ABSTRACT
ABOUT thirty-five years ago a certairi Solomon Benoliel built a theatre in Gibraltar with the intention of letting it for dramatic performances. Some scruples were felt as to the lawfulness of his conduct, and application was made to a foreign Rabbi for his opinion on the subject 1. His reply was the reverse of favourable, but he allowed a distinction to be drawn between the performances of modern and ancient times. Many distinguished men, it was added, nowadays go to the theatre to while away an hour harmlessly. Exactly two centuries before, a Rabbi of Venice 2 expressed himself appalled at the establishment of theatres by Venetian Jews, wherein men, women, and children assembled to hear' frivolous and indecent remarks.' He regretted that he had no hope of suppressing the obnoxious gatherings. But the opposition to the theatre from certain sections of Jewish opinion is even now so strong that in some Hebrew prayer-books, the '.vords that a Talmudic sage uttered in the first century of the Christian era, are still ordered to be recited every morning on
It is superfluous to quote the opinions scattered through early Jewish literature, in which the circus and theatre are denounced. The Jewish objections to the theatre were f~urfold. (]) The theatre was immoral and idolatrous. (2) It was the scene of scoffing and mockery. (3) It encouraged wanton bloodshed. (4) Attendance at the shows was an idle waste of time. The last argument is certainly open to question, and an opposite opinion is on record 2 ; but the other three were only too fully justified by indubitable facts. The ancient drama grew out of the pagan religious rites, and many of the performances in the circus were in origin unmistakably idolatrous. N or is this all. In the Augustan age, as has been often pointed out, the favourite plays of the masses were not the masterpieces of Sophocles, iEschylus, and Euripides; were not even the comedies of Menander and Plaut us. Actual scenes of
275 immorality were enacted on the stage, the loves of Jupiter and Danae, of Leda and Ganymede, were exhibited in detail by the mimes. When Rome became Christian there was little change at first, and we find heathen writers denouncing Christian actors for obscenity 1.
