they still frequent these theatres. 'Accomplishment' the word Noh means,
and it is their accomplishment and that of a few cultured people who
understand the literary and mythological allusions and the ancient lyrics
quoted in speech or chorus, their discipline, a part of their breeding.
The players themselves, unlike the despised players of the popular
theatre, have passed on proudly from father to son an elaborate art, and
even now a player will publish his family tree to prove his skill. One
player wrote in 1906 in a business circular--I am quoting from Mr.
Pound's redaction of the Notes of Fenollosa--that after thirty
generations of nobles a woman of his house dreamed that a mask was
carried to her from heaven, and soon after she bore a son who became a
player and the father of players. His family he declared still possessed
a letter from a 15th century Mikado conferring upon them a theatre-
curtain, white below and purple above.

There were five families of these players and, forbidden before the
Revolution to perform in public, they had received grants of land or
salaries from the state. The white and purple curtain was no doubt to
hang upon a wall behind the players or over their entrance door for the
Noh stage is a platform surrounded upon three sides by the audience. No
'naturalistic' effect is sought. The players wear masks and found their
movements upon those of puppets: the most famous of all Japanese
dramatists composed entirely for puppets. A swift or a slow movement and
a long or a short stillness, and then another movement. They sing as much
as they speak, and there is a chorus which describes the scene and
interprets their thought and never becomes as in the Greek theatre a
part of the action. At the climax instead of the disordered passion of
nature there is a dance, a series of positions & movements which may
represent a battle, or a marriage, or the pain of a ghost in the Buddhist
purgatory. I have lately studied certain of these dances, with Japanese