The Theater and Its Exhibit of Decaying Morals
By L. A. R.
GOD utters a wo upon the man who puts darkness for light, and evil for good. Remembering this wo of God, read the following — which we believe to be a just statement regarding a large portion of the theatrical world to-day — and draw your own conclusions. Mr. William Winter, in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, recently spoke as follows: "The accession of such noxious trash, a kind of synopsis of police-station blotters and diurnal hospital reports, is a natural consequence of an insidious evil influence which, many years ago, began to show itself, at first furtively, then a little more openly — the influence of writers, some of them very clever, who were willing to seek profit by addressing a morbid curiosity and the carnal propensities of human nature with sophisticated stage pictures of the proceedings of infatuated fools and sentimental demireps — the 'seamy side' of life. That influence received a vigorous impulse from Arthur Pinero's ably constructed but radically unmoral play of 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.'" "Other tainted theatrical fabrics have followed, in rapid succession, till at last almost every barrier protective of good manners, good taste, and public decency has been demolished, and spectacles are now presented, with impunity, against which every normal, right-thinking mind revolts. That revolt, however, finds far too little active expression. Once in a while the police interfere, but to little purpose." "A common notion — one that, at least, is insistently urged and widely deferred to — is that these reprehensible plays are really 'criticisms of life,' 'bold,' 'virile,' 'progressive,' 'up to date,' scandalizing nobody but fools and prudes. It is impossible, accordingly, to escape the conclusion that, to a large section of the public in New York — which is the center — refinement, morality, reticence, and decency are things worn out and cast away. How else can be explained the teeming abundance and the popularity of 'drama' which is, variously, aberrant, morbid, pornographic, and vulgar?" "The fact is that the direction of the theater has been almost entirely usurped by illiterate, unscrupulous speculators, solicitous for monetary gain and the gratification of their vanity. And under such managerial dominance, the theater, practically, has been surrendered to an uncouth, ignorant, ill-conditioned democracy, unfit to direct anything; and intellect, judgment, and taste are invited to accept and applaud bad for good, right for wrong, filth for purity, ugliness for beauty, the manifestation of disease and decay for 'progress,' and, in the hysterical blather of a rabid mob, to recognize and reverence the voice of the people as the voice of God!"