in licentiousness. A reaction followed, and the stage arose to a still better condition. Under Garrick's leadership it made a great advance. In later days it received additional impetus to noble improvement from the efforts of the Kemble family, Macready, and Charles Kean. Within the last ten years, in London, Henry Irving has administered its affairs in a thoroughly royal way, and-having ampler resources than they had with which to work, and a much larger and perhaps more attentive and sympathetic, certainly a more fastidious and helpful, public to address-has surpassed all his predecessors in the splendid task of developing and applying its beneficence, and keeping its intellectual standard high and its moral condition pure. Here in America, after an initiatory period of great hardship, the stage took excellent shape in such institutions as the old Chestnut Street Theater, in Philadelphia, the John Street house, and afterward the Park (it was at first called simply "The Theater"), in New York, and the Federal Street Theater, in Boston. The stock companies then were composed of actors, almost every one of whom would, in our day, be a star. Scholarship was the rule, thorough discipline prevailed, and perfect decorum was imperative. Through the growth of our country and the broadening of the theatrical field by the multiplication of theaters, the old stock system has been almost entirely destroyed, and opportunity has been provided for the inroad of many hybrid and distasteful, or downright offensive forms of amusement, all of which shelter themselves under the name of the stage. In this way the general dramatic tone has been lowered. America has as good actors now as she ever had; but their forces are not concentrated, and therefore do not seem as formidable as once they did. Nevertheless, the true dramatic spirit burns as brightly as ever in this land, and the practical success of such actors as Booth, Jefferson, McCullough, Barrett, Miss Mary Anderson, Miss Clara Morris, Miss Ward, Mme. Modjeska, Mme. Janauschek, Signor Salvini, and Maggie Mitchell is a substantial evidence of it. If a measure of success also attends divers unworthy exhibitions, that is the fault, not of the stage, but of the public. "Look elsewhere, sire!" These extraneous shows are not the American theater, any more than the thimble-riggers and gypsy fortune-tellers on Epsom downs are the race for the Derby.

It is difficult, furthermore, to understand the extreme senVOL. CXXXVI.-NO. 319. 42

sitiveness of certain moralists as to the alleged corrupting influence of the stage. They pay that institution, it seems to me, a very great compliment in ascribing to it such remarkable power over the public morals; or else, surely, they must conceive individual virtue to be exceedingly fragile. If a censor of the stage were to arraign it as a bore, I, for one, could appreciate his feelings and sympathize with his views. Many of the proceedings visible upon the stage are trivial and tedious to a degree not readily expressed. I have been in one theater or another almost every night of my life for more than twenty years, and while I have seen there much that was noble, beautiful, and impressive, I have also seen an aggregate of insipidity which cannot be reviewed without dismay. Stuffy scenery, ear-piercing music, execrable elocution, nasal vocalism, obvious ignorance, offensive conceit, pitiable vanity, the sad lack of reticence which so often permits a public disclosure of individualities that Nature plainly intended for sweet retirement and deep domestic seclusion,- all these blemishes upon the stage are appreciable. But where does the immoral influence appear? How does it strike? And in what manner does its victim conduct himself? Does the youth, upon seeing Iago, for example, presently rush forth and ham-string a fancied Cassio in a dark street? Is he driven to incontinence by the sight of a pretty woman playing Parthenia, or Pauline, or Desdemona, or Lady Teazle What, then, must be thought of the virtue which melts like wax in the heat of such exceedingly mild fires as these? What becomes of such a person when he is led into society and obliged to stand the tremendous strain of an evening party? It is a great pity, surely, for certain philosophers, and for the weak vessels of the earth in general, that Nature has made women alluring and roses sweet. But there is one way of safety for all such imperiled creatures. If the stage is really thought to weaken character by undue enticement, you have only to present it as it really is, and that dreaded glamour will vanish like smoke. Divest it of nonsense in your thought. Quit describing it as a fascination of the devil. Cease telling ignorant people to keep away from the one particular room in Blue-Beard's palace. There is not among men a more exacting, laborious, stern profession than that of the stage. There is no place more strictly mechanical and prosaic than a theater. The stage is not a Paphian Bower; it is a machine-shop. You may as sensibly allege the immoral

influence of a cotton factory as the immoral influence of the stage, to a man who knows it.

The worst influence that I know of, as proceeding from the stage, is one that also proceeds from the pulpit, and perhaps from all artistic pursuits,-the possible weakening of character, from encouragement of the love of admiration in persons who are before the public, whether as actors, orators, writers, preachers, or personal exhibitors of any kind. It takes a long time for a man to learn the usual vagueness, the frequent ignorance, the heedless flippancy, and, therefore, the general worthlessness of the opinions and remarks of most other people about himself or his proceedings,—to learn that the only rational way to live is to make duty a rigid law of life and utterly to ignore what people say. Many men never learn this, and actors in particular, whose fortunes depend so immediately on popular liking, are sometimes pitiable in their restless, craving vanity. The same thing is seen in some clergymen. To my mind, at least twothirds of all that occurs in the world, whether on the stage or elsewhere, is of no public importance at all, and ought never to be noticed in any way. We should see fewer cases of vanity, and hear less of nobodies and nothings, if society and the press had not such an inveterate disposition to "chronicle small beer."

The literature of the stage has not improved, and for simple and obvious reasons. After Shakespeare it could not improve; for that was the flood-tide. No such man has since appeared. Then, likewise, the stage has long been a costly institution, dependent on immediate gains, and obliged to aim at pleasing an immediate audience. For this reason, as well as by their nature, most of the writers for the stage have been followers and not leaders of the public sentiment. Great writers have their credentials from God; little ones are chartered by the life which surrounds them; and it is the little writers who have furnished most of the stage literature of the last two hundred and fifty years. Shakespeare produced his plays upon the stage; but he wrote them on a scale and with a scope that transcends all theatrical needs and limits, and made them for a stage as broad as the world and as permanent as the human race. Were there no stage at all, these works would still survive in all their imperial power and brilliant renown; but, without a stage, the works of most dramatists would vanish like the morning mist. Yet, with regard to modern stage literature, let us not forget that, although the nineteenth century has not, in this,

attained to the altitude of the Elizabethan age, it has fully equaled that of any later period. Knowles, Jerrold, Talfourd, Taylor, Marston, Bulwer, Gilbert, Robertson, Boucicault, Boker, Payne, Willis, and Epes Sargent are alone sufficient to prove this.

The principal fault of the stage of the present time, in America, is frivolity, and this comes from the frivolity of the public and the press. Acting is a learned profession. The stage should be devoted to good plays, well acted, and to nothing else. I do not think that the position of acting as a learned profession, or the utility of the stage as an intellectual force, is properly appreciated at this time. The public is far too easily pleased. Many silly things are accepted. Many commonplace persons are admired and commended. The newspapers, almost without exception, sedulously record, as matters of importance, the theatrical doings of individuals who, yesterday, were grocers' clerks or milliners' apprentices. Any person who can buy threesheet posters and lithograph portraits can usually obtain prominent notice as an actor, in almost every newspaper in the United States; not by purchase, but as a matter of what is called "news." All this is out of proportion. Such a state of things tends to lower the value of critical recognition, cheapen the rewards of effort in dramatic art, and bring serious and splendid endeavor and high ambition into contempt.

The world does not advance in wisdom, virtue, and happiness by denial and destruction. All institutions should be bent to the good of all mankind. It was John Wesley, a clergyman, who said that the devil should not have all the good music. Men should not make their lives tributary to their pursuits, but their pursuits tributary to their lives-drawing from the stage, as from all things else, whatever is good and strong, whatever will help to build up and round out a noble character. Must we destroy the stage because a milksop may chance to be injured by it? Is all life to be squared to the tastes and needs of simpletons?

The thing to be desired is gravity and thoroughness in the American character, more scholarship, habits of study, the rare and noble habit of thinking, in which so few persons ever indulge. As the ideals of intellectual effort rise higher and higher in the community, the sincere workers upon the stage, as in every other department of art, will be encouraged and strengthened, and the stage itself will be ennobled.

WILLIAM WINTER.

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INDEX

TO THE

HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIXTH VOLUME

OF THE

North American Review.