(_She passes to the door and out: PETRARCA moans. Then LELLO enters and comes to him anxiously._)
Did Laura come to me out of the night-- Come as the first voice breaking beyond death To one despairing? And was I lifted up to Heaven's dawn? And then ...
God! am I falling...? shall I ever...? Down this...? ... My friend stay with me! No, go ... and take them with you--Sancia--all!... I have slain the Spring forever! The green of the whole fair world!... O Laura! Laura!
(_Sinks down on the couch and buries his face in his arms. LELLO goes sorrowfully out._)
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
"It presents a last phase of the Renaissance with great effect." _Sir Sidney Lee._
"'Porzia' is a very romantic and beautiful thing. After a third reading I enjoy and admire it still more." _Gilbert Murray._
"There are certain lyrical qualities in the dramas of Cale Young Rice and certain dramatic qualities in many of his finest lyrics that make it very difficult for the critic to resolve whether he is highest as singer or dramatist. 'Porzia' is a poetic play in which these two gifts blend with subtle and powerful effectiveness. It is not written in stereotyped heroic verse, but in sensitive metrical lines that vary in beat and measure with the strength, the tenderness, the anguish, bitterness and passion of love or hate they have to express. The bizarre and poignant central incident on which the action of 'Porzia' turns is such as would have appealed irresistibly to the imagination and dramatic instincts of the great Elizabethan dramatists, and Mr. Rice has developed it with a force and imaginative beauty that they alone could have equaled and with a restraint and delicacy of touch which makes pitiful and beautiful a story they would have clothed in horror.... He turns what might have been a tragic close to something that is loftier and more moving.... It matters little that we hesitate between ranking Mr. Rice highest as dramatist or lyrist; what matters is that he has the faculty divine beyond any living poet of America; his inspiration is true, and his poetry is the real thing." _The London Bookman._
"'Porzia' has the swift human movement which Mr. Rice puts into his dramas, and technique of a very high order.... The dramatic form is the most difficult to sustain harmoniously and this Mr. Rice always achieves." _The Baltimore News._