ABSTRACT
OF those who gave their patronage to Shakespearean music in the concert-hall, some at least would not have followed the composer into a theatre. Royalty and ‘Society’ might cultivate the opera, but an influential middle-class opinion suspected the theatre of sinfulness – in the plots of the plays, in the supposed overlap between the career of actress and that of prostitute, 1 even in the opportunities given to theatregoers for illicit rendezvous. The old Puritan denunciation of ‘the playhouse’ re-emerged in the moralizing of influential Victorian clerics.
One of the fiercest diatribes against the dramatic art was lately [1862] delivered by Mr Spurgeon... As Mr Spurgeon is an eloquent preacher, but borrows several of his best effects from theatrical action, it has been asked whether a little professional jealousy has not been mixed up with his attacks.
