Plays have nothing in them that is so scandalous; and for the
worst, I wou'd not allow them the Credit, nor the Authors the Vanity
to think they could influence any one Man. The evil Conversation of
some of them wou'd frighten a Man from being vicious; so that they are
serviceable against their Wills, and do the World a Kindness through
mistake. I dare not stay any longer with you, tho' I have a great
Inclination to beg you'd excuse the roughness of my Stile: But you
know I have been busie in _Virgil_; and that they say, at _Will_'s, is
enough to spoil it: But if I had begg'd a more important thing, and
ask'd you to forgive the length of my Letter, I might assure my self
you wou'd oblige,

Your Humble Servant.

FINIS.

THE Occasional Paper:
Number IX.

Containing some
CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE DANGER
Of going to PLAYS.

In a Letter to a Friend.

LONDON,
Printed for M. Wotton, at the Three Daggers in Fleet Street.
1698.

SIR,

Being well assured that you sincerely desire to live as becomes a
Christian, though you are not in Holy Orders; and that your complying
with some things in use among those with whom you converse, is rather
from a care to avoid being over-nice to the prejudice of Religion,
than any want of a due Concern for the Interest of it: I cannot refuse
the letting you see all at once, my thoughts of that, which having
been at several times discoursed on between us, was never yet brought
to a perfect Conclusion.

I have always found you doubting the _Lawfulness_, at least the
_Expedience_ of going to _Plays, as they are now acted amongst us_;
and sometimes you have seem'd to think it did not consist with the
Faith of the _Gospel_, considering the Outrage committed there for the
most part upon it, in one instance or other. And a fresh sense of this
I perceive has been given you, by the late _lively Account of the
Stages_, the natural colours of which indeed are so black as to be
more than enough to affright those who have any _Fear of Him that
ought to be feared_, or any Dread of the Ruin of Men.

But for as much as the thread of that serious _Design_ may seem broken
too often with Observations of Learning, and Reflections of Wit, to be
closely follow'd by those who are either not used to the one, or too
fond of the other; the same good End may perhaps be helped forward a
little, by setting this matter in a less interrupted Light, and a
Simpler View.

And if things are as ba