They Ask Each Other
Where Is The Child, - A Scene Of Alarm And Bustle, Which Ends By The Door
Of The Temple Flying Open And Discovering, Shrined In Ineffable Light,
Jesus Teaching The Doctors.
In the fourth act, Demas meets a beautiful woman by the city gate, in
the loose, graceful dress of the Hetairai, and the most wonderful
luxuriance of black curls I have ever seen falling in dense masses to
her knees.
After a conversation of amorous banter, he gives her a
golden chain, which she assumes, well pleased, and gives him her name,
La Magdalena. A motley crowd of street loafers here rushed upon the
scene, and I am sure there was no one of Northern blood in the theatre
that did not shudder for an instant at the startling apparition that
formed the central figure of the group. The world has long ago agreed
upon a typical face and figure for the Saviour of men; it has been
repeated on myriads of canvases and reproduced in thousands of statues,
till there is scarcely a man living that does not have the same image of
the Redeemer in his mind. Well, that image walked quietly upon the
stage, so perfect in make-up that you longed for some error to break the
terrible vraisemblance. I was really relieved when the august appearance
spoke, and I recognized the voice of a young actor named Morales, a
clever light comedian of the Bressant type.
The Magdalene is soon converted by the preaching of the Nazarene
Prophet, and the scene closes by the triumphant entry into Jerusalem
amid the waving of palm-branches, the strewing of flowers, and "sonorous
metal blowing martial sounds." The pathetic and sublime lament,
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets!" was delivered
with great 'feeling and power.
The next act brings us before the judgment-seat of Pontius Pilate. This
act is almost solely horrible. The Magdalene in her garb of penitence
comes in to beg the release of Jesus of Nazareth. Pontius, who is
represented as a gallant old gentleman, says he can refuse nothing to a
lady. The prisoner is dragged in by two ferocious ruffians, who beat and
buffet him with absurd and exaggerated violence. There is nothing more
hideous than the awful concreteness of this show, - the naked
helplessness of the prisoner, his horrible, cringing, overdone humility,
the coarse kicking and cuffing of the deputy sheriffs. The Prophet is
stripped and scourged at the pillar until he drops from exhaustion. He
is dragged anew before Pilate and examined, but his only word is, "Thou
hast said." The scene lasts nearly an hour. The theatre was full of
sobbing women and children. At every fresh brutality I could hear the
weeping spectators say, "Pobre Jesus!" "How wicked they are!" The bulk
of the audience was of people who do not often go to theatres. They
looked upon the revolting scene as a real and living fact. One
hard-featured man near me clenched his fists and cursed the cruel
guards. A pale, delicate-featured girl who was leaning out of her box,
with her brown eyes, dilated with horror, fixed upon the scene, suddenly
shrieked as a Roman soldier struck the unresisting Saviour, and fell
back fainting in the arms of her friends.
The Nazarene Prophet was condemned at last. Gestas gives evidence
against him, and also delivers Demas to the law, but is himself
denounced, and shares their sentence. The crowd howled with exultation,
and Pilate washed his hands in impotent rage and remorse. The curtain
came down leaving the uncultivated portion of the audience in the frame
of mind in which their ancestors a few centuries earlier would have gone
from the theatre determined to serve God and relieve their feelings by
killing the first Jew they could find. The diversion was all the better,
because safer, if they happened to the good luck of meeting a Hebrew
woman or child.
The Calle de Amargura - the Street of Bitterness - was the next scene.
First came a long procession of official Romans, - lictors and swordsmen,
and the heralds announcing the day's business. Demas appears, dragged
along with vicious jerks to execution. The Saviour follows, and falls
under the weight of the cross before the footlights. Another long and
dreary scene takes place, of brutalities from the Roman soldiers, the
ringleader of whom is a sanguinary Andalusian ingeniously encased in a
tin barrel, a hundred lines of rhymed sorrow from the Madonna, and a
most curious scene of the Wandering Jew. This worthy, who in defiance of
tradition is called Samuel, is sitting in his doorway watching the show,
when the suffering Christ begs permission to rest a moment on his
threshold. He says churlishly, Anda! - "Begone!" "I will go, but thou
shalt go forever until I come." The Jew's feet begin to twitch
convulsively, as if pulled from under him. He struggles for a moment,
and at last is carried off by his legs, which are moved like those of
the walking dolls with the Greek names. This odd tradition, so utterly
in contradiction with the picture the Scriptures give us of the meek
dignity with which the Redeemer forgave all personal injuries, has taken
a singular hold upon the imaginations of all peoples. Under varying
names, - -Ahasuerus, Salathiel, le Juif Errant, der ewige Jude, - his
story is the delight and edification of many lands; and I have met some
worthy people who stoutly insisted that they had read it in the Bible.
The sinister procession moves on. The audience, which had been somewhat
cheered by the prompt and picturesque punishment inflicted upon the
inhospitable Samuel, was still further exhilarated by the spectacle of
the impenitent traitor Gestas, staggering under an enormous cross, his
eyes and teeth glaring with abject fear, with an athletic Roman haling
him up to Calvary with a new hempen halter.
A long intermission followed, devoted to putting babies to sleep, - for
there were hundreds of them, wide-eyed and strong-lunged, - to smoking
the hasty cigarette, to discussing the next combination of Prim or the
last scandal in the gay world.
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