That many of the american theatres are rather on the immoral, than on the moral side, I cannot deny it. But, if so, it is the fault of the people, permitting such plays. The best thing may be turned into an evil. The theatre is the school of all the fine arts; and were it sustained by the people as a necessary thing, soon authors would write classical plays. Classical authors, would form classical performers; and classical performers, giving a good taste to the people; criticism would improve authors, performers, and auditors: and the nation becoming refined in the fine arts, the audience would not permit an actor striking another on the stage. A moral people should not laugh in seeing an actor degrading another in action, or words: and when such bad actions are introduced by the author as a historical event, they should always be represented with an aside, reproving the clownish act. The laughter worthy of a civilized nation it is when wit, and decent actions would be exhibited with feeling, and refinement.
Travesties, or parodies should be entirely banished from the stage, not only because they injure the heroic actions; but, such actors exhibit nothing else but a company of insanes; and as it is not moral to laugh at insanes, we should banish from a moral place an immoral laughter. As the tears shed over the misfortunes of others, enhance the nobility of our heart, and the angry tears degrade us, so the laughter should not be excited in a delicate mind, were it even aimed at the last of men: a generous heart should always give to the most degraded, a chance to esteem himself. Such a bad laughter has so bad an influence in society, that ladies would laugh at every reasonable thing, uttered by the gentleman they dislike, for no other purpose than to make of the honest individual a stock of their pastime—when they have exhausted all their kind feeling with their lover. There were fools among the ancient courts to keep merry the ignorant kings and lords: and, before the middle ages, human beings were killed, with long torments, for sport!
Perhaps no author did benefit more, and injured more at the same time a national theatre, than Shakspeare. Such an extraordinary genius wrote plays, which have not the common sense. Andronichus for instance, is such an ugly monster, which must astonish every body who judge by themselves, how Shakspeare could write such an unnatural play. Andronichus is neither a tragedy, nor a parody. As Shakspeare had never been crazy, I am inclined to believe he was drunk, when he wrote Andronichus. That it was written by Shakspeare and by no body else, I have no doubt, since we find the style, the wit, and the might of his genius in it; a language which no body, but Shakspeare had ever been able to coin. The Andronichus of Shakspeare proves, that men judge like parrots in literature. Down to our days, all the learned say, that all the works of Shakspeare are the nature itself. They cannot say even, which is the best of them!
He who would deny a mighty genius in Shakspeare, might say, that the sun is a dark body. But, he who would approve a Lavinia, acting more than three acts, after Chiron and Demetrius had chopped off her arms, and tongue, without going to bed, it shows how ridiculous must be those, who find beauties in every thing Shakspeare did write.
My purpose here, is not to write a criticism on Shakspeare: but, no lady in the world could fall in love with Richard the third, the murderer of her husband, king Edward the fourth; and at the very moment in which she is going to bury him. Were Elizabeth not a lady, the love of ambition, might change a woman into a monster, at least, a month after the crime was committed. But, to love a cruel monkey, in the street, before the very victim, and this victim her beloved husband, over whom five minutes ago she shed bitter tears; to love the very Richard still reeking with her husband’s blood, at the very time in which he uses violence in stopping the sacred burial, to love him, I say, because he flatters her, it is the very parody, and the ridiculous caricature with which he wanted demonstrate the power of flattery in woman’s breast. Were woman such a selfish, vain, degraded being, the honest man would shudder at, and feel aversion rather than love the beauty. And if one of the best ladies has so low a mind, what shall we think of those less perfect than Elizabeth? But, the hyperbole is such a big one, for which nature wishes to have nothing to do with it. And such a satire to woman, instead of striking at the purpose, it becomes but a ridiculous exaggeration.
I brought here only these two instances to demonstrate, that, if the english theatre has not yet reached the italian, or french perfection, it is owing to a national, religious veneration for every thing written by Shakspeare; and when the english critic will not be awed by the great Shakspeare, and, really, Shakspeare is great, I do not see why the english theatre will not be as good as any.
There is, perhaps, no present nation in the world more fitted to improve the english theatre than America. And why? Sparta, Athens, and Borne had been great republics, because the theatre instructed the people in that alto sentire, in that patriotic feeling of virtue, and noble actions, without which all the republics of the world had been turned into monarchies, despotism, and tyranny. The best historical facts are sorrowfully abandoned by a patriotic author, who he is prevented from instructing his country fellows, under a monarchy: and many, who did write tragedies, or comedies under despotism with their free genius, suffered the vigilance of the iron rule. Shakspeare himself, was under the vigilance of the despotic Elizabeth: and although the present government of England is now the best of Europe, the english subject does not, and had never understood the republican feeling of Sparta, Athens, or Rome. England had never had a republic: and the writer for a theatre must be a republican in his soul, and in the centre of a happy republic. He who is afraid of being chained in a dungeon, cannot tell to an unfortunate people all the evils of a monarchy with which a king sucks the people’s blood; and the theatre must needs be the palladium of truth, and people’s rights.
It is a fact; America is a republic, and I hope, she will sustain herself as a republic with the improvements of the age. But, the greater number of the americans are from english blood, which, though brave, firm, and constant, has not yet felt that glowing, thrilling existence which inflamed those hearts of Sparta, Athens, and Rome with that heavenly flame of Prometheus. And the son cannot feel in his blood, that which the father did never feel himself. The republics of those times were nobility, and grandeur of thought; the republics of ours are but calculation, money, and selfishness.
By degrees, education purifies our blood, and brings the human heart to feel what our ancestors did not feel themselves. But, before a nation will be able to reach the true, virtuous enthusiasm of a republic in which man feels himself as being a part of heaven, it seems, we are still doomed to pass in obscurity ages, and ages! The republican, worthy of our race, I mean, of all men throughout the world, must not think for himself. His country should think for him. His God, body, and soul is his country: and to die for her, is his greatest reward. A republic is a beneficient mother, who does not leave in want her best generous children: and virtue with these is wealth, and prosperity.
A writer of comedies, or tragedies under a monarchial government, writes only to please his princes; and the people, present in that theatre, swallow from the mouth of subject actors, nothing but their shame. It should be better that such a people would not go to such a theatre. The individuals, there present, lose the dignity of man, while in the theatres of Sparta, Athens, and Rome, every individual, there present, felt his own dignity, as a virtuous member of society; and from that theatre, everyone learned how to be a good, virtuous, and useful citizen. Could we have in America, theatres like those of Sparta, Athens, and Rome, this nation would be the glory of our age, and posterity, as Sparta, Athens, and Rome were, and are the glory of those, and these ages.