Sir T. As dead as Pharaoh;
A mummy spiced and gilded.
Belfry. So's your drama!
I've heard you say it, and you know it's true;
The play to-night allowed it—the prologue did.
Theocracy and theatrocracy:
The one long dead; the other——
Sir T. Well?
Belfry. Stillborn!
Two things there are alive in England now,
As red as blood, as hot as fire: your crude
Salvation Army and your Music-Hall.
The first's no trade of mine; the other is;
And here's my theory of it. Your civilization
Evolves as barbarism in modern cities,
A highly decorated barbarism.
Your houses are merely wigwams where you sleep—
Sometimes. You dine abroad in crowds; then lug
Your indigestion to your music-hall
To drowse and smoke at ease. A play demands
A little intellect—which you hate to use:
Your music-hall assails your muscles mainly,
With ground and lofty tumbling, gymnasts, tramps,
Antipodists, weight-lifters, wrestlers; tricks
That gibe at gravitation; monkeys, dogs;
Illusions; jugglers, bipeds, quadrupeds;
Prodigious force and skill of man and beast,
Trained effort and sustained the savage loves
And feels his muscles pacified to watch.
The muscle business first: then comic turns;
Singers and dancers, bounders, jesters, cranks,
That make your savage laugh: he loves to laugh;
For what's your laughter but a free discharge
Of muscular energy under a pleased
Constraint. As for his slumbering fantasy,
The multitudinous rhythm and massive hues
Of Leicester Square's magnific ballets flood
The channels of his sense with undefined
Voluptuousness: your savage loves to dream
Obscure delights, uncertain glories…. What!
I tire you, Tristram? But I like the theme;
It takes me by the throat.
Sir T. The music-hall
Is utterly obscene, a heinous mart
Of alcohol and meretricious flesh.
Belfry. A prime, barbaric entertainment, fit
For gorged barbarians!
Sir T. But the theatre—
Belfry. Extinct: an anteroom to the nursery;
Annex to the lecture-hall; a mothers' meeting;
A kindergarten: men forsaken it quite.
Out of the music-hall a drama springs,
Naive, natural, splendid; hidden, impossible,
But happily conceived when he arrives
Who shall beget it. You talk of messages,
Of orientation: there's my Yankee mite—
A budding drama in the music-hall.
I think I've read somewhere that once before
Dramatic monologue became a play—
When Aeschylus turned up in Attica!
You grant the halls are fairly Dionysian——
Groom. [Stabs Sir Tristram.]
I thought of this upon your wedding-day,
And every summer since.
Sir T. [Falls] Help, Hildreth, help!