class which sways the
dramatic writers commands the people and governs the country.

The refined tastes and the arrogant bearing of an aristocracy will
rarely fail to lead it, when it manages the stage, to make a kind of
selection in human nature. Some of the conditions of society claim
its chief interest; and the scenes which delineate their manners are
preferred upon the stage. Certain virtues, and even certain vices,
are thought more particularly to deserve to figure there; and they are
applauded whilst all others are excluded. Upon the stage, as well
as elsewhere, an aristocratic audience will only meet personages of
quality, and share the emotions of kings. The same thing applies to
style: an aristocracy is apt to impose upon dramatic authors certain
modes of expression which give the key in which everything is to be
delivered. By these means the stage frequently comes to delineate only
one side of man, or sometimes even to represent what is not to be met
with in human nature at all--to rise above nature and to go beyond it.

In democratic communities the spectators have no such partialities,
and they rarely display any such antipathies: they like to see upon the
stage that medley of conditions, of feelings, and of opinions, which
occurs before their eyes. The drama becomes more striking, more common,
and more true. Sometimes, however, those who write for the stage in
democracies also transgress the bounds of human nature--but it is on
a different side from their predecessors. By seeking to represent in
minute detail the little singularities of the moment and the peculiar
characteristics of certain personages, they forget to portray the
general features of the race.

When the democratic classes rule the stage, they introduce as much
license in the manner of treating subjects as in the choice of them.
As the love of the drama is, of all literary tastes, that which is most
natural to democratic nations, the number of authors and of spectators,
as well as of theatrical representations, is constantly increasing
amongst these communities. A multitude composed of elements so
different, and scattered in so many different places, cannot acknowledge
the same rules or submit to the same laws. No concurrence is possible
amongst judges so numerous, who know not when they may meet again; and
therefore each pronounces his own sentence on the piece. If the effect
of democracy is generally to question the authority of all litera