Our literature is remarkably rich in old dramas; but they are of little use to the present age. Fastidiousness and hypocrisy have grown for many years, slowly but surely, and have at last arrived at such a pitch, that there is hardly a line in the works of our old comic writers, which is not reprobated as immoral, or at least vulgar. The excessive squeamishness of taste of the present day is very unfavourable to the genius of comedy, which demands a certain liberty and a freedom from restraints. This morbid delicacy is a great evil, for it renders the time of limitation in all comic writings exceedingly short. The ephemeral duration of the fashion, which is all the production of a man of wit can now enjoy, discourages authors. There is no motive to bestow much care on such compositions, and they fall below the ambition of men of real talents--for the best part of the reward of literary labour consists in the lasting admiration of posterity; and as some new fastidiousness will consign to oblivion, in a short time, every comic production, it is plain that such a reward cannot be reasonably anticipated. We are more completely, than any other nation, the victims of fashion. Everything here must either be in the last and newest fashion, or it must cease to be. The despotism of fashion in dress, in furniture, and in the pattern of the edges of plate, is perhaps inconvenient--it is, however, not very important; but it is a cruel grievance that it should interfere with and annihilate an entire department of our literature.
Dramatic representations were formerly given, not only in Greece and Rome, but in England also, in the daytime, and in the open air. "The Globe, Fortune, and Bull, were large houses, and partly open to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight;" and plays were first acted in Spain in the open courts of great houses, which were sometimes covered, in whole or in part, with an awning to keep off the sun. The word _sale_, which is used as a stage direction, meaning not _exit_, but he enters, i.e. he comes out of the house into the open air, is an evidence of the old practice. We are inclined to think that the morning is more favourable to dramatic excellence than the evening. The daylight accords with the truth and sobriety of nature, and it is the season of cool judgment: the gilded, the painted, the tawdry, the meretricious--spangles and tinsel, and tarnished and glittering trumpery--demand the glare of candle-light and the shades of night. It is certain, that the best pieces were written for the day; and it is probable, that the best actors were those who performed whilst the sun was above the horizon. The childish trash which now occupies so large a portion of the public attention could not, it is evident, keep possession of the stage, if it were to be presented, not at ten o'clock at night, but twelve hours earlier. Much would need to be changed in the dresses, scenery, and decorations, and in many other respects, in the pieces, the solid merits of which would be able to undergo the severe ordeal; and if we consider _what_ changes would be required to adapt them to the altered hours, we shall find that they will be all in favour of good taste, and on the side of nature and simplicity. The day is a holy thing; Homer aptly calls it [Greek: ieron aemar], and it still retains something of the sacred simplicity of ancient times. It is, at all events, less sophisticated and polluted than the modern night, a period which is not devoted to wholesome sleep, but to various constraints and sufferings, called, in bitter mockery, Pleasure. The late evening, being a modern invention, is therefore devoted to fashion; to recur to the simple and pure in theatricals, it would probably be necessary to effect an escape from a period of time, which has never been employed in the full integrity of tasteful elegance; and thus to break the spell, by which the whole realm of fancy has long been bewitched. An absurd and inconvenient practice, which is almost peculiar to this country, of attending public places in that uncomfortable condition, which is technically called being dressed, but which is in truth, especially in females, being more or less naked and undressed, might more easily be dispensed with by day, and on that account, and for many other reasons, it would be less difficult to return home.