As might have been expected, a settled weariness of life, an utter perfunctoriness, an unfathomable inanity pervaded the very souls of “No. 1.” The tenor, originally, I have no doubt, a fine young man, but now cherubically adipose, was evidently counting the days until death should release him from the part of Wilder. He had a pleasant speaking voice; and his affability and forbearance were highly creditable to him under the circumstances; but Nature rebelled in him against the loathed strains of a seven-hundred-times repeated rôle. He omitted the song in the first act, and sang “Though born a man of high degree,” as if with the last rally of an energy decayed and a willing spirit crashed. The G at the end was as a vocal earthquake. And yet methought he was not displeased when the inhabitants of Greenwich, coming fresh to the slaughter, encored him. The baritone had been affected the other way; he was thin and worn; and his clothes had lost their lustre. He sang “Queen of my heart” twice in a hardened manner, as one who was prepared to sing it a thousand times in a thousand quarter-hours for a sufficient wager. The comic part, being simply that of a circus clown transferred to the lyric stage, is better suited for infinite repetition; and the gentleman who undertook it addressed a comic lady called Priscilla as “Sarsaparilla” during his interludes between the haute-école acts of the prima donna and tenor, with a delight in the rare aroma of the joke, and in the roars of laughter it elicited, which will probably never pall. But anything that he himself escaped in the way of tedium was added tenfold to his unlucky colleagues, who sat out his buffooneries with an expression of deadly malignity. I trust the gentleman may die in his bed; but he would be unwise to build too much on doing so. There is a point at which tedium becomes homicidal mania.
The ladies fared best. The female of the human species has not yet developed a conscience: she will apparently spend her life in artistic self-murder by induced Dorothisis without a pang of remorse, provided she be praised and paid regularly. Dorothy herself, a beauteous young lady of distinguished mien, with an immense variety of accents ranging from the finest Tunbridge Wells English (for genteel comedy) to the broadest Irish (for repartee and low comedy), sang without the slightest effort and without the slightest point, and was all the more desperately vapid because she suggested artistic gifts wasting in complacent abeyance. Lydia’s voice, a hollow and spectral contralto, alone betrayed the desolating effect of perpetual Dorothy; her figure retained a pleasing plumpness akin to that of the tenor; and her spirits were wonderful, all things considered. The chorus, too, seemed happy; but that was obviously because they did not know any better. The pack of hounds employed darted in at the end of the second act, evidently full of the mad hope of finding something new going on; and their depression when they discovered it was “Dorothy” again, was pitiable. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should interfere. If there is no law to protect men and women from “Dorothy,” there is at least one that can be strained to protect dogs.
George Bernard Shaw (1856).
FROM PORTLAW TO PARADISE.
Wance upon a time, an’ a very good time it was too, there was a dacent little man, named Paddy Power, that lived in the parish of Portlaw.
At the time I spayke of, an’ indeed for a long spell before it, most of Paddy’s neighbours had wandhered from the thrue fold, an’ the sheep that didn’t stray wor, not to put too fine a point on it, a black lot. But Paddy had always conthrived to keep his last end in view, an’ he stuck to the ould faith like a poor man’s plasther.
Well, in the coorse of time poor Paddy felt his days wor well-nigh numbered, so he tuk to the bed an’ sent for the priest; an’ thin he settled himself down to aise his conscience an’ to clear the road in the other world by manes of a good confession.
He reeled off his sins, mortial an’ vanyial, to the priest by the yard, an’ begor he felt mighty sorrowful intirely whin he thought what a bad boy he’d been, an’ what a hape of quare things he’d done in his time—though, as I’ve said before, he was a dacent little man in his way, only, you see, bein’ so close to the other side of Jordan, he tuk an onaisy view of all his sayin’s and doin’s. Poor Paddy—small blame to him—was very aiger to get a comfortable corner in glory in his old age, for he’d a hard sthruggle enough of it here below.
Well, whin he’d towld all his sins to Father McGrath, an’ whin Father McGrath had given him a few hard rubs by way of consolation, he bent his head to get the absolution, an’ lo an’ behold you! before the priest could get through the words that would open the gates of glory to poor Paddy, the life wint out of the man’s body.
It seems ’twas a busy mornin’ in heaven, an’ as soon as Father McGrath began to say the first words of the absolution, down they claps Paddy Power’s name on the due-book. However, we’ll come to that part of the story by-an’-by.