Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/115

89 allowed to disgrace the boards of a Japanese theatre. The lewd maunderings of Sir John Falstaff, the licentious jesting of Mistress Ford, Mistress Page, and Mistress Quickly must excite reprobation in all but those lovers of prurience and dabblers in impropriety who are eager to gratify their illicit tastes under the pretence of art. Ninety-seven per cent. of the people who laughed to see the fat knight smothered in a basket of dirty linen are nasty-minded people. Outside a silly clique there is not the slightest interest in the Elizabethan humbug or all his works."