The Stage as a Moral Force

Socrates believed that poets tell corrupting lies about men and the gods. Jeremy Collier assailed theater for its immorality and profaneness. But there was a visionary who perceived theater to extend beyond the realm of law and religion by teaching rather than punishing, demonstrating rather than preaching. He believed theater can encourage us to fraternize in a universal sympathy and bring us nearer to our heavenly disposition. That man was Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). Schiller, a German dramatist and philosopher, is perhaps best known for Die Räuber (1781), an emotional drama regarding the conflict between two aristocratic brothers. His Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801), a romantic tragedy, was also highly acclaimed. Its heroic characterization of St. Joan of Arc allowed him the opportunity to display his bold imagination — and his imperturbable optimism. The unambiguous moral issues in Schiller’s dramas appealed to German audiences until changing times and mores caused his popularity to wane, especially following the Franco-Prussian War. His principles of high moral conduct, noble idealism, and optimism were seen to belong to the period before the French Revolution rather than to the liberal and material age that followed. Still, Schiller’s essay “The Stage as a Moral Institution” remains a work we should ponder, for it expresses truths more urgent now than ever before and points the way forward for artists of the future.

Schiller’s 1784 essay proposes the stage as a moral force, one that strengthens laws and religion. Though laws are capricious and religion might wane, the stage is relatively constant; it is where “virtue and vice, joy and sorrow, are thoroughly displayed in a truthful and popular way; where a variety of providential problems are solved; where all secrets are unmasked, all artifice ends, and truth alone is the judge,” Schiller writes. And immediately we marvel, nearly two and a half centuries later, at what a beneficial role the stage served. But even if we are speaking of high theater, was Schiller’s representation truly reliable, or was he being merely hopeful?

Earlier theorists such as Martin Opitz (1597-1639) and Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664) viewed tragedy as teaching a stoic resignation to the workings of fate. Later theorists were less inclined to endow theater with a moral purpose. Johann Elias Schlegel (1719-1749), for example, believed that pleasing an audience was of superior importance, while Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), a contemporary of Schiller, emphasized the freedom of genius. He believed Shakespeare’s genius, for instance, might excuse almost any flaw. Another contemporary, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), both a playwright and theorist, maintained that the dominant element of tragedy was pity. Curiously, Lessing was of the opinion that there never had been a play in which a Christian was of interest as a Christian. Such a play, he claimed, would be untheatrical because gentle pensiveness and unchangeable meekness do not conform to tragedy’s striving to purify passions with passions. In particular, he says, the Christians in Johann Friedrich von Kronegk’s Olindo and Sophronia (1758) fail to arouse admiration or pity, because too often they proclaim their martyrdom as something facile. Lessing also believed audiences were enamored of action, regardless of morality. In his view, a play is successful if its villains are less inveterate and clearer in purpose.

Schiller notes that whereas law and religion might proscribe certain crimes, witnessing their portrayal on stage, or the consequences thereof, is a more powerful preventative — for example, Medea’s terrifying by killing her children, and Lady Macbeth’s horrifying when washing her hands of murder. And we might believe these reactions even today, trusting to a time more primitive than our own, because we sense the propriety of these more natural sentiments of a distant yet dignified civilization. I would further say that whereas these reactions might have been true in societies where such crimes were rare or unknown, they might not be as prevalent in societies where infanticide or murder are common, for such occurrences tend to habituate us to these crimes. Thus, our reaction today to staged portrayals of these practices might not be so intense. French playwright Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), in fact, suggested this when he spoke of plays that present “manners as they are, passion as it exists, crime as it is hidden” to a public that recognizes itself “as in a mirror,” where an audience’s reaction might be of an opposing nature. For here it “frowns instead of laughs, attacks instead of approves, and growls instead of applauds.” This is where we are now. And yet, in the heart of every decent human, there is an impulse deploring murder, ancient or modern, as something unfit for civilized society and humane existence.

Virtue & Vice

Schiller tells us that by addressing virtue and vice, the stage attends to a far wider field of human behavior than law and religion. The theater of his day honored virtue and condemned vice, though both might be overlooked by man’s laws. As for virtue, Schiller believes an audience reacts with noble emotions when exposed to wholesome examples, such as in Pierre Corneille’s Cinna (1641), when Augustus offers a forgiving hand to the conspirator Cinna, or in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen (1771), when Francis the knight keeps his promise to redress a grievance despite seeing his house in flames and his wife and children in peril. As for vice, Schiller says the very souls of an audience are chastised when exposed to wrongful behavior, such as in Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606), when Lear’s daughters, given everything by their father while he was fit and able, ignore his pleas for shelter now that he is old, blind, and helpless.

Beyond virtue and vice, Schiller tells us the stage addresses matters of folly, tracing actions to their sources, allowing us to laugh “at the long catalogue of fools.” The stage exposes fools and their thousand forms of folly, subjecting them to ridicule, thus effectually curbing folly through satire and jest. Law and conscience might guard us from our sins, but the stage “especially punishes what is ludicrous,” Schiller writes. He understands that what we cannot accept when we are personally criticized for our vulgarities and weaknesses we can accept when the stage accuses us anonymously. We can bear rebuke in this manner and even be glad for it.

Practical Wisdom & Civil Life

Beyond portrayal as a means more powerful than words, and beyond the encouragement of virtue and the discouragement of vice, the stage does even more. For it is a great school of practical wisdom and a guide for civil life. Yet here, Schiller allows that there may be cases in which the stage falters, for it cannot remove egotism or stubbornness in doing evil. A thousand vices may persist despite the stage; a thousand virtues might make no impression on coldhearted spectators. Schiller admits that the behavior of Harpagon in Molière’s The Miser (1668) probably never altered a usurer’s heart, that Beverley’s suicide in Edward Moore’s The Gamester (1753) probably never saved anyone from the gaming table, and that even Karl Moor’s untimely demise in Schiller’s own Die Räuber (1781) likely never made the high roads any safer. Not in the three years since its staging, in any event. These are serious admissions. To what do we attribute them? Why does Schiller appear to negate the influence of the stage regarding miserliness, gambling, and robbery? As he does not tell us, I propose a reason.

First, the audiences attending the intellectual plays of Schiller’s time typically were not usurers, gamblers, or robbers. Furthermore, regarding persons who did attend, we might, at Schiller’s suggestion, dismiss those who were overwhelmingly egotistical or stubborn. After all, persons of extreme ego are not likely to modify their actions by observing those who exhibit altruism, much as persons who are stubborn are not likely to be persuaded of anything. Where vice is a form of livelihood (as in gambling and robbery), absent law and failing conscience, stubbornness prevails. As to miserliness, however, there may be a chance at remediation, if judging by the continuing admiration of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843) and the reformation of its protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge; or if judging by the popularity of Jerome K. Jerome’s The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1907), in which the landlord Mrs. Pennycherry becomes less stingy, and the boarder Miss Devine marries her sweetheart despite his not being wealthy. Where miserliness is not a necessity, such as with the rich, the will can be altered, and yet to say audiences have become less miserly after viewing a play disparaging miserliness might prove difficult.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) is possibly correct that the theater cannot change our inclinations. And Dumas is possibly correct that matters too close to current society are rejected. Harpagon in his speech, manners, and dress indeed might have caused audiences to laugh instead of frown, approve rather than disagree, and applaud rather than dismiss, only later, at a different period, eliciting different reactions.

Still, Schiller insists on the greatness of the stage. It is great for its ability to show men’s vices (not to mention men’s virtues), thereby preparing us for their weaknesses (to say nothing of their strengths). The stage reveals duplicity and cunning so we might distinguish hypocrisy when it is practiced, perceive intrigue as it unfolds, and recognize duplicity and cunning because we have seen it portrayed to such a degree that we more readily anticipate it in our own lives.

Beyond the beneficent advantage of knowing true occurrences by comparison with what we see portrayed on stage, might it not be possible to misinterpret a similar set of circumstances when we confront them in our own lives, having been primed through the example of the stage? Might we not become prejudiced to the point that our lives are less “lightened and delighted,” expecting vice unduly? Modern theater has given us examples, as when Jerome Lawrence Schwartz and Robert Edwin Lee mocked old-time religion and the faith of our fathers in Inherit the Wind (1955), or when Rolf Hochhuth dared criticize the highest spiritual authority, Pope Pius XII, in Der Stellvertreter (1963). It would be one thing were this the price of theater’s attempts to inoculate us from vice, but Schiller again cautions that the true culprits might themselves remain unaffected by the examples of the stage, such as Sara’s death in Lessing’s Miss Sara Sampson (1755) not likely inhibiting a debauchee, though “unguarded innocence has been shown the snares of the corrupter and taught to distrust his oaths.” So the innocent have been warned, and the guilty unaffected, and we have been taught in the bargain to view with suspicion our fellow man because some are guilty of vice. And Schiller tells us the theater gives us remedies when, in truth, it appears these remedies might be vice itself.

More generally, Schiller says the stage helps us bear the strokes of fortune — by which he means “ill fortune.” If we are prepared for inexorable facts, if we are steeled regarding adversity, it is to our advantage. Although human suffering causes pain and tears, the stage rewards us with “a grand new stock of courage and endurance” by preparing us for this adversity — as if the daily trials of life do not adequately do this for us, or we are too sheltered and need the artifice of actors to prepare us!

Schiller explains that the stage teaches us not just to bear ill fortune ourselves but to be more considerate of others affected by it; that we should judge persons gently, until we know their “whole being and circumstances.” Schiller tells us that the stage’s influence in showing men’s hidden motives might, in large measure, explain why the courts in his day began demonstrating greater tolerance and humanity toward the accused. If here Schiller appears more certain of theater’s influence, it is possibly because he believes that princes and magistrates attend the theater with greater regularity than do robbers and lawbreakers. These and other greats of the world should at least be thankful to the theater, “for it is here alone they hear the truth.” They don’t hear it from defendants under oath or fellow princes but from lofty minds and ardent patriots who have used the stage to spread enlightenment. Here not only man’s mind but the whole of his intellectual culture has been elevated by higher drama — the higher, mind you, not the lower.

Better Principles, Better Motives

Schiller mentions “two glorious fruits” of the higher class of dramas written by lofty minds. One is religious toleration, seemingly accomplished through the stage’s portrayals of gentleness, humanity, and fanaticism. The other, not yet achieved, is the reform of “mistaken systems of education.” Even before Lessing’s Nathan the Wise (1779) and Emperor Joseph II’s efforts on behalf of religious tolerance, the theater taught a hatred of intolerance through portrayals of fanaticism. Unfortunately, Schiller does not mention which stage portrayals we might thank for this.

The second fruit, reform of “mistaken systems of education,” was hoped to be addressed through stirring examples, whereby parents might be led to more just and “better views” of the subject. However, Schiller does admit that “many teachers are led astray” by false views and by methods that are often “artificial and fatal.” Isn’t it interesting that we find ourselves in this situation today?

Intellectual & Moral Culture

A final advantage of the stage, Schiller proclaims, is that as a means of amusement it has gained the highest honors. Whereas it is of much greater service in this regard than people often allow, and its influence on the intellectual and moral culture has been doubted, censurers have acknowledged, and even its enemies have admitted, that theater’s ability to amuse exceeds all other forms of entertainment. This, of itself, is fortuitous because Schiller’s opinion is that a bureaucrat was apt to become melancholy, a scholar a pedant, and the people mere brutes without the stage’s abilities to amuse. What’s more, the stage combines “amusement with instruction, rest with exertion, where no faculty of the mind is overstrained.” The stage, in short, revives us, and our torpid natures are roused by noble passions.

Here I would offer that if Schiller is correct about noble passions, the censurers and enemies who argued for what was intellectual and moral, moreover than what was merely amusing, would have cheered its beneficent service and welcomed its influence. Yet Schiller goes on to say that not only does the stage amuse, it makes us dream of other spheres, and through this dreaming and this amusement our blood circulates ever more healthily. What’s more, if we are unhappy, we are made happy. And if we are happy, we are calmed. Secure persons are made provident, effeminate natures are steeled, savages are civilized, and “as the supreme triumph of nature,” men of all ranks, zones, and conditions are emancipated from the chains of conventionality and fashion, allowing us to fraternize in a universal sympathy, forget the world, and come nearer to our heavenly destination. By sharing in the general ecstasy, there shall be only one emotion: the sentiment of being human. Certainly, this has an aura of nobility and inspiration, though we must not forget the world if we are to see how far we’ve progressed in achieving a moral stage since Schiller’s time.

Conclusion

Friedrich Schiller’s pronouncements in “The Stage as a Moral Institution” show him to be an optimist. Not only did contemporary and antecedent theorists disagree with Schiller regarding the effects (and even the purpose) of the theater, but his idea of the theater as superior to religion in its ability to inculcate moral values appears overestimated. However, we might agree that theater has the ability to influence society regarding moral precepts, analogous to religion. Where Schiller speaks about the horror of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, the selfishness of Harpagon in Molière’s The Miser, or the debauchery in Lessing’s Miss Sara Sampson, or again about the ingratitude in Shakespeare’s King Lear, are we not reminded of the biblical commandments against killing, coveting, adultery, and the honoring of our parents? Then, too, where Schiller speaks about the forgiving hand of Augustus in Corneille’s Cinna, the tragic result of gambling in Edward Moore’s The Gamester, or religious tolerance as taught by Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, are we not seeing moral matters that go beyond biblical injunction?

Yes, theater has possibly served a role parallel to what religion engages, despite the differences in their spheres and audiences. Whether theater still serves such purposes, let us agree that it can and should serve these purposes in future.

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