We scarcely need to be reminded that Shakespeare's plays were originally written for a stage which had but little more in the way of properties, and that even to-day there are not a few persons who feel that Shakespeare's finest passages do not gain but actually lose by the life-like and elaborate settings of the modern stage.
When one hears the _No_ called archaic and primitive because of their absence of scenery and the child-like simplicity and artlessness of the properties one feels it is by a critic who is confusing values. "Words which unaided can hold an audience, a drama which can paint the scene directly on the mind with little intervention of the eye, is surely not rightly described as primitive."
_This print, taken from a Japanese coloured woodcut, illustrates the central figure of a +No+ drama, with the single, most characteristic piece of stage "property," belonging to the play. The figure is that of a mother, well-nigh mad with grief at the loss of her child, (note the bamboo in her hand, a symbol of her state) who sets out to seek him. She finds the little one at the Temple of Miidera, a view of which is inset in the black circle on the left of the print. The model of a temple bell in red lacquer beneath this is mounted on roller feet, and is an illustration of the piece of property which is all that represents the temple on the stage, and is a good example of the simplicity of the stage-mounting of the +No+ pieces._ ]
_This plate, taken from a Japanese coloured woodcut, illustrates the +No+ of which Komachi is the heroine. She was a poetess of great beauty and poetic gifts, and many distinguished poets were very jealous of her. On the occasion of one of the competitions of verse before the Emperor (the figure on the extreme right with scarlet skirts) one of her enemies attempted to prove that her verse was plagiarized and that he had it already in his own collection. She proves his fraud by washing out the verse which he had just written into his book after hearing it, showing that it was not printed with the rest. This she is about to do in the picture. The story continues that after his exposure he tried to commit suicide to escape disgrace, but she generously prevented him. The mask worn by the actor who takes her part well illustrates the classic type of beauty in Japan. The eyebrows are shaved off, and painted on high upon the forehead beneath the hair. In the action she uses a fan to express the business of washing out the interpolated verses +(see p. 16)+. The oblong article to the right represents the table on which a copy of her verses was laid in the competition._ ]