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Rh came into being. Edifices—half dancing-stage, half theatre—were built for the special purpose of representing these Nō, as the performances were called; and though the chorus, which was at the same time an orchestra, remained, new interest was added in the shape of two individual personages, who moved about and recited portions of the poem in a more dramatic manner. The result was something strikingly similar to the old Greek drama. The three unities, though never theorised about, were strictly observed in practice. There was the same chorus, the same stately demean our of the actors, who were often masked; there was the same sitting in the open air, there was the same quasi-religious strain pervading the whole. We say "was;" but happily the Nō are not yet dead. Though shorn of much of the formality and etiquette which surrounded them in earlier days, representations are still given by families who have handed down the art from father to son for four hundred years. There is no scenery, but the dresses are magnificent. Even the audience, composed chiefly of noblemen and ladies of rank, is a study. They come, not merely to be amused, but to learn, and they follow the play, book in hand; for the language used, though beautiful, is ancient and hard of comprehension, especially when chanted. The music is—well, it is Oriental. Nevertheless, when due allowance has been made for Orientalism and for antiquity, it possesses a certain weird charm. Each piece takes about an hour to act. But the entire performance occupies the greater part of a day, as five or six pieces are given, and the intervals between them filled up by comediettas, whose broad fun, delivered in old-fashioned colloquial, serves as a foil to the classic severity of the chief plays.

From the Nō theatres of the high-born and learned to the Shibai or Kabuki theatres of the common people is a great descent, so far as taste and poetry are concerned, though the interest of the more vulgar exhibitions, viewed as pictures of manners—not in the world of gods and heroes, but in that of ordinary Japanese men and women—will be of greater interest to most foreign spectators. The plays given at these theatres originated partly in the