The Pant in Pantomime.

And how it goes on! The acts change with lightning rapidity, the clown trips over Yorick's skull, the ghost walks arm in arm with Falstaff, the infant Samuel teaches his teacher, the poet blows coloured bubbles, and when the pork butcher catches them and fills them with sausage-meat they are still coloured bubbles; the pantomime elephant runs away from the mouse, the tight-rope walker falls off the step-ladder, the comedian cries over Little Nell and Little Nell laughs because he cries. Logic goes on a jag and Improvidence is married to Prudence. The dunce preaches wisdom and wise men play noughts and crosses on their diplomas. Forethought gazes through his telescope while Destiny nibbles at his heels. There is madness in earnestness and sanity in the maddest acts.

It's a great play if you don't insist on sense; for the climax is locked in a box and the key is held by old Uncle Ultimate. You take the show on trust or you don't take it at all. The brothers Why and Wherefore are dumb, and Ballyhoo is an auctioneer selling hot air in coloured bottles.

Nothing adds up right and the useless things are the most useful. Men become childish to maintain their wisdom. They hit little white balls round big green paddocks with hanks and shanks of metal; they belt hard lumps of leather with slabs of willow for no apparent reason, they dive into large sheets of water irrespective of whether it's Friday night or not; they walk when they don't have to,

“Solving the Riddle of the Universe.”

they run when there's nothing to catch, they collect anything from beetles to bottle-tops, they argue as to whether Queen Elizabeth was her brother and if Shakespeare brought home the Bacon. The wiseacre asks why; the fool has the answer. Einstein says there is no such thing as time, the wise fool knows there is no such thing as Reason and that Inanity is the father of Sanity.