" Personally,
I do not know anything about this society, but surely
there is nothing out of harmony with Christianity in these professions,
and I am glad to find here an alliance between the two greatest factors in
the development of Western thought and culture -- the church and the theater.
The newspaper article to which I have referred was describing
the "old morality play, Everyman" which had been performed in the church.
The visitor who was somewhat critical, and apparently unused
to seeing the theater in a church, wrote of the performance thus:
"Both the music and the dressing of the play were perfect,
and from the moment that Death entered clad in blue stuff
with immense blue wings upon his shoulders, and the trump in his hand,
and stopped Everyman, a gorgeous figure in crimson robes and jewelled turban,
with the question, `Who goes so gaily by?' the play was performed
with an impressiveness that never faltered.
"The heaviest burden, of course, falls on Everyman, and the artist
who played this part seemed to me, though I am no dramatic critic,
to have caught the atmosphere and the spirit of the play.
His performance, indeed, was very wonderful from the moment when
he offers Death a thousand boons if only the dread summons may be delayed,
to that final tense scene, when, stripped of his outer robe,
he says his closing prayers, hesitates for a moment to turn back,
though the dread angel is there by his side, and then follows
the beckoning hand of Good Deeds, a figure splendidly robed
in flowing draperies of crimson and with a wonderfully expressive mobile face.
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