Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/156

 none of us. "The first speech is windy rhodomontade; in the second, we see the "real" Hamlet.

Tennyson wrote Idylls of the King, but in his off hours he smoked infinite tobacco and relieved his mind by relating Rabelaisian anecdote. The author of Idylls of the King was a Victorian hypocrite. The "real" Tennyson was a Rabelaisian.

Dr. Kennicott in Main Street says, "A fellow ought to go to church—keeps him in touch with the higher things!" but Dr. Kennicott slips down the street and spends the evening with Maud Dyer. The speaker was a hypocritical Puritan. The "real" man went down the street to Maud Dyer.

One of our sweethearts of the stage sings her love lyrics, touching every section of the audience with the caress of her eyes, and in a flight of wafted kisses vanishes behind the scenes, where she explodes in shrewish curses at the man who has dropped the curtain a quarter of a second too soon. On the stage, the actress: off the stage, the "real" woman.

Two young fellows entertain a starchy and correct elderly man before their fire. After some hours of serious talk, the elderly man withdraws. As the door closes behind him, one of the young chaps eases himself in the chair, stretches out his legs, yawns, and says: "Now, let's talk smut." The first part of the evening was passed in an uncomfortable illusion; the second part, amid the "realities of life."

The old-fashioned poets inspect their dreams and paint a woman as the object of every man's desire. But the naturalistic novelists see her and paint her