The Farce, Termed Ballet, Was A Kind
Of Pantomime, The Childish Incidents Of Which Were Sufficient To
Show The State Of The Dramatic Art In Denmark, And The Gross Taste
Of The Audience.
A magician, in the disguise of a tinker, enters a
cottage where the women are all busy ironing, and rubs a dirty
frying-pan against the linen.
The women raise a hue-and-cry, and
dance after him, rousing their husbands, who join in the dance, but
get the start of them in the pursuit. The tinker, with the frying-
pan for a shield, renders them immovable, and blacks their cheeks.
Each laughs at the other, unconscious of his own appearance;
meanwhile the women enter to enjoy the sport, "the rare fun," with
other incidents of the same species.
The singing was much on a par with the dancing, the one as destitute
of grace as the other of expression; but the orchestra was well
filled, the instrumental being far superior to the vocal music.
I have likewise visited the public library and museum, as well as
the palace of Rosembourg. This palace, now deserted, displays a
gloomy kind of grandeur throughout, for the silence of spacious
apartments always makes itself to be felt; I at least feel it, and I
listen for the sound of my footsteps as I have done at midnight to
the ticking of the death-watch, encouraging a kind of fanciful
superstition. Every object carried me back to past times, and
impressed the manners of the age forcibly on my mind.
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