At length the audience grew tired of understanding half the opera;
and therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of
thinking, have so ordered it at present, that the whole opera is
performed in an unknown tongue. We no longer understand the
language of our own stage; insomuch that I have often been afraid,
when I have seen our Italian performers chattering in the vehemence
of action, that they have been calling us names, and abusing us
among themselves; but I hope, since we put such an entire confidence
in them, they will not talk against us before our faces, though they
may do it with the same safety as if it were behind our backs. In
the meantime, I cannot forbear thinking how naturally an historian
who writes two or three hundred years hence, and does not know the
taste of his wise forefathers, will make the following reflection:
"In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Italian tongue was
so well understood in England, that operas were acted on the public
stage in that language."
One scarce knows how to be serious in the confutation of an
absurdity that shows itself at the first sight. It does not want
any great measure of sense to see the ridicule of this monstrous
practice; but what makes it the more astonishing, it is not the
taste of the rabble, but of persons of the greatest politeness,
which has established it.
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