cake. The gallery and pit were
fairy full, but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there
was hardly a person in what I suppose they called the dress-circle.
Women went about with oranges and ginger-beer, and there was a terrible
consumption of nuts going on."

"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British Drama."

"Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder what
on earth I should do, when I caught sight of the play-bill. What do you
think the play was, Harry?"

"I should think 'The Idiot Boy, or Dumb but Innocent.' Our fathers used
to like that sort of piece, I believe. The longer I live, Dorian, the
more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not
good enough for us. In art, as in politics, _les grandperes ont toujours
tort_."

"This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was 'Romeo and Juliet.' I
must admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare
done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested, in a
sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for the first act. There
was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young Hebrew who sat at a
cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at last the drop-scene was
drawn up, and the play began. Romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with
corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a figure like a beer-barrel.
Mercutio was almost as bad. He was played by the low-comedian, who had
introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit.
They were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it had
come out of a country-booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly
seventeen years of age, with a little flower-like face, a small Greek
head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells
of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She was the
loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. You said to me once that
pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your
eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the
mist of tears that came across me. And her voice--I never heard such a
voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow notes, that seemed to
fall singly upon one's ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded
like a flute or a distant hautbois. In the garden-scene it had all the
tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are
sing