FROM THE ARCHIVES:JOHN AND Michael Gunn's plans to build a £9,000 theatre at South King Street, off Grafton Street, in 1870 were vigorously opposed by Dublin's two existing theatres, the Queen's and the Theatre Royal, and by local residents, among others. Permission was finally given for what became the Gaiety Theatre, but not before the controversy prompted correspondence in The Irish Times. One of the project's supporters was a man who had been involved in Italian theatre, who wrote this letter under the pseudonym Uno che ama Il Bello (one who loves beauty). -
I HAVE BEEN repeatedly told, and have read over and over again in the various journals published in this country, that the Irish are naturally a highly artistic nation, far more so than the English, and that if their light has not shown before other nations as it might have done, the fault lies at the oppressor’s door, for the fine arts can only prosper when the country is in a state of tranquillity.
This I do not think is an argument worthy of the Irish, for, anyone who has studied the rise and progress of art in Italy, from the first dawn after the dark ages that succeeded the fall of the Western Empire to the present time, cannot but have been struck with the fact that it has been done in the teeth of the most relentless oppression. Even when Italy was but one great battle-field, even then art was being pursued with unexampled energy and success. Why should it not be so here? How comes it, then, that so much opposition is offered to the erection of a building destined solely for the advancement of art? Are the Irish, then, inferior in any way to the Italians? Are they, then, so easily cast down, that nought can be thought of but their own misfortunes; that anything which promises to place them, or at least to help to lead them on to the van among nations, should be pooh-poohed as a mad venture? I trow not. Nevertheless, an extraordinary spectacle is offered to the eyes of the world, vis: That in the capital of a country (boasting of its superior artistic merits) the erection of a second Theatre for the use of 5,000,000 of people, (for it may be truly said that in Dublin alone does the Theatre exist) is strenuously opposed.
Some people object to a new theatre, on the ground that theatres tend to create and spread immorality. This is simply nonsense, for the same people go to picture galleries and laud to the skies some nude figure as a wonderful work of art. Well, to an evilly disposed mind, evil will come thereof. But no one would on that account think of shutting up our picture galleries, or of casting down all statues that do not happen to patronise tailors. Neither would one ever think of closing the numerous academies to be found in all principal cities in Europe, where schools for the study of the nude are established at considerable expense to ratepayers Again, every effort has been made in Ireland to wean the people from drunkenness, but without any very perceptible result
Now, in Italy drunkenness and its concomitant evils (such as wife beating, assaulting females in railway carriages, drunken street brawls ) are almost unknown, and there is no doubt whatever that, in a great measure, so satisfactory a state of affairs is owing to the great influence of the theatre. I would advocate, therefore, not the building of one more theatre only, but of many more, which, if properly conducted, would soon present a formidable opposition to the baneful influence of the dram shop.
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