(_Exit Meadows_) COUNTESS T.: So sorry to be late, my dear Lady Eaveston. It was charmingly tolerant of you to have us. LADY E.: Invitations are never tolerant, my dear Countess; acceptances always are. But do tell me, how is your husband, the Count,--or perhaps he is no longer your husband. One never knows these days whether a man is his wife's husband or whether she is simply his wife. COUNTESS T. (_lighting a cigarette_): Really, Lady Eaveston, you grow more and more interesting. I detest interesting people; they are so hopelessly uninteresting. It is like beautiful people--who are usually so singularly unbeautiful. Has not that been your experience, Sir Mortimer? SIR M.: May I have the pleasure of escorting you to the music-room, Mrs. Wrennington? (_Exeunt omnes to music-room for dinner_) Curtain. It is from this that we have, in a measure, been delivered by the court-room scenes, and all the medical dramas. But the paradox still remains intrenched in English writing behind Mr. G.K. Chesterton, and he may be considered, by literary tacticians, as considerable stronghold. Here again we find our commonplaces shaken up until they emerge in what looks like a new and tremendously imposing shape, and all of them ostensibly proving the opposite of what we have always understood. If we do not quite catch the precise meaning at first reading, we lay it to our imperfect perception and try to do better on the next one. It seldom occurs to us that it really may have no meaning at all and never was intended to have any, any more than the act of hanging by your feet from parallel bars has any further significance than that you can manage to do it. So, before retiring to the privacy of our personal couches, let us thank an all wise Providence, that the drama-paradox has passed away. XVIII SHAKESPEARE EXPLAINED _Carrying on the System of Footnotes to a Silly Extreme_ PERICLES ACT II. SCENE 3 _Enter first Lady-in-Waiting_ (_Flourish_,^1 _Hautboys_^2 _and_^3 _torches_^4). _First Lady-in-Waiting_--What^5 ho!^6 Where^7 is^8 the^9 music?^10 NOTES 1. _Flourish_: The stage direction here is obscure. Clarke claims it should read "flarish," thus changing the meaning of the passage to "flarish" (that is, the King's), but most authorities have agreed that it should remain "flourish," supplying the predicate which is to be flourished. There was at this time a custom in the countryside of England to flourish a mop as a signal to the passing vender of berries, signifying that in that particular household there was a consumer-demand for berries, and this may have been meant in this instance. That Shakespeare was cognizant of this custom of flourishing the mop for berries is shown in a similar passage in the second part of King Henry IV, where he has the Third Page enter and say, "Flourish." Cf. also Hamlet, IV, 7:4. [Illustration: "Might be one of the hautboys bearing a box of "trognies" for the actors to suck."]