How near the people are! Can we not go? Smith. Yes, we can go where none will follow us. We two could never love each other more Than now we do; never our souls could mount Higher on passion's fire-plumed wings; nor yet Could laughter of our children's children pierce With keener pangs of happiness our hearts. I have a million things to tell my love, But I will keep them for eternity. Good earth, good mother earth, my mate and me-- Take us. [He leaps with her over the precipice. Graham rushes forward, but falls fainting. Enter villagers, shouting and laughing. SCARAMOUCH IN NAXOS: A PANTOMIME (Crieff, 1888) PERSONS Bacchus. Silenus. Sarmion. Glaucus. Scaramouch, a Showman. Harlequin, in the employment of Scaramouch. Ariadne. Ione, daughter to Glaucus. Columbine, in the employment of Scaramouch. Satyrs. Bacchantes. Sailors. Scene: Naxos. PROLOGUE. Silenus. Gentle readers--I would fain say, hearers, but I am afraid I shall never fool it on the stage--I am very fond of Pantomimes. I don't know whether I like this one so well as I liked those which I witnessed when I was a boy. It is too pretentious, I think; too anxious to be more than a Pantomime--this play in which I am about to perform. True Pantomime is a good-natured nightmare. Our sense of humour is titillated and strummed, and kicked and oiled, and fustigated and stroked, and exalted and bedevilled, and, on the whole, severely handled by this self-same harmless incubus; and our intellects are scoffed at. The audience, in fact, is, intellectually, a pantaloon, on whom the Harlequin-pantomime has no mercy. It is frivolity whipping its schoolmaster, common-sense; the drama on its apex; art, unsexed, and without a conscience; the reflection of the world in a green, knotted glass. Now, I talked to the author, and showed him that there was a certain absence from his work of this kind of thing; but he put his thumbs in his arm-pits, and replied with some disdain, "Which of the various dramatic forms of the time may one conceive as likeliest to shoot up in the fabulous manner of the beanstalk, bearing on its branches things of earth and heaven undreamt of in philosophy? The sensational dramas? Perhaps from them some new development of tragic art; but Pantomime seems to be of best hope. It contains in crude forms, humour, poetry, and romance. It is the childhood of a new poetical comedy." Then I saw where he was, and said, "God be with you," and washed my hands of him. But I'll do my best with my part. SCENE I.--A Wood. Silenus, sitting. Harlequin and Columbine posturing about him. Satyrs and Bacchantes dancing round the group. Song. Sing of dancing, sing of wine, Satyrs and Bacchantes, sing. Harlequin and Columbine, Leap within our frantic ring.