On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
the requisite faculties and exertions for its supply . In this it resembles and follows religion , which , in some shape or other , man wants , and society provides . Indeed , the drama has , in
many cases , perhaps in most , sprung out of religion ; the theatre has been an appendage to the temple . This happened both with the classical drama of antiquity , and with the romantic drama of later times . If it be true , as Dr . Johnson says , that learnin g * reared the stage , ' learning was but the nurse of an orphaned offspring . When popery in England was put to death , the infantile mysteries , by which the people had been charmed on
holidays , were nurtured by taste and poetry into all the vigour of the Elizabethan drama . Some such tenderness was needful ; for though religion generated the drama , she has not been over kind to her progeny . In the mythology of antiquity , Saturn eat his own children ; and reli gion in this case , though she could not destroy , has sorely belaboured and calumniated hers . In France ,
the priesthood sometimes even yet make a stand against the admission of the remains of an actor into consecrated ground . In England , the pulpit and the playhouse are regarded as natural belligerents ; and even beyond the pale of puritanism , and amongst the people who most enjoy theatrical amusements , there is an association of immorality with the stage , and a disposition to consider the profession as disreputable . Why should this be so ,
if the drama be itself a product of religion , and the theatre an invariable adjunct of an advanced state of civilization ? We cannot ascribe this feeling to any pervading horror of immoral tendency in an occupation ; for it is by no means difficult to indicate a strong tendency to immorality in professions which are held in the highest estimation , and to which parents
are as eager to devote their children as they are solicitous to keep them from the stage . How few would hesitate to make their sons lawyers . r The world / as Mr . Campbell observes in the work before us , ' very properly holds the barrister ' s calling in high respect , and yet it is notorious that the lawyer ' s life , which makes him daily and hourly a hireling either on the right side or the
wrong side of a cause , as his brief may chance to call him , must tend to imbue his mind with a taste for sophistry , as well as with adroitness in the practice of it . In fact , there is a great deal of acting both in courts of justice and elsewhere , that goes by a different name . * The comparison , or rather the contrast , is not here put with half its strength . There is no deception , no falsehood , in the dramatic presentation of a character . The actor no
more attempts to pass himself for Alexander the Great , than the clergyman when he reads the lessons from the book of J <* imposes himself upon the congregation for Bildad the Shuhite . But the barrister does impose ; and that where the most import ^ results are contingent upon the success of the imposition . H * counterfeits credence ; he counterfeits feeling : intending ju < ty
Untitled Article
584 Campbell ! * Life of Mrs . Siddons *
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 534, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/4/
-