Burke on Theatricality and Revolution

Author(s): Peter H. Melvin

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1975), pp. 447-468
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION

BY PETERH. MELVIN

Commentators frequentlysense that EdmundBurke experienced

the French Revolutionas a personalvendetta.Some would relate the
intensityof Burke'sresponseto the persistenceof his youthfulinterest
in aesthetics,giving special prominenceto his renderingof the evils of
the Revolutionby an abundantuse of imagerydrawnfrom architecture
and landscapegardening.1Apparentlyinvestigationsof this kind make
an initial assumption: Burke intended to contrast the aesthetically
conceivedEnglishconstitutionto the artless sterilityand abstractness
of the "Parisianmetaphysicians."Whatis ignoredis Burke'sbeliefthat
the revolutionarieswere also artisticallyinclined.A neglectedbut con-
spicuousimageryof anothersort, that of dramaturgy,providesan ac-
cess to this aspectof his reactionto the Revolution.
His lurid descriptionsof the French Jacobins as actors and tragi-
comedians-disfigured by false semblance, bathed in blood, and
ensconced in brothels-are too striking to be easily dismissed. The
Revolutionhad been preparedand executed by artists unable to find
gainfulemploymentwithintheir proper mediums.2The Jacobinswere
comic interlopersin the provinceof seriousdrama,whereBurkefelt he
demonstrablyexcelled as a critic. Nothing aroused his personal ire
more than the new theatricalpretensionsof the revolutionaries.When
he was at a loss to find sufficientlyabusiveand scurrilouslanguageto
denounce them, it was the world of the theatre to which he hastily
repaired. But it was not the case that Burke called on theatrical
imagery simply for the purposeof attack. Concealedwithinthe biting
sarcasm and rhetoricalflourishis a positive, alternativeconceptionof
the political uses of drama. Though only alluding to the many
references to the theatre in Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1790), J. T. Boultontantalizinglyoffers the view that Burke'saim was
"to arouse the emotional fervour normally associated with serious
dramaand to suggest that the properstate of mindfor observersof the

1James T. Boulton, The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke
(London and Toronto, 1963), ch. 7; Morton J. Frisch, "Burke on Theory," Cambridge
Journal, 7 (1954), 292-97; Walter D. Love, "Edmund Burke's Idea of the Body Corpo-
rate: A Study in Imagery," The Review of Politics, 27 (1965), 184-97; Neal Wood,
"The Aesthetic Dimension of Burke's Political Thought," Journal of British Studies, 4
(1964), 41-64.
2The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (Boston, 1807-08), IV, 295-
97, 421. Volume and page numbers refer to this edition. Quotations from the Reflec-
tions are contained in III.

447
448 PETER H. MELVIN

French Revolutionis that appropriateto watching a tragedy."3The

significanceof Boulton'ssuggestionneedsto be pursuedmorefully.
The present essay will examine the theatricalimagery in Burke's
presentationof the meaningof the Revolution.Lurkingin his thought
all the while, it came to the fore underthe press of real events, which
bore a considerablelikeness to the tawdry stage effects implicitly
condemnedin Burke'searly aesthetictreatise, TheSublimeand Beau-
tiful (1757). The hypothesiswhichis proposedhere is that Burkesaw in
the Revolutionthe telltale signs of a neo-classicalunderstandingof the
theatre,whichhad disastrouspossibilitieswhenappliedto politicallife.4
If Burkefoundneo-classicismdefectiveas theoryin his early work, its
bastardizationby the revolutionarieswas beyond mild contempt. His
animuswas directedparticularlyat the banefuleffects of "imitation"
in the political realm, which he thought to be inspiredby the canons
of neo-classicism and conducive to a radical distrust of inher-
ited, habitualmodes of humanconduct. Theatricalimageryprovedto
be a mightyweaponin Burke'sarsenal,preciselybecauseit constantly
remindedhis readersof the differencebetweenbeing and appearance,
natureandart, fact andfiction.
The fanaticism of the Jacobins did not appear to Burke to stem
from an error in logic or from spontaneousimpulse. Rationalistic
schemes to reorder society, and passionate energy, taken by
themselves, should have been in conflict. To effect this heady com-
binationof rationalismand passion, an intermediaryagent must have
been present. How else explain "metaphysicalspeculationsblended
with the coarsest sensuality"(III, 290)?Day by day Jacobinsand com-
panywereimbibingthe sentimentalityand false theatricalitytaught by
the vain and pretentiousRousseau. Reason and passion were fused in
the unrealityof dramaticproductions;from this revolutionaryalchemy
proceeded rationalism and sensuality together. Their conjunction
produceda mental fervor and argumentativestyle imperviousto the
pleas of reason or nature. When Burkedeclaredthe Revolutionto be
universal in design and insidious in practice, he also thought it
necessary for the true English statesman to abandon temporarily
strictly politicalconcepts like authority,rights,and duties. These were
the properconcernsof more placidtimes. Once civil society is violently
distempered,Burke had argued years before, "the people must have
some satisfactionmore solid than a sophisticalspeculationon law and
3Boulton, op. cit., 143-44.
4By "neo-classicism" is meant a congerie of related aesthetic principles which
Burke thought to be classically inspired and influential in his own day. No attempt is
made here to unravel the vexed problem of the true historical significance of neo-
classicism. On the suspicion which the term has met, cf. Oliver F. Sigworth, ed.,
Criticism and Aesthetics 1660-1800 (San Francisco, 1971), esp. xv; James W. Johnson,
"What Was Neo-Classicism?" Journal of British Studies, 9 (1969), 49-70.
 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION 449

government"(II, 115-16).The antidoteto the neo-classicalcreedof the

Jacobinswould be an improvedversionof the statesman as theatrical
director.
Nowadays,commentatorspuzzleover the prescienceof the Reflec-
tions. How did Burkeforesee the violent course of the Revolution?At
the time, however,his critics aptly contendedthat the Reflectionshad
beenprefiguredin his systematicaesthetics,whereBurkelinkedhorror
and terror to the experienceof the sublime.The most trenchantof ad-
versaries,Tom Paine,pointedout that the Reflectionsitself constituted
a counter-dramato the one taking shape on Frenchsoil. Burkeknew
that he was not writinghistory but constructinga tragedy.Paine ob-
served:"I cannotconsiderMr. Burke'sbook in scarcelyany otherlight
than a dramaticperformance;and he must, I think,have consideredit
in the same light himself, by the poeticallibertieshe has taken of omit-
ting some facts, distorting others, and making the whole machinery
bendto producea stage effect."5Burkehimself took no great painsto
clarifyhis often colorful andvagueeffusionsrelatingto the theatre.He
must have been awareof their popularappealin a centurynoted for a
varietyof theatricalforms. Still, Paineaccuratelyjudgedthat therewas
a more serious purpose to Burke's endeavor than simply that of
capturing public fancy. For the Revolution considered merely as a
political uprisingand militaryadventuredid not alone inflameBurke.
While always the astute politician,heedfulof the enormouspractical
stakes, he also saw the Revolutionas an eminentlypersonal rendez-
vous. By dint of forty years preparationhe was finally able to apply
theatricalimageryto politicsin morethan a casual manner.
Our point of departure for what follows is a discussion of the
assumptionsabout revolutionas theatre which were actually held by
the Jacobins, Robespierrein particular.To Burke, these assumptions
had been wrenchedfrom the neo-classicalphilosophyof nature, and
had become the aesthetic basis of Jacobin terrorism. The digression
into Jacobinstrategyprovidesbackgroundto the main theme:Burke's
desire to combat the "imitative"theatreof the Jacobinsby the "natu-
ralistic" theatre of the genuine statesman. Thus we can better ap-
preciatehow Burkereadthe machinationsof the revolutionariesin ad-
vance, without his having to sacrifice a predisposedcommitment to
theatricalimagery, which had been in the making since The Sublime
and Beautiful.
I.-The Jacobinswere to insist that the invocationof a new consti-
tution would be prematureif all signs of automatic deferenceto the

5P. S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (New York, 1945), I,
258-68; also the Introduction by J. T. Boulton in his edition of Edmund Burke, A Philo-
sophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London and
New York, 1958), xxv (hereafter The Sublime and Beautiful).
450 PETER H. MELVIN

aristocratwerenot eradicatedcompletely.A revolutionarygovernment

which rested on liberty would not long endure a civil society which
restedon aristocracy.Revolutionhad to invadethe realmof social dis-
tinctions, destroy "artificial"patterns of behavior,and institute the
"natural"virtue of the republicancitizen. But total reorganizationof
civil society from above would not suffice to eliminate objectionable
habits.After a time, there was little hope that a terrorsustainedexclu-
sively by an elite could accomplish much. Terror from above could
physicallydecimate the ranks of the nobility,and unleashthe pent-up
resentmentof the impoverished,but it could not repressintrigueand
self-aggrandizementamongthe middlingordersof Frenchsociety. The
wholeof revolutionarysociety wouldhave to policeitself beforejudged
cleansedof nefarioushabits and worthy of a new politicalorder. New
social "institutions,"to use Saint-Just's euphemism,would have to
maintainan atmosphereof intimidatingviolence.Indirectintimidation
would have to replacedirect reprisalif republicancitizens were to be
created.6
It was left to Robespierreto put the full powerof humansuspicion
at the center of Jacobin hopes for a purifiedsociety. Public opinion
could no longer recognizeits enemiesby pronouncedaristocratictraits
and gentlemanlymanners;these had been drivenundergroundby the
first wave of overt terrorism. Only corrupted attitudes persisted.
Refusing to abandon traditional expectations concerning the needs
which the state should satisfy, the people were still beholdento an
aristocratic ethos. "It is necessary to admit that in stormy circum-
stances," Robespierreasserted, "we have been guidedmore by love of
well-beingand the sentimentalneeds of the Nation than by an exact
theoryandpreciserulesof conduct."7The dross of social andeconomic
influencewhich the nobility still possessed was based, after all, on a
conditioned response in the people, which had been centuries in
forming.It was necessary,then, to recognizethe enemiesof libertyin
"the more delicate expressionsof incivismand intrigue."8The regula-
tory possibilitiesof suspicionwould be achievedwhen a collectiveftte
of public, dramatic observancesspreadthroughthe whole of society.
The violencewhichissues from this intimidationRobespierreknew to
be of an interpersonalqualitywhich could not be duplicatedby a re-

6For Saint-Just's views: E. V. Walters, "Policies of Violence: From Montesquieu to

the Terrorists," in K. H. Wolff and Barrington Moore, Jr., eds., The Critical Spirit
(Boston, 1967), 140-46; Albert Ollivier, Saint-Just et la Force des Choses (Paris, 1954),
ch.9.
7Convention Nationale. Rapport ... Fait au Nom du Comite de Salut Public, par
Maximilien Robespierre, le 18 Pluvoise, Year II, 2.
8Robespierre, Le Dffenseur de la Constitution, no. 1, 1792 (in section "Lettres de
Maximilien Robespierre ... a ses Commenttans"), 8.
 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION 451

mote revolutionary government. Violence which emanates from civil

society itself is nothing less than prompt, severe, and inflexiblejustice.9
Nor did Robespierre think that republican purity significantly de-
pended upon a transformation of inner motives. Natural virtue was a
raw nerve simply requiring exposure to external forces. When he
ruminated avidly on the service which the Cult of the Supreme Being
could provide by sowing mutual suspicion, in its role as one more form
of public theatre, he admitted that intentions were irrelevant to the
revolutionary enterprise. "Being of beings," intoned Robespierre,
"their needs do not escape you any more than their most secret
thoughts."10 Revolution would gain strength from whomever con-
formed, whatever the reason. The most blatant revolutionary behavior
actually might come from men least disposed inwardly. And those
most attentive to public responsibilities would continue to be the most
suspect. Greater and greater sacrifices could be demanded as proof of
fidelity. Anxiety which provoked mere conformity would finally
produce febrile activity on behalf of the Revolution. Stragglers to the
revolutionary scene, eager to prove their mettle, would run the greatest
risks.11
The whole of revolutionary society was to become a vast theatre;
everyone was to become an actor, a dissembler, except the Jacobins
themselves. The favored ones could invoke the most commonplace
excuses to evade continually being sentries over public austerity. The
Jacobins would have a social station which insulated them from the
nerve-racking plight confronting the rest of society. Their modest
means and intermediate position on the social scale would permit a
more balanced posture: attention need not be lavished on a too re-
spectable demeanor. The benefit to the elite was that someone else
could provide the necessary intimidation. Once this maddening chase
after revolutionary credentials was underway, the certified could pick
and choose from the possibilities of a private existence. Using his own
accustomed metaphor, the theatre as revolutionary society, Robes-
pierre spoke to the escape afforded an elite under trying circumstances:
Perhapswhenone has left the theatreto rangeamongthe spectators,one best
judges the scene and the actors;it seems at least that by escapingthe turbu-
lenceof events,one breathesin a morepeacefulandpureatmosphere.12
Burke saw a connection between a violent disposition and the "pure
atmosphere" prized by revolutionaries in general. No need for him to
have patiently sorted out the various shades of political belief in the
9ConventionNational. Rapport.... le 18 Pluvoise, Year II, 9.
1?Robespierre,Second Discours du President de la Convention Nationale, 1794,
6-7.
Idem, Le Defenseur de la Constitution, no. 3, 1792, 124-26.
12Idem, Le Defenseur de la Constitution, no 1, 1792, 3.
452 PETER H. MELVIN

Revolution. Constitutionalists,Brissotins, Girondists, and Maratists

were, on one level, all Jacobins; they favored the same obnoxious
aestheticimpulse.A convergingemphasison purityandviolenceat the
beginningof the RevolutionconvincedBurkethat a misguidedaesthe-
tics was involved.
He believedthat a suddenbreak with political traditionhad been
heraldedby a new vocabulary,one charged with violent overtones.13
Newly descriptive words came into parlance: sans-culotterie, mus-
cadins, honnetes gens, culottes dorees, canaille. All these terms made
referenceto the external appearanceof the membersof revolutionary
society; they were meant as rather accurate designationsof revolu-
tionaryardor.Anyonewho did not fit one of these categoriesof relative
acceptabilitywas likely to be dubbed a member of the aristocratie
bourgeoisie,a classificationwhich for the Jacobinswas to reflect the
centralproblemfacinga Republicof Virtue.Burkeknewthat the revo-
lutionaries feared, above all else, that the remnants of aristocratic
influencemight be all that a confusedsociety wouldhaveleft for moral
and political guidance."The conditionof a Gentleman"was the true
object of hostility,"not the despotismof a prince."14So beganthe twin
features of the modern revolutionary tradition: hostility toward
conventionalappearancesand unremittingimitationof this hostilityin
subsequentrevolutions.15
True, Burke acceptedthe Jacobinpremisethat the man of refined
taste, the "Gentleman,"is an aggregationof "acquired"or"second-
ary" qualities. He is a kind of residual man, who, in Tocqueville's
words,throws"a pleasingillusorycharmover humannature."16Burke
also acknowledgedthat the claim of the old nobility in Englandto
political authoritywas precariousin the extreme. Too often its mem-
bers had themselves been at the center of connivingintrigue."I hold
them [the Peers] to be of absolute necessity in the constitution,but I
think they are only good when kept within their proper bounds."
13p. J. Marshall and John A. Woods, eds., The Correspondence of Edmund Burke
(Chicago, 1968), VII, 427-28; also Albert Soboul, The Parisian Sans-Culottes and the
French Revolution 1793-94 (Oxford, 1964), 22-23, 35-37; Alexis de Tocqueville,
L' Ancien Regime (Oxford, 1965), 13.
14Marshalland Woods, op. cit., 62.
'5K. R. Minogue, "Revolution, Tradition and Political Continuity," in Preston King
and B. C. Parekh, eds., Politics and Experience (Cambridge, 1968), 305. Tocqueville
would later marvel at the "imitative" nature of the 1848 Revolution and at the "terrible
originality of the facts" it disguised. Real emotion was gone: "I had the feeling that we
had staged a play about the French Revolution, rather than that we were continuing it."
An atmosphere of play-acting became a cover for violent attacks on the uncontrived
spontaneity of innocent bystanders. Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections (Garden City,
1971), 67-70.
16Quotedin Marvin Zetterbaum, Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy (Stan-
ford, 1967), 35.
 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION 453

"Kings may make a nobleman," Burke granted, "but they cannot

make a gentleman." In the same vein: "I am no friend to aristocracy, in
the sense at least in which that word is usually understood."17 For
Burke, the gentleman, or aristocrat, stood for something more im-
portant than direct political authority. He was emblematic of the social
person. The much maligned aristocratie bourgeoisie should have been
regarded as a universal category, not a special class of proscribed men.
The gentleman symbolized for all decent mankind a precarious
union of being and appearance, nature and art, fact and fiction. The ac-
quired attributes of human conduct were "detachable" if viewed under
a too probing light. Therefore the Jacobins had concluded that they
could somehow dismember a Caesar without killing his natural virtue.
Burke held, however, that once an attitude of indifference to ap-
pearances was slightly violated, there would be no holding the line
against the quest for increasing purity. "All this violent cry against the
nobility I take to be a mere work of art" (III, 155). Burke implored
Englishmen to realize that what was detachable in aesthetic theory was
not expendable in political practice and social existence. The Jacobins
were breeding a destructive self-consciousness. By their attempt to
penetrate behind all appearances, they were at war with a casual accep-
tance of human diversity. No human response to this most devastating
kind of attack on convention was imaginable. To be faced by the sudden
and imperative necessity to justify one's very "presence" was the ulti-
mate in barbarity. In French hands the guillotine had become the in-
strument of a sham purity. "Cannibalism," Burke screamed; Jacobins
were craven enough to efface the distinguishing features from fallen
corpses (IV, 372).
"Nothing leads more certainly to perfect barbarity," said Paul Va-
lery, "than an exclusive attachment to the pure spirit."18This pure
spirit was regarded by Burke as the particular aesthetic drive behind Ja-
cobin theatricality. The end result was fanaticism, the mutilation of se-
rene surroundings. The expansion of the spectator's range of sensibility
was to be purchased by whatever offended custom, prejudice, and
tradition. The Jacobin conception of revolutionary society as theatre
was schooled exclusively in the compositional principle of dissociation.
It was predicated upon a desire to interrupt ordinary perceptual habits
and, thereby, demolish the validity of everyday appearances. If
Englishmen let themselves be guided by this conception they would de-
velop a "complexional disposition ... to pull every thing in pieces" (III,
187). The British art critic Edgar Wind observes that over a century of
Western art "has been produced and enjoyed on the assumption that

17Quotations from Peter J. Stanlis, Edmund Burke and the Natural Law (Ann
Arbor, 1965), 212.
8Valery, Petit recueil de paroles de circonstance (Paris, 1926), 85.
454 PETER H. MELVIN

the experience of art will be more intense if it pulls the spectator away
from his ordinary habits and preoccupations."19What would only later
become the case in modern art was already evident in the political
realm, in the first "complete revolution." For the Jacobin playwrights
were also engaging in artistic inventiveness for its own sake. Their ill-
conceived experiments, when transferred to political life, ushered in
unacceptable adventures in sensibility. "Everything seems out of nature
in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes
jumbled together with all sorts of follies" (III, 144).
The Jacobin "experiment" was no mere figure of speech for Burke.
It bespoke the attitude of the modern artist who retires to his "labora-
tory" to dumbfound all acquired perceptual habits and raise brute
sensations to a higher intensity. Burke, however, was sure that the Ja-
cobins could not "take the moral sympathies of the human mind along
with them, in abstractions separated from the good or evil condition of
the state, from the quality of actions, and the character of the actors"
(III, 326; IV, 297-98). And when these purified abstractions were put
before the public, they reduced the spectator to a critic who viewed
sacred institutions and living men with no more than detached interest.
Vital participation was lacking, though the French desultorily went
through the motions, committing acts of violence as if in a trance. The
critic's function demanded this bifurcated personality, a self-conscious-
ness about the behavior of others and oneself. One's "self" became an
"other," just as everyone else was seen as if divided into an inner
essence and an external appearance. A diagnostic attitude had suc-
ceeded an aesthetic impulse as the Revolution wore on. The Jacobins
may have been impelled toward purity, but in practice the detachment
they lauded led in the direction of commingling what nature had jux-
taposed. Their dramatic productions gained an abstract quality only by
alternating disharmonious passions in rapid succession:
In viewing this monstrous tragic-comic scene, the most opposite passions
necessarilysucceed,and sometimesmix witheach otherin the mind;alternate
contempt and indignation;alternatelaughterand tears; alternatescorn and
horror(III, 145).
II.-Sensitive to this outrageous mixing of dramatic forms, Burke
concluded that the Jacobins had gone beyond a simple adoption of neo-
classicism as their official artistic style. The muddled and ambiguous
consequences of neo-classical art turned propaganda were ridiculous to
Burke. The most apparent manifestations of this style-the cult of Re-
publican Rome, the festivals staged by David, the austere sculptures of
revolutionary heroes-did not elude Burke's scathing wit. But these
were symptomatic displays of a more profound derangement of moral

19EdgarWind, Art and Anarchy (London, 1963), 18.

 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION 455

sensibility than neo-classical art possessed. The public pageantry belied

fiercer uses of an underlying neo-classical disposition than was revealed
in "mere works of art." In this connection, Burke attacked the
degeneracy of French society through earthy, erotic language:
Their society was more like that of a den of outlaws upon a doubtfulfron-
tier,-of a lewd tavern for the revels and debauchesof banditti,assassins,
bravoes,smugglers,and their more desperateparamours,mixed with bom-
basticplayers,the refuseandrejectedoffal of strollingtheatres,puffingout ill-
sortedversesaboutvirtue(IV, 373).
The coarse and suggestive allusions assume their rightful im-
portance in Burke's thought if we recall the innocence, the unadorned
simplicity, the essential purity which was the hallmark of neo-
classicism. For example, contrast the debauched, licentious "offal of
strolling theatres," which France nurtured, to the rarified ideal of the
neo-classical nude. The latter "was accepted only at its farthest remove
from the naked human body."20No intolerable degree of lewdness, of
stark exhibitionism, was acceptable in neo-classicism. The Jacobins,
however, had left men naked, shivering, and indecent. The effect so
achieved was naturalistic, not the natural ideal of neo-classicism. For
Burke, it was as if neo-classical nudes, shorn of all modest adornment
and "decent drapery," were to be made alive and parade about as re-
publican citizens. Lessing in the Laocoon had stipulated the proper neo-
classical standard: "Necessity invented clothing, and what has art to do
with necessity."21 The too literal-minded Jacobins were attempting to
breathe life into this tired academic precept. A more fastidious Burke
would even clothe hallowed "prescription" and "presumption," two
mainstays of any healthy body politic, in "a vestment which accom-
modates itself to the body."22
More fundamentally, Burke had long stood opposed to the neo-
classical philosophy of nature which encouraged Jacobin purism. The
Jacobins had been misguided in their application to politics of a divorce
between being and appearance. Yet it was the whole neo-classical idea
of art imitating ideal nature which lent the support of aesthetic theory
to violent debaucheries. For when the neo-classicist of Burke's age
spoke of art imitating nature, he did not mean to imply a mere
"copying" of nature. Any discrete thing or activity was necessarily de-
fective, in that it would not divulge the secrets of a purer, inner nature.
To codify the laws of nature for the purpose of artistic activity, the neo-
classicist felt he had to penetrate ruthlessly all appearances. Thus was
20HughHonour, Neo-Classicism (Baltimore, 1968), 118.
21Quotedin Honour, op. cit., 118.
22Burke, "Speech on a Motion for a Committee to Inquire into the State of the
Representatives of the Commons in Parliament, June 16, 1784," in Robert A. Smith,
ed., Edmund Burke on Revolution (New York and Evanston, 1968), 113.
456 PETER H. MELVIN

nature conceived as timeless truth, a universal. The method whereby

the artist probed for an ideal nature, suggests Peter Gay, can be
described as "empirical Idealism."23Nature was opposed to deformity,
yet its discovery depended upon a selection from experience of the most
exemplary and beautiful things in nature, finally purified of every im-
perfection. Cicero's account of Zeuxis composing a figure more
splendid than Helen's from particular physical features noted for their
perfection was a prominent neo-classical motif.
The corollaries to this philosophy of nature were extremely
influential throughout the eighteenth century. First, art must be em-
phatically moral and didactic. Vice, not simply overt misconduct, had
to be uprooted through persuasive literature, painting, and sculpture.
Secondly, since ideal nature was a product of the artist's discovery,
future generations should strive to build on their predecessors' imi-
tation of nature. The imitation of superb artefacts was held to be the
path to artistic progress. Neo-classicism, then, provided a neat ra-
tionale for the complete autonomy of art. And, thirdly, idiosyncratic
detail and variation were slighted in favor of proportion and harmony.
These conclusions were applied to the theatre in Diderot's Paradoxe
sur le comedien. The actor, Diderot maintained, must be a kind of
hollow man who has the capacity to mimic every sort of character. He
must have "penetration and no sensibility," a total self-command; he
will be the creature of the playwright's every intention, though his pe-
culiar selflessness oftentimes will exceed and dazzle even the play-
wright's fondest expectations. Improvisation from performance to
performance will be suppressed because the actor coolly strives to
achieve a perfected expression of human nature. Sensibility, whether in-
born or acquired, will denote some kind of organic weakness in the
actor. The theatre is always to present a more imposing and exalted
version of ordinary experience; anything less insufficiently moves the
audience to moral reflection. Diderot summarized the importance of
the neo-classical philosophy of nature for the theatre:
The actor who plays from thought, from study of human nature, from
constantimitationof some idealtype, fromimagination,from memory,willbe
one and the same at all performances, will be always at his best mark.... He
will be invariable;a looking-glass,as it were, readyto reflectrealities,and to
reflect them ever with the same precision,the same strength,and the same
truth. Like the poet he willdip foreverinto the inexhaustibletreasure-houseof
Nature,insteadof comingverysoon to an endof his own poor resources.24
Burke, in The Sublime and Beautiful, decisively rejected the neo-
23Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York, 1969), II, ch. 6;
also Ernest Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston, 1965), ch. 7;
Honour, op. cit., 20-21, 101-07.
24TheParadox of Acting, trans. W. Archer (New York, 1957), 15.
 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION 457

classical idea of art imitating ideal nature. He impugned its most

vaunted preferences: patient didacticism; proportion and harmony;
clarity of expression; and, the superiority of painting to the other arts.
In their stead Burke substituted an aesthetics which relied upon indis-
tinct, nondescriptive expression, irregularity and constant deviation,
and the magnificence of poetical, dramatic utterance. He also replaced
a study of idealized nature and its companion, art history, by a study of
men's passions, which revealed to him the greater richness and appeal
of sublime emotions as compared to the pleasures of imitation. Ac-
cording to Gay, "Burke became a leader in the great eighteenth-century
revolt against theories of imitation and proportion." In The Sublime
and Beautiful he tried in vain to write "an epitaph to neo-classicism."25
In no other branch of the arts is this judgment more true than in the
theatre.
Especially noteworthy is Burke's discussion of the proper standard
of art being a faithful imitation of nature as it is available to the lowliest
intellect. In the section "Of the effects of TRAGEDY," Burke argued
that this theatrical form loses its powerful sway when the audience ap-
prehends that its representation is not reality. The nearer tragic
representation approaches reality, Burke stated, "and the further it
removes us from all idea of fiction, the more perfect is its power."26
When the theatre diverges but slightly from nature all men stand ready
to appreciate its full force. It is one thing to be a sophisticated observer
of nature, and thus prone to "judge" it, but it is quite another matter to
be stirred by what one is able to observe. "There is in all men a
sufficient remembrance of the original natural causes of pleasure, to
enable them to bring all things offered to their senses to that stan-
dard."27 Burke went on to explain that rational judgment is the
last step in aesthetic cognition, preceded by the mechanical intake of
sensations and, then, the ordering of sensations by the imagination. Ra-
tional judgment, he made evident, is the least influential power in man,
and the aesthetic experience of common men will possess it in only a
very limited degree.
However, Burke thought the sublime emotions of astonishment,
admiration, reverence, and respect were accessible to men of otherwise
humble attainment. The beautiful emotions of tenderness, affection,
and love, being languid and pallid, are less natural to man. Whenever
the sublime and the beautiful are mixed in one thing or activity, we may
expect the sublime emotions in the spectator to be more predominant.
"The great power of the sublime," in contrast to the beautiful which de-
mands a more developed judgment is that "it anticipates our reason-
ings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force."28Burke found the sub-

25Gay,op. cit., II, 306. 26TheSublime and Beautiful, 47.

271Ibid.,16. 28Ibid.,25, 120, 124-25, 156-57.
458 PETER H. MELVIN

lime to be central to man's existence-intimately involved in the desire

for self-preservation. Commenting on man's natural aesthetic en-
dowment, Burke concluded:
The true standardof the arts is in everyman'spower;andan easy observation
of the most common, sometimesof the meanestthingsin nature,willgive the
truest lights, where the greatest sagacity and industrythat slights such ob-
servation,mustleaveus in the dark,or whatis worse,amuseandmisleadus by
falselights.29
Natural man, understood in terms of aesthetic aptitude, is
inevitably resident within civil society. At times of severe crisis civil so-
ciety cannot do without him. Burke claimed to have achieved his
insights into aesthetics just as Hobbes recommended, by introspection.
Through this inward interrogation, presumably, Burke discovered that
the idea of perpetual solitude occasions the greatest amount of positive
pain, which he associated with sublime experiences.30Burke apparently
extended his conviction about himself to all men: the experience of the
sublime may be so intense that the suppression of crude passions can-
not be effected by the purity and abstractness of highly imitative art.
Art practiced for its own sake-without consideration of natural ap-
titude-will never surmount excess passion. This was the danger of the
neo-classical argument for the increasing autonomy of art. For under
peaceable social conditions art may tame "their wild nature," but in
times of social crisis "our passions instruct our reason" (III, 175).
Though the crude passions of lust and violence must be curbed, Burke
still had too little faith in man's aesthetic malleability to believe that
restrictions imposed by the artifice of laws and institutions would al-
ways be successful. Manners and taste would be more determinative of
social order, and these Burke linked to the beautiful emotions of love,
affection, and tenderness (II, 95; IV, 368).31 But the periodic crises
which wrack the most durable of constitutions testify to the weakness
of the beautiful emotions (III, 418). We concede too much to an un-
subtle picture of Burke's thought if we ascribe to him a strong faith in
the internal, self-fulfilling appeal of civil society to its members, even in
the case of the healthiest society.
The fatal defect of the beautiful emotions is that even they cannot
be invoked too often for the sake of the internal peace of a nation.
Beauty as much as sublimity is "extremely rare and uncommon.... a
positive and powerful quality" which strikes us by its novelty and
difference from "the idea of custom."32 The aesthetic dimension is
contrary to all habitual social intercourse. One of the surest ways to
destroy aesthetic enjoyment is to incorporate beauty into men's daily

29Ibid.,54. "Ibid., 1, 43.

31Ibid.,124-25. 32Ibid.,103.
 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION 459

routine. "It is absolutely necessary," Burke contended, that beauty

"should not be exerted in those things which a daily and vulgar use have
brought into a stale unaffecting familiarity."33Pomp and circumstance,
when called on once too often, barely graze the public imagination.
Citizens of a placid society are already possessed in large measure by
what Michael Oakeshott calls "negative capability," an acquired disin-
terest in the mysteries of social order. Burke himself emphasized that
man's usual attitude is one of "indifference," replaceable only by the
novelty of beauty or sublimity.34 Habit and custom are the chief sup-
ports to this normal state of indifference; they are also soothing balms
for the positive pleasure and pain associated, respectively, with beauty
and sublimity. The value of indifference, of habitual response, tends to
be known by its occasional, intermittent absence. Custom and habit
afford a salutary relief from constant aesthetic experience.
The Jacobins, however, thought they could win by continual dra-
matic performances that which only custom and habit can bestow-
domestic peace. Burke claimed that they "are involved, through a
labyrinth of confused detail, in an industry without limit, and without
direction" (III, 184). As the "purer" forms of political art are ap-
proached-those devoid of an appreciation of "mean," or obscure,
nature-man's control over art becomes impossible. "The more deeply
we penetrate into the labyrinth of art, the further we find ourselves
from those ends for which we entered it" (I, 87). It is increasingly
difficult to reverse the movement away from nature once it gathers mo-
mentum. The tendency is, beyond a point, to imitate the work of other
artists, as neo-classicism prescribed. Once a significant group of
artists, or legislators, deviates from the standard set by nature, artistic
style will follow suit on all fronts.35
Nor was the detachment of the revolutionaries bereft of the desire
to emulate abstractions. Throughout Burke's writings on French
affairs there is a dreadful foreboding about the effects of imitation.
"The moral scheme of France furnishes the only pattern ever known
which they who admire will instantly resemble" (IV, 266). Actors
observing actors are compelled to derive pleasure from the act of
dissimulating, not from the activity originally imitated. This kind of
imitation, by its exaggeration of artifice, will not link men together in
civil society. Imitation that grows away from an original act of imi-
tation affords a cheaper pleasure with every succeeding imitation. Thus,
imitation feeding on imitation is incapable of forming "our manners,
our opinions, our lives."36
In political life there must be on that account a terminal point be-
yond which artistic freedom can extend. Notice the terms in which

33Ibid.,31. 341bid.,32-33, 104.

35Ibid., 53-54. 36Ibid.,49.
460 PETER H. MELVIN

Burke rebuked the Jacobins: "I consider such a frolic rather as an un-
justifiable poetic licence, than as one of the franchises of Parnassus"
(III, 79). Or again: "Poets who have to deal with an audience not yet
graduated in the school of the rights of men, and who must apply
themselves to the moral constitution of the heart, would not dare to
produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation (III, 97-98). Burke
thought overly complicated ceremonies and institutions were to be
avoided. He spoke of the subtly intricate fabric of civil society, but it
was personal loyalties, and not the multiplication of artificial arrange-
ments, which he commended. He flayed the Jacobins for ignoring this
requirement: "On the principles of this mechanic philosophy our insti-
tutions can never be embodied ... in persons; so as to create in us love,
veneration, admiration or attachment" (III, 94). It was the zealous use
of deliberately contrived theatric rites which was the true index of social
dissolution in the Revolution. In an early work, A Vindication of
Natural Society (1756), a satirical Burke had not been interested in jus-
tifying a primitive "state of nature" as man's proper abode, which the
misleading title implied, but his scorn for the excesses of artificial so-
ciety coincides with his mature position. There is a full-blown attack on
unduly complicated judicial procedures in the Vindication, along with a
bitter review of the cost to mankind of all unmeaning forms and cere-
monies.
The process which leads to the demise of civil society may com-
mence innocently enough. Ceremonies are at first taken to be merely
ceremonies. Before long, however, they are so pervasive as to be indis-
tinguishable from that which was once meant to be commemorated.
Art may eventually parody itself, but the comical and farcical was no
human style to Burke. The Jacobins, Burke charged, "institute
impious, blasphemous, indecent theatric rites, in honor of their vitiated,
perverted reason, and erect altars to the personification of their own
corrupted and bloody republic" (IV, 368). Art then no longer comple-
mented custom and habit, but claimed instead that the miraculous
could be attained by sheer theatricality. "The most wonderful things,"
taunted Burke, "are brought about in many instances by means of the
most absurd and ridiculous . . . and, apparently by the most contemp-
tible instruments" (III, 27). In the Revolution artistic exercises had be-
come solemn institutions.

The paradoxesof eloquentwriters,broughtforthpurelyas a sportof fancy,to

try theirtalents are takenup by these [revolutionaries],not in the spiritof the
originalauthors, as means of cultivatingtheir taste and improvingtheir style
(III, 187).

Too embarrassed to admit that they do not understand excessive

 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION 461

imitations, men blindly persist in their folly (III, 188).37 When a degree
of imitation is reached which is totally unintelligible, from that very
moment, people are thrown back into a Hobbesian state of nature. The
secret of an enduring civil society is that the natural and the artificial,
reality and imitation, are so combined as to avoid intense public con-
cern with one or the other. To go to either extreme is to force men to
think about the opposite, to court the danger of a sudden reversal. Ex-
treme imagination, opposed to genuine human feeling, leads to the
savage destruction of civil society. When overwhelmed by imitation
men more earnestly seek the indulgences of crude passions. They are
more likely then to be agitated by those who have broken the yoke of
convention. This condition of natural depravity makes radical
skepticism irresistible, especially in respect to the acquired externality
of the gentleman. It was at this end of the aesthetic scale, approaching
the outer limits of imitative art, that Burke found the Jacobins to have
fomented grievous crimes against humanity.
On the other hand, when civil society is inundated by threats from
base natural passions, it may seek an escape through an artful or imagi-
nary alteration of the danger. At such junctures in history men must
finally find some repose in art. "In the palpable night of their terrors,
men under consternation suppose, not that it is the danger, which, by a
sure instinct, calls out courage to resist it, but that it is the courage
which produces the danger" (IV, 317). To Burke, this recourse to
imagination was the pressing, unavoidable need of the English people. If
carried too far, however, it could become the source of ruin. The stern
task set before the English statesman was to slake this thirst for theat-
rical art, yet avoid the pitfalls of an overweening imagination. Since the
experience of the sublime corresponded to man's natural capacity to
confront horror and terror without foresaking custom and habit, it be-
came the chosen instrument of the true statesman.
III.-Burke's comparison of the English constitution to medieval
castles and "massive ancestral buildings" has been examined by
scholars who generally are in search of a possible connection between
the central importance of sublimity in his aesthetic treatise and the
Gothic qualities of the English constitution in his political theory. Cer-
tainly Burke's descriptions of the constitution make it resemble a pot-
pourri; like a medieval castle, it develops different, seemingly incohe-
rent, elements as time passes and peculiar historical exigencies are
faced. Burke did think that the haphazard features of the constitution
would infuriate the rationalist who everywhere seeks perfect symmetry.
The rationalist would be reluctant to admit that nature knows an order
which cannot be replicated by human contrivance or thwarted by im-
37H. V. F. Somerset, ed., A Note-Book of Edmund Burke (Cambridge, 1957),
96-97.
462 PETER H. MELVIN

posed design. Despite the apparent, outward signs of incoherence, the

constitution cleaved to an impenetrable natural order. The learned few
may detect a latent wisdom in some measure, and perhaps comprehend
it in full as reflected in social institutions or "establishments." Yet even
those who studied the English constitution, the incomparable Mon-
tesquieu included, were unable to plumb the divine core. The ostensibly
incoherent elements, following "moral Nature," were pervaded by
functionality. Moreover, just as the constitution does not conform to
smooth contours, so the prudent statesman must appear at times to act
inconsistently. Criminals will be granted amnesty for acts which a year
ago would have warranted a public hanging. In Burke's opinion, "incon-
stancy is a sort of natural corrective of folly and ignorance" (I, 121).
It has been tempting to confine sublimity in Burke's political theory
to the gradual, awkward, unpremeditated growth of the English consti-
tution. The tendency, then, has been to view this historical evolution of
the nation as explicable for Burke in aesthetic categories, with the sub-
lime taking precedence over the beautiful whenever Burke insisted upon
the need for majestic authority to hold civil society together. It has
been argued that the sublime, from its ability to engender awe,
reverence, respect, and a sense of justice was, for Burke, in constant
operation.38 Still, we are faced with Burke's failure to describe
anywhere the constitution as altogether "Gothic," or indeed to
embrace Gothic style as an example or embodiment of the sublime.
Where Burke did refer to the English constitution as an architectural
masterpiece, he said that it is "part Gothic, part Grecian, and part
Chinese, until an attempt is made to square it into uniformity." 39Even
when referring to what some would call the "sublime" aspect, Burke
significantly observed:
Nothinglooks more awfulandimposingthanan ancientfortification.Its lofty,
embattled walls, its bold, projecting,roundedtowers, that pierce the sky,
strike the imaginationand promise inexpugnablestrength.But they are the
very thingsthat make its weakness.You may as well thinkof opposingone of
these old fortressesto the mass of artillerybroughtby a Frenchirruptioninto
the field as to think of resistingby our old laws and our old forms the new
destructionwhichthe corps of Jacobinengineersof to-daypreparefor all such
forms andall suchlaws.40
Constitutions alone could not directly provide the basis for national
solidarity in times of extreme crisis. Burke recognized moments in the
course of nations when convincing by rational argument or moral
example is quite beside the point. In several places, prior to and during
38Wood,op. cit., 60-63; Love, op. cit., 188-90; J. T. Boulton, Arbitrary Power: An
Eighteenth-Century Obsession (Nottingham, 1967), 17-19.
39Burke,"Observations on a Late State of the Nation, 1769," in Smith, op. cit., 7.
40Burke,"The 'Fourth' Letter on a Regicide Peace, 1795," ibid., 232 (italics added).
 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION 463

the Revolution,Burke insisted that there are nationalemergenciesin

whichthe "presumptive"virtueof a naturalaristocracymustgive pride
of place to the "actual"virtueof talentedmen(II, 22; IV, 227-29, 231).
Theyare likelyto be newlyrisenfrom unheraldedpathsof life, as Burke
believedhimself to be. Persons from humbler ranks may serve as a
"reconcilerbetweenGod and man" when external crisis intrudesand
special opportunitiesbeckon. Under pacific conditions the exquisite
moral taste of the gentleman"recommendsvirtuewith somethinglike
the blandishmentsof pleasure."Such taste operatesso as to "beautify
and soften private society."41
For Burke, domestic politics was identifiedwith the informal ar-
rangementsof "privatesociety." To the extent that it is untouchedby
foreigndisturbances,civil society does not requirethe specialverve at-
tached to "actual" virtue. It is consistent with this belief that,
throughouthis career, Burkepreachedreformin foreignand colonial
affairs,while remainingstrangelyreticentabout the need for domestic
change. Time and again he foreswore facile solutions to mounting
internalproblems;usually he was to be founddisclaimingthat he had
any solution whatsoever. Let time and traditional practice be the
mender. With the outbreak of the Revolution, however, individual
resourcefulnesswherever found had to support the continuationof
aristocratic "situations." Especially dramatists and rhetoricians-
poets in action-become the self-appointedservants at the crucial
hour.
In part theirtask is a negativeone. It is to deterthe susceptibilityof
a frightenedpeople to indulgein art of a spuriouskind and preparefor
an easy death. Burke'scondemnationof willfulimitationon the part of
spectators to barbarousscenes has a crucial bearing on the precise
nature of the threat which the Revolutionposed. As imitation trans-
mutes the reality into somethingelse, so might impendingdangerbe-
come a source of amusement.Ratherthan see the Revolutionfor what
it was, a tragedyof sublimedimensions,the Englishmight follow the
French and give it a comical dress. Theatre understoodas imitation
could be as reassuring,if not as sobering,as the languageof science.
Then, loomingdangeris apprehendednot in terms of what must occur
but in all its shifting nuances. The originally perceived shape and
characteris blurredby imitation,offeringalmost unlimitedavenuesfor
vicariouspleasure.Especiallywhen the peril moves throughspace, as
the spectreof revolutionarywar did for Burke,delightis to be foundin
the approachingmenace. "It is impossiblenot to observe,"said Burke
of the Revolution,"that, in proportionas we approximateto the poi-
sonous jaws of anarchy,the fascinationgrows irresistible"(IV, 323).
Thereis an almost irrepressibleurge to hold fast andsee whathappens.
41Quotedin Wood, op. cit., 55.
464 PETER H. MELVIN

Contemplation of the thing or activity is not tied to any notion of per-

sonal injury. The dislike of the Revolution by hereditary estates in En-
gland "is rather like that of spectators than of parties that may be con-
cerned in the piece" (III, 420). The postponement of all thought about
an irreconcilable conflict between approaching danger and oneself be-
comes gorgeously excruciating. Alas, the horror and terror of the sub-
lime are experienced in reality, and no longer as inauthentic theatre.
How, then, to shake the English public from its trance? The proposed
remedy finds Burke still thinking in the categories of aesthetics.
In the concluding section of The Sublime and Beautiful Burke
united "the power of poetry and eloquence." Poetic expression is "as
capable, nay much more capable of making deep and lively impressions
than any other arts, and even than nature itself in very many cases."42
Dramatic words are the quintessence of aesthetic expression. They
depend upon neither the charm of proportion (architecture) nor the
"super-added pleasure of imitation" (painting). Poetic eloquence can
produce in a receptive audience "ideas of those things for which custom
has appointed them to stand."43Moreover, these ideas need not be pre-
ceded by distinct images in the mind of the audience; stirring emotion
by itself is equivalent to ideas on some occasions. Men know from
custom the appropriate emotions attached to certain words, though the
particular incidents which fixed this appropriateness be long forgotten.
"Poetry cannot with strict propriety be called an art of imitation."44A
passionate style of language can register a deep and moving sense of
what the orator and playwright divine in a particular thing or activity.
Usually no object of the audience's perception can produce such an
effect. Exact descriptions of powerful, emotive objects will never be
forthcoming anyway; only the feeling about it can be transmitted with a
high degree of verisimilitude. "By the contagion of our passions we
catch a fire already kindled in another, which probably might never
have been struck out by the object described."45
Briefly mentioned, too, is an aesthetic experience which is funda-
mentally sublime on account of the awe, only slightly remote from ter-
ror, which it exacts. This intermediate experience Burke labelled "fine-
ness." The sublime aspects of reality may have annexed to them, by
virtue of interpretative, dramatic poetry, the qualities of beauty which
"mollify the rigour and sternness of the terror." An "uncultivated"
people will still be adept at deciphering the true import of "similitudes,
comparisons, metaphors, and allegories," when its rational judgment
falters.46 Such a combination of beauty and sublimity, in line with
Burke's aesthetic theory, affords a simultaneous sense of isolation and

42TheSublime and Beautiful, 173. 43Ibid.,163 44Ibid.,172.

45Ibid.,175-76.
46Ibid.,18.
 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION 465

consensus. There would be the feeling of lonely solitudenecessary to

apprehendingthe sublime, and, at the same time, the readiness to
engagein joint action encouragedby consensualemotions arisingfrom
the beautiful.
Writingon the Revolution,Burketranslatesthis theoryof language
into the politicalaction whichhe deemedthe statesman'sapt response.
In its originalstate, perceptionof the sublimeovercomesfear by incul-
cating a sense of distance from the dreadfulthing or activity. Still, it
maintainsa feelingof almost unbearableapprehensionin the observer,
what Burkedescribedas "tranquillitytingedwith horror."47The erst-
while commoner, lately impressedas statesman, should be busily en-
gagedin conveyinghis experienceof sublimeterrorby a morepalatable
representative.Only an excessive imitation of his original aesthetic
vision will cancel a feeling of activatingdiscomfort in his audience.
Thus, a vigoroushatred of a formidableand hideousmenacecould be
unitedto a fond regardfor nationalcohesiveness.Burkereferredto this
interpretativefunctionof the statesmanas "the voice of sacredmisery,
exalted, not into wild raving;but into the sanctifiedfrenzyof prophecy
andinspiration"(IV, 363-64).
Unique among his contemporaries, the statesman of "actual"
virtue does not requirea slightly disguisedversion of the sublime;he
stares approachinghorrorin the face. He can "see dangerwithoutas-
tonishment"and "provideagainstit withoutperplexity"(IV, 52). The
solitudeof the statesmanis exacerbatedby his own evidentsublimevir-
tues. For he in turnis kept at a distancefrom his fellowcountrymenby
the justice, fortitude, and wisdom he enshrines. Regardless, the
statesman must engage the attention of the people on some higher
groundthan utilityor convenience.He resolutelystationshimself,as it
were, on the peripheryof society, and sees the wellingtide of misfor-
tune. One eye is fixed on the internal state of the nation, noting the
responseto his emotive appeal;the other scans the horizonfor any in-
cipient sign of external threat. The mission of the statesman, Burke
tirelessly repeats, is to provide an early warningsignal. His is "the
wisdomwhichis involvedin early fear"(III, 420). Eventhe exceedingly
finiteobjectis fullycapableof inducingsublimeemotions.
The statesman must also fulfill the aesthetic capacity of men, so
that they becometransfixedby a feelingfor the sublimeyet remaindis-
posed towardaction. He is successfulwhen there is an equilibriumbe-
tween art and nature, appearanceand being, custom and the sublime.
He engenders"serious"pleasurewhie putting men at the disposal of
an energeticcause. At times it is necessaryfor him to expose a glimpse
into "ournaked,shiveringnature"in orderto redressanyimbalanceon
the side of a too artful imitation.The bloodyevents of the Revolution,
47Ibid., 49-50.
466 PETER H. MELVIN

in all their macabre detail, would suffice for this purpose. "The Action
of a play," Burke wrote in his twenties, should periodically "be like a
Rack to make Actors discover the bottom of their Souls."48 This ex-
posure is an act of prudence since any prolonged look at man's nature
would have the direst results. Anything less than adequate exposure
would make the political order indefensible.
Civil society must be flexible enough to fall back upon man's natural
aesthetic endowment in times of imminent peril. A simplicity which
avoided imposed symmetry must be the keynote of the English consti-
tution. Civil society, considered from the standpoint of institutions and
ceremonial forms, should be ranked rather low on a scale of aesthetic
appeal. It must be so adjusted, however, that its ultimate source of vi-
tality can be tapped rapidly in emergencies. "Constitutions furnish the
civil means of getting at the natural."49A given society will need to be
more "natural" on some occasions than on others. This should be de-
termined by historical circumstances. At any rate, Burke was very far
from the opinion that society's evolution is marked unequivocally by
the increasing efficacy of civilization. His thought, at bottom, is often
characteristic of a predatory animal, at once vigilant and fearful. His
sensitivity to how Englishmen must emulate some of the ferocious
energy of the Jacobins was stamped by Machiavelli's insistence that the
statesman become bestial in order to combat a demonic and frenzied
Fortuna.
A dangerto averta danger-a presentinconvenienceandsufferingto preventa
foreseenfuture,anda worsecalamity-these arethe motivesthat belongto an
animal,who in his constitutionis at once adventurousand provident;circum-
spect anddaring(IV, 382-83).
Even religion comprised a standing agreement to give way to more
effectual remedies. Religion, insofar as it implied an art form at all, was
to be prized less for its role in directly supporting the "actual" virtue of
the statesman than for its inability to interfere. "The theatre is a better
school of moral sentiments than churches," related Burke, "where the
feelings of humanity are thus outraged" (III, 97). The church possessed
a too tender regard for social amenities to be able to meet the enemy on
his own chosen ground. Burke cited Cromwell as one who had been able
to suspend religious sentiments and get on with his ferocious task: "We
are indebted to this act of his for the preservation of our laws" (III,
277). Organized religion notwithstanding, theology could contribute to
the success of the statesman opposing rank evils. Theology professes an
interest in the human drama of struggle against evil, and its symbols
are appealing to aesthetic man. In addition, the more ominous and ob-
scure a powerful God appeared, the more likely were the natural
48Somerset,op. cit., 97.
49Burke,"The 'Fourth' Letter," 232.
 BURKE ON THEATRICALITY AND REVOLUTION 467

leaders of society to be chastened by thoughts of the sublime (III,

109).50
IV.-In his use of theatrical imagery Burke was not completely
heterodoxin the history of Westernpoliticaltheory. Rousseauhad ex-
pressed his own reservationsabout the moderntheatre as a morally
edifyinginstitution.His assessmentin the famousletter to D'Alembert
could have interestedBurke, but for his disdainof all that he thought
Rousseauepitomized.For therewas the subtle allusionin the D'Alem-
bert correspondenceto the similaritybetweenthe regenerativemission
of the noble Legislatorand the moderndayauthorwho might yet "in-
vent a kind of play preferableto those which are established."51 Like
the Legislator, this new playwrightwould appeal indirectlyto man's
moral sensibilityby callingon all his inbornsenses. He woulddisavow
the usual modernpracticeof comminglingcelebratedheroesof Roman
history with comic situationsand love scenes. A too obviousdesire to
instruct on the part of neo-classicism was self-defeating,especially
whenheroic virtueswere succeededby unkindparodiesand effeminate
love scenes. The neo-classical theatre was pleasing to a jaded public
thirsting after novelty, but uninstructive for a stable morality.
However,theatricalart properlyconceivedcould quickenand mobilize
nationalenergies,providedit did not impair "the constant tastes of a
people, its customs, its old prejudices."52 The glory of ancient Greek
tragedy,as well as the cause of its depreciationby modernity,could be
foundin its venerationof tradition.The moderntheatre,however,bred
a ferocity which regardedtraditionas an object of destruction.A de-
voted genius, composing and directinga truly modern moralityplay,
was likely to be unavailing.Still, Rousseauwas open to this possibility.
"Oncefanaticismexists" in the theatre,"I see only one way to stop its
progress;that is to use its own arms againstit."53
Burke, too, chose to fight fire with fire, in supportof some of the
considerationswhichinformedRousseau'soutlook on the theatre. He
wouldhavehad the statesmanappealto man'snativeaestheticwisdom,
while protectingtraditionand elicitinghatred against alien doctrines.
Burke also objected strenouslyto the emotional flux which changing
dramatic forms had already induced in the French and which
threatenedthe Englishman'sequanimity.If anything,Burketook more
seriouslythan Rousseauthe possibilityof callingmen to arms through
a heighteningof theatricalexperience.If reasonandnaturalprobitydid
not dent the Jacobinmentality,little could these be expectedto arouse
disarrayedEnglishmen.Burke was sensitive to the need for the true
50TheSublime and Beautiful, 68-69.
51Jean-JacquesRousseau, Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D'Alembert on the
Theatre, trans. Allan Bloom (Ithaca, 1968), 28.
52Ibid.,19.
53Ibid.,28, 31, 33.
468 PETER H. MELVIN

statesman to perform a theatrical feat. The theatrical imagery is

central to Burke's writings on the Revolution because, as Paine
grasped, these works embodiedBurke'sown contributionto political
theatre. All other imagery-nature, castles, the Bible, and the human
family-were to achievea movingimpact as parts of a total theatrical
enterprise.54
Artistic excellence would avoid the low standards of Jacobin
theatre. The Jacobins founderedon a too literal acceptanceof neo-
classicism."It is not enoughthat the discoursesof the Actors shouldbe
such as are not unnatural,"pleaded the dramatist in Burke. "They
ought to be naturalfor the time, the occasion,the personspokento."55
Againstthe excessivelyimitativeart of the Jacobins,the statesmanpits
the sublime, which he knows is incapable of serving a moral and
politicalpurposein all seasons. There shouldbe no hesitationonce it is
conveyedto a nationthat realhumanlives are at stake. The theatresof
any nationwouldbe emptied,said the young Burke,were it announced
that a real publichangingcould be witnessedin person.56Years later,
Burkewas still able to assert: "I shouldbe truly ashamedof findingin
myself that superficialtheatricsense of painteddistress,whilst I could
exult overit in reallife" (III, 113).
French society verged on making the sublime a way of life. A
Robespierrewould have brought the audienceon stage permanently
and confoundedthe separate roles of actor and critic. The resultant
confusionencourageda detachedconcentrationon oneself and others,
at the same time that everyonewas requiredto take part in the action
of the play, exceptingthe Jacobinsthemselves.This onerouscastingdi-
vorced being and appearance at the level of individualsocial per-
sonality:"By hatingvices too much"the Jacobinshad requiredothers
"to love men too little" (III, 187).The true lawgiverought to have his
heart, not his torturingmind,full of sensibility."He ought to love and
respect his kind, and to fear himself" (III, 342). The distinctionbe-
tween being and appearance,nature and art, fact and fiction, should
have obtainedin men who know the differencebetweennormal and ex-
ceptionaltimes. The likelihoodwas that Francewouldend up despising
all the patiencewhichgoes into weddingthese antinomies.This would
be an absurdity;for Burke,the essense of politics as theatreis the need
to transmutethe dramaticexpressionrequiredin troubleddays into the
unplannedarchitectureof tranquilyears.
The JohnsHopkinsUniversity.
54Curiously, Boulton lists these as the principal kinds of imagery in the Reflections,
though later he is compelled to admit that "Burke himself frequently refers to the
drama in the Reflections." The Language of Politics, 110, 144.
55Somerset, op. cit., 97.
56The Sublime and Beautiful, 47.