Luckily, the Muscovites then began dancing and posturing in their pantomime which they call Petrouchka and the old gentleman was wonderfully attentive to the antics of the three live fantoccini. When the black fellow, as he called the Moor, clove the head of his rival with the scimitar, the knight said he had never looked for such barbarity from a fellow who, but a moment ago, was innocently playing a game of ball, like a child. What strange disorders, he added, are bred in the minds of men whose passions are not regulated by virtue, and disciplined by reason. “But pray, you that are a critic, is this in accordance with your rules, as you call them? Did your Aristotle allow pity and terror to be moved by such means as dancing?” I answered that the Greek philosopher had never seen the Muscovites and that, in any case, we had the authority of Shakespeare for expecting murder from any jealous Moor. “Moreover, these Muscovites dance murder as they dance everything. I love to shelter myself under the examples of great men, and let me put you in mind of Hesiod, who says, ‘The gods have bestowed fortitude on some men, and on others a disposition for dancing.’ Fortunately the Muscovites have the more amiable gift.” The knight, with the proper respect of a country gentleman for classick authority, was struck dumb by Hesiod.
He remained silent during the earlier part of Schéhérazade until Karsavina, as the favourite of the Sultan’s harem, persuaded the Chief Eunuch to release her orange-tawny favourite, Monsieur Massine, at which the knight exclaimed, “On my word, a notable young baggage!” I refrained from telling my innocent friend that in the old Arabian tale these tawny creatures were apes. He mightily liked the Sultan’s long beard. “When I am walking in my gallery in the country,” says he, “and see the beards of my ancestors, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many old patriarchs, and myself as an idle smock-faced young fellow. I love to see your Abrahams and Isaacs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry with beards below their girdles. I suppose this fellow, with all these wives, must be Solomon.” And, his thoughts running upon that King, he said he kept his Book of Wisdom by his bedside in the country and found it, though Apocryphal, more conducive to virtue than the writings of Monsieur La Rochefoucauld or, indeed, of Socrates himself, whose life he had read at the end of the Dictionary. Captain Sentry, seeing two or three wags who sat near us lean with an attentive ear towards Sir Roger, and fearing lest they should smoak the knight, plucked him by the elbow, and whispered something in his ear that lasted until the Sultan returned to the harem and put the ladies and their tawny companions to the sword. The favourite’s plunging the dagger into her heart moved him to tears, but he dried them hastily on bethinking him she was a Mahometan, and asked of us, on our way home, whether there was no playhouse in London where they danced true Church of England pantomimes.
PARTRIDGE AT “JULIUS CÆSAR”
Mr. Jones having spent three hours in reading and kissing Sophia’s letter, and being at last in a state of good spirits, he agreed to carry an appointment, which he had before made, into execution. This was, to attend Mrs. Miller and her youngest daughter into the gallery at the St. James’s playhouse, and to admit Mr. Partridge as one of the company. For, as Jones had really that taste for humour which many affect, he expected to enjoy much entertainment in the criticisms of Partridge; from whom he expected the simple dictates of nature, unimproved, indeed, but likewise unadulterated by art.
In the first row, then, of the first gallery did Mr. Jones, Mrs. Miller, her youngest daughter, and Partridge take their places. Partridge immediately declared it was the finest place he had ever been in. When the first music was played he said it was a wonder how so many fiddlers could play at one time without putting one another out.
As soon as the play, which was Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar, began, Partridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the scene in Brutus’s orchard, when he asked Jones, “What season of the year is it, Sir?” Jones answered, “Wait but a moment and you shall hear the boy Lucius say it is the 14th of March.” To which Partridge replied with a smile, “Ay, then I understand why the boy was asleep. Had it been in apple-harvesting time I warrant you he would have been awake and busy as soon as what’s-his-name, Squire Brutus, had turned his back.” And upon the entreaties of Portia to share Brutus’s confidence he inquired if she was not a Somersetshire wench. “For Madam,” said he, “is mighty like the housewives in our county, who will plague their husbands to death rather than let ’em keep a secret.” Nor was he satisfied with Cæsar’s yielding to Calphurnia’s objections against his going to the Capitol. “Ay, anything to please your wife, you old dotard,” said he; “you might have known better than to give heed to a silly woman’s nightmares.”
When they came to the Forum scene and the speeches of Brutus and Antony, Partridge sat with his eyes fixed on the orators and with his mouth open. The same passions which succeeded each other in the crowd of citizens succeeded likewise in him. He was at first all for Brutus and then all for Antony, until he learnt that Cæsar had left 75 drachmas to every Roman citizen. “How much is that in our English money?” he asked Jones, who answered that it was about two guineas. At that he looked chapfallen, bethinking him that, though a round sum, it was not enough to warrant the crowd in such extravagant rejoicing.
“I begin to suspect, Sir,” said he to Jones, “this Squire Antony hath not been above hoodwinking us, but he seemed so much more concerned about the matter than the other speaker, Brutus, that I for one couldn’t help believing every word he said. Yet I believed the other one, too, when he was talking, and I was mightily pleased with what he said about liberty and Britons never being slaves.” “You mean Romans,” answered Jones, “not Britons.” “Well, well,” said Partridge, “I know it is only a play, but if I thought they were merely Romans, and not Britons at heart, I should not care a hang about ’em or what became of ’em.”
To say the truth, I believe honest Partridge, though a raw country fellow and ignorant of those dramatic rules which learned critics from the Temple and the other Inns of Court have introduced, along with improved catcalls, into our playhouses, was here uttering the sentiments of nature. Should we be concerned about the fortunes of those ancient Romans were they utter strangers to us and did we not put ourselves in their places, which is as much as to turn them all from Romans into Britons? To be sure, while our imagination is thus turning them, it will not forbear a few necessary amendments for the sake of verisimilitude. For, to name only one particular, no free and independent Briton could imagine himself bribed by so paltry a legacy as a couple of guineas; but he can multiply that sum in his mind until it shall have reached the much more considerable amount which he will consent to take for his vote at a Westminster election; and thus honour will be satisfied. And the critics aforesaid will then be able to point out to us the advantages of British over Roman liberty, being attended not only with the proud privileges of our great and glorious Constitution, but also with a higher emolument.