little private box, with a
vulgar drop-scene staring me in the face. I looked out from behind the
curtain and surveyed the house. It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and
cornucopias, like a third-rate wedding-cake. The gallery and pit were
fairly 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, flowerlike 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 seem