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Untitled Article
surge to and fro many times , before it gain its due altitude and extensive appreciation ; but its head is now fairly above ground , and rise it will . The rise of dramatic literature must reform the Stage , and the stage will then become an important means of refining the intellect , elevating the feelings , and
inciting the nobler energies of all classes of the nation . Such is the faith the Monthly Repository has always held : such have we always held individually ; and both by public advocacy of the principle , and private endeavour to illustrate that principle , we will ever exert ourselves to the utmost in proof of
the solidity of its truth . And herein , be it observed , we have ever been opposed to our talented contemporary , the Athenaum , whose dramatic critic — a strong hand—seems disposed pot only to sweep down all our poor playwrights with his great scythe , but even the hope and chance of the revival of the
genuine Drama . We cannot agree with the Examiner that the play of the ' Duchess de la Valli&re' " can well afford to be judged by application of the severest tests of the dramatic art . " And it is plain that the author himself was speedily brought to a similar opinion with reference to the published version , inasmuch as he has
made great alterations , tending to render it more dramatic in representation , and less colloquial by an hour and a half . When a fine sterling play is published ' As performed , 8 tc / instead of as originally written , the version is almost alway $ much the worse for the stage omissions and interpolations ; in the present instance we think the converse would hold good .
That thfe elevated position Mr Bulwer has gained as a popular author , should render any work proceeding from his pen a fit subject for the severest tests of criticism , and that he should always be measured by the highest standards , is only a fair , and indeed a just consequence of that position ; nevertheless it might be averred in extenuation of a less fiery ordeal , not only that the author is comparatively young in the study of
dramatic literature ( having only turned his attention towards it a few years since , according to the Advertisement that precedes tne Prologue , ) and consequently has not yet perhaps half attained his own standard of perfection ; but that hip bringing all his energies , together with all his popularity , to bear upon Dramatic Literature , is a service for which , dramatic authors , the world of letters and his country , may well be thankful .
The * Duchess de la Valli&re' is not a tragedy , though several of our critical contemporaries seem disposed to judge it by p uch tests as are mainly applicable to tragedy ; whereas the author himself in his Preface speaks of it as belonging to the class of ff graver Comedy , " and that it is " a Court roem" containing
Untitled Article
66 Dramatic Literature .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 1, 1837, page 66, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1828/page/19/
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