]
[Footnote 7: I myself expressed it in slightly different terms nearly
ten years ago. "Curiosity," I said, "is the accidental relish of a
single night; whereas the essential and abiding pleasure of the theatre
lies in foreknowledge. In relation to the characters in the drama, the
audience are as gods looking before and after. Sitting in the theatre,
we taste, for a moment, the glory of omniscience. With vision unsealed,
we watch the gropings of purblind mortals after happiness, and smile at
their stumblings, their blunders, their futile quests, their misplaced
exultations, their groundless panics. To keep a secret from us is to
reduce us to their level, and deprive us of our clairvoyant aloofness.
There may be a pleasure in that too; we may join with zest in the game
of blind-man's-buff; but the theatre is in its essence a place where we
are privileged to take off the bandage we wear in daily life, and to
contemplate, with laughter or with tears, the blindfold gambols of our
neighbours.
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