UC-NRLF 
 
 31 SDM 
 
 THE 
 
 T A G E 
 
 PA 
 
 RELATION TO 
 
 FINE A R 
 
 K NEVILLE 
 
ENGLISH LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 No 
 
 . 
 
THE STAGE: 
 
 ITS PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 RELATION TO FINE AUT. 
 
THE STAGE: 
 
 ITS PAST AND PRESENT IN RELATION 
 TO FINE ART. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY NEVILLE. 
 
 BEING THE SUBJECT OF A LECTURE DELIVERED BY THE 
 
 AUTHOR AT THE FINE ART GALLERY, 
 
 CONDUIT STREET, FOR THE SOCIETY FOR THE 
 
 ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE FINE ARTS 
 
 ON THE I3TH JULY, 1 87 1. 
 
 REVISED QAND ENLARGED. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, 
 
 in 3DrHinarp to $> 
 
 1875. 
 
9^7 
 
 ' 
 
 OB. 
 
 LONDON : 
 PKIKTED PT E, RXSCOI., MAIDBK LANK, STBANP 
 
THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 MY FATHER, 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 WITH 
 
 FILIAL VENERATION 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Books on theatrical subjects would fill a 
 Library. They are as plentiful as unplayed plays ; 
 perhaps I ought, therefore, to apologize for adding 
 to the already over-swollen stream. My object, 
 however, is not so much literary as practical, and 
 if here and there I have indulged in a somewhat 
 more elaborate and copious disquisition, it must 
 be attributed to my enthusiasm for Dramatic Art 
 rather than to any ambitious design of entering 
 into competition with the great authors who have 
 preceded me. So far am I, indeed, from enlisting 
 my energies in such a presumptuous and hope- 
 less contest, that I have rather endeavoured to 
 direct my readers to those sources of information 
 
1 1 
 
 vm. 
 
 from which our history is gathered, and to make 
 my little work a kind of handbook for those to 
 whom greater works are not readily available. 
 
 My prime object has been to show the an- 
 tiquity of Dramatic Art, and the respectability of 
 the profession of an actor, with the view of 
 counteracting the popular prejudices, which, to a 
 certain extent, damage his social position, and 
 of pointing out some of the main causes of 
 those prejudices, as bigotry, and the neglect of 
 the Drama by the British Government, which 
 takes all other arts under its powerful patronage, 
 but leaves the Stage to the precarious fortune of 
 an isolated dependence; upon the vague caprices 
 of public opinion and of public taste. 
 
 In speaking, however, of the present con- 
 dition, I must not be understood to imply that 
 it is in a worse position than formerly; on the 
 contrary, the profession is purer as a whole, and 
 its individual members are more respected* It is 
 
IX. 
 
 rather the actual as compared with the possible 
 what the Stage is, as placed beside what it might 
 be, that I have attempted to exhibit in this 
 small treatise, and it will be a source of infinite 
 satisfaction and delight if I may be the con- 
 tributor in any degree to the progress of the Art 
 in social influence, and the grand position which 
 I believe it is destined ultimately to achieve. 
 
 I have retained the Lecture form as an ex- 
 cuse for its ample quotations and a somewhat 
 declamatory and rhetorical style, nor less on ac- 
 count of the pleasant recollection of the 13th 
 July, 1871, when TOM TAYLOE, Esq., for whom 
 I entertain the highest regard and admiration, 
 did me the honour of taking the chair on the 
 occasion of its delivery, 
 
 In conclusion, if my remarks should be con- 
 sidered too plain and pointed, I hope I may be 
 at least exonerated from all suspicion of private 
 ill-will or personal invective. I have ever re- 
 
spected the profession to wliich I belong, and as 
 far as my ability and influence have extended I 
 have done my best to elevate it. Such will always 
 be my fixed resolve as long as I remain before 
 the public; and when I retire (as I certainly 
 shall) I shall endeavour to lead a life of useful- 
 ness, and for the rest of my days enjoy the luxury 
 of doing good. 
 
 H. G. N. 
 
COMPENDIUM, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION .... 1 
 
 " OH ! NE'ER MAY FOLLY" (Lloyd) 5 
 THE G-REEN ROOM - .6 
 
 " SIR WAITER SCOTT TELLS us " - - 7 
 
 LORD BYRON SAYS - 9 
 
 " ELOCUTION AND ACTION " 9 
 
 DEMOSTHENES - - - 10 
 
 " WE WEEP AND LAUGH AS WE SEE OTHERS DO " 11 
 
 SPEECH AND VOICE - - - 11 
 
 "BEHELD, HIS WIPE, HIS WIPE NO MORE" 
 
 (Tennyson) - 12 
 
 " THE CRYING SHAME OP THE AGE " - 13 
 
 EARLIEST RECORDS OF THE STAGE - 14 
 
 GRECIAN ORIGIN - - - - 15 
 
 THE FIRST ACTORS - - - 16 
 
XIV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 JESCHYLUS - - 16 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF THE DRAMA - 17 
 
 THE WORKS OF ^ESCHYLUS 18 
 
 SOPHOCLES - - - 19 
 
 JESCHYLUS AND SOPHOCLES COMPARED 20 
 
 " BUT THE TIMES HAD CHANGED " 21 
 
 DEATH OF ^SCIIYLUS 24 
 
 (EDIPUS COLONUS 25 
 
 THE PLOT 26 
 SENSITIVE ATHENIANS 
 
 EURIPIDES 34 
 
 THEATRICAL PHILOSOPHERS 35 
 
 DEMOSTHENES, OLYNTHIANS 36 
 " THE THEATRE CAME TO THE CONQUERING 
 
 ROMANS " 37 
 
 GREEKS AND EOMANS COMPARED - 38 
 " CHRISTIANITY ACCELERATED THE DECLINE OF 
 
 DRAMATIC ART " 41 
 
 THE APOSTLE PAUL 42 
 
 " ART ITSELF is STILL DIVINE " 43 
 
 TURTULLIAN 44 
 
 " ONCE ON THE STAGE " (Lloyd) 44 
 
 REVIVAL OF THE DRAMA - 45 
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE, ITALY, SPAIN 45 
 
 FRANCE, GERMANY 46 
 
 ENGLAND 47 
 " FEAST OF ASSES, AND THE FEAST OF FOOLS " 48 
 
 MINSTRELS AND MUMMERS 49 
 
 SACRED MYSTERIES - - 49 
 
XV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " ANTHONY WOOD'S QUAINT STOEY " 50 
 
 GUILDS ... 52 
 
 MORALITIES - 53 
 
 " DR. PERCY'S ANALYSIS OF " EVEEY MAN " - 54 
 
 THE FIBST COMEDY - 55 
 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH - 56 
 
 NOBLEMEN WHO EETAINED PLAYERS - - 56 
 
 " OUE GREATEST ACTORS " - 56 
 
 PERSECUTION - 57 
 
 SHAKESPEAEE - 58 
 
 " WHERE FOUND THIS PEOSPEEO " - 59 
 
 " DISPARAGEMENT AND ABUSE " - 61 
 " SHAKESPEARE'S VOLUMES BECOME MORE AND 
 
 MORE DUSTY ' : - 62 
 
 ANECDOTES - - - 63 
 
 " SPEAK THE SPEECH, I PRAY YOU" (Shakespeare) 64 
 
 THE PURITANS . 65 
 
 ROYALISTS . . 66 
 
 PAINTING - 66 
 
 ORIGIN OF PAINTING - - - 67 
 
 ARTISTS - - - 68 
 
 PAEEHASIUS AND ZEUXIS - - - 68 
 
 ECLECTIC AND NATURALISTIC 70 
 FLEMISH AND DUTCH - - - .70 
 
 FEANCE - 71 
 
 " AN AETIST'S SUPEEIORITY " - - 72 
 
 ENGLAND ... 74 
 
 " A ROOM IN SPRING GARDENS " - - 74 
 
 THE RESTORATION - * * 76 
 
XVI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN 76 
 
 LICENSING ACT - - 76 
 
 ^ THE INTRODUCTION or THE FRENCH PRACTICE 
 OP ALLOWING LADIES TO PLAY THE FEMALE 
 
 CHARACTERS " 78 
 
 e WOMANHOOD is INDEBTED TO SHAKESPEARE " 79 
 
 " THE PRESENT POSITION or THE STAGE " - 80 
 
 " ALL HONOUR TO THE YOUNG MEN WHO ENTER 
 THE PROFESSION WITH A TRUE REVERENCE 
 
 FOR ART " 83 
 
 " MONEY SHOULD NEVER BE THE CHIEF OBJECT " - 84 
 
 LIVING AUTHORS ... 85 
 
 BURLESQUE - 86 
 
 MORAL INFLUENCE 87 
 
 FATHER NUGENT - 88 
 
 " I SEE NO REASON WHY THE STAGE MIGHT NOT BE 
 MADE A POWERFUL AND POPULAR AUXILIARY 
 
 IN THE CAUSE OF EDUCATION " 89 
 
 GOVERNMENT SYMPATHY AND SUPPORT 89 
 
 " THE SUM OF ALL THAT I HAVE SAID " 90 
 
THE STAGE: 
 ITS PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 IN RELATION TO FINE ART. 
 
 ME. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, 
 
 I feel this evening, in presenting myself before 
 you as a Lecturer, that I am entering upon entirely 
 foreign ground. I must therefore ask you to in- 
 dulge me with the hospitality which is usually 
 accorded to the stranger. My province is the 
 STAGE. I have all my life given my entire thought 
 and attention to dramatic representation. I am con- 
 sequently not at home on the platform; and the 
 nervousness which arises from the novelty of my 
 position is increased by the fact that what I am 
 about to deliver in your hearing has been thrown 
 together during hard provincial work, and bears 
 upon it the marks which are ever inseparable from 
 swiftness of execution. At the same time you may 
 rely on the correctness of the information it con- 
 tains ; it has been collected from the best sources 
 and with a considerable amount of reading and 
 research ; and if I shall this evening deviate from 
 the beaten track of " Readings and Recitals," which 
 
I have no doubt would prove more entertaining, yet 
 I trust I shall in some measure atone for the trans- 
 gression by having given you some sound thought 
 and solid information. 
 
 Let me begin my remarks with the observation 
 that I consider the present period the crisis of the 
 Drama. Things in our profession have arrived at 
 such a point, and I am so interested in their fortunes, 
 that I cannot allow the opportunity afforded me by 
 this excellent Society to pass without making known 
 my opinion of the STAGE, what its power and in- 
 fluence were in the past, what they are in the pre- 
 sent, and what they might, and, I hope, will be in the 
 future. 
 
 I doubt not that my object will be much mis- 
 construed, and I shall be censured for entertaining 
 such strong opinions on matters which are perhaps 
 beyond the power of managers to reform. Still we 
 v gain nothing by holding our tongues, and the first 
 step towards improvement is the knowledge of our 
 errors. I will therefore brave the anger of my pro- 
 fessional censors, cheered by the hope of the ultimate 
 good that may accrue from free ventilation of the 
 subject. "Why shrink from looking our position in 
 the face ? Why hesitate to speak of it ? 
 
 A letter in the Builder, written by my 
 esteemed friend MR. PLANCHE, first aroused my in- 
 terest in this question. That letter was followed by 
 others ; among them some most important and able 
 
o 
 
 by the gentleman who does us the honour of 
 taking the Chair this evening. But long before this 
 agitation I saw that Art, in connection with the 
 Drama, was yearly dying out. Young men and 
 women are thrust into prominent positions without 
 \ the toil and study that must pave the way to 
 distinction in every other department of the Fine 
 Arts. Our country theatres, which were, and should 
 still be, the schools of great actors, are broken up or 
 linger on in a state of bankruptcy and decay. Our 
 glorious Drama has no national home and no enrolled 
 discipleship ; and when, to crown these evils, I see 
 with grief a taste for tinselled and spangled nudity 
 taking the place of the ancient reverence for the 
 instructive, elevating, and ennobling drama, I cannot 
 refrain from the poet's language, though I feel it is 
 no longer a hope but a despair, 
 
 "Oh ! ne'er may folly seize- the throne of taste, 
 Nor dulness lay the realms of genius waste ; 
 No bouncing crackers ape the thunderers' fire, 
 No tumbler float upon the bended wire. 
 More natural uses to the Stage belong, 
 Than monsters, tumblers, pantomime, and song, 
 For other purpose was that spot designed, 
 To purge the passions, and reform the mind." 
 
 I regard my profession with deep and genuine 
 reverence, and I cannot bear to see it degenerate. I 
 honour its antiquity. I respect it as having been the 
 nursery of genius. 
 
 The greatest men of the day* poets* politicians f 
 
6 
 
 statesmen, and painters, have loved the Theatre; 
 and until "folly seized the throne of taste," they 
 regularly took their seats to listen to the noble 
 utterances of such men as Betterton, Garrick, Kean, 
 Kemble, Farren, and Macready men whom they 
 were proud to call their equals, though in another 
 department of this many-sided world. In those 
 days the Green Room was the centre of wit and 
 fashion. The elite were allowed to visit it in full 
 dress only; surtouts had to remain at the door. 
 Hence the saying among us, " on the mat," a saying 
 which is frequently met with in theatrical books ; 
 and when it was patronized by the company and 
 cheered by the converse of educated gentlemen and 
 distinguished wits, the profession could not but be 
 an honourable, noble, and elevating art. These 
 gentlemen have been driven from our "mats," these 
 wits have, to a certain extent, withdrawn from us 
 their beneficent light, the stage has gone down and 
 down, descending lower and lower every year with 
 accelerating speed, and is now in danger of perishing 
 altogether, beneath a mass of bawling ignorance and 
 shameless folly. 
 
 The Theatre wants raising up. It has too long 
 been made the victim of private influence, for the 
 display of mere tricks, incompetence, and vulgar 
 conceit. No wonder its enemies depreciate the 
 Stage, and slander its ennobling purposes. No 
 wonder the real student finds no room for the 
 
exercise of his talent and the pursuit of his 
 Art, while he is barely tolerated in the best society, 
 where he should take his rank with other artists. 
 And this state of things will continue to exist 
 while people continue to bestow their appreciation 
 on showy superficialism and pompous ignorance, 
 rather than the solid gratifications of genuine know- 
 ledge and sound understanding. I am here to 
 raise my voice against this state of things, and 
 help to " reform it altogether ;" to show the close 
 affinity between the Fine Arts and Acting, and 
 to uphold the Drama as an Institution, perhaps 
 the most important Institution of our country. 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT tells us: "A disposition 
 to this fascinating amusement seems to be inherent 
 in human nature. It is the earliest sport of chil- 
 dren to take upon themselves some fictitious cha- 
 racter, and sustain it to the best of their ability 
 by such appropriate gestures and language as their 
 youthful fancies suggest, and such dress and de- 
 coration as circumstances place within their reach. 
 The Infancy of Nations is as prone to this pastime 
 as that of Individuals." 
 
 In other words, love of the Stage is born with 
 us, is natural to us ; and, therefore, it behoves us 
 to make the best use of it we can, to foster its 
 beneficial influence over men, to improve our minds 
 by familiarity with its great works, and by this me- 
 

 
 8 
 
 dium to hold communion with the immortal men who 
 " being dead, still speak. " 
 
 Dull, indeed, must the listener be who learns 
 nothing from the splendid writings bequeathed to 
 him by master minds, and presented to him with all 
 the powerful adjuncts of the modern stage and a 
 moment's reflection will tell you what perfect writ- 
 ings we have ; contributions by the greatest authors 
 from JEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, to Byron, 
 Lord Lytton, and a host of others all of them con- 
 taining lessons valuable in themselves, and sparkling 
 with gems of wit and eloquence which are the orna- 
 ments of Literature and the triumphs of Song. 
 
 It is most difficult to write for the stage, and 
 yet it possesses a fascination few great authors can 
 resist. To excel in dramatic composition has always 
 been peculiarly gratifying. Not on account of the 
 pecuniary profit : for until Mr. Boucicault made such 
 sweeping, radical reforms, authors were very poorly 
 paid ; but because of the popularity gained by it, and 
 the satisfaction of instructing the masses of the 
 people. I wish to bring this point, "public in- 
 struction," thoroughly before you. The actor's art 
 was employed, as Shakespeare says 
 
 " To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to 
 nature ; to show virtue her own feature scorn her 
 own image, and the very age and body of the time, his 
 form and pressure " in the most popular and fasci- 
 nating manner. 
 
9 
 
 I know that before we can expect help from 
 others we must help ourselves ; but the public might 
 effect much by judicious discrimination in what they 
 encourage. Lord Byron gives some admirable advice 
 to play-goers, which, if taken, would soon elevate 
 the profession, and cause it to be . properly recog- 
 nized : as an art is appreciated, so is the artist held 
 in esteem ! Lord Byron says 
 
 " Friends of the Stage ! to whom both players and plays 
 Must sue alike for pardon or for praise, 
 Whose judging voice and eye alone direct 
 The boundless power to cherish or reject; 
 If e'er frivolity has led to fame, 
 And made us blush that you forbore to blame ; 
 If e'er the sinking Stage could condescend 
 To soothe the sickly taste it dare not mend, 
 All past reproach may present scenes refute, 
 And censure, wisely loud, be justly mute ! 
 O ! since your fiat stamps the Drama's laws, 
 Forbear to mock us with misplaced applause ; 
 So pride shall doubly nerve the actor's powers, 
 And reason's voice be echoed back by ours." 
 
 The changes of time necessarily affect style, but 
 there is no reason why we should acquire bad style. 
 Even elocution, which is the first great principle of 
 acting, is shamefully neglected. Elocution and action 
 are the fundamental principles of our art, and no 
 excellence can be attained without them. Action, 
 from which the word actor is taken, is the natural 
 support of elocution, without which representation 
 would sink into sluggish inanity. The attention 
 
10 
 
 of tlie audience is fixed by action. Ancient actors 
 and orators considered it of the utmost importance, 
 and spared no pains in acquiring perfection. De- 
 mosthenes, Plutarch, and Cicero were perfect elocu- 
 tionists ; but experience taught them it was only a 
 necessary branch of their art, so they diligently 
 applied themselves to the study of action under the 
 tuition of the best actors of their time Satyrus, 
 Roscius, and jEsopus. 
 
 Demosthenes had overcome difficulties of speech, 
 but had neglected the study of action; consequently he 
 failed to create in his hearers the spirit of enthusiasm 
 he wished to impart. So disappointed was he that 
 he left the assembly on one occasion, and, with 
 gloomy thoughts, covered his head with his cloak, 
 and bemoaned his misfortune. Satyrus met him. 
 " 0, Satyrus, my friend," said Demosthenes, " I 
 am disgraced ! They will not hear me. I, who have 
 spent the whole strength and vigour of my body in 
 their employment, yet could not render myself 
 acceptable to the people, when drunkards, tarpaulins, 
 sots, and illiterate fellows can find so favourable a 
 hearing." "Very true," replied Satyrus; "but I 
 will soon remove the cause of all this, if you will 
 repeat some verses to me out of Sophocles and 
 Euripides." So thoroughly convinced was Demos- 
 thenes that acting (action) was the one thing neces- 
 sary, that he built himself a place underground, and 
 cut off half his beard so that he could not be seen" 
 until he was master of the art of acting. 
 
11 
 
 Plutarch studied before a great looking-glass. 
 Cicero was taught to act by Roscius, the comedian, 
 and ^Esopus, the tragedian. 
 
 I had rather see too much action than too 
 little so long as the actor refrain from bawling, and 
 " tearing a passion to tatters." I had rather see 
 excess of force, dash, intensity and earnestness, than 
 the laziness of four-fifths of our present actors. 
 
 " We weep and laugh as we see others do. 
 He only makes us sad, who shows the way, 
 And first is sad himself; then Telephus 
 I feel the weight of your calamities, 
 And fancy all your miseries my own ; 
 But if you act them ill, I sleep or laugh. 
 Your look must alter as your subject does, 
 For nature forms and softens us within, 
 And writes our fortune's changes in our face. 
 Pleasure enchants, impetuous rage transports, 
 And grief dejects, and wrings the tortur'd soul 
 And these are all interpreted by speech. 
 But he, whose words and fortunes disagree, 
 Absurd, unpitied, grows a public jest." 
 
 Next to the graceful movements indispensable 
 in well-practised actors, comes speech and voice. 
 Every word has its time and note, even in common 
 talk : every sentence has its variety, and the power 
 of even a syllable should not be lost. An educated 
 ear is shocked by bad readings, and incorrect 
 accentuations. Too much attention, I am convinced, 
 cannot be paid to these points. When a piece is 
 well recited, how of ten do we hear it said "Dear me! 
 
12 
 
 I had no idea there was so much in it t" An actor 
 must know the value of words, and have a delicate 
 ear for variety and intonation. I once heard a lady 
 say " she had read ' Enoch Arden ' often without 
 shedding a tear, but she was so overcome by a clever 
 recital, that she was obliged to leave the room after 
 those harrowing lines, where Enoch, having re- 
 turned to his native village, found his wife married 
 to another, and, heart-broken, looking in upon the 
 
 happy home 
 
 "Beheld 
 
 His wife, his wife no more, and saw the babe, 
 Hers, yet not his, upon the father's knee, 
 And all the warmth, the peace, the happiness, 
 And his own children tall and beautiful, 
 And him, that other, reigning in his place, 
 Lord of his rights and of his children's love 
 Then he, tho' Miriam Lane had told him all, 
 , Because things seen are mightier than things heard, 
 Stagger'd and shook, holding the branch, and fear'd 
 To send abroad a shrill and terrible cry, 
 Which, in one moment, like the blast of doom, 
 Would shatter all the happiness of the hearth. 
 
 He, therefore, turning softly like a thief, 
 Lest the harsh shingle should grate underfoot, 
 And feeling all along the garden -wall, 
 Lekt he should swoon and tumble and be found, 
 Crept to the gate, and open'd it, and closed, 
 As lightly as a sick man's chamber door, 
 Behind him, and came out upon the waste. 
 
 And there he would have knelt, but that his knees 
 Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug 
 His fingers into the wet earth, and pray'd. 
 
13 
 
 'Too hard to bear ! why did they take me thence? 
 O God Almighty, blessed Saviour, Thou 
 That did'st uphold me on my lonely isle, 
 Uphold me, Father, in my loneliness 
 A little longer ! aid me, give me strength 
 Not to tell her, never to let her know. 
 My children too ! must I not speak to these ? 
 They know me not. I should betray myself. 
 Never : no father's kiss for me the girl 
 So like her mother, and the boy, my son.' 
 
 There speech and thought and nature fail'd a little, 
 And he lay tranced ; but when he rose and paced 
 Back towards his solitary home again, 
 All down the long and narrow street he went 
 Beating it in upon his weary brain, 
 As though it were the burthen of a song, 
 ' Not to tell her, never to let her know.' " 
 
 Amateur performances, I am afraid, have done 
 much to destroy the old mystery and romance of the 
 Stage. I believe the lack of enthusiasm in our audiences 
 is due to this. There is a deficiency of lively suscep- 
 tibility, and a want of interest in the grand works 
 which constitute our national drama. Ah ! this is 
 the crying shame of the age. That a country first 
 in civilization and progress, reverencing old institu- 
 tions, supporting and encouraging Art, ancient and 
 modern, should disregard the claims of our standard 
 plays, and allow our theatres to degenerate into 
 \ mere places of amusement, and these not always of 
 . the most creditable character. His Royal Highness 
 the Prince of "Wales said " he encouraged the 
 
14 
 
 theatre because lie considered it a noble institution 
 deserving support." I believe he felt the import- 
 ance of what he said. The present generation forgets 
 how greatly it is indebted to the Stage for all the 
 blessings of civilization it enjoys. Everything worth 
 knowing was taught from the Stage. Theatres and 
 \ pictures were the books of the unlearned, and the 
 unlearned were five-sixths of the population. It is 
 absurd to shut our eyes to its vast intellectual and 
 moral power. Let us frankly acknowledge them, and 
 do our best to restore its usefulness and purity, un- 
 affected by jealousy and the puritanical sophisms of 
 people who find harm in nearly everything outside 
 a church. Let who will search for the bad, and 
 much good may it do them when they have found 
 it ; but let us endeavour to show that the man is 
 not degraded by the art, and that it is not beneath 
 the dignity of a gentleman to be an actor. 
 
 The Saturday Review of the 1st July, 1871, 
 in an interesting and clever article on theatres, 
 says : " There is evidence of the existence of 
 theatres contemporaneously in Greece and Hin- 
 dostan. Even the Chinese possessed theatres 
 from time immemorial, and the ancient Peruvians 
 had both Tragedies and Comedies." They must 
 have invented the Art for themselves, and I have no 
 doubt that in each case a very old and interesting 
 history of Dramatic Art is attached to them. I am 
 sorry I have no time to go into this branch of the 
 
15 
 
 subject, so must content myself with the earliest 
 records of civilized times. The records handed 
 down to us from the Greeks will bring us in an 
 almost unbroken chain of events to the present day. 
 
 Acting derived its origin from the religious 
 orgies of the shepherds and tillers at the festivals 
 of the god Dionysus, at the Feast of Bacchus. 
 Dithyrambic songs were bawled to the populace, 
 and the performers used to besmear their faces 
 and rush in amongst the people like wild 
 beasts, yelling and howling and madly gesticulating, 
 inspiring awe and terror wherever they went. These 
 yellings and bowlings, and mad gesticulations must, 
 however, have had some coherence and method in 
 them, for we hear that, after a time, the one having 
 more voice or talent than the rest was allowed to 
 entertain the audience assembled in the Temple, for 
 a few minutes by himself, between the religious 
 portions of the service. The immortal Homer (if 
 there ever was such a poet, which is doubted by 
 many), 1000 B.C., is said by some to have been the 
 originator of the art. I do not think, however, this 
 is at all probable. True, we read that when reduced 
 by poverty and old age, he wandered from place to 
 place reciting his verses and begging his bread, but 
 there is no evidence that he followed the example of 
 these violent performers, with their yells and howls, 
 and mad gesticulations. 
 
 Two Icarians, Susarion and Thespis, certainly 
 
1(5 
 
 were the first who made a business of it (580 and 
 540 B.C.). Susarion is mentioned in connection 
 with Comedy, which at that time was a kind of 
 village sport, ridiculing the follies and vices of the 
 day. 5 u t Thespis, inspired with tragic power, dis- 
 dained Comedy, and so impressed his audience 
 with his recitals that children were frightened 
 into fits. I presume he enjoys the credit of 
 being the founder of the Art, from his having 
 introduced Tragedy, which was at once recognized 
 as worthy the attention of the more sensible and 
 refined inhabitants. He engaged Choerilus and 
 others to assist him. This Choerilus was really the 
 first actor. He used to act the pieces Thespis re- 
 cited, and subsequently was employed by Phrynicus 
 for his female characters. They were all exalted on 
 a cart, or scaffold on wheels, erected for the purpose. 
 Each in his turn recited some mythological 
 piece in the hearing of the people. Comedy was 
 revived after the destruction of Megara, about 485 
 B.C., by Epicharmus, who excluded vulgar buffoonery 
 and established regular plots, in which the comus, or 
 company, sustained the dialogue, modelling his 
 dramatic wit on its more fortunate rival Tragedy. 
 
 ^Eschylus, an acute Athenian general, perceived 
 the influence Thespis possessed over the masses, and 
 foresaw the good that might result from regulated 
 performances. Accordingly he built a theatre very 
 much after the fashion of our theatres, except that 
 
17 
 
 it was too large for a roof, and was therefore left 
 open to the sky. You may see the ruins of the same 
 kind of edifice at Pompeii. The Amphitheatre at 
 Pompeii was built after JEschylus' plan. He it was 
 who gave names to the different parts of the theatre 
 as the Scenery, Proscenium, Hyposcenium, Para- 
 scenium, Thymele, Orchestra; some of which, you 
 see, we retain to this day. Hissing and the much 
 abused liberty of applause come down to us direct 
 from the Greeks. At first the people were admitted 
 free. So vast was the concourse, and so great the desire 
 to obtain admission, that frequent quarrels, and 
 sometimes bloodshed, ensued. To prevent this, the 
 magistrates ordered that the price of admission 
 should be 2 oboli (2^d.) ; but in order that this 
 regulation should not seem to oppress the poor, or 
 prevent them witnessing the performances, it was 
 ordered that each spectator should receive his 
 " oboli" out of the public stock. This custom was 
 shamefully abused, and became at length the occa- 
 sion of much slander and bitter invective. 
 
 jEschylus was an author as well as a general 
 of the army, and wrote tragedies for the Stage, 
 which we have to this day ; but they are un- 
 interesting, except as classics, to the present 
 generation. His style is rather abstruse and some- 
 what disconnected ; but he is wonderfully imagina- 
 tive and full of vigorous thought. To him must be 
 ascribed the foundation of the Drama. He was the 
 
18 
 
 first to establish on the stage groups and dialogues, 
 and he dressed the characters in suitable costumes. 
 Of course, these costumes were ideal, for I suppose 
 he knew what the gods wore no better than ourselves. 
 Prometheus and Hercules were padded to gigantic 
 dimensions, the cothurnus was added to give them 
 height, and the mask, with some portion of the body 
 attached to it, was placed on the actor's shoulders, 
 so that the voice came from the stomach. All the 
 characters wore masks, and as the theatres were 
 capable of holding over 30,000 persons, some of 
 the audience must have required " telescopes to see 
 and ear trumpets to hear." It was found necessary 
 to affix speaking trumpets to the masks. Imagine 
 how hideous ! The masks themselves were never 
 beautiful ; some of those invented by -^schylus were 
 so ghastly that they frightened several children to 
 death; and with a speaking trumpet like monster 
 lips projecting, they must have presented a most 
 frightful spectacle. There is no wonder the poor 
 children went into convulsions at the sight. 
 
 The works of .^Eschylus are distinguished by 
 sublimity rather than by polish by vastness of con- 
 ception rather than by fineness of detail. They are the 
 work of a man who could hew a colossus out of a rock, 
 but disdained to paint men's heads on pebbles. His 
 " Prometheus Bound" is the grandest of his poems, 
 and a perfect illustration of his thought and style. It is 
 the very incarnation of the Spirit of Tragedy. There 
 
19 
 
 everything is vast, colossal, and gigantic ; a super- 
 human hero, he stands out bold and massive like 
 the Caucasian Peak to which he is chained ; a 
 solitary figure towering up before the vision, and 
 gathering all the darkness of the scene into his own 
 agonized but victorious being; the work of a sculptor 
 who was at home with the immortals, and disdained 
 to chisel less than a god. 
 
 You can easily conceive what an imposing 
 effect must have been produced upon the susceptible 
 and imaginative Greeks by creations so vast and 
 terrific in their character. Nor will you be sur- 
 prised (for nothing exhausts the mind so soon as 
 the tension of thought excited by sublimity) that 
 the advent of a gentler and milder poet was imme- 
 diately recognised, and felt as a relief. It was a 
 bitter trial and disappointment to poor -/Eschylus, 
 after years of uninterrupted command of the stage, 
 to see the government prize in Dramatic Poetry 
 wrested from him by so young a man as Sophocles, 
 who, at the age of twenty (some say twenty-five) 
 carried it off amidst universal acclamation. But it 
 was only the natural reaction of the public mind 
 which had been oppressed with the gloomy grandeurs 
 of ^schylus seeking relief in the softness and 
 sweetness of a sunnier style the wail and swell of 
 the solemn organ giving place to the gentler notes 
 of an ^Eolian harp, that was stealing up like a "gale 
 
20 
 
 from salubrious lands," and soothing the sense of 
 the wearied world. 
 
 The dramas of -^schylus, as compared with 
 those of Sophocles, may be likened to those tre- 
 mendous productions of Nature which geology 
 reveals to us as the predecessors of the smaller but 
 more beautiful creatures that belong to the age of 
 man. Everything in ^schylus is huge, vast, and 
 wonderful, but comparatively harsh, irregular, and 
 imperfect, like all that belongs to a formative period. 
 There is none of that subtle grace and sweetness of 
 movement, those fine distinctions and delicate de- 
 lineations which characterize the productions of 
 maturer Art. And though the dramas of Sophocles 
 lack the demoniac energy which elevates ^Eschylus 
 to the rank of a god, yet he has all that tender 
 grace and genial beauty which invest him with the 
 diviner interest of a man. 
 
 Little didJ3schylus imagine on his return from 
 the battle of Salamis, in which he had fought so 
 bravely for his country and his gods, that in the 
 boy who danced so gracefully at the head of that 
 chorus of blooming youths, who sang the triumphal 
 paean (composed by himself) round the trophy of 
 the victors, a new and poetic era was dawning upon 
 Greece, and that he was destined to wrest from the 
 poet-hero the laurels that would immortalize him 
 beyond those of war. 
 
21 
 
 It is, in fact, by a comparison of the writings of 
 these two representative men that we obtain the 
 clearest view of the change which had passed over 
 Greek ideas since ^Eschylus commenced his sublime 
 career. His cradle was rocked by the hand of Des- 
 ,tiny. He grew up with that fearful idea for his 
 tutor and companion. It haunted his imagination 
 like a dreadful phantom. He saw everything 
 through its distorting medium. It shaped his 
 creed, it coloured his fancy, it ruled his life ; 
 nature, man, society, the world, all were shadowed 
 in its portentous gloom. No wonder that every- 
 thing loomed up in the darkness to unnatural 
 proportions, that his conceptions were wild and 
 terrible like his creed, that the natural exuber- 
 ance of the poet's heart found its outlet in wild 
 shouts around the altar of Fate, and that the whole 
 universe sprang beneath the stroke of his magic 
 wand into a colossal Temple to the Phantom of 
 Doom. 
 
 But the times had changed since ^schylus 
 was a boy. Men had set themselves to re-consider 
 this dreadful creed, which had gloomed their lives 
 and weighed upon their energies like a frightful 
 nightmare. Cracks and rents had begun to shew 
 themselves in the dismal prison which had closed 
 them round. They saw the benevolent sunshine 
 struggling through. They felt that Destiny was not 
 the ruler of the world, or that at least his kingdom 
 
22 
 
 was limited and divided. They saw that there were 
 other ideas than Fate and Necessity ; that there was 
 liberty, beauty, benevolence and hope. They had 
 taken the first step to a nobler faith the brave 
 step of " honest doubt." They had become sceptics 
 in relation to the old and the false. They were 
 beginning to search for the new and the true. 
 Their eyes were opened to the beauty and harmony 
 and order of things ; and just as when a mist rises 
 from the landscape everything assumes its just pro- 
 portions and natural hues ; objects which had 
 seemed strange become familiar, and others which 
 had been magnified and distorted to the vision, 
 shrink to their native size and shape; so when 
 the dark cloud of Destiny, which had rested upon 
 Greece in the days of JEschylus, lifted its walls and 
 floated away in the growing light, the whole world 
 lay like a new creation before the feet of men, and 
 everything was fresh and beautiful and good. 
 
 Now Sophocles was the exponent of this new 
 order. He saw the beauty, and put it into song. 
 He saw the goodness, and embodied it in Vision. He 
 uttered to men their own new thoughts. He caught 
 the new revelation of the world, and interpreted to 
 them the dream. He sang of Freedom instead of 
 Destiny. He celebrated the glory and honour of 
 Virtue, instead of the glory and honour of Fate. He 
 traced the miseries of the world to their real source 
 "-the vices of mankind, instead of the imaginary 
 
23 
 
 caprices of the gods ; and the subtle threads of human 
 history, which they had been taught to believe were 
 woven by the fingers of remorseless Destiny, he 
 placed in the hands of the individuals themselves, 
 and instructed them in that greatest lesson of 
 Christianity the divine freedom and responsibility 
 of man. 
 
 Hence we find in each of his tragedies that idea 
 of a remorseless Destiny, so familiar to us in the 
 pages of the gloomy Jllschylus, that exaggerated 
 truth reduced to its just and natural dimensions. 
 It is no longer Fate that pursues men to destruction, 
 but Justice that merely follows in their own footsteps; 
 and the stages of their progress, and the workings 
 of their minds are alike delineated with a prophet's 
 insight and an artist's skill ; while the whole is 
 crowned with that true recognition of the work and 
 influence of a higher Power, which issues not in a 
 stupefying terror, but in calm reverence and intelli- 
 gent fear. Shut men down under a sense of fate, and 
 drama in the true sense is impossible. Men are 
 then but tools and victims, not contrivers and 
 workmen. But admit the sense of freedom and 
 responsibility, and at once there is room for the play 
 of motive, and the complication of interest, the 
 development of character, and the progress of 
 Drama. It was this that Sophocles did. This was 
 his work, and by this he has earned the perpetual 
 gratitude of everyone who rejoices in the conscious- 
 
24 
 
 ness of independence, and boasts in, the sacred 
 accountability of the soul. 
 
 There is no greater trial to a man of genius 
 than to see himself dethroned from his long supre- 
 macy by the inevitable revolution of poetic taste ; 
 nor is there anything more difficult for such a man 
 than to learn that he has done his appointed work, 
 and to recognise the gifts and calling of his successor. 
 The sublime ^Bschylus was not gifted beyond other 
 mortals in this kind of divination ; and so, broken- 
 hearted by the success of his youthful rival, he 
 retired to Sicily, to nurse his wounded pride, and 
 die. But Time adjusts all claims ; and rectifies the 
 injustice of partial generations; and so it happens 
 that while Sophocles still shines with the equalized 
 radiance of his comprehensive genius, JSschylus has 
 re-ascended the firmament of fame, and dazzles the 
 world with his inaccessible splendours as he did in 
 the glorious days of old. 
 
 We have said that -^Bschylus retired to Sicily 
 to escape witnessing the success of his rival, and it 
 may perhaps be regarded as another illustration of 
 the singular manner in which the tragic and the 
 comic are blended together in our strangely 
 chequered and diversified life, that this great master 
 of the tragic art, this sublime author of the tragic 
 inspiration, should have met his death by the fall of 
 a tortoise which an eagle dropped on his bald head. 
 
25 
 
 Eagles carry tortoises to a great height and let them 
 fall with wonderful accuracy on stones to break 
 them. I suppose this eagle mistook poor .^Eschylus' 
 bald pate for a stone. Had the eagle become 
 envious, I wonder, at the flights of this magnificent 
 being? Was it jealous of his undaunted approaches to 
 the Sun? Or angry at his familiar sport with the bolts 
 of the Olympian Thunderer, did it thus resent his 
 intrusion into its own domain ? Or had the spirit 
 of the comic Aristophanes, by way of heralding 
 his arrival in the world, suddenly entered into this 
 sagacious biped, and dropping upon him really from 
 " the clouds," finished his bombast and his career 
 together ? 
 
 According to Miiller it was the poem of 
 "Antigone" by which Sophocles carried off the 
 prize ; a work which was not only frequently acted 
 on the Athenian Stage, but was actually reproduced 
 in London in 1845, with all the ancient appoint- 
 ments, and with Helen Faucit for the heroine. 
 His " CEdipus Eex " is almost a modern plot, but 
 the " CEdipus Colonus " is undoubtedly the tenderer 
 and sweeter composition. 
 
 There is magnificent scope for the dramatic 
 poet in the touching story. It is one of the simplest 
 and yet the most horrible in the whole realm of 
 classic fiction. An oracle had foretold that CEdipus 
 should slay his father and be married to his mother, 
 
26 
 
 and the drama of Sophocles is the development of 
 this cruel destiny. Let me briefly tell you how these 
 tragic events came to pass : Laius, King of Thebes, 
 had married a lady named Jocasta. But she bore 
 him no children. Anxious to obtain a son to con- 
 tinue his royal line, he sought the aid of the god at 
 Delphi. The god declared, by the mouth of the 
 oracle, that he should have a son, but immediately 
 turned his joy into sorrow by the prediction that 
 this son should be his murderer. In due course a 
 son was born to him, and, in order to evade the 
 predicted fate, the king committed his new-born 
 infant to the charge of a slave, with the imperative 
 command to leave him to perish on Mount Cithseron. 
 The command was obeyed, and, with cords 
 passed through his tender feet, he was left hang- 
 ing to a tree in some wild ravine of that deso- 
 late region. But there is no evading the decrees 
 of Heaven. A shepherd discovered the helpless 
 babe, and moved by the spectacle of so much 
 misery, delivered him from his fate, and carried him 
 to his master, the King of Corinth. Now the King 
 of Corinth was in the same condition as the King of 
 Thebes had been before (Edipus was born. He also 
 was childless, and, like Laius, anxious to possess a 
 son to continue his royal line. Could anything be 
 more fortunate than this ? Was it not a gift sent straight 
 tohis wif eand himself from the gods ? Here was achild 
 a goodly child withal a child of unknown origin, 
 
27 
 
 too. What should hinder their adoption of him for 
 their son ? Would not their rejection of him be, in 
 fact, a spurning of the goodness of Heaven ? So 
 they took him and nourished him, and named him, 
 and brought him up as their own, and never told 
 him of the secret of his birth. But secrets will come 
 out, and though kindness may keep them, malice will 
 not. As soon as he was grown up, therefore, some 
 spiteful tongue dropped an insinuation about his 
 obscure parentage. He need not take upon himself 
 such airs. He was no king's son. Nobody knew, 
 in fact, where he came from. A mere foundling, 
 that's what he was ; in all likelihood only a chance 
 child of some common rustics. Stung with the 
 insult he left the court, and, as fate would have it, 
 went straight to that same oracle at Delphi to which 
 his luckless father had gone before him. That oracle 
 told him with the obscure brevity for which its voices^ 
 were celebrated, to shun his native land, or he would 
 become the murderer of his father and the husband 
 of his mother. Shocked by the response, he turned 
 his back on Corinth, his native land in supposition, 
 and flew to Thebes, his native land in reality. On 
 his way thither he encountered, in a narrow pass, a 
 chariot proceeding from Thebes to Delphi ; and see- 
 ing him in the way, the charioteer, with the usual 
 insolence of a servant of the great, commanded the 
 youth to stand out of the road. This insult was too 
 much for one of (Edipus's rank and position, and, 
 
28 
 
 in the heat of his wrath, he slew the insolent 
 charioteer on the spot. The occupant of the chariot 
 instantly rose up to avenge the death of his servant, 
 and as instantly fell beneath the hand of the mur- 
 derer. Thus was one part of the Delphic oracle 
 fulfilled, for the occupant of that chariot was nona 
 other than Laius. CEdipus went on his way, and 
 knew not that he had left his father dead on the 
 road. 
 
 On arriving at his destination he consequently 
 found that Thebes had lost its king, but that he had 
 any connection with that loss he had not the remotest 
 idea. So far as his own conscience went, he was as 
 innocent of the crime as any of its citizens, and, 
 doubtless shared, by a sympathetic sorrow, the grief 
 that had fallen upon a bereaved kingdom. Here, 
 however, his connection with the matter would have 
 ended had it not been for another calamity which 
 had visited the land. A strange monster, called 
 the Sphinx, was ravaging the country, and daily 
 devouring its luckless inhabitants. This monster 
 consented to quit their territory only on condition 
 that they should solve a riddle which itself had pro- 
 posed ; each failure, however, to solve it correctly 
 to be expiated by the life of the person who had so 
 failed in the attempt. Solution after solution was 
 offered, but no sooner offered than pronounced incor- 
 rect, and citizen after citizen paid the penalty of his 
 incompetence and presumption. The riddle was 
 
29 
 
 accordingly given up in despair, and the people 
 resigned themselves helplessly to their fate. Driven 
 by the extreme exigencies of their position, the 
 authorities offered the crown of Thebes and the hand 
 of the royal widow, Jocasta, to any one who should 
 solve the dreadful enigma : and CEdipus, attracted by 
 so brilliant a prize, and smarting under the loss of his 
 suppositional rights as the lawful heir of the Corinthian 
 diadem, is resolved to attempt the deadly secret. 
 The attempt is determined. The journey is made. 
 The fatal rock is reached. There sits the Sphinx, 
 grim and horrible. At her feet lie the bones of those 
 who have perished. But brave and fearless he goes 
 up with his solution. With unquivering lip he utters 
 it aloud. It is right : and in a moment the monster 
 has flung herself headlong. A fountain of spray 
 glancing in the sun a sheet of foam spread- 
 ing on the sea and the plague of Thebes has dis- 
 appeared for ever. The victor returns to claim his 
 prize ; and we can almost hear the laughter of the 
 mocking fiends mingling with the shouts of the ran- 
 somed people as CEdipus receives the hand of Jocasta, 
 and sits proudly down on the vacant throne his 
 father's throne with his mother for his bride, and 
 murder and incest for the bearers of his train. 
 
 And now for the present his dark destiny seems 
 to slumber ; but it is the slumber of the volcano 
 that clothes itself with verdure and tempts men to 
 build their towers and temples on its smiling slopes, 
 
30 
 
 that it may presently open its gigantic jaws and en- 
 gulf their storied pomp and pride. 
 
 So it was with (Edipus. The dark cloud of 
 misfortune had rolled away. He had lands, riches, 
 fame and honour. Children were born to him, and 
 he was happy in their love. He had a faithful wife 
 and a loyal kingdom. The enthusiasm which had 
 hailed him to his well-earned throne had settled into 
 a deeper and worthier reverence. He had taken 
 root in his people's hearts ; his character had con- 
 firmed his kingly authority, and his reign had justi- 
 fied their acceptance of his rule. No king so pros- 
 perous, honoured, beloved, as the far-famed (Edipus, 
 the conqueror of the Sphinx. But all this prosperity 
 was hollow as the grave. The volcanic fire was 
 smouldering underneath. He had unconsciously 
 reared the fabric of his glory on the thinnest crust 
 of crumbling soil, and beneath was the blazing fur- 
 nace of doom. He seems, in fact, to have been 
 permitted to pile up the edifice of his regal fortune 
 terrace upon terrace, and tier upon tier, only that 
 his downfall might be the more disastrous, and 
 that the dark powers that ruled his destiny might 
 obtain a mightier celebration of their sway. 
 
 "We have no time to trace, save with the briefest 
 outline, the successive events which brought on this 
 catastrophe the new plague that fell upon the 
 people their natural turning for counsel and assist- 
 ance to him who had delivered them from their former 
 
31 
 
 distress the embassy lie despatched to the fatal 
 oracle the return of the messenger burdened 
 with a knowledge of the double crimes that rested 
 on the King, and for which the plague had 
 been sent upon his people the gradual unfold- 
 ing of this fatal knowledge first, that the man 
 whom he had killed that day on his flight from 
 Corinth, in the narrow pass, was Laius, the 
 King of Thebes ; and then, by the testimony of 
 the old shepherd, his own identification as the cast- 
 off child of that very Laius, with its instantaneous 
 burst of blinding horrors that he had murdered 
 his father that he had married his mother that 
 his children were beings for which there was no 
 name in the whole category of human relationships 
 his sons yet his brothers, his sisters yet his 
 daughters a mixture of relations too horrible to 
 contemplate, and yet wound about his heart with 
 the inextricable tendrils of a father's love and the 
 sweet associations of years of bliss. No wonder that 
 the flame of conflicting emotions, sweeping through 
 his soul like contending whirlwinds, tossed it into 
 a chaos of pitiless passion, in which he tore out his 
 eyes that they might look no more upon the dread- 
 ful ruin, yet felt not the pain in the madness of his 
 grief, and knew not that he had done it till, waking 
 from the frenzy, he groped for the daylight, and disco- 
 vered that he was blind. 
 
 But so much sorrow must have a blissful close. 
 
32 
 
 Justice must be done to the sufferer at last. Bitterly 
 has he expiated his unwilling crimes, and expiation 
 must be followed by deliverance and victory. 
 Accordingly his death is invested with the glory 
 of a supernatural call. Even the elements them- 
 selves take part in the celebration. Lightnings 
 flash and thunders roll. Suddenly a " still, small 
 voice " breaks upon his ear a voice which comes to 
 himself alone louder to him than the roll of 
 thunder, though soft and gentle as a zephyr's sigh. 
 " Follow me !" he cries to his trembling daughters, 
 -follow me where I go, but touch me not. " Follow 
 me ! " he exclaims to the King of Athens, who has 
 been watching his inspiration with wonder and alarm. 
 
 lf He hears a voice they cannot hear; 
 He sees a hand they cannot see. 
 It beckons him away." 
 
 Blind though he be, he is their Leader now, though 
 whither he goes they cannot come. He climbs the 
 ridge with slow and stately steps that err not from 
 the path nor stumble in the ascent, while they walk 
 behind at a reverend distance, overwhelmed with 
 wonder and speechless with fear. At length he 
 reaches the grove of the Furies that grove which, 
 we should have thought, would have stricken him 
 with the greatest alarm ; but the sweet sense of 
 reconciliation in his soul clothes even that fearful 
 place with an attractive charm, and changes its dark 
 goddesses of vengeance into the gentle Eumenides, 
 
33 
 
 the ministers of peace ; lie batlies Ms body in the 
 cleansing stream, and robes it in linen clean and 
 white ; when suddenly the thunder rolls under- 
 ground, accompanied by a voice terrible to the 
 watchers, but full of sublime fascination to him 
 
 Come, CEdipus, why pause we to depart ? 
 Come, (Edipus, for thou hast tarried long ! 
 
 Clasping his daughters in his arms once more, he 
 bids the King to tarry there alone, and reverently 
 watch for the approaching end. What that end 
 was, is wrapt in mystery ; whether, like Elijah, of 
 sacred story, a chariot of fire whirled him away, or 
 whether lie was enshrouded and entombed with 
 the mysterious rites of a supernatural burial, 
 we know not. We only know that when his 
 anxious daughters returned to the spot they found 
 the King of Athens alone, with his hand over 
 his eyes, as if they had been blinded by some 
 awful vision ; but of CEdipus there remained neither 
 robe nor rag, nor bone nor dust 
 
 " His end, if any ever was, was wonderful ! " 
 
 Now you can easily conceive how such a story 
 as this, developed by the skill of a great artist, and 
 clothed in the glowing language of a poet, would 
 powerfully affect the sensitive Athenians. You can 
 imagine them borne along by the current of their 
 emotions, as scene after scene is presented to 
 their gaze; horror, pity, suspense, surprise, joy, 
 
34 
 
 sorrow, like cloud and sunshine, passing in rapid 
 changes over that vast sea of anxious faces ; 
 and all these emotions mixing, blending and settling 
 at last into one thought and one feeling, the deep 
 satisfaction of a sympathetic triumph as this tale 
 of horrors draws to its close, and, with man delivered 
 and Heaven reconciled, (Edipus passes from his soli- 
 tude and sorrow to the society and repose of the 
 immortal gods. 
 
 Sophocles, in his triumphant career, is reputed 
 to have written some 113 plays. Few only are 
 authentic. I presume many were written by his dis- 
 ciples, as pictures are supposed to have been painted 
 by Titian, Eubens, Rembrandt, and many others, who 
 have left more works than it would be possible for 
 one man to execute in the short space allotted to 
 human beings. 
 
 Passing over numerous minor authors, we next 
 come to Euripides never equal in dramatic skill to 
 Sophocles yet full of pathos and lyric beauty, and 
 more perfectly developing the Dramatic Art. He, too, 
 contributed nearly 100 plays, but only 18 are extant. 
 He died at Macedon, whilst on a visit to King Arche- 
 laus, from injuries inflicted by the King's hounds. 
 Archelaus so respected and appreciated his great merit 
 that he refused to give up the body to the Athe- 
 nians, who erected a monument to his memory and 
 placed it in the theatre with this inscription : " The 
 whole of Greece is the monument of Euripides ; 
 
Macedonian earth covers only his bones." He 
 was shamefully satirised by Aristophanes ; a dash- 
 ing, dare-devil fellow, who satirised nearly every 
 one and everything philosophers, statesmen, poets, 
 the people, and even the gods themselves. So gross 
 and extravagant were his ideas that a law was passed 
 forbidding any living person to be represented or 
 named on the stage. 
 
 Now, you will see from their appreciation 
 of these tragedians that the Athenians were a 
 great and gifted people, honouring the stage, and 
 giving it their heartiest support a support which 
 was not withheld even in tumultuous times, and 
 continued to the decline of their power and influence 
 in Greece. Illustrious, indeed, was the land which 
 produced so many gloriously distinguished authors, 
 and left a monument of genius on which even the 
 proud Romans looked with reverence, and which 
 kindled in their hearts the new inspiration that shone 
 forth in the works of Virgil, Cicero, Horace, and 
 Juvenal, and lit up their country with a truer glory 
 than all their exploits and renown in war. 
 
 So great was the glory with which the stage was 
 surrounded, that the Theatre was upheld in all its im- 
 portance. The actors were called Theatrical Philo- 
 sophers. The Theatre was considered a philosophical 
 school. Euripides and others delivered moral lectures 
 during their tragedies. The Athenians were enthu- 
 
36 
 
 siastic in their devotion to the Art, and held no cir- 
 cumstances degrading which were connected with it. 
 ^schylus and Sophocles, though they were soldiers 
 and statesmen, lost nothing by their association with 
 the Stage. The great authors of the period were all 
 proud to act the parts they wrote. The Theatre was 
 in fact upheld in every way, and its power and in- 
 fluence in the State were unbounded. 
 
 Demosthenes, indeed, directed his eloquence 
 against it. But the fact of his doing so only shows 
 how powerful an institution it had become, and how 
 deeply it was rooted in the public esteem. In the 
 first and second of his Olynthians he approaches it 
 with caution ; but in the third he attacks it boldly, 
 and says, " I mean those laws which discourage and 
 oppress the soldiery by appropriating to the main- 
 tenance of our Theatre that money which ought to 
 be applied to a provision for those who daily venture 
 their lives for their country. When you have reformed 
 those abuses which give away the bread of the sol- 
 dier to citizens idle and useless, and which squander 
 in pensions to mimics and buffoons what might be 
 converted to the support of men of honour." But 
 it appears to me that the magistrates were worse than 
 the actors, for they took the public money, while the 
 actors received it as a benefaction from the State. 
 Demosthenes says of these magistrates, " Behold, 
 the despicable creatures raised all at once from dirt 
 to opulence, from the lowest obscurity to the highest 
 
37 
 
 honour, and how have their fortunes and their power 
 increased ! " But it is a proof how deeply the foun- 
 dations of this institution had been laid, that the 
 fierce assaults of this mightiest of orators only esta- 
 blished the fabric they were intended to demolish ; 
 for the Athenians, having already passed a lawmaking 
 it death to touch upon that article of reformation, 
 did not revoke it even at his bidding. 
 
 They were assembled in the Theatre (every- 
 body went in those days) when the news of the total 
 defeat of their army before Syracuse arrived. The 
 Theatre was full of old and young matrons, maidens, 
 and children relatives of those who had fallen. 
 There was scarcely a spectator who, besides sorrowing 
 as a patriot, was not called upon to mourn the death 
 of a friend or relation. But spreading their mantles 
 before their faces they commanded the performance 
 to proceed, and, thus veiled, continued to give it 
 their attention to the last. National pride may have 
 had something to do with it ; but appreciation of the 
 Dramatic Art must have had its influence also. 
 
 The Theatre came to the conquering Romans with 
 the other Fine Arts, and at first must have been very 
 highly estimated, for the magistrates introduced it 
 on the occasion of a plague to appease the incensed 
 deities. I do not know whether it had the desired 
 effect, but for a long time it was undoubtedly 
 popular. The Tragedies were opposed to their reli- 
 
gion, so they encouraged Comedy. We first hear of 
 clowns and fairies in the Roman period, and the 
 hideous mask of ^Eschylus was supplanted by black 
 and white masks, such as harlequins wear now in 
 our pantomimes. That little practice is above 
 2,000 (B.C. 146) years old. 
 
 Not that the Romans ever distinguished them- 
 selves by dramatic genius as the Greeks had done. 
 They admired, but could not rival, the mighty works 
 of the people they had subdued. In this respect 
 they discovered the humiliating truth that the 
 greatest human ability has its limit ; and the 
 mighty sea of Grecian genius thundered its defiance 
 to the encroachments of their insatiate pride : " Thus 
 far shalt thou come, and no farther; and here shall thy 
 proud waves be stayed !" The fact is, the Drama was 
 a natural production of the Greek race. It was a 
 plant indigenous to Grecian soil. It was one of the 
 many developments of their myriad-sided culture. It 
 was born in their birth ; it grew with their growth, 
 it strengthened with their strength ; and when 
 transplanted in a foreign land, like other exotics it 
 felt the chill of an uncongenial climate, and after 
 languishing on through a period of fluctuating 
 fortunes, it rapidly drooped, withered, and died. 
 
 The Greeks were a people of many ideas ; of 
 varied culture ; sensitive to all kinds of impressions ; 
 dive to every phase of human character, feeling, and 
 
39 
 
 experience ; tremulous as a lake to each breath of sen- 
 timent, and reflecting like it, with harmonious com- 
 pleteness, the beauty of earth and the tenderness 
 of heaven ; the very people in whose midst the varied, 
 many-featured, all-reflecting Drama would naturally 
 spring into being, rise into vigour, and cling to with 
 the tenacity of a child to its parent of a citizen to 
 his home. 
 
 The Romans, on the other hand, were a people 
 of one idea ; of one purpose, of one ambition, and of 
 one history. The symbol of their character was the 
 victorious eagle ; not the eagle that soars to the 
 sun in undazzled contemplation, but the eagle that 
 swoops upon the prey with invincible might. What 
 time had they to watch the progress of a drama, 
 hastening, as they were, to the subjugation of the 
 world ? or what interest could they take in the ficti- 
 tious fortunes of an imaginary hero, absorbed as they 
 were in the dread realities of kingdoms overturned, 
 and monarchs led in ignominious chains ? No, they 
 were acting too great a drama to care for the con- 
 templation of a spectacle on the stage ; a drama 
 that was in fact a terrific tragedy the most 
 terrific which the world has ever seen a colossal 
 empire built with the wrecks of a hundred kingdoms, 
 and cemented with the blood of a hundred monarchs, 
 to become, like the Pyramids, the sepulchre of their 
 glory, looming up in the deserts of a wasted world. 
 When I say, therefore, that the Romans looked 
 
40 
 
 upon the works of the Greek dramatists with ambi- 
 tion, I mean that they looked upon them with the 
 same kind of feelings with which they had cast their 
 rapacious eyes upon the land itself ; they were 
 jealous of the glory and distinction which the Greeks 
 had attained, and desirous of wresting from them 
 the glittering prize. But this is a glory which 
 demands other qualities for its attainment than 
 mere ambition. The prizes of Art are not to be 
 secured like those of war. The acquirement of these 
 proceeds from a force and energy within ; an artistic 
 sense, innate and inborn ; inspired by the breath of 
 the munificent Creator, and nourished by influences 
 provided by Himself. And apart from this inward 
 fitness, this spiritual endowment, this native 
 instinct, this Divine birthright, this original, un- 
 impartable and inalienable faculty, a mere ambition 
 to grasp its prize will be but a plucking at the stars 
 in heaven the proof of ignorance, presumption, 
 and folly. 
 
 Now, this was the case with the Romans. They 
 tried to emulate the illustrious Greeks, and in this 
 department they signally failed. The few specimens 
 of tragic Drama which have survived the inroads of 
 oblivious Time are no more worthy of comparison 
 with the pure Greek models which they were intended 
 to eclipse than the rudest sketches of some tyro in 
 painting would deserve a place beside the immortal 
 glories of Raphael or Angelo. They had the poetic 
 
41 
 
 faculty, but not the dramatic. They could celebrate 
 the glory of their country, but they had not the 
 scope of vision, nor the breadth or delicacy of sym- 
 pathy, that could create distinct and diversified 
 characters, and breathe into their nostrils the breath 
 of life. Vast spectacles and magnificent processions 
 occupied the place of fine delineation and tragic 
 pathos celebrations which impressed them with a 
 sense of the greatness of Rome rather than the 
 greatness of an individual will erecting itself against 
 its circumstances, and triumphing over destiny. So 
 that after all we must return to those great Trage- 
 dians who sit in Athens on their unchallenged thrones. 
 ^Eschylus clothed in the thunders of his world- 
 shaking terror Sophocles shining in the beautiful 
 radiance of his orbicular perfection Euripides 
 sounding the depths of the heart with his world- 
 moving pathos, and composing in their united power 
 and influence a triple fountain of blessing to mankind. 
 
 The introduction of Christianity accelerated the 
 decline of Dramatic Art. I have told you that the 
 Stage originated among the Pagans, and their 
 dramas were representations of the pagan gods. 
 All Dramatic literature was the Scripture of the 
 period. And you can see at once how shocking to 
 Christian believers, and opposed to Christian teach- 
 ing, the performance of it must have been. The 
 suppression of the Stage was regarded as one 
 of the first duties of the early followers of the 
 
42 
 
 Apostles. Not that the Apostles themselves ut- 
 tered a word in the denunciation of the Drama. 
 Even the Apostle Paul, who had received an 
 education in all the learning and philosophy of 
 the Greeks, and had mixed from his childhood 
 with a Greek population, never directs his assaults 
 against the Dramatic Art. On the contrary, he does 
 not disdain to quote from Dramatic authors, and he 
 actually incorporates their language in his inspired 
 words and writings. When addressing the philoso- 
 phers on Mars' Hill at Athens he illustrates his dis- 
 course and sends it home to their convictions by a 
 quotation : " As one of your own poets have said, 
 We also are his offspring." And in that magnificent 
 chapter which our English Church has appointed to 
 be read in her service of Burial there is another 
 quotation from a Dramatic author " Evil commu- 
 nications corrupt good manners." Thus the Apostle 
 of the Gentiles, with that wide range of intellect and 
 heart for which he was so remarkable, and which so 
 well fitted him for his mission to the heathen, seems 
 to have recognised the inspiration of all genius 
 Pagan as well as Jewish to have separated a noble 
 Art from its corruptions and abuses, and to have 
 anticipated the time when Christianity should 
 triumph over the heathen gods, not only by insti- 
 tuting a new worship, but by wresting the Arts from 
 their heathen associations ; impressing them with its 
 own ideas, and consecrating; them with other secular 
 
43 
 
 works to the advancement of civilisation and the 
 progress of mankind. But all were not blessed with 
 the foresight, sagacity, and large-heartedness of 
 Paul ; and we do not wonder, therefore, that in their 
 first revulsion from the corruptions of Paganism, the 
 early converts to Christianity rushed to the opposite 
 extreme, and in their haste to sweep away the 
 superstition they had escaped, rose up against the 
 Drama with undiscriminating vengeance rooted up 
 the good with the bad, the wheat with the tares, 
 and cast away the Art and the Idolatry together. It 
 remained for a wiser and calmer age to discern be- 
 tween the pure metal and its foul corrosions ; to 
 recover the gem from its ignominious burial in the 
 ruins of an extinct and perished superstition ; to 
 perceive its adaptability to a new vocation; to 
 lift it once more into usefulness and honour; and to 
 proclaim to the world the great truth which it was 
 in danger of forgetting amidst the mighty rush of new 
 ideas and the enthusiasm they had awakened, that 
 though an Art may be degraded by evil associations 
 and prostituted to base and corrupting uses, yet the 
 Art itself is still divine, and needs but to be passed 
 through the purifying fire of a moral reformation to 
 shine with the lustre of its original purity, and to 
 enhance the noblest treasures of mankind. 
 
 We cannot wonder, therefore, that Theatres 
 were discouraged and actors persecuted, and that 
 great men who a few years before would have up- 
 
44 
 
 held, should write against them as Tertullian did. 
 He said, " We avoid your shows and games because 
 they savour of superstition and idolatry, and we 
 dislike the entertainment as abhorring the Heathen 
 Eeligion on which it is founded." Tertullian was a 
 pagan, but became a Christian through witnessing 
 the heroic firmness of the martyrs. Before his time 
 Christianity was a consolation to the actor, who re- 
 quired no example of heroic firmness, no martyrdom, 
 as Tertullian did, nothing but the Holy Inspiration 
 to make him a Christian, and ultimately a martyr 
 
 " Once on the stage, in Rome's declining days, 
 An actor flourished, of no vulgar fame, 
 Nature's disciple, and Genist his name. 
 A noble object for his art he chose, 
 A martyr dying midst insulting foes ; 
 Tilled with the idea of the sacred part, 
 He felt a zeal beyond the reach of art, 
 While look and voice and gesture all expressed 
 A kindred ardour in the player's breast, 
 Till, as the flame through all his bosom ran 
 He lost the actor, and commenced the man; 
 Professed the faith his Pagan gods denied, 
 And what he acted then, he after died. 
 
 Lloyd. 
 
 The Stage remained under a cloud for nearly 
 two centuries, when it was made use of, for instruc- 
 tive purposes only, in the Miracle Plays. Gregory 
 of Nazianzen, an early father of the Church, is said to 
 have constructed a drama on " The Passion of our 
 Saviour," to counteract the profanities of the 
 
45 
 
 Heathen Stage. There you see was Stage against 
 Stage ; employed for the grandest teaching in the 
 world. That play, I believe, is occasionally performed 
 in Denmark and France, and a greatly improved 
 version in Germany. There was a most interesting 
 account of it in the Daily Telegraph of June 30 and 
 July 1, 1871. To my mind the Passion Play as acted 
 at Ammergau is high art living art. I can conceive 
 few things more intensely interesting. Those poor 
 peasants, taught only by the Great Word, represent- 
 ing and acting the grand story of the Old and New 
 Testament ; year by year bringing thousands to 
 witness the pictured scene, and teaching, aye 
 grandly teaching, the irreverence and scepticism of 
 the age the Divine truth of Christian love. Nothing 
 would give me greater pleasure than to hear among 
 those mountains the delightful story, which is ever 
 new, though old as the mountains themselves the 
 Divinely simple, yet Divinely profound story of the 
 Cross. 
 
 Years of comparative weakness and obscurity 
 now intervened, and Constantinople seems to have 
 been the first to emulate the Greeks in reviving and 
 establishing the old Dramatic spirit. From thence 
 it passed to Spain and Italy, early in the 16th cen- 
 tury. The first modern drama published in Spain 
 was Sophanisba, by Trissino, then followed (but 
 failed) the grand Babbiena, Macchiavelli, Gian- 
 battista de la Porta, and Ricchi (who attempted to 
 
46 
 
 overthrow classic taste), and Borghini Oddi, and M. 
 A. Buonaretti, who introduced Romantic Drama; 
 and in the 17th century Rinuccini wedded Music to 
 the Art, and created Melodrama. The Musica 
 Opera became so popular that it was heard from 
 Milan to Ravenna, and ultimately was made classic 
 by the genius of Zeno and Metastasio. After these 
 came Goldoni, Riccoboni, Gozzi, the bold and pas- 
 sionate Alfieri, Monti, Manzoni, Niccolini, Villena, 
 Santillana, Naharra, and Rueda ; and later, but not 
 later than the first half of the 17th century, came 
 Cervantes, Lopez de Yega, and Calderon, who fur- 
 nished standards for all the world, and with Mereto, 
 Tirso de Molina and Soils, the names of great 
 Dramatic Authors die. 
 
 Next in order of Dramatic progress, and as 
 having been the earliest to recognise the importance 
 of the Dramatic Art, comes France. The ancient 
 unities have been preserved by French writers with 
 as much rigour as if they had been old Greeks ; 
 probably owing to the criticisms of Boileau, who 
 denned the rules and laws which should constitute a 
 play, and for which the French have always enter- 
 tained the highest respect; while other countries 
 (England especially) have disregarded them. Their 
 first author of distinction was Jodelle, then came 
 Corneille, Moliere, Racine, and Voltaire. 
 
 Germany, slow in its appreciation of the Drama, 
 yet not so slow as England, boasts some six or seven 
 
47 
 
 great authors notably Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller 
 who undoubtedly raised the Drama to exquisite 
 perfection, and earned for themselves undying fame. 
 And so we come to England, ever tardy to recognise 
 true genius, and fully carrying out the proverb that 
 " a prophet has no honour in his own country ;" yet 
 when awakened at last to recognise his presence and 
 admit his credentials, atoning for her slowness of per- 
 ception by a steadfastness of devotion, and showering 
 down the laurels of her love and honour, though it 
 may be, alas ! on the prophet's grave. 
 
 It appears that the first seeds of the Drama 
 were implanted in England by the Druids, who 
 taught the English youth in Homer, Hesiod, 
 ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Constant 
 intercourse with Rome naturally imported all the 
 best customs and amusements into England. "We 
 even hear of fiddling among the jesters and 
 buffoons of Nero's time. John, of Salisbury, 
 about the llth century, gives ample details of 
 the London diversions of that period, which appear 
 to have been of a very questionable character. 
 " Wars, and rumours of wars," internal differences, 
 party feeling, the natural antagonism of the con- 
 quered and conquerors, shaking the land from north 
 to south, from east to west, drove the Druids and 
 their votaries into obscure corners, particularly Cale- 
 donia, where they practised music and poetry, un- 
 aided by notation or record. The monks became 
 
48 
 
 secular priests, and had the education of youth in 
 their care ; and under their direction something like 
 the miracles of Constantinople made their appear- 
 ance. Strange things they must have been if we 
 take for an example the vagaries of St. Duns tan 
 (924), with the Devil's nose, and other monstrous 
 absurdities of this remarkable hypocrite at the Synod 
 of Wiltshire. But the Art made no progress till the 
 time of Edward the Confessor (1041), whose partiality 
 for the French caused him to encourage entertain- 
 ments and minstrels. They particularly flourished 
 at Chester and Coventry : mysteries and interludes 
 were performed. I have read that the origin of 
 "LadyGodiva" was the Coventry Mysteries, and 
 not the saving of the town from unjust taxation, as 
 present tradition asserts. Godiva was the " God's 
 Eva/' who appeared in a state of nudity in the Crea- 
 tion Play ; and after the Plague (1625), trade being 
 very slack, they obtained permission for an extra- 
 ordinary fete, mysteries being forbidden. The 
 pageant of Lady Godiva was the nearest approach to 
 the old absurdity. 
 
 For a long period there was little to lighten the 
 darkness of the age but such pageants as the 
 Feast of Asses and the Feast of Fools, which have 
 their origin in Constantinople (990). They were 
 Christian imitations of Pagan Bacchanalian solem- 
 nities. About 36 years after William the Conqueror 
 (1098), Rahere, at the priory of St. Bartholomew, 
 
49 
 
 which he built in Smithfield, gained considerable 
 property by the performance of Interludes, a crude 
 kind of piece representing a vice or grievance, where 
 the Devil, with an immense beard to make him more 
 frightful and ridiculous, sits in judgment ; and if the 
 criminal, who bears the name of the vice, as for 
 example, Simony or Avarice, is found guilty, he is 
 ordered immediately to Hell. 
 
 Eahere became King Henry's Minstrel, 1100, and 
 it is through the Minstrels and Mummers that we 
 trace our history. The Minstrels were never considered 
 merely players, their powers were epic and lyric. 
 The Mummers were low vagabonds without the 
 slightest education or decency, who strolled about 
 the country dressed in fantastic costumes ; dancing, 
 mimicking, tumbling, conjuring, posturing, &c.; very 
 much as street players do to this day. Antiquity 
 should teach us to look with toleration and compas- 
 sion, if not with respect, upon these ancestors of 
 our art. They recall to our compassionate remem- 
 brance an age of privation and difficulty, when the 
 " steep of fame" was rougher and more rugged than 
 it is now. Bad as they were, they were still the true 
 originals of English actors. 
 
 The clergy, actuated by mercenary motives, 
 established Sacred Mysteries, with the laudable in- 
 tention of instructing the ignorant in the Scrip- 
 tures. The clergy were all-powerful, and desired to. 
 
50 
 
 have the sole amusement as well as instruction 
 of the people, whom they considered the creatures 
 of their will. They were jealous of the Minstrels, 
 and shamefully and unreasonably persecuted them, 
 As the clerical Interludes grew in popularity the 
 Minstrels thought it desirable to change their style, 
 and introduced the dramatic ; the clergy followed 
 with Miracle plays. Geffroi, a French monk, per- 
 formed several tragedies, one of which was the 
 miracle of St. Catharine. Through the length and 
 breadth of England the Drama became of universal 
 interest and importance. 
 
 Henry II. , 1154, being monarch of all England, 
 and of more than a third of France, gave the greatest 
 encouragement to all amusements, and introduced 
 into England the most delightful entertainments of 
 the Continent. The work of improvement was carried 
 on by Richard I. (Cceur de Lion), 1183, who brought 
 home with him several distinguished authors whose 
 works contained the rudiments of regular Tragedy; 
 and down to the time of John (1199) amusements 
 were encouraged and loved by all classes of society, 
 and were acted not only at the English Court, but in 
 the houses of all families of distinction ; I presume 
 very much after the fashion of private theatricals in 
 the present day. We may judge of the estimation in 
 which Dramatic performances were held by the monks, 
 who had plenty of time to devote to pleasure, from 
 'Anthony Wood's quaint story, "Two holy Fran- 
 
51 
 
 ciscans having lost their way, arrived in the greatest 
 distress at a grange belonging to the Benedictines of 
 Abingdon, near Oxford. The porter who opened the 
 gate judged by their squalid appearance, their tattered 
 garments, and their foreign idiom, that they were 
 farce-players, or maskers, and carried the joyful 
 tidings in all haste to his prior. The prior, with his 
 sacristan-, the collarer, and the younger monks, flew to 
 the gate, and in hope of a dramatic performance en- 
 treated them to enter. The friars, with sad 
 countenance, assured the Benedictines they were 
 mistaken ; they were no players, but servants of God. 
 On this the monks, exasperated at the disappoint- 
 ment, fell upon them at once, beat and kicked 
 them most cruelly, and thrust them from their 
 doors." 
 
 Succeeding reigns to Edward I. (1296) bring- 
 ing change of political opinion, and consequent 
 trouble in the land, amusements were less 
 cultivated, and were mostly practised in compara- 
 tively obscure places (Chester was their strong- 
 hold), and this is the beginning of the time 
 when plays were acted by secular guilds ; still 
 they were under the jurisdiction of the Church, and 
 acted according to established rules. The dramas 
 were taken from the Old and New Testament, and 
 it is difficult to comprehend in this age of enlighten- 
 ment how the clergy, who were about the only edu- 
 cated people, could permit such gross buffoonery, 
 
52 
 
 and sacrilegious mockery. Eacli guild had its Inter- 
 lude. The " Creation " was played by the Drapers, 
 "The Fall of Lucifer," by the Tanners; "The 
 Purification," by the Blacksmiths ; " The Deluge," 
 by the Dyers; "The Sending of the Holy Ghost," 
 by the Fishmongers ; " Killing the Innocents," by 
 the Goldsmiths; "The Descent into Hell," by the 
 Cooks and Innkeepers ;" and " The Ascension," by 
 the Tailors. All the citizens of Chester must have 
 been turned into actors had they not engaged Min- 
 strels and actors to supply their places. 
 
 The continual struggles between the Clergy and 
 Laity, fluctuating in favour, first of one and then 
 the other, grew so disgraceful, that in the time of 
 Edward III., 1327, acting was suppressed altogether, 
 the Vagrant Act (the Rogues and Vagabonds Act) 
 was passed, afterwards ratified by George II., and 
 a company of men called vagrants were whipped out 
 of London, because they represented the popular 
 pieces in ale houses, and other places where the 
 populace assembled. Still, pieces were played by 
 stealth in private families, at weddings, and pro- 
 bably suggested the masquerades we hear of in the 
 time of Henry V., when the King's brother, the 
 Duke of Orleans, accidentally set fire to some dresses 
 trimmed with resin and tow, and burnt the 
 unfortunate wearers to death. 
 
 After some years of persecution, hardships and 
 privations, to which the Minstrels and actors were 
 
53 
 
 subjected, of which there is no record in any 
 book I have met with, the clergy again revived the 
 Drama as a means of instruction in monasteries and 
 universities. Religion and elocution were taught at the 
 same time. The lines in Hamlet, " My lord, you 
 played once in the University, you say ? I did, my 
 lord, and was accounted a good actor," allude to the 
 early training of Polonius. The boyu of' St. Paul's 
 School and the Chapel Royal became very efficient, 
 and obtained a monopoly of stage representation 
 within the precincts of the City of London, 1378, 
 a monopoly which they hold to this day. 
 
 The old Mystery, or Miracle Play was succeeded 
 by the Moralities, as public taste became more 
 refined, and the decorations and appointments 
 improved in accordance. We may gather some idea 
 of the enlightenment of an age by the selection of 
 its amusements ; plays have never been represented 
 until the people have attained a certain degree 
 of culture and enlightenment ; the reverence 
 with which they witnessed the monstrous absur- 
 dity of the Mysteries and Moralities made them 
 unconscious of the fact that Adam and Eve were 
 represented nude, and talked of their nudity, 
 and in the next scene appeared in the prescribed 
 covering, when an angry god came down to them, and 
 bellowed their punishment for disobedience. Both 
 sexes witnessed this performance with composure 
 and reverence ; it would have been heresy to alter it. 
 
54 
 
 Moralities represented virtue and vice, love, hate, 
 social duty, &c., and by appealing to the affections 
 and tender passions, undoubtedly improved the 
 morals of the age. Dr. Percy's analysis of " Every- 
 man " a Morality, published early in the reign of 
 Henry VIII., gives us a good idea of this kind of 
 play. " The subject of the piece is the summoning 
 of man out of the world by Death ; and its moral, 
 that nothing will then avail him but a well-spent life 
 and the comforts of religion. The subject and 
 moral are opened in a monologue spoken by the 
 messenger (for that was the name generally given by 
 our ancestors to the prologue on their rude stage). 
 Then God is represented, who, after some general 
 complaints on the degeneracy of mankind, calls to 
 * Dethe,' and orders him to bring before his tribunal 
 e Every-man,' for so is called the personage who 
 represents the human race. ' Every-man ' appears, 
 and receives the summons with all the marks of 
 confusion and terror. When ' Dethe ' is withdrawn 
 ' Every-man ' applies for relief in this distress to 
 ' Felawshyp,' { Kyndrede,' ( Goodes,' or ' Riches/ 
 but they successively renounce and forsake him. 
 In this disconsolate state he betakes himself to 
 ' Good Dedes,' who, after upbraiding him with 
 his long neglect of her, introduces him to her 
 sister c Knowledge,' and she leads him to the 
 holy man e Confession/ who appoints penance. 
 This he inflicts on himself on the stage, and 
 
55 
 
 then withdraws to receive the Sacrament of the 
 Priest. On his return he begins to wax faint ; and 
 after c Strength/ e Beaute,' c Dyscrecion, 5 and e Five 
 Wyttes,' have all taken their final leave of him, he 
 gradually expires on the stage, e Good Dedes ' still 
 accompanying him to the last. Then an ' Aungell ' 
 descends to sing his requiem ; and the epilogue is 
 spoken by a person called * Doctour,' who recapitu- 
 lates the whole, and delivers the moral." This is 
 not the most interesting Morality ; a glance into 
 " Warton's History of English Poetry," will furnish 
 you with abundant supplies. 
 
 The bigoted and hypocritical Heywood, in the 
 time of Henry VIII., from his influence at Court, 
 introduced a cheerful change in the Drama, which 
 gave the Sacred Plays a very severe shock. 
 "Gammer Gurton's Needle," an absurd Comedy 
 by Mr. S., Master of Arts, is said to be the first. 
 Five acts are wasted in discovering Mistress 
 Gurton's needle, which is at last found in her 
 man Hodge's breeches ; it is pulled out with great 
 rejoicing, and so ends the Comedy. 
 
 From this and other innovations resulted 
 plays of a more regular kind. The minds of 
 the people were diverted by the representation of 
 manners and persons in common life, and of events 
 and incidents with which they were familiar. The 
 country then swarmed with actors, and Queen 
 Elizabeth thought it desirable to suppress them 
 
56 
 
 altogether in order to select from this chaos a 
 settled company or guild for the performance of 
 natural theatrical plays. From this dates the 
 patronage period. Twelve of the principal players 
 of the time were termed Her Majesty's Comedians 
 and Servants, and received salaries from the privy 
 purse. Various noblemen retained companies of 
 players, who acted not only in their lords' houses, 
 but publicly under their license and protection ; so 
 acting became the " trade and calling" which it 
 remains to this day. 
 
 The boys of St. Paul's, Westminster, and Windsor 
 were the Queen's especial favourites ; all Lillie's and 
 most of Shakespeare's and Johnson's plays were first 
 represented by them. The noblemen who retained 
 and entertained players were the Lord Admiral 
 Lord Strange, Lord Burleigh, Lord Eobert Dudley, 
 the Earl of Leicester, Earl of Warwick, Sir Eobert 
 Lane, Lord Clinton, the Lord Chamberlain, Earl of 
 Essex, Lord Howard, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of 
 Hertford, Earl of Pembroke, and Earl of Worcester. 
 Thus, there were sixteen distinct companies (and 
 many others protected and unprotected I need 
 not enumerate), under powerful license and protec- 
 tion, practising their art with varied success during 
 the well-governed reign of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 This period furnishes us with our first 
 greatest actors Burbage, Kempe, Heminge, Pope, 
 Brown, Dutton, Shaw, Downton, Shakespeare. 
 
57 
 
 &c. For nearly half a century actors flourished 
 under this noble protection. The death of the 
 Queen brought it to an end. The Puritans were 
 already at work, incited by " Stubb's Anatomy of 
 Abuses " and the publication of the laws of Geneva, 
 which prohibited stage plays as sinful. An Act 
 of Parliament annulled the privilege of lordly 
 license and protection of players from the penalties 
 of vagrancy. The law against vagabonds was most 
 severe in those days. A strolling beggar aged 
 14 " was whipped and burned through the ear with 
 a hot iron the compass of an inch, and for the second 
 offence he suffered death. As soon as they had been 
 whipped they received a sort of ticket or permit from 
 the parish officer, which, if they could not produce, 
 the punishment was again inflicted by every justice 
 into whose hands they might fall." 
 
 King James granted an open license to Fletcher 
 and Shakespeare and their associates to perform in 
 their usual house, " the Globe, and in any convenient 
 places in any city and university in his kingdoms 
 and dominions." This was satisfactory enough to 
 Shakespeare, but a cruel deprivation to others, who 
 were already prevented by Acts of Parliament from 
 earning their bread in Lent, on Sundays, Fast-days, 
 and Thursdays, because the general rush to the 
 theatre interfered with the popular sport of bear- 
 baiting. 
 
 I have dwelt at length on the progress and 
 
58 
 
 history of Dramatic art, but, notwithstanding all 
 these revivals of the old Dramatic life and vigour, 
 they were but partial and imperfect ; mere signs, as 
 it were, and tokens of the grand outburst that was 
 coming ; as if Nature, gathering up her resources for 
 a magnificent effort, had sent some foretastes of the 
 intellectual banquet to which she was about to 
 summon the astonished world. I need not remind 
 you that I refer to the dramas of our immortal 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 And here let me observe how strange and 
 mysterious are the ways of Providence, and how 
 impossible it is to measure the extent of its orbit, 
 or calculate upon the time and place of its manifes- 
 tations. Who would have imagined that the tragic 
 spirit which shone so brightly in the dawn of 
 Athens, and so suddenly vanished from the sight of 
 men, should slumber through the centuries of Rome's 
 magnificence and reappear in an obscure town in 
 England, to make it the cynosure of all nations and 
 all time ? 
 
 But how shall I speak of that wonderful man ? 
 How utter within the limits of a single page the 
 admiration that would fill volumes and still leave 
 much unsaid ? It is like attempting to contain the 
 sea in a shell, or to measure the circumference of the 
 firmament with a span. The only comfort is, that 
 criticism of mine is rendered unnecessary by the 
 libraries which have already gathered around 
 
59 
 
 his works, while no eulogy can add to the 
 monument of his enduring and universal fame. 
 But though the one is needless, and the other im- 
 possible, yet I feel I cannot pass his shrine with- 
 out pausing a moment to express my reverence, 
 though it be only the silent reverence of a tear. 
 
 Where found this Prospero the magic wand by 
 which he summoned into view those marvellous 
 creations which embrace such extremes as Caliban 
 and Ariel the grossest savage that ever dug his 
 nails into his native clay, and the finest spirit that 
 ever danced on a summer moonbeam ? Where learnt 
 he those mighty incantations by which he summonses 
 from the tomb the " Majesty of buried Denmark" 
 or the ghost of Banquo, and limns them to the vision 
 so shadowy, yet so real ? Who took him through 
 the chambers of the human soul and revealed to his 
 unrevolted gaze the dark corners and tortuous cor- 
 ridors, and vaults foul with noxious vermin, which 
 constitute the baser part of man " that quintessence 
 of dust?" or who led him up to the Sacred Temple that 
 stands above; with its golden windows and its 
 soaring dome ; and revealed to his comprehensive 
 and impartial vision the essential nobleness and 
 sacredness of the soul ? Where learnt he those 
 strange secrets of madness, with their generic like- 
 ness, their specific difference the madness of 
 Lear ? of Hamlet ? of Ophelia ? Who taught him 
 the fearful history of guilt from its first unconscious 
 
60 
 
 step in evil to its fatal immersion in a sea of blood, 
 revealed to us in the history of the doomed 
 Macbeth ? Or who sat to his skilful pencil 
 when he painted his Cordelias, Portias, Rosalinds, 
 Mirandas, Juliets, and Desdemonas creations 
 equally lovely yet diversified in their charms as 
 the summer flowers ? As we stand and gaze at the 
 World of Wonders which Shakespeare has brought 
 into human sight, we can only feel that he was 
 one of those great and gifted beings whom the 
 Almighty dispatches at long intervals into this 
 fallen planet; commissioned to utter his divine 
 " Let Be " amidst the warring elements of tumul- 
 tuous time; to renew the face of the earth to men, to 
 inject fresh currents of thought and feeling into the 
 constitution of the world, and to bestow on us an 
 earnest and instalment of the glory which awaits our 
 entrance into the world beyond. 
 
 There is none of this fulness, this completeness, 
 this comprehensiveness in the works of the greatest 
 dramatists of Greece. Perfect in their kind, yet 
 they were to these but the early blossoms to the 
 fruit the pledge and promise of better things to 
 come. And it is the truest and noblest boast of Eng- 
 land that by the hands of her great and gifted child 
 she has brought the top stone to that temple of 
 genius whose foundations were laid in ancient 
 Athens, but which neither Rome, nor Spain, nor 
 France, nor Germany none but herself among all 
 
(31 
 
 the nations was privileged or permitted to complete 
 and crown. 
 
 Next to my astonishment at this extraordinary 
 phenomenon is my wonder at finding men of mark 
 and influence in Literature speaking of him in terms 
 of disparagement and abuse. Hume says "that he 
 cannot uphold for any length of time a reasonable 
 propriety of thought, " while Voltaire goes so far as 
 to denounce his great Tragedy of Hamlet as " the 
 work of a drunken savage.'* Is not this amazing? 
 How is .it to be accounted for ? We are not as- 
 tonished that men of incapacity and ignorance 
 should see no beauty in Shakespeare, for all colours 
 are alike to the blind ; but that a historian like 
 Hume, and a poet like Voltaire, should deliberately 
 record such sentiments as the result of a careful 
 and learned investigation ; this, I say, is only less 
 wonderful than the astonishing genius upon whom 
 they have passed so erroneous a verdict. I do 
 not accuse them of malice, but I must charge 
 them with perversity ; and though my reverence for 
 Shakespeare almost compels me to condemn them as 
 wilful libellers of his fame, yet the respect I 
 feel for them on other grounds inclines me to senti- 
 ments of charity, and causes me to prefer the milder 
 opinion that an unusual dulness must have settled 
 upon their faculties, and they came to the study 
 temporarily blind. 
 
 But there is something worse than disparage- 
 
62 
 
 merit and abuse, and that is indifference and neglect. 
 The depreciation of a few individuals is amply com- 
 pensated by the worship of the million. But we 
 cannot bestow this comfort on our immortal 
 dramatist. We have a reading public, but it is not 
 Shakespeare that is read. His name is one of the 
 luminaries of the world ; but the world, it is well 
 known, thinks little of its luminaries ; goes out to 
 gape at a shower of rockets with frantic delight, 
 but forgets to look up at the stately firmament with 
 its majestic sun and everlasting stars. In fact, the 
 printing press has become a kind of intellectual fire- 
 work manufactory, from which squibs and crackers 
 and other sparkling and noisy Combustibles of the 
 gunpowder species are thrown off day by day in im- 
 mense profusion ; while the great works which were 
 not manufactured, but created, and which shine like 
 the stars for ever and ever, are lost in the glare of 
 this pyrotechnic display, and abide in their profound 
 and measureless altitudes, too vast for our littleness 
 and too pure for our delight. Year after year 
 Shakespeare's volumes become more and more 
 dusty. Only about seven of his thirty-seven plays 
 are known on the stage, and when the seven are 
 spasmodically brought out they are not supported 
 or cared for as they deserve.* 1 cannot blame you 
 
 * This paragraph was written in 1871. I am glad to observe 
 "now a revival of Shakespearean taste in Mr. Irving's " Hamlet," What- 
 ever may be the critical judgments on his performance, there can be but 
 one opinion as to the thoughtful care and elevated intention which sug- 
 gested and characterises the whole representation. 
 
63 
 
 though for not liking them sometimes, when I reflect 
 how they are performed. I am afraid I must be 
 hard on some of my brother actors (though " cruel 
 only to be kind ") ; but really they seem to imagine 
 our dear Shakespeare must be spoken as humanity 
 never yet spoke (except on the stage), with groans 
 and gasps and grunts and bawling ; the beautiful, 
 soft words have a hard time of it, and the audience, 
 too, I am inclined to think. No wonder you don't 
 like it. I don't. When we get a school we will 
 reform these things altogether. 
 
 In relation to this matter, I am reminded of a 
 story: A robustious, perriwig-pated fellow was 
 tearing a passion to tatters to very rags and the 
 needy manager shouted from the side, " Don't ! 
 don't for goodness sake, or they'll hear you outside, 
 and won't pay to come in !" 
 
 I'm afraid " dining out " sometimes interferes 
 with poor Shakespeare. The most unfortunate in- 
 stance I remember occurred in " Hamlet." The 
 Ghost waddled on, stuck his truncheon on his breast, 
 and said, " Mark me." " Speak, I am bound to 
 hear." " So art thou to (hiccup) when thou shalt 
 hear." "What?" "I am thy father's spirits- 
 spirits ! Prompter What's the word ? Oh ! speak 
 up; never mind the audience." The prompter 
 gave him the word " Father's Ghost, doomed for a 
 certain ." "All right. I am thy father's 
 
64 
 
 Ghost, doomed for a certainty ." By this 
 
 time the audience, observing his condition, began 
 to hiss. He stepped forward and said, " Ladies 
 and gentlemen, you'd better not do that; you'll 
 only make it worse." Then, taking his place again, 
 " I am thy father's doomed Ghost doomed for 
 
 a (hiss). Ladies and gentlemen, I give up 
 
 the Ghost !" and he retired amidst general derision. 
 
 Oh ! if we could only be persuaded to speak 
 and act as Shakespeare advised " Speak the speech, 
 I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly 
 on the tongue ; but if you mouth it as many of our 
 players do, I had as lieve the town crier spoke my 
 lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your 
 hand, thus, but use all gently, for in the very torrent, 
 tempest, and as I may say whirlwind, of your pas- 
 sion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that 
 will give it smoothness. Oh ! it offends me to the 
 soul to hear a robustious, perriwig-pated, fellow tear 
 a passion to tatters to very rags to split the ears 
 of the groundlings, who for the most part are 
 capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and 
 noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er- 
 doing Termagant, it out-herods Herod ; pray you 
 avoid it." But counsels, like examples, are generally 
 disregarded ; and instead of profiting by the expe- 
 riences of others, however good, however applicable 
 they may be, we blunder on in ignorance and 
 conceit. 
 
65 
 
 Shakespeare wrote no more after 1615, and by a 
 strange fatality nearly all the principal supporters of 
 the profession died or retired about the same time. 
 Philip Henslow, the " poet's patron," died in 1616 ; 
 Edward Alleyn retired to Dulwich; Richard Cowley, 
 Richard Burbage, Robert Armin, and Nicholas 
 Tooley died. Heminges and Cundall retired. But 
 the vigour and sublimity which graced the creative 
 genius of Shakespeare maintained the stage in its 
 greatest ascendancy throughout the reign of James, 
 till it was suppressed altogether by violence in 
 1648. 
 
 The extreme Puritans opposed it might and 
 main. Playhouses were abolished ; the actors ap- 
 prehended and committed for acting ; publicly 
 whipped, and kept in prison until they could find 
 security for not acting again. Even the public 
 were fined five shillings for attending dramatic per- 
 formances. Nearly all the young and vigorous 
 actors joined the King's army. Mohun, one of the 
 leading actors of the King's company after the 
 Restoration, held an important commission. Hart, 
 also of the King's, commanded a troop of horse in 
 Prince Rupert's regiment. Burt was a cornet in 
 the same troop, and Shatersel was quartermaster; 
 Allen, a major and quartermaster-general; Robinson, 
 the actor, a Royalist officer, was butchered by 
 Harrison, who, after Robinson and his troop had 
 surrendered and laid down their arms, cried out, 
 
66 
 
 " Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord 
 negligently," and slaughtered them without mercy. 
 
 The Protectorate was the longest and sharpest 
 period of privation and persecution actors had ever 
 known since the establishment of Christianity. 
 They were hunted from door to door, cast into 
 prison, and denied even the common privileges of 
 citizens. For twenty-five years they suffered the 
 bitterest poverty and persecution from those cruel 
 and bigoted fanatics ; not only, I imagine, because 
 they were actors, but because they were Eoyalists, 
 true to their allegiance, and fought hand and brain 
 with undaunted courage for the Restoration. 
 
 I will take advantage of this break in our 
 history to give you a brief epitome of Painting, 
 showing our relation to this branch of Fine Art, as 
 well as to the art of Sculpture a relation that I 
 wish you and all the world to recognise. 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 We learn from Coleridge that " Painting is a 
 something between a thought and a thing. Painting 
 is the art of conveying thought by the imitation of 
 things. Each art has its characteristic qualities. 
 Painting has the power of imitating the effects of 
 form, light, and shadow with colour, which imitates 
 a very beautiful fact in Nature, beyond the scope of 
 sculpture, which gives only actual relief." 
 
67 
 
 Now, both colour and actual relief are un- 
 doubtedly elements in the art of acting. Painting 
 and sculpture embody impressions of simultaneous 
 action and effect only ; but acting gives us. the suc- 
 cession of events in vivid representation, accom- 
 panied with the power of language, and the exquisite 
 changes of feature, rapidity of action, delicate bye- 
 play, and the power of the eye, which has a special 
 poetry of its own that touches our tenderest sensi- 
 bilities all of which are entirely lost in painting 
 and sculpture. 
 
 What can be more dramatic than the sup- 
 posed origin of Painting, " A Greek maiden 
 tracing the outline of the shadow of her lover 
 who is about to depart " ? The idea is sublime, 
 and may have been the origin of Grecian draw- 
 ing ; but, according to Plato and others, Egyptian, 
 Babylonian, and Chaldsean art are of the highest 
 antiquity. They date nearly 3,000 years before 
 the Chrisian era. Plato says, " Osymandyas, the 
 first warlike King, after the conquest of Bactria, 
 had his exploits represented in sculpture and paint- 
 ing " 2100 B.C. The walls and temples in Thebes 
 and Jerusalem were adorned with sculpture and 
 painting. Colour, too, was used ; but so little 
 is known of this pre-historic period, and the arts 
 must have slumbered for so many centuries, that 
 little is heard of them, except " still life " in pot- 
 tery and glass, and we must return again to the 
 
68 
 
 immortal Greeks, with whom love of beauty was 
 a principle of their religion, and who possessed 
 godly faculties for all thoughtful and intelligent 
 pursuits. 
 
 The first painter of great importance was 
 Polygnotus of Thasos, 420 B.C., who gratuitously 
 painted the grand hall at Delphi, and was so reve- 
 renced by the people that he was considered the 
 property of the nation, and was maintained wherever 
 he went at the public expense as a proof of national 
 admiration. 
 
 Oimon, the Cleonean, improved the Art by fore- 
 shortening and drawing at different angles ; and 
 other colours than red, made from powdered bricks 
 were discovered. Others soon found out that if 
 bricks made colour, the earth burnt and ground 
 would supply abundant materials. Wax and glue 
 was their vehicle. But Pliny says, " Apollodorus 
 was the painter who first riveted the eye ; from 
 him dates the Dramatic period of the art," 408 B.C. 
 Zeuxis was his pupil ; he was the first to introduce 
 powerful light, shade, and colour into his subjects. 
 It is worthy of note that the black profiles we 
 frequently see in the present time are specimens 
 of the most ancient Grecian art and invention. His 
 example was eagerly followed and improved, and 
 produced many artists worthy of note, but par- 
 ticularly Parrhasius, of Ephesus, about 400 B.C., who 
 
called himself the Prince of Painters, and claimed 
 to have descended from Apollo. Parrhasius and 
 Zeuxis contended for pre-eminence; their pictures 
 were exhibited for public inspection, according to 
 the custom of the age. " The birds came down 
 to peck the grapes which Zeuxis had painted.'* 
 Then Parrhasius produced his work, and Zeuxis 
 said, " Eemove the curtain that we may see the 
 picture," but the curtain itself was the picture. 
 Zeuxis acknowledged himself beaten, exclaiming, 
 " Zeuxis deceived the birds, but Parrhasius has 
 deceived Zeuxis." This is a good example of the 
 perfection attained. From these we are brought 
 to Pamphilus, who was the master of Apelles, 
 the greatest of ancient painters, and his con- 
 temporary, Protogenes, about 350 B.C. From that 
 time the arts gradually declined in Greece, from 
 the same causes that affected the Drama, to which 
 I have already referred in an earlier part of this 
 work. 
 
 Etruscan and Byzantine Art made progress, but 
 it was only as the new faith became established that 
 the prejudices against Art were relaxed, and it was 
 employed to inculcate certain religious principles 
 rather than excite pleasure or create effect. The 
 pillage of Rome by the French, 1527, scattered the 
 Arts all over Italy. But it was not until about the first 
 half of the seventeenth century that an important 
 revival took place. The Italians created the Eclectic 
 
70 
 
 and Naturalistic schools. Domenichino and Guido 
 were the leading masters of the former, Correggio 
 of the latter. The Naturalistic opened painters' 
 eyes to the importance and beauty of Nature, and 
 suggested the pictures of Salvator Rosa, Nicholas 
 Poussin, Gaspar Poussin, Claude Gelee (called 
 Claude Lorrain), 1613-1675, Titian, Giorgione, 
 and The Carracci (particularly Annibale), Leonardi 
 da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo. 
 
 Expression was perfected by Masaccio; fore- 
 shortening by Luca Signorelli, 1440-1521. Jan 
 Van Eyck painted in oil colours, and was generous 
 enough to impart his secret to the Venetians. 
 Canvas was used in Venice before it was adopted 
 in other parts of Italy. 
 
 Spain emulated Italy, and founded its schools 
 on Titian and Raphael. The highest perfection of 
 Spanish art was in the time of Velasques, Murillo, 
 Cano, Zurbaran, and Claudio Coello, 1599 to 1682. 
 
 The Eclectic and Naturalistic schools very soon 
 occasioned a revival of art in the Netherlands, and 
 two important styles were established the Flemish 
 and the Dutch. The Flemish flourished in Brabant, 
 where Roman Catholics were struggling to oppose 
 the reformed faith, knowing well the power of pic- 
 torial representations to create vivid impressions on 
 the mind. The Protestant Dutch nourished in Re- 
 publican Holland, where artists were poorer, and had 
 
71 
 
 to paint for daily bread; hence so many homely sub- 
 jects. The Flemish school gave us Rubens, Van 
 Dyck, David Teniers, F. Snyders, 1577 to 1657. 
 The Dutch Rembrandt, Vanderhelst, Albert Cuyp, 
 Ostade, J. Ruisdaal, Jan Steen, Van de Velde, P. 
 Wouvermans, 1608 to 1668. 
 
 In France, the encouragement bestowed on 
 foreign artists, and the undervaluing of native 
 talent, so much practised to the disgrace of most 
 countries, checked and discouraged the development 
 of native ability, until Louis XIV. founded the 
 Academy of Fine Arts, under Lebrun, and dis- 
 couraged foreigners. From that time immortal 
 names appear Anthony Watteau, the head of 
 national artists in the eighteenth century, and 
 Chardin, Greuze, and David, who bring us to the 
 nineteenth century. Then appear Delaroche, Horace 
 Vernet, Delacroix, and Ingres, and the host of 
 others too numerous to particularise. 
 
 In every country, through all its stages, 
 painters have always borrowed freely from the 
 Theatre. In the days of yore, when there were no 
 playbills, theatrical personages were known by their 
 size, walk, and manner. The principal figure was 
 always the largest ; the others smaller and subser- 
 vient ; so were they painted. The nearest approach 
 to Dramatic narration are the magnificent frescoes ; 
 they are painted Dramas ; they represent the story 
 of the lives of saints, or, exploits of heroes. 
 
72 
 
 For centuries after our Saviour, the principal 
 figure in a picture was adorned with a golden back- 
 ground ; may not the majesty of action, backed by 
 the blazing sun, as seen at the Theatre, have sug- 
 gested this idea to the artist who sought to repre- 
 sent on his tablet a gem flushed with colour and 
 alive with light ? 
 
 In histories of Painting we are constantly in- 
 formed of the Dramatic tendencies, as if, indeed, the 
 Art was based upon, if not founded by, the stage. 
 They have constantly gone hand in hand together 
 even in their persecutions. Caricatures were begun 
 sooner by painters than actors, consequently the 
 decline of painting came sooner. You may almost 
 date the decline of any Art from the time cari- 
 catures and satires become fashionable. Chris- 
 tianity accelerated its decline ; then, as in the case 
 of the Drama, it was re-established by the Church 
 for instructive purposes. A Bishop of Pola was 
 the first to introduce paintings into two churches 
 which he built at the close of the 4th century. 
 But a long time after that an artist was generally 
 confounded with a workman. It is, indeed, a 
 matter of the greatest astonishment that the 
 leading spirits of the time should have been so 
 blind to an artist's superiority over all other classes 
 of people, especially when they were not only so 
 gifted, but so useful, and, indeed, indispensable. 
 For we must remember they were not only painters 
 
73 
 
 and sculptors, but architects as well. In some cases, 
 it is true, this superiority was acknowledged and 
 liberally rewarded. Giotto was the architect of the 
 elegant Campernile at Florence. The immortal 
 Raphael was not less skilled as architect than as 
 artist. He completed a splendid court in the 
 Vatican, and sent in magnificent plans, we are told, 
 for the Basilica of St. Peter. These great men were 
 justly honoured and recompensed for their genius ; 
 but these few names only shine out like stars over 
 the unknown graves of thousands who preceded 
 them, and perished without leaving even a monu- 
 ment or a name. 
 
 However, I have only to deal with Painting 
 in so far as it bears on the stage and establishes 
 the relation I have suggested in my title. There 
 are so many admirers of Fine Art who ignore 
 the idea that the Theatre can have any connec- 
 tion with it, that it is my special design and 
 desire to convince you by this lecture that the 
 Stage properly understood and employed is a grand 
 Art, and that the term " Fine Art " is not the 
 exclusive prerogative of Painting and Sculpture, 
 but embraces all that is instructive and enlightening 
 to the human mind. 
 
 In one sense the Stage has indeed the advan- 
 tage. For while in Sculpture we have form, actual 
 relief and expression, and in Painting the addi- 
 
74 
 
 tional beauty of colour, light and shadow, on the 
 stage we have all these perfections combined ; 
 crowned with that grandest of human gifts, the 
 power of language ; which harmonizes them, and 
 gives to the observer living pictures that instruct 
 the unlearned, while they are the pleasure and 
 delight of the educated and refined. 
 
 In England, as in France, foreign was pre- 
 ferred before native ability. But after the death 
 of Sir Godfred Kneller, the Court painter in three 
 successive reigns, and the last of these foreigners 
 (about 1734-5), some thirty or forty artists com- 
 bined to study the human figure, hiring a room 
 for that purpose in Spring Gardens. This move- 
 ment was due to Hogarth, who may justly be 
 accredited the founder of the English School, of 
 which Reynolds, Gainsborough, Wilson, Turner, 
 Constable, Nasmyth, Thomson and others estab- 
 lished the reputation, and which our great living 
 artists Frith, Millais, Maclise, Ward, Hunt, 
 J. W. Walton, Roberts, Bonheur, Leighton, and 
 others have consolidated with their influence, and 
 adorned with their genius. It was Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds who inaugurated the reign of triumph 
 which modern Painting now enjoys in England. 
 He used to say " to well directed industry all 
 things are possible," and while his own career was 
 an illustration of his maxim, the national influence 
 which Painting has obtained in the present day is 
 
75 
 
 another, and a more imposing one. I believe I am 
 right when I say that but for him the Eoyal 
 Academy would never have existed. Sir Joshua, 
 with the sagacity of his eminently practical mind, 
 saw the necessity of a national Institution whose 
 assembly should be the artist's Court of Appeal, 
 whose verdict should represent the voice of the 
 nation, whose honours should be the credentials of 
 a genuine reputation, and which all young artists of 
 every kind and degree should keep steadily in view 
 as a stimulus to their ambition, and the goal of 
 their life. 
 
 Our modern times are, indeed, rich in institu- 
 tions that foster and encourage Art ; for in addition 
 to the Eoyal Academy with its provision for the 
 living, we have the National Gallery with its pro- 
 vision for the dead a nation's monument to the 
 glory of Painting and the genius of painters. 
 
 I have dwelt so long on the old masters in 
 the various departments of Art to which I have 
 referred, that I think I must apologize to the 
 bright young faces around me, and go to the 
 young masters by as short a road as possible. I 
 am fearful that you should throw my little work 
 aside as a dry and barren task; and shall there- 
 fore, after taking a hasty glance at modern 
 Dramatic Art and its position, proceed as rapidly 
 as possible to a conclusion. I do not profess, of 
 
76 
 
 course, to have exhausted my subject. I have 
 dwelt rather on the creators, founders and im- 
 provers of the Arts than on those who have 
 merely followed in their footsteps, except in the 
 case of the mystic three -ZEschylus, Sophocles, 
 and Euripides. 
 
 Charles II. after his restoration immediately 
 granted two patents ; one to his amusing and 
 witty follower, Thomas Killegrew, who formed a 
 company with all who remained of the actors 
 who fought for Charles' father against Cromwell 
 Hart, Mohun, Burt, &c. called the King's Com- 
 pany : and the other to poor, noseless Sir William 
 Davenant, who formed the Duke's Company with 
 Betterton, Kynaston, Nokes, Shippy, &c., &c. 
 
 So, actors being the King's servants, and some 
 of them retained in the Royal Palace, they were 
 of course placed under the care and jurisdiction of 
 the Lord Chamberlain, whose power they have 
 always acknowledged. That power was made more 
 absolute in consequence of the satires on the King's 
 Ministry in a burlesque called " Pasquin," played at 
 the Haymarket by Henry Fielding's " Great Mogul 
 Company," in 1735. In 1736 a " Licensing Act" 
 was passed, giving the Lord Chamberlain power to 
 forbid pieces not licensed by him. It was brought 
 about ingeniously. Mr. Giffard, the manager of 
 Goodman's Fields Theatre, took an anonymous 
 
77 
 
 piece called "The Golden Rump," full of parlia- 
 mentary abuse and caricature, to the Prime 
 Minister, who was smarting under Fielding's satire. 
 He made the best possible use of the scandalous 
 manuscript in the debates on the question. The Act 
 passed, but not without opposition from the lovers 
 of the freedom of the Stage, particularly Lord 
 Chesterfield, who agreed, in principle, with Jeremy 
 Collier's attack on the abuses of the profession, pub- 
 lished in 1698, when Betterton and Mrs. Bracegirdle 
 were fined for indecent language on the stage, 
 but opposed the idea of Theatrical restriction. 
 Subsequent Acts of Parliament confirmed this law, 
 and the theatres have been compelled to submit to 
 control, which has not always been executed with 
 discretion or justice to the great body of actors. 
 Gradually, however, London patents were abolished 
 (about 1846), and the power which forbade an actor 
 earning his bread in Lent and certain days of the 
 year, was relaxed ; and the restrictions as they now 
 exist are only those which any manager who loves 
 the Art and regards the respectability of the pro- 
 fession, is pleased to observe. 
 
 In 1689 farces began to be played after the 
 dramas, and in 1717 Mr. Rich introduced har- 
 lequinades, two important additions (although not 
 original) to our entertainments. 
 
 The restoration of the Drama under Charles II. 
 
78 
 
 is remarkable for the introduction of the French 
 practice of allowing ladies to play the female 
 characters. 
 
 Ah, what a world of power and pathos did this 
 introduce into Dramatic Art ! Even Shakespeare 
 could not shine in his perfect splendour till woman 
 arose in the fulness of her charms, and shed upon 
 the stage her softer light. It was impossible that 
 youths, to whom the task had been committed of im- 
 personating the female character, could throw into 
 the representation the trembling tenderness of a 
 woman's love, or the tragic fury of a woman's hate, 
 with all those modulations and changing phases of 
 thought and feeling which so strangely distinguish 
 this fair, frail counterpart from the being of whom 
 she is the beautiful reflection infinitely like, yet 
 infinitely different. Then it was that the profound 
 depth and marvellous beauty of the female mind 
 of the female heart were first embodied in living 
 power; and woman, so long depressed by the selfish- 
 ness of men, so long kept in the background and 
 the shade, so long regarded as an inferior being 
 made a plaything for an hour and an outcast for 
 ever then it was that woman rose to her true 
 position, and claimed her lawful honours on the 
 stage ; completing another round in her steady 
 progress towards the goal which she is des- 
 tined ultimately to reach to share the dominion 
 of the world with man, and to shine so close beside 
 
79 
 
 him on the throne that they shall make between 
 them but " one light." 
 
 Womanhood is indebted to Shakespeare, above 
 all other men, for his ideal portraits of female ex- 
 cellence, purity, and beauty. Nor is it possible to 
 estimate the degree in which they have contributed 
 to the fund of universal reverence and admiration 
 by which womanhood maintains its modern inde- 
 pendence ; and which, mingling with other powerful 
 influences, have worked beneath the surface of Eng- 
 lish society to make her rights the problem of 
 philosophers, and herself the cynosure and blossom 
 of the time. He it was, in fact, who first presented 
 female character in its feminine perfection. Others 
 had painted woman in her resemblance to man. To 
 Shakespeare belongs the honour of painting woman 
 in her difference from man ; and the whole of woman- 
 hood is indebted to him for the exhibition of her 
 nature to the world as well as the revelation of her- 
 self to herself, and thus setting before her the 
 brightest mirror in which God's fairest creature 
 ever contemplated her divine and incomparable 
 charms. Nor can lovers of the Dramatic Art look 
 back with too much gratitude on that legal innova- 
 tion which made it possible for woman to appear 
 upon the stage, and to embody before the world 
 those ethereal characters which in her hands alone 
 could shine with the lustre of their created light. 
 
 I have told you of the days when for scenery a 
 
80 
 
 board with the words, " This is Rome," sufficed to 
 place you in the Eternal City; and the transition era 
 of costume when Macbeth was played in a perriwig 
 and silk stockings, and young Norval in a plaid 
 Court costume. Oh, the power of the Art and the 
 actor to conquer all this ! Now, however, we err 
 rather on the other side, and have too much and 
 too realistic scenery- real water, real pumps real 
 moon, if we could only get it to shine every night. 
 But the moon is in the habit of playing vagaries, 
 and it won't always keep in the proper place, and 
 WILL rise where the sun sets instead of a respectable 
 distance from that luminary. 
 
 Ah ! why strive too much after sensation and 
 realism, and leave so little to true art ? I thoroughly 
 agree with our respected Chairman,* that his dear 
 " Joan " f is made to bear too much of scenery and 
 supers, superfine breastplates, and the splendour of 
 Barbaric gold. "We should never forget these things 
 are only accessories, and so keep them in sub- 
 ordination to the prime object of Dramatic Art the 
 exhibition of human character, and the representa- 
 tion of human life. This brings me to the last item 
 in my title, the present position of the stage. Ah, 
 how can I speak of it without regret ? In my own 
 experience, extending over a period of sixteen or 
 seventeen years, I have gradually observed a falling 
 
 * Tom Taylor, f " Joan of Arc " by Tom Taylor, played at the Queen's, 
 
81 
 
 off in all those principles which made the Dramatic 
 Art historic, and gave it its power and influence in 
 the past. There is no longer the same importance 
 attached to acting, no longer the same knowledge 
 exacted, nor the same preparatory discipline required 
 of the actor. Scenery, costume and accessories of 
 various kinds have displaced the actor from his 
 proud position as the centre of attraction to an 
 admiring audience ; there has been, in short, a revolu- 
 tion in the Dramatic world, in which the actor has 
 been deposed from his regal seat, stripped of his 
 regal authority and influence, and publicly banished 
 from his ancestral home ; while the lawless mob, 
 trampling the treasures of Art beneath their feet, 
 have filled its halls with the tinsel grandeurs of 
 their mimic pomp and insane attempts to imitate 
 the regal dignity they have expelled ; and nought 
 remains for the exiled king but the memory of 
 a bright and illustrious past, and the hope that 
 some great avenger may arise some Shakespeare 
 clothed with the majesty of genius and bearing 
 the sword of an irresistible might to expel these 
 insolent invaders from the kingdom and inaugurate 
 a new Dramatic reign. Even since I was a boy 
 there has been a marked degeneration of the 
 English stage. Then we had a library of test 
 pieces, and the student was judged according to 
 the intelligence and ability he displayed ; if he 
 could play " Hamlet" or " Othello " well, he was a 
 good Tragedian and took his position accordingly ; 
 
82 
 
 if Young Kapid, Marlow and Charles Surface, lie 
 was a light Comedian and could be trusted with 
 all parts in that line ; if Touchstone and Tony 
 Lumpkin, he was a low Comedian, and so on. 
 Now all these things are changed ; men come into 
 the profession, we know not whence, we know not 
 how ; without training, without fitness, without 
 any speciality of aim, without even a general 
 knowledge of the Art, its principles or its history ; 
 and the result is a deluge of incapacity, igno- 
 rance and conceit, sweeping everything before it, 
 and changing the once pure taste of the playgoing 
 public into an anarchy of ideas and a Babel of 
 opinions. It fills me with an inexpressible moral 
 indignation to see my noble Art thus debased by 
 the irruption of this host of Goths and Vandals 
 men who have no reverence for it, no knowledge of 
 it, no love of it, nothing but the desire of making a 
 profit by it and earning the bread which their igno- 
 rance and stupidity have prevented them from 
 earning in the practical every day life of the world. 
 Away with these needy and incompetent adventurers! 
 True art knows nothing of such ; she shrinks from 
 them with horror, she frowns on them with con- 
 tempt ; she deems their devotion an insult, their very 
 touch a pollution ; she acknowledges no worshippers 
 but the earnest and the devoted, the souls that love 
 her for her own great sake, and find her service 
 its own reward ; and if in her bounty she showers 
 upon their heads substantial proofs of her honour 
 
S3 
 
 and regard, value them chiefly for the love they 
 bear her, and make them but reasons for a purer 
 devotion and incentives to a greater and grander life. 
 
 All honour to the young men who enter the pro- 
 fession with a true reverence for Art as the basis of 
 their studies ! I do not, of course, mean for a 
 single moment that they should receive less pecuniary 
 recompense for their pains. They, like other men, 
 work to live as well as live to work ; and the bread 
 that is earned by an industrious artist is as pure and 
 sweet as the bread of the mechanic, the lawyer, or 
 the merchant. In many cases the artist is poorer 
 than other men, and more needs the pecuniary 
 reward of his exertions ; for, where Nature bestows 
 the artistic faculty the sense of beauty, the power 
 of originating great ideas, or embodying the great 
 ideas of others she not unfrequently withholds the 
 meaner gifts of Fortune, lest men should complain of 
 the partiality of her beneficence. But what I do 
 mean is and I have no hesitation in saying it most 
 emphatically that the men who enter upon an 
 artist's life for the mere purpose of gaining a liveli- 
 hood, caring nothing for the Art itself ; feeling no 
 indignation at its abuse ; no regret at its decay ; 
 and seeing no glory or attraction in it whatever 
 beyond the mercenary and perishing reward ; such 
 men are a disgrace to the profession and a dishonour 
 to themselves ; and all my wishes for them are con- 
 tained in one the wish that they may stumble and 
 
84 
 
 fall on the sacred threshold of that Temple of Art 
 whose altar they would desecrate and whose honour 
 they defame. 
 
 I see before me Pygmalion ! he has made a 
 perfect and exquisitely sculptured form. He adores 
 it, and from the gods comes the divine fire that 
 makes the marble live and breathe and speak. It is 
 endowed with life, and all life's passions, and all 
 life's mortality. To me that old fable represents 
 what I would have it represent to you, the student 
 of our art ; the thing that acting should be perfect 
 in all its parts grander than Sculpture, because 
 endowed with life ; more beautiful than Painting, 
 because that only seems to be the perfect embodi- 
 ment of all that is best in Sculpture and Painting, 
 and of all that is truest and most touching in 
 Nature in a word, A LIVING ART. 
 
 Money should never be the chief object for 
 which a man paints, or shapes the rude stone into 
 breathing marble, or represents human life and 
 character on the stage. Whether painter, sculptor, 
 or actor, he should do it because it is his passion, 
 the end for which he lives, the object of his am- 
 bition, the crown of his life ; that which, were he 
 filled with every worldly good, he would still pur- 
 sue with unabated ardour, resolved to attain his 
 ambition or perish in the attempt. This was the 
 motive that influenced the great men and women 
 who have adorned the stage, and bequeathed their 
 
85 
 
 memory for a precept and an example. Garrick, 
 Mrs. Siddons, Kemble, and Kean, were all lovers 
 and worshippers of Art ; and it is for this reason 
 that their memories are precious and their deeds 
 will survive while the Drama has a history. Their 
 influence like their names can never perish. Death 
 did but seal the lesson of their life and give it a 
 permanent impressiveness and power. " They de- 
 parted for a season that we might receive them 
 for ever," and of them in the highest sense the 
 words are true 
 
 " The dead are like the stars by night 
 
 Withdrawn from mortal eye, 
 But not extinct they hold their way, 
 In glory through the sky." 
 
 The public had a standard in those days, and 
 knew what they were going to see. They were alive 
 to all the new readings and the different renderings. 
 Now, what standard have we ? Pieces are written 
 to cover the imperfections of actors, not to develop 
 their faculties and elevate them to a loftier ideal. It 
 is, indeed, a source of immense regret that our living 
 authors (with a few noble exceptions), many of whom 
 undoubtedly possess the power of producing solid 
 as well as brilliant work, aim only at a shallow and 
 meretricious excellence ; and when they might secure 
 a lasting fame worthy of their genius and worthy 
 of the Art, content themselves with the evanescent 
 delight of a new sensation, which degrades alike 
 the amuser and the amused. The talent of acting, 
 
86 
 
 like every other talent, needs developing ; and the 
 public taste, like that of an individual, needs culti- 
 vating, and if authors will not set themselves to the 
 task, from whom is the education of the former to 
 come, or how is the cultivation of the latter to be 
 secured ? The actor's genius must languish under 
 the author's insufficiency, and the public taste must 
 degenerate under the authors' decline. A very 
 serious responsibility rests upon them. They are 
 the leaders and teachers of the playgoing world, and 
 if there should ultimately come an absolute demo- 
 ralisation of the Dramatic Art if the stage should 
 fall behind the age in the march of universal progress 
 and culture if pure taste and pure morals should at 
 last sink into a common grave, and the Theatre be 
 transformed from a Temple of Art into a den of 
 satyrs and a nest of serpents the blame of its moral 
 corruption and decay will lie at the doors of our 
 modern authors, who pandered to the downward 
 tastes of the age; and, instead of stemming the current 
 of evil, lent all their faculties, power, and influence 
 to swell the stream and hasten the noble vessel to 
 the rapids. Although burlesques are a fantastic 
 branch of our literature which I should be sorry to 
 lose, still they are implicated in no small degree in 
 the dramatic deterioration of which I am complain- 
 ing. They are clever and amusing, certainly, but 
 they would be so much better if the actresses were 
 more completely dressed. Of course, this is not the 
 fault of the authors. They are not responsible for 
 
87 
 
 the mounting of their pieces. A woman should 
 never be called upon to sacrifice her modesty, which 
 is her greatest charm. This familiarity with nudity 
 this constant exposure of the person for the mere 
 amusement of an audience I am inclined to think 
 degrades the mind and breaks down the bulwark of 
 a woman's purity. Recollect, it is the mere amuse- 
 ment part of the programme, and should be kept 
 above reproach. If this were so we should no longer 
 have to censure that style of Art for the present 
 depreciation of the Drama. Satires and caricatures, 
 as I have shown you, have always accelerated the 
 decline of Art, and with immodesty to help it what 
 must be the result ? 
 
 Poor Cinderella of the Arts ! the Drama needs 
 the fairy godmother and the glass slipper and the 
 brave young prince to place her amongst the highest 
 and noblest of the land. 
 
 I have not touched upon the beneficial in- 
 fluence of the Stage in a moral point of view, 
 and have now time for only one or two remarks 
 on this part of the subject; and those of the most 
 cursory description. Facts are often said to be 
 better than arguments, and I trust I shall not be 
 thought egotistic if I mention an instance that 
 came to my own knowledge of the moral power and 
 benefit of the Drama. An absconding clerk came 
 to the Theatre to see the " Ticket-of -Leave Man." 
 
His heart was touched and his conscience smitten 
 by what he heard and saw, and going home, he im- 
 mediately sent back the money he had stolen from 
 his employers, and became a better, because a re- 
 pentant man. And we have often heard that 
 " guilty creatures, sitting at a play, have, by the 
 very cunning of the scene, been so struck to the 
 soul that presently they have proclaimed their 
 malef action," and thus taken that first and hardest 
 step on the road to a new and better life. One 
 such instance is sufficient, 1 think, to give the 
 Drama a high position among the moral teachers 
 and benefactors of the race. 
 
 Take another example of a different kind. 
 Father Nugent heard a little boy, in the street, 
 reciting " Richard the Third " to his companions, and 
 reciting it correctly. After a time he asked the lad 
 how much he knew. " All but the last Act, Sir, " 
 was the reply ; " and that I'll learn as soon as I get 
 sixpence." Why sixpence ? " To go to Sadler's 
 Wells with. I learnt it all there, and I know one 
 or two more." " And can't you read ? " " No, Sir, 
 nobody never taught me." The Stage, you see, was 
 that boy's school, and its influence over him must 
 have been wonderful ; knowledge had been acquired 
 by a few pleasant sittings. It is a torture to go to 
 school and learn your lessons. Some think it a 
 trouble to go to church twice a day. It is always a 
 pleasure to go to a Theatre. 
 
89 
 
 I see no reason why the Stage might not be made 
 a powerful and popular auxiliary in the cause of 
 education. In the present age of advancement and 
 progress we ought to press into our service every- 
 thing that promises to be of the slightest assistance ; 
 and when we have so vast and mighty an instrument 
 as the Theatre ready to our hand and waiting to be 
 used, the leaders of the times are not only short- 
 sighted, but guilty of neglecting a means of useful- 
 ness, if they suffer the Stage to remain outside the 
 moral agencies they employ ; or to exert its influence 
 in the opposite direction, and so counteract the ends 
 they are seeking to advance. I wish to revive the 
 period of its public usefulness, and I call upon you 
 to assist me in the worthy enterprise. Do not allow 
 immortal Shakespeare to be better known, acted and 
 appreciated in Germany and France than in his 
 native country (for in Germany Shakespeare is 
 taught at school and actors are educated to perform 
 it). Do not permit the National Drama to be almost 
 a sealed book to our rising generation. Do not 
 suffer the Stage to be abandoned to mere amuse- 
 ment when it might be transformed into a powerful 
 and popular school for the inculcation of virtue and 
 the diffusion of every great and noble sentiment. 
 In short, I ask you to help me in the solicitation of 
 Government sympathy and Government support, so 
 that England, first and foremost of the nations in all 
 that appertains to the public good, may not be the 
 last in this department of philanthropy and useful- 
 
90 
 
 ness ; but throwing her ample shield over all her 
 great and noble institutions, she may take the Stage 
 also beneath her powerful patronage and fostering ' 
 care, and thus lift the Theatre which has always 
 been an element of power in the Commonwealth, 
 which has proved its right to existence by its sur- 
 vival of centuries of persecution and martyrdom, 
 which will always exist and be an element of power, 
 and for good if rightly directed and tenderly 
 cherished thus lift the Theatre, I say, to its true 
 position among the moral agencies of the times, 
 and consecrate it to a new and illustrious career in 
 the service, welfare and happiness of mankind. 
 
 Yes, this is the sum of all that I have said. 
 That the Stage is one of the most ancient institu- 
 tions of the world, that it is founded upon one of 
 the most irrepressible instincts of humanity, and that 
 it can only perish with humanity itself. From time 
 Immemorial men have despised it, they have crushed 
 it by Acts of Parliament, they have branded its pro- 
 fessors as the pests of society, they have heaped 
 upon it all kinds of obscenity and abuse, there has 
 been no name bad enough wherewith to denounce 
 the accursed thing ; but it has lived through all 
 deathless as the instinct which gave it birth ; and 
 promises at last to rise above its accumulated 
 wrongs and become one of the fairest blossoms on 
 that tree of civilization which it helped to 
 nourish in the days of old. You may depend upon 
 
91 
 
 it that an institution which has lasted so long and 
 survived so much has something to account for its 
 marvellous vitality. A thing that is bad bad 
 wholly, bad throughout would perish of its own 
 moral rottenness and need nothing from without to 
 ensure its speedy and final dissolution. "Whatever 
 continues through the lapse of ages has an element 
 of good, and that element of good is the preservative 
 of its life and the pledge of its ultimate purification 
 and renewal. What is it, for instance, that has 
 saved Mohammedanism from the doom which its own 
 errors would otherwise have entailed upon it cen- 
 turies ago ? Is it not that grand antiseptic virtue 
 its emphatic witness to the unity of God? What 
 is it that has been the life of the vast system 
 which has flourished for so many ages in our 
 Indian territory, and threatens to be the last of our 
 Christian conquests in that great dominion? Is 
 it not the hope which it holds out to its worshippers 
 of their final absorption into the Divine Essence 
 that fascinating dream of a spiritual rest ? What is 
 it that has sustained the Religion of Rome in spite 
 of those enormous evils and abuses which have 
 paralyzed for ages the freedom of mankind ? Is it 
 not its testimony to the honour of womanhood in 
 its worship of the Virgin, with its ceaseless appeal 
 to those instincts of chivalry which are the deepest 
 and noblest feelings of the soul ? And so it is with 
 this Art of which I am proud to be the interpreter 
 and the advocate. It has within it a good and noble 
 
92 
 
 element. It is an answer to one of the greatesl 
 wants of men not a want specifically religious, 
 of course I claim for it no such position but a want 
 which is as natural, as real, as permanent the want 
 of recreation, diversion, entertainment, for which 
 the Art of the actor provides at once the most manly, 
 human, and humanizing supply. 
 
 To say that it has so many evils and abuses 
 is only to bring a charge against it which lies at 
 the door of every other Institution in the world. 
 The Theatre is not the only ground where evils 
 spring up and choke the good ; the actor's not the 
 only profession that is associated with vices which 
 damage its public reputation and influence. The 
 evil lies not in the profession but in the man. If 
 the man be good, no matter what evil associations 
 may surround him, he will pass through them all 
 with his garments unsinged ; but if the man be 
 evil, the holiest environment will not hinder its 
 display, but only set it forth in bold relief and 
 hold up himself to public shame. 
 
 To cast this Institution away, therefore, on ac- 
 count of its abuses is to act towards it unjustly, un- 
 historically, unchristianly. It is to adopt a course 
 which is applied to no other institution, and which, 
 if so applied, would be the extinction of everything 
 that is venerable and excellent ; yes, even Religion 
 and our Divine Christianity. The right method is to 
 
93 
 
 disentangle it from its evils to reform its abuses to 
 pass it through the fire of a moral reformation to 
 lay the axe to the root of the foul parasites that are 
 choking and destroying the noble tree to break off 
 the incrustation of its centuries of evil, and bring 
 to light the sparkling gem whose radiance they 
 have so long hidden and concealed. This is the 
 object I have in view in this lecture, and for this it 
 is my intention to devote all the influence and ability 
 I can command. It is to make the Stage a National 
 Institution to make it that of which a nation may 
 be proud to give it the rank of a public Institution 
 to provide for it an Academy, a Discipleship, a 
 Home to erect a Tribunal to which its professors 
 may appeal, by which merit may be rewarded, and 
 demerit swept away into the oblivion it deserves a 
 Tribunal from which spangled nudity and tinselled 
 impudence may t shrink abashed, and before which 
 genius may lift its dejected head and receive the 
 laurels of a nation's praise. 
 
 Why should there not be a Eoyal Academy of 
 Actors as well as a Royal Academy of Painters ? 
 Why should there not be a Sir Samuel Phelps as 
 well as a Sir Joshua Reynolds ? Why should the 
 latter Art be taken into a national conservatory 
 and the other left outside to wither in the storm ? 
 In a word, why should not the Dramatic Art be 
 placed on a footing with the other Arts, so that 
 the noblest of the land might aspire to its honours 
 
without a sense of degradation ; while those whose 
 nobility is only of the mind might regard them 
 with reverence, and labour for them with hope. 
 Now there is nothing for the artist to live for, 
 nothing to work up to no standard to reach, no 
 tribunal to appeal to, no laurel to crown nothing 
 but the breath of popular applause, which shifts 
 like the wind, and perishes as soon. 
 
 But once let the Stage become a national Insti- 
 tution once let it be taken under the segis of the 
 State once let it receive the kindly nurture and 
 powerful support of the British Government and I 
 venture to predict there would arise such a light of 
 Dramatic power and genius in England that the 
 Stage would become one of the brightest luminaries 
 of the age and of the world ; and mingle its rays 
 with the press and the pulpit for the enlightenment 
 of the ignorant, the elevation of the degraded, the 
 reproving of vice, the encouragement of virtue, and 
 the dissemination of those principles of public 
 morality which consolidate a nation and glorify 
 a throne. 
 
 Alas, however, I fear there is little hope of the 
 accomplishment of these bright predictions and 
 fascinating dreams ! But though these may be im- 
 possible, all is not impossible. Something can be 
 done to elevate our Art and invest it with a greater 
 
95 
 
 than its present dignity. Is there no individual 
 among all the wealthy admirers of the Drama no 
 George Peabody, no Baroness Burdett Coutts who 
 will exercise their beneficence in this department of 
 public usefulness, and hand down their names to the 
 future age as the founders of a Dramatic Institu- 
 tion or Academy ? If there be none, even that dis- 
 heartening fact must not drive us to despair. Let 
 us do something ourselves, however small, however 
 insignificant. Let us do as the founders of the 
 Eoyal Academy of Painters did, who took that room 
 in Spring Gardens (of which I have already told 
 you) and there commenced the institution which 
 has now grown into Burlington House, with its vast 
 annual displays of the works of genius the admira- 
 tion of princes, and the idolatry of the people. Let 
 us at least have a Dramatic Record Office a place 
 where our efforts in Dramatic Art shall be chronicled 
 and preserved ; to which Dramatic authors shall 
 be invited to send their works ; at which Dramatic 
 students shall come to learn the art of acting ; and 
 in which lectures may be given on Dramatic subjects. 
 This may be the small beginning of who knows 
 what magnificent result ? the little rill that shall 
 swell into the river and bear on its bosom the fleets 
 of nations the acorn that may grow into an oak 
 and brave the storms of a hundred winters the 
 room that may expand into a ROYAL ACADEMY 
 and a BURLINGTON HOUSE, and demand by 
 
96 
 
 its importance that distinction from the Govern- 
 ment which in the days of its weakness it peti- 
 tioned for in vain. 
 
 THE END. 
 


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