THE THEATRE
During carnival a company is playing in the theatre. On Christmas Day
the padrone came in with the key of his box, and would we care to see
the drama? The theatre was small, a mere nothing, in fact; a mere affair
of peasants, you understand; and the Signor Di Paoli spread his hands
and put his head on one side, parrot-wise; but we might find a little
diversion--_un peu de divertiment_. With this he handed me the key.
I made suitable acknowledgements, and was really impressed. To be handed
the key of a box at the theatre, so simply and pleasantly, in the large
sitting-room looking over the grey lake of Christmas Day; it seemed to
me a very graceful event. The key had a chain and a little shield of
bronze, on which was beaten out a large figure 8.
So the next day we went to see _I Spettri_, expecting some good, crude
melodrama. The theatre is an old church. Since that triumph of the deaf
and dumb, the cinematograph, has come to give us the nervous excitement
of speed--grimace agitation, and speed, as of flying atoms, chaos--many
an old church in Italy has taken a new lease of life.
This cast-off church made a good theatre. I realized how cleverly it had
been constructed for the dramatic presentation of religious ceremonies.
The east end is round, the walls are windowless, sound is well
distributed. Now everything is theatrical, except the stone floor and
two pillars at the back of the auditorium, and the slightly
ecclesiastical seats below.
There are two tiers of little boxes in the theatre, some forty in all,
with fringe and red velvet, and lined with dark red paper, quite like
real boxes in a real theatre. And the padrone's is one of the best. It
just holds three people.
We paid our threepence entrance fee in the stone hall and went upstairs.
I opened the door of Number 8, and we were shut in our little cabin,
looking down on the world. Then I found the barber, Luigi, bowing
profusely in a box opposite. It was necessary to make bows all round:
ah, the chemist, on the upper tier, near the barber; how-do-you-do to
the padrona of the hotel, who is our good friend, and who sits, wearing
a little beaver shoulder-cape, a few boxes off; very cold salutation to
the stout village magistrate with the long brown beard, who leans
forward in the box facing the stage, while a grouping of faces look out
from behind him; a warm smile to the family of the Signora Gemma, across
next to the stage. Then we are settled.
I cannot tell why I hate the village magistrate. He looks like a family
portrait by a Flemish artist, he himself weighing down the front of the
picture with his portliness and his long brown beard, whilst the faces
of his family are arranged in two groups for the background. I think he
is angry at our intrusion. He is very republican and self-important. But
we eclipse him easily, with the aid of a large black velvet hat, and
black furs, and our Sunday clothes.
Downstairs the villagers are crowding, drifting like a heavy current.
The women are seated, by church instinct, all together on the left, with
perhaps an odd man at the end of a row, beside his wife. On the right,
sprawling in the benches, are several groups of bersaglieri, in grey
uniforms and slanting cock's-feather hats; then peasants, fishermen, and
an odd couple or so of brazen girls taking their places on the
men's side.
At the back, lounging against the pillars or standing very dark and
sombre, are the more reckless spirits of the village. Their black felt
hats are pulled down, their cloaks are thrown over their mouths, they
stand very dark and isolated in their moments of stillness, they shout
and wave to each other when anything occurs.
The men are clean, their clothes are all clean washed. The rags of the
poorest porter are always well washed. But it is Sunday tomorrow, and
they are shaved only on a Sunday. So that they have a week's black
growth on their chins. But they have dark, soft eyes, unconscious and
vulnerable. They move and balance with loose, heedless motion upon their
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