the plays:
PANTALOON
THE TWELVE-POUND LOOK
ROSALIND
THE WILL
***
an excerpt from the first play:
PANTALOON
The scene makes believe to be the private home of Pantaloon and Columbine, though whether they ever did have a private home is uncertain.
In the English version (and with that alone are w... More
the plays:
PANTALOON
THE TWELVE-POUND LOOK
ROSALIND
THE WILL
***
an excerpt from the first play:
PANTALOON
The scene makes believe to be the private home of Pantaloon and Columbine, though whether they ever did have a private home is uncertain.
In the English version (and with that alone are we concerning ourselves) these two were figures in the harlequinade, which in Victorian days gave a finish to pantomime as vital as a tail to a dog. Now they are vanished from the boards; or at best they wander through the canvas streets, in everybody's way, at heart afraid of their own policeman, really dead, and waiting, like the faithful old horse, for some one to push them over. Here at the theatre is perhaps a scrap of Columbine's skirt, torn off as she squeezed through the wings for the last time, or even placed there[4] intentionally by her as a souvenir: Columbine to her public, a kiss hanging on a nail.
They are very illusive. One has to toss to find out what was their relation to each other: whether Pantaloon, for instance, was Columbine's father. He was an old, old urchin of the streets over whom some fairy wand had been waved, rather carelessly, and this makes him a child of art; now we must all be nice to children of art, and the nicest thing we can do for Pantaloon is to bring the penny down heads and give him a delightful daughter. So Columbine was Pantaloon's daughter.
It would be cruel to her to make her his wife, because then she could not have a love-affair.
The mother is dead, to give the little home a touch of pathos.
We have now proved that Pantaloon and his daughter did have a home, and as soon as we know that, we know more. We know, for instance, that as half a crown seemed almost [5] a competency to them, their home must have been in a poor locality and conveniently small. We know also that the sitting-room and kitchen combined must have been on the ground floor. We know it, because in the harlequinade they were always flying from the policeman or bashing his helmet, and Pantaloon would have taken ill with a chamber that was not easily commanded by the policeman on his beat. Even Columbine, we may be sure, refined as she was and incapable of the pettiest larceny, liked the homely feeling of dodging the policeman's eye as she sat at meals. Lastly, we know that directly opposite the little home was a sausage-shop, the pleasantest of all sights to Pantaloon, who, next to his daughter, loved a sausage. It is being almost too intimate to tell that Columbine hated sausages; she hated them as a literary hand's daughter might hate manuscripts. But like a loving child she never told her hate, and spent great part of her time toasting sausages to a turn before the fire, and eating[6] her own one bravely when she must, but concealing it in the oddest places when she could.
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