Whatever condemnation the stage incurred in the seventeenth century, it was, whether deservedly or not, quite as much held up to opprobrium in the eighteenth. A tract, published in 1726 by William Law, after describing the playhouse as a “sink of corruption and debauchery,” goes on to say-- “This is not the state of the Play House through any accidental abuse, as any innocent or good thing may be abused; but that corruption and debauchery are the truly natural and genuine effects of the stage entertainment.” But in spite of the abuses that existed in connection with the stage, the fact remains that all through the eighteenth century there was a succession of actresses whose celebrity was not confined to their own age. The mere mention of the names of Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Porter, Peg Woffington, Mrs. Cibber, Kitty Clive, and, later, the incomparable Sarah Siddons, Miss Farren, and Mrs. Jordan, recalls the glories of the playhouse and the privileges enjoyed by audiences of those days. In the last century it would have seemed scarcely less absurd to question the propriety of having women to act than it would now. The difference in the course of little over fifty years was marvellous. There is no department of the fine arts in which women have progressed with so much rapidity as in acting. It is hardly necessary to record the triumphs won by popular actresses, or to chronicle the successes which have marked the career of numbers who are not in the first rank. Women have entered upon the stage as upon their natural inheritance. Their presence has stimulated the talents of their male compeers. The attempt to represent human nature with only one half of humanity seems absurdly futile to later generations, who find it impossible to conceive of stage performances in which the players were all men. It has been seen how the first advent of women on the stage was productive of increased licence and freedom of manners--an almost inevitable result considering what the age was, and the novelty of the experiment. The influence of the drama in England, and the important part which it has played in the development of our social life, have been very widely discussed. Those who view the stage as a great educator, and those--a dwindling number--who regard it as a debaser of public morals, can both find apt illustrations to prove their contentions. But whichever standpoint be taken, the stage, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was far more than at the present day the national recreation. There were fewer counterbalancing attractions.