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 Church and the sta 
 
 3 1924 027 144 413 
 
 The Stage 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON 
 
 LONDON 
 TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL 
 
 i886 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027144413 
 
THE 
 
 CHURCH AND THE STAGE 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON 
 
 !Ba8 Sweatee ^at op cinm ©tteit mtt ter ^onjel ge^aW ; pe fottten, butitt 
 miSj), nic^t mtt cinaniet l^obern. 
 
 ©oet^e, aJSU^elm SKeiperS Se^rjol^rc. Bk. i, chap, xvl 
 
 LONDON 
 TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL 
 
 1886 
 
A^ Jl &03 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 I \ \\ ! «, if ■"" O'l"^ r 
 
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 LIBRARY,^ 
 
 BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
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 1 ^ /', ) 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE STAGE. 
 
 I. 
 
 PARENT AND CHILD. 
 
 So much has already been written on the relations of 
 the Church and the Stage that, in venturing to add 
 another word to the literature of the controversy, I 
 may be accused of telling " a thrice-told tale." My 
 excuse for writing these pages— if excuse be needed- 
 must be my belief that the method here pursued 
 presents the subject from a somewhat new point of 
 view. The study of the past always throws light 
 upon the problems of the present ; and, therefore, 
 while the most prominent thinkers in religion and 
 philosophy, in politics and science, are busy revising 
 the labours of past ages, recalling old judgments and 
 passing fresh condemnations, it may be neither un- 
 interesting nor unprofitable for us to re-read the 
 history of the long conflict between the Church and 
 the Stage. 
 
 The atmosphere of the time has long been charged 
 with this controversy. So often and so persistently 
 have the claims of the opposing parties been set over 
 
( 4 ) 
 against each other — so much have we heard of Church 
 versus Stage, of priests versus players ; that most of 
 us have grown up in the belief that the casus belli is 
 not accidental but essential ; that there is something 
 inherent in the natures of the two institutions which 
 necessaraly forces them into the position of rivals and 
 adversaries. Nor, if we consult recent history, do 
 we find ground to modify these conceptions. Reli- 
 gion and the Drama have long been estranged ; and 
 both Eeligion and the Drama have accepted that 
 estrangement as though there were something in the 
 nature of things which renders it unavoidable. 
 Hence the long and bitter feud between them, with 
 some phases of which nearly all of us are familiar ; 
 hence that spirit of mutual hatred, which has proved 
 so disastrous to each of them, and to society at large. 
 Denunciation on the one side has been met by rail- 
 lery on the other ; warnings have been answered by 
 jests, and anathemas by ridicule. In the midst of all 
 this confusion of angry words and heated recrimina- 
 tions, it is not suprising that so few should have 
 remained clear-sighted and cool-headed enough to 
 appreciate the real bearings of the controversy ; that 
 so few should have realised how misconceptions of 
 first principles were leading the disputants fatally 
 astray. Nor can we marvel that one who, like most 
 of the busy men and women around us, simply accepts 
 things as he finds them, and troubles little about their 
 whence and their whither, should be led to believe that 
 the feud of which he has heard so much has existed 
 from the beginning, and can only cease with the ex- 
 
( 5 ) 
 
 tinctiou of the Theatre or the downfall of the 
 Church. 
 
 We need not, however, go very deeply into the 
 matter to discover how far this common supposition 
 is from the truth. Eeligion and the Drama have not 
 always stood with daggers drawn ; but, on the con- 
 trary, Eeligion, which had before given birth to the 
 Drama of the old world, was the mother also of the 
 Drama of the new. It was under her direct inspira- 
 tion that the modern Drama came into existence. 
 Incredible as it may appear to many to-day, it is 
 nevertheless a fact that the church was the first 
 theatre, thd altar the first stage, the priests the first 
 actors, the mass the first play. The modern European 
 Drama, in a word, is the immediate ofispring of the 
 Church.* 
 
 Eightly to understand the primitive relations of 
 Eeligion and the Drama, we must be careful to remove 
 from our minds many of the ideas which are insepar- 
 ably bound up with the word church at the present 
 day. With us a church is essentially a place of worship 
 — a building consecrated entirely to the services of reli- 
 gion. In the Middle Ages it was far otherwise. Then 
 a church was the centre not only of the religious life 
 of the surrounding country, but also of its intellectual 
 
 * I have not here the space necessary to go into the much- vexed ques- 
 tion of how far theatrical exhibitions, during the Middle Ages, were 
 indebted to surviving remnants of the old Roman stage. Much learning 
 and ingenuity have been expended on this point ; but after all, it does 
 not much concern us here. Whether the medieval theatre was essen- 
 tially a new growth, or whether it was in large measure a revival, under 
 new conditions, of the drama of antiquity, the statement in the text is 
 still true : the impulse came directly from the Church. 
 
( 6 ) 
 
 and social life ; then it was not a building devoted 
 exclusively to tlie purposes of prayer and praise, but 
 was to a large extent the very home of the people. 
 Lacking all the many agencies of social activity to 
 which we are accustomed, deprived of nearly all that 
 makes life agreeable to us to-day, carrying on at best 
 a hard and precarious existence ; the large mass of 
 men and women, ignorant and degraded as they were, 
 had need of a powerful comforter and friend ; and 
 the Church of mediaeval Europe presented itself to 
 supply all that was lacking of pleasure, of comfort, of 
 refinement and culture, in the secular life of the time. 
 Thus the Church filled a far larger place in life than 
 it fills now or can ever fill again. It represented all 
 that we understand by home, club, public hall, place 
 of amusement. Eeligion did not then undertake to 
 deal only with the relatively small part of men's lives 
 with which she is now concerned ; she took charge of 
 the whole. She was the practical mistress of this 
 life, as well as the guide to the life to come ; she em- 
 braced the whole of existence, catering not only for 
 the spiritual welfare of men, but also for their moral 
 growth, their intellectual development, their aesthetic 
 culture. As Michelet says, " The Church was the 
 domicile of the people. ... It was the universal 
 refuge ; the whole social life of the people was shut 
 within its walls." 
 
 The Church was not slow to recognise the respon- 
 sibilities of its position. To its desire to retain and 
 to strengthen its hold upon the masses of the people 
 may be attributed many of those elaborations in its 
 
( 7 ) 
 
 services whicli were indeed direct concessions to the 
 popular love of excitement and the spectacular. The 
 people remained pagan at heart, and the Church only 
 kept their loyalty by gratifying their desires. Eccle- 
 siastical fetes in course of time became more and 
 more numerous ; processions in honour of saints and 
 martyrs yearly received increasing attention. These, 
 indeed, were developments of the merely external 
 ceremonies of the Church. But they were not with- 
 out parallels in the development of its internal cere- 
 monies. Though acting more slowly, the same causes 
 were here, too, producing similar effects. As time 
 went on, a change took place in the actual services 
 of the Church, which was fraught with the most 
 pregnant results. 
 
 Even in its earliest form the Church liturgy con- 
 tained certain germs of dramatic action ; and these 
 germs began to expand as soon as the austere asce- 
 ticism of early ages had been outgrown, and Chris- 
 tianity had conquered the pagan system by a series 
 of important concessions to the pagan spirit. Mr. 
 Ward* has shown that in the ordinary mass we have 
 the elements of a drama " in part pantomimically 
 presented, in part aided by both epical and lyrical 
 elements." There is the action of the officiating 
 priest ; there are the portions of Scripture narrative 
 read to the congregation ; there is the accompaniment 
 of vocal and instrumental music. A complete blending 
 of these three elements— a blending by which the epical 
 should become fused with the lyrical and spectacular 
 
 * History of English Dramatic Literature, i. 19. 
 
( 8 ) 
 —alone was required to initiate a 'representation to 
 which the term dramatic might without strain of 
 meaning be applied. 
 
 These germs of dramatic action, however, remained 
 undeveloped until the end of the tenth century. 
 About that time there passed over many parts of 
 Europe a wave of enthusiasm which may perhaps be 
 best described by the much-abused word, revival. 
 Eeligious services became increasingly popular ; a 
 fondness for ecclesiastical yeies and ceremonies spread 
 rapidly among all classes ; while the warm faith of 
 the people began to seek expression in their church 
 architecture. Touched by the influences which 
 awakened literature and art to renewed life, the 
 Church ritual began suddenly to expand ; and with 
 this expansion the dramatic elements of the mass 
 assumed more definite form, and passed rapidly into 
 what is known as the liturgical mystery. 
 
 The first important step in this direction was taken 
 when the priests began to amplify the original texts 
 of Scripture by making additions and interpolations 
 of their own. At first these were very modest, and 
 grew naturally out of the offices for the day ; but 
 when it once became recognised as customary to im- 
 prove in this way upon the text, and it was realised 
 how much variety could thus be given to a service, it 
 was found that the system was capable of almost in- 
 definite extension. In course of time it happened, 
 therefore, that an elaborate dialogue was built up on 
 the foundations thus laid ; and by and by, instead of 
 detached requests, or items of information, which 
 
( 9 ) 
 
 alone had been ventured upon in the first interpola- 
 tions, there was exhibited the whole history of some 
 great event, evolved by the different divisions of the 
 choir by a process of question and answer. Take, as 
 an example of one of these incipient dramas, the 
 dialogue in which Mary Magdalene, in the course of a 
 long cross-examination by the choir of angels, unfolds 
 the story of the crucifixion and the resurrection.* 
 After a chorus, the theme of which is the triumph of 
 the risen Christ, the angels proceed to hold a conver- 
 sation with Mary, in which, in reply to their ques- 
 tions, she goes, incident by incident, over the whole 
 story. Adopting an antiphonic arrangement, like 
 that which obtains in our churches to-day, one choir 
 sang the angels' questions, the other Mary's replies. 
 In this division we may trace the first germs of 
 characterisation. 
 
 Meanwhile an important development was taking 
 place in another portion of the service. On Palm 
 Sunday it became customary to form a procession in 
 which all the assistants carried branches and chanted 
 " Hallelujah " — imitating, if not yet representing, the 
 entry into Jerusalem. On Good Friday the priests, 
 seated around the table, repeated the incidents of the 
 Last Supper. During the evening service on the 
 following day, all the candles were extinguished to 
 simulate the darkness which spread over the world ; 
 whUe the rattling of iron and the blows of hammers 
 were employed to betoken the noise of the earthquake 
 
 * This dialogue will be found in the original Latin in Eddlestand 
 du Meril's Origines Latines du TMatre Moderne, pp. 1 08-10. 
 
( lo ) 
 
 and the rending of the veil. On Easter morning the 
 musical service was distributed among different por- 
 tions of the choir and congregation ; and of the ora- 
 torio thus initiated, Bach's Passion Music, Eossini's 
 Stahat Mater, and Handel's Messiah, are the direct 
 descendants. 
 
 It is impossible to state with certainty when the 
 epical part of the liturgy became so fused with the 
 spectacular that one no longer merely explained and 
 embellished the other, but they became integral parts 
 of a united whole. There is reason to suppose that 
 this fusion took place in the early part of the eleventh 
 century ; but it is hopeless to seek for chronological 
 exactness on a point like this. When, however, this 
 was finally accomplished — when the narrative of the 
 liturgy had been embodied in dramatic form — there 
 still remained to be taken the important step from 
 the mere representation of characters to their imper- 
 sonation. So far, the priests and choristers were 
 only priests and choristers — singing the parts allotted 
 to them, going through certain accompanying actions, 
 but always remaining to themselves and to the spec- 
 tators officials of the Church. It was with them as it is 
 to-day with Mr. Santley when he takes part in Elijah. 
 We listen to his superb dramatic singing without 
 feeling that there is any want of keeping between the 
 declamation of the prophet and the white tie and 
 swallow-tailed coat of the singer, simply because Mr. 
 Santley is still for us merely Mr. Santley and not 
 Elijah. It was for a long while the same with the 
 performers in the undeveloped liturgy-play. Their 
 
( ^1 ) 
 
 individualities had yet to be merged in the individu- 
 alities of the characters they were representing. 
 
 We cannot here do more than indicate in the 
 briefest way the steps by which the important change 
 from oratorio to drama was brought about.* 
 
 In its original form the liturgical mystery was 
 intended simply to vividly recall an event, not to 
 imitate it. The transition from the merely historic 
 representation to an actual embodiment of Scriptural 
 narrative was commenced when, to increase the im- 
 pression produced, certain objects intimately con- 
 nected with the story or the characters were brought 
 before the spectators. An early instance of this is to 
 be found in the drama of the Shepherds.^ A cradle 
 was exhibited on the altar, and beside it an image 
 of the Virgin Mary ; while one of the choir-boys was 
 placed in some elevated position whence, as the angel, 
 he might announce the birth of Jesus. A further 
 step in advance may be traced in some of the Easter 
 offices ; as, for instance, in that of the church of Mont 
 St. Michel. Here there are directions that the 
 " brother who shall be God \ {Frater qui erit Deus) 
 shall have a white alb spotted as if with blood, a 
 crown, a beard, and bare feet, and shall bear a cross. "§ 
 Similar directions are given for the clothing of the 
 three women. In the same service, apart from this 
 important step in the direction of characterisation, 
 there is a better-defined distribution of parts ; and 
 
 * The reader curious to pursue this subject will find the whole 
 questioB of the liturgical mystery and its development dealt with at 
 length in Les Mysteres, by L. Petit de Julie ville, vol. i., chap. ii. 
 
 + Du Mdril, pp. 147-50. J That is, Jesus. § Du M^ril, pp. 94-6. 
 
{ 12 ) 
 
 the priests, no longer distributed about tlie choir 
 according only to the requirements of the service, 
 are arranged with some regard to the necessities of 
 the action. 
 
 By steps such as those here indicated, each in itself 
 comparatively small and unimportant, but each, once 
 taken, leading the way naturally and almost insensibly 
 to still further advances in the same direction, the 
 liturgical mystery developed within the services of 
 the Church. In course of time the characters became 
 more numerous ; more life and movement were intro- 
 duced into the action ; further accessories were added 
 to give reality to the scene ; and the text of Scripture 
 was more and more widely departed from — change 
 in this direction being greatly aided by the gradual 
 appearance of the vernacular dialect side by side 
 with the ecclesiastical Latin. Thus within the mass 
 itself, by a process of natural and spontaneous evolu- 
 tion, there grew up a religious drama having the 
 church choir for its stage and the priests for its actors. 
 As in ancient Greece, so here again in mediaeval 
 Europe, Eeligion had given birth to the histrionic 
 art ; for in these old ecclesiastical mysteries the 
 historian of to-day finds the beginning of the modern 
 Drama. Little as it may now bear traces of its origin, 
 the Theatre of Europe is, therefore, the offspring of 
 religious worship. Its cradle was upon the steps of 
 the altar ; and in the years of its struggling infancy 
 it was nursed by ecclesiasticism and fostered by 
 clerical care. 
 
( 13 ) 
 
 II. 
 
 THE FIRST MISUNDERSTANDINGS. 
 
 The liturgical mystery could not of necessity long 
 continue so closely bound up with the religious ser- 
 vices from which it sprang. The same causes which 
 had already given it definite form and character, con- 
 tinuing to act, in course of time brought about its 
 complete separation from the Church ritual. The 
 characters bedame so numerous, the decorations so 
 elaborate, the representations so lengthy, that it could 
 no longer continue to form an essential part of the 
 mass. It was henceforth made an accompaniment of 
 the service, not a portion of the service itself: the 
 initial step was taken towards separation of Church 
 and Stage. 
 
 This led the way for the first great change in the 
 history of the English Theatre — the removal of the 
 scene of action from the interior to the exterior of 
 the building. The mystery was growing more and 
 more popular ; on fete-days immense crowds of people 
 came together to witness the performance, causing 
 great discomfort both to actors and to spectators in 
 the relatively confined area of a church. A desire 
 for what to-day would be called the evangelisation of 
 
( H ) 
 
 the masses, aided in prompting the more public per- 
 formance of sacred plays ; and when to these facts we 
 add the further fact that some of the stricter among 
 the clergy were beginning to look askance at the long 
 elaborate performances which now took place within 
 their sacred edifices, we have three of the principal 
 reasons which prompted the bodily removal of the 
 stage from the altar into the open air. These reasons 
 were brought home to the clergy with increasing force 
 by the rapid growth of public fairs, which were them- 
 selves connected with the festivals instituted by every 
 great abbey and church on the anniversary of its 
 patron saint. The clergy soon made a rule of hold- 
 ing specially elaborate services during these periods 
 of festivity ; and, among other attractions offered, it 
 presently became customary on each such occasion 
 to enact a religious play, which was usually founded 
 upon some well-known incidents in the saint's 
 career. The excitement caused by the large number 
 of people who flocked together at such times, and the 
 modified character of the performances given, ren- 
 dered more and more apparent the difficulties, already 
 recognised, of continuing to use the interior of churches 
 for the representation of these long and attractive 
 plays. Hence the stage was removed, first of all from 
 the interior of the building to the porch ; then from 
 the porch into the churchyard ; and finally from the 
 precincts of the church altogether into the open fields 
 and city streets. 
 
 The institution of the great ecclesiastical festival 
 of Corpus Christi by Pope Urban IV. in 1264, exer* 
 
( 15 ) 
 
 cised a marked and permauent influence on the early 
 drama, then vacillating between the altar and the 
 street. To the firm establishment of this festival, 
 half a century later, is undoubtedly due the intro- 
 duction in well-defined form of those great cycles of 
 miracle-plays which soon became popular in nearly 
 all the large towns in England, and which mark the 
 commencement of the Augustan age of our religious 
 drama. It is true that these public performances did 
 not altogether usurp the place of the time-honoured 
 representations within the sacred walls ; that for a 
 time public and private exhibitions went on side by 
 side ; and that the occasional presentation of mysteries 
 in churches may be read of up to the very end of the 
 history of the religious drama in this country. But, 
 practically speaking, the career of the liturgical 
 mystery came to an end with the rise of the Corpus 
 Christi plays towards the end of the thirteenth 
 century. 
 
 It is important to notice that when the religious 
 drama began to pass from the precincts of the church, 
 it also began to pass out of the hands of the clergy. 
 The introduction of a lay element among those en- 
 gaged in its preparation or performance may, indeed, be 
 traced back to the times when the mystery still formed 
 part of the service out of which it had grown ; for 
 even then such characters as Judas Iscariot and the 
 impenitent thief were intrusted to non-ecclesiastical 
 performers — the peculiar sanctity of the clergy being 
 held to unfit them for these " heavy " parts. But the 
 change in the personnel of the cast thus initiated 
 
( i6 ) 
 
 went on slowly. Even when exhibitions in fields and 
 streets first became popular, the clergy remained the 
 principal actors ; and they seem to have fought inch 
 by inch for the ground which circumstances com- 
 pelled them gradually to vacate. The lengthening 
 and complication of the plays presented, however, 
 necessitating an increase in the number of actors 
 required, and making continually greater demands 
 on the time and attention of those who assumed 
 positions of responsibility, by and by rendered it 
 impossible any longer to draw the whole of the per- 
 formers exclusively from ecclesiastical ranks. The 
 grafting of a comic element upon the more serious, 
 and the rapid absorption of materials altogether foreign 
 to the original purpose of the mysteries, aided also 
 in bringing about the change referred to. Finally, 
 clerical monopoly in the Drama was further broken 
 down by the extension to purely lay communities of 
 the custom of acting miracle-plays in honour of patron 
 saints — a custom which, early commenced by schools 
 and colleges, was in course of time adopted by the 
 parish clerks of London, and afterwards by the great 
 guilds or trading corporations all over England. 
 The result was that, in due course, the clerical element 
 in these dramatic exhibitions almost disappeared ; re- 
 maining only in some of the more sacred characters, 
 such as Pater Ccelestis and Christ, which, for obvious 
 reasons, did not so soon pass entirely into unsanctified 
 hands. 
 
 In this state of partial dependence upon, or at 
 least union with, the Church, the English drama con- 
 
( 17 ) 
 tiuued until the old mysteries began to fall into 
 decay. Of the many subtle influences before which 
 the religious drama gradually declined, it is no place 
 here to speak. Suffice it to say that when, a century 
 before the Eeformation, men began to awake as from 
 a long dream, the mysteries jarred with the new 
 sentiments and aspirations which were beginning to 
 take shape. The religious drama became an anach- 
 ronism. It was the outgrowth and the expression 
 of a phase of religious life which men were fast out- 
 growing ; the moral and intellectual conditions from 
 which it had drawn sustenance were passing silently 
 away; the stream of civilisation was sweeping on 
 where it could not follow. The Drama was touched 
 by the secular spirit which began to permeate the 
 whole of life. From the time when, long ago, the 
 clergy had begun to relinquish their positions to 
 actors and authors not connected with the Church, 
 the force of circumstances, both within the Church 
 and without it, had tended ever to widen the breach 
 between the Drama and its parent institution. When 
 the mysteries passed gradually away, leaving as their 
 successors the moral plays and the first crude efibrts 
 towards a purely worldly drama to which these in 
 their turn had given birth, when, in a word, the 
 Drama yielded to the resistless influences of the time, 
 and became secularised, that breach was made com- 
 plete. Church and Stage had once and for aU severed 
 connection. Henceforth the course of time would only 
 serve to efiace every recollection of a common past 
 which could still in anyway tend to bind them together. 
 
 B 
 
( i8 ) 
 
 It was with the decay of the religious and the rise 
 of a secular drama that ecclesiastical hostility to the 
 Stage began to come prominently to the front. But 
 it is not to this period that we have to look for the 
 commencement of that hostility. To find the first 
 traces of the long contest between the clerical power 
 and the dramatic instinct, we must turn back over 
 the pages of history to the time when the mystery- 
 play was still in its infancy. As early as 1210 a 
 proclamation was issued by Pope Innocent III. for- 
 bidding the clergy to take part in any dramatic 
 representations within their churches; and papal 
 prohibitions of this kind, renewed from time to time, 
 combined with the other causes of which I have 
 already spoken to bring about the removal of the 
 religious drama from the altar to the street. So long 
 as the spirit of opposition was merely exemplified by 
 an occasional papal bull, however, it is clear that, so 
 far from the rank and file of the clergy being adverse 
 to the religious drama, they were somewhat too much 
 inclined in its favour. It was, in fact, their fond- 
 ness for these shows which necessitated from head- 
 quarters an occasional reminder of the kind mentioned. 
 But it was not long before, among the clergy them- 
 selves, there appeared distinct signs of hostility. The 
 first far-ofi' wave of that influence which was in the 
 fulness of time to produce the Reformation, was 
 already passing over the Church. A few . bold 
 thinkers, the lineal ancestors of the Puritans of 
 whom hereafter we shall have a good deal to say, 
 were already beginning to make their voices heard. 
 
( ^9 ) 
 Men like the author of Le Manuel de Peche, who 
 forbids a " clerk " even to witness, and still more to 
 perform in a miracle-play, declaring the same to be a 
 " sight of sin ; " men like the author of Piers Plow- 
 man's Crede, who places the public representations of 
 miracles in the same category as taverns and fairs, 
 and condemns them all alike as improper places of 
 resort ; became mouthpieces for that feeling of oppo- 
 sition which was already arising among those of the 
 clergy who were made of sterner stuff. The followers 
 of John Wycliffe towards the end of the fourteenth 
 century took up the war-cry in no uncertain manner. 
 In Mr, Wright's Reliquice AntiqucB there is to be 
 found the text of a sermon, filling some sixteen pages 
 of that volume, the whole burden of which from 
 beginning to end is the sin of miracle - playing. 
 Irrelevant and childish as is much of the argument 
 adduced, this sermon as a whole is shown by its 
 straightforwardness of tone and boldness of statement 
 to have been the protest of a man of no little power. 
 A song given in the same work, and entitled "A 
 Poem against the Friars and their Miracle-Plays," 
 translates the sentiments of this sermon into some- 
 what more popular language. Throughout its seven 
 verses there is traceable a most cordial hatred of the 
 friars and their dramatic representations, which fairly 
 reaches its climax in the last verse but one ; in which, 
 in a strain which does infinitely more credit to his zeal 
 than to his Christian spirit, the unknown poet prophesies 
 the final burning up of the friars and their assistants, and 
 expresses a devout wish that he may be there to see ! 
 
( 20 ) 
 
 Men of these pronounced views were, however, in 
 advance of their time. The large mass of the clergy 
 were loth to give up a species of exhibition in which 
 it would appear they had found not a little enjoyment, 
 and which undoubtedly had brought them a good deal 
 of popularity. Hence, as time went on, it was no un- 
 common thing for bishops to find it needful to exercise 
 their authority against the representations of scriptural 
 plays within, or in the neighbourhood of, the churches 
 under their control. According to Warton there is to 
 be found in the Eegister of the Bishopric of Winches- 
 ter for the year 1384 an episcopal injunction of one 
 William of Wykeham, the then bishop, against the ex- 
 hibition of spectacula in the cemetery of his cathedral ; 
 and other instances of like kind are given by the same 
 indefatigable antiquary. How persistent, however, in 
 the face of authoritative inhibitions and scathing de- 
 nunciations, was the inkling of many among the clergy 
 after the forbidden pleasures, is proved by facts of 
 much more recent date. As late as the year 1 5 1 1 , 
 Dean Colet, in an Oratio ad Clerum delivered before 
 the Convocation of St. Paul, found it necessary to call 
 upon the heads of the Church to enforce the laws and 
 regulations forbidding the clergy to become publici 
 lusores — common players. A few years later we find 
 Cardinal Wolsey, in the regulations of the Canons 
 Eegular of St. Austin, ordering that the brothers 
 should not be lusores. And in the middle of the 
 sixteenth century Bishop Bonner issued a procla- 
 mation to the clergy of his diocese prohibiting " all 
 manner of common plays, games, or interludes to be 
 
( 21 ) 
 
 played, set forth, or declared within their churches 
 and chapels." * 
 
 Cases such as these here given, and others of like 
 signification which might be added, must be regarded 
 as pointing to persistent survivals of customs which 
 were nevertheless passing surely away. Old habits 
 always die hard ; and after its long tenure of life and 
 popularity the English religious drama did not yield up 
 the ghost without a desperate struggle. But in spite of 
 here and there a spasmodic effort, examples of which 
 are to be found long after the Eeformation, its power 
 and influence waned year by year as the impulses of 
 life veered round from the theological to the secular. 
 Yielding to the new influences which that change 
 brought with it, the Drama at length broke entirely 
 away from the dominion of the Church. It had long 
 been falling more and more under purely secular con- 
 trol; it had long begun rapidly to outrun the purposes 
 for which it had been intended. Little by little it 
 had become estranged from its original patrons, the 
 clergy ; and even before it had wholly given up its 
 dogmatic and didactic leanings, the breach between 
 Theatre and Church was virtually complete. Willingly 
 or unwillingly the clergy had at length to acknow- 
 ledge the independence of their rebellious nursling. 
 So long as the Drama bad remained expressly religious 
 or moral in its aims — so long as it had admittedly 
 sought to follow the footsteps of the Church — so long 
 as it had been content to be mainly the echo of the 
 pulpit ; some bond of sympathy, however slight, must 
 
 * Collier's History of English Dramatic Poetry, ii. 72, 73. 
 
( 22 ) 
 
 Lave continued to exist between priests and players. 
 But as soon as the Theatre claimed to have a voice of 
 its own, — to have its own aims and objects, its own 
 field of enterprise, its own mode of action ; that bond 
 was broken. The functions of the Church were found 
 to be different from those of the Theatre ; and because 
 their functions were different, the fatal fallacy — which 
 has been, and still is, the cause of so much misunder- 
 standing — sprang at once into existence, that there- 
 fore their interests must be opposed. 
 
 We have thus seen how the Drama arose within the 
 very bosom of the Church ; and how, through nearly 
 five centuries, it remained in a position of decreasing 
 dependence upon its parent institution. We have 
 seen how, in course of time, Church and Theatre 
 began to separate ; and how finally, with the secu- 
 larisation of the Drama, the severance became com- 
 plete. We shall now see how mere disjunction 
 expanded into antagonism ; and how, with the 
 disappearance of the old religious drama, the long 
 and bitter conflict between the Church and the 
 Stage actually began. 
 
( 23 ) 
 
 III. 
 
 THE FINAL SEPARATION. 
 
 The gradual secularisation of the drama was first 
 made manifest by the growing popularity of the 
 morality-play, and by the transition from this, 
 through the interlude, to the regular drama. The 
 object of the mystery had been to bring before the 
 people in tangible form the incidents of sacred history 
 and the miracles and martyrdoms of the saints ; that 
 of the morality was to convey some great ethical 
 doctrine by means of abstract figures, such as Charity, 
 Chastity, Avarice, &c. Thus far the Stage had failed 
 to find its proper province. It was only when the 
 secular drama sprang into life beneath the manifold 
 influences, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, of the 
 great transition-period in our history, that it dis- 
 covered where that province lay. Throwing aside the 
 merely dogmatic and didactic aims by which hitherto 
 it had been trammelled, it now for the first time 
 ventured to "hold the mirror up to nature," and 
 to represent the world as it was. 
 
 With the opening of this new chapter in dramatic 
 history finally ceased the connection of the Church 
 with the Stage. The Drama had passed through its 
 
( 24 ) 
 
 period of tutelage ; aud now, stauding ou the confiues 
 of maturity, it demanded the right to speak for itself, 
 to follow its own course, to do its own work in the 
 world. Of the glorious outburst of genius which 
 followed, unequalled perhaps in rapidity and splen- 
 dour by anything which the literary annals of the 
 world can show, it is unnecessary here to speak. 
 Shakspere was born in 1564; Heywood, the writer 
 of interludes, with whom the secular drama really 
 commenced, died a year later. Scarcely more than 
 thirty years separates the first feeble efforts at genuine 
 comedy and the commencement of Shakspere's mar- 
 vellous career. During that brief period dramatic art 
 in England rushed into the fulness of its powers. It 
 had discovered its true field of activity ; it had real- 
 ised, what even to-day we are so apt to forget, that 
 the work of the Pulpit and the work of the Stage do 
 not travel along the same lines ; that the function of 
 Art is not that of Religion, nor the function of Eeligion 
 that of Art. Hence, when the great Elizabethan drama 
 ripened to its full, the direct connection of the Church 
 and the Stage was already a thing of the past. 
 
 The history of the English Theatre from the estab- 
 lishment of the regular drama to the outbreak of the 
 civil war is largely associated with that of the court. 
 From time to time, it is true, the Stage aroused the 
 displeasure of the civil authorities by its marked 
 political tendencies and its outspoken criticisms of 
 those who were but little accustomed to such familiar 
 treatment. But in the main, during the period of 
 Avhich I write, the drama continued to live in the 
 
( 25 ) 
 
 goodwill and under the protection of the court; and 
 since dramatists, as a rule, responded to royal patron- 
 age in a spirit of sympathy and conciliation, no serious 
 breach occurred between protector and proteg4. It is 
 well to remember this intimate relationship, since it 
 was not without its influence in bringing about the 
 fierce conflict of which I am about to speak. 
 
 Far back into the history of the mediaeval Church 
 may be traced that spirit of stern and uncompromising 
 opposition to everything that savoured of sacerdo- 
 talism, that hatred of ritual, forms, ceremonies, sym- 
 bols, which was by and by to burst like a storm over 
 the ecclesiastical world. In its earliest manifestations 
 that spirit may be observed in the Lollards of the 
 fifteenth century and the Christian Brethren of the 
 sixteenth ; the latter of which sects may be regarded 
 as the direct progenitor of the organised Puritanism 
 of later years. To the opposition of these early re- 
 formers to the clerical Drama I have already had 
 occasion to refer. Their spirit of hatred they be- 
 queathed to their descendants, in whose hands the 
 bitter dowry rapidly developed to unforeseen propor- 
 tions. In the austere plan of life which Puritanism 
 presented to the world there was no place for social 
 excitement, for pleasure of the most innocent kind, 
 for temporary relaxation. Stern and unrelenting 
 fanatics, eaten up with their enthusiasm, and looking 
 at the whole of life through the distorting medium of 
 their own gloomy creed, these grim reformers branded 
 all joy as sin, all beauty as seduction. Art, in all its 
 manifold forms, fell beneath the universal ban ; and 
 
( 26 ) 
 
 those who devoted themselves to art were followed, 
 at first with abuse, and afterwards, as the power of 
 Puritanism grew, with more tangible expressions of 
 hostility. Puritanism at its origin meant little more 
 than a theory of Church government ; but little by 
 little it developed into a vast system, embracing the 
 whole of life — a system in which hatred of everything 
 which savoured of pleasure held from the beginning a 
 prominent place. To the spread of religious fanati- 
 cism among the middle classes must therefore, in the 
 first instance, be referred that hostility to the stage 
 which, as early as the time of Shakspere, was already 
 coming to the front. But before long political ani- 
 mosity came in to aid religious bigotry ; and from 
 that time forward Puritanism directed its assaults 
 against the Drama with ever-increasing determination, 
 and players and playwrights alike were early made 
 to realise the fact that the war was one in which 
 compromise would prove of no avail. 
 
 No one acquainted with the dramatic literature of 
 the period during which Puritan opposition was thus 
 consolidating and taking definite form, will seek to 
 deny the fact that for that increasing opposition 
 strong reasons may be alleged. The tone of the 
 Stage was fast degenerating. The Drama was not 
 only the outspoken expression of a singularly out- 
 spoken age, — of that I should see but small reason to 
 complain ; it was rapidly becoming the systematic 
 mouthpiece of the lowest passions of humanity, the 
 mocker of the highest aspirations and the repre- 
 sentative of the grossest defects of the age. To 
 
 t> 
 
( 27 ) 
 
 realise how early the decadence had set in, and how 
 rapidly it ran its course, one need only read a play- 
 wright's opinion of his fellow-playwrights — the judg- 
 ment of Ben Jonson on his contemporaries in the 
 preface to Volpone. The language he there uses is 
 unmistakably distinct. He admits that a great part 
 of the "stage-poetry" of his day is "nothing but 
 ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy ; " and his powerful 
 and out-spoken testimony goes far to corroborate the 
 Puritan complaints concerning the Stage. After 
 those words were written the downward tendency 
 became more and more marked — "rare old Ben" 
 himself being drawn away from his early and lofty 
 aims to pander to the low tastes of -King James's 
 court ; while those who followed him apparently did 
 their best to merit the reprobation which was so 
 plentifully bestowed. Certainly I have no wish to 
 attempt any defence of the later Stuart dramatists. 
 Only let it be remembered that in their wholesale 
 condemnation of the Stage, the Puritans, tempering 
 not their zeal with any semblance of discretion, were 
 guilty of that same short-sightedness which has often 
 been exhibited by well-meaning reformers in more 
 recent years. So far from doing good, their opposi- 
 tion, and especially their method of showing it, only 
 drove the Stage into attitudes of more and more pro- 
 nounced revolt. To the wild exaggerations and the 
 intense prejudices of the Puritans during the period 
 of their gradual rise into power, I believe that we have 
 to refer many of the worst features of society in the 
 early years of the Eestoration. I am not unmindful 
 
( 28 ) 
 
 of tlie debt of gratitude which we owe to Puritanism 
 and its representatives ; nor is it here the place to 
 complain that by their blind and unreflecting policy 
 they did so much to neutralise the good which their 
 courage and consistency had wrought. But in recog- 
 nising the ethical grounds of their opposition to the 
 contemporary stage, it is well to bear in mind the 
 fact that, however good may have been the reasons 
 for the course of conduct which they pursued, how- 
 ever good may have been their intention in pursuing 
 it, that course was proved by the sequel to have been 
 worse than useless. In the words of Lord Macaulay, 
 " The Puritans boasted that the unclean spirit was 
 cast out. . . . But the force of the exorcism was 
 spent. The fiend returned to his abode ; " and taking 
 to himself seven other spirits, " they entered in, and 
 dwelt together : and the second possession was worse 
 than the first." 
 
 From the time of Aristophanes the Theatre has 
 always been a dangerous enemy ; and in its many 
 conflicts with opponents, civil and religious, it has 
 seldom failed to have something to say in its own 
 behalf. "While Puritanism was year by year growing 
 more bitter and violent in its animosity — while it was 
 ranking all dramatic exhibitions below bear-baitintr 
 and similar "profane exercises" — while its more zeal- 
 ous exponents were openly and admittedly aiming at 
 a total and permanent closing of the theatres ; the 
 Stage was not likely to remain as little moved as an 
 unconcerned looker-on. The feud was one of life 
 and death. The very existence of the Drama was 
 
( 29 ) 
 
 threatened ; and in its struggle for self-preservation 
 the Stage only obeyed the strongest instinct of univer- 
 sal nature. Even in Shakspere * and his immediate 
 contemporaries we can already find traces of the 
 • reply of the Theatre to Puritan abuse. With the 
 lapse of a few years the language of the Stage passed 
 into open and unrestrained defiance, and from that 
 into violent and coarse vituperation. Contemporary 
 dramatic literature abounds in caricatures of Puritan 
 life, — many of the playwrights drawing the materials 
 for their coarse and exaggerated burlesques from this 
 well-known type of national character. We have but 
 to turn to the works of Jonson, Chapman, Marston, 
 Middleton, and many other obscurer authors, to realise 
 how fiercely and how persistently the Stage avenged 
 itself on its enemies with those old weapons of satire 
 which it has used so often and with so much eff'ect. 
 Eidicule, as we all know, is a bitter test even for the 
 most philosophical; and doubtless the public exhibi- 
 tion of their foibles and extravagances did not tend to 
 soothe the anger of the Puritans, or to break down 
 their prejudices. 
 
 If the productions of the contemporary drama fur- 
 nish us with one side of the question, the other side 
 may be obtained from the long series of volumes and 
 pamphlets with which Puritanism attacked its formid- 
 able foe. The work commenced by Gosson, who as far 
 back as 1580 or thereabouts launched the first thun- 
 derbolt of rhetoric against " stage-plays," was carried 
 forward in earnest by a long succession of intrepid 
 
 * See Twelfth Night, ii. 3 ; The Winter's Tale, iv. 2. 
 
( 30 ) 
 
 zealots. Pamphlet after pamphlet made its appearance, 
 the thesis of every one of which, set forth with a great 
 show of Biblical arguments, and with all the eloquence 
 and learning in the writers' power, was the heathenish 
 abomination of the theatre, and the duty of those 
 in authority to deal with it with all the rigour of 
 the law. The characteristic qualities of this paper- 
 cannonade were poverty of logic and wealth of zeal. 
 Texts of Scripture wrested from their plain meaning, 
 and long and tedious dissertations concerning the 
 infernal origin of the Drama, were held sufficient to 
 establish the Puritan views ; and of nearly all of these 
 writers it may be said, without fear of contradiction, 
 that if it had depended only upon dearth of argument 
 and violence of abuse to win the reformers' cause, that 
 cause could not have been in better hands. 
 
 The great representative and culminating work of 
 the anti-dramatic literature of this period was the 
 famous Histrio-Mastix, or Actors TragcBdie, of 
 William Prynne. This modest little treatise fills a 
 thousand and six closely printed pages, and is, with 
 grim irony, divided into parts, acts, and scenes. It 
 is elaborate in design and solid in matter, and cer- 
 tainly marshals an array of authorities long enouf^h 
 to startle even the boldest disputant. It must be 
 admitted, too, that taken as a whole, it is somewhat 
 more judicial in tone and apposite in reasoning than 
 the majority of works which had preceded it. One 
 fatal complaint against it may, however, be very 
 justly made. The author evidently knew little or 
 nothing about the plays and playhouses of his time ; 
 
( 31 ) 
 
 indeed, he seems to have made no pretence to know- 
 ledge on this point. He says, without hesitation, 
 that upon his first arrival in London, he " had heard 
 and seene . . . foure severall playes," and there his 
 practical acquaintance with the acted drama would 
 appear to have ceased. This comparative ignorance, 
 however, did not prevent him from calling theatres 
 " devil's chapels," or from roundly asserting that the 
 drama had its origin with the father of all evil.* 
 
 Prynne, as is well known, having implicated the 
 queen in his wholesale condemnation of dancing, and 
 otherwise offended the authorities, incurred severe 
 penalties by the publication of this work ; but though 
 the author suffered, the book was perhaps not without 
 some effect. Had the times been favourable, we might 
 even have seen traces of its influence in the dramatic 
 literature of the period. But the times were far from 
 favourable. A crisis was even then impending, and 
 all the elaborate argument and fierce invective of 
 Prynne and his brethren were soon lost amid that 
 practical antagonism which, growing in strength with 
 the gradual growth of Puritanism, and culminating 
 with the overthrow of the king's cause, involved the 
 Stage in a sudden ruin which seemed final and 
 complete.! 
 
 * It has been said that there are as many as one hundred thou- 
 sand references, taken from one thousand authors, in this extraordinary- 
 book, and that no less than four thousand texts of Scripture are brought 
 up to show the absolute sinfulness of the stage. Truly the work was, 
 as Dominie Sampson would say, " Prodigious ! " 
 
 t It is interesting to observe that Milton published his Cormis 
 within a year after Prynne's work first saw the light. Milton, it must 
 be remembered, distinctly repudiated the indiscriminate opposition of 
 
( 32 ) 
 
 This practical opposition had already found ways 
 of expressing itself. Plays had for some time been 
 prohibited on Sundays ; and during the continuance 
 of the plague in London in 1637, sucb performances 
 were suspended altogether. But these were merely 
 premonitions of what the Stage might expect if its 
 great enemy ever came into full possession of the 
 civil power. This, as we all know, happened ere long. 
 In 1642 began the great war; and upon its outbreak 
 theatrical representations were temporarily ordered to 
 " cease and be forborne," because stage plays " do not 
 well agree with the seasons of humiliation." Then Puri- 
 tanism, finding at length a power of expression through 
 the law of the land, began resolutely to carry out the 
 measures which its writers had so long been urging 
 upon the Government. In 1647 a Parliamentary or- 
 dinance gave summary power to magistrates against 
 any players found engaged in exercising their calling ; 
 and a year later this was followed by another ordi- 
 nance, declaring all stage-players to be rogues, and 
 subject to the punishment of rogues, and authorising 
 magistrates to pull down all galleries, seats, and 
 stages, "that so there might be no more plaies 
 acted." This was practically the final blow. The 
 dark days of the Theatre had set in. Though the 
 vitality of the Drama was not entirely stamped out, 
 every effort was made to render the work of destruc- 
 tion complete. Puritanism had at last avenged itself 
 
 the Puritans in general to the Stage ; and, Puritan as he was, he could 
 have had but little sympathy with the school of thought represented by 
 Prynne. 
 
( 33 ) 
 
 on its great adversary, and the Englisli drama was 
 hurried to its doom. The great fire was virtually 
 quenched; and the few flickering sparks which yet 
 remained can only be discovered by raking among 
 the embers. 
 
( 34 ) 
 
 IV. 
 
 PLAYERS AND PURITANS. 
 
 With the restoration of royalty in the person of the 
 " Merry Monarch " begins a new chapter in the his- 
 tory of English society and of the English stage. 
 That chapter does not open well. Thirteen years of 
 Puritan ascendancy were followed in the natural order 
 of things by a period of open and unrestrained license: 
 The strenuous attempts which, during the period of 
 the Protectorate, were made to stamp out the most 
 innocent desires of human nature, to destroy all pos- 
 sibility of amusement, to bring in the reign of a grim 
 and unsympathetic asceticism, and to hide the beauty 
 of nature and humanity beneath the pall of a dark 
 creed, are, I believe, to be credited with much of 
 the subsequent moral disorder. As before and since 
 in the history of society, undue restraint, once thrown 
 off, was followed by undue liberty. The forces of life 
 must have free play ; human nature will in the end 
 assert itself The Puritans, with their unhealthy 
 notions of earthly existence, with their stern rules 
 of conduct, and their wild theories concerning the 
 power and function of government, forgot this. They 
 did their best to bind human nature with the 
 
( 35 ) 
 
 narrow bonds of their austere creed ; and human 
 nature once having found the opportunity to burst 
 those bonds, avenged itself in a way that was as 
 fearful as it was inevitable. 
 
 We must, however, be careful not to assume that 
 the moral reaction which followed the Eestoration 
 affected to any very great extent the large masses of 
 the people. With Puritanism in its most pronounced 
 developments the average Englishman had never had 
 much sympathy ; but with the essence and spirit of 
 Puritanism he was, and continued to be, in cordial 
 agreement. The restoration of the monarch}' and the 
 overthrow of the extreme party affected the milder 
 religionists — that is, the large body of the middle 
 classes — less, perhaps, than is ordinarily supposed. 
 The hurried transition from one extreme to the other 
 could hardly have been effected if the English demo- 
 cracy at large — never, be it remembered, accustomed 
 to sudden changes on questions of such vital import- 
 ance — had exhibited strongly marked predilections for 
 one or other of the contending parties. The revolu- 
 tion and the counter-revolution may be regarded as 
 principally the work of powerful minorities ; and 
 when Charles 11. ascended the throne, he was 
 welcomed by many of the more sober of the party 
 to which the founders of the Protectorate had them- 
 selves belonged. 
 
 But Charles Stuart on his return to England 
 brought with him what these moderate thinkers had 
 little looked for — the unrestrained licentiousness 
 which has made his reign notorious in the annals 
 
( 36 ) 
 
 of our couutry. In the English court, and among 
 the ruling and upper classes, undisguised sensuality 
 became the order of the day. Charles himself was 
 a libertine, and the friend and patron of libertines ; 
 and the one aim of those about him seemed to be 
 to emulate and, if possible, to surpass in wickedness 
 their royal master. Hence followed a period of dis- 
 soluteness which has been rightly termed " wild and 
 desperate," and into the details of which we are 
 fortunately not called upon to enter. The important 
 point to remember in connection with our present 
 subject is, that it was of the dissolute aristocracy and 
 not of the sober middle classes that the Stage now 
 became the mouthpiece and the mirror. Duriug its 
 palmy days, in the time of Shakspere and his im- 
 mediate successors, the Drama had been in the best 
 sense democratic ; it had been in close sympathy with 
 the great mass of the people. This was no longer the 
 case. The Stage and the literature of the Stage were 
 now the creatures of one class only of the community ; 
 and of that class, the most licentious and the most 
 profane, the Drama became the only too ready repre- 
 sentative.* The steady middle-class inhabitants of 
 
 * The new theatrical regime initiated at the Restoration, bad as it was, 
 was not altogether without its advantages, inasmuch as it permanently 
 introduced actresses to the English stage. As early as 1629 some 
 French women had appeared at Blaokfriars Theatre, but the experi- 
 ment had proved a complete failure ; and it was not till after the 
 re-opening of the theatres that it became general for women to play 
 female parts. All important as was this change, alike from an artistic 
 and from a moral point of view, it unfortunately gave rise almost im- 
 mediately to a practice, the continued survival of which is greatly to be 
 deplored — the practice, namely, of occasion: ill j' casting women for male 
 parts ; Dryden's prologue to his adaptation of The Tempest showing 
 
( 37 ) 
 
 London regarded the theatre as at best a place of 
 very doubtful resort ; and so the regular frequenters 
 of the playhouse were mostly those in whose moral 
 characters the glaring defects of the time were very 
 clearly marked. I can only add that the Stage con- 
 formed only too readily to the vitiated taste of its 
 patrons.* 
 
 Hence we must not look for any revival of the old 
 drama during the reigns of the later Stuarts. The 
 continuity of history had been broken ; and in no 
 true sense of the word can the post- Restoration drama 
 be regarded as an offspring even of that relatively 
 degenerate drama which had existed immediately 
 before the closing of the theatres. Fresh influences 
 were at work, and a fresh drama was the result — the 
 
 that this custom followed very rapidly upon the regular appearance of 
 women on the stage. It is very important, I think, in the interests 
 of the English theatre, that a determiaed eilort should be made to do 
 away with this objectionable practice, now fortunately limited almost 
 entirely to burlesque and opera-bouffe. Of course, I am not now refer- 
 ring to those oases in which the demands of the plot necessitate the 
 assumption by the heroine of a masculine disguise — a device very 
 popular with Shakspere and the older dramatists, and to which no 
 rational objection can be made. But I protest against the senseless 
 practice of filling the parts of princes and pages with female performers 
 — a practice which is as indefensible from an artistic as it is objec- 
 tionable from a moral point of view. 
 
 * The comparative unpopularity of the theatre during this period is 
 a noteworthy fact, the significance of which has been pointed out by 
 Mr. Lecky in the following passage : — " So much has been said of the 
 necessary effect of theatrical amusements in demoralising nations that it 
 is worthy of special notice that there were ten or eleven theatres open 
 in London in the reign of Elizabeth, and a still greater number in the 
 reign of her successor, whereas in the incomparably more profligate 
 reign of Charles II. there were only two. Even these proved too many, 
 and ... it was found necessary to unite the companies in 1684" 
 {History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 538). 
 
( 38 ) 
 
 Eestoration comedy being merely the temporary ex- 
 pression of a state of society which itself could not 
 necessarily be otherwise than temporary. The writings 
 of Wycherley, characterised by an undisguised immo- 
 rality which is simply astounding (he himself makes 
 one of his characters declare that plays are " filthy, 
 obscene, hideous things ");''''■ and after these, the works 
 of Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, give us a 
 dreadful picture of the state of the Stage, and of the 
 society which supported it, during the period when 
 such plays were performed. Not all the perfection 
 of construction and brilliancy of dialogue by which 
 they were frequently marked were sufficient to hide 
 the moral rottenness which was indeed " the soul of 
 the plot." t 
 
 This condition of things continued until 1688. lu 
 that year of grace came the Eevolution, and with it a 
 change for the better in the court life and in the 
 social life of the time. Under the influence of purer 
 examples, and with the gradual spread of a more re- 
 fined taste, the glaring profligacy which had made a 
 boast of its own hideousness began to lose ground. 
 The taint, however, still rested upon the Stage, which, 
 being made the last refuge of the retreating immo- 
 
 * Olivia in Tlie Plain Dealer, act ii., scene i. 
 
 t The condition of the Stage at this time may be understood by 
 recalling the fact that for many years no decent woman would risk 
 appearing at the first performance of a new comedy ; and that it was 
 the custom for ladies to attend the theatre masked. Pepys, on June 12, 
 1663, having seen Lady Mary Cromwell thus protected at the theatre, 
 forthwith went to the Exchange to purchase a " vizard " for his wife. 
 Colley Gibber refers to the practice of wearing masks as one which in 
 his day had " been abolish'd these many years " {Apology for the Life of 
 Mr. Colley Ciller, 2d ed., 1740, p. 219). 
 
( 39 ) 
 
 rality, responded but slowly to the improved impulses 
 of society. Tlie Theatre, depending for its very exist- 
 ence upon the patronage of that portion of the com- 
 munity which had been the least touched by the 
 changing spirit of the time, still clung tenaciously to 
 many of its old abominations ; when, in the year 1698, 
 appeared a book which at once threw the literary 
 world into commotion and stirred dramatic society 
 to the depths — Jeremy Collier's Short View of the 
 Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage. 
 
 This work is certainly the most famous, as it is 
 probably the most powerful, of all the many diatribes 
 which the controversy between the Church and the 
 Stage has called into existence. The author was a 
 sturdy and honest non-juror, — a man of great learning 
 and ability, whose unbending devotion to principle 
 during those turbulent times constantly brought him 
 into trouble and disgrace. Unlike the Histrio-mastix, 
 his book is still readable ; and any one who opens it 
 may convince himself of its straightforward hard- 
 hitting style, and of the well-timed blows which it 
 dealt round unmercifully upon the leading " wits " of 
 the day — the august Dryden himself included. " To 
 compliment Vice," says the robust author, "is but one 
 remove from worshipping the Devil;" and no one 
 looking through the volume will be inclined to think 
 that Collier erred in this respect. The chief com- 
 plaint against him, indeed, is that he was too keen to 
 detect impropriety — scenting profanity and unclean- 
 ness in the most innocent expressions, and gravely 
 reprobating the Stage for its abuse of clergymen and 
 
( 40 ) 
 
 great people. One point deserving of notice is, that 
 he systematically brings up the classical drama to bear 
 witness against that of his own day : the method thus 
 adopted showing that he was not attacking the Stage 
 upon a general principle, but merely the form it had 
 then assumed, and the abuses by which it was defiled. 
 Collier made the mistake of assuming that the fashion- 
 able viciousness of his time was directly due to the 
 debasing influence of the contemporary drama. 
 "Being convinc'd," he writes in his preface, "that 
 nothing has gone farther in Debauching the Age 
 than the Stage-Poetry and Play-house, I thought I 
 could not employ my Time better than in Writing 
 against them." A great deal in his book, too, judged 
 by the canons of modern criticism, is trivial in 
 the extreme, and not a little is altoo-ether wide 
 of the mark. But at least Collier was a man in ear- 
 nest. He had found abuses which deserved attack, 
 and he threw himself heart and soul into his self- 
 imposed task of attacking them. Whatever draw- 
 backs the book may have, it was at least the honest 
 work of an honest man ; and if we would do justice 
 to its merits and to the merits of its author, we must 
 avoid being misled by Leigh Hunt's vehement abuse 
 of what he calls the " over-heated zeal " of " this sour, 
 nonjuring critic." If the punishment were somewhat 
 severe, at least the Stage had brought it upon itself ; 
 and it is pleasant to think that if the would-be re- 
 former reaped little but abuse, the castigation he had 
 iuflicted was not without its beneficial efi"ects. 
 
 Indeed, the SJwrt View is one of the few books 
 
( 41 ) 
 
 of invective that have produced a marked and lasting 
 impulse in the right direction. It dropped like a 
 thunderbolt into the dramatic world. Dryden bitterly- 
 felt the attack upon himself ; but at first tacitly, and 
 afterwards implicitly, admitted that he had deserved 
 it. Congreve and Vanbrugh made feeble and ill- 
 considered replies, which only brought down upon 
 them pulverising rejoinders from their opponent. The 
 better feelings of the great mass of the English people 
 were upon the reformer's side ; the comic poets who 
 had been made the subjects of attack, though beyond 
 the reach of any actual reformation, still bore unwil- 
 ling testimony to the reality of the change that was 
 setting in. From this point we may mark the turn 
 of the tide. Society had grown weary of the bare- 
 faced immorality of the Eestoration. A reaction had 
 set in; and of this reaction Collier had become the 
 mouthpiece and exponent. For the first time for 
 many years it became possible for a man to be at 
 once a gentleman and an honest man ; infraction of 
 the seventh commandent was no longer considered an 
 essential condition to the favourable regard of society ; 
 while the wives who respected their characters, and 
 the husbands who held sacred their vows, ceased to be 
 looked upon as necessarily objects of derision and con- 
 tempt. These marked changes in the state of society 
 after the Kevolution were presently mirrored in the 
 dramatic literature of the time. The race of Eestora- 
 tion dramatists, whose work, unrelated to the Drama 
 which had preceded it, was also happily without any 
 marked influence on that by which it was followed, 
 
( 42 ) 
 
 was succeeded by a generation of playwrights who set 
 themselves in earnest to the task of driving profanity 
 and lawlessness from the Stage. Writers like Mrs. 
 Centlivre, like CoUey Gibber in his later productions, 
 like Steele (who indeed mistook the purpose of comedy, 
 and failed accordingly),'" did much to bring the drama 
 to a higher level than it had occupied since the re- 
 opening of the theatres. And though here and there 
 we come upon a brief period of retrogression, we may 
 regard the commencement of the eighteenth century 
 as the beginning of better things. For from that time 
 onward may be traced a slow but well-marked progress 
 in the tone and tendencies of the English stage, a 
 growing recognition on the part of actors and authors 
 of their responsibilities and their duties, and a con- 
 sequent appreciable, though unequal, movement of 
 dramatic art towards its rightful position in social life. 
 How did the Church respond to these new aspira- 
 tions of the Drama ? Did she, realising that at length 
 the prodigal had become ashamed of the past, stretch 
 out the hands of assistance ? Did she hasten with the 
 word of encouragement to playwrights and players 
 when they threw themselves into the good work of 
 reform ? Did she cast aside the antaofonism which 
 she had till lately had such good reason to exhibit, 
 and welcome every small improvement as an earnest 
 
 * In Pielding's Joseph Andrews (Book iii., chap, xi.), Parson Adams 
 is made to say—" I have never heard of any plays fit for a Chris- 
 tian to read but ' Cato ' and the ' Conscious Lovers ' [by Steele] ; and, I 
 must own, in the latter there are some things almost solemn enough for 
 a sermon." Steele, indeed, fell into the error of mistaking the stage for 
 the pulpit. 
 
( 43 ) 
 
 of greater improvement in the future ? Unfortunately 
 we must answer these questions in the negative. The 
 time had come when, had the juster counsels of con- 
 ciliation prevailed, the wide breach between these 
 two great institutions might have been presently 
 closed. But the opportunity passed unimproved. 
 The Church does not readily adapt itself to new con- 
 ditions, or realise the necessity of adjusting its action 
 to the changing needs of the time. The dark line of 
 demarcation once having been drawn between the 
 Church and the Stage, neither justice nor policy could 
 now induce the former to wipe that line away. 
 
 This was a critical point in the history of the Eng- 
 lish stage — the point at which indeed the feud between 
 Religion and the Drama entered upon its modern 
 phase. It is, therefore, important that we should' 
 understand the various factors of the problem as it 
 existed at that time. To do this we must fix our 
 attention upon the Church, and upon the causes which 
 led to the policy pursued by her ; for it was upon her 
 that there then rested the onus of responsibility. 
 
 Looking back at the drama of the Eestoratioii, 
 and realising its gross immorality and its systematic 
 pandering to the lowest tastes of a debased society, 
 we can understand, nay, we can in a large measure 
 sympathise with the stern attitude of hostility taken 
 up by the religious thinkers of the time. They did 
 not seek for measures of slow reform ; they did not 
 endeavour to prune away the evil and develop the 
 good ; they lacked alike the will to attempt and the 
 patience to achieve the purification of an institution 
 
( 44 ) 
 
 so utterly corrupt as the Stage. Tliey were here as 
 elsewhere iconoclasts pure and simple ; here as else- 
 where their war was a war of extermination. Hence 
 their attitude of unrelenting defiance — an attitude 
 explained, and to a large extent justified, by the moral 
 condition of the society in which they lived, and of 
 the Stage, which was its only too faithful representa- 
 tive. Thus far, then, we can both understand and 
 appreciate the Puritan position. But time went on ; 
 the moral tone of the age underwent a gradual change ; 
 and the Stage, which, as a condition of its existence, 
 must sooner or later find the average moral tone of its 
 surroundings, began to respond to the new impulses 
 which were passing through society. All was chang- 
 ing — except the Church. She stUl persisted in her 
 opposition ; she still repeated the old arguments ; she 
 still launched forth her anathemas and pronounced 
 her curses. Why ? Because the Stage, having once 
 been rightly identified with the worst phases of a 
 vicious society, had acquired a mark of sin. Hence- 
 forth its fate was sealed; no eff'ort at improvement 
 met with recognition or response. The Church dis- 
 tinctly refused to help it to rise ; yet the Church was 
 never weary of abusing it because it was down. This 
 was the Christian charity, the justice, the common- 
 sense, of the religious party of the time. The sons of 
 thunder made their churches ring with denunciations, 
 careless though the enormities they were denouncing 
 were fast becoming things of the past ; pious people 
 shrugged their shoulders, and nasally repeated their 
 platitudes, heedless of the fact that their statements 
 
' ( 45 ) 
 
 were generally misleading and often absolutely false. 
 The Church clings to her old prejudices, and ever re- 
 fuses to recall as unjust to-day the censure she justly 
 pronounced yesterday. Hence when she entered into 
 a heritage of bitter antagonism to the Stage, she did 
 not pause to inquire whether that antagonism was still 
 well-founded ; or whether the matter at issue between 
 herself and her traditionary foe was not rapidly be- 
 coming a thing of the past. It was nothing to her 
 that she was visiting the sins of the fathers upon the 
 children, who, if not yet entirely faultless, were at any 
 rate doing their best to throw off the hereditary taint. 
 She simply accepted the family feud, and carried it on 
 with unabated animosity. 
 
 So it was that just at the time when the Theatre 
 entered upon a period of earnest reform, the Church 
 on her side consolidated her antagonism and made it 
 an article of her creed. Henceforth, in every effort 
 towards amendment, the Stage had a double difficulty 
 to contend with — the difficulty always attendant upon 
 every effort to rise from the lower to the higher ; and 
 the difficulty which was now thrown deliberately in 
 the way by those who should have been the first to 
 encourage and assist. Every practical movement in 
 the direction of a higher moral tone in the plays pro- 
 duced, and in the theatres themselves, has therefore 
 come directly and immediately from the Stage itself, — 
 one actor, Garrick, doing more to elevate the Drama 
 than all the priests and Puritans who have ever lived ; 
 and what is still more significant, every such move- 
 ment has been made in the face of the very institution 
 
( 46 ) 
 
 which professes to be the moral leader of the people. 
 This preposterous state of things has continued with 
 but little modification from that day to this : a slight 
 reaction in favour of the Theatre noticeable during the 
 early part of the eighteenth century, being followed 
 by the revived opposition which became marked after 
 the rise of Methodism. Had the Church realised her 
 responsibilities and done her duty, these papers, if 
 written at all, would have been no more than anti- 
 quarian essays. As it is, the facts may be thus 
 summed up : — That the Stage to-day stands so high 
 as it does, the Stage itself is to be commended ; that 
 it stands no higher, the Church is mainly to be 
 blamed. 
 
( 47 ) 
 
 THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE 
 CONTROVERSY. 
 
 Bearing in mind the facts set forth in the last 
 chapter, we shall not now have much difficulty in 
 realising in what condition the Church -and -Stage 
 question came down to our own times. I do not 
 think that any one reading that chapter will accuse 
 me of undue partisanship. I have not tried to 
 palliate the manifold vices of the Stage during the 
 period of the Eestoration ; I have not, like Leigh 
 Hunt and Charles Lamb, sought excuses for its im- 
 morality ; I have not endeavoured to throw the cloak 
 of specious reasoning over its grossness, its profanity, 
 its filth. I am free to admit that the Stage has come 
 down to our own times with the curse of two cen- 
 turies of corruption still clinging to it; and I am 
 convinced, moreover, that the knowledge of this one 
 fact will help us in no small measure to understand 
 the attitude of the modern Church towards the modern 
 Stage. 
 
 That attitude, so strange in the light of the present, 
 becomes comprehensible in the light of the past. The 
 opposition of the religious classes — of those, that is, 
 
{ 48 ) 
 
 who make a special profession of religion — to the 
 Drama, is almost wholly a traditional opposition. 
 They have taken it, as they take so much else, on 
 simple faith ; it has come down to them from the past 
 with their creeds and ceremonies, and they accept it 
 as a matter of course. Let us grant, for the sake of 
 argument, that to the religious classes a hundred 
 and fifty years ago the Stage seemed rotten to the 
 core and incapable of amelioration ; that, looking at 
 the problem calmly and dispassionately (as religious 
 people are accustomed to do), they saw good reason 
 to believe that they would render a greater service to 
 society by leaving the Stage to its corruption than by 
 exerting themselves for its elevation and reform, — 
 how, it may be asked, can their decision a hundred 
 and fifty years ago affect the decision of independent 
 men and women dealing with the problems of the 
 present day ? At first sight the answer would seem 
 to be — In no way whatever. Yet it is important to 
 understand that it is really upon the conduct of the 
 old Puritans that the conduct of their modern repre- 
 sentatives is based. The Church, which is too often 
 only the strong hand by which the past holds the 
 present and the dead rule the living, has sent down 
 its grim heirloom of traditions ; and among those 
 traditions, uncompromising opposition to dramatic 
 art in every form takes a prominent place. It matters 
 not that times have changed — that "new occasions 
 teach new duties" — that a course of conduct which 
 yesterday might be justified is without the shadow of 
 justification to-day. The Stage has inherited a bad 
 
( 49 ) 
 
 reputation ; and the Church, nursing its hatred as it 
 nurses its time-worn creeds, persists in accepting the 
 evidence of the past concerning the things of the 
 present; thus, in answer to every argument and 
 every appeal, merely repeating the empty shibboleths 
 of a generation which has passed away. 
 
 It might at first sight appear a little curious that 
 the Church should so obstinately continue to speak of 
 the Theatre to-day in terms of the worst abuses which 
 have ever defiled it in the past : thus practically 
 declining to recognise even the remote possibility of 
 amendment. But it must be remembered that society 
 at large is very slow to believe in amendment of any 
 kind ; and that even Christian society shows a marked 
 reluctance to carry its own theories of conversion into 
 the arena of practical daily life. It is the old story of 
 giving a dog a bad name. The Stage contracted de- 
 filement, and straightway the Church declares it to be 
 beyond the limits of reform ; it sank into the depths of 
 impurity, and the Church condemns it as incapable 
 of elevation. Because it has fallen into the gutter, 
 therefore the gutter is its proper place ; because it 
 has been begrimed with dirt, therefore it is naturally 
 and irretrievably black. The singular cogency of 
 this reasoning is only equalled by the exquisitely 
 Christian spirit which runs through it. One can 
 only wonder how it would fare with Christianity itself 
 if we met it with reasoning of this kind ; for nowhere 
 can we read the story of corruption more clearly 
 than in the annals of the Christian Church. Yet the 
 Church conveniently chooses to forget with how much 
 
( 50 ) 
 bitter truth we might turn upou it with the satirist's 
 wovda — Mutato nomine, de te fahula narratur! 
 Acting upon ancient tradition, it has done all within 
 its power to prevent the Stage from throwing o3 the 
 stain by which it has so long been cursed. Since 
 the Church will not alter its language to suit the 
 changing facts, the facts have to be garbled to suit 
 the unchanging language : the majority of those who 
 abuse the Theatre the most persistently being con- 
 fessedly ignorant of the subject, and, like Mr. Croaker, 
 only deigning to listen to the testimony of the better 
 informed when they have so firmly made up their 
 minds that they feel no risk of perversion. And so 
 the familiar platitudes are repeated ad nauseam, and 
 evangelical enthusiasts continue manfuUy to fight the 
 ghosts of things which we may well hope can never 
 exist again. 
 
 In dealing with the present phase of this long 
 quarrel, one is forced, therefore, to confess that the 
 spirit of religious opposition to dramatic art is still 
 very strong.* But it should be remarked that as a 
 
 * To show how readily the religious classes will seize hold of any 
 point that may be turned to the detriment of the stage, I may mention 
 here an incident which occurred not long ago. In the Fortnightly 
 Review for January 1885, Mr. F. C. Burnand, stern moralist and writer 
 of burlesques, published a very unnecessary article entitled " Behind 
 the Scenes." His animadversions on the dramatic profession were 
 eagerly seized hold of by one of the most liberal of our religious papers, 
 which published a leading article upon them. Shortly afterwards Mr. 
 Toole, in an address delivered before the Brechin Dramatic Club, made 
 a manly and straightforward reply to Mr. Bumand's remarks. I cut out 
 a condensed report of his address and sent it to the said paper, remarking 
 that as the editor had given great publicity to Mr. Burnand's state- 
 ments, he might think it only just to do as much for the testimony of 
 so high an authority as Mr. Toole. Of course no notice was ever taken 
 
( 51 ) 
 
 rule this opposition is no longer exhibited in the old 
 outspoken way. Positive attacks upon the Theatre 
 grow fewer every year. Here and there an enthusiast 
 of the more pronounced type may be found exhibiting 
 his zeal and exposing his ignorance ; but generally 
 speaking, so far as I have been able to observe, the 
 aggressive policy is at present far from popular. The 
 position of the Church to-day is one rather of nega- 
 tive than of positive antagonism. Active opposition 
 is fast being relinquished, but as yet it is not replaced 
 by active co-operation and support. The silence of 
 the religious world at large in face of the immense 
 dramatic activity of the time is a most significant 
 sign. Judging only from the sermons preached in 
 London, for instance, on any Sunday, one might 
 readily suppose that no such thing as a theatre exists 
 in the metropolis ; or, if one exist, that its influence 
 as a social force is so small that there is no need to 
 pay it any attention. The Church to-day ignores 
 the Stage as much as possible. The policy of 
 the past is beginning to seem too much like an 
 anachronism ; the policy of the future is not yet 
 formulated. Hence silence is the easiest way out 
 of the difficulty ; and for the present things are 
 allowed pretty much to take their own course. That 
 this modified form of expressing antagonism really 
 implies an important change of position, we may see 
 by looking in other directions. The silent influences 
 
 of either extract or letter ; and many who had been carefully informed 
 of Mr. Burnand's accusations, were thus as carefully left in ignorance of 
 Mr. Toole's reply. 
 
( 53 ) 
 
 of the time have not been without their result. Many 
 of the old prejudices are already disappearing at the 
 touch of a broader culture ; and though intolerance is 
 fighting inch by inch for the ground it has held so 
 long, there is comfort for us in believing that its ranks 
 grow thinner as the years pass by. As yet the in- 
 fluences of the more healthy spirit which, I believe, is 
 gaining ground among us, are not so perceptible as 
 we could have wished in regard to the Drama itself; 
 but we need only look elsewhere to convince ourselves 
 of the reality of the progress that is being made. The 
 opposition of the Church to dramatic art must logi- 
 cally base itself on opposition to pleasure in general — 
 the broad ground taken must be that all amusement 
 is in itself wrong. Upon that ground, in the past, 
 the Church in fact stood. Those who opposed the 
 Drama did so because they held that there was some- 
 thing sinful in all recreation, and that temptation 
 lurked in whatever tended to temporarily relieve the 
 grim austerity of life and distract the attention from 
 the contemplation of death and eternity. Hence, 
 consistently enough, those who attacked the Drama 
 attacked also art in every form, and branded with the 
 same brand everything that ministered to pleasure. 
 The religious classes to-day are not so fiercely con- 
 sistent. The social gatherings and entertainments of 
 various kinds, now common with all our religious 
 bodies, show how surely the old asceticism is break- 
 ing away. Little by little the Puritan outer crust is 
 wearing off", allowing the human feeling beneath it to 
 disclose itself. The broad ground of the essential sin- 
 
( 53 ) 
 fulness of all pleasure is already abandoned ; and as 
 a necessary outcome of this we may observe a modifi- 
 cation in the attitude adopted towards much that was 
 formerly proscribed as belonging only to the world. 
 The late Mr. TroUope's Autobiography bears ample 
 testimony to the change which has beeo coming over 
 average middle-class ideas of prose fiction during the 
 last fifty years. In that change we may see an en- 
 couraging sign. The novel, since its wide popularity 
 is of comparatively recent growth, has been able to 
 stand largely upon its own merits unhampered by any 
 traditionary curse ; and it has thus been in a favour- 
 able condition to receive the full force of that strong 
 and healthy movement which the broader sympathies 
 and wider culture of the present generation have com- 
 bined to set on foot. Of that movement the Drama 
 has as yet been touched only by the fringe. But 
 when we remember that what is now urged against 
 the Drama was not long ago urged equally against 
 prose fiction in general, and that to-day almost every 
 one reads novels, and no one is ashamed of doing so, 
 we can hardly doubt that the change which is already 
 perceptible in the attitude of the Church towards 
 dramatic art, slight though it may be, is the sure sign 
 that for the Theatre also has commenced a new and 
 brighter chapter of its history. 
 
 There are men who are the delegates of the past to 
 the present — the religious bigots and the social tyrants 
 who still in our churches and parliaments repeat the 
 sentiments of two centuries ago. Happily, however, 
 the future, too, has its representatives ; and these 
 
( 54 ) 
 
 are the men who boldly stand forth to preach doc- 
 trines which it will take the rank and file a full 
 century to grasp. If within the Church there are 
 many who are doing their utmost to keep alive the 
 ancient blood-feud between Religion and dramatic art, 
 let us at least do justice to the few who, from their 
 places as ministers of religion, have not hesitated to 
 attack the bigotry or apathy of their brethren. The 
 noble words which many of these have spoken for the 
 Theatre,^ — the efforts they have made to rouse those 
 within the range of their influence, — the unhesitating 
 way in which some of them have borne the opprobrium 
 which their conduct has brought down upon their 
 heads ; entitle them to our sincere respect. To their 
 conduct we may thankfully turn for additional evi- 
 dence that the change of which I have spoken has 
 really set in. What the few preach to-day the many 
 may accept to-morrow ; and friends of the Drama may 
 surely find their greatest satisfaction in the fact that 
 words in its defence — words, too, of no uncertain 
 sound — have already gone forth from some among 
 the recognised ministers of the Gospel. 
 
 Such seems to be the present attitude of the Church. 
 Turning to the Stage, we may rejoice to find unmis- 
 takable evidences of an earnest desire to cut free from 
 all the vicious connections of the past. The Theatre 
 to-day realises its responsibilities as, it is safe to say, 
 it has never realised them heretofore. Much has been, 
 and much continues to be written, upon the decadence 
 in the literary merits of our modern plays. Into that 
 question there is no need for us to enter here. But 
 
( 55 ) 
 
 whatever maybe their merits or demeiits judged simply 
 from the standpoint of art, I am quite certain that, 
 judged from the standpoint of ethics, they are incom- 
 parably higher in tone and purer in teaching than 
 the large mass of plays produced during any pre- 
 vious period in the history of the modern Drama. 
 Taken as a whole, their moral tone is far superior 
 to that of the average prose fiction of the day ;* 
 while, if anything, our higher -class plays may, 
 I think, be justly criticised as being too consciously 
 didactic in their aim. The Theatre is, indeed, work- 
 ing hard to answer the accusations of the religious 
 world in the most noble and practical way — by showing 
 that the alleged abuses are without foundation in fact. 
 It is making a praiseworthy attempt to throw off 
 the inheritance handed down to it from the past, and 
 to merit, even while it does not obtain, the recogni- 
 tion and the support of religious society. It is un- 
 doubtedly true that, among those who are largely 
 responsible for the present and the future of the Stage, 
 there are, as in every other profession, men who are 
 throughout the whole of their careers influenced only 
 by motives the reverse of high. There are managers 
 who are time-servers ; who worship only success ; and 
 who, to achieve success, will willingly pander to the 
 tastes of any portion of the public to which they can 
 
 * This has occurred before. " The most important feature in these 
 plays [of Goldsmith and Sheridan], as serving to reflect light on the 
 character of the age, is their superior purity to those of our earliest dra- 
 matists" (Pictorial History of England, vol. v. p. 647). Yet prose 
 fiction during the same period was represented by the works of Fielding, 
 Smollett, and Sterne. 
 
( 56 ) 
 
 look for support. But, on the other hand, there are 
 managers, both in the metropolis and in the provinces, 
 who are engaged in the noble work of raising their 
 art to its just position — of purging it from evil and 
 cleansing it from evil surroundings — of bringing it 
 into closer and closer sympathy with the aspirations 
 of the better part of society ; who, in a word, are doing 
 their best to make the Theatre a national institution 
 for good. In these efforts they are seconded by a large 
 and increasing number of men and women who, while 
 devoting their lives to the long-ostracised profession, 
 are using their influence to bring that profession into 
 wider and more genuine respect. There is much still 
 that is put upon the stage, from time to time, to which 
 exception may be taken ; for managers, after all, are 
 but human, and the tastes for which they cater are as 
 wide and mixed as is society itself. But the general 
 movement is unmistakably an upward one ; and con- 
 sidering the large number of theatres in London alone, 
 and the many thousands they nightly draw within their 
 walls, the general healthiness and purity of the plays 
 presented, from the most solemn tragedy down to the 
 flimsiest farce, is a fact which does not receive the 
 attention it deserves. I look upon it as a most hope- 
 ful sign. In the past, when Puritans poured forth 
 their volumes of grim invective, the Stage answered 
 with raillery and abuse ; to-day, when ministers of the 
 Gospel repeat the old anathemas, the Stage replies 
 with the nobler language of practical reform. The 
 position of the Theatre is one of conciliation ; and if 
 the long conflict is not brought to a speedy termina- 
 
( 57 ) 
 
 tion, the fault will not rest with the Drama or its 
 representatives. 
 
 So far, then, as it is possible to generalise, we are 
 safe in saying that the signs of the times are not 
 unhopeful. Managers, authors, and actors are be- 
 ginning more and more to realise the immense possi- 
 bilities of their art ; and with this realisation comes 
 the growing recognition of the importance of the 
 Drama as a factor in social life, and of their duties 
 and responsibilities towards society at large. Their 
 efforts to raise the Stage into a condition more worthy 
 of the support of educated and refined men and 
 women, their endeavours to provide the public with 
 the means of hearty and healthy recreation, are 
 meeting with daily increasing recognition from por- 
 tions of that public to which in the past managers 
 would have felt it useless to appeal. The pits of 
 their houses are to-day filled with many who, a 
 generation ago, would never have thought of entering 
 a theatre ; and a larger proportion of those who are 
 regularly in their places in our churches and chapels 
 on Sunday mornings, are not ashamed of being seen 
 enjoying a comedy the night before. More especially 
 may the Drama look to the rising generation for sym- 
 pathy and support. Our young men and women, 
 growing up untrammelled by many of the lingering 
 superstitions and traditionary prejudices from which 
 it is so hard for the elders among us to shake them- 
 selves wholly free, and breathing the relatively 
 healthy intellectual atmosphere of the time, are 
 breaking through the old restraints and refusing 
 
{ 58 ) 
 
 any longer to credit the reasoning which would 
 make Religion the foe of honest amusement and 
 rational recreation. This is particularly reassuring ; 
 for the future is in the hands of the young men and 
 women of the present. But against all these hopeful 
 signs we have to place the undeniable fact that the 
 marked progress which the Stage has made during 
 recent years has not been recognised and appreciated 
 to any considerable extent by the great religious 
 public at large. For this reticence I have already 
 assigned a reason which goes far to explain it — the 
 power of traditional prejudices. To this, among other 
 assignable causes, must be added the fact that the 
 Church knows well how much easier it is to abuse 
 than it is to correct. Vituperation is cheap — especi- 
 ally when one is at liberty to manufacture one's facts ; 
 reform costs time, labour, patience. Hence the re- 
 ligious public finds that the simplest way to satisfy 
 its conscience is to inveigh against or to ignore what 
 it steadily refuses to take earnestly in hand ; soothing 
 itself with the pleasant belief that by this means it 
 may shirk its responsibility and avoid an unwelcome 
 task. 
 
 It will not long, I think, be able to satisfy itself 
 and society by this feeble course. The world at large 
 will in the future demand more from the Church in 
 the way of practical help and counsel in daily need 
 than the Church has ever given in the past ; and if 
 the help and the counsel are not forthcoming, it will 
 not be satisfied by elaborate theologies and incom- 
 prehensible creeds. If the Church wishes to retain and 
 
( 59 ) 
 
 to strengthen its hold upon the people — or if, more 
 correctly speaking, it wishes ever to get that hold- 
 it will have to cease to draw round itself the magic 
 circle of its own sanctity. It will have to enter the 
 arena of practical life. It will have to adapt itself 
 more than it is at present doing to the conditions and 
 the necessities of the time ; it will have to widen its 
 doors and open its windows for the free air of heaven ; 
 it will have to give up what Professor Mahaflfy has 
 termed " its stern and gaunt devoutness," and deal 
 with the world as something more than a dismal vale 
 of tears inhabited only by millions of wretched worms. 
 It will find it no longer possible to pass over the 
 question of the Theatre in studied silence or with a 
 passing word of abuse. The time for this conduct 
 has gone by. The Church must give up "fighting 
 extinct Satans," and face in a practical manner the 
 practical problems of the day. The Theatre exists in 
 our midst as a social fact ; it fills a large and an 
 increasing place in society ; it exercises an almost in- 
 calculable influence for good or for evU. The time has 
 come when we may fairly ask the Church, — " What 
 do you propose to do ? Are you prepared, in the 
 face of all that has been done during the past few 
 years, to deny that the Theatre might be made a 
 most powerful educational and moral agency in 
 society ? If you deny it your own indifference con- 
 demns you, — your own sUence proclaims your weak- 
 ness. But if you admit that it might be made all 
 that we allege, then why do you stand aloof ? why 
 do you shirk your duty with these great interests at 
 
( 60 ) 
 
 stake ? why do you play the coward to the Stage 
 which you have already wronged so much, and to 
 the society which expects so much of you ? " 
 
 These questions are coming more and more to 
 the front; and they are questions which demand 
 a straightforward and decided answer. 
 
( 6i ) 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE OUTLOOK. 
 
 Ik passing under review some of the most salient 
 features in the history of the quarrel between the 
 Church and the Stage, we have been enabled to trace 
 the gradual growth of that spirit of antagonism to 
 all dramatic art which has so long been character- 
 istic of the religious world at large. While the 
 Drama, still in its infancy, remained practically under 
 the control of the Church, the opposition with which 
 it met was mainly confined to a scattered few. But 
 when, with the secularisation of the Drama, the final 
 separation took place, the antagonism of the Church 
 to the Theatre soon became violent and general ; and 
 with the accession to power of the Puritan party, 
 hostility to dramatic art passed into an article of the 
 current creed. To the gradual spread of Puritan ideas 
 of life and conduct through almost the whole of reli- 
 gious society we owe that long-standing and universal 
 horror of plays and playhouses which still distinguishes 
 the evangelical classes in general. The controversy 
 has been long and bitter, and has often been conducted 
 in such a manner as to reflect little credit on either 
 of the parties engaged. To-day we may see signs 
 
( 62 ) 
 
 of a coming change ; and looking round us we feel 
 justified in saying that if the conflict is as yet far 
 from its close, it has at least passed through its most 
 acute phases. Though the asceticism which in vary- 
 ing degrees marked all the higher ethical systems of 
 the past, still retains a strong hold of large portions 
 of the religious public, it is none the less passing 
 away ; and though its vitality is still exhibited in the 
 obstinate antagonism of the modern Church to the 
 modern Theatre, the modified form of that antagonism 
 marks its gradual decline. Here as elsewhere, of 
 course, there are and will continue to be reaction- 
 ists ; but the movements initiated by these' must 
 be regarded merely as eddies in the stream. Great 
 satisfaction may at least be found in the facts that 
 the old theological positions are fast being abandoned 
 by the more cultured religious thinkers ; and that 
 the men and women of the rising generation, while 
 doubtless they will have faults enough of their own 
 to answer for, promise to be tolerably free from many 
 of those old restraints and prejudices which proved 
 so harmful in the past. 
 
 There is good ground to hope, therefore, that 
 another generation will see a notable change in the 
 social position of the Stage. By that time we may 
 anticipate that the Church will realise more clearly 
 than it does at present these three important points 
 — first, that the Theatre is a necessary fact in social 
 life ; secondlj^, that there is absolutely no need to 
 deplore the impossibility of destroying it ; but that, 
 thirdly, under favourable conditions, it might become 
 
( 63 ) 
 
 an iustitution of the greatest moral and intellectual 
 importance, and the strong ally of the Church itself. 
 In closing these papers in all hope for the future that 
 is before us, it may be well for a moment to look at 
 each of these points a little more carefully. 
 
 The Drama has its root in one of the strongest 
 instincts of human nature. Back into the very 
 lowest forms of savage life (to say nothing here of 
 the same instinct in brutes), may be traced that love 
 of imitation which, among almost all peoples who 
 have reached a civilised state, Las eventuated in some 
 kind of dramatic exhibition. Histrionic amusement 
 in one shape or another is an almost universal trait of 
 societies otherwise varying to the utmost extent ; 
 while wherever among ancient or modern peoples a con- 
 dition of fair aesthetic culture has been reached, there 
 the Drama has always filled a prominent place. The 
 Stage would seem to be the spontaneous outgrowth of 
 the most dissimilar soils, drawing its nutrition, no 
 matter what may be the particular form of social life 
 under which it develops, directly from human nature 
 itself. Nor is this all. The instinct for imitation, 
 which is one of the first to show itself in the lowest 
 phases of human life, is also the most pronounced in 
 the highest developments of civilisation. Savage and 
 cultured, the child and the grown-up man, alike bear 
 witness to its strength. Of this instinct the Theatre 
 is the natural, normal, and inevitable outcome. But 
 let it not be supposed that there is not ample evidence 
 of its existence and its strength outside the enormous 
 popularity of the Drama itself. Everywhere and 
 
( 64 ) 
 
 among all classes at the present day is such evi- 
 dence to be found in abundance ; and it is par- 
 ticularly instructive to observe how plentifully it is 
 furnished by the very people who are loudest in their 
 condemnation of the Stage. A consummate platform 
 performer, like the late John B. Gough, who was 
 more an actor than an orator, will draw crowds to hear 
 him ; readings from Shakspere by a retired actress 
 in a public hall will be extensively patronised by the 
 religious world ; operatic concerts given by singers in 
 evening dress will attract hundreds of those who 
 would shudder at the idea of hearing the same per- 
 formers sing the same music in appropriate garb and 
 with appropriate scenery. Who needs to be reminded 
 of the extensive patronage which is given by the reli- 
 gious public to semi-dramatic performances like those 
 of Mr. and Mrs. German Eeed 1 Who needs to be 
 told of the pious crowds that frequent the delectable 
 entertainments of Messrs. Moore and Burgess ? The 
 writer knows for a fact that dramatic performances 
 pure and simple are given in entertainments held in 
 connection with churches and chapels at the present 
 day — the odour of profanity being removed by having 
 them announced under the euphemistic title of 
 " charades." And it is no less a fact that many reli- 
 gious people will witness with delight the performance 
 of a play in the opera-room of the Crystal Palace 
 who would not think of seeing the same play given 
 by the same company at a theatre in the West End. 
 I do not pause here to animadvert on the wretched 
 hypocrisy exhibited in such conduct as this, nor will 
 
( 65 ) 
 
 I do more than suggest in passing that respectable 
 people in search of entertainment might spend their 
 time to far better purpose in a good theatre than 
 in patronising the generally third-rate performances 
 which are provided for their diversion. What I here 
 wish to point out is, that even those who oppose the 
 Drama bear ample testimony to the strength of the 
 dramatic instinct. As that instinct is an inevitable 
 fact of human nature, so the Theatre, its normal out- 
 come, is an inevitable fact of social life. It exists 
 among us, though religious people may find it con- 
 venient to shut their eyes to its presence; it will 
 continue to exist so long as human nature remains 
 human nature and human life keeps its essential traits. 
 Deplore it or not as we may, here it remains, stub- 
 born, inevitable, and indestructible. 
 
 For those who look facts boldly in the face, and who 
 will therefore realise the truth of what I have just 
 written, it will be gratifying to be able to think that 
 there is no need whatever to deplore the inevitable- 
 ness of the Theatre. The feelings with which we regard 
 the Drama as a general fact, apart from any particular 
 forms under which it may manifest itself, must depend 
 entirely upon the view we take of the question of 
 amusement at large. If it can be proved that the grim 
 Puritan conception of life is the true one — if it is best 
 for men and women to go through the world treating 
 it simply as a gloomy vestibule to an eternity which, 
 for most of us, will be an eternity of torment — if 
 whatever tends to beautify life is necessarily dan- 
 gerous — if honest laughter and honest sympathy are 
 
( 66 ) 
 
 sinful — and if it is wrong to allow the mind to dwell, 
 however briefly, on matters not connected with the 
 awful problems of death and the hereafter ; then we 
 must condemn the Stage, as we must condemn art in 
 every form. But I think there are few to-day who 
 will venture to adopt the ground so consistently held 
 by the Puritan fanatics of the past. We know that 
 bodily and mentally we have need of recreation ; that 
 without it in each case there is feebleness and disease ; 
 that the man who does not occasionally unbend his 
 faculties is not therefore the more, but distinctly the 
 less, capable of doing the serious work of life. That 
 this is true, physically and mentally, few I imagine 
 will now undertake to deny. Body and mind alike 
 need change. Nature demands it ; and like the tyrant 
 that she is, visits with severe punishment those who 
 will not obey her law. 
 
 All defence of the Stage, as of novel-reading or of 
 other forms of mental relaxation, must commence with 
 the enunciation of the broad principle of the absolute 
 necessity of pleasure. It will not then be difficult to 
 show that of all varieties of intellectual amusement, 
 that afforded by the Theatre is incomparably the best. 
 Social in its character ; cosmopolitan in its sym- 
 pathies ; appealing alike to every class of the com- 
 munity — to old and young, to rich and poor alike ; 
 the Theatre has advantages possessed by no other 
 form of entertainment ; while its fascination is ad- 
 mitted by its most pronounced opponents — is, indeed, 
 urged by them as one of its dangers. A danger it 
 would certainly be if they could show that on the 
 
( 67 ) 
 
 average the influence of the Stage is a degrading one. 
 But they cannot show this. On the contrary, the 
 influence of the Stage, even as it exists to-day, is on 
 the whole beneficial. The mention of this leads us 
 at once to our third point — the ethical power of the 
 Stage, and its functions as an educational factor iu 
 social life. 
 
 The main want in society all along has been and 
 still is, want of sympathy. " The pest of society," 
 says Emerson, " is egotism." Were our human sym- 
 pathies wider and stronger than they are, much that 
 we most deplore in the world would pass away as a 
 matter of course. The ability to feel with and for 
 the men and women around us — this is what we 
 require more urgently than parliamentary enactments, 
 or philosophical theories, or elaborate creeds. But 
 unfortunately we all of us live in partial isolation. 
 The best of us can rarely touch, even in their highest 
 moments, the wide interests of universal humanity ; 
 while for the average man, the possibilities of vivid 
 fellow-feeling are bounded by the narrow limits of his 
 own lot. Himself, his family, the few with whom he 
 daily meets and converses — these at most are all that 
 ever enter into his calculations. For what passes 
 beyond the confines of his actual acquaintanceship, 
 how should he care 1 Ruin and misfortune, disaster 
 and death, in all their manifold forms, are busy 
 around him ; but he passes on through life virtually 
 cut off from those whom he nevertheless calls his 
 fellow-creatures, shut up in his narrow circle and 
 practically separated from all that lies beyond. 
 
( 68 ) 
 
 The dangers arising from this state of things are 
 exacerbated rather than assuaged by the necessary 
 conditions of modern life. In the material civilisa- 
 tions of the present day, in which the struggle for 
 existence is keener perhaps than it has ever been 
 before, and in which the adulation that is given to 
 mere worldly success leads men to aim at that by 
 all means within their power, the conditions are 
 singularly unfavourable for the development of the 
 finer feelings. Men whose sympathies at the best of 
 times are feeble and imperfect, are rendered still 
 more selfish and callous by the hard race for wealth 
 and fame and position which goes on in all our great 
 centres of civilisation at the present day. What has 
 always been required, and what is required impera- 
 tively now, is a power to take men out of themselves 
 and their limited circle of life — a power to strengthen 
 the sympathies and widen the affections ; and to do 
 this is, I contend, the true ethical function of all art. 
 
 Consider for a moment upon what the faculty of 
 sympathy is based. Is it not founded directly upon 
 the imagination ? The selfish man is the man who 
 is unable to represent vividly to himself the thoughts 
 and feelings, the joys and sorrows of others. We 
 can only sympathise with what we can picture to 
 ourselves; and inability to feel for another simply 
 means inability to grasp, by means of the imagi- 
 nation, the experiences through which that other is 
 passing. Mr. Euskin states the case strongly, but 
 not too strongly, when he says : — "An unimagina- 
 tive person can neither be reverent nor kind. . . . The 
 
( 69 ) 
 
 imaginative power always purifies ; the want of it, 
 therefore, as essentially defiles" — or, more properly- 
 speaking, leaves in a defiled condition.* If this be so, 
 it would be hard to over-rate the power and influence 
 of art. It is art that supplements the inevitable 
 imperfections of life ; it is art that appeals to 
 and strengthens the imaginative and therefore sym- 
 pathetic side of our nature ; it is art that by en- 
 larging the scope of our observation of life and men 
 and nature, gives our sympathies a wider field of 
 action, and brings us into contact with the outlying 
 world. As George Eliot said in her essay on Riehl, 
 " Art is the nearest thing to life ; it is a mode of 
 amplifying experience and extending our contact with 
 our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal 
 lot." 
 
 If it is the grand moral function of art, by strength- 
 ening and widening the imagination, to enlarge the 
 faculty of sympathy and give to men the power of feel- 
 ing joys and sorrows other than their own, then I 
 have no hesitation in saying that among all the forms 
 in which the artistic energy finds expression, on its 
 purely ethical side the Drama stands undoubtedly 
 first. If of art in general it is true that it is the 
 nearest thing to life, of dramatic art in particular is 
 it true. Painting and poetry and sculpture have each 
 their special advantages ; but none of these is so in- 
 tensely human as the Drama ; none appeals so directly 
 or so powerfully to the feelings ; none brings us into 
 such close contact with the world of our fellow-men. 
 
 * Fors Glavigera, Letter xxxiv. 
 
( 70 ) 
 
 When Crabbe spoke of the pleasure men feel in going 
 to the theatre 
 
 " To steal a few enclianted hours away 
 From self," 
 
 he little knew how truly he was describing the ethical 
 influence of dramatic art. " The main use of works 
 of fiction, and of the drama," writes Mr. Ruskin in the 
 letter from which I have already quoted, "is to 
 supply, as far as possible, the defect of . . . imagina- 
 tion in common minds." By what other means, in- 
 deed, can the defect be so well supplied 1 The Drama 
 presents life to us in all its varying forms with a 
 vividness impossible elsewhere outside of life itself. 
 The men and women move and act, think and speak, 
 love and hate, fail and conquer, upon the mimic 
 stage, as the men and women do whom daily we meet 
 and shake by the hand. The marvellous insight of 
 Shakspere lays bare the inmost secrets of human 
 hearts — the struggles and the failures, the yearning 
 hopes, the awful despair, which are hidden beneath 
 the rude exteriors of common men ; and as we watch 
 the life-history unfold itself before us, the smile that 
 quivers round the lips, the tear that starts to the eye, 
 the warm blood that rushes to the cheek, all bear wit- 
 ness to the subtle power which for the time enchains 
 and fascinates, and touches at its will the sacred 
 chords of human sympathy and love. To all art be- 
 longs in some degree this mighty power ; to dramatic 
 art alone it is given in its fullest extent. So long as 
 men retain au interest in their common humanity, so 
 long will the Drama remain an indestructible factor in 
 
( 71 ) 
 sociiil life ; and so long as men have need of sympathy 
 and reverence and love, so long, happily, will dramatic 
 art fulfil its ministry as the great educator of the 
 emotional side of our nature. 
 
 I do not think the Church of the future will feel it 
 just or politic longer to estrange so powerful an ally. 
 The religious classes, as a whole, have too long placed 
 themselves in a false position with regard to dramatic 
 art. They have blindly refused to realise its moral 
 power ; they have done their best to thrust it into an 
 attitude of pronounced opposition to their own senti- 
 ments ; they have withheld their influence, and have 
 shut their eyes to the consequences which were likely 
 to follow their ill-advised conduct. It is not their fault 
 that the modern Drama is not as powerful for evil as it 
 might be potent for good ; it is not their fault that 
 the tremendous influence of the Stage is not to-day 
 perverted to deplorable ends. Surely the time has 
 now come when a more just and rational policy should 
 prevail ; and those who take the lead in preaching the 
 gospel of conciliation will be conferring one of the 
 greatest benefits upon mankind. Let the war-hatchet 
 be buried once and for ever. Let, Church and Stage 
 confess that they have often dealt unfairly with each 
 other in the past, and have mistaken each other's aims. 
 Then, at last, we may look forward to a time when 
 Eeligion and the Drama, purified from all the cor- 
 ruption by which they have both so long been cursed, 
 may work side by side in the world, to elevate 
 and enlighten, to bless and beautify mankind. 
 
 Printed by Ballantytie, Hanson &= Co., Edinburgh and Loiulon.