John Dennis Excerpts from The Usefulness of the Stage (1698)
The poet, dramatist, and critic John Dennis (1657–1734) published The Usefulness of the Stage in 1698 in response to the attack on the current state of drama by Jeremy Collier in a Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage.
Nothing can more strongly recommend any thing to us than the assuring us that it will improve our happiness. For the chief end and design of man is to make himself happy. 'Tis what he constantly has in his eye, and in order to which he takes every step that he makes. In whatever he does, or he does not, he designs to improve or maintain his happiness. And it is by this universal principle that God maintains the harmony and order and quiet of the reasonable world. It had indeed been an inconsistency in Providence to have made a thinking and reasoning creature that had been indifferent as to misery and happiness; for God had made such a one only to disturb the rest and, consequently, had acted against his own design.
If then I can say enough to convince the reader that the stage is instrumental to the happiness of mankind, and to his own by consequence, it is evident that I need say no more to make him espouse its interest.
I shall proceed then to the proving these two things.
First, that the stage is instrumental to the happiness of mankind in general.
Secondly, that it is more particularly instrumental to the happiness of Englishmen.
The stage is instrumental to the happiness of mankind in general. And here it will be necessary to declare what is meant by happiness, and to proceed upon that.
By happiness, then, I never could understand any thing else but pleasure; for I never could have any notion of happiness that did not agree with pleasure, or any notion of pleasure that did not agree with happiness. I could never possibly conceive how anyone can be happy without being pleased, or pleased without being happy. 'Tis universally acknowledged by mankind that happiness consists in pleasure, which is evident from this, that whatever a man does, whether in spiritual or temporal affairs, whether in matters of profit or diversion, pleasure is, at least, the chief and the final motive to it, if it is not the immediate one. And Providence seems to have sufficiently declared that pleasure was intended for our spring and fountain of action when it made it the incentive to those very acts by which we propagate our kind and preserve ourselves. As if selflove without pleasure were insufficient for either; for, as I myself have known several who have chosen rather to die than to go through tedious courses of physic, so, I make no doubt, but several would have taken the same resolution rather than have supported life by a perpetual course of eating, which had differed in nothing from a course of physic if eating and pleasure had not been things inseparable. Now as it is pleasure that obliges man to preserve himself, it is the very same that has sometimes the force to prevail upon him to his own destruction. For, as Monsieur Pascal observes, the very men who hang and who drown themselves are instigated by the secret pleasure which they have from the thought that they shall be freed from pain.
Since, therefore, man in every thing that he does proposes pleasure to himself, it follows that in pleasure consists his happiness. But though he always proposes it, he very often falls short of it; for pleasure is not in his own power, since, if it were, it would follow from thence that happiness were in his power. The want of which has been always the complaint of men both sacred and secular, in all ages, in all countries, and in all conditions. "Man that is born of a woman is but of few days, and full of trouble" says Job (4, i). Of the same nature are the two complaints of Horace, which are so fine and so poetical and so becoming of the best antiquity.
Scandit aeratas vitiosa naves
Cura; nec turmas equitum relinquit,
Ocior cervis et agente nimbos
(Ocior Euro. Hor., Ode 16, Lib. 2.)
And that other, in the first ode of the third book.
Timor et Minae
Scandunt eodem quo dominus: neque
Decedit aerata triremi et
Post equitem sedel atra Cura.
In short, they who have made the most reflections on it have been the most satisfied of it; and above all, philosophers who, by the voluminous instructions, by the laborious directions, which they have left to posterity, have declared themselves sensible that to be happy is a very difficult thing.
And the reason why they, of all men, have always found it so difficult is because they always propounded to owe their happiness to reason, though one would think that experience might have convinced them of the folly of such a design, because they had seen that the most thinking and the most reasonable had always most complained.
For reason may often afflict us and make us miserable by setting our impotence or our guilt before us; but that which it generally does is the maintaining us in a languishing state of indifference, which, perhaps, is more removed from pleasure than it is from affliction, and which may be said to be the ordinary state of men.
It is plain then that reason, by maintaining us in that state, is an impediment to our pleasure which is our happiness: for to be pleased a man must come out of his ordinary state; now nothing in this life can bring him out of it but passion alone, which reason pretends to combat.
Nothing but passion, in effect, can please us, which every one may know by experience. For when any man is pleased he may find by reflection that at the same time he is moved. The pleasure that any man meets with oftenest is the pleasure of sense. Let anyone examine himself in that and he will find that the pleasure is owing to passion; for the pleasure vanishes with the desire and is succeeded by loathing, which is a sort of grief.
Since nothing but pleasure can make us happy, it follows that to be very happy we must be much pleased; and since nothing but passion can please us, it follows that to be very much pleased, we must be very much moved. This needs no proof, or, if it did, experience would be a very convincing one; since anyone may find, when he has a great deal of pleasure that he is extremely moved.
And that very height and fullness of pleasure which we are promised in another life must, we are told, proceed from passion or something which resembles passion. At least no man has so much as pretended that it will be the result of reason. For we shall then be delivered from these mortal organs, and reason shall then be no more. We shall then no more have occasion from premises to draw conclusions and a long train of consequences; for, becoming all spirit and all knowledge, we shall see things as they are: we shall lead the glorious life of angels, a life exalted above all reason, a life consisting of ecstasy and intelligence.
Thus is it plain that the happiness, both of this life and the other, is owing to passion and not to reason. But though we can never be happy by the force of reason, yet, while we are in this life, we cannot possibly be happy without it, or against it. For since man is by his nature a reasonable creature, to suppose man happy against reason is to suppose him happy against nature, which is absurd and monstrous. We have shown that a man must be pleased to be happy and must be moved to be pleased; and that to please him to a height, you must move him in proportion. But then the passions must be raised after such a manner as to take reason along with them. If reason is quite overcome, the pleasure is neither long, nor sincere, nor safe. For how many that have been transported beyond their reason have never more recovered it? If reason resists, a man's breast becomes the seat of civil war, and the combat makes him miserable. For the passions, which are in their natures so very troublesome, are only so because their motions are always contrary to the motions of the will; as grief, sorrow, shame and jealousy. And that which makes some passions in their natures pleasant is because they move with the will, as love, joy, pity, hope, terror, and sometimes anger. But this is certain, that no passion can move in a full consent with the will, unless at the same time it be approved of by the understanding. And no passion can be allowed of by the understanding that is not raised by its true springs and augmented by its just degrees. Now in the world it is so very rare to have our passions thus raised, and so improved, that that is the reason why we are so seldom thoroughly and sincerely pleased. But in the drama the passions are false and abominable unless they are moved by their true springs and raised by their just degrees. Thus are they moved, thus are they raised in every well-written tragedy, till they come to as great a height as reason can very well bear. Besides, the very motion has a tendency to the subjecting them to reason, and the very raising purges and moderates them. So that the passions are seldom anywhere so pleasing and nowhere so safe as they are in tragedy. Thus have I shown that to be happy is to be pleased and to be pleased is to be moved in such a manner as is allowed of by reason. I have shown too that tragedy moves us thus, and consequently pleases us, and consequently makes us happy. Which was the thing to be proved.
The corruption of manners upon the Restoration appeared with all the fury of libertinism even before the playhouse was reëstablished, and long before it could have any influence on manners; so that another cause of that corruption is to be inquired after than the reestablishment of the drama; and that can be nothing but that beastly Reformation which, in the time of the late civil wars, was begun at the tail instead of the head and the heart; and which oppressed and persecuted men's inclinations instead of correcting and converting them, which afterwards broke out with the same violence that a raging fire does upon its first getting vent. And that which gave it so licentious a vent was not only the permission but the example of the court, which, for the most part, was just arrived from abroad with the king, where it had endeavored by foreign corruption to sweeten, or at least to soften, adversity, and having sojourned for a considerable time both at Paris and in the Low Countries, united the spirit of the French whoring to the fury of the Dutch drinking. So that the poets who wrote immediately after the Restoration were obliged to humour the depraved tastes of their audience. For as an impenitent sinner that should be immediately transported to heaven would be incapable of partaking of the happiness of the place, because his inclinations and affections would not be prepared for it; so if the poets of these times had written in a manner purely instructive, without any mixture of lewdness, the appetites of the audience were so far debauched that they would have judged the entertainment insipid; so that the spirit of libertinism which came in with the court and for which the people were so well prepared by the sham reformation of manners caused the lewdness of their plays, and not the lewdness of the plays the spirit of libertinism, For it is ridiculous to assign a cause of so long a standing to so new, so sudden, and so extraordinary an effect, when we may assign a cause so new, so probable, and unheard of before, as the inclinations of the people, returning with violence to their natural bent upon the encouragement and example of a court that was come home with all the corruptions of a foreign luxury; so that the sham Reformation being, in a great measure, the cause of that spirit of libertinism which with so much fury came in with King Charles the Second, and the putting down the playhouse being part of that Reformation, it is evident that the corruption of the nation is so far from proceeding from the playhouse, that it partly proceeds from having no plays at all.
That the corruption of manners is not to be attributed to the licentiousness of the drama may appear from the consideration of the reigning vices, I mean those moral vices which have more immediate influence upon men's conduct and consequently upon their happiness. And those are chiefly four.
1. The Love of Women.
2. Drinking.
3. Gaming.
4. Unnatural Sins.
For drinking and gaming, their excesses cannot be reasonably charged upon the stage for the following reasons.
First, because it cannot possibly be conceived that so reasonable a diversion as the drama can encourage or incline men to so unreasonable a one as gaming or so brutal a one as drunkenness.
Secondly, because these two vices have been made odious and ridiculous by our plays instead of being shown agreeable. As for drunkenness, to show the sinner is sufficient to discredit the vice; for a drunkard, of necessity, always appears either odious or ridiculous. And for a gamester, I never knew one shown in a play but either as a fool or a rascal.
Thirdly, because those two vices flourish in places that are too remote and in persons that are too abject to be encouraged or influenced by the stage. There is drinking and gaming in the furthest north and the furthest west among peasants as well as among dukes and peers. But here, perhaps, some visionary zealot will urge that these two vices, even in these remote places and these abject persons, proceed from the influence of that irreligion which is caused by the corruptions of the stage and will, with as much reason, and as much modesty, deduce the lewdness which is transacted in the tin-mines in Cornwall and the coal-pits of Newcastle from the daily abominations of the pits of the two play houses as he would derive the brutality of the High-Dutch drinking from the profaneness of our English drama.
But what will they say then to those gentlemen who neither are supposed to go to our theaters, nor to converse much with those who do, nor to be liable to be corrupted by them? What will they say to these gentlemen if they can be proved to have a considerable share in the two afore-mentioned vices? What can they answer? For it would be ridiculously absurd to reply that the clergy are corrupted by the laity, whom it is their business to convert. But here I think myself obliged to declare that I by no means design this as a reflection upon the Church of England, who, I am satisfied, may more justly boast of its clergy than any other church whatsoever; a clergy that are equally illustrious for their piety and for their learning. Yet may I venture to affirm that there are some among them who can never be supposed to have been corrupted by playhouses, who yet turn up a bottle oftener than they do an hour glass; who box about a pair of tables with more fervor than they do their cushions, contemplate a pair of dice more frequently than the Fathers or Councils, and meditate and depend upon hazard more than they do upon Providence.
And as for that unnatural sin which is another growing vice of the age, it would be monstrous to urge that it is, in the least, encouraged by the stage; for it is either never mentioned there or mentioned with the last detestation.
And now, lastly, for the love of women, fomented by the corruption and not by the genuine art of the stage; though the augmenting and nourishing of it cannot be defended, yet it may be in some measure excused.
1. Because it has more of nature, and consequently more temptation and consequently less malice, than the preceding three, which the drama does not encourage.
2. Because it has a check upon the other vices and peculiarly upon that unnatural sin, in the restraining of which the happiness of mankind is, in so evident a manner, concerned.
So that of the four moral reigning vices, the stage encourages but one, which as it has been proved to be the least of them all, so it is the least contagious and the least universal. For in the country fornication and adultery are seldom heard of, whereas drunkenness rages in almost every house there: from all which it appears how very unreasonable it is to charge the lewdness of the times upon the stage when it is evident that of the four reigning moral vices the stage encourages but one, and that the least of the four and the least universal and a vice which has a check upon the other three, and particularly upon that amongst them which is most opposite and most destructive to the happiness of mankind.
While I am pleading in defense of the stage I am defending and supporting poetry, the best and the noblest kind of writing. For all other writers are made by precept and are formed by art; but a poet prevails by the force of nature; is excited by all that's powerful in humanity, and is, sometimes, by a spirit not his own exalted to divinity.
For if poetry in other countries has flourished with the stage and been with that neglected, what must become of it here in England if the stage is ruined; For foreign poets have found their public and their private patrons. They who excelled in Greece were encouraged by the Athenian state, nay and by all Greece, assembled at their Olympian, Istmean, Nemean, Pythian games. Rome had its Scipios, its Caesars, and its Maecenases. France had its magnanimous Richelieu, and its greater Lewis; but the protection that poetry has found in England has been from the stage alone. Some few indeed of our private men have had souls that have been large enough, and wanted only power. But of our princes how few have had any taste of arts! Nay, and of them who had some, have had their heads too full, and some their souls too narrow!
As then in maintaining the cause of the stage, I am defending poetry in general; so in defending that I am pleading for eloquence, for history, and philosophy. I am pleading for the reasonable pleasures of mankind, the only harmless, the only cheap, the only universal pleasures; the nourishments of youth and the delights of age; the ornaments of prosperity and the surest sanctuaries of adversity; now insolently attempted by furious zeal, too wretchedly blind tosee their beauties or discern their innocence. For unless the stage be encouraged in England, poetry cannot subsist; for never was any man a great poet who did not make it his business as well as pleasure and solely abandon himself to that. And as poetry would be crushed by the ruins of the stage, so eloquence would be miserably maimed by them; for which, if action be confessed the life of it, the theater is certainly the best of schools; and if action be not the life of it, Demosthenes was much mistaken.