HAPPY AS A KING—"PAPERS ALL SOLD."
[SHADOW PANTOMIMES.]
What are the boys and girls going to do Thanksgiving night when dinner is over, the nuts and raisins all gone, the last sugar-plum eaten, and it isn't yet time to go to bed? Suppose they try Shadow Pantomimes.
Draw a white screen across the parlor, hanging down to the floor, darken the part of the room where the audience are, and place one strong light at the extreme end, behind the stage, so that the shadows of the actors will be thrown on the screen when they pass or stand behind it. The subjects have to be guessed by the audience. A Shadow Pantomime has the advantage that all sorts of contrivances can be used, and the appearance of the players disguised, so that the lookers-on will soon want to see what is at the other side of the screen, where the sight of card-board cats and donkeys and paper noses and chins would be a sad disillusion. The player should in general keep near the screen, but never touch or shake it; and as there is no scenery except such shadows as bushes or fences, no scene is announced, but all has to be guessed from the action of the figures. The subjects should, of course, be easy to guess, as the audience enjoys better what is recognized quickly. We suggest to ingenious shadow-makers as possible subjects: Cinderella—the child and the godmother, the dance, the fitting of the shoe. The Lion and the Unicorn—the lion's mane and tail and the unicorn's horn being the chief distinctions, and the crown being represented on a pole in the middle while they fight; afterward the representation of the last lines are easy: "Some gave them white bread, and some gave them brown; some gave them plum-cake, and drummed them out of town." Punch and Judy, with Judy's large cap and Punch's hump, pointed cap, and long nose and chin, and of course a Toby, well cut out of mill-board or card-board. The House that Jack built, with a constant show of the objects in succession, some of them only cut models, held at a distance from the screen so as to enlarge the shadows: this would be necessary, for instance, in showing the house with its bright windows, and it is well for such subjects to draw a curtain across the lower part of the stage, and place a screen at each side, so as to leave only a small square of light for exhibiting the shadows, while the hands are hidden behind the screens. Sing a Song of Sixpence, the pie being the shadow of a packed clothes-basket, the king and queen wearing crowns, and the blackbird of the last verses being swung on the end of a thread so as to hit off a paper nose.
Most of the nursery rhymes admit of being shown in shadows, and also such ballads as the "Mistletoe Bough." There may be, for a change at the end, a few shadow charades, such as Snow-ball, Cox-comb, Asterisk (ass-tea-risk), Ring-let, Cat-as-(ass)-trophy, etc., done quickly and guessed easily.
