vigorous rehearsal, and worked most of the day, besides playing at
night. We were to give the Artaserse, a tragedy of extreme length and
magniloquence, and conclude with the Donne Furlane.

The night arrived; the theatre was full from parterre to gallery; the
boxes presented a truly brilliant spectacle. The curtain went up, and
the play began.

I shall only say of Artaserse that La Panormita was the Aspasia of the
piece, and Belviso the Berenice, her foster-sister and companion. My
role was that of the Messenger, and only gave me one long speech,
recounting the miraculous preservation of Artaspe and Spiridate, sons of
King Artaserse and lovers of the two ladies; the treachery, discovery,
and violent end of Dario--in fact, the untying of the knot firmly
twisted in the third act. The audience paid visits, talked, laughed,
played faro, so far as I could learn, throughout the play. Nor do I
wonder at it, for not the finest acting in the world could have
galvanised into life any one link of its dreary chain. When the curtain
was raised; however, upon the second piece, there was a perceptible
settling down to listen, behold, and be amused. Tragedy was the fashion,
and must be endured, but all the Italians loved the masks.

The Donne Furlane was the piece, a comedy of art as they call it here--
or, as we say, a comedy of masks--wherein the stock characters of
Harlequin, Columbine, Brighella and Pantalone are given a rag of a plot,
and are expected to embroider that with follies, drolleries and
obscenities according as their humour of the moment may dictate. The
persons who give the title to this particular farce--the Donne Furlane--
are the lowest class of Venetian women, and their ceremonious name
implies what we in England imply when we speak of the nymphs of Drury