Boucicault's word, "proloquial" acts
of certain long and complicated plays, which seem to require for their
due comprehension the exhibition to the audience of events antecedent
to the real subject of the drama. But these "proloquial acts" are
things quite apart from the old-fashioned prologue.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ART OF "MAKING-UP."
When, to heighten the effect of their theatrical exhibitions, Thespis
and his playfellows first daubed their faces with the lees of wine,
they may be said to have initiated that art of "making-up" which has
been of such important service to the stage. Paint is to the actor's
face what costume is to his body--a means of decoration or disguise,
as the case may require; an aid to his assuming this or that
character, and concealing the while his own personal identity from the
spectator. The mask of the classical theatre is only to be associated
with a "make-up," in that it substituted a fictitious facial
expression for the actor's own. Roscius is said to have always played
in a vizard, on account of a disfiguring obliquity of vision with
which he was afflicted.
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