Girls may read him, not for the truth, he says,
But to be pointed to the bawdy plays.”
In The Careless Husband we find Lord Morelove saying:
“Plays now, indeed, one need not be so much afraid of; for since the late short-sighted view of them, vice may go on and prosper; the stage dares hardly show a vicious person speaking like himself, for fear of being call’d prophane for exposing him.”
To this Lady Easy replies that,
“’Tis hard, indeed, when people won’t distinguish between what’s meant for contempt, and what for example.”
Perhaps Cibber’s most interesting contribution to the controversy is contained in his dedication of Love Makes a Man, published in the first edition, but omitted in the collected edition of his plays:
“But suppose the stage may have taken too loose a liberty? Is there nothing to be said for it? Have not all sciences been guilty? Was it to be expected in a reign of pleasure, peace and madness, that the poets should not be merry? Did not the court then lead up the dance? And did not the whole nation join in it? Was it not mere Joan Sanderson,[63] and did not the lawn-sleeves, cuffs, and cassocks fill up the measure? But since those dancing days are over, I hope our enemies will give us leave to grow wise, and sober, as well as the rest of our neighbors: Why shall we not have the liberty to reform, as well as the clergy, and lawyers? I believe upon a fair examination we may find, that prophaneness, cruelty, and passive obedience, are now less than ever the business of the stage, the bench or the pulpit; and I doubt not, but we can produce examples of new plays, lawyers, and pastors that have met with success without being obliged to immorality, bribery, or politics ...
“Now if the stage must needs down, because ’tis possible it may seduce, as instruct; the same rule of policy might forbid the use of physic, because not only their patients, but physicians themselves die of common diseases; or call in the milled crowns, because they are but so many patterns for coiners to counterfeit by, or might as well suppress the Courts of Judicature, because some persons have suffered for what a succeeding reign has made a new law, that makes that law that sentenced them illegal: The same conclusion might discountenance our religion, because we sometimes find pride, hypocricy, avarice, and ignorance in its teachers: So that if our zealous reformers do not stick fairly to their method we may in time hope to see our nation flourish without either wit, health, money, law, conscience, or religion....
“But this sort of reformation I hope will never be thoroughly wrought, while the king, and the Established Church have any friends: The stage I am sure was never heartily oppressed but by the enemies of both.”
Though Cibber thought Collier extreme and unjust in his criticism, his own attitude concerning the abuses of the stage was hardly less censorious than Collier’s, but he blames the audiences for the low moral standards of the entertainments:
“However gravely we may assert, that Profit ought always to be inseparable from the Delight of the Theatre; nay, admitting that the Pleasure would be heighten’d by the uniting them; yet, while Instruction is so little the Concern of the Auditor, how can we hope that so choice a Commodity will come to a Market where there is so seldom a Demand for it?
“It is not to the Actor therefore, but to the vitiated and low Taste of the Spectator, that the Corruptions of the Stage (of what kind soever) have been owing.”[64]