Tuesday, December 09, 2008 7:11 AM
It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the nest scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baran: her virtue and her life alike in danger; drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other and just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard and we are straightway transported to the greathall of the castle: where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of al sorts of places, from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company,arolling perpetually.
Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem at first sight.The transitions in real lifefrom well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit lessstartlingl only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive looker-on, which makes a vast difference. Tge actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and preposterous.
As sudden shiftings of the scene, and rapid changes of time and place, are not only sanctioned in books by long usage, but are by considered as the great art of authorship: an author's skill in his craft being, by such critics, chiefly estimated with relation to the dilemmas in this brief introduction to the present one may perhaps be deemed unnecessary. If so, let it be considered a delicate intimation on the part of the historian that he is going back to the town in which Oliver Twist was born; the reader taking it for granted that there are good and substantial reasons for making this journey, or he would not be invited to proceed upon such an expedition.
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Dickens is truly a genius.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
