Scene: Naxos.
PROLOGUE.
Silenus. Gentle readers—I would fain say, hearers, but I am afraid I shall never fool it on the stage—I am very fond of Pantomimes. I don't know whether I like this one so well as I liked those which I witnessed when I was a boy. It is too pretentious, I think; too anxious to be more than a Pantomime—this play in which I am about to perform. True Pantomime is a good-natured nightmare. Our sense of humour is titillated and strummed, and kicked and oiled, and fustigated and stroked, and exalted and bedevilled, and, on the whole, severely handled by this self-same harmless incubus; and our intellects are scoffed at. The audience, in fact, is, intellectually, a pantaloon, on whom the Harlequin-pantomime has no mercy. It is frivolity whipping its schoolmaster, common-sense; the drama on its apex; art, unsexed, and without a conscience; the reflection of the world in a green, knotted glass. Now, I talked to the author, and showed him that there was a certain absence from his work of this kind of thing; but he put his thumbs in his arm-pits, and replied with some disdain, "Which of the various dramatic forms of the time may one conceive as likeliest to shoot up in the fabulous manner of the beanstalk, bearing on its branches things of earth and heaven undreamt of in philosophy? The sensational dramas? Perhaps from them some new development of tragic art; but Pantomime seems to be of best hope. It contains in crude forms, humour, poetry, and romance. It is the childhood of a new poetical comedy." Then I saw where he was, and said, "God be with you," and washed my hands of him. But I'll do my best with my part.
SCENE I.—A Wood.
Silenus, sitting. Harlequin and Columbine posturing about him. Satyrs and
Bacchantes dancing round the group.
Song.
Sing of dancing, sing of wine,
Satyrs and Bacchantes, sing.
Harlequin and Columbine,
Leap within our frantic ring.
Dance, the skies are violet;
Dance, our lips with wine are wet;
Sing, heigh-ho, the shade is mellow!
Twist and twine from dusk till dawn;
Feet and hoofs beat bare the lawn.
Bacchus is a noble fellow!
From our garlands grapes are flung,
And we tread them in the grass;
Ivy, in our tresses strung,
Streams behind us as we pass.
Dance, the skies are violet;
Dance, our lips with foam are wet;
Sing, the beechen shade is mellow!
Bend and bound with one accord;
Foot it firm, and trench the sward.
Bacchus is a splendid fellow!
Round we spin; our starry eyes
Glimmer through our tossing manes.
Time is ending; wisdom dies;
We are drunk; and Bacchus reigns.