Furthermore, it is to be said—and it is an important truth which should in no wise be overlooked—that even when the play is petty and worthless in plot, full of absurdities as many of our gaudy modern pantomimes and spectacles are, and pernicious in its exhibitions of nudity, impure postures, and prurient accessories,—even then a twofold good may be derived from the show, in addition to the mere recreative diversion and pleasure yielded. First, the sight of the superb power, grace, and skill of the trained performers, disciplined and perfected to the highest point of energy, self-possession, and easy and joyous readiness for the execution of their functions, is a charming and edifying sight. It is the display of models of human nature developed to an extreme degree of strength, beauty, and flexibility,—a display which tends to mould the eyes of the spectators, and through their eyes to affect their souls and to exert educational influence on future generations. Every spectator should be kindled by the sight to secure for himself, for the highest fulfilment of life under the eyes of God, the exemplary development which these performers have so laboriously won for the mere purpose of exhibition and pay. The sacrifice and toil they have devoted for the sake of applause, should we not be willing to devote for the sake of entering on our full heritage in the universe?
Second, the melodrama, by its artistic groupings, colors, and movements, its scenic processions, its magic pictures, its orderly evolution of romantic adventures, the multiform interplaying of the characters and fortunes of its actors upon one another, draws our attention from ourselves, enlists our feelings in the fates of others, and thus exercising our faculties, disciplines, purifies, and emancipates them, making them readier and more competent for whatever exigencies we may be called on to meet. This great good and use of the dramatic art, its moral essence, is afforded to the profiting beholder by almost every theatrical representation, namely, that, in showing life concentrated and intensified, it holds up for imitation the instructive spectacle, in its trained actors, of men passing from themselves into the personalities and situations of others, mutually appropriating one another's traits and experiences, supplementing themselves with one another. This varied practice of reason, imagination, and sympathy in assuming inner states and their outer signs is the most effective culture and drill there is for freeing human nature from the slavery of routine, and perfecting its entrance on that heritage of unlimited sympathetic fellowships which will at last realize the hydrostatic paradox in morals, and make one man commensurate with all humanity. A drop balances an ocean by its dynamic translation and interplay with all the drops!
Whatever dissent or qualification may be made by some to the foregoing view, there will scarcely be any hesitation or difference of opinion when we turn from the representation of bad characters or neutral characters, the vile and the insignificant, to the grandest forms of the drama, where we encounter the most pathetic and brilliant impersonations of ideal excellence,—those patterns of loveliness and heroism with which the Stage abounds in its pictures of stainless and queenly women, fearless and kingly men. The natural influence of weeping over the misfortunes and wrongs or worshipping the virtues of a saintly sufferer, who resists not, complains not, resents not, but bears all with angelic patience, sweetness, and fortitude, is to soften and expand the heart and cultivate the tenderest graces of human nature. The natural influence of tracing the indomitable enterprise, valor, disinterestedness, and perseverance of a great genius, an illustrious patriot or martyr, thrilling with the deepest admiration at his virtues, is to foster in the susceptible breast burning aspirations after kindred worth and distinction. This tendency may be neutralized or prevented, but it is the natural influence, by which alone it is fair to judge the best specimens of the drama. And he who should undertake to estimate the total influence of the Stage in the model characters it has held up as ideals for honor and imitation, would have a task not less difficult than genial.
While War and Work, with the rehearsing discipline they exact, occupy and ravage the fairest fields and promises of Human Life, and create Weariness, Crime, Lust, and Death, as the horrid Reapers who tread close in their steps, the Theatre—one bright home of Freedom, Art, and Beauty, planted in a paradisal place—is prophetic of the time to come when Love and Leisure shall have room to people the redeemed world with their fair and sweet offspring, Play and Joy.
In the mean time, while the spirit of doubt, banter, and insincerity is so rife,—while we meet on every hand that arid, cynical, and contemptuous temper which thrives on mockery and badinage, fosters an insolent complacency and laughter by degrading superior persons and subjects in parodies and lampoons,—while our young men and women are infested with a boastful conceit of superiority to all sentiment and enthusiasm, and even our rising authors are so disenchanted, so knowing, that persiflage and the ridicule of illusion and devotion are their highest tests of experience and power,—under such conditions, surely we shall all agree that the ideal revelations, the impassioned music and eloquence, the free elevation above commonplace, the portrayals of ingenuous faith and energy, that still linger on the Stage, are to be held precious. Amidst so much formality and hypocrisy, it is a boon to have a great actor break into us through the crust of custom and startle our noblest powers into life.
The actor, in laboring to fit himself for the highest walk in his profession, studies all forms of human nature and experience, discriminates their ranks and worth, sees what is congruous and becoming, or the contrary, and reproduces their powers in himself by the practice of putting on their states and showing their signals. This done disinterestedly, with a sovereign eye to duty and the Divine Will, is the way for every one to educate himself towards that personal perfection the pursuit of which is his supreme business on earth. He thus learns to assume and absorb the ascending ideals that brighten the pathway to heaven. Herein the dramatic art becomes glorified into identity with religion.
The lowest range of the histrionic inhabitations of the soul is obsession, where the man is insanely held by some inferior or evil spirit, as when Nebuchadnezzar went out and ate grass, like an ox. The next grade is sympathetic domination, where the idea of another being is so vividly seated in the imagination of a person that for the time it makes him its involuntary agent. The intermediate or neutral level, half-way from the lowest to the highest, is the region of voluntary assumption, or acting properly so called, where the player by his own free intelligence and will reproduces or imitates foreign characters. Then there is the ascent into inspiration, where loftier influences or spirits than are native to the impersonator take possession of him, enhancing his powers, animating and guiding him beyond his own knowledge or volition. And lastly, there is the supreme height of divine incarnation, where some deity stoops into the cloud of mortality, or the infinite God in varying degrees deigns to inflesh and enshrine himself in man. Christendom owns one unapproachable and incomparable example in its august Founder. But in India, Egypt, Greece, were mystic men, who, too wise and grand to be thought lunatics, have claimed to be of a lineage divine and dateless. This is a realm for silence. But every unique, whether Gautama or Jesus, is only the transcending culmination of a rule that rises through levels below. Either great men have played the rôles of incarnate gods or descending gods have assumed the rôles of men on earth.