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

by Various

But there is another thought connected with this. We find in such an idea of the nature and end of theatrical representations the true reason why actors and actresses never have been, and never can be regarded as a reputable class in society. They may contribute ever so much to our amusement, but no principle of gratitude, even if there were any ground for so sacred a feeling, will ever bring the very persons who use them as a means of enjoyment to recognize their social equality. A favorite actor may now and then be toasted at a public dinner. Grave men may sometimes manifest a public interest in some actress who has furnished an exciting theme of newspaper discussion, or judicial investigation. But let the higher tests be demanded, and the instinctive feeling of our humanity manifests itself at once. They never have been, they never will be admitted freely to the more intimate social relations. The fashionable frequenter of the theatre would not cordially give his daughter in marriage to the most popular of actors; he would turn with aversion from the thought that his son should choose for his bride the most accomplished actress that ever called forth the rapturous plaudits of a pleasure-maddened audience. We need not go far for the reason. It may be partly found in the fact, or suspicion, of their generally vicious lives. But of that, and the cause of it, in another place. It is a different though related thought to which we would here give prominence. With all that is pretended about the theatre being a place of instruction, or recreation, there is an under-consciousness that its great end is pleasurable emotion merely—in a word, amusement. Along with this there is another suppressed consciousness that such an end is not honorable to our humanity, and that those, therefore, whose chief employment is to minister to it, can not be regarded as having a high or even a reputable calling. This decision may be called unjust, but we can not alter it, even though we fail to discover the true ground in which it has its origin. The distinctions exist in the very nature of things and ideas. No theoretical fraternization can ever essentially change them.

There are three grades of employment whose respective rank must ever be independent of all conventionalities. Two are reputable, though differing in degree. The third is essentially dishonorable through all its great variety of departments. The highest place is given, and must ever be given, to those who live for the spirit's good, or the health of the body as conducive to it—the second to those most useful and reputable employments that have for their end the material well-being, in itself considered. The region of dishonor embraces all of every class whose aim is the ἡδὑ instead of the ἁγαθὁν, the pleasurable instead of the good or the truly useful, whether in respect to soul or body—all who live to please, to gratify simply—to amuse mankind—in other words, to aid them in annihilating their precious earthly time, and in turning away their thoughts from the great ends of their immortal existence. The poorest mechanic, or day-laborer, who is toiling in the lowest department of the utile (or useful as we have defined it) is of a higher rank, belongs to a more honorable class, than the proudest play-actor that ever trod the boards of a theatre. Among these "men and women of pleasure," there may be also numerous varieties and degrees, from the female balancer on the tight rope to the most fashionable danseuse; from the clown of the circus to the Forrest or Macready of the aristocratic theatre; but the instinct of the human consciousness recognizes in them all but one genus. They all live to amuse, and such a life can not be honorable.

It may be said, perhaps, that this dishonor should attach to those who are amused as well as to the amusers. It might be so on the score of abstract justice; but, in fact, from the very thought there comes an additional load of obloquy upon the condemned caste. Mere pleasure-seeking, mere amusement, is felt to be, in itself, a degradation of the rational nature, and a semi-conscious sense of this finds relief by casting it upon the instruments who are supposed to receive pecuniary emolument in place of the unavoidable dishonor. It may be thus seen that the disrepute of actors and actresses is no accidental disadvantage, but has an unchangeable reason in the laws of the human consciousness. From no other cause could have come that universal reprobation of the scenic character, to be found in the writings of the most enlightened heathen as well as in those of the most zealous Christian Fathers. The opinions of Plato and Socrates on this point are most express, and Augustine only utters the sentiment of the Classical as well as the Christian world when he says (De Civ. Dei, 2. 14), Adores removent a societate civitatis—ab honoribus omnibus repellunt ho mines scenicos—"They remove actors from civic society—from all honors do they repel the men of the stage." The exceptions to this only prove the rule. The fact that in a very few cases, like those of Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, they have barely emerged from this load of dishonor, only shows how universal and how deep is the opprobrium.

The stage can not be reformed. Our proof of this has, thus far, been drawn mainly from historical experience. But such experience, like every other legitimate induction, forces upon us the thought of some underlying principle of evil, some inherent vitiosity which no change of outward circumstances could be ever expected to eradicate. In searching for this essential vice we need not indulge in any affectation of profundity. It will be found, we think, lying nearer the surface than is commonly imagined. Why is play-acting radically vicious? Because, we answer, it is just what its name imports. It is acting—acting in the theatrical sense—acting a part—an unreal part, in distinction from the stern verities which ever ought to occupy this serious and earnest life of ours. We have alluded to the heartlessness of the stage in view of the abounding sufferings and sorrows of the world. It is a varied aspect of the same truth we would here present. We have no right to waste upon mere amusement the precious time that might be employed in the alleviation of so much misery. We have no right to be acting, or to take delight in seeing others acting, in a world where abounding insincerity, falsehood, and disguise, are ever demanding truthfulness, and earnestness, and reality, as the noblest and most valuable elements in human character. Certainly there is a call upon us to avoid every thing of even a seemingly contrary tendency, in whatever fair disguise it may present itself, or under whatever fair name of art, or æsthetics, or literature, it may claim our admiration. The objection is not so much that the representation is fictitious in itself, as its tendency to generate fictitious characters in the actors and spectators. No sober thinking man can look round upon our world without perceiving that its prevailing depravity is just that which the theatre is most adapted to encourage. There is acting, stage-acting, every where—in politics, in literature, and even in religion. Men are playing State and playing Church. Artificialness of character is pervading our "world of letters" to a most demoralizing extent. We are every where living too much out of ourselves—alternately the victims and creators of false public sentiments under which the theatrical spirit of the times is burying every thing real and truthful in human nature. Our morals are theatrical; our public and social life is theatrical; our revolutions and our sympathy with revolutions are theatrical; our political conventions are theatrical; our philanthropy and our reforms are theatrical.

But we can not at present dwell upon this view in its more general aspects. In the more immediate effect upon actors and actresses themselves we find the radical cause of the vicious lives which have ever characterized them as a class. Men and women who act every character will have no character of their own. The dangerous faculty of assuming any passion, and any supposed moral state, must, in the end, be inconsistent with that earnestness of feeling without which there can be neither moral nor intellectual depth. We have neither time nor space to dwell upon those evil effects of theatrical representations which are best known and most generally admitted. Whoever demands proof of them may be referred to the records of our Criminal Courts. We would rather search for the root of the evil. It is here in the most interior idea of the drama that we find the virus fountain from which all its poison flows, and of which what are called the incidental evils, are but the necessary ultimate manifestations. It is not found simply in the personation of vicious characters, whether in the shape of heroic crime or vulgar comedy. The radical mischief is in the fact that the theatre is the great storehouse and seminary of false feeling; and all false feeling, without the exception even of the religious (in fact, the higher the pretension the greater the evil), is so much spiritual poison. By this we mean an emotion and a sentimentality having no ground in any previous healthy moral state with which they may be organically connected. No fact is more certain than that such a seeming virtue may be called out in the worst of men, and that instead of truly softening and meliorating, it invariably exerts a hardening influence, rendering the affections less capable of being aroused to the genuine duties and genuine benevolence of real life. It is indeed a blessed and a blissful thing to have a feeling heart; but, then, the feeling must be real; that is, as we have defined it, flowing from within as the legitimate product of a true, moral organism. Better be without all feeling than have that which is the unnatural result of artificial stimulus. Better that the soul be an arid desert than that it should be watered by such Stygian streams, or luxuriate in the rank Upas of such a deadly verdure. There is evidence in abundance that a man may melt under the influence of a theatrical sentimentality, and yet go forth to the commission of the worst of crimes; with a freedom, too, all the greater for the fictitious virtue under which his true character has been so completely concealed from his own eyes.

It might, at first, seem strange that this should be so. The emotions of benevolence, of compassion, of patriotism, it might be said, must be the same whatever calls them forth. But a true analysis will show that there is not only a great but an essential difference. In the one case feeling is the natural result of a sound soul in direct communion with the realities of life. In the other it is entirely artificial.—One has its ground in the reason and the conscience; the other in the sensitive and imaginative nature. One comes to us in the due course of things; the other we create for ourselves. The one is ever recuperative, elevating while it humbles, softening while it invigorates. It grows stronger and purer by exercise. It never satiates, never exhausts, never reacts. The other ever produces an exhaustion corresponding to the unnatural excitement, and like every other artificial stimulus reduces the spiritual nature to a lower state at every repetition. In short, to use the expressive Scriptural comparisons, the one is a continual pouring into broken cisterns; the other is like a well of living water, springing up to everlasting life. Nothing is more alluringly deceptive, and therefore more dangerous, than the cultivation of the æsthetic nature, either to the exclusion of the moral, or by cherishing a public sentiment that confounds them together. We should be warned by the fact, of which history furnishes more than one example, that a nation may be distinguished for artistic and dramatic refinement, and yet present the most horrid contrast of crime and cruelty. A similar view may be taken of an age noted for a theoretical, or sentimental, or theatrical philanthropy. There is great reason to fear that it will be followed, if not accompanied, by one distinguished for great ferocity and recklessness of actual human suffering.

But to return to our analogy. It might with equal justice be maintained, in respect to the body, that physical strength is the same, whatever the cause by which it is produced. And yet we all know that there is a most essential difference between that vigor of nerve and muscle which is the result of the real and natural exercise of the healthy organism, in the performance of its legitimate functions, and that which comes from maddening artificial stimulants. They may appear the same for the moment; and yet we know that the one has an element of invigorating and re-creating life; the other has the seeds of death, and brings death into the human microcosm with all its train of physical as well as spiritual woes.

And this suggests that idea in which we find the most interior difference between true and false feeling. In the one the emotion is sought for its own sake as an end. In the other it is the means to a higher good. One seeks to save its life and loses it. The other loses its life and finds it. The true benevolence is unconscious of itself as an end, and through such unconsciousness attains to substantial satisfaction. The spurious looks to nothing but the luxury of its own emotion, and thus continually transmutes into poison the very aliment on which it feeds. Like Milton's incestuous monsters, so do the matricidal pleasures of artificial sentiment.

Into the womb
That bred them ever more return—

engendering, in the end, a fiercer want, and giving birth to a more intolerable pain—