BOOK VII. CONTAINING THREE DAYS.
1. Chapter i. A comparison between the world and the stage.
(continued)
If we had descended to the next order of spectators, we should have
found an equal degree of abhorrence, though less of noise and
scurrility; yet here the good women gave Black George to the devil,
and many of them expected every minute that the cloven-footed
gentleman would fetch his own.
The pit, as usual, was no doubt divided; those who delight in heroic
virtue and perfect character objected to the producing such instances
of villany, without punishing them very severely for the sake of
example. Some of the author's friends cryed, "Look'e, gentlemen, the
man is a villain, but it is nature for all that." And all the young
critics of the age, the clerks, apprentices, &c., called it low, and
fell a groaning.
As for the boxes, they behaved with their accustomed politeness. Most
of them were attending to something else. Some of those few who
regarded the scene at all, declared he was a bad kind of man; while
others refused to give their opinion, till they had heard that of the
best judges.
Now we, who are admitted behind the scenes of this great theatre of
Nature (and no author ought to write anything besides dictionaries and
spelling-books who hath not this privilege), can censure the action,
without conceiving any absolute detestation of the person, whom
perhaps Nature may not have designed to act an ill part in all her
dramas; for in this instance life most exactly resembles the stage,
since it is often the same person who represents the villain and the
heroe; and he who engages your admiration to-day will probably attract
your contempt to-morrow. As Garrick, whom I regard in tragedy to be
the greatest genius the world hath ever produced, sometimes
condescends to play the fool; so did Scipio the Great, and Laelius the
Wise, according to Horace, many years ago; nay, Cicero reports them to
have been "incredibly childish." These, it is true, played the fool,
like my friend Garrick, in jest only; but several eminent characters
have, in numberless instances of their lives, played the fool
egregiously in earnest; so far as to render it a matter of some doubt
whether their wisdom or folly was predominant; or whether they were
better intitled to the applause or censure, the admiration or
contempt, the love or hatred, of mankind.
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