f and begins to play his part.
"A man has been here!" "You've been drinking!" The dialogue of the
comedy continues, but ever and anon with difficulty on the part of
Pagliaccio, who begins to put a sinister inflection into his words.
Taddeo is dragged from the cupboard in which he had taken hiding. He,
too, puts color of verity into his lines, especially when he prates
about the purity of Columbine. Canio loses control of himself more and
more. "Pagliaccio no more, but a man--a man seeking vengeance. The name
of your lover!" The audience is moved by his intensity. Silvio betrays
anxiety. Canio rages on. "The name, the name!" The mimic audience
shouts, "Bravo!" Nedda: if he doubts her she will go. "No, by God!
You'll remain and tell me the name of your lover!" With a great effort
Nedda forces herself to remain in character. The music, whose tripping
dance measures have given way to sinister mutterings in keeping with
Canio's mad outbursts, as the mimic play ever and anon threatens to
leave its grooves and plunge into the tragic vortex of reality, changes
to a gavotte:--

[figure: a musical excerpt]

Columbine explains: she had no idea her husband could put on so
tragical a mask. It is only harmless Harlequin who has been her
companion. "The name! The name!! THE NAME!!!" Nedda sees catastrophe
approaching and throws her character to the winds. She shrieks out a
defiant "No!" and attempts to escape from the mimic stage. Silvio
starts up with dagger drawn. The spectators rise in confusion and cry
"Stop him!" Canio seizes Nedda and plunges his knife into her: "Take
that! And that! With thy dying gasps thou'lt tell me!" Woful intuition!
Dying, Nedda calls: "Help, Silvio!" Silvio rushes forward and receives
Canio's knife in his heart. "Gesumaria!" shriek the women. Men throw
themselves upon Canio. He stands for a moment in a stupor, drops his
knife and speaks the words: "The comedy is ended." "Ridi Pagliaccio!"
shrieks the orchestra as the curtain falls.

"Plaudite, amici," said Beethoven on his death bed, "la commedia finita
est!" And there is a tradition that these, too, were the last words of
the arch-jester Rabelais. "When 'Pagliacci' was first sung here (in
Boston), by the Tavary company," says Mr. Philip Hale, "Tonio pointed
to the dead bodies and uttered the sentence in a mocking way. And there
is a report that such was Leoncavallo's original intention. As the
Tonio began the piece in explanation so he should end it.