DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0198
186
JOHN RUSKIN.
would only need to be made more contemptuous for
this) is written with such strange felicity as Ruskin uses
when, with much feeling, he writes lightly-
“ The pantomime was Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
The forty thieves were girls. The forty thieves had
forty companions, who were girls. The forty thieves
and their forty companions were in some way mixed
up with about four hundred and forty fairies, who were
girls. There was an Oxford and Cambridge, in which
the Oxford and Cambridge men were girls. . . . Mingled
incongruously with these seraphic, and as far as my boy-
ish experience extends, novel elements of pantomime,
there were yet some of its old and fast - expiring ele-
ments. There were, in speciality, two thoroughly good
pantomime actors, Mr W. H. Payne and Mr Frederick
Payne. . . . There were two subordinate actors, who
played, subordinately well, the fore and hind legs of a
donkey. And there was a little actress, of whom I have
chiefly to speak, who played exquisitely the little part
she had to play. The scene in which she appeared was
. . . the house scene, in which Ali Baba’s wife, on
washing day, is called upon by the butcher, baker, and
milkman, with unpaid bills; and in the extremity of her
distress hears her husband’s knock at the door and
opens it for him to drive in his donkey, laden with
gold. The children . . . presently share in the rap-
ture of their father and mother; and the little lady I
spoke of—eight or nine years old—dances a pas de
deux with the donkey. She did it beautifully and
simply, as a child ought to dance. She was not an
infant prodigy; there was no evidence, in the finish
or strength of her motion, that she had been put to
continual torture through half her eight or nine years.
She did nothing more than any child, well taught, but
painlessly, might easily do. She caricatured no older
JOHN RUSKIN.
would only need to be made more contemptuous for
this) is written with such strange felicity as Ruskin uses
when, with much feeling, he writes lightly-
“ The pantomime was Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
The forty thieves were girls. The forty thieves had
forty companions, who were girls. The forty thieves
and their forty companions were in some way mixed
up with about four hundred and forty fairies, who were
girls. There was an Oxford and Cambridge, in which
the Oxford and Cambridge men were girls. . . . Mingled
incongruously with these seraphic, and as far as my boy-
ish experience extends, novel elements of pantomime,
there were yet some of its old and fast - expiring ele-
ments. There were, in speciality, two thoroughly good
pantomime actors, Mr W. H. Payne and Mr Frederick
Payne. . . . There were two subordinate actors, who
played, subordinately well, the fore and hind legs of a
donkey. And there was a little actress, of whom I have
chiefly to speak, who played exquisitely the little part
she had to play. The scene in which she appeared was
. . . the house scene, in which Ali Baba’s wife, on
washing day, is called upon by the butcher, baker, and
milkman, with unpaid bills; and in the extremity of her
distress hears her husband’s knock at the door and
opens it for him to drive in his donkey, laden with
gold. The children . . . presently share in the rap-
ture of their father and mother; and the little lady I
spoke of—eight or nine years old—dances a pas de
deux with the donkey. She did it beautifully and
simply, as a child ought to dance. She was not an
infant prodigy; there was no evidence, in the finish
or strength of her motion, that she had been put to
continual torture through half her eight or nine years.
She did nothing more than any child, well taught, but
painlessly, might easily do. She caricatured no older