Page:Under the Microscope - Swinburne (1899).djvu/24

 whose life has not been spent behind the scenes can hope to verify his guess at the wearer of such or such a mask. We see Harlequin Virtue make love to the goddess Grundy, and watch if we can without yawning the raddled old columbine Cant perform her usual pirouettes in the ballet of morality; we have hardly heart to sit out, though revived on so rotten a stage by express desire, the screaming farce of religion; and after all we are never sure whether it was Clown or Pantaloon whom we heard snuffling and wheezing in the side-scenes. We go for instance to the old Quarterly Theatre, confident that we shall see and hear the old actors in their old parts, or at least some worthy successor and heir to the sound stage traditions of the house; and indeed we find much the same show of decoration and much the same style of declamation as ever; but we had a tender and pardonable weakness for the old faces and the old voices; and now we cannot even tell if they are here or no; whether the part taken in the first act by an old familiar friend is not continued in the second by a new performer of much promise and ability, remarkable for his more than apish or parrot-like dexterity in picking up and reproducing the tricks and phrases, tones and gestures, of the stage-struck veteran in whose place he stands; but not the man we came to see. We cannot hang upon the actor's lips with the same breathless attention when we know not whether it be master