十八世紀初英國戲劇論戰的分野問題

Rethinking the Division in the Stage Controversy in Early Eighteenth-Century England

英人傑瑞米．科利爾(Jeremy Collier, 1650-1726)原為與政治無涉的平凡牧師。1688年冬光榮革命爆發後，他開始從事反革命的政治宣傳工作，並因拒絕向威廉三世與瑪麗二世宣誓效忠而被剝奪了英國國教會的神職。1696年，他於刑場替兩名因陰謀刺殺威廉三世而被判處死刑的詹姆士派舉行公開赦罪儀式而遭通緝。儘管科利爾在革命後的連串行動奠定了他在政治上的惡名，十八世紀初他卻因批評時下戲劇的不道德現象而成為備受推崇的衛道者。以他在1698年出版的《管窺英國戲劇的不道德和褻瀆》一書為起點，英國社會展開了一場長達近三十年的「戲劇論戰」。
1781年迄今，戲劇論戰的研究者們採用了數種相互交疊的二分法模型對論戰的參與者進行分類。依據對戲劇和劇院的態度，該論戰的參與者們首先被分為反劇者與挺劇者。由於批評戲劇的一方的代表人物，包括科利爾、亞瑟．貝德福(Arthur Bedford, 1668-1745)和威廉．勞(William Law, 1686-1761)，都是神職人員，而對他們的批評進行最激烈抗議的往往是劇作家，這場論戰也常被視為教士與詩人之間的職業之爭或是聖俗之爭。與此同時，附和科利爾的反劇言論者常被當成科利爾的盟友，反對其意見者則被當作他的敵人。這些慣用分野涉及了雙重脈絡，是研究者與研究對象的時空及文化背景的交流互動的結果。本文追溯它們的起源與流變，檢視其合理性，並提出替代方案。

In 1698, the nonjuring clergyman Jeremy Collier (1650-1726) published A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. This was the commencement of the almost thirty-year-long‘Stage Controversy’(also known as the‘Collier Controversy’or Collier’s Stage Controversy’) over the moral quality of English stage performances in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Although Collier’s role in spreading anti-Revolutionary propaganda between 1689 and 1696 made him an unpopular figure in politics, his criticism of the stage gradually established his reputation as a moralist that even his political enemies could not deny.
From about 1780 to 2020, researchers have adopted several dichotomous models to describe the different sides of the Stage Controversy: Based on the participants’differing attitudes towards stage performances, the controversy is most frequently seen as a pamphlet war taking place between the pro- and anti-theatrical camps. Because the best-known critics of stage performances, including Collier, Arthur Bedford (1668-1745), and William Law (1686-1761), were clergymen and the most enthusiastic defenders of the performances were usually playwrights, this controversy is also perceived as a conflict between clergy and playwrights as professions, or, more broadly, between ecclesiastical and secular writers. Similarly, individual participants are often identified as Collier’s allies or enemies depending on whether or not they shared his opinion of English stage performances. This article characterizes these overlapping models as the products of a dynamic interaction between researchers and their objects of study. It traces the origin and development of these models, examines their validity, and proposes a new model to describe the relationship between participants in the Stage Controversy.