And when the
play was over the graveyard was a sorry sight with trodden grass and broken headstones.
Early in the sixteenth century, the Morality in its turn was largely superseded by another sort of
play called the Interlude.
When, on the present occasion, I entered the gaming-rooms(for the first time in my life), it was several moments before I could even make up my mind to
play. For one thing, the crowd oppressed me.
Madame Ratignolle could not, so it was she who gaily consented to
play for the others.
He had made them sit up and take notice, and now, willy-nilly, they were dealing him hands and clamoring for him to
play. Well,
play he would; he'd show 'em; even despite the elated prophesies made of how swiftly he would be trimmed--prophesies coupled with descriptions of the bucolic game he would
play and of his wild and woolly appearance.
Then, aloud, she said doggedly: "See here, Miss Pollyanna, I ain't sayin' that I'll
play it very well, and I ain't sayin' that I know how, anyway; but I'll
play it with ye, after a fashion--I just will, I will!"
There were, in fact, so many things to be attended to, so many people to be pleased, so many best characters required, and, above all, such a need that the
play should be at once both tragedy and comedy, that there did seem as little chance of a decision as anything pursued by youth and zeal could hold out.
'No,' said he, 'I do not ask my life; only to let me
play upon my fiddle for the last time.' The miser cried out, 'Oh, no!
"Don't ask me to
play Nibs with you again," he said to Philip.
"My own garden is my own garden," said the Giant; "any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to
play in it but myself." So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.
Some of you gentlemen going to
play for me this evening?' It was the soft, amiable Negro voice, like those I remembered from early childhood, with the note of docile subservience in it.
The
play continued for a few minutes, and then suddenly, without any warning, Harlequin stopped talking.