Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-02-01

showing vaciIlation over it, the matter goes
beyond our comprehension. Yet these are
the features of the dispute over Sardou's
new drama which agitated Paris last week.
In writing 'sThermidor" Sardou intended
to use the stage as political engine against
the radical republicanism. In drawing q
forbidding picture of the Republicans
of 1898, he has doubtless shown
ability to use his imagination Tor
his facts which appears to marked
degree in his other works. No doubt
his portrayal of that great historical era inn
proves every opportunity to pisrepresent
facts, or to represent only one side OF them,
by which the passionate revolt OF the Terror
lists can be made to seem the wanton cruelty
Of brutal savages. That is the weak poiLt
of every attempt to enforce moral or pollt-
ical lesson by means of works of fiction. 1t
would be just as easy for Republican dra-
matist like Victor Hugo to produce stage
picture in which the Terrorists should ap-
pear as heroes and patriots, as for Sardou to
make them murderers and savages.
There is certainly reason for us to feel
gratifed that we are, as patton, far beyond
the point where we can get into riot over
political drama. We may account for
part of the difference between ourselves and
the French by recognizing that there is
less radical demarcation of issues between
the parties. If anyone should produce a
drama showing the revolutionary characters
of this country to be selfish and besotted
wretches, perhaps it would be more closely
akin to Sardou's effort But even that wan
ton attack on our national beliefs would
not create a riot There might be
disposition to hiss such drama from the
stage; but the vast majority of Americans
would show their perception of the surest
means of suppressing such nonsense by
staying away from the performance and
letting it die.
We have got happily beyond the point of
regarding the stage as a means of public
instruction. Only the other day, in one of
the Pittsburg theaters, an actor took occa-
sion in a topical song to introduce verse
embodying the stock attack on the McKin-
ley bill. OF the audience, seven, if not
eight-tenths were supporters of that meas
ure; but none of them thought it worth
while to even show sign of dissent. And
they were right. The American public
goes to the theater to be interested and
amused. The class that can have its views
on history or political measures affected by
a stage presentation is too ignorant to be
catered for by our theatrical managers.
The fact that the drama can be taken so
seriously in France as to regard it as po-
litical engine, furnishes the explanation for
another marked difference in the standing
which the stage and playwrights have
in France as compared with Anglo
Saxon countries. If the stage
representations have this political
importance it is natural that its elevation
should be the first care of government, and
that the successful maker of dramas should
occupy the highest rank in literature. But
the press and the drama in France occupy
nearly a reversed position as compared with
the respective power of the two in this coun-
try. For some reason-perhaps because lib
erty of the press has been really unknown
there before the present generation-the
newspapers of France are hardly taken
more seriously than the drama is here; while
the drama there has the political Importance
as means of reaching the people that the
press has in the United States, with some
thing of the direct contact and personal i'm
preston possessed by our political orators Of
generation ago.
Perhaps our view of these radical differ
| ences between national characteristics is
akin to the feeling of Punch's housemaid
who. when told that the French say "Wee"
for "yes," replied: Claw, Miss, how tri-
fingP' Nevertheless we can hardly help re-
garding it as matter of cougratulatlon that
we are long past that stage of self-govern-
ment where political excitement can be
produced by the fact that an inventive
genius like Sardou sees fit to employ his
Imagination in remodeling political history.