CHAPTER XIV.A DENOUEMENT WARMLY APPLAUDED BY THE SPECTATORS.
THE play, which bore the equally new and attractive
title, “The Brigands of the Black Forest,” was a remarkable
work of art. Composed in strict accordance with
the ancient precepts of dramaturgy, it was based on the
unity of time, action, and place. Its introduction neatly
defined the characters of the various personages, the plot
worked them well into a powerful imbroglio, the dénouement
cleverly disentangled the plot; and, though foreseen, the
issue produced, none the less, a very great effect. Nor did
it lack even the sensational scene so loudly insisted upon by
our modern critics, and that scene was a success.
For the rest, the public should have been ill-advised to
expect from the Cascabel family one of those modern-taste
plays, where all the details of private life are laid in the nude
on the stage; where, if crime does not actually triumph, virtue is at times but sparingly rewarded. No, at the closing scene of the “Brigands of the Black Forest,” innocence was acknowledged according to the rule, and wickedness met with due punishment under the most convenient form. The police suddenly appeared, just as all seemed hopelessly lost, and when they laid hand on the brigand, the hall broke out with loud cheers.
No doubt about it, the piece would have been written in
a simple, powerful, personal style, respectful of grammar, and free from those pretentious neologisms, those documentary expressions and realistic terms of the new school,—if it had been written. But it was not written any more than spoken, and hence it could be played on all the stages, as on all the trestles, of the two worlds. An immense advantage this is for dumb shows, not to speak of the many errors of grammar and of orthoepy, which are entirely avoided in this kind of literature.
A remark has been made above anent the style of drama
that should not be expected from the Cascabel family. The simple fact is that Cæser Cascabel himself was the composer of the particular masterpiece in question. “Masterpiece” is the word, since, adding up the old world with the new, it had been played three thousand one hundred and seventy-seven times! And he had so contrived it as to bring out in striking relief the special talents of the individual members of his troupe, talents so varied and so real that no such galaxy of artists had ever been presented to the public by the manager of any company, whether stationary or itinerant.
The masters of the contemporaneous drama have very
justly laid down the principle: “On the stage you must
always make your audience laugh or cry, or else they will
yawn.” Well, if all the dramatist's art is contained in that
axiom, “The Brigands of the Black Forest” deserves to be
styled a masterpiece a hundred times over. The spectators
laugh even to tears, and weep—to tears likewise. There is
not a scene, nor part of a scene, where the most heedless
looker-on experiences the desire to open his mouth to
yawn; and should that sensation, perchance, force itself
upon him as the result of a dyspeptic affection, the incipient
awn would surely be turned to a sob or a chuckle.
Like all well-planned dramas, this one was clear, rapid, simple in its evolution as in its conception. The facts followed each other in such logical succession as to suggest the probability of their having happened in the real world.
Let the reader judge of it by the following necessarily
succinct account.
It was the story of two lovers who worshiped each
other,—and for convenience sake, let it be stated, right here, that Napoleona was the fair loved one, and Sander was the young swain. But alas, Sander is poor, and Napoleona's mother, the haughty Cornelia, will not hear of the match!
The particularly new point in the plot is that “the course
of true love” is, in addition, prevented from “running
smooth” by the presence of a long, lanky suitor, Clovy, with pockets as full of gold as his skull is void of brain; and that the mother—here perhaps the author's inventive genius shines forth with more eclat still—the mother, who has an eye to the gold, does not ask better than to give him her daughter.