Puslapio vaizdai
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before we learned that our intrusion was known. Two black figures appeared, coming up one of the paths. They were Onge women, and one carried a baby in a sling made from the bark of trees. The other woman, by comparison, was overdressed, as her shoulders were strung with beads and ornaments, and a fiber apron hung from the girdle of shells at the waist. She also wore armlets, leglets, and anklets, and her hair was long and matted. The woman carrying the child was a hideous old hag, fat and shiny; her body was scarred all over. The natives use quartz to tattoo their figures, which leaves little raised

dots over the entire body.

The pair shyly approached, and Kumali attempted to reassure them. He was not as successful in charming them as he had been with the cobra, however, for despite the tempting offers of beads and bright-colored cloth, they gave only a few curious glances before their fear prevailed and they bolted, much to our disappointment. As the

there for the weather and voracious insects. When thoroughly dried, she cleans it, and, after decorating it with shells and beads, wears it constantly about her neck, between the shoulders, even when working or engaged in cooking.

After a year of mourning in this realistic manner, the widow begins to look about for another partner, making her wishes known to her neighbors. The chief man of the tribe selects a warrior and presents him to the widow. She usually ap

A JARAWA WARRIOR

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proves on sight, and thereupon removes to a lonely spot, takes the dear dead man's skull from her shoulders, and buries it, covering it well. She then returns to the camp, where feasting and dancing await her. Later, retiring from the scene of the festivities she spends a week or more in fasting and vigil by the lonely grave of the skull.

At the end of that period the widow emerges into festive life again, this time bringing the skull with her. This is placed upon a long bamboo pole and

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borne before her by one of the head-men of the community, who leads a procession of women. The natives follow the skullbearer and the widow, singing and dancing to the music of the yemnga. In the space in front of the communal hut the pole is set up. The men then come forward, and the poor old skull looks down on a wild revel of feasting and dancing. The festivities continue until the food is devoured and the dancers drop from sheer exhaustion.

As the bride and bridegroom retire from the scene, pigskins and mats are thrown at them by way of wedding-presents. The guests then depart, the men carrying the skull, which is again buried and forgotten.

In all this weird ceremony there is much crude philosophy and some wisdom, as will be admitted. The primitive savage has a sense of justice and right. The Andamanese even give a very good reason for their hostility to strangers, namely, that they were once friendly, but have been unmercifully treated in the past by Chinese and Malay traders. A semblance of poetry is also to be found in some of their customs and ceremonies. Such, for instance, as the naming of girls by what they term "Flower names." The natives of the Andamans seldom use names when directly addressing one another, and only the simplest names suffice to indicate a person not present. These are very much alike, and no distinction is made between sexes in common names, which are usually taken from some physical characteristic. Young girls, however, are given additional names, taken from the names of trees and plants, which are often musical in sound. It is a sad reflection that the better instincts of these people are never to come under the influence of a higher civilization than their own, for they are fast dying out. Diseases, mostly brought to the islands by the prisoners, are responsible for this, and soon, perhaps, the race will be gone.

We were resting in the shade of the hut eating our rice and fish when suddenly one of the bearers, who was some distance away, cried out, "Sahib, baibo, jarawas tir marto hai," which was a timely warning to throw myself down; the Jarawas were shooting. This was a complete surprise, for, as has been said, we supposed that all the warriors were at the extreme northern end of the islands attending the funeral of a chief. We were, nevertheless, being attacked by a party of natives, and were soon on the defensive. I experienced the unpleasant sensation of feeling an arrow whiz by me and seeing it imbed itself in a tree.

The party of Jarawas, mostly old men, women, and boys, as we discovered later, had established itself in a cleared place some distance away. A few shots from the revolver soon had them on the run, however, as they probably mistook our party for the posse known to have been sent out from Port Blair after them.

The incident served thoroughly to frighten my bearers, who up to this time had been kept busy cutting out, or trying to cut out, the pestiferous little ticks from

their bare legs. They were now almost afraid to stop at any point for fear of another attack. As we saw no more of the natives for some time, their fears subsided somewhat, and we continued to pick our way through the thickets and jungle. Sleeping, eating, and tramping, the bearers carrying the outfit, of which the most cumbersome parts were the curios we had collected and the photographer's paraphernalia, occupied the next few days.

I shall never forget the ever-changing beauty of the forests. Here and there flourishing creepers festooned the trees, while rare orchids swung from the limbs of others, and the evergreen trees laden with climbers were cooling to look upon. Occasional groves of bamboo and valuable woods stretched for miles. And I shall never forget the beautiful, silent nights. The moon was at the full, and as the silvery rays sifted through the branches they brought out weird shadows, which took strange shapes.

After supper the bearers would smoke, chew betel-nut, and tell ghost-stories in their strange tongue, then fall into dreamless sleep, except one or two, who were on guard. The silence of the night in the Andaman jungle, aside from innumerable insect life, is broken by the screech of the owl and the cry of the köi. This latter bird has a most humanlike note, not unlike a boy, lost in the woods, whistling to keep up courage. Its strident notes continue night and day, and when they are about at night it is, to say the least, very distracting.

The koi is very cunning, and the tendency to get something for nothing is so strongly developed as to have warranted its appearance as a trickster in the recent drama in which birds were used with symbolic significance. One of its little tricks is to lay its eggs in the nest of a crow, which it very much resembles in color and shape. The fraud is not discovered until the fledgling has been hatched out by the mother crow and is ready to fly, when discord reigns.

As our supplies were beginning to run low, we attempted to quicken our advance, but with disastrous results. Often we would find what appeared to be a path, only to have it end in jungle and be forced to retrace our steps, which was particularly hard on the bearers, who were

anything but strong. Their accustomed slight diet had undermined their vitality until they could go only a short distance over rough country without rest. Kumali and Subodha, nevertheless, were always alert and lent valuable assistance.

As we were picking our way through the tangle of underbrush one day in an effort to reach a comparatively clear space, I heard a slight noise. As I was some distance ahead, I turned aside to investigate. I could see what appeared to be a small animal moving about near the base of a scrub-palm, and naturally concluded it was a wild pig, and cautiously approached, as a tree was between me and the object. Finally, the animal, as I supposed, remaining perfectly quiet, I stepped out into the slight clearing.

The pig was a human dwarf, and we interrupted just as he was settling down to a full meal of cocoanuts. I have never seen such an expression of mingled surprise, fear, and rage in my life as was in the face and eyes of that creature as it looked up at me. We captured the little. fellow without trouble, and I brought him back to India.

Cocos-for that was the name we gave him-was a real dwarf. The natives of the Andamans are not in any sense dwarfs, though undersized. There are probably a great many dwarfs sitting down to feasts of cocoanuts on the islands every day, but they are not a race, or missing links in the human chain. According to the certificate. of measurement, Cocos is a cross between a Chittagongese and Burmese, and his height is two feet, nine inches. As he was being measured, Cocos was extremely nervous, and I repeatedly put my hand to his forehead to quiet him. When the calipers were applied to his head, however, he be

came frantic with fear and prostrated himself, begging me not to kill him.

There is a superstition among the Hindus that dwarfs have supernatural powers. A legend to the effect that Vishnu, the Hindu god, becoming jealous of man, came to earth in the form of a dwarf, and that henceforth all dwarfs became possessed of all the power of the gods, is commonly believed in. As a consequence of this belief, Hindu women, at the sight of Cocos, would immediately prostrate themselves in prayer, which seemed to please him after he became accustomed to it.

On the fifth day, the bearers being exhausted, when we came upon a small clearing near nightfall we encamped for the night. We had passed a few natives, mostly old men and women, so guard was kept as usual, though it was changed frequently that all might rest. Supper of tea and cold rice was eaten in silence, and at dawn we were aroused by the bearer on guard, who had found a trail which led down a slope to the coast. Quickly gathering up the outfit, we moved cautiously down the trail. It was thorny and rough, but at last, about II A.M., we came in sight of the water. The coast was bare and desolate, and the loose stones made walking difficult; but it was a great relief to see it.

We looked eagerly for the launch which was to meet us, but it was nowhere to be seen. We camped under some bamboos near the water, and Kumali and two bearers were sent up and down the beach to look for the boat. After five hours of anxious waiting, they returned with the news that the launch was coming. Needless to say, we soon had our stuff aboard and steamed back to Port Blair.

SHAKSPERE ON THE STAGE

FIFTH PAPER: KING HENRY VIII

BY WILLIAM WINTER

ONJECTURE has long been busy,

the play of "King Henry VIII." That That play was first published in the first Shakspere folio, 1623. The date of its composition is not known; neither is the date of its first presentment on the stage. Some Shakspere editors, among them Theobald, Malone, and Dr. Johnson, maintain that it was produced before the death (1603) of Queen Elizabeth; other Shaksperean editors, among them Collier, Dyce, and Knight, contend that it was not produced until after the accession of King James the First. A favorite belief is that it was performed, under the title of "All is True," on June 29, 1613, at the Globe Theater, London, on which occasion the discharge of small cannon,-perhaps in the coronation scene, Act IV, Scene 1, or, more probably, in the scene of King Henry's entrance, as a masker, at a festival in the palace of Cardinal Wolsey, Act I, Scene 4,set fire to the theater and caused its destruction. Controversy on this subject hinges mainly on the prologue to the play and the speech delivered by Cranmer at the christening of the royal infant.

Two plays relative to the story of Cardinal Wolsey, one of them being ascribed to Henry Chettle, a dramatist of Shakspere's time, of whose biography scarcely anything is known, were acted in London in 1601, and Malone assigns Shakspere's "King Henry VIII" to that year. The play is one that would have pleased Queen Elizabeth more than it could be supposed likely to please her successor, King James the First. That queen delighted in servile adulation, and she exacted abject deference to her authority; but her sense of delicacy was not such as is easily shocked.

There is no reason to suppose that Eliza

arine's eminently queenlike statement of her position or been displeased by a representation of the gallant behavior of King Henry the Eighth, her father, on the occasion of his meeting with the fair Anne Boleyn. She knew the reason why her father had desired and procured the annulment of his marriage to Catharine of Aragon, and though the demeanor of King Henry toward Anne Boleyn in the masque scene is that of a bold and expeditious wooer, it is not such as Elizabeth would have regarded as unseemly.

On the other hand, King James had not reason to revere the memory of Queen Elizabeth, who is specifically honored in Shakspere's play, that sovereign having kept his mother, Queen Mary of Scotland, for eighteen years incarcerated in prison, subjected her to indignity, and finally sent her to death on the block; and it is known that, in fact, he abhorred her memory. The speech which is delivered by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the scene of the christening was well calculated to please Queen Elizabeth, but it does not contain anything, aside from the lines of homage to her successor, likely to have gratified. King James. Those lines, seventeen in number, beginning, "Nor shall this peace sleep with her," and ending, "Thou speakest wonders," break the continuity of the address; but they serve the purpose of adulation of a vain monarch, notoriously susceptible to flattery. They probably, as was suggested by Theobald, were interpolated into Cranmer's encomium, some time after the first presentment of the play, when Elizabeth had died and James had ascended the English throne. Shakspere

himself might have inserted them, or they might have been inserted by another hand. It has been surmised that the revival of the play in the summer of 1613 was prompted by the wish to profit by contributing to the general public rejoicing incident to the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James, to Frederick, the Elector Palatine. That marriage occurred about the middle of the previous February, and it is hardly reasonable to suppose that the production of an "historical masque or show play" (Coleridge) intended as a spectacle apposite to that occasion would be deferred till the end of June, a period of more than four months. The conjecture put forth in 1850 by that respected scholar Spedding, to the effect that, in writing his play of "King Henry VIII," Shakspere had proceeded "as far, perhaps, as the third act, when, finding that his fellows of the Globe were in distress for a new play, with which to honor the marriage of the Lady Elizabeth, he handed them his manuscript," and that they intrusted it to John Fletcher, "already a popular and expeditious playwright," to be completed, is ingenious, but also it is unwarranted. "Expeditious" Fletcher may have been, but there is abundant reason to believe that Shakspere was at least quite as energetic, and could himself have finished his play with equal despatch.

In the absence of definite, decisive information, it seems, on the whole, probable that Shakspere's "King Henry VIII" was first presented toward the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and that the play called "All is True," acted in 1613, with disaster to the Globe Theater, was Shakspere's play, revived for an occasion, and altered in such a way as to make it acceptable to the time of King James. The compliment to that royal person, supposing it to have been then first inserted in the text, miscarried, because the theater caught fire before the performance had reached the christening scene, and Cranmer's honeyed words, occurring in the last act, were not spoken. No record has been discovered of the cast of "All is True," but among the Harleian Manuscripts there is a letter, addressed by the Rev. Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering, dated "this last of June, 1613," in which a reference is

made to the burning of the Globe Theater: "No longer since than yesterday, while Bourbage his company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry VIII and there shooting of certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire catch'd." The implication would seem to be that Burbage participated in the representation. If so, he would have played one of the principal parts,-either King Henry or Cardinal Wolsey, for he was then in the prime of his renown. Contemporary reference to "All is True" sometimes calls it by that name and sometimes by the name of "Henry VIII.".

No mention is made of any presentment of this drama in the interval between 1613 and 1663, the interval, roughly speaking, between the period of Burbage and that of Betterton. Shakspere's manuscript remained in possession of the managers, who owned it from the time when the play was first performed (whatever time that may have been) till the time of its first publication. To what extent or by what hand it may have been altered after the death of Shakspere in 1616, and before it was published in 1623, investigation has failed to discover. Modern scholarship assumes that, because of certain peculiarities of the versification, notably the use of "double endings," much of the play must have been written by some hand other than that of Shakspere, possibly or probably that of Fletcher, whose use of "double endings" was habitual. That theory, however, like other theories which, resting on surmise and not on evidence, would discredit Shakspere's authorship of his writings, is merely conjectural. It would be amusing, if it were not painful, to observe the assurance with which theories about Shakspere are adopted and proclaimed as fact, sometimes by thoughtful commentators, from whom a larger measure of discretion might reasonably be expected.

The first positively recorded representative of King Henry the Eighth was John Lowin, one of the best actors of Shakspere's time, and, in contemporary favor, second only to Richard Burbage. Authentic assurance is furnished by Downes that Lowin was instructed by Shakspere himself as to the performance of this part. Lowin, born in 1576, lived to be eightytwo years old, became very poor in his latter days, kept an inn, called The Three

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