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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41298	A Defence of dramatick poetry being a review of Mr. Collier's View of the immorality and profaneness of the stage.	Filmer, Edward, b. ca. 1657.; Settle, Elkanah, 1648-1724.; Rymer, Thomas, 1641-1713.; Vanbrugh, John, Sir, 1664-1726.	1698 (1698)	Wing F905; ESTC R16098	47,476	128

Advice in Execution was indisputable and had the Argument been powerful enough to perswade 'em without question the Will would not have been wanting and consequently the Christian Roman Empire would never have faln short of the Heathen Plato in his Common-wealth in banishing the Play-house upon a full Conviction of their Christian Duty to oblige them to such a Reformation At least had the Lenity of those Christian Emperors who propagated the Faith not by Rods of Iron but Beams of Mercy indulged their Pagan Subjects to continue their Heathen Plays and Vanities nevertheless 't is highly to be supposed they had either used their own Imperial or commission'd their Ecclesiastical Authority to forbid that Liberty to their Christian Subjects But as nothing of all this was done but the open and publick Stage continued unshaken in defiance of all this Holy Breath against it what can we in all Reason conclude but that these Christian Princes lookt back to the fore-mention'd Father louder Thunder against the Stage as only a temporary Blast the greatest Cloud that rais'd all that Storm the main Ecclesiastical Matter of Complaint was dispell'd for the late Mourning now Smiling Church had thrown off her Cypress her Wounds were all heal'd and her Tears wiped away and thus that great Stage-Stumbling-Block viz. the unseasonableness of Mirth and Diversion was removed The Christians too now joining in the Heathen Diversion met their Friends not their Persecutors there And for the bloodier Gladiators and all the other lewder and more barbarous Theatrick Entertainments they fell in course with the Tyrants that supported them Thus all these highest Provocations of the Primitive Christian Quarrel against the Theatres composed and ended and nothing but the Innocent Dramatick Stage left standing and that to liable to all the Inspection and Regulation of Censors and Supervisors upon any Abuse or Corruption How then must these Christian Emperors look upon these Decrees of the Councils but as an over-warmth of Zeal a sort of a Iury-Presentation past at their Vacat Exiguis not weighty enough to found a State Indictment upon Nay their Sentence perhaps not worthy the Execution as pronounc'd by not altogether the proper Judges of the Fact A true Inquisition into the Stage being more the States than the Churches Province Those Reverend Divine Doctors of their Councils pass their Judgment at too far distance their Gravities come least or perhaps never into a Play-house Walls and therefore the full Cognizance of the Matter and the true Merits of the Cause lay not so much in their Reach For these therefore and whatever other Reasons the Primitive Christian Government was induced to continue the Stage Is not here one of the most convincing Arguments for the present Establishment of the Theatres especially comparing the different Circumstances between them Our Plays are no Heathen Compositions our Authors and Auditors profess one Faith our Stage lies under no Ecclesiastical Reprimand from the Fathers of our Church In short we have so many more favourable Aspects and all that Weight on our side in ballance between 'em enough to silence even Calumny it self And thus as our Stage has so leading an Example as the Primitive Christian Indulgence to warrant its Foundation as it has received the Protection of Crown'd Heads it has sometimes had the Honour of their Royal Presence at its Diversions too and what 's yet greater even Princes of the most exalted Piety have been the Royal Guests within those publick Walls In a Sermon upon the Death of the late QUEEN preach'd by William Payne D. D. Rector of St. Mary Whitechappel Chaplain to His MAJESTY Page 19 and 20. dilating upon that copious Theme the shining Piety of that truly Christian Princess we read as follows She gave Patterns of Virtue not uncouth or fantastick affected or unnatural such as we meet in the Legends but what are agreeable to Civil Life and to all the Stations of this World what Christianity and the plain Law of God require of us and those Things which they had not forbidden She did not think necessary to forbid her Self The undue Rigours and Severities of some Indiscreet Persons have done great Harm to Religion and Virtue by condemning those Things as absolutely sinful which are so only by Accident but in themselves innocent such as Dancing Playing at Cards going to Plays and the like Our Admirable QUEEN could distinguish here between Duty and Prudence between Unlawful and Inexpedient She would not refuse those Common Diversions nor use them too much She would not wholly keep from seeing of Plays as if they were utterly unlawful c. Here are two Christian Authorities one from the Theatre and the other the Pulpit of a contrary Opinion to Mr. Collier viz. That Plays in themselves are an Innocent Diversion And here I must look back to one Argument of the Fathers against the Theatres St. Chrysostome to oppose the Worldly Diversion of the Stage tells us how St. Paul exhorts us to rejoyce in the Lord. He said In the Lord not in the Devil And St. Ierome on the same Subject says Some are Delighted with the Satisfactions of this World some with the Circus and some with the Theatre But the Psalmist Commands every good Man to delight himself in the Lord. These Precepts of the Psalmist and the Apostle are indeed the highest Duty of Christianity But as we are but Men 't is a Duty too weighty to lye upon Humane Weakness without any Intervals of some lighter Alleviations of the Cares and Labours of Life Were Life to be intirely divided between the Prayer-book the Psalter and the Plough Rejoycing in God is that Exercise of Piety requiring so Intent and Exalted a Meditation that the weakness of Humane Nature would hardly be able to keep up the Soul on so sublime a flight without flagging her Wing and Devotion so severely tyed to the Altar I fear would make but a very lean Sacrifice But both the Psalmist and the Apostle did not extend this Command to Rejoyce only in the Lord no their Commission reach'd not so far they neither did nor could deliver such a Precept because their Lord and Master our Blessed Saviour himself would have refuted them For to give us an Instance that Temporal and Worldly Mirth and Rejoycing has received a Warrant of Authority even from Christ himself we need but read how Christ and his Mother were called to the Marriage in Cana of Galiiee where his Beginning of Miracles was turning Water into Wine Here we may Innocently and Modestly presume to suppose at this Marriage Festival when their Wine as the Text expresses was drank out that Cheerefulness and Mirth went round with the Glass not Spiritual Mirth for that wants not the Juice of the Grape And here undoubtedly our Saviour would neither have been himself a Guest at the Feast or heightned the Mirth at the Price of a Miracle had either a Cheerful Glass a Sociable Rejoycing or the Innocent Delights of Life

for this Reason That scarce any Body would apply themselves to the study of Nature and Morality unless when the Play-house was shut and the Weather foul That there was no Body to teach Philosophy because there was no Body to learn it But that the Stage had Nurseries and Company enough This Quarrel of Seneca against the Stage I confess was highly reasonable for undoubtedly that angry Gentleman of Learning was sensibly touch'd in the most tender part viz. Honour and Interest Perhaps the Auditory had found as much good Instruction to be glean'd up at a Play-house Lecture as at a Philosophy one and so because the Play-house-School got ground of the Philosophers 't was high Time to cry out Great was his own Diana of Ephesus Tacitus relating how Nero hired decay'd Gentlemen for the Stage complains of the Mismanagement and lets us know 't was the part of a Prince to Relieve their Necessity and not to tempt it c. And that his Bounty should rather have set them above an ill Practice then put them upon it Though Nero's Conduct was not always to be Vindicated however begging both Tacitus and Mr. Collier's Pardon I must give it on his side in this Case and say he was here very much in the Right For if that Prince thought it no Degradation to his own Imperial Dignity Personally to Act in Plays himself I know no Reason he had to think it either a Shame or a Condescension in a Private Gentleman and a Decay'd one too to come upon the Stage If the Sovereign could play the Histrio sure the Subject was not above it Plays in the Opinion of the Judicious Plutarch are dangerous to corrupt Young People and therefore Stage-Poetry when it grows too Hardy and Licentious ought to be check'd Here Plutarch's Charge against the Play-house is not over severe the Dangers from the Stage only threaten'd the Younger sort of People Wisdom and Gravity nay possibly Mr. Collier himself might enter a Play-house Walls and come off unhurt Nay as Dangerous as it might be even to Youth it self the Danger belike lay not either in the Play-house or the Play but the Abuses and Corruptions that crept into the Representations there For he condemns the Stage-Poetry but only when it grows too Hardy and too Licentious Plutarch's Check does not reach Mr. Collier's he brings only the pruning Hook I have here recited every Individual Authority quoted by Mr. Collier of his Heathen Philosophers Historians and Orators I think they are somewhat short of half a Score And how far their several Authorities reach I hope I have indifferently well explain'd Well to Sum up this Heathenish Evidence This Learned Scholiast has made hard shift to muster up a little above half a dozen Philosophers Orators and Historians that have either enter'd their Pagan Protests or prefer'd some Arraignment against Plays Now the particular Opinions of not half a score of these Dissenting Ethnick Doctors out of at least half as many hundred of that Fraternity especially too at their rate of talking or Mr. Collier for 'em is no more a Conclusive Argument in my simple Judgment against the Stage Then a Diogenes in his Tub and his Rags or an Epimantus at his Roots and his Water should perswade any Rational Man from a clean Shirt upon his Back and a good House o're his Head or a good Dish of Meat and a Bottle of Wine for his Dinner viz. if he is able to purchase it And now as doughtily as these Orators have supported his Cause upon this Diminitive Foundation what a Colossus has he rais'd For he concludes upon this Head with telling us This was the Opinion of those Celebrated Authors with respect to Theatres They charge 'em with the Corruption of Principles and Manners and lay in all imaginable Caution against them And yet these Men had seldom any thing but this World in their Scheme and form'd their Judgment only upon Natural Light and common Experience We see then to what sort of Conduct we are obliged The Case is plain Unless we are little enough to renounce our Reason and fall short of Philosophy and live under the pitch of Heathenism Here I must confess this Insinuation is very artful But all this while these Philosophers that charge the Stage with this Corruption of Principle and Manners give us but their bare Word for it Was it enough for the Great Plato and Aristotle the very Doctors of the Chair in the Old Heathen Divinity for Religion was then but Philosophies Pupil was it enough I say for those Zealots in Morality to see that Stage that had stood hundreds of Years and to look upon it as such a Nursery of Corruption and say no more against it Does it look like the Man that the World received him for Plato to tell us in a Line and a Half That Plays raise the Passions and pervert the use of them and by consequence are dangerous to Morality only to start such an unintelligible Fragment and not make a little Sermon-Work upon that Text Perhaps indeed Sic Volo sic Iubeo might be enough to banish Plays from his own Common-wealth and even that short Sentence might be Supererrogation However he owed that Justice both to the World around him and Posterity after him to read a little longer Esculapian Lecture upon so Epidemick a Disease Undoubtedly had either Plato or Aristotle but half Mr. Collier's Pique against the Play-houses they would have spared their Ink as little as he has done and consequently have supplied him with more copious Satyr and more sensible Arguments upon that Subject But for once I 'll joyn Issue with him and to throw some Weight more into his Scale I 'll suppose these half a dozen Philosophical Doctors with their Natural Light and as many Doctor Collier's with their Divine Light had all past their Negative Vote against the Stage however they would hardly carry the Cause For truly I know no Reason why the Stage should be obliged to stand upon a stronger Basis then the very Sanction of our Laws themselves And I doubt not but a Foundation may be very honest and innocent though not establish'd by a Nemine Contradicente To these Testimonies of the Philosophers c. he tells you He 'll add a couple of Poets who both seem to be good Judges of the Affair in hand The first is Ovid who in his Book De Arte Amandi gives his Reader to understand that the Play-house was the most likely Place to forage in Here would be choice nothing being more common than to see Beauty surprized Women Debauch'd and Wenches pick'd up at those Diversions Ovid. Lib. 1. Sed tu praecipue curvis venare Theatris Haec Loca sunt voto fertiliora tuo Ruit ad celebres cultissiama Foemina Ludos Copia judicium saepe mor at a meum est Spectatum veniunt veniunt spectentur ut ipsae Iile Locus casti damna pudor is habet In this Authority

been Sinful and Unlawful Nor can the End of this Miracle exprest in the Text viz. The manifesting forth his Glory and making his Disciples believe on him be any Argument to weaken my Assertion For 't were even Impiety to suggest That our Saviour could want Occasion or Opportunities of Exerting the God to need a poor Choice for the Ground of a Miracle Next let us examine one of the most Capital Offences of Dramatick Poetry arraign'd both by the Philosophers Fathers of the Church and the Son of the Church Mr. Collier viz. The Raising the Passions c. Here we 'll begin with Tragedy Tragedy indeed does raise the Passions and its chief work is to raise Compassion For the great Entertainment of Tragedy is the moving that tenderest and noblest Humane Passion Pity And what is it we pity there but the Distresses Calamities and Ruins of Honour Loyalty Fidelity or Love c. represented in some True or Fictitious Historick or Romantick Subject of the Play Thus Virtue like Religion by its Martyrdom is rendred more shining by its Sufferings and the Impression we receive from Tragedy is only making us in Love with Virtue for Pity is a little Kin to Love and out of Love with Vice for at the same time we pity the suffering Virtue it raises our Aversions and Hate to the Treachery or Tyranny in the Tragedy from whence and by whom that Virtue suffers How often is the good Actor as for Instance the Iago in the Moor of Venice or the Countess of Notingham in the Earl of Essex little less than Curst for Acting an Ill Part Such a Natural Affection and Commiseration of Innocence does Tragedy raise and such an Abhorrence of Villany And that this is truly the Entertainment of Tragedy we come on purpose to see Virtue made Lovely and Vice made Odious That Expectation brings us to the Play and if we find not that very Expectation answer'd instead of any satisfactory Delight we receive or any Applause we return we Explode and Hiss our Entertainment the Play sinks and the Performance is lost and we come away with this Disrelish as to think both our Money and Time ill spent 'T is true a Character that has not all the Perfections of true Honour or Innocence nay a Vicious one sometimes may move Compassion But then 't is not the Vice or Blemishes in the Character that moves that Pity For Instance in the Orphan we pity the Vicious and Libertine Polydore that lyes with his Brother's Wife But when do we pity him When he 's touch'd with that sense and horror of his Guilt that he gives up his Life pick 's a feign'd Quarrel with the Injur'd Castalio and runs upon his Sword to Expiate 'T is not the Criminal but the Penitent the Virtue not Vice in the Character moves the Compassion Thus we pity Timon of Athens not as the Libertine nor Prodigal but the Misanthropos When his Manly and Generous Indignation against the Universal Ingratitude of Manking makes him leave the World and fly the Society of Man when his open'd Eyes and recollected Virtue can stand the Temptation of a Treasure he found in the Woods enough to purchase his own Estate again When all this glittering Mine of of Gold has not Charm to bribe him back into a hated World to the Society of Villains Hypocrites and Flatterers We pity the Evandra too his Mistress not for the Vice and Frailty in her Character but for that Generous Gratitude to the Founder of her Fortunes that she sells all she has in the World and brings it all in Jewels to relieve the Distresses of Timon and what heightens our Pity is that she follows him not for a Criminal or wanton Conversation with him Nay what 's yet greater she can quit all the Vanities and Temptations of Life and with an equal Contempt of Jewels and Gold can embrace his voluntary Poverty eat Roots drink Water and dye with him However if the pitying Part is not the main Offence there 's another more dreadful Danger from Tragedy For as his Minutius Foelix upon that Subject tells us Sometimes a Luscious Actor shall whine you into Love and give the Disease that he Counterfeits Mr. Collier himself is more at large upon this Play-house Danger For he concludes his Book with this last Argument to prove the Unlawfulness of Plays viz. Were the Stage in a condition to wipe off all her other Imputations there are two Things behind which would stick upon them and have an ill Effect upon the Audience The first is their dilating so much upon the Argument of Love The Subject is Treated Home and in the most tender and passionate manner imaginable c. These Love Representations oftentimes call up the Spirits and set them at Work The Play is Acted over again in the sense of Fancy and the first Imitation becomes a Model Love has generally a Party within and when the Wax is prepar'd the Impression is easily made Thus the Disease of the Stage grows catching It throws its Amours among the Company and forms these Passions when it does not find them c. I don't say the Stage Fells All before them and disables the whole Audience 'T is a hard Battle where none escapes However their Triumphs and their Trophies are unspeakable Neither need we much wonder at the matter They are dangerously prepar'd for Conquest and Empire There 's Nature and Passion and Life in all the Circumstances of their Action Their Declamation their Mein their Gestures and their Equipage are moving and significant Now when the Subject is agreeable a lively Representation and a passionate way of Expression make wild work and have a strong Force upon the Blood and Temper I cannot well understand what Mr. Collier means and I-fear he don't over-well understand himself in all this last Paragraph But perhaps he design'd it more for Rapsody than Reason and so 't is no great matter whether it be Intelligible or not For all this Nature Passion Life and Action Declamation Mien Gesture and Equipage are purely the Actors and by making such wild work in the Blood and Temper and felling so many of the Audience before them plainly tells us That these unspeakable Triumphs and Trophies Conquest and Empire are all the Actors and Actresses and the Cupids Darts come all from their own Eyes and Charms and consequently the Audiences captivated Hearts are all their own the Enamour'd Gentlemen in the Pit and the Gay Ladies in the Boxes are these Victorious Players most passionate humble Servants This unspeakable Play-house Victory I am afraid is a piece of News that wants Confirmation For as to the Men-Players I dare swear for 'em that all the Feminine Trophies our Triumphant Young Fellows of both Play-Houses can boast is not enough to buy them Sword-knots and Crevatestrings And for the Ladies of the Stage with all the advantage of Paint Plume and Candle-light I do not hear they are so very over-stockt