The Renascence of the English Drama Author:Henry Arthur Jones Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II RELIGION AND THE STAGE (Reprinted from the Nineteenth Century Review for January 1885 by the kind permission of Mr. James Knowles) Je sais bien que, ... more »pour reponse, ces messieurs tachent d'insinuer que ce n'est point au theatre a parler de ces matieres; mais je leur demande, avec leur permission, sur quoi ils fondent cette belle maxime.—MoLifeRE, Preface to the Tartuffe. A RECENT production at a London theatre has obtained a greater success perhaps than it merits because it has incidentally raised the question of how far it is lawful or expedient for a modern playwright to touch religious questions and to put modern English religious life upon the stage. Upon any question of dramatic craftsmanship, literary skill, or originality of plot, a playwright will do well to abide by the wholesome rule that forbids an artist to speak of his own work or to question any verdict that may be passed upon it. It is true that this rule at times presses somewhat severely upon a dramatic author, inasmuch as, while all other artists are judged by their own performances, a playwright is judged partly by the performances of others, and is praised or blamed not merely for what he has done or misdone for himself, but for what the management, the actors, the scene-painters, and the carpenters have done or misdone for him. ThusShakespeare himself would hardly escape severe condemnation as a sorry bungler in stagecraft, were he an unknown playwright and his masterpieces had now to be submitted to the public for the first time at an afternoon performance with stock scenery and slovenly stage-management. The curiously divergent values and meanings which a public representation may attach to a play or to certain portions of a play from what the author attaches to them, or that different aud...« less