ACTRESSES AND THE MISE EN SCÈNE or partially undraped’ A National Vigilance campaigner described the ‘mere nudities’ of the tableau based on Johann Dannecker’s sculpture Ariadne: ‘Ariadne’…so far as I can put it into language, represents a naked woman lying on the back of a lion There were or wrinkles on the lower parts of the limb, distinguishing it from an ordinary picture The left leg was placed under the lower part of the right leg, producing these wrinkles She was lying in such a position that had it not been for the tights gross indecency would have been the result The model for Henrietta Ray’s Naiad barely enhanced the decency of her tights by wearing a thin wisp of gauze over her loins: The next picture to which I took exception was a picture called the ‘Naiad,’ & this picture represents a woman lying on a mound, slightly on the left side The face is upturned, the neck, stomach, thighs & legs are fully exposed Of course… I believe there were tights A very thin piece of gauze, mark you, is thrown slantingly across the person, but not sufficient to hide Although the gauze was ‘such as would pass not only through a finger ring, but through a lace hole’ the LCC Theatres and Music Halls Committee ruled that the provision of a thin scarf or spray of flowers across the pelvis was a sufficient compromise to decency As long as the Palace realized works of fine art, it was up to the spectators to remind themselves of the presence of tights even though seeing them was ‘a matter of inference & faith, not of observation & knowledge’.67 Objections were just as unsuccessful in 1881, when an individual complained to the Lord Chamberlain that Drury Lane’s ‘Statue Ballet’ featured ‘about 30 girls in tights from head to feet without a vestige of skirt & only a thin scarf for an apology to shield them’ Officials consulted various parties, including a clergyman, and concluded the plaintiff must be ‘one of the overnice people who bring to the theatre the prurience which they see there’.68 A similar device of costumed nudity was used in the Crystal Palace’s pantomime of 1887–8 ‘An English Mother’ complained: ‘A band of girls, about 30, I should think, from the ages of 10 to 16, naked to their waists, perform a dance [hand] in hand with just a little fringe of net perfectly transparent & which flies open as they dance.’ She continued, 129