18th-century views of theater
While Yale is now home to a world renowned School of Drama and professional theater, there was a time when the University was as adamantly anti-theater as any other institution of higher learning.
A century after the University was founded, in fact, its fourth president, Timothy Dwight, exclaimed: "When you go to theatres, recollect that you are to give an account of your conduct at the last day."
The controversies that surrounded the theater during the 1700s at Yale, in England and abroad are documented in "Theater & Anti-Theater in the 18th Century," the newest exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The show will continue through April 14.
The anti-theater sentiment at Yale during this era is traced through such documents as faculty judgments, college rules and the writings of early presidents. Yet, as other materials make plain, despite official restrictions, theater existed on campus during the 1770s and 1780s, cultivated by undergraduate literary societies, despite the considerable punishments that could be incurred for acting in, or even attending, a play.
In England, as the exhibit shows, controversy about the theater prompted Anglican clergyman Jeremy Collier to publish the tract "A short view of the immorality and profaneness of the English stage" in 1698. While this was not the first attack against Restoration drama, Collier's work sparked a flood of publications by partisans and adversaries of the stage -- many of which are on view at the Beinecke.
The Yale exhibition also examines the attempts to reform the French theater in the 18th century. This section features the 10th plate volume (1772) of Diderot's "Encyclopédie," containing over 80 illustrations devoted to theatrical architecture and stage machinery. The "Encyclopédie" -- whose contributors included Voltaire, Diderot's collaborator D'Alembert, the Chevalier de Jaucourt and Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- was met with considerable hostility by the Church and its political allies, and the bitter controversy that ensued is documented in the Beinecke exhibit.
As the Beinecke display reveals, the controversy surrounding the morals of actors could be as heated as that surrounding the theater itself. For instance, the exhibit contrasts the splendid funeral given to English actress Anne Oldfield in London, with the ignominious burial shortly afterward of famed French actress Adrienne Lecouvreur, who refused to seek repentance for her stage career as actors were then supposed to do. This section also looks at the career of David Garrick -- actor, playwright and manager of Drury Lane -- whose international success is credited with changing the public's perception of the acting profession.
Selections of major works by 25 playwrights from the 18th century are also on view throughout the Beinecke exhibit. These include Englishmen Thomas Otway, William Wycherley, John Dryden, William Congreve, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan; French writers Lesage, Marivaux, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau and Beaumarchais; Germans G.E. Lessing and Friedrich Schiller; and four English women who wrote for the stage -- Mary de La Rivière Manley, Catharine Trotter, Mary Pix and Susanna Centlivre.
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