THE PLAYWRIGHT’S WORK

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5209, 1 December 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PLAYWRIGHT’S WORK

(From tlie Charinj Cnm Mayazine.) "To hold the mirror up to Nature, show virtue her own feature, scorn her own imago, and the very age and body of the time his form and pres-ure,” This is the work of the playwright if lie know and love his art. What ho represents on the mimic stage must be a reflection of the world—the great stage on which we all strut, p'ay onr parts on, well or ill, then make our fin'd exit. _ He must not only show us what the world is like, hut in what it is rao-it unlike, the thing it should be ; there must be no false coloring for the sake of effect, no drawing an improbable conditio i of things from his own inner consciousness for the sake of harmony, no reflection, iruyhort, from a blotched or ill-shaped glass; the mirror may he small when the dramatic instindtis not great, hut it mu t bo true. The virtue ho would have us love must bo clothed in spotle-s white, her features must be clearly seen, her beauty must he transcendaut, her form of matchless shape, so that the most vicious and criminal of his audience shall inwardly bow the knee anil pay her rightful homto'e. Around the vice or sin he won d depict there must lie no false halo of superficial goodness, no show of greatness of soul to hide a want of principle, the moral odioosness must he lettered in capitals so that groundling., may ha/e no need of spectacles. Lastly, he must depict the ago in which ho lives, he must regard himself as'the historian of society t whom future ages will look for a faithful pictu-e of his time. This is the real work of the dramatist, and this is what Shaksperu did. He uiheld a mirror (hat could not lie ; that reflected not oidy the positive, the practical, the average form oi things, but their difference®, their distinctions ; all the lights and

shades were true, never too light, never too dark, lie used his fancy, his poetic imagination, to embellish the real, not to create the ideal. He won our live of virtue by no stagey hyperboles, no clap-trap of overwrought pathos ; hot hy producing her in all her native moral beauty, that captivates the remnant of the divine within us. He never makes us lunch at virtue, even in our .leaves, nor laugh a!ou 1 with vice ; and if at limes wo cannot repress an inward chuckle, we rejoice h cmse it is hidden. He mail ; all good tlii igs .loveable by the very strength of their goodness ; he made crime and sin hideous anil hateful, vice and folly contemptible and ridiculous.