the same function as one of Handel’s long arias; not to advance the action of the play, but to communicate to us something more than words alone can express about the character who is singing or dancing. With the jōruri we move to a world like that of the operas of Gluck or Mozart. It is interesting, in this connection, that some of Mozart’s earlier operas have successfully been performed with marionettes, and critics often say of Cosi Fan Tutti, that it seems to have been written for them. In these operas, as in the jōruri, there is a greater fusion of the words and the music, a more obvious attempt to interest the audience in what will happen next. But there is still a stylization and a nobility which vanish in later operatic developments, just as these qualities in jōruri tended to disappear in the kabuki. Thus, Eurydice, insisting that Orpheus turn around to look at her, remains distant and beautiful, while Fricka arguing with Wotan in Valhalla is somehow commonplace.
We need not push this parallel any further—it is not an exact one in any case. Although the Nō and the jōruri plays can be appreciated fully only in performance, they are not merely the libretti of essentially musical productions. They are works of poetic drama, and at a time when our playwrights seem increasingly to be turning to this medium, they may well find help if not inspiration in the achievements of the Japanese theatre.
