tuous model, the man who is engaged in the duties of religion, will be better employed than he who is seated in a Theatre and listening to it.-The Supreme Being who claimed the seventh day as his own, allowed the other six days of the week for purposes merely human. When the necessity for daily labour is removed, and the call of social duty fulfilled, that of moderate and timely amusement claims its place, as a want inherent in our nature; to relieve this want, and fill up the mental vacancy, games are devised, books are written, music is composed, spectacles and plays are invented and exhibited. And if these last have a moral and virtuous tendency, if the sentiment expressed tend to rouse our love of what is noble, and our contempt of what is mean; if they unite hundreds in a sympathetic admiration of virtue, abhorrence of vice, or derision of folly; it will remain to be shown how far the spectator is more criminally engaged than if he had passed the evening in the idle gossip of society; in the feverish pursuits of ambition; or in the unsated and insatiable struggle after gain—the grave employments of the present life, but equally unconnected with our existence hereafter."* If I were to proceed with the authorities available, I might easily expand my narrow volume into a *Conclusion of the article Drama, in the Supplement to Encyc. Brit. vol. iii. p. 671, folio,* but I have adduced enough to shew that the enemies of the Stage have principally been excited by its abuses, which they have too readily confounded with its utility; and that in all ages it has found powerful advocates, which I certainly have not selected from amongst the " profligate and vicious."† Yet in the face of all this mass of evidence, Christian preachers, predetermined to judge on the one side only, ascend the pulpit, and gravely tell their congregations that "the Stage is denounced by the religion they profess, and condemned by the almost unanimous verdict of the whole moral world." Are then the recorded opinions of so many wise and good men to be dismissed like chaff? and is no weight to be attached to the * See various articles in the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, Observer, World, Connoisseur, Adventurer, and all the leading periodicals, in which the abuses of the Stage are pointed out, improvements suggested, and its general advantages commended. Sir Richard Blackmore, Jonas Hanway, Professor Gellert, Dr. Hey, Gilpin, Richardson, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, with a host of equally moral and religious authors may be added to the long list of those who have written and spoken favourably of the Stage. See appendix to Dr. Plumptre's Four Discourses. † Dr. Styles quotes Rousseau, as an authority amongst the enemies of the Stage I should be very sorry to have found him in the list of its defenders, and if I had, I should as soon have thought of quoting Spinosa or Voltaire on a question of divinity. But we need not wonder at this zealous expediency, since Dr. Styles also quotes Shakspeare, while condemning him, and in this practice he is far from singular. wisdom of the legislative body, which protects the Theatre by law, and the example of the Sovereign who encourages it by her presence and command? These enthusiastic ministers who pick out texts from Scripture intended for general purposes, apply them individually to the patrons and professors of the Stage, and hurl them at our heads with unsparing severity, forget that in thus anathematizing an art sanctioned by law, and encouraged by royal countenance, they arm our hands with their own weapons, and enable us to send back other texts with double pungency in their direct application, reminding them "that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully;"* that they are commanded to "render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's,"† "to submit themselves to every ordinance of man, whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors;"" to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates;"§ "to render to all their dues, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour."|| In a dissertation on the Stage it may appear strange that so little allusion should have been made to SHAKSPEARE; but we come to him at last. Dr. Bennett pronounces a high panegyric on his unequalled powers, but adds, "he indulges in profaneness and obscenity to such an extent, as * 1 Timothy, i, 8. || Rom. xiii. 7. † St. Matthew, xxii. 21. § Titus, iii. 1. to render his writings, in the form in which he left them, almost unfit for general perusal." He laments, "that a connexion with the Stage degraded the mighty genius, which, if exerted in a proper sphere would not only have delighted but benefited mankind, instead of lavishing its energies and prostituting its powers to the most grovelling purposes of sin and Satan."* These are hard words. Coarse passages, no doubt there are, scattered through the pages of Shakspeare; but they impeach the taste and manners of the day more than the character of the writer, and affect the delicacy rather than the moral tendency of his works. They are exceptions, not general features; nor do they, as is too often the case with his contemporaries, form a leading characteristic of his style. We must also remember, that Shakspeare made no collection of his own works, nor did he ever revise them with a view to publication. Expunge these objectionable sentences, by which his text is disfigured, and we claim for him a degree of excellence which mere mortal genius has never yet arrived at. But if we carry the objection through, it extends to the Bible itself, in which there are passages no father can read aloud in his family; some of which are passed over in the daily lessons, and the omission of other chapters, where they occur, has often been recommended by learned and pious authorities. There are purified editions of Shakspeare, for the purposes of family reading,* and in the plays, as they are now acted, gross passages are either expunged altogether, or softened till they cease to be offensive. Dr. Bennett quotes a detached sentence from Dr. Johnson's celebrated preface, to the following effect. "He (Shakspeare) sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose." This carelessness is thus represented as a peculiar attribute of theatrical composition; but add the contexts which precede and follow the passage, and we observe how much the asperity of Dr. Johnson's opinion is diminished. "His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evils in books or in men: he sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writings, indeed, a system of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally." And in another part of Dr. Johnson's preface, he says, "the plays of Shakspeare are filled with practical axioms and domestic wisdom,-from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence." This mode of quotation from garbled extracts, savours more of the school of Ignatius Loyola, than of that of John Wesley; and here *Bowdler's Family Shakspeare. |