THETHEATRICALCRITIC.MYDEARMASTER,YOU must feel alarmed during this hot weather at seeing the walls inscribed with “Death to poodle-dogs,” having yesterday, with your own hand, sent me adrift without either muzzle or collar. You knew that I wanted my liberty; I was indeed constrained to beg of you to let me go by what you would term “some subtle indescribable impulse.” To tell the truth, the conversation you carried on with your friends about Boileau, Aristotle, Smith’s last book, and the “five unities,” proved dull. I listened to you as long as I could, then yawned, and barked as if I heard some one at the door. Nothing would for one instant draw your attention from scientific discussion.You even pushed me off your knee just as you had clinched an argument by pointing out that the ancients were always the ancients.It was truly unkind of you to persist in remaining indoors when duty and inclination called me abroad. At last you let me go. I had found on the table an order for a stage-box in the Theatre of the Animals, a glorious place where they were only waiting for you and me. For two reasons I will refrain from writing down a full review of the play: first, because I am only a novice in the art; and secondly, because you, my master, gain your bread by descriptive writing. How could you.cram your paper daily if you had not at hand all the stock phrases of dramatic criticism? As for myself, I feel rich in the mine of poesy that prompts every wag of my shaggy tail.I should be an ungrateful dog if I robbed you of your capital. Your imagination I have nothing to find fault with, seeing that your greatest successes, as a dramatic critic, were penned on plays you never took the trouble to witness.I made my way to the theatre on foot, for the weather was fine. I came across some agreeable acquaintances on the way, all going with their noses to the wind. The bulldog at the door respectfully inclined his head as I entered the box and threw myself carelessly into a chair, my right foot on the velvet cushion in front, and my legs resting on a couch. This graceful attitude you yourself assume when preparing to sit out, or sleep out, a five-act play.I had hardly been seated two minutes when the orchestra was invaded by musicians. These personages were the gayest to behold. The flute was played by a goose, while a donkey struck the harp—asinus ad lyram, wrote some erudite poet. A turkey clacked in E flat. The symphony began, and resembled those of which you speak so enthusiastically every winter. The curtain then rose, and my troubles as a critic commenced.It was a very solemn drama, written by a sort of greyhound, orhalf-greyhound and half-bulldog, a half-English half-German animal, who had entered the Dogs’ Institute of Paris.This great dramatic poet, whose name is Fanor, has a way of manufacturing dramas as ingenious as it is simple. He first goes to Mr. Puff’s Pug and demands a subject, next he makes his way to Mr. Scribe’s Poodle and engages him to write it. When the play is put on the stage, he employs six pariahs to applaud it, brutes they are who bark savagely. He is a wonderful fellow. Fanor wears his coat well brushed and most artistically curled, altogether he is just the sort of cur to wait upon rank and bow it into the boxes.The play was said to be new. Let us skip the first scene. It is always the same—servants and confidants explaining the nature of the crimes, griefs, intrigues, virtues, or ambitions of their masters.Do you know, my master, it was perhaps a great mistake to remove the muzzles of our poets. The traffic in the sublime has been left to an unmuzzled race of poodle-dog poetasters. It was not so with the ancients who wore the bands of art, and who dwelt far from the common crowd within the temple of the Muses. As well-fed watchdogs, they were thus restrained from poking their noses into the accumulated filth of history.There is more in the muzzle than one would think. It is a safeguard against the spread of the hydrophobia of literature, so prevalent in our own times, and requiring all the bullets of cold-blooded critics to keep it in check. Evils other than the unnatural howlings and riot of modern tragedy are caused by liberty. There is an unearthing of old bones, which are scraped, polished, and displayed as the product of that modern genius the nineteenth-century dramatist, who with tragic instinct consigns the memory of their real owners to eternal death and oblivion.The tendency of some grovelling dogs thus to become resurrectionists is too well known to require further comment at my hands. Death to those who before us said what we will to say, “Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!”Little by little the plot expanded. When the pugs had revealed all their masters’ secrets and hidden thoughts, the masters themselves appeared, and in their turn gave us the paraphrase of what had preceded, together with the culmination of their passions. If you only knew how many odious persons I beheld. Imagine two old foxes in mourning for their tails: these with a couple of superannuated wolves, recumbent,and gazing vacantly around; a pair of badly-licked dancing bears, waltzing to soft music; weasels with frayed ears and gloved hands, made up a staff of threadbare comedians, all professing their loves and passions on the stage. Yet I am told that outside the theatre door they would tear each other’s eyes out for a leg of mutton or horse’s ham. But I had for the moment forgotten that the secrets of public life should be carefully walled around, so I dutifully returned to my analysis, in, I own, a roundabout sort of way. The language was not very intelligible. It was all about the sorrows of unfortunate Queen Zemire and her lover Azor. You have no notion of the singular and unaccountable stuff crowded into this hybrid composition.The beautiful Zemire is a Queen of Spain, descended from a noble stock, counting among her ancestors a jolly dog named Cæsar.In the back-kitchen of the castle, and in the noblerôleof turnspit, a mangey animal, but withal a worthy fellow, named Azor, turned the queen’s spit (while Queen Zemire had turned his head). Hesays—“Belle Zemire, O vous, blanche comme l’hermine,O mon bel ange à l’œil si douxQuand donc à fin prendrez-vousEn pitié mon amour, au fond de la cuisine,” &c. &c.These verses, improvised by the pale light of the lamp, were found admirable. The friends of the poet exclaimed, “Ah! sublime! They are perfumed with the profoundest sentiment!” In vain the linguists—curs, griffins, and boars—sought to criticise. “Why,” said they, “should kitchen and cookery in a high-class composition be mixed up with flowers and sentiment? What was there in a turnspit and its associations—the devouring appetite of the queen, &c.—to fan the flame of passion?” These expressions, let fall at random, nearly cost them their seats.The verses were forcibly rendered by Azor, who scratched himself at intervals, either to relieve his feelings or lend piquancy to his love. At last the lover subsided into his daily barking prose.“Zemire! Zemire! Oh how I long to kiss the ground beneath thy feet!” (in carrying out this ardent desire he would have encountered no reasonable difficulty, as the full-bodied lady left her footprints wherever she trod—this by the way). Azor howls in his agony of heart, when the kitchen-boy all at once throws some hot cinders into his eyes to remind him of his neglected duties at the spit.I must tell you that in the castle there is a nasty dog, a Dane namedDu Sylva, an intimate friend of the Count’s horses, with whom, for his own pleasure, he goes hunting. He is, as you shall see, a cur fierce, jealous, implacable, and desperately wicked. He is hopelessly enamoured of the beautiful Zemire, who treats the attentions of this northern boor with scorn. What does the Dane do? He, of course, dissembles with such craft one would imagine he had forgotten the insults heaped upon him. Alas! the traitor is only biding his time. One day he finds Azor in the castle moat, looking fondly towards his lady’s nest. “Azor, follow me,” says the Dane. He obeyed, and followed with his tail hung pensively between his legs. What does the Dane then do? He led Azor to a neighbouring pool, and ordered him to plunge and remain there for an hour. Azor obeys gladly. The cool water soothes his skin, and carries off the taint of cooking. It imparts lustre to his disordered fur, grace to his sickly body, vivacity to his eyes, which have been dimmed by the light of the fire. Leaving the pool, Azor rolls with delight on the sweet-smelling grass, impregnating his coat with the odour of flowers. He completes his toilet by whitening his teeth against the lichen of an old tree. That done, he feels the return of youth. The warm blood throbs through his heart, and his pensive tail wags briskly with the sense of new life. The whole world seems to open before him. There is nothing to which he may not aspire, not even the paw of Zemire. At sight of these extraordinary transports the Dane laughed in his sleeve, like the crafty rascal he was. He seemed to mutter, “Curses fall upon you, fool! You shall pay dearly for my fellowship!”I ought to tell you, master, that this scene was played with great success by the celebrated Laridon. He is perhaps rather stout and old for hisrôle, nevertheless, as they say in the papers, his energy andchiccarry all before them.Perhaps the finest scene was laid in the forest of Aranjuez, when the queen-dog walked pensively along with ears cast down, and a poodle held her graceful tail. Suddenly, at the bend of a path, she encounters Azor—Azor renewed, resplendent—the Azor of her dreams. Is it really he? Oh mystery! oh terror! oh joy!! Their eyes meet, and, eloquent with passion, tell their tale of love. Everything was forgotten in those moments of bliss. Had any one reminded Zemire that she filled one of the proudest thrones in the world, she would have replied, “What of that, so long as one loves?” Had Azor been informed of his humble position, he would simplyhave shown his teeth. Oh delights, miseries, joys of love! and also, to conclude my exclamations, oh vanity of vanities! know that every door has a hinge, every lock a key, on the rose is a grub, in thekennel a dog, and to every lamp, for the most cogent reason, there belongs a wick, and so in the forest of Aranjuez there lurks a terrible Dane who views our friends’ behaviour from afar.“Ah! oh! so you love each other, do you? Tremble! tremble! foryour fate.” While speaking thus, when Zemire had quitted the scene, the Dane approached Azor. “So! so!” said he, “Zemire thinks you angelic in your borrowed beauty. You must now assume the skin of a porcupine, and with quills erect, dirty, hideous, smeared with sand and ashes, show yourself to Zemire, and break the spell that binds her!” Thus howled the Dane, giving full vent to his passion in foaming rage. Poor Azor obeyed, and appeared before his mistress. Standing beneath a frightful long-beaked heron, he bowed to the queen, declaring that he had played her false, as he was only an obscure turnspit, and begging her forgiveness. Then he remained motionless, prepared for his doom. Zemire cast herself at his feet, “Ah!” she said, “let me share your sorrows. I love you still, even in your vile condition. There! I give you my paw in the face of all the world.”During this touching scene the whole house was moved to tears, and at the close came down with thunders of applause. Every one, beasts and birds—even to a flea on the tip of my nose—seemed delirious with excitement. With great presence of mind I bit the tail of an impulsive cock, arresting his flight to the stage to challenge the Dane. In a few soothing words I assured him that the villain was really a very decent fellow in his own house. At the same time I reminded him that, as the village cock, he might be missed in the morning from his dunghill, where he performed the useful office of heralding the dawn.The curtain fell on the fourth act. As to the fifth, I do not intend to usurp your place as critic, but will conclude by saying that in this act the dogs had become tigers—a natural metamorphosis of which good authors avail themselves. The tiger, with equal consistency, killed his wife by mistake, and consoled himself by slaughtering his friends. It seems, when fairly married, Zemire became a tigress. This, I have heard, is one of those unaccountable changes which not unfrequently occur in real life. Be that as it may, the curtain at last fell on scenes of crime, murder, and confusion.After the close of the drama, attendants handed round refreshments. As for me, I followed your example. As it was the first night of representation, I left the box at once with the air of one burdened with thought; and making my way to the green-room, joined a group of theatrical critics walking about with a supercilious pedantic air. One had thesting of the wasp, another the beak of the vulture, a third the cunning of the fox. Beasts of prey were there, hungering for helpless victims. Lions proudly showing their teeth. Of mischievous animals of all sorts, it was a goodly company. I ought to inform you, as soon as it became known that you belonged to me I was permitted to go behind the scenes, and to cultivate the acquaintance of the actors. But I must now conclude this rambling review, a friendly greyhound is waiting to join me at supper.
MYDEARMASTER,
Y
OU must feel alarmed during this hot weather at seeing the walls inscribed with “Death to poodle-dogs,” having yesterday, with your own hand, sent me adrift without either muzzle or collar. You knew that I wanted my liberty; I was indeed constrained to beg of you to let me go by what you would term “some subtle indescribable impulse.” To tell the truth, the conversation you carried on with your friends about Boileau, Aristotle, Smith’s last book, and the “five unities,” proved dull. I listened to you as long as I could, then yawned, and barked as if I heard some one at the door. Nothing would for one instant draw your attention from scientific discussion.
You even pushed me off your knee just as you had clinched an argument by pointing out that the ancients were always the ancients.
It was truly unkind of you to persist in remaining indoors when duty and inclination called me abroad. At last you let me go. I had found on the table an order for a stage-box in the Theatre of the Animals, a glorious place where they were only waiting for you and me. For two reasons I will refrain from writing down a full review of the play: first, because I am only a novice in the art; and secondly, because you, my master, gain your bread by descriptive writing. How could you.cram your paper daily if you had not at hand all the stock phrases of dramatic criticism? As for myself, I feel rich in the mine of poesy that prompts every wag of my shaggy tail.
I should be an ungrateful dog if I robbed you of your capital. Your imagination I have nothing to find fault with, seeing that your greatest successes, as a dramatic critic, were penned on plays you never took the trouble to witness.
I made my way to the theatre on foot, for the weather was fine. I came across some agreeable acquaintances on the way, all going with their noses to the wind. The bulldog at the door respectfully inclined his head as I entered the box and threw myself carelessly into a chair, my right foot on the velvet cushion in front, and my legs resting on a couch. This graceful attitude you yourself assume when preparing to sit out, or sleep out, a five-act play.
I had hardly been seated two minutes when the orchestra was invaded by musicians. These personages were the gayest to behold. The flute was played by a goose, while a donkey struck the harp—asinus ad lyram, wrote some erudite poet. A turkey clacked in E flat. The symphony began, and resembled those of which you speak so enthusiastically every winter. The curtain then rose, and my troubles as a critic commenced.
It was a very solemn drama, written by a sort of greyhound, orhalf-greyhound and half-bulldog, a half-English half-German animal, who had entered the Dogs’ Institute of Paris.
This great dramatic poet, whose name is Fanor, has a way of manufacturing dramas as ingenious as it is simple. He first goes to Mr. Puff’s Pug and demands a subject, next he makes his way to Mr. Scribe’s Poodle and engages him to write it. When the play is put on the stage, he employs six pariahs to applaud it, brutes they are who bark savagely. He is a wonderful fellow. Fanor wears his coat well brushed and most artistically curled, altogether he is just the sort of cur to wait upon rank and bow it into the boxes.
The play was said to be new. Let us skip the first scene. It is always the same—servants and confidants explaining the nature of the crimes, griefs, intrigues, virtues, or ambitions of their masters.
Do you know, my master, it was perhaps a great mistake to remove the muzzles of our poets. The traffic in the sublime has been left to an unmuzzled race of poodle-dog poetasters. It was not so with the ancients who wore the bands of art, and who dwelt far from the common crowd within the temple of the Muses. As well-fed watchdogs, they were thus restrained from poking their noses into the accumulated filth of history.
There is more in the muzzle than one would think. It is a safeguard against the spread of the hydrophobia of literature, so prevalent in our own times, and requiring all the bullets of cold-blooded critics to keep it in check. Evils other than the unnatural howlings and riot of modern tragedy are caused by liberty. There is an unearthing of old bones, which are scraped, polished, and displayed as the product of that modern genius the nineteenth-century dramatist, who with tragic instinct consigns the memory of their real owners to eternal death and oblivion.
The tendency of some grovelling dogs thus to become resurrectionists is too well known to require further comment at my hands. Death to those who before us said what we will to say, “Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!”
Little by little the plot expanded. When the pugs had revealed all their masters’ secrets and hidden thoughts, the masters themselves appeared, and in their turn gave us the paraphrase of what had preceded, together with the culmination of their passions. If you only knew how many odious persons I beheld. Imagine two old foxes in mourning for their tails: these with a couple of superannuated wolves, recumbent,and gazing vacantly around; a pair of badly-licked dancing bears, waltzing to soft music; weasels with frayed ears and gloved hands, made up a staff of threadbare comedians, all professing their loves and passions on the stage. Yet I am told that outside the theatre door they would tear each other’s eyes out for a leg of mutton or horse’s ham. But I had for the moment forgotten that the secrets of public life should be carefully walled around, so I dutifully returned to my analysis, in, I own, a roundabout sort of way. The language was not very intelligible. It was all about the sorrows of unfortunate Queen Zemire and her lover Azor. You have no notion of the singular and unaccountable stuff crowded into this hybrid composition.
The beautiful Zemire is a Queen of Spain, descended from a noble stock, counting among her ancestors a jolly dog named Cæsar.
In the back-kitchen of the castle, and in the noblerôleof turnspit, a mangey animal, but withal a worthy fellow, named Azor, turned the queen’s spit (while Queen Zemire had turned his head). Hesays—
“Belle Zemire, O vous, blanche comme l’hermine,O mon bel ange à l’œil si douxQuand donc à fin prendrez-vousEn pitié mon amour, au fond de la cuisine,” &c. &c.
“Belle Zemire, O vous, blanche comme l’hermine,O mon bel ange à l’œil si douxQuand donc à fin prendrez-vousEn pitié mon amour, au fond de la cuisine,” &c. &c.
“Belle Zemire, O vous, blanche comme l’hermine,
O mon bel ange à l’œil si doux
Quand donc à fin prendrez-vous
En pitié mon amour, au fond de la cuisine,” &c. &c.
These verses, improvised by the pale light of the lamp, were found admirable. The friends of the poet exclaimed, “Ah! sublime! They are perfumed with the profoundest sentiment!” In vain the linguists—curs, griffins, and boars—sought to criticise. “Why,” said they, “should kitchen and cookery in a high-class composition be mixed up with flowers and sentiment? What was there in a turnspit and its associations—the devouring appetite of the queen, &c.—to fan the flame of passion?” These expressions, let fall at random, nearly cost them their seats.
The verses were forcibly rendered by Azor, who scratched himself at intervals, either to relieve his feelings or lend piquancy to his love. At last the lover subsided into his daily barking prose.
“Zemire! Zemire! Oh how I long to kiss the ground beneath thy feet!” (in carrying out this ardent desire he would have encountered no reasonable difficulty, as the full-bodied lady left her footprints wherever she trod—this by the way). Azor howls in his agony of heart, when the kitchen-boy all at once throws some hot cinders into his eyes to remind him of his neglected duties at the spit.
I must tell you that in the castle there is a nasty dog, a Dane namedDu Sylva, an intimate friend of the Count’s horses, with whom, for his own pleasure, he goes hunting. He is, as you shall see, a cur fierce, jealous, implacable, and desperately wicked. He is hopelessly enamoured of the beautiful Zemire, who treats the attentions of this northern boor with scorn. What does the Dane do? He, of course, dissembles with such craft one would imagine he had forgotten the insults heaped upon him. Alas! the traitor is only biding his time. One day he finds Azor in the castle moat, looking fondly towards his lady’s nest. “Azor, follow me,” says the Dane. He obeyed, and followed with his tail hung pensively between his legs. What does the Dane then do? He led Azor to a neighbouring pool, and ordered him to plunge and remain there for an hour. Azor obeys gladly. The cool water soothes his skin, and carries off the taint of cooking. It imparts lustre to his disordered fur, grace to his sickly body, vivacity to his eyes, which have been dimmed by the light of the fire. Leaving the pool, Azor rolls with delight on the sweet-smelling grass, impregnating his coat with the odour of flowers. He completes his toilet by whitening his teeth against the lichen of an old tree. That done, he feels the return of youth. The warm blood throbs through his heart, and his pensive tail wags briskly with the sense of new life. The whole world seems to open before him. There is nothing to which he may not aspire, not even the paw of Zemire. At sight of these extraordinary transports the Dane laughed in his sleeve, like the crafty rascal he was. He seemed to mutter, “Curses fall upon you, fool! You shall pay dearly for my fellowship!”
I ought to tell you, master, that this scene was played with great success by the celebrated Laridon. He is perhaps rather stout and old for hisrôle, nevertheless, as they say in the papers, his energy andchiccarry all before them.
Perhaps the finest scene was laid in the forest of Aranjuez, when the queen-dog walked pensively along with ears cast down, and a poodle held her graceful tail. Suddenly, at the bend of a path, she encounters Azor—Azor renewed, resplendent—the Azor of her dreams. Is it really he? Oh mystery! oh terror! oh joy!! Their eyes meet, and, eloquent with passion, tell their tale of love. Everything was forgotten in those moments of bliss. Had any one reminded Zemire that she filled one of the proudest thrones in the world, she would have replied, “What of that, so long as one loves?” Had Azor been informed of his humble position, he would simplyhave shown his teeth. Oh delights, miseries, joys of love! and also, to conclude my exclamations, oh vanity of vanities! know that every door has a hinge, every lock a key, on the rose is a grub, in thekennel a dog, and to every lamp, for the most cogent reason, there belongs a wick, and so in the forest of Aranjuez there lurks a terrible Dane who views our friends’ behaviour from afar.
“Ah! oh! so you love each other, do you? Tremble! tremble! foryour fate.” While speaking thus, when Zemire had quitted the scene, the Dane approached Azor. “So! so!” said he, “Zemire thinks you angelic in your borrowed beauty. You must now assume the skin of a porcupine, and with quills erect, dirty, hideous, smeared with sand and ashes, show yourself to Zemire, and break the spell that binds her!” Thus howled the Dane, giving full vent to his passion in foaming rage. Poor Azor obeyed, and appeared before his mistress. Standing beneath a frightful long-beaked heron, he bowed to the queen, declaring that he had played her false, as he was only an obscure turnspit, and begging her forgiveness. Then he remained motionless, prepared for his doom. Zemire cast herself at his feet, “Ah!” she said, “let me share your sorrows. I love you still, even in your vile condition. There! I give you my paw in the face of all the world.”
During this touching scene the whole house was moved to tears, and at the close came down with thunders of applause. Every one, beasts and birds—even to a flea on the tip of my nose—seemed delirious with excitement. With great presence of mind I bit the tail of an impulsive cock, arresting his flight to the stage to challenge the Dane. In a few soothing words I assured him that the villain was really a very decent fellow in his own house. At the same time I reminded him that, as the village cock, he might be missed in the morning from his dunghill, where he performed the useful office of heralding the dawn.
The curtain fell on the fourth act. As to the fifth, I do not intend to usurp your place as critic, but will conclude by saying that in this act the dogs had become tigers—a natural metamorphosis of which good authors avail themselves. The tiger, with equal consistency, killed his wife by mistake, and consoled himself by slaughtering his friends. It seems, when fairly married, Zemire became a tigress. This, I have heard, is one of those unaccountable changes which not unfrequently occur in real life. Be that as it may, the curtain at last fell on scenes of crime, murder, and confusion.
After the close of the drama, attendants handed round refreshments. As for me, I followed your example. As it was the first night of representation, I left the box at once with the air of one burdened with thought; and making my way to the green-room, joined a group of theatrical critics walking about with a supercilious pedantic air. One had thesting of the wasp, another the beak of the vulture, a third the cunning of the fox. Beasts of prey were there, hungering for helpless victims. Lions proudly showing their teeth. Of mischievous animals of all sorts, it was a goodly company. I ought to inform you, as soon as it became known that you belonged to me I was permitted to go behind the scenes, and to cultivate the acquaintance of the actors. But I must now conclude this rambling review, a friendly greyhound is waiting to join me at supper.