An Essay on the Character and Influence of the Stage on Morals and Happiness

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Williams and Smith, 1807 - 188 páginas
 

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Página 140 - His onset was violent: those passages which while they stood single had passed with little notice, when they were accumulated and exposed together, excited horror; the wise and the pious caught the alarm, and the nation wondered why it had so long suffered irreligion and licentiousness to be openly taught at the public charge.
Página 141 - The disgust which vice gives him at first, soon wears off to make way for new notions, more liberal in his opinion, by which a sovereign contempt of religion, and a declared war upon the chastity of wives, maids and widows, are converted from being infamous vices to be fashionable virtues. The infection spreads gradually through all ranks and becomes universal. How gladly would I listen to any one, who should undertake to prove, that what I have been describing is chimerical!
Página 39 - I believe with no other motive than religious zeal and honest indignation. He was formed for a controvertist : with sufficient learning ; with diction vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect ; with unconquerable pertinacity ; with wit in the highest degree keen and sarcastic ; and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by just confidence in his cause. Thus qualified, and thus incited, he walked out to battle, and assailed at once most of the living writers, from Dryden to D'Urfey....
Página 39 - ... who dislikes it, and all those who, from habit or circumstances, live in a state of divorce from their own minds, are pleased with an amusement in which they have nothing to do but to open their eyes and behold ; the moral tendency of it, however, is very faulty* That mockery of age and...
Página 44 - The drama's laws the drama's patrons give: And those who live to please must please to live.
Página 88 - Now all my hopes are dead ! A little while Was I a wife ! a mother not so long ! What am I now ? — I know. — But I shall be That only whilst I please ; for such a son And such a husband drive me to my fate.
Página 140 - Playhouse becomes his favourite amusement; and he is enchanted with the gaiety and splendor of the chief personages. The disgust which Vice gives him at first soon wears off, to make way for new notions, more liberal in his opinion; by which a sovereign contempt of religion, and a declared war upon the chastity of wives, maids, and widows, are converted from being infamous vices, to be fashionable virtues.
Página 53 - Caesar, at an advanced period of life, to appear on the stage to recite some of his own works, he felt his character as a Roman citizen insulted and disgraced; and in some affecting verses, spoken on the occasion, he incensed the audience against the tyrant, by whose mandate he was obliged to appear before them.
Página 40 - As good and evil are different in themselves, so they ought to be differently marked. To confound them in speech is the way to confound them in practice. Ill qualities ought to have ill names, to prevent their being catching.
Página 60 - Mr. Whitefield had let me come to the Lord's table with him, I never should have gone back again. But the caresses of the great are exceedingly ensnaring. My Lord E sent for me to-day, and I was glad I could not go. Poor things ! they are unhappy, and they want Shuter to make them laugh.

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