Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage

Representation of the Impiety
and Immorality of the English
Stage

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Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning
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Title: Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English
Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a
Lady (1704)
Author: Anonymous
Release Date: April 19, 2005 [EBook #15656]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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Series Three: Essays on the Stage
No. 2 Anon., Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the
English Stage (1704) and Anon., Some thoughts Concerning the Stage
(1704)
With an Introduction by Emmett L. Avery and a Bibliographical Note
Announcement of Publications for the Second Year
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INTRODUCTION
Within two or three years after the appearance in 1698 of Jeremy
Collier's 'A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the
English Stage', the bitter exchanges of reply and counter-reply to the
charges of gross licentiousness in the London theaters had subsided.
The controversy, however, was by no means ended, and around 1704 it
flared again in a resurgence of attacks upon the stage. Among the tracts
opposing the theaters was an anonymous pamphlet entitled 'A

Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage', a
piece which was published early in 1704 and which appeared in three
editions before the end of that year.
The author reveals within his tract some of the reasons for its
appearance at that time. He remarks upon the obvious failure of the
opponents of the theater to end "the outragious and insufferable
Disorders of the STAGE." He stresses the brazenness of the players in
presenting, soon after the devastating storm of the night of November
26-27, 1703, two plays, 'Macbeth' and 'The Tempest', "as if they
design'd to Mock the Almighty Power of God, who alone commands
the Winds and the Seas." ('Macbeth' was acted at Drury Lane on
Saturday, November 27, as the storm was subsiding, but, because it
was advertised in the 'Daily Courant' on Friday, November 26, for the
following evening, it would appear that, unless the players possessed
the even more formidable power of foreseeing the storm, their
presentation of 'Macbeth' at that time was pure coincidence. No
performance of 'The Tempest' in late November appears in the extant
records, but there was probably one at Lincoln's Inn Fields, which was
not regularly advertising its offerings.) The author also emphasizes the
propriety, before the approaching Fast Day of January 19, 1704, of
noting once more the Impiety of the stage and the desirability of either
suppressing it wholly or suspending its operations for a considerable
period. Apparently the author hoped to arouse in religious persons a
renewed zeal for closing the theaters, for the tract was distributed at the
churches as a means of giving it wider circulation among the populace.
('The Critical Works of John Dennis' [Baltimore, 1939], I, 501, refers to
a copy listed in Magga catalogue. No. 563, Item 102, with a note: "19th
Janry, Fast Day. This Book was given me at ye Church dore, and was
distributed at most Churches.")
Except for the author's ingenuity in seizing upon the fortuitous
circumstances of the storm, the acting of 'Macbeth' and 'The Tempest',
and the proclamation of the Fast Day (which was ordered partly
because of the ravages of the storm),