The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-11-18
THE CORRUPTING ARTS.
Sir Henry Irving Defends the Stage
Against Criticism.

London Telegraph.
Sir Henry Irving formally opened the
Grand Theater, at Woolwich, the other
evening Sir Henry said: II have never
ceased to maintain that well-conducted
theater is necessary adjunct to your true
civic life. You must have some satisfac-
ton in the dramatic instinct that Is in all,
or in most of us, for l expect sometimes
that certain censors of the stage are un-
happily born without 1t. That is grave
misfortune. But you who have the dra-
matte instinct cannot nourfsh it upon the
ordinary incidents of your daily lives. You
cannot have general elections every week.
L am told that the declaration OF the poll
Is very dramatic moment. Colonel
Hughes, however, can hardly have enjoyed
it much on this occasion. for he was re-
turned with very little excitement. But
you may not have a poll more than once
in five years, and how is your appetite for
drama to subsist on that? 1t is the func-
ton of the theater to keep you from star
walton. The acted drama holds the mirror
up to nature. / say the acted drama, be-
cause Shakespeare, when he talks of show
ing the very age and body of the time, It's
form and pressure, obviously means this
to be done through the medium of the
stage. Well, there is a great variety OF
drama, and you constantly hear that this
or that play is good, bad or Indifferent
and sometimes a legislator rises In the
House of Commons and 1mplores that BODY
or the government, or both, to intervene
to save the playgoing public from some
terrible corruption on the stage.
'sPeople will dispute till doomsday about
the moral influences of the drama, because
any representation of human nature is
sure to be the signal for alarm to every
body who thinks that men and women
ought to be trained without any knowl-
edge of life Dangers there are, of course.
in all exercises of the imagination. A
great novelist has written book to show
the vicious influence of music. In the in
fancy of painting IL was the firm belief of
religious teachers that art would corrupt
the world IL il were not severely limited to
sacred subjects. You remember the scan
poem when he turned away from painting
angels and produced lifelike portraits of
citizens They were greatly delighted at
first-at least some of them were-and
then 1t was decided that this gift of por-
traiture was dangerous, and Fra Lippo
Lippi was hidden to return to the angels.
Well the dramatist cannot always be
drawing angels, and the actor cannot al
ways be playing them. Public opinion in
regard to the stage is governed on the
whole, believe, by a robust common
sense, which rejects the notion that the
theater, If allowed to exist at all, shall
be place where human nature must not
be exhibited. No doubt there is point
where freedom becomes license, but !
think YOU will find that 1t is not the license
of the lord chamberlain. The theater to-
day does so much to brighten the lives OF
the people that it is entitled to the sup
port of all the elements of sound citizen
ship and it is because / see those elements
that / confidently predict for this play
house in which we stand the success that
the energy and capacity of Its founder so
richly deserve.