But if these fair Expectations should be blasted in the Bloom, and notwithstanding the vigorous Efforts which will be made by this Reformer, Immorality shall maintain its ground and keep Possession of the Theatre, some other Expedients may be suggested to procure a Regulation.  It might, perhaps be desirable, that a few Persons of Importance, Men of Learning, Gravity, and good Taste, might be commission’d by Authority, as a Check upon the Actors, to censure and suppress any Dramatick Entertainments that shall offend against Religion, Sobriety of Manners, or the Publick Peace; and all Persons should be encourag’d to send them such loose or profane Passages which they hear from the Stage, or read in the printed Plays:  Nor will it be less expedient, that they should be instructed to peruse the Plays already publish’d, and which are now publickly acted, and to expunge all offensive and criminal Mixtures, that hereafter they may become a clean and innocent Diversion.  Besides, this End would the more effectually be accomplish’d, if the Writers of Comedy, Farce, and Interludes, were rewarded and supported by Means independent on the Actors:  For while the Poets, who write for a Maintenance, are paid by the Theatre, they will be under a great Temptation to write as desir’d and directed by the Actors, which was the Complaint of Cervantes above-cited, concerning the Comick Poets of Spain.  The Actors, we may safely conclude, are not restrain’d by such rigorous Precepts of Vertue, but that they will always be inclin’d to present those Performances which will best fill the House and promote their Interest; and therefore they will readily humour the vitiated Taste of the Audience, by acting the most immoral Plays, while they find their account in doing so:  And that which confirms this Observation is, that they never, as far as I have heard, rejected any Comedy merely for its Looseness, tho I believe they have refus’d many for want of that entertaining Quality.  Now were the Comick Writers provided of a Subsistence some other way, they would be deliver’d from the Necessity of complying with their Actors, by writing such Plays as they shall bespeak, or at least approve, as the most likely to invite a profitable Audience.

It would prove an effectual Remedy for this Evil, if the Ladies would discountenance these loose Comedies, by expressing their dislike, and refusing to be present when they are acted:  And this no doubt they would do, were they inform’d, that the Comedies which they encourage by their Appearance at the Theatre, are full of wanton Sentiments, obscene Allusions, and immodest Ideas, contain’d in Expressions of a double Meaning:  for it cannot be imagin’d they would bear with Unconcernedness, much less with Pleasure, Discourses in Publick, which they detest as unsufferable in private Convention, if they knew them to be unchast.  And should the Ladies assert their Esteem of Vertue, and declare openly on the Side of Modesty, the most attractive Beauty of the fair Sex, as certainly they would do, if they understood how much those amiable Qualities have been expos’d and affronted by our most eminent Comick Poets; this would lay the Ax to the Root, and at one Blow destroy this pernicious Practice; for after this, what Writer would transgress the Rules of Decency and Purity of Expression, when he knows, that by his immodest Mixtures he shall fright the Ladies from the House?