| Citation |
NYWJ.737.026
26 Dec 1737:12 (216)
[Continued from last; article on free speech, excerpt on
Charles II of England]
. . . In this reign a licencer was appointed for a stage and
the press. No plays were encouraged but what had a tendency
to debase the minds of the people. The original design of
comedy was perverted: It appeared in all the shocking
circumstances of immodest double entendres, obscene
description and leud representation. Religion was sneered
out of countenance, and publick spirit ridiculed as an
awkard, old-fashioned virtue. The fine gentleman of the
comedy, tho' embroidered all with wit, was a consummate
"debauchee"; and the fine lady, tho' set off with a
brilliant imagination, was a very impudent coquet. Satire,
which in the hands of Horace, Juvenal and Boileau, was
pointed with a generous resentment against vice, now became
the declared foe of virtue and innocence. As the city of
London in all ages, as well as the time we are speaking of,
was remarkable for it's opposition to arbitrary power, the
poets levelled all their artillery against the metropolis,
in order to bring the citizens into contempt. An alderman
was never introduced on the theatre but under the
complicated character of a sneaking canting hyporcite, a
miser and a cuckold. While the court wits, with impunity,
libelled the most valuable part of the nation: Other writers
of a different stamp, with great learning and gravity,
endeavoured to prove to Britons, that slavery was "jure
divino". Thus the stage and the press, under the direction
of a licencer, became battering engines against religion,
virtue and liberty: Those, who had courage enough to write
in their defence, were stigmatized as schismaticks, and
punished as disturbers of the government.
But when the embargo on wit was taken off, Sir Richard
Steele and Mr. Addison soon rescued the stage from the load
of impurity it laboured under. With an inimitable address
they strongly recommended to our imitation the most amiable,
rational, manly characters: And this with so much success,
that I cannot suppose there is any reader to day, conversant
in the writings of those gentlemen, that can taste, with any
tolerable relish, the comedies of the once admired Shadwell.
Vice was obliged to retire and give place to virtue. . . [74
more lines] To be continued.
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