DRAMATIC LICENSE.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 12027, 31 October 1904, Page 3

DRAMATIC LICENSE.

♦ TO THE.EDITOB OS THB FBESS. Sir, —I believe I only give expression to a feeling shared by ninny playgoers when I make my protest a gain* t tho treatment of religious subjects and character in the melodraoMs at prtwent being produced in Christchurch. Xo one would maintain that the stage should utterly eschew the subject of religion, or, for that matter, of politics. Teutonic drama had its origin largely in tho mediaeval church, end Athenian comedy -was a most, salutary an.l effective weapon of political Kitire. But all true friends of the dramatic art must deplore tho May in which these melodrama." d<"»! with religious subjects. "Tiio Eternal City," for example, which has just been produced in ChrLstchurch, contains feature* that cannot but give offence tn Roman Catholics. '"His Holiness tho Pope" i.« introduced as one of the dm mat i<: pcr-misr. in a piny that is a very ordinary melodrama, with a plot coenpostd of the usual ek-nunts- of sordid inirigi:>.\ and a- style and d>llo which, neither fruin a moral nor n. litcrory viewpoint, 'an be said to be elevated. It in <arf-fully explained, it is true, that tho "Timo" of tint play w future, so tliat !io pi ixMial allusions can bo read into it. But tin* Pope iwver diey. In the oyes of memIvers of ib> Roman Catholic Communion he •-■? not merely it potentate, not simply a man, but tlu» lltad of the Church, God's \ii-e-gorent upon earth. Neither in the nor in attitude , of the actor wa» there any suggction of in-everence. But •the introduction of the Pope into the plot of a very- mundane melodrama, must have been a 'painful shock to devout Roman Catholics, if there were, any in the audk'iH'e. The tawdry Iheatricalties of ■"make up' and linn-light with which tho : acr. (1 ofnoe was invested, could not fail to [iroduco mi unpleasant sensation, and when a Fcetion of the. audience so far forgot themselves aH to ajiplaud the pronounifiiifiit # of the Benediction, even a >cf]>tic, wen: lie a man of culture and r-tliiienient, must have been disagreeably imprcsw-d. The '"Sign of the Cross," too, hii'i .'-imilar objor.tionablo features. I uuderMimd that there w<-re Churoh dignitark's and Bishops among them, who 011 its iir.«t pioducliun in England, professed themselves cdirieJ by this highly ficusntiotiiil melodrama. I confess I am surprised that even layiiien, not to sny msliops iind ministers of the Gospel, can listen with pleasure to tho Sermon on the. Mount mouthed by a strolling player a.'i an episode in a play, whore tho main interest is sensual intrigue. It is true that ;i character who must, command even higher reverence than 11 Pope and portions of Scriptures, of oven deeper sacre'dness than the Sermon on tho Mount, form tho matter of the Passion Play at Oberam-mt-rgan. But that is conceived in a very different spirit from Mr Wilson Barrett's or Mr Hall Cainc-'s melodramas. The whole production is carried out in a ppint of deep reverence; its object is edification, not amusement; and no element of the commonplace, or the sordid mingles with the religious motive. It is quite possible that the dramatic art might even in these degenerate days of the fltage, resume its place as a great, moral force and as tho handmaid of religion. But if that is to be done, it must be elevated to a higher plane than that which is reached in these transpontine melodramas.—Yours, etc., PLAYGOER.