Whoever has heard documents read over in a law-court, can imagine the reading on this occasion,--quick and monotonous, but plain and articulate enough. The ingenious advocate contrives to interrupt the tedium by jests, and the public shows its delight in his jokes by immoderate laughter. I must mention one, the most striking of those I could understand. The reader was just reciting the document, by which, one, who was considered to have been illegally possessed of it, had disposed of the property in question. The advocate bade him lead more slowly, and when he plainly uttered the words: "I give and bequeath," the orator flew violently at the clerk and cried: "What will you give? What will you bequeath? you poor starved-out devil, nothing in the world belongs to you?" "However,"--he continued, as he seemed to collect himself--"the illustrious owner was in the same predicament. He wished to give, he wished to bequeath that which belonged to him no more than to you." A burst of inextinguishable laughter followed this sally, but the hour-glass at once resumed its horizontal position. The reader went mumbling on, and made a saucy face at the advocate; but all these jokes are prepared beforehand.
[Footnote 4: An allusion to the comic scene, in the puppet-play of Faust, from which Göethe took the subject of his poem. One of the two magic words (Berliche, Berloche) summons the devils, the other drives them away, and the Hanswurst (or buffoon), in a mock-incantation scene, perplexes the fiends, by uttering one word after the other, as rapidly as possible.--Trans.] [Footnote 4: An allusion to the comic scene, in the puppet-play of Faust, from which Göethe took the subject of his poem. One of the two magic words (Berliche, Berloche) summons the devils, the other drives them away, and the Hanswurst (or buffoon), in a mock-incantation scene, perplexes the fiends, by uttering one word after the other, as rapidly as possible.--Trans.]
I was yesterday at the play, in the theatre of S. Luke, and was highly pleased. I saw a piece acted _extempore_ in masks, with a great deal of nature, energy, and vigour. The actors are not, indeed, all equal; the pantaloon is excellent, and one of the actresses, who is stout and well-built, speaks admirably, and deports herself cleverly, though she is no extraordinary actress. The subject of the piece is extravagant, and resembled that which is treated by us under the name of _Der Verschlag_ (the partition). With inexhaustible variety it amused us for more than three hours. But even here the people is the base upon which everything rests, the spectators are themselves actors, and the multitude is melted into one whole with the stage. All day long the buyer and the seller, the beggar, the sailor, the female gossip, the advocate and his opponent, are living and acting in the square and on the bench, in the gondolas and in the palaces, and make it their business to talk and to asseverate, to cry and to offer for sale, to sing and to play, to curse and to brawl. In the evening they go into the theatre, and see and hear the life of the day artificially put together, prettily set off, interwoven with a story, removed from reality by the masks, and brought near to it by manners. In all this they take a childish delight and again shout and clap, and make a noise. From day to night,--nay, from midnight to midnight, it is always the same.