Any one who is blessed with a pretty strong stomach can pass his
evenings while at Constantinople at the play: he may, moreover, choose
among quite a number of almost equally wretched little theatres of
various sorts, many of which are beer-gardens and wine-shops as well.
At some one of these one can always find the Italian comedy, or
rather a troupe of Italian actors, whose efforts frequently make one
wish the whole arena could be converted into a vegetable market. The
Turks, however, frequent by preference those theatres in which certain
bare-necked, brazen-faced, painted French women sing light songs to
the accompaniment of a wretched orchestra. One of these theatres was
the Alhambra, situated in the Grande Rue de Pera: it consisted of a
long apartment, always crowded to the utmost, and red with fezzes from
stage to entrance. The nature of those songs, and the bold gestures
which those intrepid ladies employed in order to make their meaning
perfectly clear, no one could either imagine or credit unless indeed he
had been to the _Capellanes_ at Madrid. At anything especially coarse
or impudent all those great fat Turks, seated in long lines, broke
into loud roars of laughter, and then the habitual mask of dignity
and reserve would drop from their faces, exposing the depths of their
real nature and every secret of their grossly sensual lives. There is
nothing that the Turk conceals so habitually and effectually as the
sensual nature of his tastes and manner of life. He never appears in
public accompanied by a woman, rarely looks at, and never speaks to,
one, and considers it almost an insult to be inquired of concerning
his wives. Judging merely by outside appearances, one would take this
to be the most austere and straitlaced people in the world, but it is
only in appearance. The same Turk who colors to the tips of his ears
if one so much as asks if his wife is well, sends his boys, and his
girls too, to listen to the coarse jests of _Kara-gyuz_, corrupting
their minds before their senses are fairly awakened, while he himself
is fully capable of abandoning the peaceful enjoyments of his own
harem for such excesses as Bayezid the Thunderbolt set the first
example of, and Mahmûd the Reformer was doubtless not the last to
follow. And, indeed, were proof needed of the profound corruption which
lurks beneath this mask of seeming austerity, one need go no farther
than to that selfsame _Kara-gyuz_. It is a grotesque caricature of a
middle-class Turk, a sort of _ombra chinese_, whose head, arms, and
legs are made to accompany with appropriate gestures the developments
of some extravagant burlesque having usually a love-intrigue for its
plot. The marionette is worked behind a transparent curtain, and
resembles a depraved Pulcinello, coarse, cynical, and cunning. Sensual
as a satyr, foul-mouthed as a fishwife, he throws his audience into
paroxysms of laughter and enthusiasm by every sort of indecent jest and
extravagant gesture. Before the censorship curbed to some small extent
the hitherto unbridled looseness of this performance, the figure was
made to give visible proof of its corporeal resemblance to Priapus, and
not infrequently upon this lofty and elevating point the whole plot
hinged.