CHAPTER XI.

PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THEATRICAL REPRE

SENTATIONS.

HE success of a theatrical entertainment de

THE

pends largely upon its power to fasten the attention and excite the emotions. And representation and costume, the voice and the living person, make a much deeper impression, and produce in most minds, if not all, a more intense excitement, than reading or study, however protracted or profound. The introduction of different characters, the whole scenery resembling real life, produces an illusion in susceptible minds which has been properly expressed by the word "entranced." And this effect, if the sentiments advanced be elevating, is good, and if they be immoral, it is bad. But it is a point of great weight and positive bearing whether the virtues are capable of yielding such intense excitement as the vices.

It will, I think, be conceded either at once, or

after a little reflection, that truth, honesty, temperance, industry, frugality, chastity, and, in general, religion, are not capable of being represented in the Theater, either in matter or manner, so as to cause such intense excitement as vice and its entanglements, as intrigue, drunkenness, duelling, conspiracy, adultery, divorce, treason, robbery, forgery, the altering of wills, murder, incest, and the passions which occasion these crimes, namely, lust, revenge, covetousness, and ambition. The virtues which in actual life are quiet and unobtrusive, could be worked up to excite only by bringing the vices into proximity to them, and delineating so vividly the temptation as to make it long doubtful how the scale would turn; and then if it should always turn on the side of virtue it would often be against the sympathies of many, and in a brief period become monotonous to most. Thus the two grand divisions of the Drama, tragedy and comedy, deal chiefly with sins and vices, either alone, or in terrible and long uncertain conflict with virtue. The very idea of tragedy involves a fatal issue, or a fatal issue unexpectedly escaped; while that of comedy includes foibles, sins which are

comical in their effects, and in general the ludicrous accidents of life.

There is, however, a limit to the interest which the Christian can take in the representation of scenes of vice. It cannot be proper to hear or see voluntarily, for the sake of pleasure, what it would be improper to say or do. If the doing of sinful things is sinful, “to have pleasure in them that do them" must be sinful also, for the same state of mind is implied in both cases. If there are in plays profane expressions, or indecent allusions, or lascivious looks, attitudes, and gestures, it cannot be right to derive amusement from the spectacle.

We speak now, not of the crimes represented, but of the language and attitudes employed in representing them. Hence, the Christian could find no pleasure in much that would create great interest in an assembly of average morality; and what is considered by a sagacious "management actually necessary to success," would be regarded as sinful by any one who adopts the precepts of Christ as the rule of his life.

CHAPTER XII.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PLAYS

MATTER.

THE

BELIEVING the principles set forth in the pre

ceding chapters to be evident, we will now make a discriminating examination of the Theater in this country with respect chiefly to the fundamental elements of matter and manner. And there are certain general characteristics of plays which will be at once recognized, and hardly denied by

any.

Christian principles are not accepted as the rule of morals. Praise and censure are not given according to the precepts of the Gospel, but according to shifting, worldly, and often immoral, codes. Hence, the Theater cannot teach the morals of Christianity to those whom it influences; but, so far as it departs therefrom, it diminishes the hold which Christian morality has upon the public. That which Christianity denounces as a great sin is often spoken

of as a mere folly or insignificant defect of character. And a mode of life which Christ enjoins on his disciples is disparaged as superfluous or impossible.

True religion-meaning the conscientious, selfdenying, world-renouncing, God-fearing, Christianis never praised, but usually ridiculed; and when religion comes upon the stage it is generally in the person of a sporting parson, or an Aminadab Sleek, or the Hypocrite. If an instance of whole-souled benevolence is brought forward, it is usually an act performed by some "good liver," some "hale fellow;" and if a piece of penuriousness is to be denounced, not unfrequently it is connected with some "sanctimonious" professor. That religion of an easy-going sort is sometimes complimented, is freely admitted; and that many fine and just sentiments concerning God, and virtue, and the future life are introduced, is well known.

But

that the kind of piety that denies self, renounces the world, and fears God, is seldom or never praised in the literature of the Drama, will be denied by none who are familiar with the subject.