Indeed, farcical to the
broadest point as was that mythological travesty of "The Danaides," it
was the essence of decency and propriety compared with "La grande
Duchesse," "La belle Helene," "Orphee aux Enfers," "La Biche au Bois,"
"Le petit Faust," and all the vile succession of indecencies and
immoralities that the female good society of England in these latter
years has delighted in witnessing, without the help of the mask which
enabled their great-grandmothers to sit out the plays of Wycherley,
Congreve, and Farquhar, chaste and decorous in their crude coarseness
compared with the French operatic burlesques of the present day.
But by far the most amusing piece in which I recollect seeing Poitier,
was one in which he acted with the equally celebrated Brunet, and in
which they both represented English _women_--"Les Anglaises pour Rire."
The Continent was then just beginning to make acquaintance with the
traveling English, to whom the downfall of Bonaparte had opened the
gates of Europe, and who then began, as they have since continued, in
ever-increasing numbers, to carry amazement and amusement from the
shores of the Channel to those of the Mediterranean, by their wealth,
insolence, ignorance, and cleanliness.
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