He certainly cannot complain
that his wishes have not been faithfully fulfilled. It may be due
to my ignorance of English, but the song I have just quoted seems to me silly,
and I do not think any "ragtime music" could make it worth singing.
Of course many songs and plays in the music halls are such
as afford innocent mirth, but it has to be confessed
that there are other things of a different type which it is not wise
for respectable families to take the young to see.
I would not like to say all I think of this feature of Western civilization,
but I may quote an Englishman without giving offense. Writing in
the `Metropolitan Magazine', Louis Sherwin says: "There is not a doubt
that the so-called `high-brow dancer' has had a lot to do
with the bare-legged epidemic that rages upon the comic-opera stage to-day.
Nothing could be further removed from musical comedy than the art
of such women as Isadora Duncan and Maude Allen. To inform Miss Duncan
that she has been the means of making nudity popular in musical farce
would beyond question incur the lady's very reasonable wrath.
But it is none the less true. When the bare-legged classic dancer
made her appearance in opera houses, and on concert platforms
with symphony orchestras, it was the cue for every chorus girl
with an ambition to undress in public. First of all
we had a plague of Salomes. Then the musical comedy producers,
following their usual custom of religiously avoiding anything original,
began to send the pony ballets and soubrettes on the stages
without their hosiery and with their knees clad in nothing
but a coat of whitewash (sometimes they even forgot to put on the whitewash,
and then the sight was horrible).
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