Plays and Politics

"[T]he theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than churches." --Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

Basically, Burke is appalled with a particular enlightenment preacher, the Reverend Price. He argues that what the Reverend Price got away with in sermons would not stand up in plays because the poets have to be able to communicate to an audience "not yet graduated in the school of the rights of men" and must therefore "apply themselves to the moral constitution of the heart." Here Burke affirms the common man in the realm of morals ("where men follow their natural impulses") over men improperly educated. The theater provides both a better way of arguing (as acting is relatively closely attached to reality) and a better type of audience than the rhetorical, enlightenment style sermons found in churches.

Coleridge also writes about theater in relation to ethics and politics: "What would appear mad or ludicrous in a book, when presented to the senses under the form of reality, and with the truth of nature, supplies a species of actual existence. ... No part was ever played in perfection, but nature justified herself in the hearts of all her children" ("The Drama Generally, and Public Taste").

In fact, in order to resist revolutionary tendencies, Coleridge sees a need for the theater to influence the public mind; to do that, it must first be attentive to the sorts of plays it is showing.

For more, see Julie Carlson's "An Active Imagination: Coleridge and the Politics of Dramatic Reform."