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Wits, roysterers, and actors are sitting waiting for the poet Sly to come and amuse them with his songs and verses. Enters a group of nobles, among whom are the Earl of Westmoreland, and Dolly, a girl of aristocratic birth. The gentlefolk are visiting the tavern for a caprice.

Suddenly Sly enters, somewhat bemused with drink, and begins at once to divert the company with his songs and jests. They are all captivated by the man's wit, and watch him fascinated until, overcome with liquor, he falls to the ground. Someone suggests taking him out into the street, but Westmoreland has another idea, and proposes that they carry him to his castle, and when he comes round they will tell him he has been mad, but has miraculously recovered his reason. They will treat him like a great lord, and amuse themselves with the jokes until they are tired of it, when they will tell him the truth and turn him away.

The second act shows us the process of convincing the wretched poet that he is a great lord, who has a charming lady in the person of Dolly. Sly begins to believe even this, speaks words of love to her, is about to embrace her, when a burst of mocking laughter comes from behind a curtain, and Westmoreland and his friends are revealed.

The final act shows Sly, disillusioned, in a prison of Westmoreland's castle. But he cannot live the old life any more after having tasted happiness, so he opens his veins with a shard of glass. Dolly, however, has been touched by the poet's fate, and in the silence of the night she comes to him in his prison and tells him she understands him. But Sly, who all his life has sought love and sympathy, finds it now too late, for the life is dripping from him. He dies in the girl's arms, while a servant from above throws a light on the two and says it is time to take Sly back to the tavern, and

finds the moment opportune since he seems to be asleep.

Extended treatment of the story of the trick played on the tinker, reduced by Shakespeare to a mere sketch, is not new to the stage. The Induction to The Taming of the Shrew is seldom produced when the comedy is revived today; but in the earlier Elizabethan play, The Taming of A Shrew, published in 1594, the Sly story is treated at far greater length than Shakespeare accords it in his revision.

The story itself is very old. It occurs in the Arabian Nights as well as in an English ballad, and there is pretty good reason for believing that Philip the Good actually carried out such a practical joke in 1440. But Signor Forzano is the first to perceive the tragic possibilities inherent in the joke - unless, indeed, we except Mr. Bernard Shaw, who in Pygmalion, has treated a somewhat similar theme. Sly has been produced at the Costanzi Opera House, in Rome.

A GERMAN SCHOOL OF WISDOM'

COUNT HERMANN KEYSERLING, the distinguished German philosopher, has founded a 'School of Wisdom' at Darmstadt, which he hopes will become a centre of spiritual influence and start the German mind on what the Count describes as 'the way toward Perfection. This is to be accomplished by means of lectures and conversations.

Larger assemblies are to be held two or three times a year, where lectures on philosophic themes will be given. In May, Count Keyserling himself lectured on 'The Symbolism of History, Politics, Wisdom, and World Superiority,' and Dr. Richard Wilhelm, of Peking, on 'Chinese Wisdom.' There are no restrictions as to nationality in the school. Anyone who becomes a member of the Gesellschaft für freie Philosophie may attend.

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THE LIVING AGE

NUMBER 4018

JULY 9, 1921

A WEEK OF THE WORLD

'PERPLEXED AMERICA'

THE London Nation and Athenæum discusses the foreign policy of President Harding's administration under the above title. Like most British journals, it takes Mr. Harvey's Pilgrims' Banquet speech very pleasantly. However, unlike its contemporaries previously quoted by us, it has the advantage of the comments upon the speech cabled from the United States. On a basis of the latter, it refuses to attach so much importance as they did to Mr. Harvey's utterances as an expression of presidential policy. It refers rather sympathetically to the President's difficulties, says that Mr. Hughes is checked in his efforts to promote better conditions in Europe 'by the unintelligent Gallicism of the American Press'; that the big money interests of the United States are fighting desperately to have America come under 'a treaty already dead beyond expression.' It implies that financial influences have something to do with the delay of the peace resolution in Congress; and elsewhere suggests that Wall Street wants the treaty for the protection of its own speculations in Europe. It concludes by saying: "The one thing is to proclaim that America is at peace with all the world, and is resolved to remain so.'

'FASCISMO' ON THE WANE

ACCORDING to Il Messagero, the Fascisti have been rent by dissensions since the last election. Republicans and Monarchists have fallen out and the party is said to be disintegrating. This journal explains the present discord by the fact that the Fascisti rallied around a purely negative programme and confined themselves to a policy of direct action. Faced by the necessity of adopting a positive programme and accommodating themselves to legal parliamentary action, they find themselves divided and helpless.

However this may be, the movement will remain an interesting and fruitful episode in Italian political history. The Fasci are, in fact, Soviets, or more or less spontaneous unions like our Committees of Public Safety at the time of the American Revolution and the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils of the recent German Revolution, organized to perform political functions where the regular government ceased to work. Benito Mussolini, who is said to have started the Fascisti movement, was a Socialist before the war, and at one time editor of the principal Italian Socialist paper, Avanti. During the war, he became what is termed in contemporary parlance a 'social patriot,' Copyright 1921, by The Living Age Co.

and founded a new journal at Milan, Popolo d'Italia. He was an ardent advocate of Italian participation in the war, and fought as a bersagliere at the front.

If the Fascisti disintegrate and disappear, as is now predicted, it will not be because their opponents at the opposite extreme, the Communists, have been vanquished; but because the Moderates have resumed control and violent extremism has lost its meaning.

A comparison of the membership of the Italian Chamber as elected in 1919 and 1921 is as follows:

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as a sovereign state and our ideas as to what constitutes an honest, just, conciliatory international policy." However, during the correspondent's long conversation with him concerning present conditions in Germany, the President manifested great sympathy with its people and confidence in its govern

ment.

Ross reports that, when he paid a farewell call upon Saavedevra, the President of Bolivia, the latter expressed a hope that diplomatic relations between the two countries might be resumed speedily. In Montevideo he attended a meeting of working-people where a longshoreman said to him: 'So long as Germany was unconquered and prospered, everything went well with us. We could buy things cheap and the workingman was well off. Now everything costs enormous prices, goods are poor, and every one is discontented.' This informant says that he found South Americans everywhere sympathetic with Germany, even in Brazil, and ascribes their feeling to three things: the chivalry they have inherited from both their Spanish and their Indian forbears, which makes them sympathize with the defeated side; the memory of the good old days when they could buy German merchandise in abundance at low prices; and finally, regret at the loss of the German market. Brazil wishes to sell coffee to Germany, Argentina wool, and Chile saltpetre; and the people of those countries ascribe their present distress in no small part to the loss of their German customers. Although Ross personally witnessed a demonstration against France in Rio de Janeiro, he does not think this represents the attitude of the people. The cultural and economic ties which unite most Latin-American republics with the Entente nations are so strong, that we can hope only to share their sympathy with the Entente, not to monopolize it,'

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