In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure
or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither
the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that which
it resembles. The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry,
is as a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the brightest
rays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the simplicity
of these elementary forms, and touches them with majesty and beauty,
and multiplies all that it reflects, and endows it with the power of
propagating its like wherever it may fall.
But in periods of the decay of social life, the drama sympathizes with
that decay. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great
masterpieces of antiquity, divested of all harmonious accompaniment
of the kindred arts; and often the very form misunderstood, or a weak
attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer considers as moral
truths; and which are usually no more than specious flatteries of some
gross vice or weakness with which the author, in common with his
auditors, are infected.
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