climbing figure; then there are meeting figures coming in from the corners of the design; and finally crowds throng the scene. At one time these masses may simply give the sense of a sea of figures, again they may be used for movement for its own sake, while again they may form the designed columns between which the chariot moves down toward Dante. In the progression from the single figure at the start to the full stage at the end, there is the same unfolding, the same building up in volume, that occurs in the progression of lighting from darkness to all-enveloping radiance.

If there is anything in the nature of decoration in the production, it is in the plinths at the back. These are designed as towering, shapeless masses, and through most of the play they are half lost or more in the darkness over the stage. But they emerge and are altered at times, so that they may suggest satanic wings, celestial wings, etc., the changes being accomplished by masses of actors appearing on platforms at various heights, carrying forms that give the desired outline.

A similar convention is observed in the costuming. Individual personality is, of course, rigidly excluded from the groups of massed figures, and the note of impersonality, of abstraction, is further accentuated by clothing the actors, for change of scene, not with costumes, but with shapes, designed merely to intensify the background feeling. Thus the designer virtually covers the human figure, much as the Greeks and Orientals depersonalized the faces of their actors in other times. The leading characters, however, wear a series of masks.

The only other device for change of atmosphere is a series of twenty immense gauzes, rising from each of the upper twenty steps, beyond the plinths, designed to be drawn up successively in the final episode in order to bring the action to the peak of light. This backing of huge gauzes, with a cyclorama behind, helps to achieve the sense of great distances and space that are notably rendered in the drawings.

The third element, sound, follows much the same progression as the lighting and movement. Out of the first silence the single voice of Dante is heard, the

lines building up gradually from that start. The music, too, begins as single sounds. From this beginning there is gradual progression to the full celestial chorus at the close. The speaking of the text in actual time covers perhaps half of the period of action. An orchestra of 150 is called for, with the brasses and drums in front, and the "echo orchestra" of strings behind, the stage. There will also be a hidden chorus of several hundred singing through a gigantic, concealed megaphone, which will produce an astonishing volume of sound. Many other unusual devices will be employed, such as steam whistles to aid the chorused shrieks of the damned, and great pipe-organs used to make the air throb without sound.

Any one knowing the legend of the "Divine Comedy" will be enabled to visualize the flow of action better by looking through the series of illustrations than by any description of mine. Geddes completed a remarkably long series of these drawings, nearly a score making up the sequence from which the reproductions are taken, and several times that many reaching only the dignity of

sketches. A word should be said about the renderings as such, for they stand out as exceptional even in any showing of drawings by the very able group of decorators who now grace the American theater.

Geddes might be said to have no style of his own: every new series of stage designs is entirely predicated upon the demands of the drama in hand, the lighting problems involved, the form of the stage, etc. The well remembered series for "Pelléas and Mélisande" was as different from the later "Boudour" set as could be imagined, and this Dante series seems to be in an equally different vein, as if the designer of the earlier productions had entirely disappeared, and a new artist, with a differing conception of the theater and an entirely alien technic of rendering, had taken up an unrelated problem. But considered simply as drawings, as pictures, these are on a level that Geddes has seldom touched before, and certainly never sustained through a series.

Besides making the drawings and designing the stage, Geddes arranged the complete text and planned every technical detail of the production. The his

tory of the project from that time is illuminating, if somewhat typically discouraging. It was submitted to those in charge of the Dante celebration, and negotiations progressed to the point where a presentation seemed assured on the scale conceived by the designer; indeed, a leading New York producer, the one best fitted to realize such a visionary scheme concretely on a stage, was engaged to produce it. But, as usual when a world artist is being honored, other considerations than art intervened, and ultimately the large Dante celebration fund was dispersed along channels dug closer to the usual fire-works-and-Chautauqua banalities. There is hope that it will still be produced.

But Geddes's drawings remain, and the fact remains that once more one of the younger decorators has come forward with a project revolutionary in spirit and method, instinct with a noble beauty, and yet geared to practical possibilities. It is one more indication, and the best of this season, that America is outgrowing its dependence upon Europe for what is imaginative, progressive, and inspiring in the theater.