1831.] Theatrical Affairs, at Home and Abroad. 315 



theatre that deserved to live an hour. We have no tragedy worth the 

 paper that it was written on. The cause must be looked for in the 

 want of encouragement. While all the other labours of invention are 

 supported by the publishers, a class of men who, whatever may be their 

 habits, know the value of their matters of trade, and are, consequently, 

 liberal where genius and diligence are to be found: the drama is in 

 the hands of managers men often plunged in the distresses of thea- 

 trical affairs ; often influenced, of course, by motives that have nothing 

 to do with the merits of the work before them ; and often too anxiously 

 busy with theatrical details to have time for the interests of authorship. 

 But the law is the severest drawback upon dramatic writing. By the 

 present negligence of legislation on this point, an author, immediately 

 on publication, loses all power of preventing any theatre from taking 

 his work, playing it, mutilating it, adding to it, disfiguring it in any 

 way that caprice, ignorance, or bad taste may choose. And all this is to 

 be suffered without any remuneration. Or if the author should dispose of 

 his work to any peculiar theatre, every other theatre in the kingdom 

 may deal with it from that moment as it likes. While this state of 

 things continues, it is difficult to conceive that any man capable of 

 writing a good tragedy will subject himself to such inconvenience, and 

 actual loss j while he can take the smoother way of throwing his thoughts 

 into the shape of romance, of which the emolument is certain, and the 

 reception liable to comparatively little doubt. 



The only chance of giving England a revived dramatic glory, is in 

 the revisal of the laws of the press. The principle of the revisal should 

 be That no theatre shall, in the first instance, be at liberty to play any 

 drama, whether published or unpublished, without having made an 

 arrangement with the author, or his representatives. That after its 

 performance by one theatre, no other shall be entitled to adopt it, with- 

 out entering, in like manner, into an arrangement with the author. 

 And that the author's right in his dramatic works shall last during his 

 life, and shall be continued to his representatives during at least the 

 time allowed for copyright in the case of other publications. 



We should be glad to see the Lord Chancellor, than whom no man 

 knows better the state and embarrassments of literary property, apply- 

 ing his attention to the subject. A very signal benefit would be con- 

 ferred on literature, by w\at would be., after all, but an act of common 

 justice. The discussion about patent rights, now before Chancery, 

 might fairly make the initiative of such a measure ; and there can be 

 no doubt, that if a national stage be of any kind of importance to the 

 amelioration of a national mind, which every man of common sense 

 must know that it is, which it was always held to be in the most refined 

 nations of antiquity, and which makes a large portion of the finest lite- 

 rature of Europe, as it takes the highest rank, and makes the most 

 justly boasted literature of France ; the means of substituting vigorous 

 performances for vapidity, English feelings for foreign sentiment, and 

 the racy and powerful productiveness of English genius for meagre 

 imitations and bad morality, must be of importance ; and the reforma- 

 tion of the English drama by this infusion of a new spirit into it is 

 worthy of the ambition of a legislator. It is remarkable that, even 

 in St. Petersburg!!, regulations similar to those which we have pro- 

 posed, have been adopted a few years since for the express purpose of 

 founding a national drama. 



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