THE DRAMA AND ITS DUTIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11878, 1 February 1902, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE DRAMA AND ITS DUTIES.

THEATRES AS A MORAL FORCE. , f >" AN interesting interview recently appeared ;,I,V in the Birmingham Daily Mail with the emi;i; nent English author and actor, • Mr. Wilson |/;ip Barrett, who next Wednesday inaugurates an yi- important dramatic season, in this city. The v" ;. question of theatrical performances being made ,a power for good was discussed, and ' Mr. Barrett made the following observations:— " I consider," he observed, " the stage as an instrument. for good or evil is all-powerful. The theatre has not fulfilled its mission when it has provided amusement only. . All tli« c- great dramatists are my witnesses to th« ,v I. ' truth: ot this assertion. Had they critter 4®*. - for amusement only , they could not have beer great. - They wrote not for an age,. but fo: all time; not for the amusement of the fev of their own. period, not for their instruction

/ > but of all who came after. Those who only p.>-': wrote for amusement are dead and forgotten. X" i',: Those who wrote to teach are living, and teaching still in their immortal works. They have helped to make language, mould <j, thought, and form morality." • f?" " Shakespere, for instance," observed the TV: Mail man. " I consider Shakespere the greatest moral force that humanity has produced. He has become a standard of morality. Quotations 1 from his writings have passed into our language, and have become part and parcel of at, and theL repetition . forme constant '• streams of messages: of morality. Even the £ <■. despicable characters-he introduces into his i.i : plays teach morality by the abhorrence they create by their evil deeds." .' jV " Awful examples, as it were?" ' " The painting of evil does not make a work 'evil; it is how and with what motive the evil : is pictured Judat Iscariot, as depicted by ,< • ;, the Apostlet, does not teach us tc be treacher- . ous. The evil of the men ot Gomorrah does not: incite us to infamy, noi does the picture of an logo or a Macbeth incite us to murder. These are th.- shadows which are inevitable t . where there Is light, and they are as essential a?, they are inevitable. ' Should we not seek to represent life rather than romance?' is a question often asked. What is meant by life? There are men who seem to imagine that there is no life, no reality, except in vice, , , meanness, and pettiness. To these people ■ all that is noble, sublime, chivalrous, and ~ beautiful is romantic twaddle. Ido not envy these people theii experience of life. ' I have met men and women who are as noble and true as any hero o;* heroine novelist ever , imagined or put upon pape., whose lives of hourly oelr-sacrificc can compare with the deeds of the heroes of any author who ever wrote. Give ;to the Btagc o pure, sweet, wholesome story, and some men tell us ' But (t -this is not life as we know it.' No, thank Heaven, »t is not. Tuere are noisome and noxious reptiles that die in the pure light ot s - ' day, and wither in the sunshine. That which is life '? th. rose is death to them. Shall those who love th. sun wallow in the mire ; ■ hecauso these others cannot live out 01 it? I think not. They have thfeik uses, J suppose —but this mission 13 not to guide thought or. , help mankind. 'Life?' Who can depict life truly with pen or brush? Ask a painter the best of his craft—it it is easy to reproduce a ray of sunshine falling on a field of clover J,::'; 'or a Shadow passing over a moor of bracken'. » • His efforts are bounded by his power to see— and ability to fix on his canvas what ho has seen—or rathe, too often wha + he thought he %-ik saw. The best of human eyes are defective— tlle most cunning of human hands are inr. -.competent to deal with th. simplest forms of f . what is known as still life. How much more \il-. ' ™ re "!t t\ find c , write, who can approach > ill reproduction of human life with anything like success. " Ton are not fond, evidently, of the problem play , Mi. Barrett?" • 10 *-■ 1 Woke of the mission ot the '• the mirror up to nature, show ! own feature, scorn he. own image ■X ' tbo very atre and bo , ds of tb - time its 7 - 'Pi? 1 th™ Pressure.' -I Let the ™ ma do this— Sion Not . nW , t , hen - 1 does »it fulfil its f does the thtLi? the unskilful laugh' i'• Sjk* the iudwJL €ntl - ltf ! work—nor in v makSfrror un to fJ ieve - bT ? t holdint, the Siß and tW 119 a " holc - Let it do with such powfii fnr I 3 n ? forc , G in thib world readiE**! »*■ the drama. No pronsion upon the hraiivfn m«ni V^ re n /\ of an acted plat mwi oq,m ! watching ?• ears. aJ- I™' K ar J- W*. moral forwi !■ «,. „ i r \. a PPealed to. If Jtbig ■ agn imows.'.'. or * or?u