Belfry. Don't I? Say: You reckon that your English Church is dead Three hundred years or so, for all the state It keeps, the wealth it grips? Sir T. As dead as Pharaoh; A mummy spiced and gilded. Belfry. So's your drama! I've heard you say it, and you know it's true; The play to-night allowed it--the prologue did. Theocracy and theatrocracy: The one long dead; the other---- Sir T. Well? Belfry. Stillborn! Two things there are alive in England now, As red as blood, as hot as fire: your crude Salvation Army and your Music-Hall. The first's no trade of mine; the other is; And here's my theory of it. Your civilization Evolves as barbarism in modern cities, A highly decorated barbarism. Your houses are merely wigwams where you sleep-- Sometimes. You dine abroad in crowds; then lug Your indigestion to your music-hall To drowse and smoke at ease. A play demands A little intellect--which you hate to use: Your music-hall assails your muscles mainly, With ground and lofty tumbling, gymnasts, tramps, Antipodists, weight-lifters, wrestlers; tricks That gibe at gravitation; monkeys, dogs; Illusions; jugglers, bipeds, quadrupeds; Prodigious force and skill of man and beast, Trained effort and sustained the savage loves And feels his muscles pacified to watch. The muscle business first: then comic turns; Singers and dancers, bounders, jesters, cranks, That make your savage laugh: he loves to laugh; For what's your laughter but a free discharge Of muscular energy under a pleased Constraint. As for his slumbering fantasy, The multitudinous rhythm and massive hues Of Leicester Square's magnific ballets flood The channels of his sense with undefined Voluptuousness: your savage loves to dream Obscure delights, uncertain glories.... What! I tire you, Tristram? But I like the theme; It takes me by the throat. Sir T. The music-hall Is utterly obscene, a heinous mart Of alcohol and meretricious flesh. Belfry. A prime, barbaric entertainment, fit For gorged barbarians! Sir T. But the theatre-- Belfry. Extinct: an anteroom to the nursery; Annex to the lecture-hall; a mothers' meeting; A kindergarten: men forsaken it quite. Out of the music-hall a drama springs, Naive, natural, splendid; hidden, impossible, But happily conceived when he arrives Who shall beget it. You talk of messages, Of orientation: there's my Yankee mite-- A budding drama in the music-hall. I think I've read somewhere that once before Dramatic monologue became a play-- When Aeschylus turned up in Attica! You grant the halls are fairly Dionysian---- Groom. [Stabs Sir Tristram.] I thought of this upon your wedding-day, And every summer since. Sir T. [Falls] Help, Hildreth, help! Belfry. [Seizes Groom, who makes no resistance] You murdering hound! Why--Groom! Of all men, Groom! Prince of good fellows and of actors! Groom!