Adam Smith, Theater Critic?

The propriety of every passion exited by objects peculiarly related to ourselves, the pitch which the spectator can go along with, must lie, it is evident, in a certain mediocrity. If the passion is too high, or if it is too low, he cannot enter into it. Grief and resentment for private misfortunes and injuries may easily, for example, be too high, and in the greater part of mankind they are so. They may likewise, though this more rarely happens, be too low. We denominate the excess, weakness and fury : and we call the defect, stupidity, insensibility, and the want of spirit. We can enter into neither of them, but are astonished and confounded to see them.

-Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, I, II, Introduction, 1759

(He, apparently, no fan of the yelling-and-screaming school either.)