The hours pass by and the great lamps flare in the night wind, and the actors, as they get more and more into the spirit of the comedy they are performing, become filled with enthusiasm, and with impassioned gestures, and with the very voices and tones of the characters they are personating, keep their audience spellbound in their attention.
The hours still move on, but the interest never flags. The rapid strokes on the drum in some of the exciting scenes, and the shrill falsetto tones of the actors, and the bursts of laughter as the crowd is convulsed by the dry humour that runs through the piece, wake the silence of the night, and people living near by, who could not leave their homes, are startled out of their first sleep by the unwonted sounds that wake up the echoes of the night.
Midnight strikes, but there is no sign that the play is near its end, or that the audience dreams of moving from the uncomfortable seats that each one has extemporized for himself. The small hours begin to lengthen and it would seem time for the women at least to be in their homes. The stern and strict etiquette of the country forbids women to mingle with men, but when a play is being acted, etiquette is flung to the winds, and the wives and the young maidens sit on into unseemly hours, forgetful of the nation's ideals.
The wind becomes chiller and the darkness of the East deeper and denser, but still the merriment grows more fast and furious, when suddenly, as if with the wave of an enchanter's wand, a thin streak of light touches the border of the thick curtain that has fallen on the world, and ere long the dawn dyes the eastern sky with its colours and night begins to fly before the coming day.
This is the signal for the play to stop. The actors, weary with their long night's work, descend quickly from the stage, whilst the audience, with pale faces and worn looks, hurry away to their homes to cook their rice and prepare for a long sleep to make up for the loss of it during the night.
It has been a merry time for them all, and the blue feeling that had been gathering round their hearts and made them have long faces and caused them to be unpleasant in their homes, has vanished in the laughter that caused them almost to split their sides. A celebrated humorist has declared that if he could have but one laugh a month, the whole character of his life would be changed. During the pleasant hours in which the actors beguiled the time, they must have laughed scores of times, and the memory of those jokes will linger in their brains for many a week to come, and make them look on their sorry surroundings with a lighter and a more cheerful heart.