718 THE DRAMA 



prejudice against the Theatre is dying away in the eastern seaboard 

 States, it is still most potent and aggressive in the West. But a 

 story that was told me before leaving England will, I think, convince 

 you that this religious prejudice is still a terrible hindrance to the 

 highest development of your Drama. There is nothing in which 

 Americans can more legitimately take pride than in the magnificent 

 public spirit shown by their wealthy citizens. Englishmen stand 

 agape and envious at the large sums given by your millionaires to 

 advance and endow all kinds of scientific, artistic, and social enter- 

 prises. I am told that a very large amount was designed by a 

 wealthy American to found and endow a National American Theatre 

 on a most lavish scale, but he was persuaded by a religious friend to 

 hold his hand and shut his pocket because of the evil that a National 

 Theatre might work in your midst. 



Consider what mischief was done to the whole American com- 

 munity by the frustration of that most wise, most humane, most 

 benevolent scheme. Consider how many hundreds of thousands of 

 your fellow-citizens will in consequence waste their evenings in empty 

 frivolity when they might have been drawn to Shakespeare and 

 Goethe. Therefore, we must still count that the hostile, religious 

 spirit is very active and potent on your side of the Atlantic as upon 

 ours. It everywhere sets up a current of ill-will and ill-nature toward 

 the Drama throughout the two entire nations; it everywhere stimu- 

 lates opposition to the Theatre; it keeps alive prejudices that would 

 otherwise have died down two hundred years ago, and it is, in my 

 opinion, the one great obstacle to the rise and development of a 

 serious, dignified, national art of the Drama. I fear there will 

 always be a crew of unwholesome, religious fanatics in America and 

 England who will be doomed at their birth to be hostile to the 

 Drama. It is useless to argue with them. You cannot argue the 

 jaundice out of a man, and advise him that it is foolish to have a 

 sickly green complexion. He needs something far more drastic than 

 advice and argument. We must leave the fanatics to rave against 

 the Theatre and against all art and beauty. 



But among this actively hostile religious class, and also among 

 the moderate, reasonable, indifferent class, there must be thousands 

 who, having been nurtured to regard the Theatre as frivolous and 

 empty and evil, have adopted the ideas current around them, and 

 have never taken the trouble to examine their stock prejudices against 

 the Drama, and to inquire whether there is any ground for them. 

 To this large body of American and English citizens, to the heads 

 and leaders of all those religious sects in America and England who 

 are now hostile to the Drama, and especially to that large allied 

 class of influential, educated men in both countries, who, if not 

 actively hostile, are supercilious and cold and indifferent and blind 



