Warburton, the friend of Pope, a divine of the highest rank, wrote notes to Shakspeare. And an infinite number of the christian clergy of as orthodox piety as any that ever lived, have admired and loved plays and players. If in religion doctor Johnson had a fault, it certainly was excessive zeal—and assuredly his morality cannot be called in question. What his idea of the stage was, may be inferred from his labours, and from his private friendships. His preface to Shakspeare—his illustrations and characters of the bard’s plays—his tragedy of Irene, of which he diligently superintended the rehearsal and representation—his friendship for Garrick and for Murphy—his letters in the Idler and Rambler, from one of which we have taken our motto for the Dramatic Censor, and his constant attendance on the theatre, loudly proclaim his opinion of the stage. To him who would persist to think sinful that which the scrupulous Johnson constantly did, we can only say in the words of one of Shakspeare’s clowns—“God comfort thy capacity.”
One example more. Whatever his political errors may have been, the present old king of England can never be suspected of coldness in matters of divinity, or of heterodoxy in religion. His fault in that way leans to the other side—for it is doubted by the most intelligent men in England whether his zeal does not border on excess. He has all his life too taken counsel from those he thought the best divines; yet he has done much to encourage the stage, and greatly delighted in scenic representations—particularly in comedy. But as a much stronger proof of his esteem for the drama, we will barely mention one fact: When his majesty first read Arthur Murphy’s tragedy of the Orphan of China, he sent the poet a present of a thousand guineas.
The notion that the theatre should be avoided as a stimulant to the passions deserves some respect on account of its antiquity; for it is as old as the great grand-mother of the oldest man living. In good times of yore, when ladies were not so squeamish as they are now about words, because they did not know their meaning, but were more cautious of facts, because the meaning of facts cannot be misunderstood, young men had a refuge from the temptations of the stage in the reserved deportment and full clothing of domestic society, we cannot wonder that the good old ladies who abhorred the slightest immodesty in dress little, if at all less than they abhorred actual vice, should urge to their sons the necessity of keeping aloof from the allurements of the theatre. If at that time the costume of the stage differed essentially from that of private life, and was the reverse of modest, or if the actresses indulged in meretricious airs which dared not be shown in domestic society, there was a very just pretence, or rather indeed there was the most cogent reason for preaching against the theatre. But at this day, no hypothesis of the kind can be allowed. That beautiful young women ornamented with every decoration which art can lend to enhance their charms will perhaps excite admiration and licentious desires, is true; but that those arts are more generally practised, or those incitements more strongly or frequently played off on the boards of the theatre than in respectable private life, our eyes forbid us to believe. He who looks from the ladies on the stage to those seated on the benches, and compares their dress and artificial allurements must have either very strong nerves or very bad sight, if he persist in saying that there is more danger to be apprehended from the former than the latter. He knows very little of modern manners and must be a very suckling in the ways of the world who imagines that a young man has any thing to fear from the actresses on the stage, who has gone through the ordeal of a common ball-room, or even walked of a fine day through our streets. The ladies of London, Dublin, New-York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, have thrown those of the stage quite into the back ground in the arts of the toilet. Nor is this qualification confined to those of the haut-ton, but has descended to tradesmen’s wives and daughters; to chambermaids, laundresses, and wenches of the kitchen white, yellow, and black, coloured and uncoloured.
Familiarity with impressive objects soon robs them of their influence; and if our natural disgust and anger at the shameful innovations in the female costume for which Great Britain and America stand indebted to the virtues of France, be blunted by the constant obtrusion of them on our sight, it is to be hoped that the pernicious influence of them upon public morals will be diminished also. In those regions where a tropical sun renders clothing cumbersome, and the costume of the ladies of necessity exceeds a little that of ears in transparency and scantiness, familiarity renders it harmless; little or nothing is left for the imagination to feed upon; cheapened by their obviousness, the female charms are rejected by the fancy which loves to dwell on what it only guesses at, or has but rarely seen, and the youthful heart finds its ultimate safety in the apparent excess of its danger. Thus the stage, if it ever possessed, has lost its vitious allurements, as a bucket of water is lost in the ocean. To test this reasoning by matter of fact we appeal to the general feeling, and have no fear of being contradicted when we assert that, with reference to their comparative numbers, more mischievous throbs have been excited in every theatre in London, New-York, and Philadelphia for some years past before, than behind the curtain.
We are aware that there are some who will object, as a thing taken for granted, the greater licentiousness of a player’s life; but this, before it can be admitted in argument, must be proved, and the proof of it would be very difficult indeed. From a long and attentive consideration of the subject, founded upon a perfect knowledge of the private characters of the stage, and the general complexion of society off of it, we are persuaded that in point of intrinsic virtue the players stand exactly on a par with the general mass of society. That there are offenders against the laws of morality and religion among them is certain; but it must be remembered that they labour in this respect under great disadvantages, from the publicity of their situation. There, they stand exhibited to public view, every turn of their conduct, private and public, becomes a subject of general scrutiny. Ten thousand eyes are rivetted upon them, for one that is fixed upon individuals in private life. And though it often happens that some of them are suspected whose lives are perfectly pure, none who have deviated from the paths of virtue can long keep their fall concealed. Can the same be said of the other departments of life? No. Now and then indiscretion, accident, or a total abandonment of decency brings to light the misconduct of an individual; but in general the irregularities of private life either escape detection or are hushed up by pride. Sometimes indeed one vitious purpose occasions the detection of another, and family disgrace is revealed to pave the way to a divorce, with a view to another marriage, and perhaps to another divorce. Were the private conduct of individuals in other stations as well known as that of the people of the stage, the former would have no cause to exult at the superiority of their morals; and in truth if a candid review be taken individually of the actresses of the English stage, by which we mean every stage where the English language is spoken, it will appear that, with few exceptions, they stand highly respectable for private worth and pure moral character. In England, Scotland and still more in Ireland, an unblemished reputation is necessary to a lady’s success on the stage. In some instances, the greatest favourites of the public have been driven for a time from the stage, for trespasses upon virtue, and when permitted to return were never after much more than endured. To these instances we shall have occasion to advert in the course of this work.
While we assert, on the best grounds, that the theatre may be made, by proper established regulations, a school of virtue and manners, we do not wish to conceal our persuasion that there is nothing more potent to debase and corrupt the minds of a people than a licentious stage. But it may be averred with equal truth, that the abuses of every other institution are fraught with no less mischief to the public. At this very moment the abuse of the pulpit is the parent of more public mischief in Great Britain and America than the stage ever produced in its most prolific days of vice; and it is deplorable to reflect that the former is rapidly increasing, while the vitiation of the latter has been for a century on the decline. The licentiousness of the stage in the reign of Charles II was enormous: but it was a licentiousness which the theatre in common with the whole nation derived from the court, and from a most flagitious monarch whose example made vice fashionable. In servile compliance with the reigning taste, the greatest poets of the day abandoned true fame, and discarded much of their literary merit: Otway and Dryden sunk into the most mean and criminal slavery to it—the former with the greatest powers for the pathetic ever possessed by any man, Shakspeare excepted, has left behind him plays which in an almost equal degree excite our admiration and contempt, our indignation and our pity. It is charitable to suppose that “his poverty and not his will consented.” But Dryden had no such excuse to plead for his base subserviency to pecuniary advantage, or for the detestable licentiousness of his comedies. He who will take the pains to turn to that admirable tragedy, Venice Preserved, by Otway, will find in the scenes between Aquileia and the old senator Antonio enough to disgust the taste of any one not callous to all sense of delicacy. But had Juvenal lived at that period, he would have scourged Dryden out of society. To those we might add Wycherly. Congreve and other cotemporary authors succeeded: but the offences committed by those men can no more be alleged as a ground of general condemnation of the stage, than the works of lord Rochester can be set up as a reason for condemning Milton, Pope, Thomson, Goldsmith, and all our other poets, or the innumerable murders committed by unprincipled quacks, be alleged as a cause for abolishing the whole practice of medicine.
Exasperated by the outrages of the dramatic poets, on virtue and decency, Jeremy Collier, a non-juring clergyman, attacked the stage. His charge against the authors was unquestionably right; but his attack upon the stage itself, exhibited a disposition splenetic almost to misanthropy, and an austerity of principle urged to unsocial ferocity. In his fury he renounced the idea of reforming the stage; he was for abolishing it entirely. He attacked the poets with “unconquerable pertinacity, with wit in the highest degree keen and sarcastic, and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by just confidence in his cause.”[3] Thus arose a controversy which lasted ten years, during which time authors found it necessary to become more discreet. “Comedy (says Dr. Johnson) grew more modest; and Collier lived to see the reformation of the stage.” Colley Cibber, who was one of those whose plays Collier attacked, candidly says, “It must be granted that his calling our dramatic writers to this account had a very wholesome effect upon those who writ after his time. Indecencies were no longer wit; and by degrees the fair sex came again to fill the boxes on the first day of a new comedy, without fear or censure.”
Such a licentious stage as is here described well deserved the severest attacks: but what is there to justify severity now? at this day not only the success of every new play so much depends upon its purity, but so scrupulously correct in that particular is the public taste, and so abstinent from every the slightest indelicacy are the authors of plays and even farces, that not a word is uttered upon the stage from which the most timid real modesty would shrink. In conformity to this happy state of the general taste and morals, all the old plays that retain possession of the stage, have been cleared of their pollution, and all the offensive passages in them have been expunged; some have been entirely thrown out as incapable of amendment, and in truth, purity of sentiment, and delicacy of expression, have become so prevalent, that it is very much to be doubted whether if it were proposed to act one of Wycherly’s, Dryden’s, or Otway’s offensive plays in its original state, a set of players could be found who would prostitute themselves so far as to perform it.
From the offences of mankind arise despotic restrictions and penal laws of every kind. From the licentiousness of the stage in England, arose the licensing law which still continues to hold a heavy hand over all the dramatic productions that are acted; and which has too often been perverted to corrupt purposes.
But if the abuses of the stage in the times alluded to, serve to show its power to do mischief, the general reformation in the public taste, which followed that of the dramatic writings, equally show its competency to effectuate good. Rousseau, who had little less dislike to plays and players than Jeremy Collier, says, in a letter to D’Alembert, “Let us not attribute to the stage the power of changing opinions or manners, when it has only that of following and heightening them. An author who offends the general taste may as well cease to write, for nobody will read his works. When Moliere reformed the stage he attacked modes and ridiculous customs, but he did not insult the public taste; he either followed or explained it.” So far Rousseau was right. It is the public that gives the stage its bias—necessarily preceding it in taste and opinion, and pointing out the direction to its object. In return the stage gives the public a stronger impulse in morals and manners. Wherever the stage is found corrupted with bad morals, it may be taken for granted that the nation has been corrupted before it; when it labours under the evils of a bad taste, it may safely be concluded that that of the public has been previously vitiated. The truth is evident in the wretched state of dramatic taste in England at this moment, where, corrupted by the spectacles and mummery of the Italian opera, by the rage for preternatural agency acquired from the reading of ghost novels and romances, and by the introduction of German plays or translations, the people can relish nothing but melo-drame, show, extravagant incident, stage effect and situation—goblins, demons, fiddling, capering and pantomime, and the managers, in order to live, are compelled to gratify the deluded tasteless multitude at an incalculable expense.