To offer my ladie a rose.
Chorus:
What can the mask, the age-old form of entertainment, give us to-day? It is so far from mere representation that it allows us to escape from realism and to enter freely into the world of fine and subtle character interpretation. It is a form of entertainment that lends itself to humor, to dignity, and to beauty, and enlists the finest creative effort.
SHADOWS
CHAPTER I
The Mystery of the Shadow
The life of primitive man was full of peril. Out of the struggle to survive the dangers which threatened him on every side came fear and superstition. He developed a great regard for shadows which he could not understand. They were mysterious, they moved and changed, appeared and disappeared. They eluded him and yet pursued him. The shadow became for him a living thing. Gradually he came to look upon his own shadow as his very soul. He felt that he must shield and protect it. Consequently he would permit no one to step upon it, or even to touch it.
Stories of regard for the shadow come from many lands. The natives of Nias, an island in the Dutch East Indies, greatly feared the rainbow, because to them it was a powerful net set by a great spirit to catch their shadows, and to destroy them.
Savages of Wetar, a neighboring island, believe that a man can be made ill unto death if his shadow is stabbed, while the Ottawa Indians believed that a man will die if certain figures are drawn upon his shadow, and the Bushmen of Australia never allow their shadows to fall upon dead game. They are confident that bad luck will follow them if they do so. When a Malay builds a house, he takes the greatest care to prevent his shadow from falling into the hole that is being dug for the center post. If, by chance, his shadow should fall into the hole, he feels certain that sickness and trouble will follow him.