Her father, who is a stranger to her, comes on dressed in
banknotes and chained to a safe; her mother, also a stranger, wears
a society bee which buzzes in the place where her bonnet would have
been; and five samples of the fashionable world, where, as you know,
everybody thinks the same thing at the same time, let off recitatives
from time to time in unison. And there was much talk about "Robin
Hood's Barn," a thing I was never told about at an age when I am sure
it would have given me sincere pleasure.
Here and there the symbolism was obvious to the point of crudity;
but you searched in vain for a consistent scheme. The father in his
banknotes lashed to a ponderous safe was an easy personification of
the slavery of wealth, and the pantomime ducks and drakes were simple
to understand as symbolizing the career of a spendthrift (though the
father was never that); but why, you asked, did the double-faced nurse
exhaust all her spare moments and our patience pirouetting about the
stage? Did she represent the levity of the dual life? Not at all;
her actions bore no moral significance: she was just giving a literal
illustration of a phrase--"to dance attendance."
I don't know how the children in the audience appreciated all
this, but I confess that some of it left me wondering whether
my intelligence was too raw or too ripe for the fancies of this
Wonder-Zoo-Land.
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