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.
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