Age cannot so well brook, and would not perhaps be
so just and reasonable; because it is very possible they might be
so fram'd and govern'd by such Rules, as not only to be innocently
diverting, but instructing and useful, to put some Vices and Follies
out of Countenance, which cannot perhaps be so decently reprov'd, nor
so effectually expos'd and corrected any other way. But as the Stage
now is, they are intollerable, and not fit to be permitted in a
civiliz'd, much less a Christian Nation. They do most notoriously
minister both to Infidelity and Vice. By the Profaneness of them, they
are apt to instil bad Principles into the Minds of Men, and to
lessen that awe and reverence which all Men ought to have for God and
Religion: and by their Lewdness they teach Vice, and are apt to infect
the Minds of Men, and dispose them to lewd and dissolute Practices.

"And therefore I do not see how any Persons pretending to Sobriety and
Vertue, and especially to the pure and holy Religion of our Blessed
Saviour, can, without great Guilt, and open Contradiction to his holy
Profession, be present at such lewd and immodest Plays, much less
frequent them, as too many do, who yet would take it very ill to be
shut out of the Communion of Christians, as they would most certainly
have been in the first and purest Ages of Christianity."

And not only wise and sober Men have declar'd their detestation of
the Immorality of the Stage, but eminent Poets themselves, who have
written the most applauded Comedies, have own'd, that the Theatre
stands in great need of Restraints and Regulation, and wish'd that
Plays were compil'd in such an inoffensive Manner, that not only
discreet and vertuous Persons of the Laity, but a Bishop himself,
without being shock'd, might be present while they were acted. Mr.
_Dryden_ has, up and down in his Prefatory Discourses and Dedications,
freely aeknowledg'd the Looseness of our Dramatick Entertainments,
which sometimes he charges upon the Countenance given to it by the
dissolute Court of King _Charles_ the Second, and sometimes upon the
vitiated Taste of the People. In his Dedication of _Juvenal_, made
_English_, to the late famous Earl of _Dorset_, he thus bespeaks him;
"As a Counsellor bred up in the Knowledge of the Municipal and
Statute Laws may honestly inform a just Prince how far his Prerogative
extends, so I may be allow'd to tell your Lordship, who by an
indisputed Title are the King of Poets, what an Ext