be Malay, and our
spirits rose. But the orchestra quickly damped them; there was a piano,
a violin, a 'cello, a clarionet, and a cornet, and from beginning to end
of the performance they were never in tune with themselves or with the
singers. And the music? It was sometimes Italian, sometimes Spanish,
never, as far as I could detect, Oriental, and always thoroughly and
frankly bad.

No matter! The curtain rose and displayed a garden. The Prince entered.
He was dressed in mediaeval Italian costume (a style of dress, be it said
once for all, which was adopted by the whole company). With gestures of
ecstatic astonishment he applied his nose to the paper roses. Then he
advanced and appeared to sing, for his mouth moved; but the orchestra
drowned any notes he may have emitted. The song finished, he lay down
upon a couch and slept. Whereupon there entered an ugly little girl, in
a short white frock and black stockings and ribbons, with an expression
of fixed gloom upon her face, and began to move her feet and arms in a
parody of Oriental dancing. We thought at first that she was the Moon
Princess, and felt a pang of disappointment. But she turned out to be
the Spirit of Dreams; and presently she ushered in the real Princess,
with whom, on the spot, the Prince, unlike ourselves, became violently
enamoured. She vanished, and he woke to find her a vision. Despair of
the Prince; despair of the King; despair of the Queen, not unmixed with
rage, to judge from her voice and gestures. Consultation of an
astrologer. Flight of the Prince in search of his beloved. Universal
bewilderment and incompetence, such as may be witnessed any day in the
East when anything happens at all out of the ordinary way. At this point
enter the comic relief, in the form of woodcutters. I am inclined to
suppose, from the delight of the audience, that there was something
genuine here. But whatever it was we were unable to follow it.
Eventually the woodcutters met Afrid, whether by chance or design I
could not discover. At any rate, their reception was rough. To borrow
the words of the synopsis, "a big fight arose and they were thrown to
space"; but not till they had been pulled by the hair and ears,
throttled and pummelled, to the general satisfaction, for something like
half an hour.

The next scenes were equally vigorous. The synopsis describes them thus:
"Several young princes went to Genie Janar, the father of the Moon
Princess, to demand her in marria