Like other places which can
properly be called dramatic temples, the theatre now partakes of the
solemnity of a religious temple. One goes to see SEEBACH, not to laugh,
but to test one's ability to suppress the desire to weep over the woes
of MARGARET, and to mourn with MARY STUART. Fortify yourself, O reader,
with a substantial dinner and much previous sleep, and come with me for
a night of German tragedy. Come to the Fourteenth Street theatre, not to
look back regretfully at departed opera-bouffe, but to SEEBACH. It is
with such reckless puns as the foregoing, that I endeavor to brace your
spirits for the exhausting struggle with six hours of tragedy played in
the most tragic and awful of modern languages. You are to hear _Faust_
in German. No man who has accomplished this feat can wonder at the
stolid bravery of the German infantry. It is said that the new recruit
is forced to hear _Faust_ once a week during his first year of service.
This terrible discipline has the natural effect of giving him that
steadiness under fire, at which the world marvels. He will stand with
his regiment for hours under the merciless fire of the mitrailleuse with
no thought of flight. What terrors can shot or shell have for him who
has been taught to listen unmoved to the dialogue of "FAUST" and
"MEPHISTOPHELES" in the first thirty-two acts of _Faust_?
We find the theatre full of Germans, wearing that grave and earnest
expression of countenance wherewith the German takes his legitimate
tragedy.
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