Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-02-04

fail to recall any special recent evidences
of activity to justify it. 1t is not asked
that the pulpit or scholarship shall abandon
their own tasks to work reformation in
dramatic fields But it is insisted that they
recognize any and every educating factor
and exert their influence to make them
agencies for good rather than evil
Thus, it being true that modern drama
is, in the main, contributing 10 and edu-
eating vicious and impure taste, and 1t
being true that large class of people are
theater-going, the question is whether the
pulpit and scholarship shall content them
selves with condemnation Should they
not rather seek to divert this agency from
evil by stimulating among those who main
tain it taste for the pure, elevating and
refining, to which the managerial element
will, in self-interest, respond, and thus aid
in retaining morbid and debasing appe-
tite for the unwholesome upon the stage?
There is a wide and unoccupied mission
airy field for labor in this direction. In
this decade the drama drags its skirts in
the mire and filth of sensationalism and
vulgarity. Beyond few spasmodic trib-
utes to virtuOus sentiments and manly
spirits the most of the dramas of to-day
those which the managerial element find
to pay best-are trashy. They serve
possibly in a few cases to amuse, and only
infrequently to entertain. 1t is not vain
conception, we contend, that scholarship
and the pulpit may exert influences in the
interest of pure art in the drama, that
would be reflected in the ordinary dra-
matte criticism of the day and lift it out
Of the rut Of mere fault-finding to a con-
ception of the overshadowing Importance
and value of artists, who, like Mr.. Barrett,
are doing their utmost to elevate the actors
profession, purify the stage, and make its
Influence refining and wholly for good.
The stage of to-day is at lower level
than at any period in its history. 1t caters
in the main to tastes that tend to corrupt
public thought, and establish false esti-
mates of humanity. The thin Cruel which
most modern playwrights give us is nau-
seating, and debasing sensationalism, bur-
lesque, French suggestiveness clad in silks
and velvets and robed in the seductive
language of accomplished indecency and
gilded sophistry, have firm hold upon
| the stage. As natural result the Ander-
sons, the Barretts, Booths and Irvings
are so very few as to shine a hundred fold
brighter in the dramatic armament than if
higher and better level of general excel
lence and purity was occupied by their
contemporaries What should be kept
clearly in view is the undeniable fact that
the pulpit and the study is not justified in
neglecting to exert themselves to mold
and, in a sense, direct an influence that it
cannot be denied exerts powerful inAu-
ence upon a large class in society.
1t ought to be realized that it is possible
to create a demand for dramatic purity
and strength that will be responded to,
to the exclusion very largely, if not
wholly, from the legitimate stage of the i'm
pure and demoralizing. The managers of
to-day attempt no denial of the low ebb of
the drama, but excuse themselves for the
unsavory dish they serve by the plea that
they respond to the popular taste. This is
in part true, but is mainly false. The pub
lie taste is but feebly represented by thea
trical patronage of to-day. AS matter of
fact, those who are repealed by the low
grade of material posing upon the stage,
and the Indifferent thought spoken upon
it, is the larger element.
We conceive it to be legitimate office
of scholarship and the pulpit to so csA-
mend the worthy in dramatic art while
unsparingly conGemning the vicious, as to
cultivate among those who love and sus-
tain dramatic representations 4 sentiment
for the decent and elevating to which
managers will bow. A view should not
be taken along the lines of respective
that wholly excludes the theater We
submit that since it is an educating 'influ-
ence, since it always has had and will have
patronage, since it does SOW seeds that
must yield harvests, there should be some
thing broader, better and more tolerant
than its wholesale condemnation by those
who claim to desire dramatic reformation
1t is not the part of wisdom to indiscrim-
inately condemn. Rather there should
be adopted the wise policy that en-
courages by non-condemnation of the drama
whenever pure and elevating, with the
hope that at no far distant day all that is
vulgar and vicious attaching to it will be
driven out and to its own level, and the
drama in text, and the theater in action,
be reclaimed to purity of thought and re-
tinement of sentiment, and come to be, as
they may and should be, stronger for good
than for evil in fact, develop in the true
sense as educators and ciyilizers.