| It is right and wholesome to have those light
comedies and entertaining shows; and I shouldn't wish to see them diminished.
But none of us is always in the comedy spirit; we have our graver moods;
they come to us all; the lightest of us cannot escape them. These moods
have their appetites - healthy and legitimate appetites - and there ought
to be some way of satisfying them. It seems to me that New York ought to
have one theatre devoted to tragedy. With her three millions of population,
and seventy outside millions to draw upon, she can afford it, she can support
it. America devotes more time, labor, money, and attention to distributing
literary and musical culture among the general public than does any other
nation, perhaps; yet here you find her neglecting what is possibly the most
effective of all the breeders and nurses and disseminators of high literary
taste and lofty emotion - the tragic stage. To leave that powerful agency
out is to haul the culture-wagon with a crippled team. Nowadays, when a
mood comes which only Shakspeare can set to music, what must we do? Read
Shakspeare ourselves! Isn't it pitiful? It is playing an organ solo on a
jew's-harp. - "About Play-Acting" |
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