lovely things;
We soil the stream, we cannot soil
The brightness of Life’s fountain springs.

Here where man’s last progressive aim

Has stamped the green earth with the brand
Of want and greed, and put to shame
Her beauty, and we see the land

With mine and factory and street

Deformed, and filled with dreary lives,—
Here, too, Life’s fountain springs are sweet:
Our venture fails, God’s hope survives.

And in the heart of every child

Born in this brick horizon ring
The flowers of wonderland grow wild,
The birds of El Dorado sing.
 FIRST PATHWAYS

Where were the pathways that your childhood knew?—

In mountain glens? or by the ocean strands?
Or where, beyond the ripening harvest land,
The distant hills were blue?

Where evening sunlight threw a golden haze

Over a mellow city’s walls and towers?
Or where the fields and lanes were bright with flowers,
In quiet woodland ways?

And whether here or there, or east or west,

That place you dwelt in first was holy ground;
Its shelter was the kindest you have found,
Its pathways were the best.

And even in the city’s smoke and mire

I doubt not that a golden light was shed
On those first paths, and that they also led
To lands of heart’s desire.

And where the children in dark alleys penned,

Heard the caged lark sing of the April hills,
Or where they dammed the muddy gutter rills,
Or made a dog their friend;
Or where they gathered, dancing hand in hand,
About the organ man, for them, too, lay
Beyond the dismal alley’s entrance way,
The gates of wonderland.

For ’tis my faith that Earth’s first words are sweet

To all her children,—never a rebuff;
And that we only saw, where ways were rough,
The flowers about our feet.
 HIDDEN PATHS

You see a house of weathered stone,

A pillared gate, a courtyard wide,
And ancient trees that almost hide
The garden wild and overgrown;
You see the sheltering screen of pines
Beyond the farmyard and the fold,
And upland cornfields waving gold
Against the blue horizon lines;
But we of every field and wall
And room are now so much a part,
We seem to touch a living heart
And rather feel than see it all.

You pass the broken arch that spanned

The garden walk,—you note the weeds,
But miss our secret path that leads
To hidden nooks of wonderland;
And, where the faded rooms you mark,
You know not of the ancient spell
That o’er them in the firelight fell
When all the world outside was dark.

Elsewhere is your enchanted ground,

Your secret path, your treasure store;
And those who sojourned here before
Saw marvels we have never found.
For Earth is full of hidden ways
More wondrous than the ways it shows,
And treasures that outnumber those
For which men labour all their days.
 THE PATHS OF THE INFINITE

Have we not marked Earth’s limits, followed its long ways round,
Charted our island world, and seen how the measureless deep
Sunders it, holds it remote, that still in our hearts we keep
A faith in a path that links our shores with a shore unfound?

No quest the venturer waits, no world have we to explore;

But still the voices that called us far over the lands and seas
Whisper of stranger countries and lonelier deeps than these,
In the wind on the hill, and the reeds on the lake, and the wave on the shore.

Never beyond our Earth shall the venturer find a guide:

From the golden light of the stars, but not from the stars, a clue
May fall to the Earth; and the rose of eve and the noonday blue
Veil with celestial beauty the fathomless deeps they hide.

They have their bounds those deeps, and the ways that end are long;
But the soul seeks not for an end,—its infinite paths are near;
Over its unknown seas by the light of a dream we steer,
Through its enchanted isles we sail on an ancient song.

Here, where a man and a maid in the dusk of the evening meet,
Here, where a grave is green and the larks are singing above,
The secret of life everlasting is held in a name that we love,
And the paths of the infinite gleam through the flowers that grow at our
feet.
 A DESERTED HOME

Here where the fields lie lonely and untended,

Once stood the old house grey among the trees,
Once to the hills rolled the waves of the cornland—
Long waves and golden, softer than the sea’s.

Long, long ago has the ploughshare rusted,

Long has the barn stood roofless and forlorn;
But oh! far away are some who still remember
The songs of the young girls binding up the corn.

Here where the windows shone across the darkness,

Here where the stars once watched above the fold,
Still watch the stars, but the sheepfold is empty;
Falls now the rain where the hearth glowed of old.

Here where the leagues of melancholy loughsedge

Moan in the wind round the grey forsaken shore,
Once waved the corn in the mid-month of autumn,
Once sped the dance when the corn was on the floor.
 BEYOND THE FARTHEST HORIZON

We have dreamed dreams beyond our comprehending,

Visions too beautiful to be untrue;
We have seen mysteries that yield no clue,
And sought our goals on ways that have no ending.
We, creatures of the earth,
The lowly born, the mortal, the foredoomed
To spend our fleeting moments on the spot
Wherein to-morrow we shall be entombed,
And hideously rot,—
We have seen loveliness that shall not pass;
We have beheld immortal destinies;
We have seen Heaven and Hell and joined their strife;
Ay, we whose flesh shall perish as the grass
Have flung the passion of the heart that dies
Into the hope of everlasting life.

Oh, miracle of human sight!

That leaps beyond our earthly prison bars
To wander in the pathways of the stars
Across the lone abysses of the night.
Oh, miracle of thought! that still outsweeps
Our vision, and beyond its range surveys
The vistas of interminable ways,
The chasms of unfathomable deeps,
Renewed forevermore, until at last
The endless and the ended alike seem
Impossible, and all becomes a dream;
And from their crazy watch-tower in the vast
Those wild-winged thoughts again to earth descend
To hide from the unfathomed and unknown,
And seek the shelter love has made our own
On homely paths that in a graveyard end.
Oh, miracles of sight and thought and dream!
Y d b t l d t f th t
You do but lead us to a farther gate,
A higher window in the prison wall
That bounds our mortal state:
However far you lift us we must fall.
But lo! remains the miracle supreme,—
That we, whom Death and Change have shown our fate,
We, the chance progeny of Earth and Time,
Should ask for more than Earth and Time create,
And, goalless and without the strength to climb,
Should dare to climb where we were born to grope;
That we the lowly could conceive the great,
Dream in our dust of destinies sublime,
And link our moments to immortal hope.

No lesson of the brain can teach the soul

That ’twas not born to share
A nobler purpose, a sublimer care
Than those which end in paths without a goal;
No disenchantment turn it from the quest
Of something unfulfilled and unpossessed
O’er which no waters of oblivion roll.
But not in flight of thought beyond the stars
Can we escape our mortal prison bars:
There the unfathomable depths remain
Blind alleys of the brain:
The sources of those sudden gleams of light
That merge our finite in the infinite,
We look for there in vain;
For not upon the pathways that are barred
But those left open,—not where the unknown quest
Dismays the soul, but where it offers rest,
Are set those lights that point us heavenward.

So, let us turn to the unfinished task

That earth demands, strive for one hour to keep
A watch with God, nor watching fall asleep,
Before immortal destinies we ask.
Before we seek to share
A larger purpose, a sublimer care,
Let us o’ercome the bondage of our fears,
And fit ourselves to bear
The burden of our few and sinful years.
Ere we would claim a right to comprehend
The meaning of the life that has no end
Let us be faithful to our passing hours,
And read their beauty, and that light pursue
Which gives the dawn its rose, the noon its blue,
And tells its secret to the wayside flowers.

Our eyes that roam the heavens are too dim,

Our faithless hearts too cumbered with our cares
To reach that light; but whoso sees and dares
To follow, we must also follow him.
Our heroes have beheld it and our seers,
Who in the darkest hours foretold the dawn.
It flashes on the sword for freedom drawn:
It makes a rainbow of a people’s tears.
The vast, the infinite, no more appal
Him who on homely ways has seen it fall:
He trusts the far, he dowers the unknown
With all the love that Earth has made our own,
And all the beauty that his dreams recall:
For him the loneliest deeps of night it cheers;
It gathers in its fold the countless spheres,
And makes a constant homelight for them all.
 A HALT ON THE WAY

A pause, a halt upon the way!

A time for dreaming and recalling;
We bore the burden of the day,
And now the autumn night is falling.

A halt in life! a little while

In which to be but a beholder,
And think not of the coming mile
And feel not, “I am growing older.”

A stern old man with wrinkled brow,

Urging us on with beckoning finger,
Time seems no longer—rather now
A sweetheart who would make us linger.

Old times are with us,—long ago;

Upon the wall familiar shadows;
We find again the haunts we know,
The pleasant pathways through the meadows.

And as we turn and look ahead,

Seeking beyond for things departed,
And dream of pathways we must tread
In days to come through lands uncharted,

Old faiths still light us on our way,

Old love and laughter, hope and sorrow,—
As evening of the Northern day
Becomes the morning of to-morrow.
 OLD LANDMARKS

The log flames, as they leap and fall,

Cast ancient shadows on the wall;
Again I hear the south-west blow
About the house, as long ago
We heard it, when we gathered round
The hearth made homelier by the sound
That in the chimney caverns keened
And told of things the darkness screened.
Dim in their panels round the room
The old unchanging faces loom;
And soft upon the crimson robe,
The hand that rests upon a globe,
The dusky frames, the faded tints,
The flicker of the hearth-light glints.
Out in the yard familiar tones
Of voices reach me; on the stones
A waggon rumbles, and a bark
Welcomes an inmate from the dark.
It might be twenty years ago,
So much of all we used to know
Remains unchanged; and yet I feel
Some want that makes it half unreal.
For we who long ago were part
Of all we knew, the very heart
Of all we loved, let somewhere slip
The bonds of that old comradeship.
The past awakes; but while I muse
Here in the same old scenes, I lose
The paths to which we once had clues.
Along familiar ways we went
All day, at every turn intent
To mark where Time had made a theft,
Or undisturbed our treasure left.
H ld d d h
Here an old tree was down, and there
A roof had fallen, a hearth was bare,
Where once we saw amid the smoke
The glowing turf, the kindly folk.
Here one we had watched beside the plough
Stride with his horses, hobbled now;
And here there strode a full-grown man
Where once a bare-legged urchin ran.
And where was now that girl whose feet
Once made yon mountain path so sweet?
Whose shyness flushed her cheek, the while
The mischief hidden in her smile
Belied it? I behold the spot
Where once she passed but now is not,
The grey rocks, where the mountain breeze
Fluttered the skirts about her knees.
We passed beside the wheelwright’s door
Where, as it used to be, the floor
Was piled with shavings, and a haze
Of dusty motes made dim the rays
Of sunlight, and the air was sweet
With smell of new-sawn wood and peat.
We heard the smithy anvil clink,
And saw the fire grow bright and sink
In answer to the bellows’ wheeze,
While, as of old, between his knees
The smith a horse’s fetlocks drew,
And rasped the hoof and nailed the shoe.
Here, and at every place of call,
The welcome that we had from all,
The pleasant sound of names outgrown
By which in boyhood we were known,
Quick springing to their lips, a look
That backward to old meetings took
Our thoughts, a word that brought to mind
Something for ever left behind,—
All, though they blessed us, touched the springs
Of tears at the deep heart of things.
O tea s at t e deep ea t o t gs.

We saw the mountains far away,

Beyond whose blue horizons lay
The wonderlands of which we dreamed
Of old; and still their barrier seemed
To tell us of the pilgrim quest,
And things remote and unpossessed,—
Not of that world which on our hearts
Had marked its bounds and graved its charts.
They told us of that unknown shore
That none can find; but where, before,
They called us o’er the world to roam,
They now seemed sheltering walls of home.
And those old paths whose ends we sought
Were dearer for themselves than ought
Their ends foretold: no truth could harm
Their beauty or undo their charm;
No disillusions of the far
Could touch their homeliness, or mar
The love that made them what they are.

Here we were children: here in turn

Our children in the same paths learn
The secrets of the woods and flowers,
And dream the dreams that once were ours.
Their vision keen renews our own,
Their certainties our doubts atone,
And, sharing in their joys, we weave
The years we find with those we leave.
A little weary, glad of rest
Ourselves, our hearts are in their quest.
Pilgrims of life, whose steps have slowed,
We love to linger on the road,
Or reach the welcome stage, while they
Are eager for the unknown way.
Some time to come their thoughts will turn
To these wild winter nights, and yearn
For something lost and left behind
For something lost and left behind,
As now I turn.—I hear the wind
Keen in the chimney as of old,
And darkness falls on field and fold;—
I catch the clue, on scenes that were
I look not backward,—I am there!
The men are gone, the gates are barred,
We steal across the empty yard,
The cattle drowse within their stalls,
The shelter of our homestead walls
Is round us, and the ways without
Are filled with mystery and doubt.
Over the hidden forest sweeps
The wind, and all its haunted deeps
Are calling, and we do not dare
Farther beyond our walls to fare
Than o’er one field, the sheds to gain
Where, sheltered from the wind and rain,
The watchful shepherd and his dogs
Still tarry, and a fire of logs,
A lantern’s light, a friendly bark,
Make us an outpost in the dark.
I miss the way! I drop the clues!
Through mists of years again I lose
My childhood, and alone I sit
And watch the shadows leap and flit
Above the hearth. The world that lies
Beyond our homely boundaries
I know, and in the darkness dwell
No hidden foes, no wizard spell.
But still the starry deeps are crossed
By lonelier paths than those we lost;
Still the old wonder and the fear
Of what we know not, makes more dear
The ways we know; and still, no less
Than in my childhood’s days, I bless
The shelter of their homeliness.

A id th b dl d k
Amid the boundless and unknown
Each calls some guarded spot his own;
A shelter from the vast we win
In homely hearths, and make therein
The glow of light, the sound of mirth,
That bind all children of the earth
In brotherhood; and when the rain
Beats loud upon the window-pane,
And shadows of the firelight fall
Across the floor and on the wall,
And all without is wild and lone
On lands and seas and worlds unknown,—
We know that countless hearthlights burn
In darkened places, and discern,
Inwoven with the troubled plan
Of worlds and ways unknown to man,
The shelter at the heart of life,
The refuge beyond doubt and strife,
The rest for every soul outcast,
The homely hidden in the vast;
And doubt not that whatever fate
May lie beyond us, soon or late,
However far afield we roam,
The unknown way will lead us home.

THE END

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.

By SIDNEY ROYSE LYSAGHT

Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.
POEMS OF THE UNKNOWN WAY
 ATHENÆUM.—“The series of poems under the general heading, ‘The
Undiscovered Shore,’ contains some exquisite renderings of the moods and
impressions of one who goes down, literally as well as tropically, into the
great waters. They are full of melody, full of sadness—the harvest of an eye
quick to catch the beauty of external circumstance and of an ear open to the
calling of the highways of the seas and the highways of life.... Mr. Lysaght
puts an exceptional sense of rhythm at the service of sincere thinking and
fine feeling.”
DAILY CHRONICLE.—“Mr. Lysaght has an admirable style and an
almost Swinburnian command of metre.”
LITERARY WORLD.—“Here is stuff with the right ring; with an accent
such as this to guide him, the critic cannot fall into a mistake. We have
enjoyed our tour among Mr. Lysaght’s perplexities in no half-hearted
fashion.”
Crown 8vo. 6s.
HER MAJESTY’S REBELS
MORNING POST.—“A most remarkable book, and no one on the look-
out for the best in contemporary fiction can afford to miss it.”
WORLD.—“Rare and charming novel.... The story is intensely
interesting, and every individual is alive and appealing.”
ACADEMY.—“To find fault with Her Majesty’s Rebels is difficult, and to
praise it worthily is not easy; few Irish books of such good parts have come
into our hands since Carleton’s days.”
STANDARD.—“The story is tremendously absorbing and poignant.”
SPECTATOR.—“A very striking story.”
DAILY CHRONICLE.—“An able book, certainly one of the ablest of the
year.”
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.

By SIDNEY ROYSE LYSAGHT

Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. each.
ONE OF THE GRENVILLES
 DAILY TELEGRAPH.—“Bound to be discussed by any one who reads it,
and whatever the verdict of the reader may be, he cannot fail to be
interested and attracted.”
GUARDIAN.—“A really good and absorbing tale.”
ACADEMY.—“There is freshness and distinction about One of the
Grenvilles.... Both for its characters and setting and for its author’s pleasant
wit, this is a novel to read.”
BOOKMAN.—“So high above the average of novels that its readers will
want to urge on the writer a more frequent exercise of his powers.”
THE MARPLOT
SPECTATOR.—“A clever, original, and vigorous work.”
WORLD.—“It is not often the path of the reviewer is brightened by so
admirable a piece of work as Mr. Lysaght’s novel, The Marplot.”
PALL MALL GAZETTE.—“A book which the reader cannot put down
without a glow of honest pleasure.... Of very high excellence.”
SATURDAY REVIEW.—“We do not often come across a better specimen
of modern fiction than The Marplot.”
DAILY TELEGRAPH.—“The whole book teems with good things.”
BOOKMAN.—“There is not a dull page in The Marplot.”
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.
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