My heron is not stately, so probably the costume wouldn't fit.
Hmm. The last lines of The Sun Also Rises are about the saddest lines I know in a novel, though there is something about Gatsby in The Great Gatsby that is terribly moving. It may be that the saddest writings are saddest mixed in with comedy -- Angela's Ashes does that, as Steve says. They sort of open up a deeper vein of human experience than just a standard weepie. As far as plays go, Twelfth Night seems to me to have moments of terrible sadness -- Andrew Aguecheek, a bumbling fool, suddenly out of nowhere in the middle of a party says: "I was loved once". And he is transformed. There is a kind of grief of loss in Twelfth Night that cannot be completely reconciled at the end: it is just life.
The saddest moment in the theatre I think must be the scene in Madam Butterfly when she and Cho-cho san are preparing the house for the return of Pinkerton, and they sit and wait like little mice through the night to surprise him when he arrives (which he doesn't). I have often seen audiences weeping uncontrollably at this quiet scene, while the rest of the opera leaves them unmoved.
yours, Peter T.