In England, when the King came to his own again (29 May, 1660) and the reign of the Saints was ended, it was certain that the Theatre also would come to her own. The stage had been bad enough, in verse, taste, and manners, before the doors were closed in 1642. When the dramatic Muse returned, she brought with her, like the man in the parable, seven other devils worse than herself. The morals and tastes of the town and Court were what, after so many years of Puritan sway, they might be expected to be. They are most livelily delineated in the "Diary" of Mr. Pepys; and the drama of the Restoration was their child, and worthy of them. At first the stage was occupied by the older plays of Fletcher, Jonson, and Shirley; no new names of note appear till Dryden\'s "Wild Gallant" failed in 1663, and Sir George Etherege\'s "Love in a Tub" prospered in 1664.
No age will be content with old plays, the mould and fashion of the time must be exhibited. Pictures of the brutal mirth and the horseplay of triumphant licence, of the flirtations and intrigues of lackeys and lords and ladies, all genteel and witty à la mode of the Court and town as we know them from Pepys and Grammont, were presented.
Everything must be "new". As we hear of "the new morality," "the new theology," and so on, so, in "The Rehearsal" (1671), a burlesque by the Duke of Buckingham and other hands, on the plays of the last ten years, the word "new" is constantly reiterated. "You must know this is the new way of writing, and these hard things please forty times better than the old plain way of writing."
[Pg 359]
The butt of "The Rehearsal," Bayes, a mixture of Davenant with the mannerisms of Dryden, keeps bragging that this or that absurdity is "new". "New," certainly, and not worthy to wax old, was the extravagant "heroic" tragedy, copying the flights of the French school of bombastic romances, and written in rhyming couplets. The authors of "The Rehearsal" stitch together scraps and parodies of the new plays, in that which is being rehearsed, with plenty of farcical "business" under Mr. Bayes, who gives amusing snatches of his "Ars Poetica," while there are gibes at the new style of prologues and epilogues, which Dryden wrote so copiously. But "The Rehearsal" is less witty than Sheridan\'s "The Critic". As for the "new" rhyming "heroic" plays, Dryden ascribes their origin to Davenant. Forbidden to act the old sort of plays under the Reign of the Saints, he introduced examples of moral virtue, "writ in verse" (in rhyme), "and performed in recitative music". He combined the Italian opera with characters in the manner of Corneille. At the Restoration, he turned his "Siege of Rhodes" into "a just drama," but without "design and variety of characters". Dryden took the manner up, and, inspired by Ariosto, made love and valour the theme of the new heroic tragedy on a superhuman scale, and with supernatural incidents, ghosts for example. Then came rant and extravagance expressed in rhymed couplets, and even triplets, till Dryden returned to blank verse, and Lee and Otway and others followed him. But the drama remained as heroic and absurd as when Dryden wrote that masterpiece "The Conquest of Granada". In this he has a ghost, the ghost of the mother of the heroic Almanzor. Scott supposes that she was brought in to prove the courage of her son, even in face of an apparition. Really, the courtesy of Almanzor is more to be admired; the stage direction shows that he bowed to the spectre!
Many critics of the age regarded the heroic tragedy with no more respect than we are apt to do now. Dryden replied with arguments which are not quite to the point. The heroic tragedy is a perfectly legitimate form of art; the Greek tragedies deal with divine heroes and gods, and ?schylus in "The Persians" does not disdain the ghost of Darius, and in "The Eumenides"[Pg 360] introduces the Furies. Dryden pleaded for a similar licence in the heroic play, but all depends on the manner of the doing. His ghosts are not majestic, like that of Darius; they are absurd. For boldness of language he also claimed a privilege; persons engaged in superhuman struggles may talk above the pitch of ordinary men. But they must not, like the heroes of the Caroline tragedies, soar or slip into bombast; they must rise on the wings of poetry, not on bladders full of gas. "Are all the flights of heroic poetry to be concluded bombast, unnatural, and mere madness because they," the critics, "are not affected by their excellences?" asks Dryden, in his "Apology for Heroic Poetry and Poetic Licence". "No, not all," the critics might have answered, "but many of your flights of heroic poetry are bombast"; and they might, indeed they did, produce examples. For instance, in his "The State of Innocence," in which, accepting Milton\'s permission given in blank verse,
Ay, you may tag my verses if you will,
he rhymed "Paradise Lost" into an opera, Dryden wrote thus:—
Seraph and cherub, careless of their charge,
And wanton, in full ease, who live at large,
Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,
And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie.
The spectacle of wanton seraphs lying dissolved in hallelujahs naturally provoked laughter, but Glorious John did not see the absurdity of the situation. He took his image from Virgil, he says, where the Greeks enter Troy which "lay buried in sleep and wine". But Trojans were not seraphs, and sleep and wine are not dissolving hallelujahs. In the same way Virgil, following Homer, describes the Cyclops as a monster of mountainous height, as in fact he was. Goliath was only about ten feet high. But Dryden applauds Cowley for writing of Goliath—
The valley, now, this monster seemed to fill,
And we, methought, looked up to him from our hill.
"The passage is horrible bombast," says Scott. Not living in an early heroic age, in which exaggeration is natural and pardonable, but in the age of scepticism and the Royal Society, Dryden[Pg 361] exceeded the ancient licence, and, as when a hero takes off his hat to his mother\'s ghost, mingled modern manners with more than heroic audacities. Criticism should look for beauties, not faults, said Dryden, but the critics could reply that the whole scheme of the heroic drama was faulty. The result is extravagance and rant, indeed rant was then the fault of the actors on the French stage. Molière had to warn his company that a King, conversing with his Minister, "does not necessarily speak like a d?moniac".
Turning to comedy, we find it but little instructed, in refinement, creation of character, and wit, by the example of Molière.
Etherege\'s three plays "Love in a Tub" (1664), "She Would if She Could" (1667), and "The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter" (1676), are the work of a courtier and amateur concerning whose life and death little is known. The merriment of "Love in a Tub" is a picture of contemporary manners; compared with its prose, the rhyming ten-syllabled couplets of the graver and sentimental characters are almost a relief.
The author (1635-1691?), in the Prologue, admits that "wit" (dramatic genius in this case), "has now declined"; avers that "the older and graver sort" would decry new plays in the manner of Fletcher and Ben Jonson; and bids the audience "Only think upon the modern way of writing". In an Epilogue to "Sir Fopling Flutter," Dryden characterizes the hero admirably:—
True fops help Nature work, and go to school,
To file and finish God Almighty\'s fool.
If these\' pieces have wit, they "have not wit enough to keep them sweet".
Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692) was made immortal when he became the butt of Dryden\'s satire. His plays are useful to students of contemporary manners, and he was the Laureate of William and Mary in succession to "Glorious John".
Sir Charles Sedley and Mrs. Aphra Behn have left nothing imperishable but a few songs, the swan songs of the dying Muse of lyric.
All these playwrights had before their eyes the inimitable and immortal comedies with which Molière was endowing the literature[Pg 362] of France. But, even when they tried to follow this model, their imitations were barbarous: for compared with the literary taste and manners of the Court of Louis XIV, those of the reign of Charles II were brutal.
The least unsuccessful of those who directed themselves by the light of Molière was William Wycherley (1640?-1716?). Here we sketch his career and that of his successors, reserving for a separate section the great name of Dryden. Wycherley was of an old family in Shropshire, had a handsome person, was brought up, in boyhood, at Paris, in the literary circle of Madame de Montausier, later resided at Oxford, and, if we could believe what Pope says that Wycherley reported of himself, wrote his first play, "Love in a Wood," before he came to London, to the Middle Temple. This would make Wycherley prior to Etherege, but either his own or Pope\'s memory is supposed to have been incorrect. The play was not acted till 1672: it was not much in advance of Etherege in merit.
Of "The Gentleman Dancing Master" (1673), "The Country Wife" (1673), and "The Plain Dealer" (1674) the last is by far the best. In the Prologue, the line
And with faint praises one another damn,
was remembered, unconsciously, by Pope, in his "Damn with faint praise" (in the character of "Atticus," Addison).
"The Plain Dealer" is a comedy of humours, like Jon son\'s, the chief humorist being the benevolent railing Manly, taken from the Alceste of Molière\'s "Le Misanthrope". Manly "of an honest, surly, nice humour," is a gallant British sea captain, who holds all the world in contempt but his friend and his love, who, of course, betray him. He is beloved by Fidelia, who, for his sake, has abandoned her large fortune, and taken service as a seaman with Captain Manly. Many scenes of conversation, in imitation of Molière, are vigorous; one perhaps was in Sheridan\'s mind when he wrote "The School for Scandal". Wycherley defends his "Country Wife" from the assaults of a false prude, who, at least, shows us that, even under Charles II, "The Country Wife" was thought superfluously indecent. The Widow Blackacre,[Pg 363] a female Peter Peebles, a litigious she-lawyer, with her oaf of a son, is "in very gracious fooling". The intrigue, and the part assigned to Fidelia, are odious enough, and impossible enough, but the nobility of Fidelia is demonstrated by allowing her, occasionally, to talk in blank verse. When we remember Wycherley\'s French education, we may suppose that he dealt so much in matter which a French audience would not have endured, because he knew the taste of the theatre-going part of his countrymen.
Wycherley is said to have suffered much from a jealous wife of noble birth, who caused him a world of legal troubles by the bequest of her money. He married again at 75, and shortly afterwards died. The most interesting thing in his later years was his acquaintance with Pope, then a lad, and the characteristic use which Pope made of his opportunity.
Congreve.
Heaven, that but once was prodigal before,
To Shakespeare gave as much, she could not give him more
than she conferred on Congreve. So wrote Dryden: and probably half believed what he wrote. Dryden was a literary dictator; literary opinion followed his lead; and there was a period when the town recognized the equal of Shakespeare in the sprightly author of comedies no longer ravishing.
William Congreve was born (1670) near Leeds: his family was of Staffordshire. His father settling in Ireland, Congreve was educated at the grammar school of Kilkenny, and at Trinity College, Dublin. He was a very handsome man, with an air of greatness; he easily conquered both the courtly and the literary world when he came to London; he won the admiration and affection of the generous Dryden, who applauded and opened the doors of the theatre to his first comedy, "The Old Bachelor". The play is not better than a fair specimen of Wycherley\'s manner, but "The Double Dealer" (1693) is much more readable and interesting. The complicated passions of Lady Touchwood have a kind of greatness, the more complicated plots of Maskwell nearly lead to a sanguinary conclusion; Maskwell being as near an[Pg 364] approach to the regular villain of comedy as the conditions of comedy permitted. Lady Froth is rather more learned than Mrs. Malaprop, and as vicious under her zeal for astronomy and "mathemacular proof" as the unkindness of man will allow her to be. The haughty refusal of Lord Froth to laugh, even when he is amused, is amusing; Brisk and Careless are agreeable rattles, Sir Paul Plyant is almost to an incredible degree "an uxorious, foolish, fond old knight," and the heroine, Cynthia, is a good girl. The constant bustle, and the involutions of a plot full of surprises ought to have made the play more popular on the stage than it was at first. Leigh Hunt, who edited "The Comedies of the Restoration" (or rather of the date from the Restoration to Queen Anne), candidly says, "speaking for ourselves, we can never attend sufficiently to the plots of Congreve. They soon puzzle us and we cease to think of them."
The student who would enjoy Congreve must first peruse each play very carefully, and make out a summary of the plot, with diagrams illustrating the secret staircases, back doors, screens, and other places of ambush: he must also master the details of the various marriages which are arranged for the various heiresses, amiable bankrupts, and old gentlemen. When the reader has thus given his full attention to the details he may re-read the plays with more ease and pleasure.
In "Love for Love" (1695) Sir Sampson Legend has some of the diverting traits of Sir Anthony Absolute; there are unlooked-for glimpses of romance in the assumed madness of his impoverished son Valentine (the sympathetic rake of comedy—the Charles Surface of an earlier day). The sailor son, Ben Legend, is the stock simple sailor, with some gross sense under the breezy manners of the untutored mariner. Foresight, with his rich collection of superstitions, is a "character part" of interest to the folklorist; one scene between two moral sisters who simultaneously detect each other\'s sins is diverting: the wit of Jeremy the valet, however, does not come within sight of the wit of Molière\'s Mascarille; and Miss Prue is a tomboy not remarkable for innocence.
The pearl of "The Way of the World" (1700) is the high-hearted Millamant, who, when she at last rewards one of the thousands[Pg 365] that sigh for her, makes a very spirited private marriage contract with her adorer. Her song,
If there\'s delight in love,\'tis when I see
That heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me,
is famous among the lyrics of Congreve. We do not often care for Congreve\'s characters, nor do they try to win our affection, but Millamant conquers all hearts.
Congreve\'s tragedy in blank verse "The Mourning Bride," holds much the same place in his plays as "Don Garcie de Navarre" does in those of Molière.
After a long, fashionable, and applauded life, Congreve died in 1729, deeply lamented by the Duchess of Marlborough (daughter of the great Duke), and by the once beautiful and delightful actress, Mrs. Bracegirdle. He held rich sinecures under Government, as did other wits while the Tories were in office.
Vanbrugh.
He writes your comedies, draws schemes, and models,
And builds Dukes\' houses upon very odd hills
is a contemporary couplet which sums up a few of the accomplishments of Sir John Vanbrugh. His family seem to have been Protestants driven from Ghent in the wars of Alva. He was born in 1666[1] "in a French bastile" he said. He was educated in France; entered the English army; produced his first play, "The Relapse," in 1696, and was the architect of Castle Howard, the Earl of Carlisle\'s house, in 1701. Carlisle procured for him the herald\'s post of Clarencieux; as a Whig he was sent to carry the Order of the Garter to the Elector of Hanover (later George I); he built the palace of Blenheim, and, like all who met her, was insulted by Sarah Duchess of Marlborough. He seems to have been friendly with the wits of both parties, being as jovial as versatile. He died on 26 March, 1726.
"The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger," is a kind of continuation of Colley Cibber\'s "Love\'s Last Shift"; as Fielding\'s "Joseph[Pg 366] Andrews" continues and burlesques Richardson\'s "Pamela". From the Preface we learn that, as the second title leads us to think probable, "The Relapse" was accused of obscenity and blasphemy. The Prologue, spoken by Miss Cross on the first night, would, in our delicate age, clear all the women out of the stalls and boxes. The piece opens with a long dialogue in blank verse, between Loveless, a newly married rake, rejoicing in
the happy cause of my content,
and Amanda, his bride, that Sappy cause. They are going to town, and Amanda is afraid that Loveless\'s Virtue will Relapse. An amusing character is Lord Foppington, a knight newly made a peer; "While I was but a knight I was a very nauseous fellow," he confesses. He holds an absurd levee with his tailor, wigmaker, and hosier, and snubs his brother, Tom Fashion, who is penniless. Through an old nauseous match-maker, Coupler, Tom learns that the peer is contracted to a rustic heiress, whom he has never seen, Miss Hoyden, daughter to Sir Tunbelly Clumsey. Tom decides to go down, personate his brother, and marry the wealthy Miss Hoyden. Yet he has a qualm of conscience and will give Foppington another chance.
Arrived in town, Loveless and Amanda drop blank verse for prose. Amanda confesses her distaste for the obscenities of, the stage. Loveless admits that he has admired a lady at the play; Amanda flutters with jealousy; her cousin, Berinthia, enters; she is the woman admired by Loveless. Enter Lord Foppington bent on the conquest of Amanda. He dislikes the quiet of a country life: "For \'tis impossible to be quiet without thinking; now thinking is to me the greatest fatigue in the world". His lordship is a lover of books, of their bindings, "The inside, I must confess, I am not altogether so fond of". For this he gives his exquisite reasons, and describes the glories of his everyday occupations. From 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. he drinks. "Thus, ladies, you see my life is a perpetual round of delights." This peer is worth a wilderness of Sir Fopling Flutters. On Sundays, "a vile day I must confess," Foppington imitates the course of Mr. Badman. He ends by making a declaration to Amanda, who[Pg 367] replies with a box on the ear. Loveless and Foppington fight, Foppington falls, exclaiming "Ah,—quite through the body. Stap my vitals!"
Like Shakespeare, Vanbrugh "has brave notions," and like him, as Ben Jonson said, "he needs to be stopped" before swords are drawn in ladies\' company. His Lordship, of course, is no more killed than was the Master of Ballantrae when the sword hilt "dirled on his breast-bone".
Berinthia and Amanda now discuss not "the practical part of unlawful love," "that is abominable"; "but for the speculative; that, we must all confess, is entertaining". Amanda admits an interest in a speculative inquirer, her husband\'s friend, Mr. Worthy, and, most unnaturally, for she is very jealous, invites Berinthia, a merry widow, to be her guest.
Lord Foppington, happily recovered, airs his original philosophy of life for his brother\'s edification. "Look you, Tam, of all things that belong to a woman I have an aversion to her heart. For when once a woman has given you her heart, you can never get rid of the rest of her body." This philosopher declines to give Tom a penny, and Tom returns to the raid upon Miss Hoyden and her fortune.
Loveless is now found—ah! woful change—not only talking in blank verse—indicative of a serious passion—with Berinthia, but kissing her: the discovery is made by Worthy, her old lover. "O God!" exclaims Berinthia. Worthy now knows that Berinthia adores Loveless, and Berinthia—that Worthy adores Amanda. They contrive a plot against Amanda very worthy of their ingenuous principles.
We next find Tom at Sir Tunbelly Clumsey\'s door, which is garrisoned like the Tower, and all to seclude that Dana?, Miss Hoyden. Both Tom and Miss Hoyden are eager to be married with no more delay than Tom Jones and Sophia, but Sir Tunbelly is more set on ceremonies than Squire Western.
The proceedings of Berinthia now justify the censures of the moralist, and "turning the other page," as Chaucer recommends, we find Tom and Miss Hoyden privately married by Chaplain Bull, when Foppington arrives with two coaches and twenty foot-men,[Pg 368] the military skill of Sir Tunbelly, convinced that the newcomer is an impostor, enables him to rout Lord Foppington\'s guard and arrest his person. Presently a Sir John Friendly arrives; he knows and recognizes the genuine Foppington, who has admirably preserved the calm dignity of his philosophy. The blushless Hoyden now avows to her Nurse and the Chaplain her resolve to prevent trouble by at once wedding the real Lord Foppington.
Meanwhile, by aid of virtue and blank verse, Amanda converts the passion of Mr. Worthy into profound admiration and esteem. The natural denouement follows: Miss Hoyden is recognized as Mrs. Tom Fashion, and Lord Foppington, who would have gone to the guillotine as gallantly as any gentleman, congratulates his brother: "Dear Tam, you have married a woman beautiful in her person, charming in her airs, prudent in her conduct, constant in her inclinations, and of a nice morality. Split my windpipe!"
Vanbrugh\'s quality, his absence of sentiment, his large and lively handling of old comic types, may be guessed at from this brief analysis of his first play. He was thought to have surpassed it in "The Provoked Wife" (1697) and "The Confederacy" (1705). He also adapted pieces by Molière, and a French writer nearly forgotten, Boursault.
George Farquhar.
George Farquhar, born 1678, at Londonderry, was the son of a clergyman, and was a University wit of Trinity College, Dublin. He early became an actor, and early left the stage; it is said because he had done accidentally what Mr. Lenville proposed to do of set purpose to Nicholas Nickleby, severely wounded a fellow-player in a stage duel. He then obtained a commission in the army, and wrote plays, "A Trip to the Jubilee," "Sir Harry Wildair," "The Way to Win Him," "The Recruiting Officer," "The Beaux\' Stratagem" (1707), and others; the characters, such as Scrub, Sergeant Kite, Archer, Lady Bountiful, Captain Plume, and others, were great favourites with Sir Walter Scott, and by him are often quoted. Farquhar died young, at about the age[Pg 369] of 30. George Farquhar with his gaiety, his gallantry, his happy military swagger, his heroes who are not lost to honour, his plots, so comprehensible, and sources of so many merry adventures, wins more sympathy and affection,—dying in the arms of Victory as he did, during the triumph of his last and best play,—than any of the other comic writers of the Restoration.
Otway.
Otway, like most dramatists of his day, cannot be fairly judged by his printed works. They want the splendid costumes and decor, the setting of the stage, and the pathos and brilliance of the beautiful actresses, for Otway was most successful in such tender and distraught heroines as Belvidera and Monimia. Born in 1652, Thomas Otway, the son of the rector of Woolbeding, in Sussex, entered Christ Church, Oxford, in 1669, but soon left it, on the death of his father, for London. Here he hung about the Duke of York\'s Theatre, where he failed as an actor. In 1675 he produced a play, "Alcibiades," though, as he says in a preface to his "Don Carlos," "I might as well have called it \'Nebuchadnezzar,\'" for Alcibiades acted in a way not consistent with his character. The caprice of the witty, miserable Earl of Rochester won the good will, if nothing more substantial, of the Duke of York for the poet, who dedicates to him the heroic play of "Don Carlos" (1676). In this, according to Otway, Dryden declared that "I know not a line I would not be author of," so the play must have been, and in fact was, a success. It is written in rhyming couplets, and even triplets; the rhymes are often surprisingly bad. The history of the death of Don Carlos, who was mad, is obscure, and Otway treats it with extreme poetic licence. Philip of Spain is here a tender, though avenging, father and husband, who repents and rants monstrously, though rant is not the common fault of Otway. There is tenderness and pathos enough to account for the popularity of the play; moreover Otway was known to be hopelessly in love with Mrs. Barry, the beautiful actress; Rochester who presently satirised Otway, being his rival. After a luckless campaign with Monmouth in Flanders, Otway, following Dryden\'s example, abandoned rhyme for blank verse in "The Orphan"[Pg 370] (1680), based on a stock situation in a novel of the seventeenth century. The intrigue, though the crucial situation is not acceptable now on the stage, is ingeniously contrived to bring out the characters of the rival brothers, and Monimia, a very pathetic character, must have drawn many tears. There is the usual number of deaths in the last act. The blank verse has no great distinction, and abounds in redundant feet. Otway, in fact, did not take by literary perfections, but "The Orphan" has no lines so far below the tragic level as the words of the Queen in "Don Carlos".
How hard it is his passion to confine,
I\'m sure \'tis so if I may judge by mine!
The phrase of Monimia when she learns the depth ............