Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVII, August 1852, Vol. V

by Various

Good plays may, indeed, be acted; but they will not long continue to call forth what are styled good audiences—the term having reference to numbers and pecuniary avails, rather than to moral worth. In fact, the theatre presents its most mischievous aspect when it claims to be a school of morals. Its advocates may talk as they will about "holding the mirror up to Nature, showing Virtue its own feature, Vice its own image;" but it can only remind us that there is a cant of the play-house as well as of the conventicle, and that Shaftsbury and his sentimental followers can "whine" as well as Whitfield and Beecher. The common sense of mankind pronounces it at once the worst of all hypocrisies—the hypocrisy of false sentiment ashamed of its real name and real character. As a proof of this, we may say that the stage has never been known in any language by any epithet denoting instruction, either moral or otherwise. It is the play-house, or house of amusement—the theatrum, the place for shows, for spectacles, for pleasurable emotions through the senses and the excitements of the sensitive nature. There may have been periods when moral or religious instruction of some kind could, perhaps, have been claimed as one end of dramatic representations, but that was before there was a higher stage, a higher pulpitum divinely instituted for the moral tuition of mankind. Since that time, the very profanity of the claim to be a "school of morals" has only set in a stronger light the fact that, instead of elevating an immoral community, the stage is itself ever drawn down by it into a lower, and still lower degradation.

We will venture the position, that no open vice is so pernicious to the soul as what may be called a false virtue; and this furnishes the kind of morality to which the stage is driven when it would make the fairest show of its moral pretensions. The virtues of the stage are not Christian virtues. If they are not Christian, they are anti-Christian; for on this ground there can be no via media, no neutrality. Who would ever think of making the moral excellences commended in the Sermon on the Mount, or in Paul's Epistles, the subjects of theatrical instruction? How would humility, forgiveness, poverty of spirit, meekness, temperance, long-suffering, charity, appear in a stage hero? In what way may they be made to minister to the exciting, the sentimental, the melodramatic? These virtues have, indeed, an elevation to which no stage-heroism or theatrical affectation ever attained; but such a rising ever implies a previous descent into the vale of personal humility, a previous lowliness of spirit altogether out of keeping with any dramatic or merely æsthetic representation. The Christian moralities can come upon the stage only in the shape of caricatures, or as the hypocritical disguise through which some Joseph Surface is placed in most disparaging contrast with the false virtues or splendid vices the theatre-going public most admires.

It is equally true that the most tender emotions find no fitting-place upon the stage. The deepest pathetic—the purest, the most soul-healing—in other words, the pathetic of common life, can not be acted without revolting us. Hence, to fit it for the stage, pity must be mingled with other ingredients of a more exciting or spicy kind. It must be associated with the extravagance of love, or stinging jealousy, or complaining madness, or some other less usual semi-malevolent passion, which, while it adds to the theatrical effect, actually deadens the more genial and deeper sympathies that are demanded for the undramatic or ordinary sufferings of humanity. We can not illustrate this thought better than by referring the reader to that most touching story which is given in the July number of our Magazine, and entitled, "The Mourner and the Comforter." How rich the effect of such a tale when simply read, without any external accompaniments!—how much richer, we might say, for the very want of them! How its "rain of tears" mellows and fertilizes the hard soil of the human heart! And yet how few and simple the incidents! How undramatic the outward fictitious dress, through which are represented emotions the most vitally real in human nature! Like a strain of the richest, yet simplest music, in which the accompaniment is just sufficient to call out the harmonious relations of the melody, without marring by its artistic or dramatic prominence the deep spiritual reality that dwells in the tones. We appeal to every one who has read that touching narrative—how utterly would it be spoiled by being acted! There might be some theatrical effect given to the agitated scene upon the balcony, but a vail would have to be drawn around the chamber of the mourner, and the more than heroic friend who sits by her in the long watches of the night. Such scenes, it may be said, are too common for the stage—ay, and too holy for it, too. They are too pure for the Kembles and Sinclairs ever to meddle with, and they know it, and their audiences feel it. We decide instinctively that all acting here would be more than out of place. The very thought of theatrical representation would seem like a profanation of the purest and holiest affections of our nature.

And so too of others, which, although not virtues have more of a prudential or worldly aspect. The stage may sometimes tolerate a temperance or an anti-gambling hero, but it is only to feed a temporary public excitement, and the moment that excitement manifests the first symptom of a relapse, this school of morals must immediately follow, instead of directing the new public sentiment. The wonder is, that any thinking man could ever expect it to be otherwise. Every one knows that the tastes of the audience make the law to the writer, the actor, and the manager. In this view of the matter, we need only the application of a very few plain principles and facts, to show how utterly hopeless must be the idea of the moral improvement of any representation which can only be sustained on the tenure of pleasing the largest audiences, without any regard to the materials of which they are composed. The first of these is, that the mass of mankind are not virtuous, they are not intelligent—the second, that even the more virtuous portions are worse in the midst of an applauding and condemning crowd than they would be in other circumstances; and the third, that the evil aspects of our humanity furnish the most exciting themes, or those best adapted to theatrical representations.

But the world will become better—the world is becoming better, it may be said—and why should not the stage share in the improvement? If the world is becoming better, it is altogether through different and higher means. If it is becoming better, it is by the influence of truth and grace—through the Church—upon individual souls brought to a right view, first of all, of the individual depravity, and thus by individual accretion, contributing to the growth of a better public sentiment. The spirit of theatrical representations is directly the reverse of this. It operates upon men in crowds, not as assembled in the same space merely, but through those feelings and influences which belong to them solely or chiefly in masses. Deriving its aliment from the most outward public sentiment, its tendency is ever, instead of "holding the mirror up to Nature," in any self-revealing light, to hide men from themselves. By absorbing the soul in exciting representations, in which the most depraved can take a sort of abstract or sentimental interest, it causes men to mistake this feeling for true virtue and true philanthropy, when they may be in the lowest hell of selfishness. It may become, in this way, more demoralizing than a display of the most revolting vices, because it buries the individual character beneath a mass of sentiments and emotions in which a man or a woman may luxuriate without one feeling of penitence for their own transgressions, or one thought of dissatisfaction with their own wretchedly diseased moral state.

The theatre might with far more truth and honesty be defended on the ground of mere amusement. This is, doubtless, its most real object; but there is an instinctive feeling in the human soul that it would not do to trust its defense solely to such a plea. In the first place, it may be charged with inordinate excess. Who dare justify the spending night after night in such ceaseless pleasure-seeking? And if there were not vast numbers who did this, our theatres could never be supported. To say nothing here of religion, or a life to come, the mere consideration of this world, and the poor suffering humanity by which it is tenanted, would urgently forbid that much of this life, or even a small portion of it, should be devoted to mere amusement. Within a very few rods of every theatre in our city, almost every species of misery to which man is subject is daily and nightly experienced. How, in view of this, can any truly feeling soul (and we mean by this a very different species of feeling from that which is commonly generated in theatres) talk of amusing himself? In the year 1832, during the severest prevalence of the cholera, the theatres in New York were closed. We well remember the impatience manifested at the event by those who claimed to represent the theatre-going public, and with what exulting spirits they called upon their patrons to improve the jubilee of their opening. We well remember how freely the terms "bigot" and "sour religionist" were applied to all who thought a further suppression of heartless amusements was due, if only as a sorrowing tribute of respect to suffering humanity. It was all the sheerest Pharisaism, they said, thus to stand in the way of the innocent and rational amusements of mankind; as though, forsooth, amusement was the great end of human existence, and they who so impatiently claimed it actually needed some relaxation from the arduous and unremitted exertions they had been making for the relief of the sorrowing and toiling millions of their race.

But if not for amusement, it might be said, then for recreation, which is a very different thing. The former term is used when the end aimed at is pleasure merely, without any reference to the good, as a something higher and better than pleasurable sensations, sought simply because they are pleasurable, and without regard to the spiritual health. In its contemptible French etymology we see the very soul of the word, so far as such a word may be said to have any soul. It is muser, s'amuser, having truly nothing to do with music or the Muses, but signifying to loiter, to idle, to kill time. We may well doubt whether this ever can be innocent, even in the smallest degree. Certainly, to devote to it any considerable portion of our existence, especially in view of what has been and is now the condition of our race, must be not only the most heartless, but in its consequences the most damning of sins. It is in this sense that every true philanthropist, to say nothing of the Christian, must utter his loud amen to the denunciation of the heathen Seneca—Nihil est tam damnosum bonis moribus quam in spectaculis desidere, tunc enim per voluptatem facilius vitia surrepunt.—"Nothing is so destructive to good morals as mere amusement, or the indolent waste of time in public spectacles; it is through such pleasure that all vices most readily come creeping into the soul."

We would have our Editor's Table ever serious, ever earnest, and yet in true harmony with all that innocent and cheerful and even mirthful recreation, which is as necessary sometimes for the spiritual as for the bodily health. We would avoid every appearance of sermonizing, and yet we can not help quoting here an authority higher than Seneca—Vanis mundi pompis renuntio.—"The vain pomp of the world I renounce," is the language of the primitive form of Christian baptism, still literally in use in one of our largest Christian denominations, and expressed in substance by them all. Now it can be clearly shown that this word, pompæ, was not used, as it now often is, in a vague and general manner, but was employed with special reference to public theatrical shows and representations. To every baptized Christian, it seems to us, the argument must be conclusive. If theatrical shows (pompæ) are not "the world," in the New Testament sense, what possible earthly thing can be included under this once most significant name? If they are not embraced in "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life," then not only has language no fixed meaning, but even ideas themselves have wholly changed.

Recreation, as we have said, is something very different from amusement. It is the re-creating or renewing the overtasked mental or bodily powers, by some relaxing and restoring exercise. It is pleasurable, as all right things ever are; but here is the all-important distinction—pleasure is not its end. The accompanying enjoyment is only a laxative and recreative means to something higher and more ultimate, and more real in human existence; and it is only on this ground that it becomes either rational or innocent. Amusement never can be either.

But those who need recreation in this sense will never seek it in the theatre. The reason presents itself at once. Experience concurs with the a priori view, derived from the very nature of the thing, in declaring that it can never be found there. The emotions called out in the play-house are exciting—they are exhausting—they are dissipating. In each of these aspects they are at war with the legitimate idea of the recreative. They stimulate but do not invigorate. All mere pleasure-seeking has in it an element of death. It has its ground in a morbid feeling of want which is ever rendered still more morbid by gratification. It is the same with that which lies at the foundation of the appetite for stimulating drinks, except that here it affects the whole spiritual system. In a word, the truly recreative exercises of the soul, in which pleasure is a means and not an end, are ever attended by a sense of freedom, and this is the best characteristic by which they are to be distinguished from others that assume the appearance and the name. Whatever is healthful, either to body or soul, is never enslaving. The counterfeit passion for enjoyment, on the other hand, is ever binding the spirit to a deeper and still deeper bondage. From the one, the mind returns with a healthier and heartier relish to the more arduous and serious duties of life; the other at every repetition renders such duties more and more the objects of an ever growing distaste and aversion. The slightest observation of the habitual frequenters of the theatre will determine to which class of mental exercises the influence of its representations are to be assigned.