Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1878-12-04
Morality as Set Forth in the New York
Theaters.
Sunday Afternoon.

Sunday Afternoon.
The question about theater-going is
one of the constant puzzles of Christian
casuistry, and it is Il question to which
it is not possible to give, off-hand, suf-
icient and final answer. 1t will be gen
orally conceded that dramatic repre-
sensations are not necessarily evil: the
almost universal resort to amateur his
trionism shows what is the popular
Judgment on that subject. But the
question whether we shall patronize the
actual .theater of the period IS much
more difficult. In two or three daily
papers that are by no means Puritanic
in their notions we have seen references
to the present condition Of the stage in
this country that do not encourage us to
recommend our neighbors to patronize
it, A writer in the Tribune-who had
been assured that if he had not attend
ed the drama since his youth he would
find it an entirely different thing from
that of his recollections-concluded to
60 and take grown-up child. The au-
dience he found to be decorous and
respecta BILE in the extreme, and the play
was described as Irregular Old-fash-
toned, legitimate play" But the things
that this correspondent saw and heard
there are not, it must be confessed,
things with which decent people wish
themselves or their children to be famil-
lar. Profanity, to begin with, was a
frequent condiment Of the play; there
was a scene of drunken carousal, and
a song in praise Of wit, women and
Wlne:" presently came an innuendo
to the last degree obscene, so broad that
there was no mistaking it's meaning"
and by and by an interview in which
one player uses all the arts OF wicked
persuasion to break down another's
virtue. These coarse and indecent
scenes and suggestions naturally made
the father doubt the usefulness of this
form of recreation. And his conclusion
as to the theater-golng is one to which
a good many people who are by no
means prudish have been forced to
come: GAS things are at present it is
too costly risk, and the good to be
gained is too indirect while there are
so many unexceptionable avenues to
benefit and recreation elsewhere. |
can imagine stage with plays and per-
formers all pure; shall we ever see it 2"
The prospect of seeing it just now in
New York is not brilliant, if we may
credit the newspapers. The plays that
are now most popular in that city are
described as being glaringly immoral;
the few that are above reproach on the
score Of morality are disparaged by the
newspapers and ignored by the public.
The new opera, too, that has been
crowding the Academy, is based upon
one of the most disgusting of plots.
:. The standard is degenerating," says
the Springfield Republican, . if this vul-
carly vicious story, set to perfectly SYM
pathetic music, is we'll received in the
American metropolis" Yet the reform
of the drama must not be looked upon
as an impossible achievement Fiction
was scarcely less impure in former days
than the drama is now, but the preva-
lence of better morality has done
much to purify it, The time will come
when the influence that has reached the
novelist will overtake the playwright
and the actor. and when bad plays shall
cease to be respectable. Meanwhile,
let all good people steadily bear witness,
not against the drama as an evil in it.
self, but against the immortality that in
these days makes it an unclean thing.