The Genial i***t

Chapter 5

THERE'S a harvest for you," said the i***t, as he perused a recently published criticism of a comic opera. "There have been thirty-nine new comic operas produced this year and four of 'em were worth seeing. It is very evident that the Gilbert and Sullivan industry hasn't gone to the wall whatever slumps other enterprises have suffered from."

"That is a goodly number," said the Poet. "Thirty-nine, eh? I knew there was a raft of them, but I had no idea there were as many as that."

"Why don't you go in and do one, Mr. Poet?" suggested the i***t. "They tell me to do is to forget all your ideas and remember all the old jokes you ever heard, slap 'em together around a lot of dances, write two dozen lyrics about some Googoo Belle, hire a composer, and there you are. Hanged if I haven't thought of writing one myself."

"I fancy it isn't as easy as it looks," observed the Poet. "It requires just as much thought to be thoughtless as it does to be thoughtful."

"Nonsense," said the i***t. "I'd undertake the job cheerfully if some manager would make it worth my while, and, what's more, if I ever got into the swing of the business I'll bet I could turn out a libretto a day for three days of the week for the next two months."

"If I had your confidence I'd try it," laughed the Poet, "but, alas! in making me Nature did not design a confidence man."

"Nonsense, again," said the i***t. "Any man who can get the editors to print sonnets to 'Diana's Eyebrow,' and little lyrics of Madison Square, Longacre Square, Battery Place, and Boston Common, the way you do, has a right to consider himself an adept at bunco. I tell you what I'll do with you: I'll swap off my confidence for your lyrical facility, and see what I can do. Why can't we collaborate and get up a libretto for next season? They tell me there's large money in it."

"There certainly is if you catch on," said the Poet. "Vastly more than in any other kind of writing that I know. I don't know but that I would like to collaborate with you on something of the sort. What is your idea?"

"Mind's a blank on the subject," sighed the i***t. "That's the reason I think I can turn the trick. As I said before, you don't need ideas. Better go without 'em. Just sit down and write."

"But you must have some kind of a story," persisted the Poet.

"Not to begin with," said the i***t. "Just write your choruses and songs, slap in your jokes, fasten 'em together, and the thing is done. First act, get your hero and heroine into trouble. Second act, get 'em out."

"And for the third?" queried the Poet.

"Don't have a third," said the i***t. "A third is always superfluous; but, if you must have it, make up some kind of a vaudeville show and stick it in between the first and second."

"Tush!" said the Bibliomaniac. "That would make a gay comic opera."

"Of course it would, Mr. Bib," the i***t agreed. "And that's what we want. If there's anything in this world that I hate more than another it is a sombre comic opera. I've been to a lot of 'em, and I give you my word of honor that next to a funeral a comic opera that lacks gayety is one of the most depressing functions known to modern science. Some of 'em are enough to make an undertaker weep with jealous rage. I went to one of 'em last week called 'The Skylark,' with an old chum of mine who is a surgeon. You can imagine what sort of a thing it was when I tell you that after the first act he suggested we leave the theatre and come back here and have some fun cutting my leg off. He vowed that if he ever went to another opera by the same people he'd take ether beforehand."

"I shouldn't think that would be necessary," sneered the Bibliomaniac. "If it was as bad as all that, why didn't it put you to sleep?"

"It did," said the i***t. "But the music kept waking us up again. There was no escape from it except that of actual physical flight."

"Well, about this collaboration of ours," suggested the Poet. "What do you think we should do first?"

"Write an opening chorus, of course," said the i***t. "What did you suppose? A finale? Something like this: