Abroad with the Jimmies, page 59 by Lilian Bell
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he house with Judas. He plays with such tremendous power--he makes it seem so real, so close, so near. Once I asked him if he liked the part, and he broke down and wept. He said he hated it--that he loathed himself for playing it, and that his one ambition was to be allowed to play the Christus for just one time before he died, in order to wipe out the disgrace of his part as Judas and to cleanse his soul. I cried too, for I knew that his ambition could never be realised. I told him that perhaps they would allow him to act the part at a rehearsal, if he told them of his ambition, and the thought seemed to cheer him. He said he knew the part perfectly, and had often rehearsed it in private to comfort his own soul.
Such was his sincerity and grief, such his contrition and remorse after a performance, that it would not surprise me some day to know that the part had overpowered him, and that he had actually hanged himself.
As to the play itself--I wish I need say nothing about it. My mind, my heart, my soul, have all been wrenched and twisted with such emotion as is not pleasant to feel nor expedient to speak about. It was too real, too heart-rending, too awful. I hate, I abhor myself for feeling things so acutely. I wish I were a skeptic, a scoffer, an atheist. I wish I could put my mind on the mechanism of the play. I wish I could believe that it all took place two thousand years ago. I wish I didn't know that this suffering on the stage was all actual. I wish I thought these people were really Tyrolese peasants, wood-carvers and potters, and that all this agony was only a play. I hate the women who are weeping all around me. I hate the men who let the tears run down their cheeks, and whose shoulders heave with their sobs. It is so awful to see a man cry.
But no, it is all true. It is taking place now. I am one of the women at the foot of the cross. The anguish, the cries, the sobs are all actual. They pierce my heart. The cross with its piteous burden is outlined against the real sky. The gree