On Tuesday Mr. Samuel Smith called attention to "the low
class of plays now exhibited in some of the theatres," and moved that a stricter supervision was needed "alike in the interest of the public and the theatrical profession." Mr. Smith declared that the class of play had been degenerating, and that pieces were played now that fifty years ago would have been condemned as grossly immoral. With the spirit of Mr. Smith's appeal against depravity and suggestiveness we have every sympathy, but we cannot because of that sympathy fail to notice his exaggeration and want of common-sense. You can hardly find any period between this and the Restora- tion in which the age was not declared to be degenerating in morals, and the stage accused of getting more and more impure. The complaint is as universal as that about the degeneracy of modern servants, which Shakespeare himself echoed. Mr. Smith was equally "moving in worlds unrealised" when he talked of our American friends being scandalised by our "sensuous and indelicate modes of dressing." As a matter of fact, American ladies are quite as much inclined to cUcolletfi dresses as are Englishwomen of the same class, while the notion that the conventional evening dress of women in the richer classes encourages immorality is preposterous rubbish.
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