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Prime ministers had succeeded each other like the clowns in a harlequinade.
The opening scenes, like a soap bubble, began to grow larger and larger, the double plot was abandoned, the Transformation scene became the principal feature, and a long Harlequinade at the end. In the Pantomime of "Red Riding Hood," written by F.W. Green, and produced at Her Majesty's Theatre, during the 'eighties, an effort was made to compose and invent a piece of pure Pantomime.
To have the spirit so suddenly, cruelly riven from the sprightly body that was, but a few hours ago, hale and alert, obedient to every petty wish, could dance, run, and leap; to be forced with such hideous precipitation to leave the warm breath of June and undergo the lonely change, merging with the shadow; to be flung from the exquisite and commonplace day of sunshine into the appalling adventure that should not have been his for years and hurled into it by what hand! ah, bitter, bitter price for a harlequinade!
Ben More, Suilven, Canisp oh, to see them once again! and the windy skies, and Geinig thundering down its rocky chasm, and Aivron singing its morning song along the golden gravel of its shoals! what did he want with any theatre? with the harlequinade in which he was losing his life? Could he not escape? Euston station was not so far away and Invershin?
This harlequinade excited much boisterous laughter among the crowd; and no one joined in it more mirthfully than young Springall, who, for some reason known best to Hugh Dalton, yet sanctioned by Sir Robert Cecil, had spent the last few days in the kitchens and buttery of Cecil Place.
This harlequinade after the pantomime at the church for what is a modern smart wedding but a second-rate pantomime? put them into a good humour, and made them feel that, after all, they had got something for their presents. And so the happy pair passed through a dreary rain of rice to the mysteries of that Bluebeard's Chamber, the honeymoon.
If the whole affair happened in some alien atmosphere, if a pear-tree began to grow apples or a river to run with wine in some strange fairyland, the effect would be quite different. The streets and shops and door-knockers of the harlequinade, which to the vulgar aesthete make it seem commonplace, are in truth the very essence of the aesthetic departure.
What they most admire in a pantomime is the oldest part of it, the only true pantomime the harlequinade! Hence the very nature of children is a proof that what Christmas is now to them, it was in the past to their elders.
That work has undoubtedly great merit, when considered as a wild satirical harlequinade; but, if we consider it as a picture of life and manners, we must pronounce it more absurd than any of the romances which it was designed to ridicule.
Have I not often told you that it sprang from no disrespect to my friends, the comic actors, but from the feeling that no comedian can hope to be comic enough to compete with the real thing the true harlequinade of everyday life, roaring and screaming around me wherever I go?
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