Perhaps he does not make sufficient allowance for the
regulated licence of plain speaking proper to the festival of the god,
and claimed by the Comic poet as his inalienable right, or for the fact
that it was a festival in a season of licence, in a city accustomed to
give ear to the boldest utterance of both sides of a case. However that
may be, there can be no question that the men and women who sat through
the acting of Wycherley's Country Wife were past blushing. Our tenacity
of national impressions has caused the word theatre since then to prod
the Puritan nervous system like a satanic instrument; just as one has
known Anti-Papists, for whom Smithfield was redolent of a sinister smoke,
as though they had a later recollection of the place than the lowing
herds. Hereditary Puritanism, regarding the stage, is met, to this day,
in many families quite undistinguished by arrogant piety. It has subsided
altogether as a power in the profession of morality; but it is an error
to suppose it extinct, and unjust also to forget that it had once good
reason to hate, shun, and rebuke our public shows.
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