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Updated: June 24, 2025
As this happened to be the truth, the bishop did right to report it. Otherwise, his lordship does not seem to have had much acquaintance with the French scenical mode of arranging their public acts for purposes of effect. I leave this passage as it was written originally under an impression then universally current.
We cannot dismiss this part of our subject without allusion to a species of drama that prevailed in the Middle Ages, called Mysteries, or Moralities. These were a sort of scenical illustration of the Sacred Scripture, and the subjects were events taken sometimes from the New Testament and sometimes from the Old.
Image to yourself, oh reader, whosoever you are, the intensity of the excitement which by that time had arisen in all people to be spectators of the scene then image to yourself the effect of all this, a perfect consciousness that in herself as a centre was settled the whole mighty interest of the exhibition that interest again of so dubious and mixed a character sympathy in some with mere misfortune sympathy in others with female frailty and guilt, not perhaps founded upon an absolute unwavering belief in her innocence, even amongst those who were most loud and positive as partisans in affirming it, and then remember that all this hideous scenical display and notoriety settled upon one whose very nature, constitutionally timid, recoiled with the triple agony of womanly shame of matronly dignity of insulted innocence, from every mode and shape of public display.
Image to yourself, oh reader, whosoever you are, the intensity of the excitement which by that time had arisen in all people to be spectators of the scene then image to yourself the effect of all this, a perfect consciousness that in herself as a centre was settled the whole mighty interest of the exhibition that interest again of so dubious and mixed a character sympathy in some with mere misfortune sympathy in others with female frailty and guilt, not perhaps founded upon an absolute unwavering belief in her innocence, even amongst those who were most loud and positive as partisans in affirming it, and then remember that all this hideous scenical display and notoriety settled upon one whose very nature, constitutionally timid, recoiled with the triple agony of womanly shame of matronly dignity of insulted innocence, from every mode and shape of public display.
Klopstock was at least an anomaly; Lessing did not present himself in the impassioned walks of literature; Herder was viewed too much in the exclusive and professional light of a clergyman; and, with the exception of John Paul Bichter, a man of most original genius, but quite unfitted for general popularity, no commanding mind arose in Germany with powers for levying homage from foreign nations, until the appearance, as a great scenical poet, of Frederick Schiller.
But that as nothing to do with French translation the condition of which, in this country, is perfectly scandalous. Some people may fancy that this scene of that day's drama was got up merely to save appearances by a semblance of discussion, and that in effect it mattered not how the performance was conducted where all was scenical, and the ultimate reliance, after all, on the bayonet.
The public gain in that production was a revival of interest in one of the most famous novels in the language; the possession of a scenical pageant that filled the eye with beauty and strongly moved the imagination; a play that is successful in the domain of romantic poetry; a touching exemplification of the great art of acting; and once again the presentment of that vast subject, the relation of heart to heart, under the dominion of love, in human society, that more absorbs the attention, affects the character, and controls the destiny of the human race than anything else that is beneath the sun.
In reality, there was at this period a collision of forces acting in opposite directions upon the estimation of the stage and scenical art, and therefore of all the ministers in its equipage.
On the other hand, Lessing was merely a man of talent, but of talent in the highest degree adapted to popularity. His very defects, and the shallowness of his philosophy, promoted his popularity; and by comparison with the French critics on the dramatic or scenical proprieties he is ever profound.
Assuredly the finest geniuses have not always the power to withdraw themselves from that intensely interesting train of ideas, which we have shown has not been removed from about them by even the violent stimuli of exterior objects; and the scenical illusion which then occurs, has been called the hallucinatio studiosa, or false ideas in reverie.
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