A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage: Together with the Sense of Antiquity on this ArgumentCollier, Jeremy
General
A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage: Together with the Sense of Antiquity on this Argument
Collier, Jeremy
Theater -- England -- Early works to 1800; Theater -- Moral and ethical aspects -- Early works to 1800
'Smutty Songs (says he) are much more abominable than Stench and Ordure.
And which is most to be lamented, you are not at all uneasy at such
Licentiousness. You Laugh when you should Frown; and Commend what you ought
to abhor.----Heark you, you can keep the Language of your own House in
order: If your Servants or your Childrens Tongues run Riot, they presently
smart for't. And yet at the _Play-House_ you are quite another Thing. These
little Buffoons have a strange Ascendant! A luscious Sentence is hugely
welcome from their Mouth: And instead of Censure, they have thanks and
encouragement for their Pains. Now if a Man would be so just as to wonder
at himself, here's Madness, and Contradiction in Abundance.
'But I know you'l say what's this to me, I neither sing nor pronounce, any
of this Lewd stuff? Granting your Plea, what do you get by't? If you don't
repeat these Scurrilities, you are very willing to hear them. Now whether
the Ear, or the Tongue is mismanaged, comes much to the same reckoning. The
difference of the _Organ_, does not alter the Action so mightily, as you
may imagine. But pray how do you prove you don't repeat them? They may be
your Discourse, or the Entertainments of your Closet for ought we know to
the contrary. This is certain; you hear them with pleasure in your Face,
and make it your business to run after them: And to my Mind, these are
strong Arguments of your Approbation.
'I desire to ask you a Question. Suppose you hear any wretches Blaspheme,
are you in any Rapture about it? And do your Gestures appear airy, and
obliged? Far from it. I doubt not but your blood grows chill, and your Ears
are stopt at the Presumption. And what's the Reason of this Aversion in
your Behaviour? Why 'tis because you don't use to Blaspheme, your self.
Pray clear your self the same way from the Charge of Obscenity. Wee'l then
believe you don't talk Smut, when we percieve you careful not to hear it.
Lewd Sonnets, and Serenades are quite different from the Prescriptions of
Virtue. This is strange Nourishment for a Christian to take in! I don't
wonder you should lose your Health, when you feed thus Foul. It may be
Chastity is no such easy Task! Innocence moves upon an Ascent, at least for
sometime. Now those who are always Laughing can never strain up Hill. If
the best preparations of Care will just do, what must become of those that
are dissolv'd in Pleasure, and lie under the Instructions of
Debauchery?----Have you not heard how that St. _Paul_ exhorts us _to
rejoyce in the Lord_? He said _in the Lord_; not in the Devil. But alas!
what leisure have you to Mind St. _Paul_? How should you be sensible of
your Faults, when your Head is always kept Hot, and as it were intoxicated
with Buffooning?'---- ----He goes on, and lashes the Impudence of the
_Stage_ with a great deal of Satir and Severity; and at last proposes this
Objection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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