e. They are only a lyric or narrative accompaniment to the
music and the dance. Still they have, one is informed, a beauty much
appreciated by Japanese, and one that the stranger, ignorant of the
language, misses. And secondly, what is worse, the music failed to move
me. Whether this is my own fault, or that of the music, I do not presume
to decide, for I do not know whether, as so often is the case, I was
defeated by a convention unfamiliar to me, or whether the convention has
really become formal and artificial. In any case, after the first shock
of interest, I found the music monotonous. It was solemn and religious
in character, and reminded me more of Gregorian chants than of anything
else. But it had one curious feature which seemed rather to be primitive
and orgiastic. The two musicians who played the drums accompanied the
performers, almost unceasingly, by a kind of musical ejaculation,
starting on a low note and swooping up to a high, long-held falsetto
cry. This over and over again, through the dialogue and through the
singing. The object, I suppose, and perhaps, to Japanese, the effect, is
to sustain a high emotional tone. In my case it failed, as the music
generally failed. My interest, as I began by saying, was maintained by
the visual beauty; and that must have been very great to be able to
maintain itself independently of the words and the music.

As to the drama, it is not drama at all in the sense in which we have
come to understand the term in the West. There is no "construction," no
knot tied and untied, no character. Rather there is a succession of
scenes selected from a well-known story for some quality of poignancy,
or merely of narrative interest. The form, I think, should be called
epic or lyric rather than dramatic. And it is in this point that it most
obviously differs from the Greek drama. It has no intellectual content,
or very little. And, perhaps for that reason, it has had no development,
but remains fossilised where it was in the fifteenth century. On the
other hand, these actors, I felt, are the only ones who could act Greek
drama. They have, I think, quite clearly the same tradition and aim as
the Greeks. They desire not to reproduce but to symbolise actuality; and
their conception of acting is the very opposite of ours. The last thing
they aim at is to be "natural." To be unnatural rather is their object.
Hence the costume, hence the mask, hence the movement and gesture. And
how effectiv