By way of compensation, Silvio, I perfectly understand the unintelligible; the most extravagant motifs seem perfectly natural to me and I enter into them with extraordinary facility. I readily find the sequel of the most capricious and most incomprehensible nightmare.—That is why the class of plays I described to you just now pleases me above all others.
Théodore and Rosette and I have great discussions on this subject: Rosette has but little relish for my system, she is for true truth; Théodore would give the poet more latitude, and would not exclude conventional, optical truth.—For my part, I maintain that the field must be left absolutely free for the author and that the imagination must hold sovereign sway.
Many of the guests based their arguments on the ground that plays of this sort were as a general rule outside of the ordinary stage conditions and could not be acted; I answered that that was true in one sense and false in another, just like everything else that people say, and that their ideas as to the possibilities and impossibilities of the stage seemed to me to lack exactness and to be based upon prejudices rather than arguments; and I said among other things that the play of As You Like It was certainly capable of being performed, especially for society people who were not accustomed to other parts.
That suggested the idea of acting it. The season is drawing on and all other forms of amusement are exhausted; we are weary of hunting, of riding and boating parties; the chances of boston, varied though they be, are not exciting enough to fill up the evening, and the proposition was received with universal enthusiasm.
A young man who knows how to paint offered his services to paint the scenery; he is working at it now with much zeal, and in a few days it will be finished.—The stage is erected in the orangery, which is the largest apartment in the chateau, and I think everything will go off well. I am to play Orlando; Rosette was to be the Rosalind, as it was proper that she should be; as my mistress and the mistress of the house, the rôle was hers as of right; but she has refused to masquerade as a man, through some whim most extraordinary for her, for prudery certainly is not one of her faults. If I had not been sure of the contrary, I should have thought that her legs are not well formed. Actually not one of the ladies in the party would consent to seem less scrupulous than Rosette, and the play was very near falling through; but Théodore, who was to take the part of the melancholy Jaques, offered to take her place, inasmuch as Rosalind is a man, almost all the time, except in the first act, when she is a woman, and with a little paint, a pair of corsets and a dress, he could carry out the deception well enough, having no beard as yet and being very slender in figure.
We are now learning our parts and it is a curious thing to see us.—In every solitary nook in the park you are sure of finding some one, with a roll of paper in his hand, mumbling to himself, looking up at the sky, then suddenly lowering his eyes, and making the same gesture seven or eight times. Any one who didn't know that we were going to give a play would certainly take us for inmates of a lunatic asylum, or poets—which is almost a pleonasm.
I think we shall soon know our parts well enough to have a rehearsal.—I expect something very interesting. Perhaps I am wrong.—I was afraid for a moment that our actors, instead of acting by inspiration, would strive to reproduce the gestures and intonation of some fashionable comedian; but luckily they have not followed the stage closely enough to make that mistake, and it is to be hoped that, amid the natural awkwardness of people who have never stood on the boards, they will show some precious gleams of nature and a charming naïveté that the most consummate talent cannot equal.
Our young painter has really done marvels:—it is impossible to give a stranger look to the old tree-trunks and the ivies that enlace them; he has taken the trees in the park for his models, accentuating and exaggerating them, as should properly be done for stage scenery. The whole thing is done with admirable spirit and fancy; the rocks, the cliffs, the clouds are of mysterious, fantastic shapes; reflections play upon the surface of the water, more trembling and shimmering than quicksilver, and the ordinary coldness of the foliage is wonderfully relieved by the saffron tints laid on by the brush of autumn; the forest varies from emerald green to purple; the warmest and coldest tints blend harmoniously and the very sky changes from a delicate blue to the most glowing colors.
He has designed all the costumes in accordance with my suggestions; they are of the most beautiful type. There was an outcry at first that they could not be translated in silk and velvet or any known material, and there was a moment when the troubadour costume was on the point of being generally adopted. The ladies said that the brilliant colors would put out their eyes. To which we replied that their eyes were inextinguishable stars, and that they, on the other hand, would put out the colors, as well as the Argand lamps, the candles and the sun, if they had the chance.—They had no reply to make to that; but there were other objections that sprung up in crowds and bristled with heads like the Lernean hydra; no sooner was one head cut off than two others appeared even more stupid and obstinate.
"How do you suppose that can be done?—Everything looks all right on paper, but it's a different matter on your back; I can never get into that!—My skirt's at least four inches too short; I shall never dare to appear that way!—That ruff is too high; I look as if I were hunchbacked and hadn't any neck.—That wig ages me intolerably."