Articles on the immorality of burlesque performance

“Critics agree that it is wasted ammunition to criticse burlesque writing, yet critics will do it. There has been a volume of watery sentiment showered over Mr. Brougham’s burlesque ‘Shylock’ to nourish that vigorous young sprout into luxuriant foliage, if it needed it. The main point in burlesque writing and acting is the matter of good taste. The story, scenery, action and dialogue may be as outré, bizarre, fantastic and extravagant as the mind of the author and actor can conceive, and it is all the better burlesque; but good taste, and even decency, may be easily outraged, as it often is, by vulgar and thoughtless writers and players. Then it is no burlesque, and criticism should be moulded into bolts of denunciation and hurled at the heads of the offenders. Mr. Brougham never offends decency or good taste, and the play of his fertile fancy is always graceful and amusing. We could wish, though, that his reverence for the grand creation of Shakespeare’s genius was not quite so absorbing as to make him forget at times that he is a caricature Sylock, and not the rival of Booth, Kean or Fechter. Mr. Brougham gleams with coruscations of real genius, which makes us wish that the original Shylock was before us with his legitimate surroundings. The audiences which have rewarded Mr. Brougham’s latest effort for their amusement have been literally packed, and as a consequence the ticket speculators swarm like predatory Bedouins on the highway which leads to the present Mecca of Fashion. The Senator or Assemblyman in Albany who will exert himself to suppress these hindrances to happiness will be adjuged to be truly a tribune of the people.

If the Black Crook, when he passed away after a prolonged and beautiful [illeg…] the glare of limelights and the blare of trumpets, could have looked ahead with the prophet’s eye and beheld the palpably gross appeals to sensual natures and vacant minds made by the gilded maidens who march about and carol nursery rhymes and prance and suggestively sway their undraped forms about in the intoxicating cancan, that deformed but respectable wizard would curse Barras for having created him to inaugurate the spectacular drama. It is not a whit too much to state that at no period of the world’s existence has the influence of the drama been so wide and, unhappily, pernicious, as it has been since the introduction of the spectacular, ballet and burlesque. The inevitable cancan at fancy balls, with its accompanying scenes of excitement, riot and nameless debauchery, has necessitated a quadrupling of the police force at these volcanic gatherings, where the frantic orgies of ancient Rome are made almost endurable by mournful comparison. Every little town and village in the New England States and the West and South has had its ‘Black Crook’ or ‘White Fawn,’ fragmentary and stripped of glare and glitter, but quite as indecent and demoralizing as the Devil himself could wish. It is in bain that the managers cry that the spectacular was a concession to the fickle public taste. The present public taste for that species of entertainment, so far as it exists, resulted from the pandering of the ‘war managers’ to the licentious side of human nature.”

“The Indecent Drama.

New York, March 20, 1869.

To the Editor of the Herald:—

In common, no doubt, with thousands of other patrons and admirers of decent and rational amusement, I was highly pleased this morning with the severe but perfectly just criticism of your dramatic editor on the unclean, lascivious performances which occupy the stages of some of our prominent theatres. That these debasing exhibitions have sadly demoralized our youth, of both sexes, I think very few will question, and I wish all respectable members of the community could be induced to emulate the example of your talented critic in precept, and still more effectually discourage this ‘social evil’ by persistently staying away from the places where it presents itself.”