The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1877-10-27
For The Cecil Wing.
BROADBRIM'S NEW YORK LETTER.

Decay Of the american Drama: Theaters
Old and Neu;; Modern Acting and Old
Time Actors; NeU York as it Was and as
At Is: Suicides; Business Failures: Gossip:
&C., &c.
In no one thing is the radical change
observed in our city more than in the
amusements of our people at the present
time in contrast to what they were twenty
five or thirty years ago.
The first inroad made on the old time
drama, by the so called society plays, was
in the introduction of the French play of
Camille" about twenty years ago.
Never up to that time had any dramatist
dared to effect such public and shameful
compromise with vice. Mothers, wives
and daughters, night after night, attended
the theater, and wept over the sorrows and
disappointments of creature that not one
in public, and applauded the final action of
the hero when he disgraced himself and
his family by making her his wife. This
may be a very proper thing to do in Paris
atmosphere Of the Jardin Mabille, or the
QUARTER Lorrette- but it should have been
pelted off of every respectable stage in
America, and the actors and actresses
should have been booted from the theater
who dared to give the immoral representa-
ton. The vicious taste has grown on our
people. The indeccncies of the French
Opera Bouffe have been supplemented by
the vulgarisms OF the concert saloons of
London, and step by step our theaters have
refrigerated till in all New York there is
only one solitary theater left, which can be
regarded as proper exponent of decent
and wholesome drama. There was time
when the name of Wallack represented all
that was good and noble in the play house;
but now, season after season, we see that
temple abandoned to the inanities of negro
minstrels or the vulgar jokes and indecent
exhibitions of second class London concert
singers, and after their purgation, when
the public is informed that the legitimate
season is about to commence they are treat
ed to a hash called I" Marriage" by Dion
Boucicault, the bold grossness of which
has had no parallel in the history of the
American stage.
1t has become fashionable with some of
the dish water critics to sneer at the old
time pieces, and ventilate their slang about
bowling and Bowery actors. TO many of
us who recolect the history of the New
York stage, this twadde is simply anus
ing, and it may be news to some of those
verdant knights of the quill to know that
the first time | ever saw John Gilbert was as
a member of the Bowery company, Lester
Wallack, now New York's petted darling,
although the old rat is over sixty, and
hosts of others who are now the best
actors on the stage. Poor Ned Davenport,
whom we layed peacefully to rest few
weeks ago, was member of the Bowery
company when / first knew it; and re-
collect a cast of "Julius Casar,' some
thing over thirty years ago, the like of
which, with all due Difference to the present
the Brutus, Hamblin was Marc Anthony,
and Junius Brutus Booth the great, was
the living embodiment of Cassius. Mrs.
Shaw, then in the zenith of her beauty,
was the Calphurna. No stage revival of
these latter days has equaled it, and very
much doubt if the American theaters will
see such performance in the present
generation. The Union Square, under the
management of Shook and Palmer, is
about the only theater in New York where
there is truly legitimate and respectable
performance. The "Two Orphans" "The
Danicheffs," and plays of like character,
have run for months at time, and the
high moral tone of these pieces is some-
thing to be gratefully remembered.
just now the Rev Joseph Cook is cleo
trifying the New York public with series
of lectures which are intended to reconcile
the most advanced discoveries of modern
science with the accepted revelations of the
Bible. Logically and financially the lee
lures have been success, and whether he
demolshes Huxley and Tyndall, there is
no doubt but the bank account of the Rev.
Joseph Cook will be materially bettered by
the lecture season of 1S77-7S. Speaking
of Reverends, the Rev. Alfred Thompson,
of Elgin, Illinois, has been sent to States
CONTINUED ON FOURTH PAaE.]