You see, Sir, I have given my Thoughts freely: I wish they may receive your Approbation; because I wou'd never think but to please you. I dare not now think of excusing any thing I have writ, for I was resolv'd to tie my self to no Method, but to think as much as I cou'd for the advantage of the Stage, which I must believe very lawful, for any thing I have yet met to the contrary. Nor can I be perswaded, that our Plays have had so ill effect as some wou'd imagine. The best of our Plays have nothing in them that is so scandalous; and for the worst, I wou'd not allow them the Credit, nor the Authors the Vanity to think they could influence any one Man. The evil Conversation of some of them wou'd frighten a Man from being vicious; so that they are serviceable against their Wills, and do the World a Kindness through mistake. I dare not stay any longer with you, tho' I have a great Inclination to beg you'd excuse the roughness of my Stile: But you know I have been busie in _Virgil_; and that they say, at _Will_'s, is enough to spoil it: But if I had begg'd a more important thing, and ask'd you to forgive the length of my Letter, I might assure my self you wou'd oblige, Your Humble Servant. FINIS. THE Occasional Paper: Number IX. Containing some CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE DANGER Of going to PLAYS. In a Letter to a Friend. LONDON, Printed for M. Wotton, at the Three Daggers in Fleet Street. 1698. SIR, Being well assured that you sincerely desire to live as becomes a Christian, though you are not in Holy Orders; and that your complying with some things in use among those with whom you converse, is rather from a care to avoid being over-nice to the prejudice of Religion, than any want of a due Concern for the Interest of it: I cannot refuse the letting you see all at once, my thoughts of that, which having been at several times discoursed on between us, was never yet brought to a perfect Conclusion. I have always found you doubting the _Lawfulness_, at least the _Expedience_ of going to _Plays, as they are now acted amongst us_; and sometimes you have seem'd to think it did not consist with the Faith of the _Gospel_, considering the Outrage committed there for the most part upon it, in one instance or other. And a fresh sense of this I perceive has been given you, by the late _lively Account of the Stages_, the natural colours of which indeed are so black as to be more than enough to affright those who have any _Fear of Him that ought to be feared_, or any Dread of the Ruin of Men. But for as much as the thread of that serious _Design_ may seem broken too often with Observations of Learning, and Reflections of Wit, to be closely follow'd by those who are either not used to the one, or too fond of the other; the same good End may perhaps be helped forward a little, by setting this matter in a less interrupted Light, and a Simpler View.