Event Comment: Mainpiece Written by
the late
Mr Congreve. Benefit
Mrs Mills. Tickets to be had of Mills at his house in
Nassau St.,
Soho. To
the Author of
the General Advertiser: It is with
great Pleasure I find by
the Publick Papers that a tragedy founded on
Voltaire's
Mahomet is now in rehearsal at
Drury Lane Theatre.
The Original was by Authority forbid to be played in
France on account of
the free and noble sentiments with regard to Bigotry and Enthusiasm, which shine through it; and which that Nation found as applicable to itself, as to
the bloody propagators of
Mahomet's Religion. Indeed
the Fable on which it is built demanded such sentiments;
the design of it being to shew
the dreadful effects of Bigotry and Enthusiasm, even upon minds naturally well inclined when work'd up to such a pitch, as a beautiful concurrence of amazing, yet probable Circumstances hath
there carried
them to: So that it was equally impossible for
the poet, by cutting and mangling his play, to lop it to
their standard of
Orthodox poetry, as it were for
their Inquisitors, by torturing and burning a poor
Protestant, to convince him of
their
Christian love and charity....
They foresaw that
the most obvious Reflection, that every sensible Spectator could not but make, would be, that he every day saw
the same effects produced from two
the most different causes,
Mahometanism and
Christianity; and
the consequence must be, ei
ther that
they were both alike Imposters, or that a crafty, mercenary, and cruel Clergy had dared to add a spirit to Christianity, which Christianity never knew. It is not doubted but
these every Sentiments, which in France, prevented
the Representation of this piece, will, in
England speak loudly in its favor (providdd our
English poet is not unequal to his subject) especially since so audacious an attempt has been lately made by
the Common Enemy of
Europe to establish at once a Civil and Spiritual Tyranny over those injur'd Nations, by
the old Mohametan and
Roman Arguments of Fire and Sword. I am, &c