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Untitled Article
reality traffickers in vice , or if not so , its base and voluntary ministers . Under the circumstances of a beneficial change , such as I have alluded to , the same motives would press on theatrical
proprietors to preserve public decency , as are now imperative on certain other proprietors , and the agents of vice would necessarily slink into unseemly holes and corners , and thus two separate species of nuisances would disappear from the public gaze , instead of being thrust forward to the annoyance of the well dispose ^ .
The love of acting is a very widel y spread passion , which , if closely analyzed , would perhaps be found based on the love of power , —a desire to rule over the minds of others , —which seems to be corroborated by the fact , that most incipient actors believe their peculiar forte to be tragedy , until convinced of the contrary by the suffrage , or want of suffrage , of their audience . At most
of the boy-pens , christened by the name of schools , the propensity to act is found to be strong , and the schoolmasters use it as an instrument to excite the boys to emulation in the use of speech , through the process of declamation . It is said also that Napoleon took lessons of Talma how to act the emperor . Thus an actor may teach a sovereign , but is not held fitting to teach a people . But
after the love of acting and declamation has been first encouraged in a boy by his schoolmaster , and the exhibition of it has met with the approbation of his parents and friends , he is expected to put it away as on a shelf so soon as he has left school , and then to acquire new tastes of a directly contrary tendency . If he persist in liking acting ., he is called a spouter , a ' stage-struck fool , ' and
sundry other epithets , and warned that total ruin must be the consequence if he does not abstain . The boy cannot comprehend how that which met with approval while at school , can change its nature after he has left school , his reason revolts from the tyranny , and he resolves to persevere . Perchance he is thwarted in his first wishes to make an essay , and they become stronger by the denial
of gratification . Walter Scott remarks , that if Waverley ' s aunt had given him unlimited access to the young lady he first took a fancy to , the charm would probably have lost its force , and even thus is it with acting . Give the boy or the young man his way , let him try the experiment , and he will be satisfied as to his fittingness or unfittingness , but this is not the rule . He is debarred
from the opportunity of proving his skill , and he runs away and becomes a stroller . Whether he succeeds or fails , the stamp of pluyer is thenceforth stricken upon him , and , unless he be a rich man , he may never turn away from that for which he is unfitted , to that for which he is fitted . A man may study for a surgeon or
physician , and afterwards become a tradesman , or a merchant , or a clergyman , or an officer in the army . Amongst professions he may change from one to another with impunity , and amongst trades the same . Tlie military engineer may turn away from the business of destroying towns , and , as an architect , take to building
Untitled Article
& 58 O / i Theatrical J-ttform .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 558, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/46/
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