players, and I notice that their ideal of beauty, unlike that of Greece
and like that of pictures from Japan and China, makes them pause at
moments of muscular tension. The interest is not in the human form but in
the rhythm to which it moves, and the triumph of their art is to express
the rhythm in its intensity. There are few swaying movements of arms or
body such as make the beauty of our dancing. They move from the hip,
keeping constantly the upper part of their body still, and seem to
associate with every gesture or pose some definite thought. They cross
the stage with a sliding movement, and one gets the impression not of
undulation but of continuous straight lines.

The Print Room of the British Museum is now closed as a war-economy, so I
can only write from memory of theatrical colour-prints, where a ship is
represented by a mere skeleton of willows or osiers painted green, or a
fruit tree by a bush in a pot, and where actors have tied on their masks
with ribbons that are gathered into a bunch behind the head. It is a
child's game become the most noble poetry, and there is no observation of
life, because the poet would set before us all those things which we feel
and imagine in silence.

Mr. Ezra Pound has found among the Fenollosa manuscripts a story
traditional among Japanese players. A young man was following a stately
old woman through the streets of a Japanese town, and presently she
turned to him and spoke: 'Why do you follow me?' 'Because you are so
interesting.' 'That is not so, I am too old to be interesting.' But he
wished he told her to become a player of old women on the Noh stage. 'If
he would become famous as a Noh player she said, he must not observe
life, nor put on an old voice and stint the music of his voice. He
must know how to suggest an old woman and yet find it all in the heart.'