intervals the orchestra would start up a jerky little tune, and the two “stars” would begin to sing in nasal voices some words expressive of passion; then the man would take the woman about the waist and dance and swing her about and bend her backward and gaze into her eyes—­actions all vaguely suggestive of the relationship of sex.  At the end of the verse a chorus would come gliding on, clad in any sort of costume which admitted of colour and the display of legs; the painted women of this chorus were never still for an instant—­if they were not actually dancing, they were wriggling their legs, and jerking their bodies from side to side, and nodding their heads, and in all other possible ways being “lively.”

But it was not the physical indecency of this show that struck Montague so much as its intellectual content.  The dialogue of the piece was what is called “smart”; that is, it was full of a kind of innuendo which implied a secret understanding of evil between the actor and his audience—­a sort of countersign which passed between them.  After all, it would have been an error to say that there were no ideas in the play—­there was one idea upon which all the interest of it was based; and Montague strove to analyze this idea and formulate it to himself.  There are certain life principles-one might call them moral axioms—­which are the result of the experience of countless ages of the human race, and upon the adherence to which the continuance of the race depends.  And here was an audience by whom all these principles were—­not questioned, nor yet disputed, nor yet denied—­but to whom the denial was the axiom, something which it would be too banal to state flatly, but which it was elegant. and witty to take for granted.  In this audience there were elderly people, and married men and women, and young men and maidens; and a perfect gale of laughter swept through it at a story of a married woman whose lover had left her when he got married:—­

“She must have been heartbroken,” said the leading lady.

“She was desperate,” said the leading man, with a grin.

“What did she do?” asked the lady “Go and shoot herself?”

“Worse than that,” said the man.  “She, went back to her husband and had a baby!”

But to complete your understanding of the significance of this play, you must bring yourself to realize that it was not merely a play, but a kind of a play; it had a name—­a “musical comedy”—­the meaning of which every one understood.  Hundreds of such plays were written and produced, and “dramatic critics” went to see them and gravely discussed them, and many thousands of people made their livings by travelling over the country and playing them; stately theatres were built for them, and hundreds of thousands of people paid their money every night to see them.  And all this no joke and no nightmare—­but a thing that really existed.  Men and women were doing these things—­actual flesh-and-blood human beings.