A QUESTION.
IT is not in politics but in aesthetics that the English people ex- hibit their anarchical tendencies. A total want of order and regi- men prevails throughout the several provinces of art, and espe- cially in the drama. Men awaken now and then to the fact, and they denounce or deplore it, as the monks denounced the out- rages which afflicted society in the middle ages ; but with as little search into the causes. The great houses, built as mansions for the legitimate drama, are given up to "masked balls" and equestrian exhibitions ; the legitimate exiled to the suburbs. It might be inferred that London and Westminster have degenerated and must bow before the superior intellect of Bentonville or Mary- lebone. Mrs. Charles Kean owns a vocation to impersonate Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and sanguine folks begin to hope that Shakspere is to be revived in the Hay- market. Alas I his works have sunk to be a mere oppor- tunity. The revival is a personality. A leading dramatic poet of our own day is reputed to have uttered the decree that " Shak- spere is a very overrated poet": Westminster and its Hall have outgrown that old-fashioned individual, and his very censor has become "a classic"—is shelved. The drama lives, indeed, even in Westminster ; but only for French scholars and those who are versed in the dialect of the Italian opera. The survivors of the old legitimate playgoing class must "go to see the play" in the theatre of their memories, or must make pilgrimages, as some do, to Sadler's Wells.
Reflective men are scandalized at this condition ; like a corre- spondent, who sends us a grave protest against the " bal masque" at Drury Lane on Monday last, its " licentiousness " and "unbri- dled wantonness." If its wantonness is really "unbridled," he and other decent people had better stay away, or refer the question to the Police. But does he not know that all genius is "licen- tious " ? What does that fact mean? An ingenuous contemporary bases art on theology, with much show of reason; yet art is the favourite butt of censorious severity. How is this ? By what faith antagonistic to trading utilitarianism or didactic useful- knowledgism are we to invoke the revival of art and establish order in place-of anarchy ?
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