University of Virginia Library

AN EVENING AT THE THEATRE.

It is a pleasant thing for any one who is fond of
plays and players, after the cares and business of
the day are satisfactorily over, to find himself snugly
ensconced in a quiet and comfortable corner of
a box five minutes previous to the rising of the curtain,
with a fair prospect of three or four hours' rational
amusement before him. An evening so spent
is good for the health, spirits, and understanding,
and leaves the morals just about where it found
them, neither much better nor worse. The stage,
like every thing that has been made much the subject
of controversy, has been greatly overrated, both
for good and for evil, especially in regard to the impression
it makes upon a gentleman's virtue. Its opponents
have accused it of clearing a man's morals
out of him in the most wholesale and expeditious
manner; while its advocates, in the opposite extreme,
contend that it possesses the singular property

of filling a person with as much morality as he
can well hold; and rather more, indeed, than he
can decently and profitably get along with, as this
world is constituted, without injuring his wife and
family, and being obliged to “eat his mutton cold.”
The truth is, that both parties have written more
nonsense about the matter, than is wholesome to
read; and both have volunteered much solemn
foolishness and ill-tempered declamation in their
zeal to serve the cause of truth. The one will
gravely cite as an argument, and a case in point,
that “the three young men who lately robbed their
employers to a considerable amount, were very frequently
in the habit of attending the theatre;” to
which they might, with equal propriety and sagacity,
have added, that these three young men were
regularly in the habit of eating their dinner, and
that the greatest depredator had long evinced a
strange and suspicious partiality for roast pig; the
one being as logical a deduction of effects from
causes as the other. Then the Solomons, on the
opposite tack, balance this by quoting certain cases,
where
as if a chance word spoken in a church or a tavern,
a hay-field or a fish-market, might not just as easily
have touched the tender point, and awakened

Another favorite argument with those who denounce
the stage is, that vice is often not sufficiently
punished or virtue rewarded. But does this never
happen in real life? and who is then to blame? It
certainly does, and much more frequently off the
stage than on; for dramatic authors in general,
make no scruple of sacrificing both probability and
possibility in their zeal to mete out poetical justice
to the misbehaved persons of the drama. That
man's principles must be very weak and wavering
who can be swayed either one way or the other by
a few words, and the passing of a picture before his
eyes; and he must have a strong natural bias towards
roguery, who finds his virtue giving way on
seeing a vicious gentleman now and then get off
scot-free on the stage. Such a one is not a whit
safer in witnessing the proceedings of a court of
justice; because, though nineteen rogues out of

twenty be condemned, the twentieth may hold out
a temptation to iniquity, by escaping in consequence
of a flaw in the indictment. For my own part, I
am well content to spend a few hours pleasantly at
the theatre, without fretting about whether there
has been any visible addition to my small stock of
virtue, provided it does not suffer diminution. Men's
morals are not like coal fires, requiring to be constantly
stirred up and trimmed, to prevent their dying
away or going out entirely.

But let who will argue or declaim, it is, as we
said at first, a pleasant thing, after a day spent in
harassing and jangling pursuits, to pass an evening
at the theatre, and is as refreshing to the mind as a
warm bath to the body, clearing away the little petty
cares and vexations that business is so apt to
engender and leave behind. Like the bath, it is
only relaxing and enervating when immoderately
indulged. There are more important things than
plays—even the best of them—in the world, and it
is by no means a good sign to see a young man
lounging about a theatre. His education ought to
be completed, and his mind stored with dry though
necessary facts and useful information, before he
takes an unlimited range into that region of passion
and imagination, else, in the voyage of life he will
be as a light bark with more canvas than ballast, on

a stormy sea, liable to be upset by every squall that
blows.

But to a tolerably well regulated mind, what
mines of inexhaustible and invaluable wealth are
concealed behind that green curtain. Beyond that
the bloody Richard and gallant Percy, the wronged
Othello, the moralizing Jaques, the monster Caliban,
the mediatative Hamlet, honest Jack Falstaff
and ancient Pistol—merry Rosalind, the pretty Perdita,
the gentle Desdemona, and how many other
thousands of pure and base, and great and glorious
spirits having a living visible existence! There the
spirit-stirring passages gleaned from records of antiquity
are treasured up, and the warriors and sages
of old again live and breathe, in the picture of the
poet. The curtain rises, and lo! spare Cassius and
gentle Brutus again walk the streets of Rome. The
centuries that have elapsed are as nothing, and the
spectator is present at the fall of “mighty Cæsar.”
Or a drum is heard, and the thane of Cawdor once
more treads the “blasted heath,” to be met by the
prophetic greetings of the weird sisters. Now if a
man be not very wise, and altogether above being
instructed by Shakspeare and other worthies, there
is certainly something to be learnt from this, and
such as this. The drama is, in truth, a stupendous
creation; and let its decriers say what they may, it

will ever remain amongst the proudest and mightiest
works of civilized man. True, all is not gold
that glitters, and with the pure ore of Shakspeare,
and the brilliant sparkling gems of Congreve and
Sheridan, are mixed up the tinsel of Reynolds and
the brass of Morton; but they are easily separated
by those who are not afflicted with a total mental
blindness, and to those who are, the one is just as
good as the other.

But, independently of the stage, what ample scope
for study and observation does the audience afford
to any one who takes the trouble to observe his species!
What a field for the painter, the physiognomist,
and the caricaturist! What faces are to be
seen—how rich and broad is their expression when
those who own them once get fairly interested in
the business of the scene, and become unconscious
of all else beside. A countryman's, for instance,
when a comic song is sung, or a juggling trick
played, how he sits, his head jerked forward like a
crane's, as if to get it as near the scene of action as
possible, his shoulders up to his ears, his distended
mouth dividing his face into two portions, and his
eyes as convex as a lobster's; then when the affair
reaches the climax, the monstrous twistings and
contortions of his visage, and the convulsions of his
body rolling to and fro under an uncontrollable

storm of laughter, are more amusing than any thing
on the boards. Again, where is there a more charming
picture than that of a fine girl watching, with
intense interest, the escapes or sufferings of the hero
or heroine of the piece; her graceful neck inclined
forward, her small delicate hand unconsciously
grasping the front of the box, her sweet lips
slightly parted, and her beaming eyes fixed with
tender earnestness on what is passing before them.
This the artist may copy, but he cannot go on and
pencil down the various shades of sorrow and joy,
anxiety and hope, that flit tremulously over her
beautiful face. In this world of cold and ceremonious
observance it is a treat to see such a girl; she
is unsophisticated; and the chances are, that her
understanding is better, and her feelings warmer and
purer than those who evince more coldness and circumspection.
Then there are the coquettes, with
their pretty, and the fops with their ridiculous affectation;
the solemn gravity of many at a joke, and
the merriment of some at a murder; while others
are troubled with the most strange and unfortunate
peculiarities. There is one individual in the habit
of attending the Park, that is afflicted with a hissing
Natty Bumpo laugh, which is heard both loudly and
distinctly: this places the owner somewhat in the
predicament of the fiends in Paradise Lost, who,
when desirous of giving applause, found they could
only send forth hisses. Whenever any thing very
laughable takes place, or an actor plays exceeding
well, and the house is in a roar, a loud venomous
hiss is heard, and the people all turn indignantly
around towards the place from whence the sound
proceeds; but the involuntary culprit is never suspected,
for he appears, and really is, enjoying himself
as much as any of them.

But, of all the persons who come to a theatre, the
most to be dreaded and avoided are those that are
possessed with a talking demon; such as Ophelia
characterizes as being “as good as a chorus.”
Though a curse to all, they generally bring their
particular victim along with them—some simple
friend—to whom, during the progress of the play,
they detail the whole history of the plot—what has
been done in the last scene, and what is to be done
in the next—what the several characters have just
said, and what they are going to say—remarks on
the author—off-hand criticisms on the actors, accompanied
with short biographical notices of both, together
with a running commentary on different
parts of the audience, and their own private opinion
on affairs in general—and all this miscellaneous

gabble conveyed in that most abhorrent of all sounds,
a quick buzzing uninterrupted whisper. Any man
who wishes to hear the play, and can sit patiently
beside one of those annoyances, has more meekness
than Moses, more patience than Job, more forbearance
than Socrates, and no nerves at all.