After all, the main question is, does a sensational play exercise
a beneficial or a pernicious influence over the audience? If the reader
will consider the matter impartially he should not have any difficulty
in coming to a right conclusion.
Theatrical performances should afford amusement and excite mirth,
as well as give instruction. People who visit theaters
desire to be entertained and to pass the time pleasantly.
Anything which excites mirth and laughter is always welcomed by an audience.
But a serious piece from which humor has been excluded,
is calculated, even when played with sympathetic feeling and skill,
to create a sense of gravity among the spectators, which, to say the least,
can hardly be restful to jaded nerves. Yet when composing his plays
the playwright should never lose sight of the moral.
Of course he has to pay attention to the arrangement
of the different parts of the plot and the characters represented,
but while it is important that each act and every scene
should be harmoniously and properly set, and that the characters
should be adapted to the piece as a whole, it is none the less important
that a moral should be enforced by it. The practical lesson
to be learned from the play should never be lost sight of.
In Chinese plays the moral is always prominent. The villain is punished,
virtue is rewarded, while the majority of the plays are historical.
All healthy-minded people will desire to see a play end with virtue rewarded,
and vice vanquished.
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