NOTES
PALICIO
I
The fragment of Æschylus on the title (see List of previous Editions) suggests a truly ancient origin for the family of Palicio: its known history is given in the Nobiliario viceregio capitaniale e pretoriano in Palermo nobile. Parte terza degli annali di Agostino Inveges. Palermo. MDCLI. p. 104. PALIZZI. Hugo, Squarcialupu and some of the others may be found in Sicilian histories about the year 1500, the supposed date of this play: their characters and the political situation are quasi-historical. The incidents connecting Margaret and Palicio are mostly adapted from a bad French story by De Stendhal, called Vanina Vanini, in a book titled Chroniques Italiennes, published by Michel Levy, in 1855.
1883.
II
Since the publication of PALICIO, unexpected light has been thrown on the married history of Palicio and Margaret. It would seem that they had a son, who was probably named after his maternal uncle, the chief Justiciary: for in March 1891 a half-witted Sicilian, named Manuel Palizzi, or Palicio, was among the Italians who were executed by the mob in New Orleans, for being concerned in the murder of the head of the police. Though the mental condition of this unfortunate fellow was such as to make his responsibility questionable, yet his connection with the Mafia society, and with their motives and crimes, points, as unmistakably as his name, to his ancestor in my play, terribly degraded though he was in body as in mind. It is possible that some of our fanatical anarchists may be similarly the prey of a depraved atavism, and be impelled by a fermentation of the sour dregs of an old puritanic heroism. I hope that the family is now extinct. The late Professor Freeman in the introduction to his History of Sicily, contributed to the literature of my play, by giving a careful and full account of what I assumed to be the origin of the family name.
1894.
THE RETURN OF ULYSSES
This play, being a dramatising of the chief scenes in Homer’s Odyssey, and not a recast of the story in dramatic form, is as a stage-play open to evident objections; to which, if it be not successful, there can be no answer. How closely Homer has been followed need not be pointed out, as translations of the Odyssey are common, and the recent accurate version by Mr. Lang is in every one’s reach. Reference to that will measure the author’s fidelity, and show where he has altered, where added; and it may also excuse him from any acknowledgment of obligation to his friend, beyond the general confession that he has borrowed from his book whenever it suited him to do so.