Ethics of the Theatre

“Abstain from every form of evil.” I Thess. v: 22.

up HERE IS A DISTINCTION between the stage as an institution and an occasional performance. As an institution the stage may be vicious, while the occasional performance may be moral. The question, therefore, for us to answer is not, Shall I read dramatic literature? for all will acknowledge that such literature may be wholesome. The question is not, May I go to see and hear a certain moral play? but, Shall I patronize the institution known as the theatre, of which that moral play is only a part?

The stage has a history which is not to its credit. “Dramatic representation,” says Dr. Herrick Johnson, 64 had its origin among the Greeks with a troupe of history of bacchanalians in rude and boisterous songs, the stage interspersed with dances, conducted with a high degree of licentiousness both in language and action. Then came Thespis, introducing tragedy. The stage is said to have been a cart, the chorus a troupe of itinerant singers, and the actor a sort of mimic. Subsequently ^Eschylus appeared, who carried the Greek drama at once to nearly its highest perfection. He was followed by Sophocles, who introduced a third, and even a fourth, actor into his plays. Then came decline under Euripides, exhibiting degenerate taste and loose morality. The transition to comedy was easy, originating in the licentious sports of the villages, and popular in proportion as it was personal, abusive and low. The comedies of Aristophanes are an illustration at once ot the depravity of the poet and the libertinism of the spectators. His wit was coarse and vile, a mixture of buffoonery and positive filth.

44 Theatrical exhibitions became popular amusements among the Romans just as they lost their stern love of virtue, yielded to luxury, and grew weak and effeminate.

“The European stage is no exception. This grew out of the ‘Mysteries’ of the Middle Ages — a sort of sacred drama performed by monks, in which the Devil also played a conspicuous part. This was the foundation of the modern British and American stage, which has risen only to degenerate, until now many of its exhibitions outrival in licentiousness and filth the darkest days of the drama, even on the confession of its friends.

u In China theatrical entertainments are popular, but neither there nor in Japan are women allowed to perform. It is a question whether women were ever present in the ancient theatre. It is undeniable that the actors were invariably men, and few in number; and yet these theatrical entertainments contributed to the downfall of the Grecian state. They had their origin in a corrupt state of morals, and they tended to deterioration.”

Not long after the Declaration of Independence our American Congress passed the following resolution:

44 Whereas true religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness; Resolved, that it be and is hereby earnestly recommended action of to the several States to take the most effectual congress measures for the discouragement and suppression of theatrical entertainments, horse racing, gaming, and such other diversions as are productive of idleness, dissipation, and a general depravity of principles and

manners.”

Now, were our forefathers fanatics and fools? or did they have good reasons for passing such resolutions? The best Greek and Roman writers, such as Xenophon, Plato, Socrates and Tacitus, denounced the theatre of their times as antagonistic to good morals, Athens suppressed the theatre by law. In Rome “gross exhibitions and licentious buffoonery became the common rule of the play.” “The Roman theatre,” says Dr. Schaff, u became more and more the nursery of vice, and deserved to be abhorred by all men of decent feeling and refinement.” Mr. Lecky declares that the u Moral and Mystery plays of the Middle Ages brought about the degradation of the church and all religion.” Of England Macaulay writes: u From the time that the theatres were opened they became the seminaries of vice.” And Sir Walter Scott says of the theatre in his day: “It was abandoned to the vicious. The best portions of the house were set apart for the abandoned characters.” The playhouses of England were suppressed by Cromwell.

It is evident, therefore, that our fathers in Congress knew history and acted according to the light they had. But has not the theatre improved? Is not the instituhas stage on very much better now than it was then? improved? Efforts have been made to reform it, Edwin Booth declared that he would have a moral theatre in New York, but he failed to establish it on a paying basis. Henry Irving made the attempt in London, and as signally failed. Hannah More wrote moral plays, but the theatrical managers did not want them, because they would not pay. All who know the facts are compelled to admit that the theatre is still bad. One need not go to it to learn this; he has only to look at the

billboards. Its bill of fare is for the most part moral filth. To be found standing before the average theatrical poster is a reflection on one’s purity of mind. Modesty must turn away its face for self -protection.

Now and then a pure play is placed before the public with great parade, and the preachers are invited to come and see. Then look out for more filth the following week! The pure play has been used as a sort of opiate for the consciences of the guardians of public morals* They are not expected to denounce what appears in the same building where they sat and enjoyed a moral play. The theatrical manager knows how to manage the public so as to fill his coffers.

The fact that the theatre as an institution is still bad is proved by the testimony of those wTho are most familiar with its workings. “None of my children,” said actors as Macready, the actor, u shall ever with my witnesses consent? on any pretence, enter a theatre or have any visiting connection with actors or actresses,” Edwin Booth said: UI never permit my wife and daughter to witness a play without previously ascertaining its character.” This is an admission that the theatre as an institution is bad, though some plays may be good. Mr. Dumas, the play- writer, wrote to a friend: u You do not take your daughter to see my play. You are right. Let me say, once for all, you must not take your daughter to the theatre. It is not mainly the work that is immoral; it is the place.” Mr. Sothern, in a newspaper article over his own name, says: “I have known some of our best performers who have found it necessary to first attend and see a play before they would allow their wives and daughters to go. Why was this necessary? Why, because they knew there was very little cleanness in those places, and who better than they should know?” John Gilbert, the veteran actor, wrote in the North American Review, “I believe the present condition of the drama, both from a moral and artistic point of view, to be a subject for regret. Many of the plays that have been adopted from the French are open to the severest criticism on the ground of immorality.” An actor, in passing a theatre, said to a friend of Dr. Cuyler, “Behind those doors lies Sodom.” Edwin Forrest, hearing Rev. Dr. Brantley denounce the theatre as an immoral institution, lingered long enough to assure the preacher that he agreed with what he said, only he would make it stronger.

Mr. William Winter, a dramatic critic, asserts that christian ethics on the stage would be inappropriate. Mr. A. M. Palmer, the Nestor of theatre managers, says friends as in a Review article: u The chief themes of witnesses the theatre are now, as they ever have been, the passions of men — ambition and jealousy, leading to murder; lust, leading to adultery and to death; anger, leading to madness.” Mr. Clement Scott, a distinguished theatrical critic of the London press, was asked to give his views as to the effect of the stage upon a pure-minded girl who might enter the profession to make a livelihood and to pursue dramatic art. And here are his words: “A woman may take a header into a whirlpool and be miraculously saved; but then she may be drowned. I should be sorry to expose modesty to the shock of that worst kind of temptation, a frivolous disregard of womanly purity. One out of a hundred may be safe; but then she must hear things that she had better not listen to and witness things she had better not see. Stage life, according to my experience, has a tendency to disorder the finer feelings, to crush the inner nature of men and women out, and to substitute artificiality and hollowness for sincerity and truth; and, mind you, I speak from an intimate experience of the stage extending over thirty-seven years. It is nearly impossible for a woman to remain pure who adopts the stage as a profession. Everything is against her, and what is more to be deplored is that a woman who endeavors to keep her purity is almost of necessity doomed to failure in her career. It is an awful thing to say, and it is still more terrible that it is true, but none who know the life of the green-room will deny it.” And let me add that the stage is the only profession in which a black spot against a woman’s character adds to her popularity. Mr. Scott admits that in spite of all the difficulties in the way there are men and women on the stage who live pure lives, and all the more honor to them for it; yet he insists that the stage, as it is to-day, is an institution which is a menace to the virtue of all who enter the theatrical profession.

With the friends of the theatre as witnesses, its actors and play- writers and critics, the case is established that the stage as an institution is bad. So far as I know, A bad there is not a theatre in the world which

institution does not pander to depraved tastes in order to make money. The plea of the managers is that the public are to blame because they demand such plays. If this be true, the public taste is depraved. It is plain, however, that the theatre has done much to create the depraved taste which it feels called upon to gratify. The flood of moral filth which it pours upon a community cannot fail to degrade the people. “There is scarcely an evil,” said Henry Ward Beecher, “incident to human life which may not be fully learned at the theatre. There one learns how pleasant a thing is vice.

Amours are consecrated, license is prospered, and the young come away alive to the glorious liberty of conquest and lust.”

The philosophy of all this is found in the nature of the actor’s profession. Acting is injurious to character. The best acting is the worst acting. To act a part any-THE where is to weaken character. Every actor

explanation js a hypocrite while on the stage; that is, he must pretend to be what he is not. He must feign emotions and passions good and bad. Dr. H. Clay Trumbull, in his book on u Border Lines in the Field of Doubtful Practices,” gives a chapter to the theatre which I wish I could read to you in full, but I must be content with a few paragraphs. “The chief and all-prevailing objection to the theatre, he says, u is that the profession of an actor is in and of itself unnatural, baleful, and radically and universally wrong; and, because this is so, no change of controlling influences can make the institution which depends on and represents that profession an agency of substantial good or worthy of christian countenance and support. On the face of it, the profession of an actor stands all by itself in demanding of its votary that his main purpose and endeavor shall be to seem what he is not, to appear something else than his real self; and herein lies the essential and irremediable evil of this profession.

u That which might have been a power for good in creation, or in original performance, is given wholly to imitation or simulation, and this, too, more commonly acting ln the sphere of the lower nature rather than of A part fae higher, or, at all events, in the lower as well as the higher; for the essential requirements of dramatic action call for the portrayal of the more violent and unworthy passions, rather than the gentler and worthier virtues. A man who is perhaps at heart a good and true man, and who has exceptional capabilities of good, devotes himself to seeming a bad man and to exhibiting the semblance of the vilest passions or of the most abhorrent crimes. How can such a course fail of injury to a noble nature? Even if it in no degree lowers the tone of the nature, it inevitably restrains it within limitations all unworthy of its powers and destiny.

“In his merging of his personality in simulation, as a very essential of his profession, the art of the actor differs from that of any other. There is nothing like it in the true mission or in the best work of any honest or reputable profession. There is nothing akin to it in any other approved sphere of art. A man may describe evil or portray it in literature, in poetry, in music, in sculpture, without putting himself into the exhibit of evil, without merging his personality in another personality; but in the art of the actor he who would portray the murderer, the adulterer, the seducer, or the betrayer of a sacred trust, must, in order to be the best actor, strive to think, and feel, and speak, and act as if he were himself this very evil doer.

“An English writer, some time since, computed that Mr. (now Sir) Henry Irving had committed at least fifteen thousand murders on the stage, while Mr. Barry acted Sullivan had added at least two thousand more crime S|-age murders than this to his list, and Mr. Charles Wyndham had been divorced from twenty-eight hundred wives on the stage; that Mrs. Bancroft had in the same public place been ‘foully betrayed or abducted ’ thirty-two hundred times; that Miss Ada Cavendish had been ’ betrayed, deserted or abducted ’ fifty-six hundred times; and so on along the list of popular actors.

64 Can any intelligent person, any person of refined sensibilities or with a fair knowledge of psychological laws and influences, believe for one moment that the deliberate and purposed indulgence in simulated evil to any such extent has had no effect in deadening the moral nature of the actor to the enormity of the offences simulated or dallied with?”

THERE IS A WIDE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE STAGE. The purpose of the stage, as we have seen, is to teach men how church to act a part. The purpose of the Church of and stage Christ is to teach men how to be real. The purpose of the stage is to amuse; the purpose of the church is to save. The symbol of the Church of Christ is the Cross; the symbol of the stage ought to be a baby’s rattle. The purpose of the stage is to make money, and managers are not slow to do so even at the expense of good morals; the purpose of the Church of Christ is to make character, and good morals are not for sale at any price. The stage gives what the people want, and, sad to say, the worst plays draw the biggest crowds; the purpose of the Church of Christ is to give what the people need, regardless of its popularity. The stage ministers to u the lust of the flesh, to the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father “; the purpose of the Church of Christ is to crucify these things. The stage is a caterer; the Church of Christ is a prophet. The stage panders; the church rebukes. The stage in its tragedies glorifies revenge, which leads to murder; the Church of Christ teaches forgiveness of enemies and the patient endurance of wrong. The tendency of the stage is to make people childish in their feverish desire for diversion; the work of the church is to make people child-like in their faith and love and simplicity of character. The tendency of the stage is to keep the race in its childhood of selfgratifying amusement; the work of the church is to lead the race into the manhood of self-sacrificing achievement. The foot-lights are suggestive of the fact that the lower tendencies of human nature are there brought into prominence; the Church of Christ would magnify the head-light and heart-light that reveal and develop the higher attributes of our being. In a word, the real church is the incarnation of the spirit of Christ — pure, humble, self-sacrificing and forgiving. The stage is the incarnation of the spirit of the world — lustful, proud, selfish and revengeful. And what God hath put asunder no man can join together.

The charge made by several yellowish journals that my sermons on the “Ethics of Amusements” have been answers sensational is true only to the extent that the TO critics utterance of unvarnished truth is apt to make a sensation, especially when it strikes popular errors and sins.

The charge that I do not attend the theatre, and therefore have no right to have an opinion, is not reasonable. One need not get drunk or tell a lie to know what drunkenness and lying are. I have never seen leprosy or small-pox, but I have a fair idea as to what they are. I have read bill-boards, theatrical notices, and some of the plays. I have gathered the testimony of actors, theatre-goers, managers and stage-fixers, who are competent witnesses. Indeed, people who do not go to the theatre may be better qualified to judge of its ethics than those who have habituated themselves to its atmosphere. One can live in a lazaretto until its sights, sounds and odors cease to be repulsive. The habitual theatre-goer is apt to become blunted in his finer sensibilities.

One critic declares that the theatre is intended only to amuse, and should not, therefore, be expected to teach morals and religion; let people go to church for these. And herein is its viciousness. It was proved, I believe, last Sunday evening, that the pleasure-seeking spirit in the individual does not give pleasure in the long run, and ends in degeneracy. As with the individual, so with an institution. If its one purpose is to amuse, regardless of morals or religion, it cannot fail to degenerate. Another critic insists that we must draw a distinction between bad plays and good plays, bad actors and good actors. I have conceded that there may be good actors, the good so far as one can De good whose business is

and the bad dissimulation; but it is never good to pretend to be good. Prayer on the stage is rank blasphemy. Even if the actor really prays, he has no right to do it to be seen of men. Playing at religion is debasing to actors and beholders. The modern stage had its birth at a time during the dark ages when men were playing at religion in their daily lives, and they would not, of course, refuse to play at it for the entertainment of an audience. Lecky is right when he says that the “Mystery Plays” led to the degeneration of religion, and it is equally true that the degeneration of religion led to the u Mystery Plays.” Playing at marriage and divorce on the stage weakens, if it does not destroy, the sanctity of marriage and keeps the divorce courts busy. Playing at vice cannot fail, sooner or later, to make an actor vicious, while playing at virtue makes virtue unreal and opens the way for vice. It is one of the discouraging signs of the times to-day that religious plays are becoming popular. It proves that the religious instinct in theatre-going people is a thing to play with;’ and, wThile faith, prayer and praise are feigned, it is evident that real faith, prayer and praise are lacking.

The Passion Play, though performed by a simple country people with deep religious feeling, has not improved the state of true religion at Oberammergau; and I can think of nothing that would go farther toward breaking down real Christianity than the presentation of this farcical crucifixion of our Lord in the theatres of the world. Portraying the sacred and holy feelings of the soul for the entertainment of an audience is an incongruous proceeding; and feigning sacred and holy feelings is cant, which, on or off the stage, weakens religious character. The fact that one is paid a hundred dollars a night for such dissimulation does not help the case.

We are told that there are bad christians and wicked preachers. Yes, and I fear that the theatre, with the atmosphere of sham and pretense which it has created actors and and fostered, is largely to blame for the bad preachers types of Christianity seen in many pulpits and pews. The reality of religion is in perpetual conflict with the unreality of the stage; and when the stage succeeds in making the pulpit u stagey “it has destroyed its power for good.

There are fallen preachers, but all the critics admit that such is the exception. The rule is that preachers are good men, and if they are bad it is in spite of the church, which, as an institution, is expected to make them good. When a preacher falls into sin it creates surprise, and he must at once surrender his pulpit; but not so with the actor. Good actors and actresses are the exception. If one is known to be moral and religious the fact attracts attention, and when one falls into sin neither he nor she is compelled to leave the stage. When the theatre-going public hear of it their morbid curiosity prompts them to crowd the house and increase the receipts. Managers are aware of this, and hence are not careful to conceal any scandal which will call an actor or actress more prominently before the public.

All this goes to prove that the church, as an institution, is good, and that the immoral christian and preacher is the exception, while the theatre, as an institution, is bad, and the moral actor or actress is the exception. To say that there are bad bakers and candlestickmakers is wide of the mark, because everyone knows that baking bread and making candles are not immoral institutions. If they are bad it is in spite of their business. If a preacher or church member is bad it is in spite of the church, which would make him good; but if an actor is good it is in spite of the theatre, which, as an institution, tends to make him bad.

Several critics contend that the theatre of to-day is

better than it was in former years, but the facts are

against them. The theatre which Plato, Aristotle,

Socrates, Cato and Tertullian denounced had

A MISTAKE. -,

no women on its stage. Women were not allowed on the stage until about the seventeenth century. The entrance of women into almost any department of life means an infusion of virtue; but not so with the stage, which uses woman to-day for the display of her shame more than of her virtues. Those who insist on being only good women on the stage do not grow rich. In the lowest theatres woman is most in evidence. For this reason I do not believe that the theatre in China and Japan is as bad as it is in America. Prominent pagans, on their first visits to our country, have been shocked by the indecencies they have been compelled to see in theatres to which they had been taken by their wealthy friends. Some theatres are, of course, worse than others. They differ not so much in degrees of goodness as of badness. During the past few weeks a play has been running in Boston with large audiences, the immoralities of which shocked even Chicago and led reputable citizens in Springfield to protest against its production in that city. I never heard any protest in Boston, And this play is not the exception. The foul play, with its foulness more or less veiled, is the rule. The managers of theatres are in it for money, and they know that such plays draw the big crowds. The plays in which the simulation of virtue predominates over that of vice, I repeat, are not the most profitable. They are used with rare skill as decoys for good people.

The plea that christians should ally themselves with the good on the stage is more specious than convincing. You cannot ally yourself with the good without also A misleading being allied with the evil, for on the stage PLEA the good and the evil are in close alliance.

Admiral Cervera of the Spanish Navy seems to have been a good man. Would it have been possible for me during the war with Spain to have allied myself with Admiral Cervera without becoming the ally of Spain? Certainly not, for Admiral Cervera was a part of a great institution known as the Spanish Government, and every ally of his was also an ally of Spain. So one cannot ally himself with the good in the theatre without being also an ally of the bad. The good in it is a small part of a great evil institution. An ally with Cervera would have been claimed by Spain, and an ally of the good in the theatre is claimed by the friends of this evil institution. It would be amusing, if it were not so pitiable, to see good men in alliance with the theatre spending so much time apologizing for the company they are in. They admit that some plays and players are very bad, and that the theatre, as an institution, is not good; but they hope that their presence with them will be salutary.

I verily believe they are mistaken. A drop of pure water will not make much impression upon a goblet of ink, but a drop of ink can ruin a goblet of pure water. Unless pure water wants to be converted into ink it had better keep separate from the ink.

The only way to win people of the world to the true christian life is to show them that we have something better than they have. People will not eat God’s manna and manna, which we recommend, while they onions see us turning from it and gorging ourselves

with the onions of Egypt. And the only way to reform the theatre is to convert it into something else. As long as it remains a theatre it carries with it the elements of degeneracy. The playhouse, if run to make money, becomes the moral pest-house by a process of natural law. Solon denounced the actor’s profession as “tending, by its simulation of evil character, and by its expression of sentiment not genuine or sincere, to corrupt the integrity of human dealings.” Rousseau says of the stage: u It is the art of dissimulation, of assuming a foreign character and of appearing different from what a man really is, of falling into a passion without a cause, and of saying what he does not think as naturally as if he did.” Archbishop Tillotson, Sir Matthew Hale, William Wilberforce and Dr. Rush join with Solon and Rousseau in condemnation of the theatre on the ground that it is a “nursery of licentiousness and vice.”

One of my critics denounces Macready and Fanny Kemble as cranks for turning against the stage, which had enriched them. If cranks, they are certainly in good company. The actress, Mrs. Siddons, said that play-acting is a business u unworthy of a woman.’’ Montague Stanley, a young actor of note, called it a most ungodly profession. Madame Janauschek said:

44 1 am glad when fortune gives me the opportunity by my advice to keep any good girl out of a life which, nine times out of ten, is one of misery or aimless selfishness. The best thing for a young girl to do, no matter how great she expects to become, is to keep away from the theatre and do anything but go upon the stage. This is what I tell them all.” The brief career of Adoniram Judson on the stage confirmed the claim that the theatre behind the foot-lights is bad. John B. Gough, in his youth, became stage-struck; but when he got a glimpse of the sham and the hollowness, the coarseness and profanity which prevail behind the scenes, he tells us that he felt “perfectly satisfied with a three-weeks’ experience.” What a loss to the world if Adoniram Judson and John B. Gough had chosen acting as their profession and persisted in it.

The police of our great cities bear testimony to the fact that the theatre is a foster-mother of crime among the youth. The director of the city prison in Paris says: police u If a noted play of a vicious character has

testimony )een pUj- on q boards, I very soon find it

out by the number of young fellows who come into my custody.” Thirteen out of fifteen young men from the country employed in a New York publishing house were led to destruction within a few years by the theatre.

The moral quality of theatre-going does not depend upon the play. That play is a part of a great institution. If you go to the theatre you will very properly be judged, not by the play you see, but by the institution that you patronize. The plays which are better than the institution do not lift it up, but rather the institution drags down the play to its level. The whole is stronger than any part, and the whole gives moral quality to every part. For a person who desires both safety and usefulness the wise course is to refrain from theatre-going. If you care not for safety you have not that stamina of character which has a wholesome fear of evil. If you care not for usefulness you certainly have the not the spirit of Him who went about doing

safeway good, nor of him who said, “If eating meat make my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh while the world stands.” Let us give ourselves only to the things that are “pure, lovely and of good report.” If such a course be self-denial, remember the words of Him “whose we are and whom we serve,” “If any man would be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Your self-denial will bring greater joy than indulgence.