MY GOOD LADY,
You command me to acquaint you with the proceedings between Mr. Murray and Miss Nanny Darnford: and Miss Polly makes it easy for me to obey you in this particular, and in very few words; for she says, every thing was adjusted before she came away, and the ceremony, she believes, may be performed by this time. She rejoices that she was out of the way of it: for, she says, love is so awkward a thing to Mr. Murray, and good-humour so uncommon an one to Miss Nancy, that she hopes she shall never see such another courtship.
We have been at the play-house several time; and, give me leave to say, Madam, (for I have now read as well as seen several), that I think the stage, by proper regulations, might be made a profitable amusement.—But nothing more convinces one of the truth of the common observation, that the best things, corrupted, prove the worst, than these representations. The terror and compunction for evil deeds, the compassion for a just distress, and the general beneficence which those lively exhibitions are so capable of raising in the human mind, might be of great service, when directed to right ends, and induced by proper motives: particularly where the actions which the catastrophe is designed to punish, are not set in such advantageous lights, as shall destroy the end of the moral, and make the vice that ought to be censured, imitable; where instruction is kept in view all the way, and where vice is punished, and virtue rewarded.
But give me leave to say, that I think there is hardly one play I have seen, or read hitherto, but has too much of love in it, as that passion is generally treated. How unnatural in some, how inflaming in others, are the descriptions of it!—In most, rather rant and fury, like the loves of the fiercer brute animals, as Virgil, translated by Dryden, describes them, than the soft, sighing, fearfully hopeful murmurs, that swell the bosoms of our gentler sex: and the respectful, timorous, submissive complainings of the other, when the truth of the passion humanizes, as one may say, their more rugged hearts.
In particular, what strange indelicates do these writers of tragedy often make of our sex! They don't enter into the passion at all, if I have any notion of it; but when the authors want to paint it strongly (at least in those plays I have seen and read) their aim seems to raise a whirlwind, as I may say, which sweeps down reason, religion, and decency; and carries every laudable duty away before it; so that all the examples can serve to shew is, how a disappointed lover may rage and storm, resent and revenge.
The play I first saw was the tragedy of The Distressed Mother; and a great many beautiful things I think there are in it: but half of it is a tempestuous, cruel, ungoverned rant of passion, and ends in cruelty, bloodshed, and desolation, which the truth of the story not warranting, as Mr. B. tells me, makes it the more pity, that the original author (for it is a French play, translated, you know, Madam), had not conducted it, since it was his choice, with less terror, and with greater propriety, to the passions intended to be raised, and actually raised in many places.
But the epilogue spoken after the play, by Mrs. Oldfield, in the character of Andromache, was more shocking to me, than the most terrible parts of the play; as by lewd and even senseless double entendre, it could be calculated only to efface all the tender, all the virtuous sentiments, which the tragedy was designed to raise.
The pleasure this gave the men was equally barbarous and insulting; all turning to the boxes, pit, and galleries, where ladies were, to see how they looked, and stood an emphatical and too-well pronounced ridicule, not only upon the play in general, but upon the part of Andromache in particular, which had been so well sustained by an excellent actress; and I was extremely mortified to see my favourite (and the only perfect) character debased and despoiled, and the widow of Hector, prince of Troy, talking nastiness to an audience, and setting it out with all the wicked graces of action, and affected archness of look, attitude, and emphasis.
I stood up—"Dear Sir!—Dear Miss!" said I.
"What's the matter, my love?" said Mr. B. smiling.