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That book is a striking proof of the justice of Pope's remark: "Each might his several province well command, Would all but stoop to what they understand ." BOSWELL. 'And his plays are good. JOHNSON. 'Yes; but that was his trade; l'esprit du corps; he had been all his life among players and play-writers.
That book is a striking proof of the justice of Pope's remark: "Each might his several province well command, Would all but stoop to what they understand." BOSWELL. 'And his plays are good. JOHNSON. 'Yes; but that was his trade; l'esprit du corps: he had been all his life among players and play-writers.
It is said, 'the grossness of the old play-writers was their misfortune, not their crime. It was the fashion of the age. It is not our fashion, certainly; but they meant no harm by it. The age was a free-spoken one; and perhaps none the worse for that. Mr. Dyce, indeed, the editor of Webster's plays, seems inclined to exalt this habit into a virtue.
Here, through the rivalry of two play-writers, he was persuaded to write very hastily a new play. He consented, and produced one which was well received by the Parisians. It did not do justice to his powers, however, and he soon after wrote "Alexandre," which was an advance upon the previous performance.
Is it in fact till we come to mediaeval times, and the chivalric age, that women are set up as being more incomprehensible than men? That is, less logical, more whimsical, more uncertain in their mental processes? The play-writers and essayists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries "worked" this notion continually.
If it be said that Shakspeare's is the very highest art, the answer is, that what they hated in him was not his high art, but his low art, the foul and horrible elements which he had in common with his brother play-writers. True, there is far less of these elements in Shakspeare than in any of his compeers: but they are there.
Play-writers have handled it for about two thousand years, and the public, like a great baby, must have the tale repeated to it over and over again. Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung into life of late years; and which is said, but I don't believe a word of it, to have Shakspeare for a father.
With us, the people are left to do everything for themselves, with the least possible amount of Government interference. Our play-writers and play-actors could do a great deal to raise the standard of stage-literature and of acting, if they would but try. But they do not try. I went the other evening to see that relic of the Dark Ages, a sterling English comedy.
Your old play-writers talked nonsense when they said men lost liberty of person by marriage. Men lose liberty, but it is the liberty of the mind. We cease to be independent of the world's word, when we grow respectable with a wife, a fat butler, two children, and a family coach. It makes a gentleman little better than a grocer or a king! But you have seen Constance Vernon.
Smith complains that the play-writers had appropriated his adventures, but does not say that his own character had been put upon the stage. In Ben Jonson's "Staple of News," played in 1625, there is a reference to Pocahontas in the dialogue that occurs between Pick-lock and Pennyboy Canter: Pick. A tavern's unfit too for a princess. P. Cant.
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