Excerpt from A Consideration of the Objections to the Stage From the Earliest Period and the Conclusion It Warrants: Being the Concluding Part of the Dunlap Society's Publication Entitled: When Was the Drama First Introduced in America?

I consulted Dr. Dickerman, the most eminent Egyptologist in this country, upon this subject, and his observation was this The state of mind and the condition of society of the ancient Egyptians were not such as would incline them to theatrical rep resentations. They had athletic sports, games, such as draughts or checkers, and games of chance, but not such a disposition as brought people together to witness anything. None of the buildings whose ruins have been studied indicate that any were constructed with reference to the assembling of pe0p1e, except the processions, with priests, in the temples, and that the Laby rinth, moreover, in the twelfth dynasty, contemporary with Abra ham, had meetings of the delegates from the different nomes, or provinces, to discuss the political affairs of the kingdom.he took the whole play-going public by storm, made men old in prejudice forget the idols of their youth and like Pope confess that he never had his equal. From Richard III. To Abel Drugger, from King Lear to Don F elix, from Macbeth to Bayes, his tragic force, his keen sense of humor, his marvelous genius carried everything before it; and this combina tion of equal excellence, and in the highest degree, in both tragedy and comedy is the more remarkable, for the two great Roman actors, Roscius in comedy and Esopus in tragedy, never crossed the limits of their respective branches, and both reached the pre'e'minence they attained by the most careful and assiduous study. It is said of Roscius that, in the very height of his reputation, he did not even venture upon a gesture that he did not carefully consider and practise in private, and yet, notwithstanding this elaborate study, there was no mannerism or afi'ectation in his acting, but every thing he did seemed natural to the character he repre sented; and having referred to these two great Roman actors, it may be mentioned, as an example of being endowed like Garrick with qualities that enable him who possesses them to soar easily and at once to the highest reach of his art, that Terence, the most ele gant, subtle, and felicitous in expression of the Roman comic dramatists, is supposed, his biography being but imperfectly known, to have been born a slave, who at the age of twenty-seven offered his first play, the An dria, to the conductors of the theatrical exhibitions, who referred him to an eminent playwright of Rome for its examination, where, unknown and meanly clad, he read, seated upon a low stool, his opening scene, afterwards declared by Cicero to be a model of narra tive, and his genius was at once recognized!

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