as it is, thank heaven, and the race is not likely to come to an end. Where is the necessity of portraying somebody who has a pig's snout or ox's muzzle, and of gathering together the trash of a clown whom you would throw out of the window if he came into your house? The image of a pedant is no more interesting than the pedant himself, and his reflection in a mirror does not make him the less a pedant. An actor who succeeded in imitating the attitudes and manners of cobblers to perfection would not amuse me more than a real cobbler.
“But there is a theatre which I love, a fantastic, extravagant, impossible theatre, in which the worthy public would pitilessly hiss from the first scene, for want of understanding a single word.
“It is a singular theatre. Glow-worms take the place of Argand lamps, and a scarabaeus, beating time with his antennae, is placed at the desk. The cricket takes his part; the nightingale is first flute; little sylphs issuing from the pea-blossom hold basses of citron-peel between their pretty legs which are whiter than ivory and with mighty power of arm move their bows, made with a hair from Titania's eyelash, over strings of spiders' thread; the little wig with its three hammers, which the scarabaeus conductor wears, quivers with pleasure and diffuses about it a luminous dust, so sweet is the harmony and so well executed the overture!
“A curtain of butterflies' wings, more delicate than the interior pellicle of an egg, rises slowly after the three indispensable raps. The house is full of the souls of poets seated in stalls of mother-of-pearl, and watching the performance through dewdrops set on the golden pistils of lilies. These are their opera-glasses.
“The scenery is not like any known scenery; the country which it represents is as strange as was America before its discovery. The palette of the richest painter has not half the tones with which it is diapered. All is painted in odd and singular colors. The verditer, the blue-ash, the ultramine, and the red and yellow lake are in profusion.
“The sky, which is of a greenish-blue, is striped zebra-wise with broad flaxen and tawny bands; in the middle distance spare and slender trees wave their scanty foliage the color of dried roses; the distance, instead of being drowned in its azure-tinted vapor, is of the most beautiful apple-green, and here and there escape spirals of golden smoke. A wandering ray hangs on the portal of a ruined temple or the spire of a tower. Towns full of bell-turrets, pyramids, domes, arcades, and ramps, are seated on the hills and reflected in crystal lakes; large trees with broad leaves, deeply carved by the chisels of the fairies, inextricably entwine their trunks and branches to form the wings. Over their heads the clouds of heaven collect like snow-flakes, through their interstices the eyes of dwarfs and gnomes are seen to sparkle, and their tortuous roots sink into the soil like the finger of a giant-hand. The woodpecker keeps time as he taps them with his horny beak, and emerald lizards bask in the sun on the moss at their foot.
“The mushroom looks on at the comedy with his hat on his head, like the insolent fellow that he is. The dainty violet stands up on her little tiptoes between two blades of grass, and opens her blue eyes wide to see the hero pass.
“The bullfinch and the linnet lean down at the end of the boughs to prompt the actors in their parts.
“Through the tall grasses, the lofty purple thistles and the velvet-leaved burdocks, wind, like silver snakes, brooks that are formed with the tears of stags at bay. At wide intervals anemones are seen shining on the turf like drops of blood, and daisies, like veritable duchesses, carrying high their heads laden with crowns of pearls.
“The characters are of no time or country; they come and go without our knowing why or how; they neither eat nor drink, they dwell nowhere and have no occupation; they possess neither lands, nor incomes, nor houses; only sometimes they carry under their arm a little box full of diamonds as big as pigeons' eggs; as they walk they do not shake a single drop of rain from the heads of the flowers nor raise a single grain of the dust on the roads.
“Their dress is the most extravagant and fantastical in the world. Pointed steeple-shaped hats with brims as broad as a Chinese parasol and immoderate plumes plucked from the tails of the bird of paradise and the phoenix; cloaks striped with brilliant colors, doublets of velvet and brocade, letting the satin or silver-cloth lining be seen through their gold-laced slashings; hose puffed and swollen like balloons; scarlet stockings, with embroidered clocks, shoes with high heels and large rosettes; little slender swords, with the point in the air and the hilt depressed, covered with cords and ribbons-so for the men.
“The women are no less curiously accoutered.
“The drawings of Delia Bella and Romain de Hooge might serve to represent the character of their attire. There are stuffed, undulating robes with great folds, whose colors play like those on the necks of turtle-doves, and reflect all the changing tints of the iris, large sleeves whence other sleeves emerge, ruffs of open-slashed lace rising higher than the head which they serve to frame, corsets laden with knots of embroideries, aiglets, strange jewels, crests of heron plumes, necklaces of big pearls, fans formed from the peacock's tail with mirrors in the centre, little slippers and pattens, garlands of artificial flowers, spangles, wire-worked gauzes, paint, patches, and everything that can add flavor and piquancy to a theatrical toilette.
“It is a style which is not precisely English, nor German, nor French, nor Turkish, nor Spanish, nor Tartar, though it partakes somewhat of all these, and is one which has adopted what is most graceful and characteristic from every country. Actors dressed in this manner may say what they will without doing violence to probability. Fancy may rove in all directions, style may at its ease unroll its diapered rings like a snake basking in the sun; the most exotic conceits may fearlessly spread their singular flower-cups and diffuse around them their perfume of amber and musk. Nothing hinders it, — neither places, nor names, nor customs.
“How amusing and charming are their utterances! They are not such actors as contort their mouths and make their eyes start out of their heads in order to despatch their tirade with effect, like our dramatic howlers; they, at least, have not the appearance of workmen at their task, or of oxen yoked to the action and hastening to get done with it; they are not plastered with chalk and rouge half an inch thick; they do not carry tin daggers nor keep a pig's bladder filled with chickens' blood in reserve beneath their cloaks; they do not trail the same oil-stained rags through entire acts.
“They speak without hurry or clamor, like well-bred people who attach no great importance to what they are doing; the lover makes his declaration with the easiest air in the world; he taps his thigh with the tip of his white glove, or adjusts the leg of his trousers while he is speaking; the lady carelessly shakes the dew from her bouquet and exchange witticisms with her attendant; the lover takes very little trouble to soften his cruel fair; his principal business is to drop clusters of pearls and bunches of roses from his lips, and to scatter poetic gems like a true spendthrift; often he effaces himself entirely, and lets the author court his mistress in his stead. Jealousy is no fault of his, and he is of the most accommodating disposition. With his eyes raised to the flies and friezes of the theatre, he complacently waits until the poet has finished saying what has taken his fancy, to resume his part and place himself again upon his knees.
“All is woven and unwoven with admirable carelessness; effects have no causes, and causes no effects; the most witty character is he who says most absurdities; the most foolish says the wittiest things; young girls talk in a way that would make courtesans blush, and courtesans utter maxims of morality. The most unheard-of adventures follow one after another without any explanation; the noble father arrives from China in a bamboo junk expressly to recognize a little girl who has been carped off; gods and fairies do nothing but ascend and descend in their machines. The action plunges into the sea beneath the topaz dome of the waves, transversing the bottom of the ocean through forests of coral and madrepore, or rises to heaven on the wings of lark and griffin.
“The dialogue is most universal: the lion contributes a vigorously uttered oh! oh! — the wall speaks through its chinks, and provided that he has a witticism, rebus, or pun to interpose, any one is free to interrupt the most interesting scene; the ass's head of Bottom is as welcome as the golden head of Ariel; the author's mind may be discerned beneath every form, and all these contradictions are like so many facets which reflect its different aspects while imparting to it the colors of the prism.
“This apparent pell-mell and disorder succeeds after all in representing real life with more exactness in its fantastic presentations than the most minutely studied drama of manners. Every man comprises the whole of humanity within himself, and by writing what comes into his head, he succeeds better than by copying through a magnifying glass objects which are external to him.
“What a glorious family! young romantic lovers, roaming damsels, serviceable attendants, caustic buffoons, artless valets and peasants, gracious kings, whose names and kingdoms are unknown to historian and geographer; motley graciosos, clowns with sharp repartees and miraculous capers; O you who give utterance to free caprice through your smiling lips, I love you and adore you among and above all others: Perdita, Rosalind, Celia, Pandarus, Parolles, Silvio, Leander, and the rest, all those charming types, so false and so true, who, in the checkered wings of folly soar above gross reality, and in whom the poet personifies his joy, his melancholy, his love, and his most intimate dream beneath the most frivolous and flippant appearances.
