Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/64

52 about a mad person, and the final play about devils, or sometimes a festive piece. Each of the plays in the Nō repertory is classified into one of these groups, and the purpose of having this fixed programme is to achieve the effect of an artistic whole, with an introduction, development and climax. The third, or woman-play, is the most popular, but to present a whole programme of such plays would mar the total effect as much, say, as having an Italian opera with five mad scenes sung by successive coloratura sopranos.

The tone of the Nō plays is serious, and often tragic. To relieve the atmosphere, the custom arose of having farces performed in between the Nō dramas of a programme, often parodies of the pieces that they follow. It might be imagined that the alternation of mood from the tragic tone of the Nō to a broad farce and then back again would prove too great a wrench for the sensibilities of the audience. This is not merely a case of comic relief in the manner of Shakespeare, for the farces last almost as long as the serious parts, and often specifically deride them. But the Japanese audiences have apparently enjoyed the very sharpness of the contrast between the two moods.

On the whole, however, the humour of the Japanese farces is not very interesting to us, and when a Western reader thinks of the Nō theatre, it will be of the tragedies. What are the qualities most to be admired in these works? There is first of all the poetry. This is written in alternating lines of 7 and 5 syllables, like most other Japanese verse, but in the plays attains heights otherwise unknown in the language. The short verses are sometimes miracles of suggestion and sharp imagery, but, at least for a Western reader, lack the sustained power of the greatest poetry. The Nō provides a superb framework for a dramatic poet. It is in some ways an enlarged equivalent of the