PLAYS AND PLAYERS.

Auckland Examiner, Volume 1, Issue 1, 11 December 1856, Page 3

PLAYS AND PLAYERS.

A taste for theatrical representations is one inevitable result of civilization. Where they are unknown the people must be barbarous for dramatic literature has ever been the earliest and sweetest fruit of mind-development. That dramatic poets have through all recorded time, by educated human nature, been held in honour, is matter of fact. Homer and Virgil wrote no stage plays, but still take rank among dramatists, for it is difficult to conceive anything more dramatie than their epics. In Rome, priests, emperors, consuls, and kings did homage to Virgil. In Greece seven cities contended for the honour of being the birthplace of Homer. Echylus, Euripides, Sophocles and Menander who rank among the first Greek writers, as well in the order of merit as of time, and gave form and likelehood to dramatic representation, are still the admiration of scholars. Aristides,

W hose mind reposed upon its proper wisdom Wanting no other praise.

And whose motto to be and not to seem we commend to the attention of Drama denouncing Pharisees, was not ashamed to be seen in a play-house. Socrates did sharply censure and scornfully satirize the dramatic poets, but that “ wisest of men” never could have been absurd enough to confound the abuse with the use of the poetic faculty, or the abuse with the use of stage plays. Foolish wisdom would that be, yet precisely that is the wisdom of those modern wiseacres, who because some stage-plays are bad would annihilate the Drama, and argue that because immoral persons make acting a profession, the profession itself is demoralizing, and a fortori should be put down. As sagely might they argue that all lawyers being unquestionably moral therefore litigation should be upheld; all physicians detesting quackery, therefore there is nothing like physic.

The priest calls the lawyer a cheat, The lawyer beknaves the divine, All professions berogue one another.