In the Roman catholic countries the priesthood shut out as far as they could from the people the instruction of the stage. For ages the fire of the HOLY inquisition kept works of genius of every kind in suppression all over the south of Europe. In France the monarch supported the stage against its enemies; but though he was able to support the actors in life, he had not power or influence sufficient to obtain for them consolation in death; the rights of the church and christian burial being refused to them by the clergy.
In England, where the clouds of religious intolerance were first broken and dispersed by the reformation, the stage has flourished, and exhibited a mass of excellence and a constellation of genius unparalleled in the annals of the world. There it has been encouraged and admired by men whose authority, as persons deeply versed in christian theology and learned as it is given to human creatures to be, we do not scruple to prefer to that of the persons who raise their voices against the stage. Milton, Pope, Addison, Johnson, Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, and many others have given their labours to the stage. In many of his elegant periodical papers Mr. Addison has left testimonies of his veneration for it, and of his personal respect for players; nay, he wrote several pieces for the stage, in comedy as well as tragedy; yet we believe it will not be doubted that he was an orthodox christian. The illustrious Pope, in a prologue which he wrote for one of Mr. Addison’s plays—the tragedy of Cato—speaks his opinion of the stage in the following lines:
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart,
To make mankind in conscious virtue bold,
Live o’er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age.
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wondered how they wept.