THE THEATER
The palace of the Corporation of Canton has a niche for its golden god,—an inner hall where great seats, placed solemnly about the center, indicate rather than invite repose. And, as European clubs would place a library, they have established a theater, with parade and pomp, on the far side of the court which is in front of the whole building. It is a terrace of stone deep in between two buildings. Consisting only of a difference in level, the stage between the wings and the crowd is simply a wide, flat space above their heads. A square canopy like that of a dais shades and consecrates it. Another portico in the foreground, framing it in four pillars of granite, confers on it solemnity and distance. Here comedy develops, legends are told, the vision of the things which are to be reveals itself in rolling thunder.
The curtain, comparable to that veil which divides us from the world of dreams, does not exist here. But as if each soul, in discarding its disguises, were held in an impenetrable tissue, whose colors and elusivebrightness are like the livery of night; each actor in his silken draperies shows nothing of himself but the movement when he stirs. Beneath the plumage of his part the golden headdress, the face hidden under rouge and mask, he is no more than a gesture and a voice. The emperor mourns over his lost kingdom, the unjustly accused princess flees from monsters and savages, armies defile, combats take place, a gesture effaces years and distances, debates proceed before the elders, the gods descend, the genie arises from the jar. But never does any one of the persons engaged in the execution of a chant or of a complicated dance deviate from the rhythm and the harmonies which time the measure and rule the evolutions, any more than he would throw off his clothes.
The orchestra at the back,—which throughout the piece continues its evocatory tumult, as if, like swarms of bees that reassemble at the beating of a caldron, the scenic phantoms would dissipate if there were silence,—has less a musical rôle than the service of sustaining the whole, playing (if we may call this prompting music) and answering for a chorus of the populace. It is the music which accelerates or moderates the movement, which heightens withan accent more acute the discourse of the actor, or which, surging up behind him, brings to his ears clamor and rumor. There are guitars, bits of wood that are beaten like tympans, that are clashed like castanets; a sort of monochord violin which, like a fountain in a solitary court, by the thread of its plaintive melody, carries the development of the elegy; and finally, in the heroic movements, the trumpet. It is a sort of bugle of brass, of which the sound, charged with harmonies, has an incredible brilliance and a terrible stridence. It is like the braying of an ass, like a shout in the desert, a flourish to the sun, the clamor volleyed from the diaphragm of an elephant. But the gongs and cymbals hold the principal place. Their discordant racket excites and stimulates the emotions, deafening thought, which in a sort of dream sees only the spectacle before it. Meanwhile at one side of the scene, hung in a cage of woven rushes, are two birds like turtledoves. These it seems arepelitzebrought from Tientsin. Competing innocently with the uproar in which they bathe, they jet a song of celestial sweetness.
The hall under the second portico, and the entire court, is stuffed as full as a pie with living heads. Among them emergethe pillars, and two lions of sandstone with froglike jaws whose heads are bonneted with children. It is a pavement of skulls and round yellow faces, so closely packed that the limbs and bodies cannot be seen. Pressed together, the hearts of the crowd beat one against the other. It oscillates with but one movement. Sometimes, stretching a row of arms, it surges against the stone wall of the stage; sometimes, withdrawing, is hidden by the sides. In the upper galleries, the wealthy and the mandarins smoke their pipes and drink tea in cups with brass saucers, surveying like gods both spectacle and spectators. As the actors themselves are hidden in their robes, so, as it enters each bosom, does the drama stir under the living stuff of the crowd.