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Show THE STAGE. Mr. John Drew has an article in The Independent of the 9th insL on "Changesand Tendencies of the American Amer-ican Stage." There is very little in the article to commend attention. We do not think there will be a general concensus con-census in Mr. Drew's view that in Am. . erica the influence of the stage is on the side of morals, nor will people generally gen-erally acquiesce in the statement that everywhere on the stage today vice is scourged and virtue triumphant, no more than they will acquiesce in Mr. Drew's statement that the public's taste is absolutely healthy. The New York stage for the past year has been , the scene of the most riotous and inde- cent plays almost in the history of the world, and the public taste which Mr. Drew calls 'healthy," has furnished a patronage in excess of the capacity of the house wherein these indecent plays have been produced. The stage has long been held in ill rcpure and has been the target for much well-directed and eloquent abuse, and the reasons for this are not far to be sought in the case of the English-fpeakin English-fpeakin world. Powerful alike for good or evil, the stage has unfortunately too often tended towards the latter and in so far earned maledictions. . The sombre Puritan spirit that nominated nom-inated English religious thought, loved righteousness and hated iriiquity with a fierceness and a narrowness that prevented pre-vented anything like sane discrimination; discrimina-tion; and the stage as a whole consequently conse-quently came under the ban of the pulpit pul-pit and was assailed as a thing essentially essen-tially evil. .Such an opposition is as useless as It is unfair. It is a legitimate legiti-mate form of amusement; it offers a field for the noblest display of poetic genius, and it "has always been a permanent per-manent fixture in the intellectual life of every civilized people. It can neither be rooted out nor cried down were such a thing needful or desirable. It will os,ibly never be without cause for reproach, re-proach, as it wiil always reflect the popular taste; and as long as there are classes to whom the low and immoral are fascinating, there will be plays and players to cater to their tastes. But on the other hand, there will al ways be those who lift the stage to high planes and throw their influence for what is good and beautiful in their art. The writer in The Independent, Mr. Drew himself, is certainly an example ex-ample of this class. If, in our own day, it should seem that the stage has set out to present all the ugliness and pollution pol-lution of humanity under the name of . "realism" and to teach that illicit love was the highest inspiration of the dramatic dra-matic art, such as we see Mrs. Carter doing in "Zaza,"' we have only to remember re-member that we have had such men as Booth and such women as Mary Anderson, An-derson, and still have such men as Jefferson Jef-ferson and John Drew. Wilson Barrett and. Sir Henry Irving, with such women as Miss Adams, Julia Marlowe and Miss Kenan, whose ideals of art have been -oble and whose influence has been on the side of what was high and morally pure. Such names as these redeem the stage from sweeping condemnation and lift it above the cesspool into which women as Mrs. Carter are endeavoring to drag it. L. |