"NOTHING SURPRISES ME IN THIS PLAY."]
In the present case her only excuse was the old one, that she was "treated
like a child." Certainly she deserved to be, for her behaviour was of the
most wilful and wayward; but she was the mother of a strapping boy, and a
woman who is thought old enough to play, in the premier Italian company,
the part of _Desdemona_ (with the accent, too, on the second syllable)
could hardly justify her complaint that she was regarded as a juvenile.
The choice of the Alfieri Theatre for the scene of the culmination of the
domestic drama seemed to touch the extreme of improbability. The actors
were not a poor travelling company of mummers, as in _Pagliacci_, with no
decent private accommodation for this kind of thing. The protagonist of
_Carnival_ was lodged in a perfectly good Venetian palace, where there was
every convenience for having the matter out with his wife and her lover.
For the rest the plot was commonplace to the verge of banality.
As _Silvio Steno_, in his home life, Mr. MATHESON LANG was excellently
natural, but as _Othello_ his make-up spoilt his nice face and tended to
alienate me. As _Simonetta_ (I got very sick of the name) Miss HILDA BAYLEY
had a difficult part, and failed, from no great fault of her own, to attach
our sympathies, till in the end she explained her rather inscrutable
conduct in a defence which gave us for the first time a sense of sincerity
in her character.
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