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Untitled Article
the patent theatres is no proof of the general decline of the stage , it is quite certain that the improvement of the stage has not kept pace with the improvements in other branches of art . This fact might in itself be considered sufficient to have kept the stage in a far worse condition than that in which we find it . If it has thriven
so well , under so many new circumstances tending to depress it , we may reasonably hope that when it shall be freed from its shackles , competition in excellence will advance it high in public favour . Every body can remark , that the persecution , the disabilities in law , and the covert proscription in private life , which the Jews have had inflicted on them by the nations amon g whom they have dwelt , have had far more effect in keeping up their
peculiarities , and preventing the developement of the higher qualities of which they are capable , than any deficiency of intellect or mischievous regulations of their own . They have remained a separate people , not by their own wish , but by the injustice of their neighbours , just as the wisdom of the Greeks has degenerated into cunning under the oppression of the Turks . Most people are now aware of this fact , yet it does not seem to strike them ,
that a similar law of proscription has hitherto prevented the profession of acting from rising to the same state of excellence as other arts . It is the more needful that the proscription should be removed , inasmuch as theatrical attraction has now to contend with numerous other intellectual tastes which have grown up amongst the public since the days of Garrick 3 and which by their better cultivation draw into other channels much of the money
and attention which would be given to theatrical amusement , were there a constant developement of all the excellencies of which it is capable , so as to meet the capacity of the constantly increasing taste of the public . In the days of Garrick , play-goers were not readers as they now are . There were no books of a high order of imagination constantly issuing from the press , and furnishing a variety of novelty . There were no dioramas , and panoramas , and cosmoramas , and zoological gardens , and colosseums , and
numberless other methods of expending surplus coin in public amusement . The sti ge reigned sole and undivided , and occupied the principal talk of the town , while foreign politics excited little of stirring interest in that age compared with the age of transition in which we at present live , and during which the minds of the large majority of all classes are occupied with the stirring details of political agitation of a domestic nature , to the exclusion of all fictitious excitement .
It requires no prophet to foresee , that as public enlightenment proceeds , the excitement , which is at present on the increase , will gradually lessen , and as actors improve in fitness for their profession , their influence over the public mind will increase . At present , by far the larger portion of the plays which are put forth are behind the taste of the play-going public . They can feel no interest in fictitious and unnatural emotions , and to represent
Untitled Article
On Theatrical Reform , 553
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 553, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/41/
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