IX. Burlesquerie

"R

EFINED BURLESQUE!" Undaunted by the adjective, crowds were hurrying in -sailors, dock-hands, toughs, young men wearing the latest Arrow collar, and staid citizens of Hoboken, sometimes accompanied by their wives. The unswept streets of Hoboken were being scoured by a cold and inefficient wind that picked up the litter of dust, straw, and paper and flung it into people's eyes and mouths, giving them a taste of the city. Over a low-lying brick building the rigging of a ship rose in confused detail against a cloudy sky. Against all this shone the arc-lighted promise of the theatre entrance.

In the front row, in an aisle seat, was a whitehaired man who seemed to be a hundred years old; he sat there with an air of having occupied that seat once every week since the theatre was built. Mid

way of the parquet floor sat a placid matron of fifty beside her complacent husband; their views on all subjects coincided exactly with those of Dr. Parkhurst; they were solid blocks in the fabric of our American civilization. About them was a dark

grey mass of padded masculine shoulders, in which, here and there, girls in twos and threes made spots of colour. Above, the balcony buzzed, and the peanut gallery filled suddenly like the breaking of a dam. An orchestra of seven filed in. A hush, not of eagerness but of religous certainty, fell upon the theatre. In five hundred souls there was the calm which comes of absolute confidence in that which they are about to receive.

No one had come there in quest of novelty, any more than one goes to confession for that purpose. They came for the familiar and satisfying benediction of burlesque. The old rites have changed a little since the time of our fathers, but the heart of the mystery is still there. The piece pretends, after the new fashion, to be a musical comedy. But the tunes are those invented by Jubal, the father of those that handle the harp and organ-revised a little, a very little, year by year; the first chord awakes ancestral memories. There is a trace of plot on the program, and the name of an author, just as if it were something new! but no one is deceived. To put all doubts at rest, and to betray the fact that this production is simply the ten millionth performance of the festival invented by Adam (after a hard day's labour pulling eucalyptus stumps in the wilderness to the westward of Eden), it is entitled "The Jolly Girls."

The orchestra plays its immemorial tunes, the

sons of Adam lean a little forward with a beatific light on their faces, the curtain rises, and the dream begins. The stage is filled with Beauty, in the form of forty female legs, while in one of the wings waits Laughter, in the shape of a little man with a putty nose. The legs burst upon the scene in a blaze of light and sound, a kaleidoscope of calf and ankle, a whirl of soft pink feminine contours, a paradisiac vision of essential Girl: the whole theatre breathes forth a sigh of happiness, and the sons of Adam lean back in the seats, content. The promise is fulfilled.

The legs, encased in pink tights, move forward and back, up and down; forward and back, up and down. Somewhere above them are lungs and larynxes that pour forth a volume of sound, in time to the hypnotic throb of the music. Gradually, in the mêlée, arms become visible and, vaguely connecting the arms and legs, pieces of coloured cloth that finally become definite as golden tunics, green sashes, scarlet bodices. Moreover, there are faces, but not real faces of weariness or anger to disturb the illusion-these faces are masks, painted to express an impersonal and uniform pleasure in the exhibition of bodily charms. Pink cheeks, bistred eyelashed depths that emit glances at the corners, carmined lips set in an imperishable smile-these are the perfect and sufficient symbols of a joy that never was on sea or land. But faces, after all, belong to an

other world, the world of reality; if one looks at them too long, one sees them, and the dream vanishes; they are extinguished presently by a row of flying legs and arms-the scene becomes a chaos of feminine extremities, the music rises to a climax, and stops, as the chorus leaves the stage. Enter the little man with the putty nose.

nose.

He speaks to somebody-in a rapid, monotonous, unintelligible voice; it does not matter, he is telling what the plot of the piece is. His real function is revealed a minute later when two tramps, a tall one and a short one, enter and the tall one hits him over the head with a stick. The victim falls on his putty The house rocks with laughter, and the gallery storms applause. The cares of the day, the harsh realities of life, fade away when in the golden land of Never-never a tall man enters with a short companion and hits the third man over the head with a stick. Nations may rise and fall, and Dean Swift or Bernard Shaw may force to our lips a painful smile with his comments on our folly, but the true inebriation of laughter comes at the spectacle of a man hit over the head with a slapstick.

What secret wish is gratified when we see man who was created in the image of God falling bump on his nose? Irresistibly, moved by a profound impulse, we laugh. In the course of the evening, the small man is hit over the head fifty-seven hundred times; he rises but to fall again, more hopelessly

than ever. He is kicked in the nose, in the ear, in front and behind. His nose is pulled into an infinite variety of shapes, being made to resemble every object under heaven from a telephone wire to a turnip. He submits meekly. Upon him the desire of the whole audience to see mankind made ridiculous is visited and revisited times without number.

Genially, casually, the tall man kicks him in the face whenever he notices him. The tall man has taken possession of the stage. Singing, dancing, clowning, guying, arguing, wheedling, mocking, bullying now as an unshaven tramp, a few minutes later as an unshaven Turk, then as an unshaven pirate-whatever a man can be without visiting a barber-shop first, in a dozen different costumes, always delightful, irresponsible, and seductive, and always accompanied by his short comrade, he pervades the evening. He speaks, and the audience laughs; he refrains from speaking, and the audience laughs. Why?

His slapstick is a magic wand that has only to touch things to make them funny, and it is a symbol of himself. He has slapstick shoulders, slapstick eyebrows, ears, nose, legs, posteriors; he acts with all of these, eloquently, and at each gesture some human dignity is overthrown, knocked over the head, tumbled on its nose. He sings, walks across the floor, makes love; and these things, to the im