Your ShelfYour Projects

The Theater

5%

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 15, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 39.

Read the full edition

The Theater.

It was before the rink came to be; it will flourish after the rink ceases to be. The same general objection holds against it as an institution. It is keyed to pleasure. It roots in the world that lieth in the wicked one. It is, on the part of the management, purely a money-making affair; on the part of the patron, a pleasure-seeking affair. But, further, the theater as an institution deserves condemnation because of its effects upon the “poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.” That there are pure men and women upon the stage, no one will deny, but that the class known as actors is pure, no one will assume. The effect of the stage upon those who live behind the scenes is bad; the strong, pure character is the exception, and even he cannot cleanse and purify the stage.
Colley Cibber, for forty years an actor, says: “While vice and farcical folly are the most profitable commodities, why should we wonder that, time out of mind, the poor comedian when real vice could bear no price should deal in what would bring him most ready money? But this, you will say, is making the stage a nursery of vice and folly, or at least keeping an open shop for it. I grant it.”
Dumas, the author of “Camille,” writes: “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 theater. It is not merely the work that is immoral, it is the place. Whenever we paint man, there must be a grossness that cannot be placed before all eyes, and wherever the theater is elevated and loyal, it can live only by using the color of truth. The theater being the picture or satire of the passions and social manners, it must be immoral, the passions and social manners themselves being immoral.”
“Lo, where the stage, the poor, degraded stage, Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.”
Edwin Booth, who lost a fortune trying to reform the stage, writes: “I never permit my wife or daughter to witness a play without previously ascertaining its character. . . While the theater is permitted to be a mere shop for gain, open to every huckster of immoral gimmicks, there is no other way to discriminate between the pure and base than through the experience of others.”
W. C. Macready, the celebrated actor, said: “None of my children shall ever, with my consent, or on any pretense, enter a theater, or have any visiting connection with actors or actresses.”
Sheridan Knowles, a converted actor, renounced the stage as utterly evil; another converted actor said to Theodore L. Cuyler, while passing a play-house in which he had often performed, “Behind those curtains lies Sodom.”
Frances Kemble writes: “A business which is incessant excitement and factitious emotion seems to me unworthy of a man; a business which is public exhibition is unworthy of a woman.”
Montague Stanley, an English actor, writes: “April 28.—Last night of my dramatic career. And now, thanks be to the Lord, who hath called me from darkness to light, I am emancipated from a most ungodly profession. May the Lord bless and prosper me in my new one!”
Of theater-goers he says: “They are leading others by their example to do as they are doing; and they are verily guilty of their brother’s blood when he falls into the snare of ungodliness and is taken. They are upholding a system of enormous wickedness. Every individual who contributes a fraction at the door of a theater for admission is a partaker with all those sitting around him in the common sin of supporting a vast machinery of corruption.”
Another writer says: “The good self of the actor’s personality must for the time being be lost in the evil self of the character acted. And what an effect is this! The greater the actor, the completer the transference of self, and the profounder the evil.”
The editor of Figaro writes: “To be a really clever performer—and very few are such—the various passions of a woman’s nature cannot be represented by one who has not felt them. If I do not express an absolute fact, it is at least remarkable that the lives of all the great actresses have been full of intrigues; and it may even be said that the greater they were, the freer the life they led. The history of the theater from its origin to our own times tends to prove this.”
We have thus quoted from behind the scenes simply to show that Herrick Johnson is right when he says: “The stage as an institution has within itself the seeds of corruption, and exists only under a law of degeneracy.”
The mission of the Christian religion is not to reform institutions, but to regenerate men. But when an actor is “born from above,” he leaves the stage. If he cannot reform the stage who acts upon it, be sure they cannot who sit before it. They are on the wrong side of the footlights. When a Christian enters a theater, it is as a listener, not a teacher. He lends his ears, and through them the actors and actresses pour the lessons of the hour; he lends his eyes, and through them lasting impressions are made upon the mind; he is silent as to his own faith or hope. Such an attitude ill befits the “salt of the earth and the light of the world.” As well might Moses try to free Israel by reforming Egypt, or the angels to rescue Lot by saving Sodom, as for a few Christians to attempt the reform of the stage by frequenting the theater.
An institution that doesn’t educate its teachers in morals must prove a poor school for its patrons. The one thing insisted upon in any public educator is a good moral character. The one thing not insisted upon on the stage is a good moral character. The teacher and preacher whose character is not above reproach must step into private life; the actor and actress need not. In too many cases, an element of attractiveness is added when immorality is hinted.
Words stand for thoughts. The great stream of conversation after the theater flows something like this: “Wasn’t his acting superb? I prefer him to——.” “Wasn’t the scenery fine? I never saw a play so well put on the stage.” “Her dresses were elegant, and so becoming! I wonder who does her work!” Where is the thought the interpretation of which ranks the theater as an educator? The discussion even after one of Shakespeare’s plays turns, not upon the depth of thought, but upon the comparative merits of actors, actresses, dresses, and scenery. Food for thought, indeed!
As a recreation the theater fails. The stream of life that flows between its banks does not thereby gain power for turning the world’s wheels. The patrons of the stage, as a class, are not the people who do the world’s work, any way; the great majority are the young who haven’t yet settled to serious business, or professional pleasure-seekers, or those who haunt the play-house because it kills time and helps while away an idle hour. And this in a world where time is short, life earnest, and
“Not enjoyment and not sorrow Is our destined end or way; But to act that each to-morrow Find us further than to-day.”
The surroundings of the theater are sufficient to condemn it. “Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” Liquor saloons cluster about a theater as naturally as cattle gather beneath a wide-spreading tree on a sultry summer day. “Coming events cast their shadows before.” Already the dramshop is overbidding legitimate trade in the neighborhood of the old Hollis Street Church, soon to be a theater. The bulletin boards heralding and press reports describing the plays before the Boston public to-day are enough to condemn an institution that can thrive by such exhibitions, in the judgment of any decent man.
An institution rooted and grounded in this world, depending for its success upon its power to please human nature, demoralizing those who serve at its altars, drawing in its train the dramshop, is unfit for Christian support. It is wrong in origin and aim. It unfits its patrons to appreciate the gospel of Christ, and unfits Christians to serve their Redeemer. Brother, sister, cease the question, What harm can the theater do me? and ask this, What good can I do by going? Ought I to put the Christ who is formed in me—the hope of glory—into any place where I would not willingly meet Christ, my Lord and Master?
Turn away from lovers of self, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and learn what these words mean, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.”—Rev. O. P. Gifford, in Watchman.