The story of the pantomime is a more or less lurid eastern melodrama, based on the Arabian Nights. A hunchback is in love with a beautiful young dancer, who hates him. He sells her to a fierce old sheik, to get her out of the way of another lover, the sheik's son. Then he takes poison. Sumurun, the sheik's chief wife, favors a handsome cloth merchant called Nur-al-Din, whom she manages to smuggle into the harem in a chest of silks. The intruder is, of course, discovered by the sheik, who is warned of the treachery below, as he is about to kill his son, whom he has found in the room with his new dancer. He has Nur-al-Din at his mercy when the supposedly poisoned hunchback slips in and stabs him. The lovers are united and the inmates of the harem set free. It is true that there is nothing strikingly original nor remarkable in the outline of the story. That is impossible in a wordless play. Bernard Shaw, speaking of a pantomime with music, 'A Pierrot's Life,' produced some years ago in London, says, 'I am conscious of the difficulty of making any but the most threadbare themes intelligible to the public, without words.' Reinhardt was wise in selecting a vivid tale, and one easy to follow. Besides, he has told the story with remarkable directness and swiftness. Attention and interest never for an instant flag, owing to the impression of incessant swarming life which we get from the scene before us. The personages are clearly and definitely characterized by means of the careful working out of the details of every action. Colors and their arrangement play a positive part in the understanding of the play. Pantomime is the foundation of drama. An audience which appreciates pantomime will appreciate good drama. Action is the element which distinguishes drama from other literary forms, and pantomime is made up wholly of action, hence its very real place in drama. The greatest moments in life are manifested not in words but in action. Dramatists are coming to realize that a gesture may be more expressive and natural at tense moments than speech. We have some striking examples of this. In the silent opening of 'What Every Woman Knows,' Barrie accomplishes, by the chess game and the entrance of the brother, what ten minutes of dialogue would have failed to do. Roberto Bracco's 'Infedele,' played in English as 'The Countess Coquette,' by Nazimova, is a still more remarkable instance. The play, in lines, is a very short one, but by the use of pantomime, even long stretches of it, there is produced a play of the regular length. One of the most intense scenes in modern drama is the prison scene in Galsworthy's 'Justice,' where not a word is spoken till the end, when a cry rings out into the still, breathless house.