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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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448 ‘Quite a new one,’ said Miss Snevellicci, ‘of which this gentleman is the author, and in which he plays; being his first appearance on any stage. Mr Johnson is the gentleman’s name.’ ‘I hope you have preserved the unities, sir?’ said Mr Curdle. ‘The original piece is a French one,’ said Nicholas. ‘There is abundance of incident, sprightly dialogue, strongly-marked characters--’ ‘--All unavailing without a strict observance of the unities, sir,’ returned Mr Curdle. ‘The unities of the drama, before everything.’ ‘Might I ask you,’ said Nicholas, hesitating between the respect he ought to assume, and his love of the whimsical, ‘might I ask you what the unities are?’ Mr Curdle coughed and considered. ‘The unities, sir,’ he said, ‘are a completeness--a kind of universal dovetailedness with regard to place and time--a sort of a general oneness, if I may be allowed to use so strong an expression. I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far as I have been enabled to bestow attention upon them, and I have read much upon the subject, and thought much. I find, running through the performances of this child,’ said Mr Curdle, turning to the phenomenon, ‘a unity of feeling, a breadth, a light and shade, a warmth of colouring, a tone, a harmony, a glow, an artistical development of original conceptions, which I look for, in vain, among older performers--I don’t know whether I make myself understood?’ ‘Perfectly,’ replied Nicholas. ‘Just so,’ said Mr Curdle, pulling up his neckcloth. ‘That is my definition of the unities of the drama.’ Mrs Curdle had sat listening to this lucid explanation with great complacency. It being finished, she inquired what Mr Curdle |
