Innies and outties
If a person were to try stripping the disguises from actors while they play a scene upon the stage, showing to the audience their real looks and the faces they were born with, would not such a one spoil the whole play?
And would not the spectators think he deserved tho be driven out of the theatre with brickbats, as a drunken disturber?...
Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in wich the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on a play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor go back in a different costume, so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by shadows.
Erasmus, The Praise of Folly
(quadro: Golconde - René Magritte)
