The Theatres Are At
Their Gayest In February Until Prince Carnival And His Jolly Train
Assault The Town, And Convert
The temples of the drama into ball-rooms.
They have not yet arrived at the wonderful expedition and despatch
observed
In Paris, where a half hour is enough to convert the grand
opera into the masked ball. The invention of this process of flooring
the orchestra flush with the stage and making a vast dancing-hall out of
both is due to an ingenious courtier of the regency, bearing the great
name of De Bouillon, who got much credit and a pension by it. In Madrid
they take the afternoon leisurely to the transformation, and the
evening's performance is of course sacrificed. So the sock and buskin,
not being adapted to the cancan, yielded with February, and the theatres
were closed finally on Ash Wednesday.
Going by the pleasant little theatre of Lope de Rueda, in the Calle
Barquillo, I saw the office-doors open, the posters up, and an
unmistakable air of animation among the loungers who mark with a seal so
peculiar the entrance of places of amusement. Struck by this apparent
levity in the midst of the general mortification, I went over to look at
the bills and found the subject announced serious enough for the most
Lenten entertainment, - Los Siete Dolores de Maria, - The Seven Sorrows of
Mary, - the old mediaeval Miracle of the Life of the Saviour.
This was bringing suddenly home to me the fact that I was really in a
Catholic country.
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