their virtue; but as a whole the drama wears a little thin, and one becomes uneasily conscious of the ugliness that lies—it cannot be gainsayed—beneath the splendour and the glitter.
Scheherazade, like the less important ballet of Thamar, is concerned, you see, to present a conventionally romantic picture of oriental sensuality. Now, this is a very legitimate thing to do. But whereas Thamar is content to handle the theme in a wholly simple and unmoral manner, Scheherazade includes a deliberate appeal to the human sense of shame which, however good as morality, is surely bad as art. For the sense of shame is not compatible with æsthetic satisfaction, nor do I think that its excitement, in a work of art, would be enjoyed by a society more delicate-minded than our own.
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