THE THEATRE: ITS PERNICIOUS TENDENCY. Addressed to Young Men.

Octavo, brown cloth titled in gilt on the front cover with formal decorations in blind on both covers. The covers are bumped with a few small stains & with light dampstaining to the rear cover. The spine is rubbed & faded with its head & tail and the rear joint chipped. iv & 123 pages. The front hinge is cracked & the front endpaper is detached. There is a contemporary owner's gift inscription & a bookseller's blind stamp on the endpaper with a tiny chip out of its top edge. A good copy despite its flaws. First edition.William Keddie [1809-1877] was a Scottish editor, collector, scientist and author. Keddie quotes contemporary and earlier critics views on theatre and its pernicious effects on the audience, especially on the minds of the young. A lecturer to the Young Men's Christian Association recounts: "I had occasion to investigate the books of a Penitentiary last year, and I was told, without qualification, that the majority of the inmates. were first seduced from the paths of virtue at theatres, races or tea-gardens." However, Keddie's book impresses one as a history of one aspect of theatre rather than a moral tract. He ranges widely with passages on the immorality of Shakespeare's plays, the character of Falstaff, the actor Macready as a reformer of theatrical evils, the profligacy of actor Edmund Kean, the singer Jenny Lind who was persuaded to leave the stage [no doubt for moral reasons] and the actor Morgan Stanley who fully embraced the theatre but late came to recognize its deleterious effects on the audience.Rare. First Edition.

Product Info

Publisher: Glasgow, Scotland: Glass and Duncan, 1853.

Year: 1853.

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

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