DEPICTS LIFE OF REIGN OF LOUIS XIV

"The Montespan" is a three-act drama written about twenty years ago by Romain Rolland, and only recently translated into English by Miss-Helena Van Brugh de Kay, with an introduction by the author for American readers. This introduction is not the least interesting part of the volume. Short as it is, it contains a vigorous, damaging deunuciation of the so-called "classic" ages, with one of which, the reign of Louis XIV, the play itself is concerned. "Epochs of prey", M. Rolland describes them, "a pack of hounds with blind instincts, always straining to escape from the huntsman's leash." The era of Augustus, the era of Leo X, the era of Louis XIV,--all built on the uncertain grounds of repression, murder and cruelty; all followed by periods of terrible degeneration, of savage misuse of liberty.

In "The Montespan", inspired by the famous "Poison Affair", M. Rolland does not pretend to follow exactly the events of history. His object is to create the atmosphere of the decadent court, to develop the characters logically from what is known of them without necessarily adhering to the minor details of fact. Madame de Montespan, for example, is made to take poison and die, in his play; in reality, she survived this episode by twenty-seven years. But no one can read the play and not be convinced that her suicide was the logical, certainly the most artistic ending for her glittering career. The author show an ambitious, ruthless woman, frightened by the approach of age and the failing devotion of the king into the most desperate measures for retaining her remarkable domination. While the king amuses himself with younger, prettier women, La Montespan performs the most diabolical, awful sacrifices in the belief that she can thereby hold the fickle monarch; and M. Rolland has woven this intensely dramatic material into a short, but powerful and moving tragedy. The several liberties which he has taken with fact really do, as he declares, "affirm the rights of art versus history"; the significance of the period is more clearly brought out by his logical development, than it could possibly be by mere dramatization of actual events.