Note 367 — Chapter XVII
Reading edition
How the Spanish theatre, as it existed in the time of Philip IV., ought to have been regarded may be judged by the following remarks on such of its plays as continued to be represented at the end of the eighteenth century, read in 1796 to the Spanish Academy of History, by Jovellanos,—a personage who will be noticed when we reach the period during which he lived.
“As for myself,” says that wise and faithful magistrate, “I am persuaded there can be found no proof so decisive of the degradation of our taste as the cool indifference with which we tolerate the representation of dramas, in which modesty, the gentler affections, good faith, decency, and all the virtues and principles belonging to a sound morality, are openly trampled under foot. Do men believe that the innocence of childhood and the fervor of youth, that an idle and dainty nobility and an ignorant populace, can witness without injury such examples of effrontery and grossness, of an insolent and absurd affectation of honor, of contempt of justice and the laws, and of public and private duty, represented on the stage in the most lively colors, and rendered attractive by the enchantment of scenic illusions and the graces of music and verse? Let us, then, honestly confess the truth. Such a theatre is a public nuisance, and the government has no just alternative but to reform it or suppress it altogether.” Memorias de la Acad., Tom. V. p. 397.
Elsewhere, in the same excellent discourse, its author shows that he was by no means insensible to the poetical merits of the old theatre, whose moral influences he deprecated.
“I shall always be the first,” he says, “to confess its inimitable beauties; the freshness of its inventions, the charm of its style, the flowing naturalness of its dialogue, the marvellous ingenuity of its plots, the ease with which every thing is at last explained and adjusted; the brilliant interest, the humor, the wit, that mark every step as we advance;—but what matters all this, if this same drama, regarded in the light of truth and wisdom, is infected with vices and corruptions that can be tolerated neither by a sound state of morals nor by a wise public policy?” Ibid., p. 413.