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The Church of Scotland viewed theatre as a threat to godly order. It often broke the Sabbath and involved the deceit of acting, a falsehood in itself. Above all, it competed with the pulpit as a moral teacher, since the stage addressed seduction, adultery and revenge, not to mention the involvement of actresses it thought immodest, all of which the Kirk felt inflamed passions rather than disciplined them. Playhouses were also linked with drinking, gambling and prostitution; money better spent in support of family and charity.
By the time of the Union the Crown had granted just two theatres a patent, both in London, which the 1737 Licensing Act reinforced, making all others illegal, including in Edinburgh. To get round this rule a variety of approaches were taken. One example was that since musical performances were permitted and ticketed, during the interlude a play was performed for free, and was often the main attraction.
This was the backdrop against which John Home wrote his play Douglas.
The play, a tragedy set in medieval Scotland, appealed to a post-Union Scottish audience as they were keen to show they could rival English literature. It premiered at the Canongate Theatre in December 1756, and legend has it that someone in the audience shouted, ‘Whaur's yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?’
Home was a minister of the Kirk, and for him to also be a playwright was considered outright scandalous. Ministers who attended the play were disciplined and the Edinburgh Presbytery issued an admonition against theatre-going to its congregations. On account of the pamphlet war that followed, Douglas became a national cause célèbre and it opened at Covent Garden in March 1757. To avoid being deposed as a minister Home resigned, moved to London, and some years later received a royal pension.
At about this time the Church of Scotland was divided. There were the Evangelicals, who stood by Calvinist discipline and congregations' right to choose their ministers. But there was a younger group of clergy, called Moderates, who supported patronage (the right of landowners to appoint ministers) and were comfortable debating with sceptics like David Hume. In addition to Home, the group included Alexander Carlyle, who penned a satire arguing the public hangman ought to burn the play, and Adam Ferguson, then an army chaplain, who defended the theatre in The Morality of Stage-Plays Seriously Considered.
The church prosecuted Carlyle for attending the play but he escaped with an admonition. Despite this attempt at intimidation, such threats didn’t stop ministers going to the theatre, increasingly openly.
David Hume entered the debate in his 1757 Four Dissertations. He addressed it ‘To The Reverend Mr. Hume, Author of Douglas, a Tragedy.’ (He used the old spelling of Home.) He praised the playwright as having ‘the true theatric genius of Shakespear and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one, and licentiousness of the other.’ The dedication’s timing was designed to support his friend and indirectly the play’s success.
But the volume included The Natural History of Religion, a particularly sceptical work that traced religion to fear and flattery. It seems Hume knew that addressing it to a serving minister would be seen as a provocation to the Evangelicals, or put his friend at risk, as records suggest he briefly withdrew the dedication after publication, then reinstated it four days later. So Hume, a master of irony, might have been both supporting his friend and taking a deliberate jab at the Evangelicals: it was they who had accused the Moderates of being too close to him.
William Robertson, another of Home’s circle, was appointed Principal of Edinburgh University in 1762 and in 1763 was elected chair of the General Assembly, the Kirk's governing body, giving the Moderates greater influence over the church. While this of course was not entirely to do with Douglas, it shows how the balance of power was shifting.
Royal assent for a theatre licence in Edinburgh was finally granted in 1767, when George III also approved the legal groundwork for the New Town. Notably, Edinburgh’s was the first licensed theatre in Britain outside London, and another small but important step in the Enlightenment period.