The Sun.
London, England, 1856-08-09 00:00:00

all their heavenward aspirations—with all their
deep domestic affections—with their unselfish hopes
and apprehensions of the future, are not ever con-
jugating the verb "to seduce" in one or other of
its moods. Love is not always lust ; nor do man
and woman always unite their fates together with
an eye to adultery and assassination. Every hus-
band is not always standing behind a curtain to
catch his wife in the fact ; uor is every wife ready
to sacrifice her duty and her self-respect at the shrine
of the first pale-faced fiddler rank with tobacco reek
who would lead her astray. Life in England, at
least, is not ever an affair of intrigue, jealousy,
adultery, and duels. The Satanic drama of Paris
no more conveys an idea of English life in 1856
than it does of life in Peru whenManco Capac was

a little boy.
Now, the fact is that English dramatists of the
present day—we except the farce-writers, who are
rich and racy of the soil and ply their craft in an
unexceptionable manner—are nothing better than
sycophantic copyists of French filth. The other
day we had occasion to remark upon the
abominable opera which has been represented
throughout the season which ends to-day at her
Majesty's Theatre. We would now give a turn to
the managers of theatres in which regular dra-
matic representations are presented, to the authors
whom they employ, and to the audience who are not
ashamed to afford their patronage to such exhibi-
tions. We select this time rather than an earlier
period for such a purpose partly because the pre-
sent lull in public business permits us to turn for a
moment to such subjects, partly because the
pieces have had their filthy run, and we cannot
now interfere with the profits of managers and
actors. It is far indeed from our wish to use the
power of this journal to the injury of any
private enterprise, but henceforward, and after
fair warning, we shall be less chary than we have
hitherto been in denouncing these unseemly exhi-
bitions to the indignation of the public. A weekly
contemporary, the Spectator, recently united in
one well-deserved censure the opera of " La Tra-
viata," and a drama which not long since was pro-
duced at the Olympic under the name of " Retri-
bution." The plot in a few words is this :—A
had seduced B's wife, who dies ; B makes up his
mind to seduce A's wife in return. B tells A's
wife, in order to carry out his little plot, that A
has seduced and is seducing C's wife, which is, in
point of fact, the case. Now B has a younger
brother, whom, in mathematical form, we shall
style B—, who is quite a boy. But B—desires to
seduce A's wife on his own account, which com-
plicates the problem. There occurs a boudoir
scene. A's wife being minded to avenge herself on
A, who, as it will be remembered, had seduced C's
wife, is waiting for B with that intent. Ais neatly
concealed. In place of B there enters B—, who
warns Mrs. A that B's sole idea in the intrigue is
vengeance against her husband, not love for her-
self. In the midst of his expansions A enters
fiercely and challenges B—. A and B—then de-
part, leaving Mrs. A. to her reflections. This is
the time for B, who comes in by the window,
and who might do anything he pleased with Mrs.
A, so terror-stricken is she, but, like a noble crea-
ture as he is, he jumps out of the window again,
leaving the lady to ring for her maid. In the
fourth and final act we are transported to B's
apartment. Mrs A, regardless of her little diffi-
culties of the preceding evening, comes to see B
at his lodgings ; but, hearing the voice of A out-
side, she conceals her in a closet. The object of
I A's visit is to ask hospitality for B—, whom he
has wounded in a duel. Of course, it comes to
light that the two B's are brothers. It suddenly
flashes on A that, if this be so, Mrs. B, whom
he had originally seduced, was the wife of
the gentleman before him. A and B fight in the
room. A falls, run through the body--:Mrs. A
comes out of the closet and throws herself on the
corpse. Bis quite happy that he has at length
obtained Retribution, but his joy is slightly
checked by the intelligence that poor little B— is
just dead in his dressing-room.
We ask pardon of our readers for laying such
abominable trash as this before them, but the fact
is that the above is a very fair average specimen of
a French drama, founded upon a French novel.
Our paltry hod-carriers in the drama business have
not even the merit of originality, .but are content
to take this filth at second hand. Surely something
better than this might be accomplished, on the sup-
position that men of ordinary ability would turn
their attention to this subject, as they might to the
making .of shoes. Sir Edward Lytton and Mr.
Sheridan Knowles, in our own day, have contrived
to obtain a reasonable amount of success without
converting themselves into nightmen for the Pa-
risian cesspools. One has heard at an earlier period
of such plays as " She Stoops to Conquer," the
" Rivals." the " School for Scandal," and a few
others which were not wituout, cub:A...it., i. ust:ii.
time. Ate our English dramatic writers so en-
tirely destitute of invention that they cannot con-
coct a plot and imagine a series of characters with-
out plagiarism of the most contemptible kind ? We
trust that English audiences will for the future set
their faces against those contemptible and filthy
exhibitions. They are a disgrace to our country
and our time. " All the world's a stage," is the
old hackneyed quotation ; we cannot in the case of
our theatres reverse the saying and add, " Toe
stage is all the world ;" let us not, at any rate,
make it the world's filthiest part.