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very pompes of the divell which we renounce in baptism if we believe the fathers) are sinful, heathenish, lewde ungodly spectacles and most pernicious corruptions, condemned in all ages, as intolerable mischiefs to churches, to republics, to the manners mindes and souls of men. And that the profession of play-poets, of stage-players; together with the penning, acting, and fre quenting of stage-plays, are unlawful, infamous, and misheseeming Christians. All pretences to the contrary are here likewise fully answered; and the unlawfulness of acting or beholding academical enterludes briefly discussed; besides sundry other particulars concerning dancing, dicing, healthdrinking, &c. of which the table will inform you. By William Prynne an utter barrester of Lincolne's Inne. London. Printed by E. A. and W. I. for Michael Sparke, and are to be sold at the Blue Bible, in Greene Arbour, in little Old Bayley, 1633."

Thus you see, Sir, Dr. Styles has only abbreviated this immense play-bill of Prynne's Literary Amusements, a book he probably never saw. Now, Sir, you perhaps know that there are such things as answers to books; and should it ever happen to you to meet with a little 12mo. volume, entitled

"Theatrum Redivivum, or the theatre vindicated by Sir Richard Baker in answer to Mr. Pryn's Histrio-mastix, wherein his groundless assertions against stage-plays are discovered, his mistaken allegations of the fatliers manifested, as also what he calls his reasons, to be nothing but his passions, (Comici finis est humanos mores nosse, atque discribere. HIEROM ad FURIAM.) London 1662"

you will see in 140 small pages, one of the most masterly and witty answers ever bestowed on a disingenuous author. He there exhibits Mr. Prynne going about with a press-gang, and laying violent hands on every body living or dead he could torture to his purpose. As this ingenious and erudite tract will be shortly reprinted, I shall not enlarge on Prynne's title-page, further than to observe, that more or less every opinion he quotes has reference to Heathen exhibitions, and disgraceful immorality: that his citations are most partial and disingenuous ;-and that the man who could forge Archbishop Laud's Diary, and select as he did the public records in favor of monarchical usurpations, may well be capable of dishonest quotation against the stage. Prynne was a learned, laborious, and persecuted man, entitled therefore to our respect as such; but his character was mixed up with much bigotry, fanaticism, and inconsistency. In Malone's History of the Stage may be also traced the real reason of puritanical zeal against the drama, viz. the theatrical lampoons on the peculiarities and opinions of the early English Protestants and Puritan dissenters-Hinc illa lachrymæ.

I now go to your fifth argument-that the American congress, soon after the declaration of independence, passed a resolution for the suppression of theatrical entertainments. Now, Sir, had you been conversant with the history of the transatlantic states, you would have known that this was not merely owing to the influence VOL. XXV. Pam. NO. XLIX. S

of some rigid Quakers and Puritans whose prejudices were strongly against such amusements, and was acquiesced in temporarily from political reasons; because the drama of the mother country kept alive the old loyal associations. And now that the danger is past, what is the result? the return of the drama and the stage; and America, universally cited as an instance of superior government and prosperity, engages at large salaries our principal English performers. If therefore this resolution of the first federal union "must be regarded in the light of very strong presumptive evidence of the immoral tendency of the stage," does not the present state of the American stage carry an equally presumptive proof of the moral and amusing tendency of the theatre?

But let us examine the average character of those productions which are represented on the stage. If we go to tragedy, we shall find that pride, ambition, revenge, suicide, the passionate love of fame and glory, all of which Christianity is intended to extirpate from the human bosom, are inculcated by the most popular plays in this department of the drama. It is true, gross cruelty, murder, and that lawless pride, ambition, and revenge, which trample on all the rights and interests of mankind, are reprobated; but I would ask, who needs to see vice acted in order to hate it? or will its being acted for our amusement, be likely to increase our hatred of it, on right principles?

James, p. 34.

6.

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As this sixth paragraph is only an opinion of yours, I shall check it with the opinions of others. Aristotle is the eulogist of this department of the drama. (Poetics, c. 6.) The Emperor Antoninus, in principle a disciple of Zeno, who was as severe as Cato the Censor, thus writes: "Tragedy received its birth from a desire to remind men of the several accidents attendant on mortal man; and to forewarn them, that similar events may happen to themselves; also to teach mankind, that those miseries which form their amusement when feigned on the stage, ought not when real to be deemed insupportable in the general theatre of the world." Mr. John Milton thus prefaces Samson Agonistes, a dramatic poem, in 1671-Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such-like pas

sions. Hence philosophers and other gravest writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, frequently cite out of tragic poets, both to adorn and illustrate their discourse. The apostle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the text of Holy Scripture, 1 Cor. xv. 33; and Paræus commenting on the Revelations, divides the whole book as a tragedy into acts, distinguished each by a chorus of heavenly harpings and song between. Heretofore men in highest dignity have labored not a little to be thought able to compose a tragedy, Dionysius, Augustus Cæsar, Seneca, Gregory Nazianzen a father of the church, &c."Addison's opinion of tragedy may be collected from his various works, but was particularly displayed by his writing "Cato." Dr. Blair (whom you recommend to the study of young persons) says "Modern tragedy has aimed at a higher object by becoming more the theatre of passion; pointing out to men the consequences of their own misconduct; showing the direful effects which ambition, jealousy, love, resentment, and other such strong emotions, when misguided, or left unrestrained, produce on human lifethese, and such as these, are the examples which tragedy now displays to public view; and by means of which it inculcates on men the proper government of their passions. Taking tragedies complexly, I am fully persuaded, that the impressions left by them on the mind, are, on the whole, favorable to virtue and good dispositions. And therefore the zeal which some pious men have shown against the theatre must rest only on the abuse of comedy, which indeed has frequently been so great as to justify very severe censures against it” 1 I think you will allow these opinions to counterbalance your own: I therefore pass to your assertions on comedy, which I shall try in the same mode.

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Comedy is in its nature so contemptible, and the "stuff" of which it is made so disgusting to a mind of common dignity, that its plots, its follies, and what some are pleased to call its good-humored vices, shall not pollute my page. Love, intrigue, prodigality dressed in the garb of generosity, profaneness dignified with the name of fashionable spirit, seduction and adultery, mere peccadillos in these days of refinement, are all materials which the comic muse combines and adorns to please and instruct her votaries.

Styles, second edition. p. 85.

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I shall here content myself with again quoting Dr. Blair's opinion against yours-" Comedy proposes for its object, neither the great sufferings nor the great crimes of men; but their follies and slighter vices, those parts of their character which raise in beholders a sense of impropriety, which expose them to be censured, and laughed at by others, or which render them troublesome in civil society. The general idea of comedy, as a satirical exhibition of the improprieties and follies of mankind, is an idea very moral and useful." The only part of your paragraph deserving notice is what may be fairly granted you without affecting the question that certain abuses have at various periods of history disgraced this department of the drama. But what then? Is this an argument against the thing itself any more than the impositions of priestcraft are arguments against the value of true religion? I admit that the most obscene and licentious compo sitions have disgraced literature and the stage, and that the periodical attacks on the stage by Northbrooke, D. Rainolds, Prynne, and Collier, may have had very salutary effects in curbing and banishing immoral writings-but is the abuse of a thing any objection against its use. "Licentious writers of the comic class have too often had it in their power to cast a ridicule on characters and objects which did not deserve it: but this is a fault not owing to the nature of comedy, but to the genius and turn of the writers of it." I am certainly aware that the religious peculiarities of some Christian sects have been satirized on the stage: I cannot say that I approve of such an exhibition. It is a species of religious usurpation: for who is to be the judge of what is false or what is fanatical, amid the clashing opinions on forms and doctrines? As power revolves, true religion itself may become the banter of knaves and fanatics. Still the impositions of Brothers and Joannah Southcote may be fair subjects of the comic muse. I suppose you know that Hales, Chillingworth, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, and Pascal, wielded the weapons of wit and ridicule in polemical contests. And when wit is the vehicle of sense, and not its substitute, it is doubtless a powerful solvent of imposture and superstition-so well discriminated by the great author of "The Night Thoughts," himself a dramatic writer

Sense is our helmet, wit is but the plume;
The plume exposes, 'tis our helmet saves.
Sense is the diamond, weighty, solid, sound;
When cut by wit, it casts a brighter bean;
Yet, wit apart, it is a diamond still.

Wit, widow'd of good sense, is worse than nought;
It hoists more sail to run against a rock.

Young. N. viii. 1, 1232.

Lect. XLVII. 2 Blair. Lect. XLVII.

I

Do you not know that Menander, Plautus, and Terence, have greatly contributed to the progress of letters? Has the French comedy no charms for you? The first age of English comedy was not infected with that spirit of indecency and licentiousness which unhappily characterised the age of Charles II. and the after period. Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, cannot be accused of intentional immoral tendency: they have certainly depicted characters now unnatural, with frequent coarse and gross allusions; but scenes were admitted in compliance with the custom of the times; and when we consider the state of manners and of vulgar colloquial language, what literary Goth cannot tolerate their defects for the sake of their beauties ?these deformities are but the rude casket which contains the brilliant diamond. I shall pass over those English writers, who, condescending to the vitiated taste of the age in which they lived, disgraced their language and their country by licentious writings. With Dr. Blair, "I am happy, however, to have it in my power to observe that, of late years, a sensible reformation has taken place in English comedy :"-and during the half century which has elapsed since this observation was published, I may honestly say, that modern taste has nearly banished all remaining impurities from the stage.

You then make some general assertions about the audience of a theatre being constantly interested in behalf of vice, and tolerating " atrocities" for the sake of "open-hearted, good-humored virtues." You say young women are prepared for intrigues, and young men for rakes. You bring forward no facts or arguments in support of these "strong assertions,"I shall therefore leave them to their fate and public disbelief. Then follows—

8.

"Besides, how saturated are both tragedies and comedies with irreverend appeals to Heaven, profane swearing, and all the arts of equivocation, and falsehood, and deception! What lascivious allusions are made; what impure passages are repeated! What a fatal influence must this have on the delicacy of female modesty! Think too of a young man coming at the hour of midnight from such a scene, with his passions inflamed, &c. passing through ranks of wretched creatures waiting to ensnare him and rob him of his virtue; does it not require extraordinary strength of principle to resist the attack?"-p. 36.

This paragraph is the only one I cannot immediately discover in

"Moliere is always the satirist only of vice or folly. He has selected a great variety of ridiculous characters peculiar to the times in which he lived, and he has generally placed the ridicule justly. Vice is exposed in the style of elegant and polite satire. In his prose comedies, though there is abundance of ridicule, yet there is never any thing found to offend a modest ear, or throw contempt on sobriety and virtue." Blair. Lect. XLVII.

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