of the
background, and play and players alike were upraised to a lofty plane of
solemn stateliness by the stately reality of those noble walls: which
themselves were tragedies, because of the ruin that had come to them
with age.

Upon the comedy that so injudiciously was interpolated into the program
the effect of the heroic environment was hopelessly belittling. M.
Arene's "L'Ilote" and M. Ferrier's "Revanche d'Iris" are charming of
their kind, and to see them in an ordinary theatre--with those intimate
accessories of house life which such sparkling trifles require--would be
only a delight. But at Orange their sparkle vanished, and they were
jarringly out of place. Even the perfect excellence of the players--and
no Grecian actress, I am confident, ever surpassed Mademoiselle
Rachel-Boyer in exquisitely finished handling of Grecian
draperies--could not save them. Quite as distinctly as each of the
tragedies was a success, the little comedies were failures: being
overwhelmed utterly by their stately surroundings, and lost in the
melancholy bareness of that great stage. It was all the more, therefore,
an interesting study in the psychology of the drama to perceive how the
comparatively few actors in the casts of the tragedies--how even, at
times, only one or two figures--seemed entirely to fill the stage; and
how at all times those plays and their setting absolutely harmonized.

VIII

Of scenery, in the ordinary sense of the word, there was none at all.
What we saw was the real thing. In the opening scene of "Oedipus," the
_King_--coming forward through the royal portal, and across the raised
platform in the rear of the stage--did literally "enter from the
palace," and did "descend the palace steps" to the "public place" where
_Creon_ and the priests awaited him. It was a direct reversal of the
ordinary effect in the ordinary theatre: where the play loses in realism
because a current of necessarily recognized, but purposely ignored,
antagonistic fact underruns the conventional illusion and compels us to
perceive that the palace is but painted canvas, and (even on the largest
stage) is only four or five times as high as the _Prince_. The palace at
Orange--towering up as though it would touch the very heavens, and
obviously of veritable stone--was a most peremptory reality.

[Illustration: SCENE FROM THE FIRST ACT OF "OEDIPUS"]

The fortuitous accessory of the trees growing close beside the stage
added to the outdoo