On entering the theatre I was invaded by a sense of serenity and peace. There was no ornament, no upholstery, no superfluity at all. A square building of unvarnished wood; a floor covered with matting, exquisitely clean, and divided into little boxes, or rather trays (so low were the partitions), in which the audience knelt on their heels, beautiful in loose robes; running out from the back wall a square stage, with a roof supported by pillars; a passage on the same level, by which the actors entered, on the left; the screens removed from the outer walls, so that the hall was open to the air, and one looked out on sky and trees, or later on darkness, against which shone a few painted lanterns. Compare this with the Queen's Hall in London, or with any of our theatres, and realise the effect on one's mood of the mere setting of the drama. Drama was it? Or opera? Or what? It is called a "dance." But there was very little dancing. What mainly remains in my mind is a series of visual images, one more beautiful than another; figures seated motionless for minutes, almost for half-hours, with a stillness of statues, not an eyelash shaking; or passing very slowly across the stage, with that movement of bringing one foot up to the other and pausing before the next step which is so ridiculous in our opera, but was here so right and so impressive; or turning slowly, or rising and sitting with immense deliberation; each figure right in its relation to the stage and to the others. All were clothed in stiff brocade, sumptuous but not gorgeous. One or two were masked; and all of them, I felt, ought to have been. The mask, in fact, the use of which in Greek drama I had always felt to be so questionable, was here triumphantly justified. It completed the repudiation of actuality which was the essence of the effect. It was a musical sound, as it were, made visible. It symbolised humanity, but it was not human, still less inhuman. I would rather call it divine. And this whole art of movement and costume required that completion. Once I had seen a mask I missed it in all the characters that were without it.