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    their bibles , and why should they see the same plays over and over again , even though they be the plays of William Shakspeare ? Toujours perdrix is a proverb as applicable to plays as to music ; and we have to thank Edward Lytton Bulwer that dramatic authors have now one motive less to abstain from writing . The

    public can no longer abide grandiloquence , and care more for the € Rent Day / than for ' Venice Preserved . ' The former is to the latter what a Waverley novel is to the ' Scottish Chiefs , ' or c Thaddeus of Warsaw . ' The latter served the turn in their day , but have now paled their attractions . There are abundance of subjects for dramatic interest , which will come home to all hearts , and stir the very depths of passionate feeling . The passions of the human heart are as thev were of old , in all their

    characteristics , save their present superior refinement . Ardent love , and deep gratitude , and furious hate , and deadly revenge , and gentle pity , and melting charity , and godlike friendship , and blind avarice , and self-sacrificing generosity , and devoted courage , and withering malice , and high magnanimity , and coward fear—all these passions remain the same as they ever were . Circumstances , costume , and the outward forms of speech , are all that require altering to suit the altered conditions of humanity . But

    plays must not be judged of as is at present the custom ; they must have fair play . The actors must be the judges , and the monopoly of authors must cease . Merit alone must rule ; and it will probably be found that those who are first-rate actors will possess the talent to write first-rate plays . It should be so . True genius cannot be confined to a small part of a thing ; it must embrace a whole . It is recorded of Shakspeare that he was an indifferent actor . How know we that ? Possibly the taste of the time in acting ; was to ' out-Herod Herod , ' and his acting was

    in advance of such fustian . The public taste in acting is very far from chaste even now , and there is no great hope of refining the taste of the present play-going community ; but new audiences and a new system of management will work wonders . The managers who undertake the business transactions must be simply men of business , and not actors , and the actors and actresses

    must be men and women of good feelings and moral qualities . At present , the behind-scene exhibitions are capable of exciting little but disgust , like the scenes behind the boxes . It will be very desirable also that the hours should be better regulated , that both audience and actors may be enabled to attend without risking the loss of health .

    The ultimate objects for which human beings gather themselves together in large cities , at the risk of sacrificing some portion of health by the loss of a free atmosphere , is the desire to enlarge the sphere of human pleasures . One of the pleasures peculiar to great cities , is the theatre , in which two senses may be gratified at once—hearing and seeing , —and these two senses are brought to

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    620 On Theatrical Reform .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1833, page 620, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2622/page/36/