in their hands, had a principal dancer (or protagonist), and assistant (or deuteragonist), and various accompanying personages, usually not more than four or five actors in all, plus a chorus. The texts of the individual plays are short, generally not even so long as a single act of a normal Western play, but the singing and dancing made them take about an hour to perform. I think that the best introduction to the technique of a Nō play is the brilliant pastiche of one written by Arthur Waley on the subject of the Duchess of Malfi.
“The persons need not be more than two—the Pilgrim, who will act the part of the waki [or deuteragonist], and the Duchess, who will be shite or Protagonist. The chorus takes no part in the action, but speaks for the shite while she is miming the more engrossing parts of her role.“The Pilgrim comes on to the stage … and then names himself to the audience thus (in prose):
“ ‘I am a pilgrim from Rome. I have visited all the other shrines of Italy but have never been to Loretto. I will journey once to the shrine of Loretto.’
“Then follows (in verse) the Song of Travel in which the Pilgrim describes the scenes through which he passes on the way to the shrine. While he is kneeling at the shrine, the Protagonist comes on to the stage. She is a young woman dressed, ‘contrary to the Italian fashion’, in a loose-bodied gown. She carries in her hand an unripe apricot. She calls to the Pilgrim and engages him in conversation. He asks her if it were not at this shrine that the Duchess of Malfi took refuge. The young woman answers with a kind of eager exaltation, her words gradually rising from prose to poetry. She tells the story of the Duchess’s flight, adding certain intimate touches which force the priest to ask abruptly, ‘Who
