recreation to a very large and increasing number of persons, and while
it would be easy to over-estimate its influence for good or evil even
with these, there is no doubt that the stage, if not the drama, is
popular. Fortunately an inquiry like this into a now waning taste
in theatricals concerns the fact rather than the effect of the taste
otherwise the task might become indefinitely hard alike for writer and
for reader. No one can lay his hand on his heart, and declare that he
is the worse for having seen “La Belle Hélène,” for example, or say more
than that it is a thing which ought not to be seen by any one else; yet
I suppose there is no one ready to deny that “La Belle Hélène” was the
motive of those performances that have most pleased the most
people during recent years. There was something fascinating in the
circumstances and auspices under which the united Irma and Tostée
troupes appeared in Boston--_opéra bouffe_ led gayly forward by _finance
bouffe_, and suggesting Erie shares by its watered music and morals; but
there is no doubt that Tostée's grand reception was owing mainly to the
personal favor which she enjoyed here and which we do not vouchsafe to
every one. Ristori did not win it; we did our duty by her, following her
carefully with the libretto, and in her most intense effects turning the
leaves of a thousand pamphlets with a rustle that must have shattered
every delicate nerve in her; but we were always cold to her greatness.
It was not for Tosteés singing, which was but a little thing in itself;
it was not for her beauty, for that was no more than a reminiscence, if
it was not always an illusion; was it because she rendered the spirit of
M. Offenbach's operas so perfectly, that we liked her so much? “Ah, that
movement!” cried an enthusiast, “that swing, that--that--wriggle!” She
was undoubtedly a great actress, full of subtle surprises, and with
an audacious appearance of unconsciousness in those exigencies where
consciousness would summon the police--or should; she was so near, yet
so far from, the worst that could be intended; in tones, in gestures, in
attitudes, she was to the libretto just as the music was, now making
it appear insolently and unjustly coarse, now feebly inadequate in its
explicit immodesty.
To see this famous lady in “La Grande Duchesse” or “La Belle Hélène” was
an experience never to be forgotten, and certainly not to be described.
The former opera has undoubtedly its proper and blameless charm. There
is something pretty and arch in the notion of the Duchess's falling
in love with the impregnably faithful and innocent Fritz; and the
extravagance of the whole, with the satire upon the typical little
German court, is delightful. But “La Belle Helene” is a wittier play
than “La Grande Duchesse,” and it is the vividest expression of the
spirit of _opéra bouffe_. It is full of such lively mockeries as that of
Helen when she gazes upon the picture of Leda and the Swan: “J'aime á
me recueiller devant ce tableau de famille! Mon père, ma mère, les voici
tous les deux! O mon père, tourne vers ton enfant un bec favorable!”--or
of Paris when he represses the zeal of Calchas, who desires to present
him at once to Helen: “Soit! mais sans lui dire qui je suis;--je désire
garder le plus strict incognito, jusq'au moment où la situation sera
favorable á un coup de théâtre.” But it must be owned that our audiences
seemed not to take much pleasure in these and other witticisms, though
they obliged Mademoiselle Tostée to sing “Un Mari sage” three times,
with all those actions and postures which seem incredible the moment
they have ceased. They possibly understood this song no better than the
strokes of wit, and encored it merely for the music's sake. The effect
was, nevertheless, unfortunate, and calculated to give those French
ladies but a bad opinion of our morals. How could they comprehend that
the taste was, like themselves, imported, and that its indulgence here
did not characterize us? It was only in appearance that, while we did
not enjoy the wit we delighted in the coarseness. And how coarse this
travesty of the old fable mainly is! That priest Calchas, with his
unspeakable snicker his avarice, his infidelity, his hypocrisy, is alone
infamy enough to provoke the destruction of a city. Then that scene
interrupted by Menelaus! It is indisputably witty, and since all those
people are so purely creatures of fable, and dwell so entirely in an
unmoral atmosphere, it appears as absurd to blame it as the murders in
a pantomime. To be sure there is something about murder, some inherent
grace or refinement perhaps, that makes its actual representation upon
the stage more tolerable than the most diffident suggestion of adultery.
Not that “La Belle Hélène” is open to the reproach of over-delicacy
in this scene, or any other, for the matter of that, though there is a
strain of real poetry in the conception of this whole episode of
Helen's intention to pass all Paris's love-making off upon herself for a
dream,--poetry such as might have been inspired by a muse that had
taken too much nectar. There is excellent character, also, as well
as caricature in the drama; not only Calchas is admirably done, but
Agamemnon, and Achilles, and Helen, and Menelaus, “pas un mari ordinaire
... un mari épique,”--and the burlesque is good of its kind. It is
artistic, as it seems French dramatic effort must almost necessarily
be. It could scarcely be called the fault of the _opéra bouffe_ that the
English burlesque should have come of its success; nor could the public
blame it for the great favor the burlesque won in those far-off winters,
if indeed the public wishes to bestow blame for this. No one, however,
could see one of these curious travesties without being reminded, in
an awkward way, of the _morale_ of the _opéra bouffe_, and of the
_personnel_--as I may say--of “The Black Crook,” “The White Fawn,” and
the “Devil's Auction.” There was the same intention of merriment at the
cost of what may be called the marital prejudices, though it cannot be
claimed that the wit was the same as in “La Belle Hélène;” there was the
same physical unreserve as in the ballets of a former season; while in
its dramatic form the burlesque discovered very marked parental traits.
This English burlesque, this child of M. Offenbach's genius, and the now
somewhat faded spectacular muse, flourished at the time of which I write
in three of our seven theatres for months,--five, from the highest to
the lowest being in turn open to it,--and had begun, in a tentative way,
to invade the deserted stage even so long ago as the previous summer;
and I have sometimes flattered myself that it was my fortune to witness
the first exhibition of its most characteristic feature in a theatre
into which I wandered one sultry night because it was the nearest
theatre. They were giving a play called “The Three Fast Men,” which had
a moral of such powerful virtue that it ought to have reformed everybody
in the neighborhood. Three ladies being in love with the three fast men,
and resolved to win them back to regular hours and the paths of
sobriety by every device of the female heart, dress themselves in men's
clothes,--such is the subtlety of the female heart in the bosoms of
modern young ladies of fashion,--and follow their lovers about from
one haunt of dissipation to another and become themselves exemplarily
vicious,--drunkards, gamblers, and the like. The first lady, who was a
star in her lowly orbit, was very great in all her different _rôles_,
appearing now as a sailor with the hornpipe of his calling, now as an
organ-grinder, and now as a dissolute young gentleman,--whatever was the
exigency of good morals. The dramatist seemed to have had an eye to
her peculiar capabilities, and to have expressly invented edifying
characters and situations that her talents might enforce them. The
second young lady had also a personal didactic gift, rivaling, and
even surpassing in some respects, that of the star; and was very rowdy
indeed. In due time the devoted conduct of the young ladies has its just
effect: the three fast men begin to reflect upon the folly of their wild
courses; and at this point the dramatist delivers his great stroke. The
first lady gives a _soirée dansante et chantante_, and the three fast
men have invitations. The guests seat themselves, as at a fashionable
party, in a semicircle, and the gayety of the evening begins with
conundrums and playing upon the banjo; the gentlemen are in their
morning-coats, and the ladies in a display of hosiery which is now no
longer surprising, and which need not have been mentioned at all except
for the fact that, in the case of the first lady, it seemed not to have
been freshly put on for that party. In this instance an element comical
beyond intention was present, in three young gentlemen, an amateur
musical trio, who had kindly consented to sing their favorite song of
“The Rolling Zuyder Zee,” as they now kindly did, with flushed faces,
unmanageable hands, and much repetition of
The ro-o-o-o-
The ro-o-o-o-
The ro-o-o-o-ll-
Ing Zuyder Zee,
Zuyder Zee,
Zuyder Zee-e-e!
Then the turn of the three guardian angels of the fast men being
come again they get up and dance each one a breakdown which seems to
establish their lovers (now at last in the secret of the generous ruse
played upon them) firmly in their resolution to lead a better life. They
are in nowise shaken from it by the displeasure which soon shows itself
in the manner of the first and second ladies. The former is greatest in
the so-called Protean parts of the play, and is obscured somewhat by the
dancing of the latter; but she has a daughter who now comes on and sings
a song. The pensive occasion, the favorable mood of the audience, the
sympathetic attitude of the players, invite her to sing “The Maiden's
Prayer,” and so we have “The Maiden's Prayer.” We may be a low set,
and the song may be affected and insipid enough, but the purity of its
intention touches, and the little girl is vehemently applauded. She is
such a pretty child with her innocent face, and her artless white dress,
and blue ribbons to her waist and hair, that we will have her back
again; whereupon she runs out upon the stage, strikes up a rowdy, rowdy
air, dances a shocking little dance, and vanishes from the dismayed
vision, leaving us a considerably lower set than we were at first, and
glad of our lowness. This is the second lady's own ground, however, and
now she comes out--in a way that banishes far from our fickle minds
all thoughts of the first lady and her mistaken child--with a medley of
singing and dancing, a bit of breakdown, of cancan, of jig, a bit of
“Le Sabre de mon Père,” and of all memorable slang songs, given with
the most grotesque and clownish spirit that ever inspired a woman. Each
member of the company follows in his or her _pas seul_, and then they
all dance together to the plain confusion of the amateur trio, whose
eyes roll like so many Zuyder Zees, as they sit lonely and motionless in
the midst. All stiffness and formality are overcome. The evening party
in fact disappears entirely, and we are suffered to see the artists
in their moments of social relaxation sitting as it were around the
theatrical fireside. They appear to forget us altogether; they exchange
winks, and nods, and jests of quite personal application; they call each
other by name, by their Christian names, their nicknames. It is not
an evening party, it is a family party, and the suggestion of home
enjoyment completes the reformation of the three fast men. We see them
marry the three fast women before we leave the house.
On another occasion, two suburban friends of the drama beheld a more
explicit precursor of the coming burlesque at one of the minor theatres
last summer. The great actress whom they had come to see on another
scene was ill, and in their disappointment they embraced the hope of
entertainment offered them at the smaller playhouse. The drama itself
was neither here nor there as to intent, but the public appetite or the
manager's conception of it--for I am by no means sure that this whole
business was not a misunderstanding--had exacted that the actresses
should appear in so much stocking, and so little else, that it was
a horror to look upon them. There was no such exigency of dialogue,
situation, or character as asked the indecorum, and the effect upon the
unprepared spectator was all the more stupefying from the fact that most
of the ladies were not dancers, and had not countenances that consorted
with impropriety. Their faces had merely the conventional Yankee
sharpness and wanness of feature, and such difference of air and
character as should say for one and another, shop-girl, shoe-binder,
seamstress; and it seemed an absurdity and an injustice to refer to them
in any way the disclosures of the ruthlessly scant drapery. A grotesque
fancy would sport with their identity: “Did not this or that one write
poetry for her local newspaper?” so much she looked the average culture
and crudeness, and when such a one, coldly yielding to the manager's
ideas of the public taste, stretched herself on a green baize bank with
her feet towards us, or did a similar grossness, it was hard to keep
from crying aloud in protest, that she need not do it; that nobody
really expected or wanted it of her. Nobody? Alas! there were people
there--poor souls who had the appearance of coming every night--who
plainly did expect it, and who were loud in their applauses of the chief
actress. This was a young person of a powerful physical expression,
quite unlike the rest,--who were dyspeptic and consumptive in the range
of their charms,--and she triumphed and wantoned through the scenes with
a fierce excess of animal vigor. She was all stocking, as one may
say, being habited to represent a prince; she had a raucous voice, an
insolent twist of the mouth, and a terrible trick of defying her enemies
by standing erect, chin up, hand on hip, and right foot advanced,
patting the floor. It was impossible, even in the orchestra seats, to
look at her in this attitude and not shrink before her; and on the stage
she visibly tyrannized over the invalid sisterhood with her full-blown
fascinations. These unhappy girls personated, with a pathetic effect not
to be described, such arch and fantastic creations of the poet's mind
as Bewitchingcreature and Exquisitelittlepet, and the play was a kind
of fairy burlesque in rhyme, of the most melancholy stupidity that
ever was. Yet there was something very comical in the conditions of its
performance, and in the possibility that public and manager were
playing at cross-purposes. There we were in the pit, an assemblage of
hard-working Yankees of decently moral lives and simple traditions,
country-bred many of us and of plebeian stock and training, vulgar
enough perhaps, but probably not depraved, and, excepting the first
lady's friends, certainly not educated to the critical enjoyment of such
spectacles; and there on the stage were those mistaken women, in
such sad variety of boniness and flabbiness as I have tried to hint,
addressing their pitiable exposure to a supposed vileness in us, and
wrenching from all original intent the innocent dullness of the
drama, which for the most part could have been as well played in
walking-dresses, to say the least.
The scene was not less amusing, as regarded the audiences, the ensuing
winter, when the English burlesque troupes which London sent us,
arrived; but it was not quite so pathetic as regarded the performers. Of
their beauty and their abandon, the historical gossiper, whom I descry
far down the future, waiting to refer to me as “A scandalous writer
of the period,” shall learn very little to his purpose of warming his
sketch with a color from mine. But I hope I may describe these ladies
as very pretty, very blonde, and very unscrupulously clever, and still
disappoint the historical gossiper. They seemed in all cases to be
English; no Yankee faces, voices, or accents were to be detected
among them. Where they were associated with people of another race,
as happened with one troupe, the advantage of beauty was upon the
Anglo-Saxon side, while that of some small shreds of propriety was with
the Latins. These appeared at times almost modest, perhaps because
they were the conventional _ballerine_, and wore the old-fashioned
ballet-skirt with its volumed gauze,--a coyness which the Englishry had
greatly modified, through an exigency of the burlesque,--perhaps because
indecorum seems, like blasphemy and untruth, somehow more graceful and
becoming in southern than in northern races.
As for the burlesques themselves, they were nothing, the performers
personally everything. M. Offenbach had opened Lemprière's Dictionary
to the authors with “La Belle Hélène,” and there, was commonly a flimsy
raveling of parodied myth, that held together the different dances and
songs, though sometimes it was a novel or an opera burlesqued; but there
was always a song and always a dance for each lady, song and dance being
equally slangy, and depending for their effect mainly upon the natural
or simulated personal charms of the performer.
It was also an indispensable condition of the burlesque's success, that
the characters should be reversed in their representation,--that the
men's _rôles_ should be played by women, and that at least one female
part should be done by a man. It must be owned that the fun all came
from this character, the ladies being too much occupied with the more
serious business of bewitching us with their pretty figures to be very
amusing; whereas this wholesome man and brother, with his blonde wig,
his _panier_, his dainty feminine simperings and languishings, his
falsetto tones, and his general air of extreme fashion, was always
exceedingly droll. He was the saving grace of these stupid plays; and
I cannot help thinking that the _cancan_, as danced, in “Ivanhoe,” by
Isaac of York and the masculine Rebecca, was a moral spectacle; it
was the _cancan_ made forever absurd and harmless. But otherwise, the
burlesques were as little cheerful as profitable. The playwrights who
had adapted them to the American stage--for they were all of English
authorship--had been good enough to throw in some political allusions
which were supposed to be effective with us, but which it was sad to see
received with apathy. It was conceivable from a certain air with which
the actors delivered these, that they were in the habit of stirring
London audiences greatly with like strokes of satire; but except
where Rebecca offered a bottle of Medford rum to Cedric the Saxon, who
appeared in the figure of ex-President Johnson, they had no effect upon
us. We were cold, very cold, to suggestions of Mr. Reverdy Johnson's now
historical speech-making and dining; General Butler's spoons moved us
just a little; at the name of Grant we roared and stamped, of course,
though in a perfectly mechanical fashion, and without thought of any
meaning offered us; those lovely women might have coupled the hero's
name with whatever insult they chose, and still his name would have made
us cheer them. We seemed not to care for points that were intended
to flatter us nationally. I am not aware that anybody signified
consciousness when the burlesque supported our side of the Alabama
controversy, or acknowledged the self-devotion with which a threat that
England should be made to pay was delivered by these English performers.
With an equal impassiveness we greeted allusions to Erie shares and to
the late Mr. Fiske.
The burlesque chiefly betrayed its descent from the spectacular ballet
in its undressing; but that ballet, while it demanded personal exposure,
had something very observable in its scenic splendors, and all that
marching and processioning in it was rather pretty; while in the
burlesque there seemed nothing of innocent intent. No matter what the
plot, it led always to a final great scene of breakdown,--which was
doubtless most impressive in that particular burlesque where this scene
represented the infernal world, and the ladies gave the dances of the
country with a happy conception of the deportment of lost souls. There,
after some vague and inconsequent dialogue, the wit springing from a
perennial source of humor (not to specify the violation of the seventh
commandment), the dancing commenced, each performer beginning with the
Walk-round of the negro minstrels, rendering its grotesqueness with a
wonderful frankness of movement, and then plunging into the mysteries
of her dance with a kind of infuriate grace and a fierce delight very
curious to look upon. I am aware of the historical gossiper still on the
alert for me, and I dare not say how sketchily these ladies were dressed
or indeed, more than that they were dressed to resemble circus-riders
of the other sex, but as to their own deceived nobody,--possibly did not
intend deceit. One of them was so good a player that it seemed needless
for her to go so far as she did in the dance; but she spared herself
nothing, and it remained for her merely stalwart friends to surpass her,
if possible. This inspired each who succeeded her to wantoner excesses,
to wilder insolences of hose, to fiercer bravadoes of corsage; while
those not dancing responded to the sentiment of the music by singing
shrill glees in tune with it, clapping their hands, and patting Juba, as
the act is called,--a peculiarly graceful and modest thing in woman. The
frenzy grew with every moment, and, as in another Vision of Sin,--
“Then they started from their places,
Moved with violence, changed in hue,
Caught each other with wild grimaces,
Half-invisible to the view,
Wheeling with precipitate paces
To the melody, till they flew,
Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces
Twisted hard in fierce embraces,
Like to Furies, like to Graces,”--
with an occasional exchange of cuffs and kicks perfectly human. The
spectator found now himself and now the scene incredible, and indeed
they were hardly conceivable in relation to each other. A melancholy
sense of the absurdity, of the incongruity, of the whole absorbed at
last even a sense of the indecency. The audience was much the same in
appearance as other audiences, witnessing like displays at the other
theatres, and did not differ greatly from the usual theatrical house.
Not so much fashion smiled upon the efforts of these young ladies, as
upon the _cancan_ of the Signorina Morlacchi a winter earlier; but there
was a most fair appearance of honest-looking, handsomely dressed men
and women; and you could pick out, all over the parquet, faces of one
descent from the deaconship, which you wondered were not afraid
to behold one another there. The truth is, we spectators, like the
performers themselves, lacked that tradition of error, of transgression,
which casts its romance about the people of a lighter race. We had not
yet set off one corner of the Common for a Jardin Mabille; we had not
even the concert-cellars of the gay and elegant New Yorker; and nothing,
really, had happened in Boston to educate us to this new taste in
theatricals, since the fair Quakers felt moved to testify in the streets
and churches against our spiritual nakedness. Yet it was to be noted
with regret that our innocence, our respectability, had no restraining
influence upon the performance; and the fatuity of the hope cherished
by some courageous people, that the presence of virtuous persons would
reform the stage, was but too painfully evident. The doubt whether they
were not nearer right who have denounced the theatre as essentially and
incorrigibly bad would force itself upon the mind, though there was a
little comfort in the thought that, if virtue had been actually allowed
to frown upon these burlesques, the burlesques might have been abashed
into propriety. The caressing arm of the law was cast very tenderly
about the performers, and in the only case where a spectator presumed
to hiss,--it was at a _pas seul_ of the indescribable,--a policeman
descended upon him, and with the succor of two friends of the free
ballet, rent him from his place, and triumphed forth with him. Here was
an end of ungenial criticism; we all applauded zealously after that.