Byron once thought to write a drama on this subject; had he done so, Silvio Pellico might have had a formidable rival. More or less, all the playwrights have gone to Italian history, and the more exact they became, the more gross the situation. F. Marion Crawford fell on this rock of accuracy, when he wrote his Francesca play for Mme. Sarah Bernhardt.
Silvio Pellico, who wrote the first drama on "Francesca da Rimini" known to modern playgoers, lived his early life in an intensely religious atmosphere, and suffered imprisonment later because of his patriotic tendencies; it is not surprising, therefore, to find in his play--first a national appeal that was to win it applause from all Italy, and then, more important still, a purity of tone that struggled most nobly against an inevitable, passionate end. _Paolo_ is the one who, after some scruples, succumbs; _Francesca_ is infinitely conscious that she is a wife; _Giovanni_ is suspicious. It would seem that Pellico's play is the first that realized the theatrical possibilities of the story; research has brought to light no play manuscript previous to his.
In the handling of his details, Pellico's incongruities and artificialities are many. _Paolo_ returns from knightly deeds in Asia, to find his father dead--the _Malatesta Verucchio_ who died in 1312, twenty-seven years after _Giovanni_ committed the murder; therefore Pellico gives to the deformed brother the power that history does not wholly accord. The dramatist would avoid the indelicacy he finds in the reading incident, recounting it only in a situation during which _Francesca_ holds aloof in a wild effort to stifle her love. Throughout the play, there is this ruthless twisting, in a desire to conceal wrong and unpardonable sin.
Turning to Uhland's fragmentary ideas, which even he himself was doubtful whether he could handle, an atmosphere confronts us as mediævally German as the "Der arme Heinrich" of Hartmann von Aue, which was the inspirational source for Longfellow's "The Golden Legend." Uhland shows heaviness in conception, and a conventionality, thoroughly at variance with the tragedy's original passion. Romantic as he is, he has robbed the story of its warm southern nature, and has thrown his Dante aside to deal with false situation. He seems willing to let fact and spirit go. _Paolo_ is a knight who tilts and worships a glove. Uhland thinks, and he is not alone in his belief, that _Francesca_ had been promised to _Paolo_ before _Giovanni_ was wedded to her; yet if _Paolo's_ marriage with _Orabile_, in 1269, is to be recognized as correct, historically, logical deductions from dates would discountenance the statement. Neither have I found commentaries to support the theory that _Paolo_ was older than _Giovanni_, as Uhland sets forth in his play. The servant in Boccaccio here becomes a jealous lover. It is interesting to note the variations of this counter-element in the many play versions of the story--the element that urges _Giovanni's_ suspicion to quick action--the dramatic force of _Pepe_ in Boker; the disappointed motherhood and embittered love of _Lucrezia_ in Stephen Phillips; the inborn savagery of _Malatestino_ in D'Annunzio; the innocent unconsciousness of _Concordia_ in Crawford, which finds similarity in a scene in Maeterlinck's "Pelléas and Mélisande" between father and little son. Further, in Uhland, a distorted glimpse of a colourless reportorial figure of Dante, gathering material for his poem, is as meaningless as it is unnecessary for atmosphere.