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your fellow-creatures , in order to work good upon them , to make virtue lovely and vice hateful . Let your modelled accents teach them the true use of language ; let your beauty teach them the
love of all beauty ; let your gait teach them grace of movement ; and let your garments awaken the taste which is dormant within them . Play in no piece which sound judgment condemns as immoral , or productive of mischief , whatever be the fashion which has sanctioned it . If you can do all this , and fill well a station worthy of the proudest ambition , that of a teacher of the people , go on . If you cannot , mingle once more with the herd , and give
place to a better and worthier being . But who is to pay us ?* asks Sylvester again ; * the mechanics are not sufficiently well off . ' ' That is not true , Sylvester . Abundance of the mechanics are sufficiently well off , earning three and five pounds per week by skilled labour ; and if they limit their numbers , they will be still better off , not merely a portion of them , but the whole mass will be well off . Instead of working from morning to night ,
threefourths of a day will be found sufficient for their comfortable maintenance and the needful accumulation , and thus they will have time to spare for the cultivation of their minds . The mechanics not able to maintain theatres ! You are dreaming , Sylvester . Who maintains the army , and navy , and church , and state , and the pension list , and pays the interest of the national
debt ? The working classes of the community , amongst whom the mechanics form far the most productive portion . It is recorded of Kean , that when he first played Sir Giles Over reach ., on his return home his wife asked him what success he had , and more especially what Lord Essex said . Swallowing his usual quantity of stimulus , he replied , " Damn Lord Essex ; I tell you the pit thundered at me . " The mechanics not maintain theatres ! Where
do the taxes come from ? Leave a portion of them in their pockets , instead of abstracting them for the convenience of the Lords John and Charles , &c , and the theatrical fund would not be small . Go to , Sylvester ; you are shallow-minded , and not a fitting teacher ? The day for mimics , like you , has gone by we need men of mind and mould , who can understand as well as speak all that is set down for them . We need instructed lecturers , and not pragmatic mountebanks . '
Hie day is gone by for the ancient description of ploys—tha British theatre , as it is pompously called . Ancient prejudices can no longer be appealed to , for the prejudices have vanished , and new plays must be produced , capable of taking hold of the perceptions of the listeners . The world is older than it was , find
will not sit down day after clay to the same banquet , merely be * cause it has been sanctioned by custom . The hour may be the sa me , but the cates must be varied . In works of imagination , people require variety , and a constant renewal . They do not sit down and read the same novels over and over again as they do
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On Theatrical Reform . £ J $ >
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1833, page 619, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2622/page/35/
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