_Question_. I have come to talk with you a little about the drama.
Have you any decided opinions on that subject?
_Answer_. Nothing is more natural than imitation. The little
child with her doll, telling it stories, putting words in its mouth,
attributing to it the feelings of happiness and misery, is the
simple tendency toward the drama. Little children always have
plays, they imitate their parents, they put on the clothes of their
elders, they have imaginary parties, carry on conversation with
imaginary persons, have little dishes filled with imaginary food,
pour tea and coffee out of invisible pots, receive callers, and
repeat what they have heard their mothers say. This is simply the
natural drama, an exercise of the imagination which always has been
and which, probably, always will be, a source of great pleasure.
In the early days of the world nothing was more natural than for
the people to re-enact the history of their country--to represent
the great heroes, the great battles, and the most exciting scenes
the history of which has been preserved by legend. I believe this
tendency to re-enact, to bring before the eyes the great, the
curious, and pathetic events of history, has been universal. All
civilized nations have delighted in the theatre, and the greatest
minds in many countries have been devoted to the drama, and, without
doubt, the greatest man about whom we know anything devoted his
life to the production of plays.
_Question_. I would like to ask you why, in your opinion as a
student of history, has the Protestant Church always been so bitterly
opposed to the theatre?
_Answer_. I believe the early Christians expected the destruction
of the world. They had no idea of remaining here, in the then
condition of things, but for a few days. They expected that Christ
would come again, that the world would be purified by fire, that
all the unbelievers would be burned up and that the earth would
become a fit habitation for the followers of the Saviour.
Protestantism became as ascetic as the early Christians. It is
hard to conceive of anybody believing in the "Five Points" of John
Calvin going to any place of amusement. The creed of Protestantism
made life infinitely sad and made man infinitely responsible.
According to this creed every man was liable at any moment to be
summoned to eternal pain; the most devout Christian was not absolutely
sure of salvation. This life was a probationary one. Everybody
was considered as waiting on the dock of time, sitting on his trunk,
expecting the ship that was to bear him to an eternity of good or
evil--probably evil. They were in no state of mind to enjoy
burlesque or comedy, and, so far as tragedy was concerned, their
own lives and their own creeds were tragic beyond anything that
could by any possibility happen in this world. A broken heart was
nothing to be compared with a damned soul; the afflictions of a
few years, with the flames of eternity. This, to say the least of
it, accounts, in part, for the hatred that Protestantism always
bore toward the stage. Of course, the churches have always regarded
the theatre as a rival and have begrudged the money used to support
the stage. You know that Macaulay said the Puritans objected to
bear-baiting, not because they pitied the bears, but because they
hated to see the people enjoy themselves. There is in this at
least a little truth. Orthodox religion has always been and always
will be the enemy of happiness. This world is not the place for
enjoyment. This is the place to suffer. This is the place to
practice self-denial, to wear crowns of thorns; the other world is
the place for joy, provided you are fortunate enough to travel the
narrow, grass-grown path. Of course, wicked people can be happy
here. People who care nothing for the good of others, who live
selfish and horrible lives, are supposed by Christians to enjoy
themselves; consequently, they will be punished in another world.
But whoever carried the cross of decency, and whoever denied himself
to that degree that he neither stole nor forged nor murdered, will
be paid for this self-denial in another world. And whoever said
that he preferred a prayer-meeting with five or six queer old men
and two or three very aged women, with one or two candles, and who
solemnly affirmed that he enjoyed that far more than he could a
play of Shakespeare, was expected with much reason, I think, to be
rewarded in another world.
_Question_. Do you think that church people were justified in
their opposition to the drama in the days when Congreve, Wycherley
and Ben Jonson were the popular favorites?
_Answer_. In that time there was a great deal of vulgarity in many
of the plays. Many things were said on the stage that the people
of this age would not care to hear, and there was not very often
enough wit in the saying to redeem it. My principal objection to
Congreve, Wycherley and most of their contemporaries is that the
plays were exceedingly poor and had not much in them of real,
sterling value. The Puritans, however, did not object on account
of the vulgarity; that was not the honest objection. No play was
ever put upon the English stage more vulgar then the "Table Talk"
of Martin Luther, and many sermons preached in that day were almost
unrivaled for vulgarity. The worst passages in the Old Testament
were quoted with a kind of unction that showed a love for the
vulgar. And, in my judgment, the worst plays were as good as the
sermons, and the theatre of that time was better adapted to civilize
mankind, to soften the human heart, and to make better men and
better women, than the pulpit of that day. The actors, in my
judgment, were better people than the preachers. They had in them
more humanity, more real goodness and more appreciation of beauty,
of tenderness, of generosity and of heroism. Probably no religion
was ever more thoroughly hateful than Puritanism. But all religionists
who believe in an eternity of pain would naturally be opposed to
everything that makes this life better; and, as a matter of fact,
orthodox churches have been the enemies of painting, of sculpture,
of music and the drama.
_Question_. What, in your estimation, is the value of the drama
as a factor in our social life at the present time?
_Answer_. I believe that the plays of Shakespeare are the most
valuable things in the possession of the human race. No man can
read and understand Shakespeare without being an intellectually
developed man. If Shakespeare could be as widely circulated as
the Bible--if all the Bible societies would break the plates they
now have and print Shakespeare, and put Shakespeare in all the
languages of the world, nothing would so raise the intellectual
standard of mankind. Think of the different influence on men
between reading Deuteronomy and "Hamlet" and "King Lear"; between
studying Numbers and the "Midsummer Night's Dream"; between pondering
over the murderous crimes and assassinations in Judges, and studying
"The Tempest" or "As You Like It." Man advances as he develops
intellectually. The church teaches obedience. The man who reads
Shakespeare has his intellectual horizon enlarged. He begins to
think for himself, and he enjoys living in a new world. The
characters of Shakespeare become his acquaintances. He admires
the heroes, the philosophers; he laughs with the clowns, and he
almost adores the beautiful women, the pure, loving, and heroic
women born of Shakespeare's heart and brain. The stage has amused
and instructed the world. It had added to the happiness of mankind.
It has kept alive all arts. It is in partnership with all there
is of beauty, of poetry, and expression. It goes hand in hand with
music, with painting, with sculpture, with oratory, with philosophy,
and history. The stage has humor. It abhors stupidity. It despises
hypocrisy. It holds up to laughter the peculiarities, the
idiosyncrasies, and the little insanities of mankind. It thrusts
the spear of ridicule through the shield of pretence. It laughs
at the lugubrious and it has ever taught and will, in all probability,
forever teach, that Man is more than a title, and that human love
laughs at all barriers, at all the prejudices of society and caste
that tend to keep apart two loving hearts.
_Question_. What is your opinion of the progress of the drama in
educating the artistic sense of the community as compared with the
progress of the church as an educator of the moral sentiment?
_Answer_. Of course, the stage is not all good, nor is--and I say
this with becoming modesty--the pulpit all bad. There have been
bad actors and there have been good preachers. There has been no
improvement in plays since Shakespeare wrote. There has been great
improvement in theatres, and the tendency seems to me be toward
higher artistic excellence in the presentation of plays. As we
become slowly civilized we will constantly demand more artistic
excellence. There will always be a class satisfied with the lowest
form of dramatic presentation, with coarse wit, with stupid but
apparent jokes, and there will always be a class satisfied with
almost anything; but the class demanding the highest, the best,
will constantly increase in numbers, and the other classes will,
in all probability, correspondingly decrease. The church has ceased
to be an educator. In an artistic direction it never did anything
except in architecture, and that ceased long ago. The followers
of to-day are poor copyists. The church has been compelled to be
a friend of, or rather to call in the assistance of, music. As a
moral teacher, the church always has been and always will be a
failure. The pulpit, to use the language of Frederick Douglass,
has always "echoed the cry of the street." Take our own history.
The church was the friend of slavery. That institution was defended
in nearly every pulpit. The Bible was the auction-block on which
the slave-mother stood while her child was sold from her arms.
The church, for hundreds of years, was the friend and defender of
the slave-trade. I know of no crime that has not been defended by
the church, in one form or another. The church is not a pioneer;
it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become
useless. The church preaches the doctrine of forgiveness. This
doctrine sells crime on credit. The idea that there is a God who
rewards and punishes, and who can reward, if he so wishes, the
meanest and vilest of the human race, so that he will be eternally
happy, and can punish the best of the human race, so that he will
be eternally miserable, is subversive of all morality. Happiness
ought to be the result of good actions. Happiness ought to spring
from the seed a man sows himself. It ought not to be a reward, it
ought to be a consequence, and there ought to be no idea that there
is any being who can step between action and consequence. To preach
that a man can abuse his wife and children, rob his neighbors,
slander his fellow-citizens, and yet, a moment or two before he
dies, by repentance become a glorified angel is, in my judgment,
immoral. And to preach that a man can be a good man, kind to his
wife and children, an honest man, paying his debts, and yet, for
the lack of a certain belief, the moment after he is dead, be sent
to an eternal prison, is also immoral. So that, according to my
opinion, while the church teaches men many good things, it also
teaches doctrines subversive of morality. If there were not in
the whole world a church, the morality of man, in my judgment, would
be the gainer.
_Question_. What do you think of the treatment of the actor by
society in his social relations?
_Answer_. For a good many years the basis of society has been the
dollar. Only a few years ago all literary men were ostracized
because they had no money; neither did they have a reading public.
If any man produced a book he had to find a patron--some titled
donkey, some lauded lubber, in whose honor he could print a few
well-turned lies on the fly-leaf. If you wish to know the degradation
of literature, read the dedication written by Lord Bacon to James
I., in which he puts him beyond all kings, living and dead--beyond
Caesar and Marcus Aurelius. In those days the literary man was a
servant, a hack. He lived in Grub Street. He was only one degree
above the sturdy vagrant and the escaped convict. Why was this?
He had no money and he lived in an age when money was the fountain
of respectability. Let me give you another instance: Mozart,
whose brain was a fountain of melody, was forced to eat at table
with coachmen, with footmen and scullions. He was simply a servant
who was commanded to make music for a pudding-headed bishop. The
same was true of the great painters, and of almost all other men
who rendered the world beautiful by art, and who enriched the
languages of mankind. The basis of respectability was the dollar.
Now that the literary man has an intelligent public he cares nothing
for the ignorant patron. The literary man makes money. The world
is becoming civilized and the literary man stands high. In England,
however, if Charles Darwin had been invited to dinner, and there
had been present some sprig of nobility, some titled vessel holding
the germs of hereditary disease, Darwin would have been compelled
to occupy a place beneath him. But I have hopes even for England.
The same is true of the artist. The man who can now paint a picture
by which he receives from five thousand to fifty thousand dollars,
is necessarily respectable. The actor who may realize from one to
two thousand dollars a night, or even more, is welcomed in the
stupidest and richest society. So with the singers and with all
others who instruct and amuse mankind. Many people imagine that
he who amuses them must be lower than they. This, however, is
hardly possible. I believe in the aristocracy of the brain and
heart; in the aristocracy of intelligence and goodness, and not
only appreciate but admire the great actor, the great painter, the
great sculptor, the marvelous singer. In other words, I admire
all people who tend to make this life richer, who give an additional
thought to this poor world.
_Question_. Do you think this liberal movement, favoring the better
class of plays, inaugurated by the Rev. Dr. Abbott, will tend to
soften the sentiment of the orthodox churches against the stage?
_Answer_. I have not read what Dr. Abbott has written on this
subject. From your statement of his position, I think he entertains
quite a sensible view, and, when we take into consideration that
he is a minister, a miraculously sensible view. It is not the
business of the dramatist, the actor, the painter or the sculptor
to teach what the church calls morality. The dramatist and the
actor ought to be truthful, ought to be natural--that is to say,
truthfully and naturally artistic. He should present pictures of
life properly chosen, artistically constructed; an exhibition of
emotions truthfully done, artistically done. If vice is presented
naturally, no one will fall in love with vice. If the better
qualities of the human heart are presented naturally, no one can
fail to fall in love with them. But they need not be presented
for that purpose. The object of the artist is to present truthfully
and artistically. He is not a Sunday school teacher. He is not
to have the moral effect eternally in his mind. It is enough for
him to be truly artistic. Because, as I have said, a great many
times, the greatest good is done by indirection. For instance, a
man lives a good, noble, honest and lofty life. The value of that
life would be destroyed if he kept calling attention to it--if he
said to all who met him, "Look at me!" he would become intolerable.
The truly artistic speaks of perfection; that is to say, of harmony,
not only of conduct, but of harmony and proportion in everything.
The pulpit is always afraid of the passions, and really imagines
that it has some influence on men and women, keeping them in the
path of virtue. No greater mistake was ever made. Eternally
talking and harping on that one subject, in my judgment, does harm.
Forever keeping it in the mind by reading passages from the Bible,
by talking about the "corruption of the human heart," of the "power
of temptation," of the scarcity of virtue, of the plentifulness of
vice--all these platitudes tend to produce exactly what they are
directed against.
_Question_. I fear, Colonel, that I have surprised you into agreeing
with a clergyman. The following are the points made by the Rev.
Dr. Abbott in his editorial on the theatre, and it seems to me that
you and he think very much alike--on that subject. The points are
these: