interior of a castle. But the figures, which were about two-thirds of
human size, were wonderful in their brilliant, glittering gold armour,
and their martial prancing motions. All were knights--even the daughter
of the king of Babylon. She was distinguished only by her long hair. All
were in the beautiful, glittering armour, with helmets and visors that
could be let down at will. I am told this armour has been handed down
for many generations. It certainly is lovely. One actor alone was not
in armour, the wizard Magicce, or Malvigge, the Merlin of the Paladins.
He was in a long scarlet robe, edged with fur, and wore a three-cornered
scarlet hat.
So we watched the dragon leap and twist and get the knight by the leg:
and then perish. We watched the knights burst into the castle. We
watched the wonderful armour-clashing embraces of the delivered knights,
Orlando and his bosom friend and the little dwarf, clashing their
armoured breasts to the breasts of their brothers and deliverers. We
watched the would-be tears flow.--And then the statue of the witch
suddenly go up in flames, at which a roar of exultation from the boys.
Then it was over. The theatre was empty in a moment, but the proprietors
and the two men who sat near us would not let us go. We must wait for
the next performance.
My neighbour, a fat, jolly man, told me all about it. His neighbour, a
handsome tipsy man, kept contradicting and saying it wasn't so. But my
fat neighbour winked at me, not to take offence.
This story of the Paladins of France lasted three nights. We had come on
the middle night--of course. But no matter--each night was a complete
story. I am sorry I have forgotten the names of the knights. But the
story was, that Orlando and his friend and the little dwarf, owing to
the tricks of that same dwarf, who belonged to the Paladins, had been
captured and immured in the enchanted castle of the ghastly old witch
who lived on the blood of Christians. It was now the business of Rinaldo
and the rest of the Paladins, by the help of Magicce the _good_ wizard,
to release their captured brethren from the ghoulish old witch.
So much I made out of the fat man's story, while the theatre was
filling. He knew every detail of the whole Paladin cycle. And it is
evident the Paladin cycle has lots of versions. For the handsome tipsy
neighbour kept saying he was wrong, he was wrong, and giving different
stories, and shouting for a jury to come and say who was right, he or my
fat friend. A jury gathered, and a storm began to rise. But the stout
proprietor with a fennel-wand came and quenched the noise, telling the
handsome tipsy man he knew too much and wasn't asked. Whereupon the
tipsy one sulked.
Ah, said my friend, couldn't I come on Friday. Friday was a great night.
On Friday they were giving I Beati Paoli: The Blessed Pauls. He pointed
to the walls where were the placards announcing The Blessed Pauls. These
Pauls were evidently some awful secret society with masking hoods and
daggers and awful eyes looking through the holes. I said were they
assassins like the Black Hand. By no means, by no means. The Blessed
Pauls were a society for the protection of the poor. Their business was
to track down and murder the oppressive rich. Ah, they were a wonderful,
a splendid society. Were they, said I, a sort of camorra? Ah, on the
contrary--here he lapsed into a tense voice--they hated the camorra.
These, the Blest Pauls, were the powerful and terrible enemy of the
grand camorra. For the Grand Camorra oppresses the poor. And therefore
the Pauls track down in secret the leaders of the Grand Camorra, and
assassinate them, or bring them to the fearful hooded tribunal which
utters the dread verdict of the Beati Paoli. And when once the Beati
Paoli have decreed a man's death--all over. Ah bellissimo, bellissimo!
Why don't I come on Friday?
It seems to me a queer moral for the urchins thick-packed and gazing at
the drop scene. They are all males: urchins or men. I ask my fat friend
why there are no women--no girls. Ah, he says, the theatre is so small.
But, I say, if there is room for all the boys and men, there is the same
room for girls and women. Oh no--not in this small theatre. Besides this
is nothing for women. Not that there is anything improper, he hastens to
add. Not at all. But what should women and girls be doing at the
marionette show? It was an affair for males.
I agreed with him really, and was thankful we hadn't a lot of smirking
twitching girls and lasses in the audience. This male audience was so
tense and pure in its attention.
But hist! the play is going to begin. A lad is grinding a broken
street-piano under the stage. The padrone yells _Silenzio!_ with a roar,
and reaching over, pokes obstreperous boys with his long fennel-stalk,
like a beadle in church. When the curtain rises the piano stops, and
there is dead silence. On swings a knight, glittering, marching with
that curious hippety lilt, and gazing round with fixed and martial eyes.
He begins the prologue, telling us where we are. And dramatically he
waves his sword and stamps his foot, and wonderfully sounds his male,
martial, rather husky voice. Then the Paladins, his companions who are
to accompany him, swing one by one onto the stage, till they are five in
all, handsome knights, including the Babylonian Princess and the Knight
of Britain. They stand in a handsome, glittering line. And then comes
Merlin in his red robe. Merlin has a bright, fair, rather chubby face
and blue eyes, and seems to typify the northern intelligence. He now
tells them, in many words, how to proceed and what is to be done.
So then, the glittering knights are ready. Are they ready? Rinaldo
flourishes his sword with the wonderful cry "Andiamo!" let us go--and
the others respond: "Andiamo". Splendid word.
The first enemy were the knights of Spain, in red kirtles and half
turbans. With these a terrible fight. First of all rushes in the Knight
of Britain. He is the boaster, who always in words, does everything. But
in fact, poor knight of Britain, he falls lamed. The four Paladins have
stood shoulder to shoulder, glittering, watching the fray. Forth now
steps another knight, and the fight recommences. Terrible is the
smacking of swords, terrible the gasps from behind the dropped visors.
Till at last the knight of Spain falls--and the Paladin stands with his
foot on the dead. Then loud acclamations from the Paladins, and yells of
joy from the audience.
"_Silenzio!_" yells the padrone, flourishing the fennel-stalk.
Dead silence, and the story goes on. The Knight of Britain of course
claims to have slain the foe: and the audience faintly, jeeringly
hisses. "He's always the boaster, and he never does anything, the Knight
of Britain," whispers my fat friend. He has forgotten my nationality. I
wonder if the Knight of Britain is pure tradition, or if a political
touch of today has crept in.
However, this fray is over--Merlin comes to advise for the next move.
And are we ready? We are ready. _Andiamo!_ Again the word is yelled out,
and they set off. At first one is all engaged watching the figures:
their brilliance, their blank, martial stare, their sudden, angular,
gestures. There is something extremely suggestive in them. How much
better they fit the old legend-tales than living people would do. Nay,
if we are going to have human beings on the stage, they should be masked
and disguised. For in fact drama is enacted by symbolic creatures formed
out of human consciousness: puppets if you like: but not human
_individuals_. Our stage is all wrong, so boring in its personality.
Gradually, however, I found that my eyes were of minor importance.
Gradually it was the voice that gained hold of the blood. It is a
strong, rather husky, male voice that acts direct on the blood, not on
the mind. Again the old male Adam began to stir at the roots of my soul.
Again the old, first-hand indifference, the rich, untamed male blood
rocked down my veins. What does one care? What does one care for precept
and mental dictation? Is there not the massive brilliant, out-flinging
recklessness in the male soul, summed up in the sudden word: _Andiamo!_
Andiamo! Let us go on. Andiamo!--let us go hell knows where, but let us
go on. The splendid recklessness and passion that knows no precept and
no school-teacher, whose very molten spontaneity is its own guide.
I loved the voices of the Paladins--Rinaldo's voice, and Orlando's
voice: the voice of men once more, men who are not to be tutored. To be
sure there was Merlin making his long speeches in rather a chuntering,
prosy tone. But who was he? Was he a Paladin and a splendour? Not he. A
long-gowned chunterer. It is the reckless blood which achieves all, the
piff-piff-piffing of the mental and moral intelligence is but a
subsidiary help, a mere instrument.
The dragon was splendid: I have seen dragons in Wagner, at Covent Garden
and at the Prinz-Regenten Theater in Munich, and they were ridiculous.
But this dragon simply frightened me, with his leaping and twisting. And
when he seized the knight by the leg, my blood ran cold.
With smoke and sulphur leaps in Beelzebub. But he is merely the servant
of the great old witch. He is black and grinning, and he flourishes his
posterior and his tail. But he is curiously inefficacious: a sort of
lackey of wicked powers.
The old witch with her grey hair and staring eyes succeeds in being
ghastly. With just a touch, she would be a tall, benevolent old lady.
But listen to her. Hear her horrible female voice with its scraping
yells of evil lustfulness. Yes, she fills me with horror. And I am
staggered to find how I believe in her as _the_ evil principle.
Beelzebub, poor devil, is only one of her instruments.
It is her old, horrible, grinning female soul which locks up the heroes,
and which sends forth the awful and almost omnipotent malevolence. This
old, ghastly woman-spirit is the very core of mischief. And I felt my
heart getting as hot against her as the hearts of the lads in the
audience were. Red, deep hate I felt of that symbolic old ghoul-female.
Poor male Beelzebub is her loutish slave. And it takes all Merlin's
bright-faced intelligence, and all the surging hot urgency of the
Paladins, to conquer her.
She will never be finally destroyed--she will never finally die, till
her statue, which is immured in the vaults of the castle, is
burned.--Oh, it was a very psychoanalytic performance altogether, and
one could give a very good Freudian analysis of it.--But behold this
image of the witch: this white, submerged _idea_ of woman which rules
from the deeps of the unconscious. Behold, the reckless, untamable male
knights will do for it. As the statue goes up in flame--it is only
paper over wires--the audience yells! And yells again. And would God the
symbolic act were really achieved. It is only little boys who yell. Men
merely smile at the trick. They know well enough the white image
endures.
So it is over. The knights look at us once more. Orlando, hero of
heroes, has a slight inward cast of the eyes. This gives him that look
of almost fierce good-nature which these people adore: the look of a man
who does not think, but whose heart is all the time red hot with
burning, generous blood-passion. This is what they adore.
So my knights go. They all have wonderful faces, and are so splendidly
glittering and male. I am sorry they will be laid in a box now.
There is a great gasp of relief. The piano starts its lame rattle.
Somebody looking round laughs. And we all look round. And seated on the
top of the ticket office is a fat, solemn urchin of two or three years,
hands folded over his stomach, his forehead big and blank, like some
queer little Buddha. The audience laughs with that southern sympathy:
physical sympathy: that is what they love to feel and to arouse.
But there is a little after-scene: in front of the drop-curtain jerks
out a little fat flat caricature of a Neapolitan, and from the opposite
side jerks the tall caricature of a Sicilian. They jerk towards one
another and bump into one another with a smack. And smack goes the
Neapolitan, down on his posterior. And the boys howl with joy. It is the
eternal collision between the two peoples, Neapolitan and Sicilian. Now
goes on a lot of fooling between the two clowns, in the two dialects.
Alas, I can hardly understand anything at all. But it sounds comic, and
looks very funny. The Neapolitan of course gets most of the knocks. And
there seems to be no indecency at all--unless once.--The boys howl and
rock with joy, and no one says Silenzio!
But it is over. All is over. The theatre empties in a moment. And I
shake hands with my fat neighbour, affectionately, and in the right
spirit. Truly I loved them all in the theatre: the generous, hot
southern blood, so subtle and spontaneous, that asks for blood contact,
not for mental communion or spirit sympathy. I was sorry to leave them.
FINIS.