We have to allow, you will admit, at
least as much to the beneficent heightening of travesty, if we have ever
seen the living actor in the morning, not yet shaved, standing at the
bar, his hat on one side, his mouth spreading in that abandonment to
laughter which has become from the necessity of his profession, a
natural trick; oh, much more, I think, than if we merely come upon an
always decorative, never an obtrusive, costumed figure, leaning against
the wall, nonchalantly enough, in a corner of the coulisses.
To sharpen our sense of what is illusive in the illusion of the puppets,
let us sit not too far from the stage. Choosing our place carefully, we
shall have the satisfaction of always seeing the wires at their work,
while I think we shall lose nothing of what is most savoury in the feast
of the illusion. There is not indeed the appeal to the senses of the
first row of the stalls at a ballet of living dancers. But is not that a
trifle too obvious sentiment for the true artist in artificial things?
Why leave the ball-room? It is not nature that one looks for on the
stage in this kind of spectacle, and our excitement in watching it
should remain purely intellectual.
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