THE DRAMATIC POETS.
Noble, gentle, and humble Authors.
It is a curious fact, that the number of dramatic writers between the
years 1659-1700, inclusive, exceeds that of the actors. A glance at
the following list will show this.
Sir W. Davenant, Dryden, Porter, Mrs. Behn, Lee, Cowley, Hon. James
Howard, Shadwell, Sir S. Tuke, Sir R. Stapylton, Lord Broghill (Earl
of Orrery), Flecknoe, Sir George Etherege, Sir R. Howard, Lacy
(actor), Betterton (actor), Earl of Bristol, Duke of Buckingham,
Dr. Rhodes, Sir Edward Howard, Settle, Caryll (Earl of Caryll, of
James II.'s creation), Henry Lucius Carey (Viscount Falkland), Duke
of Newcastle, Shirley, Sir Charles Sedley, Mrs. Boothby, Medbourne
(actor), Corye, Revet, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Arrowsmith,
Neville Payne, Sir W. Killigrew, Duffet, Sir F. Fane, Otway, Durfey,
Rawlins, Leanard, Bankes, Pordage, Rymer, Shipman, Tate, Bancroft,
Whitaker, Maidwell, Saunders (a boy-poet), and Southerne.
Here are already nearly threescore authors (some few of whom had
commenced their career prior to the Restoration) who supplied the
two theatres, between 1659 and 1682, in which latter year began that
"Union," under which London had but one theatre till the year 1695.
Within the thirteen years of the Union, appeared as dramatic writers,
The Earl of Rochester;--Jevon, Mountfort, Harris, Powell, and
Carlisle (actors); Wilson, Brady, Congreve, Wright, and Higden.
From the period of the dissolution of the Union to the end of the
century occur the names of,
Colley Cibber (actor), Mrs. Trotter (Cockburn), Gould, Mrs. Pix, Mrs.
Manley, Norton, Scott, Dogget (actor), Dryden, jun., Lord Lansdowne
(Granville), Dilke, Sir John Vanbrugh, Gildon, Drake, Filmer,
Motteux, Hopkins, Walker, W. Phillips, Farquhar, Boyer, Dennis,
Burnaby, Oldmixon, Mrs. Centlivre (Carroll), Crauford, and Rowe.
[Illustration: (Thomas Betterton.)]
In the above list there are above a hundred names of authors,
none of whose productions can now be called stock-pieces; though of
some four or five of these writers a play is occasionally performed,
to try an actor's skill or tempt an indifferent audience.
Of the actors who became authors, Cibber alone was eminently
successful, and of him I shall speak apart. The remainder were
mere adapters. Of Betterton's eight plays, I find one tragedy
borrowed from Webster; and of his comedies, one was taken from
Marston; a second raised on Molière's "George Dandin"; a third was
never printed; his "Henry the Fourth" was one of those unhallowed
outrages on Shakspeare, of which the century in which it appeared
was prolific; his "Bondman" was a poor reconstruction of Massinger's
play, in which Betterton himself was marvellously great; and his
"Prophetess" was a conversion of Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy into
an opera, by the efficient aid of Henry Purcell, who published the
music in score, in 1691. There was noble music wedded to noble words,
and for the recreation of those who could appreciate neither; there
was a dance of quaint figures from whom, when about to sit down, the
chairs slipped under them, took up the measure, and concluded by
dancing it out.
Medbourne produced only his translation of the "Tartuffe," Jevon only
one comedy. Mountfort, like Betterton, was an indifferent author. His
"Injured Lovers" ends almost as tragically as the apocryphal play in
which all the characters being killed at the end of the fourth act,
the concluding act is brought to a close by their executors. In
Mountfort's loyal tragedy all the principal personages receive their
quietus, and the denouement is left in the hands of a solitary and
wicked colonel, with a contented mind. "Edward the Third" is so much
more natural than the above, that it is by some assigned to Bancroft,
while "Zelmane" is only hypothetically attributed to Mountfort, on
the ground, apparently, of its absurdities. In the preface to his
"Successful Strangers," Mountfort modestly remarks, "I have a natural
inclination to poetry, which was born and not bred in me." He showed
small inventive power in his bustling comedy, "Greenwich Park," and
less respect for a master in minstrelsy, when he turned poor Kit
Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" into an impassioned sort of burlesque,
with the addition of Harlequin and Scaramouch to give zest to the
buffoonery!
Carlisle, the actor who fell at Aghrim, was the author of the
"Fortune Hunters;" and Joseph Harris, who was a poor comedian, and
the marrer of four adapted and unsuccessful plays, resumed under
Queen Anne his original vocation of engraver to the Mint. The age was
one of adapters, whose cry was that Shakspeare would not attract,
and accordingly George Powell combined authorship with acting,
and borrowed from Shirley, from Brome, and from Middleton. Mrs.
Pix, and the romancers, produced a few plays, from one of which a
recent dramatist has stolen as boldly as George himself was wont
to steal. I allude to the "Imposture Defeated," in which Artan (a
demon) enables Hernando, a physician, to foretell the fate of each
patient, according as Artan takes his stand at the foot or at the
head of the bed. One word will suffice for Dogget's contribution to
stage literature. He was the author of one lively, but not edifying,
piece, entitled the "Country Wake," in which he provided himself with
a taking part called Hob, and one for Mrs. Bracegirdle--Flora. In a
modified form, this piece was known to our grandfathers as "Flora;"
or, "Hob in the Well."
The actors themselves, then, were not efficient as authors. Let
us now see what the noble gentlemen, the amateur rather than
professional poets, contributed towards the public entertainment, and
their own reputation, during the last half of the seventeenth century.
They may be reckoned at a dozen and a half, from dukes to knights.
Of the two dukes, Buckingham and Newcastle, the former is the more
distinguished dramatic writer. He was a man of great wit and no
virtue; a member of two universities, but no honour to either. He
was one who respected neither his own wife nor his neighbour's, and
was faithful to the King only as long as the King would condescend
to obey his caprices. From 1627, when he was born, to April 1688,
the year of his death, history has placed no generous action of his
upon record, but has registered many a crime and meanness. He lived a
profligate peer, in a magnificence almost oriental; he died a beggar;
bankrupt in everything but impudence. Dryden and Pope have given him
everlasting infamy; the latter not without a touch of pity, felt not
at all by the former. Historians have justified the severity of the
poets; Gilbert Burnet has dismissed him with a sneer, and Baxter has
thrown in a word on behalf of his humanity.
His play of the "Chances" was a mere adaptation of the piece so
named, by Beaumont and Fletcher. Plays which were attributed to
him, but of which he was not the author, need not be mentioned. The
Duke's dramatic reputation rests on his great burlesque tragedy, the
"Rehearsal;" but even in this he is said to have had the assistance
of Butler, Martin Clifford, and Dr. Sprat. Written to deride the
bombastic tragedies then in vogue, Davenant, Dryden, and Sir Robert
Howard are, by turns, struck at, under the person of the poet Bayes;
and the irritability of the second, under the allusions, are perhaps
warrant that the satire was good. The humour is good, too; the very
first exhibition of it excited the mirth which afterwards broke into
peal upon peal of laughter. The rehearsed play commences with a scene
between the royal usher and the royal physician, in a series of
whispers; for, as Mr. Bayes remarks, the two officials were plotting
against the King; but this fact it was necessary, as yet, to keep
from the audience!
Mr. Cavendish, whose services in the royal cause deservedly earned
for him that progress through the peerage which terminated in his
creation as Duke of Newcastle, was the opposite of Buckingham in
most things save his taste for magnificence, in which he surpassed
Villiers. Two thousand pounds were as cheerfully spent on feasting
Charles I., as the Duke's blood was vainly shed for the same monarch
in the field. He lived like a man who had the purse of Fortunatus;
but in exile at Antwerp, he pawned his best clothes and jewels, that
he and his celebrated wife might have the means of existence. He was
the author of a few plays, two of which were represented after the
Restoration. The "Country Captain," and "Variety," were composed in
the reign of Charles I. The "Humourous Lovers," and the "Triumphant
Widow," subsequently. These are bustling but immoral comedies,
suiting, but not correcting the vices of the times; and singular,
in their slip-shod style, as coming from the author of the pompous
treatise on horses and horsemanship. Pepys ascribes the "Humourous
Lovers" to the Duchess. He calls it a "silly play; the most silly
thing that ever came upon a stage. I was sick to see it, but yet
would not but have seen it, that I might the better understand her."
Pepys is equally severe against the "Country Captain." The Duke
seems to have aimed at the delineation of character, particularly in
"Variety," and the "Triumphant Widow, or, the Medley of Humours."
Johnson grieves over the oblivion which, in his time, had fallen on
these works, and later authors have declared that the Duke's comedies
ought not to have been forgotten. They have at least been remembered
by some of our modern novelists in want of incident.
Of the three earls, all of whose pieces were produced previous to
1680, there is not much to be said in praise. The eccentric, clever,
brave, inconsistent, contradictory George Digby, Earl of Bristol,
he who turned Romanist at the instigation of Don John of Austria,
and aiming at office himself, conspired against Clarendon, was the
author of one acted piece, "Elvira," one of the two out of which
Mrs. Centlivre built up her own clever bit of mosaic, the "Wonder."
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in whom all the vices of Buckingham
were exaggerated; to whom virtue and honour seemed disgusting, and
even the affectation of them, or of ordinary decency, an egregious
folly, found leisure in the least feverish hour of some five years'
drunkenness, to give to the stage an adaptation of "Valentinian," by
Beaumont and Fletcher, in which he assigned a part to Mrs. Barry--the
very last that any other lover would have thought of for his
mistress. The noble poet, little more than thirty years old, lay in
a dishonoured grave when his piece was represented, in 1680;[51] but
the young actress just named, gaily alluded, in a prologue, to the
demure nymphs in the house who had succumbed, nothing loath, to the
irresistible blandishments of this very prince of blackguards.
The Earl of Caryll was a man of another spirit. He was the head of
the family to which Pope's Carylls belonged, and being a faithful
servant of James II., in adversity as well as in prosperity, the King
made him an earl, at that former period, when the law of England did
not recognise the creation. Caryll was of the party who talked of
the unpopularity of Shakspeare, and who for the poet's gold offered
poor tinsel of their own. His rhymed drama of the "English Princess,
or the death of Richard the Third," owed its brief favour to the
acting of Betterton, who could render even nonsense imposing. His
comedy of "Sir Solomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb," was "taken from the
French." The chief scenes were mere translations of Molière's "Ecole
des Femmes;" but life, and fun, and wit were given to them again by
Betterton, who in the comic old Sir Solomon shook the sides of the
"house," as easily as he could, in other characters, move them to
wonder, or melt them to tears.
In 1664, another "lance was broken with Shakspeare" by Lord Orrery,
the Lord Broghill of earlier days. There was something dramatic
in this lord's life. He was a marvellous boy, younger son of a
marvellous father, the "great Earl of Cork." Before he was fifteen,
Dublin University was proud of him. At that age he went on the "grand
tour," at twenty married the Earl of Suffolk's daughter, and landed
in Ireland, to keep his wedding, on the very day of the outbreak
of the Rebellion of 1641. The young bridegroom fought bravely for
homestead and king, and went into exile when that king was slain; but
he heeded the lure of Cromwell, won for him the victory of Macroom,
rescued him from defeat at Clonmel, and crushed Muskerry and his
numerous Papal host. From Richard Cromwell, Broghill kept aloof, and
helped forward the Restoration, for which service Charles made him
a peer--Earl of Orrery. The earl showed his gratitude by deifying
kings, and inculcating submissiveness, teaching the impeccability
of monarchs, and the extreme naughtiness of their people. Pepys
comically bewails the fact, that on going to see a new piece by
Orrery, he sees only an old one under a new name, such wearying
sameness is there in the rhymed phrases of them all.
Orrery's tilt against Shakspeare is comprised in his attempt to
suppress that poet's "Henry V.," by giving one of his own, in which
Henry and Owen Tudor are simultaneously in love with Katherine of
France. The love is carried on in a style of stilted burlesque; and
yet the dignity and wit of this piece enraptured Pepys--but then he
saw it at Court in December 1666, Lord Bellasis having taken him to
Whitehall, after seeing "Macbeth" at the Duke's House,--"and there,"
he says, "after all staying above an hour for the players, the King
and all waiting, which was absurd, saw 'Henry V.' well done by the
Duke's people, and in most excellent habits, all new vests, being put
on but this night. But I sat so high, and so far off, that I missed
most of the words, and sat with a wind coming into my back and neck,
which did much trouble me. The play continued till twelve at night,
and then up, and a most horrid cold night it was, and frosty, and
moonshine;" and it might have been worse.
In Orrery's "Mustapha" and "Tryphon," the theme is all love and
honour, without variation. Orrery's "Mr. Anthony" is a five-act
farce, in ridicule of the manners and morals of the Puritans. Therein
the noble author rolls in the mire for the gratification of the
pure-minded cavaliers. Over Orrery's "Black Prince," even vigilant
Mr. Pepys himself fell asleep, in spite of the stately dances.
Perhaps he was confused by the author's illustration of genealogical
history; for in this play, Joan, the wife of the Black Prince, is
described as the widow of Edmund, Earl of Kent--_her father!_ But
what mattered it to the writer whose only teaching to the audience
was, that if they did not fear God, they must take care to honour
the King? Orrery's "Altemira" was not produced till long after
his death. It is a roar of passion, love (or what passed for it),
jealousy, despair, and murder. In the concluding scene the slaughter
is terrific. It all takes place in presence of an unobtrusive
individual, who carries the doctrine of non-intervention to its
extreme limit. When the persons of the drama have made an end of one
another, the quietly delighted gentleman steps forward, and blandly
remarks, that there was so much virtue, love, and honour in it all,
that he could not find it in his heart to interfere, though his own
son was one of the victims!
A contemporary of Orrery, young Henry Carey, Viscount Falkland, son
of the immortal soldier who fell at Newbury, wrote one piece, the
"Marriage Night," of which I know nothing, save that it was played
in the Lent of 1664; but I do know that the author had wit, for when
some one remarked, as Carey took his seat in the House of Commons for
the first time, that he looked as if he had not sown his wild oats,
he replied, that he had come to the place where there were geese
enough to pick them up!
The last of the dramatic lords of this century was that Lord
Lansdowne whom Pope called "Granville the polite," and absurdly
compared with Surrey, by awkwardly calling the latter the "Granville
of a former age." Granville was a statesman, a Tory, a stiff-backed
gentleman in a stiff-backed period, and a sufferer for his opinions.
Driven into leisure, he addressed himself to literature, in
connection with which he committed a crime against the majesty of
Shakspeare, which was unpardonable. He reconstructed the "Merchant
of Venice," called it the "Jew of Venice," and assigned Shylock
to Dogget. Lord Lansdowne's "She Gallants" is a vile comedy for
its "morals," but a vivacious one for its manner. Old Downes, the
prompter, sneers at the offence taken at it by some ladies, who, he
thinks, affected rather than possessed virtue themselves. But ladies,
in 1696, _were_ offended at such outrages on decency as this play
contains. They were not the first who had made similar protest. Even
in this lord's tragedy of "Heroic Love," Achilles and Briseis are
only a little more decent than Ravenscroft's loose rakes and facile
nymphs. The only consolation one has in reading the "Jew of Venice"
(produced in 1701) is, that there are some passages the marrer could
not spoil. As for Shylock, Rowe expressed the opinion of the public
when, in spite of the success of the comic edition of the character,
he said, modestly enough, "I cannot but think the character was
_tragically designed_ by the author." Dryden, Pope, and Johnson
have in their turn eulogised Granville; but, as a dramatic poet, he
reflects no honour either on the century in which he was born, or
on that in which he died. Indeed, of the dramatist peers of the
seventeenth century, there is not a play that has survived to our
times.
And now, coming to a dozen of baronets, knights, and honourables, let
us point to two,--Sir Samuel Tuke and Sir William Killigrew, who may
claim precedence for their comparative purity, if not for decided
dramatic talent. To the former, an old colonel of the cavalier times,
Charles II. recommended a comedy of Calderon's, which Sir Samuel
produced at the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre, in 1663, under the
title of the "Adventures of Five Hours." The public generally, and
Pepys especially, were unusually delighted with this well-constructed
comedy. When it was played at Whitehall, Mrs. Pepys saw it from Lady
Fox's "_pew_;" and, making an odd comparison, the diarist thought
"Othello" a "mean thing," when weighed against the "Adventures;" but
his chief praise is, that it is "without one word of ribaldry;" and
Echard has added thereto his special commendation as a critic.
Sir Robert Stapylton says of William Killigrew what could not be said
of his brother Tom (whose plays were written before the Restoration),
that in him were found--
"---- plots well laid,
The language pure and ev'ry sentence weighed."
Sir William, a soldier of the first Charles's fighting time, a
courtier, and vice-chamberlain to the Queen, in "Rowley's" days, was
the author of four or five plays, one only of which deserves any
notice here,--namely, his comedy of "Pandora." The heroine of this
drama, resolving to cloister herself up from marriage, allows love to
be made to her in jest, and, of course, ends by becoming a wife in
happy earnest. The author had, at first, made a tragedy of "Pandora."
The masters of the stage objected to it in that form; and, it being
all the same to the complaisant Sir William, he converted his tragedy
into a comedy!
Sir Robert Stapylton, himself a Douay student converted to
Protestantism; a cavalier, who turned to a hanger-on at court--but
who was always a scholar and a gentleman,--has received more censure
than praise at the hands of a greater critic and poet than himself.
Pepys took no interest in Stapylton's "Slighted Maid," even though
his own wife's maid, Gosnell, had a part in it; and Dryden has
remarked of it, with too much severity, that "there is nothing in the
first act that might not be said or done in the second; nor anything
in the middle which might not as well have been at the beginning or
the end." Stapylton, like the wits of his time, generally wrote more
weakly than he spoke. This was the case, too, with Tom Killigrew,
of whom Scott remarks truly, in a very awkward simile (_Life of
Dryden_), that "the merit of his good things _evaporated_ as soon as
he attempted to _interweave_ them with comedy."
But who is this jaunty personage, so noisy at a rehearsal of one of
his own indifferent plays? It is "Ned Howard," one of the three sons
of the dirty Earl of Berkshire, the first Howard who bore that title,
and whom Pepys saw one July day of 1666, serving the King with
liquor, "in that dirty pickle I never saw man in, in my life." The
daughter of this Earl was the wife of Dryden.
And what does Ned Howard say at rehearsal? The actors are making some
objection to his piece; but he exclaims, "In fine,--it shall read,
and write, and act, and print, and pit, box, and gallery it, egad,
with any play in Europe!" The play fails; and then you may hear Ned
in any coffee house, or wherever there is a company, proclaiming, by
way of excuse, that "Mr. So-and-so the actor didn't _top his part,
sir_!" It was Ned Howard's favourite phrase.
The old Earl of Berkshire gave three sons to literature, besides a
daughter to Dryden; namely, Sir Robert, James, and this Edward. The
last-named was the least effective. His characters "talk," but they
are engaged in no plot; and they exhibit a dull lack of incident.
The most of his six or seven dramas were failures; but from one of
them, which was the most original, indecent, and the most decidedly
damned, Mrs. Inchbald condescended to extract matter which she
turned to very good purpose in her "Every one has his Fault." Edward
Howard gratified the court-party in his tragedy of "The Usurper," by
describing, under the character of Damocles the Syracusan, the once
redoubted Oliver Cromwell: while Hugo de Petra but thinly veiled Hugh
Peters; and Cleomenes is said to have been the shadow of General
Monk. Lacy said that Ned was "more of a fool than a poet;" and
Buckingham was of the same opinion.
James Howard came under Buckingham's censure too; and an incident in
the "English Monsieur," which, if Pepys's criticism may be accepted,
was a mighty, pretty, witty, pleasant, mirthful comedy, furnished
the satirical touch in the "Rehearsal," where Prince Volscius falls
in love with Parthenope, as he is pulling on his boots to go out
of town. James Howard belonged to the faction which affected to
believe that there was no popular love for Shakspeare, to render
whom palatable, he arranged "Romeo and Juliet" for the stage, with a
double denouement--one serious, the other hilarious. If your heart
were too sensitive to bear the deaths of the loving pair, you had
only to go on the succeeding afternoon to see them wedded, and set
upon the way of a well-assured domestic felicity!
This species of humour was not wanting in Sir Robert Howard,--who
won his knighthood by valour displayed in saving Lord Wilmot's life
in that hot affair at Cropredy Bridge. Sir Robert has been as much
pommelled as patted by Dryden. Buckingham dragged him in effigy
across the stage, and Shadwell ridiculed the universality of his
pretensions by a clever caricature of him, in the "Impertinents,"
as Sir Positive Atall. For the King's purpose, Howard cajoled the
Parliament out of money; for his own purpose, he cajoled the King
out of both money and place; and netted several thousands a year by
affixing his very legible signature to warrants, issued by him as
Auditor of the Exchequer. The humour which he had in common with his
brother James, he exhibited, by giving two opposite catastrophes to
his "Vestal Virgin," between which the public were free to choose.
Sir Robert has generally been looked upon as a servile courtier; but
people were astounded at the courage displayed by him in his "Great
Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma;" in which the naughtiness of the
King's ways, and still more that of the women about him, was shown
in a light which left no doubt as to the application of the satire.
His bombastic periods have died away in the echoes of them which
Fielding caught in his "Tom Thumb;" but his comic power is strongly
and admirably manifested in his "Committee," a transcript of Puritan
life, which--applied to Quakers, for want of better subjects for
caricature--may still be witnessed in country theatres, in the farce
of "Honest Thieves." Like many other satirists, Sir Robert could not
detect his own weak points. In his "Blind Lady," he ridicules an old
widow in desperate want of a seventh husband; and at threescore and
ten, he himself married buxom Mistress Dives, one of the Maids of
Honour to Queen Mary.
Of comedies portraying national or individual follies, perhaps the
most successful, and the most laughable, was James Howard's "English
Monsieur," in which the hero-Englishman execrates everything that is
connected with his country. To him an English meal is poison, and
an English coat degradation. The English Monsieur once challenged
a rash person who had praised an English dinner, and, says he, "I
ran him through his mistaken palate, which made me think the hand
of justice guided my sword." Is there a damp walk, along which the
Gallo-Englishman passes--he can distinguish between the impressions
previously left there by English or French ladies,--the footsteps
of the latter being of course altogether the more fairy-like. "I
have seen such _bonne mine_ in their footsteps, that the King of
France's _maître de danse_ could not have found fault with any one
tread amongst them all. In these walks," he adds, "I find the toes of
English ladies ready to tread upon one another."
Later in the play, the hero quarrels with a friend who had found
fault with a "pair of French tops," worn by the former. These boots
made so much noise when the wearer moved in them, that the friend's
mistress could not hear a word of the love made to her. The wearer,
however, justifies the noise as a fashionable French noise: "for,
look you, sir, a French noise is agreeable to the ear, and therefore
not unagreeable, not prejudicial to the hearing; that is to say, to a
person who has seen the world." The English Monsieur, as a matter of
course, loves a French lady, who rejects his suit; but to be repulsed
by a French dame had something pleasant in it; "'twas a denial with a
French tone of voice, so that 'twas agreeable." Ultimately, the nymph
bids him a final adieu, and the not too dejected lover exclaims to a
friend: "Do you see, sir, how she leaves us; she walks away with a
French step!"
One word may be said here for Sir Ludovick Carlell, the old gentleman
of the bows to Charles I. Like Shirley, Killigrew, and Davenant,
he had written plays before the time of the Commonwealth; and he
survived to write more after the Restoration. The only one, however,
which he offered to the players was a translation of "Heraclius,"
by Corneille; and that was returned on his hands. There is another
knight, Sir Francis Fane, from whose comedy of "Love in the Dark,"
Mrs. Centlivre, more clever at appropriation than Mrs. Inchbald, has
taken Intrigo, the man of business, and turned him into Marplot,
with considerable improvements; but as Fane himself borrowed every
incident, and did not trouble himself about his language, his merit
is only of the smallest order. He wrote a fair masque, and in his
unrepresented "Sacrifice" was little courtier enough to make his
Tamerlane declare that "princes, for the most part, keep the worst
company." He and Sir Robert Howard, both Tories, could, when it
pleased them, tell the truth, like the plainest spoken Whig.
More successful than Sir Francis was rollicking Tom Porter, or Major
Porter, according to his military rank. Both were luckless gentlemen;
but Tom wrote one play, the "Villain," which put the town in a flame,
and raised Sandford's fame, as an actor, to its very highest. Tom
was also the author of a rattling comedy, called the "Carnival,"
but rioting, and bad company and hot temper marred him. He and
Sir Henry Bellasys, dining at Sir Robert Carr's, fell into fierce
dispute, out of mutual error; fierce words, then a thoughtless blow
from Sir Henry, then swords crossing, and tipsy people parting the
combatants. They were really warm friends; but Tom had been struck,
and honour forbade that he should be reconciled till blood had flown.
So Dryden's boy was employed to track Bellasys, and the Major came
upon him in Covent Garden, where they fought, surrounded by a crowd
of admirers. Tom's honour was satisfied by passing his sword through
the body of his dearest friend. The knight felt the wound was mortal,
but he beckoned the less grievously wounded major to him, kissed
him, and remained standing, that Tom might not be obstructed in his
flight. The friend and poet safe, the knight fell back, and soon
after died. There was really noble stuff in some of these dissolute
fine gentlemen! But there are no two of them who have so faithfully
illustrated themselves, and the times in which they lived, as Sir
George Etherege and Sir Charles Sedley; the former, a knight by
purchase, in order to please a silly woman, who vowed she would many
none but a man of title; the latter, a baronet by inheritance. Sir
George, born in 1636, was the descendant of a good--Sir Charles, born
three years later, a member of a better--family, reckoning among its
sons scholars and patrons of scholars. Sir George left Cambridge
undistinguished, but took his degree in foreign travel, came home to
find the study of the law too base a drudgery for so free a spirit,
and so took to living like a "gentleman," and to illustrating the
devilishness of that career by reproducing it in dramas on the stage.
Sedley left Oxford as Etherege left Cambridge, ingloriously,
bearing no honours with him. Unlike Sir George, however, he was a
home-keeping youth, whereby his wit seems not to have suffered.
He nursed the latter in the groves, or at the paternal hearth at
Aylesford, in Kent, till the sun of the restored monarchy enticed
him to London. There his wit recommended him to the King, won for him
the hatred of small minds, and elicited the praise of noble spirits,
who were witty themselves, and loved the manifestation of wit in
others. "I have heard," says honest, brilliant, and much-abused
Shadwell, "I have heard Sedley speak more wit at a supper than all my
adversaries, putting their heads together, could _write_ in a year."
This testimony was rendered by a man whose own reputation as a wit
has the stamp and the warrant of Rochester.
Two more atrocious libertines than these two men were not to be found
in the apartments at Whitehall, or in the streets, taverns, and dens
of London. Yet both were famed for like external qualities. Etherege
was easy and graceful, Sedley so refinedly seductive of manner that
Buckingham called it "witchcraft," and Wilmot "his prevailing, gentle
art." _I_, humbler witness, can only say, after studying their works
and their lives, that Etherege was a more accomplished comedy-writer
than Sedley, but that Sedley was a greater _beast_ than Etherege.
These two handsome fellows, made in God's image, marred their manly
beauty by their licentiousness, and soon looked more like two
battered, wine-soaked demons, than the sons of Christian mothers.
Etherege, however, fierce and vindictive as he could be under
passion, was never so utterly brutalised in mind as Sedley, nor so
cruel in his humours at any time. If Sedley got up that groundless
quarrel with Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, the alleged cause
of which was some painted hussey, it was doubtless out of the very
ferocity of his fun, which he thought well spent on exhibiting the
prelate as sharing in the vices common at court.
Etherege, perhaps, had the stronger head of the two; he, at all
events, kept it sufficiently free to be able to represent his King
on more than one small diplomatic mission abroad. Sedley, who was
nevertheless the longer liver of the two, indulged in excesses
which, from their inexpressible infamy, betray a sort of insanity.
When he, with other blackguards of good blood, was brought to trial
for public outrages, which disgusted even the hideous wretches that
lurked about Covent Garden, Chief Justice Foster addressed him from
the bench with a "Sirrah!" and told him, while the reminiscence of
the plague and the smoke of the Great Fire still hung over the court,
that it was such wretches as he that brought God's wrath so heavily
upon the kingdom. But neither the heavy fine of 2000 marks, nor his
imprisonment, nor his being bound over to keep the peace for three
years, nor his own conscience, nor the rebuke of wise men, could
restrain this miscreant. He was not yet free from his bond[52] when
he, and Buckhurst and others were carried off to the watch-house
by the night-constables for fighting in the streets, drunk, as was
their custom, and as naked as their drawn swords. On this occasion,
in 1668, the King interfered in their favour, and Chief Justice
Keeling, senile betrayer of his trust, let them go scatheless; but
he punished the constables by whom they had been arrested!
Etherege contributed three comedies to the stage:--"The Comical
Revenge, or Love in a Tub," "She Would if She Could," and the "Man of
Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter." Sedley wrote the "Mulberry Garden;" a
tragedy, called "Antony and Cleopatra," wherein a single incident in
Shakspeare's play is spun out into five acts; "Bellamira," in which
comedy, partly founded on the "Eunuchus" of Terence, he exhibited
the frailty of Lady Castlemaine, and the audacity of Churchill--a
translated drama from the French, called the "Grumbler," and a
tragedy, entitled the "Tyrant King of Crete." Of all Sedley's pieces,
the best is the "Mulberry Garden,"[53] for portions of which the
author is indebted to Molière's "Ecole des Maris," and on which
Pepys's criticism is not to be gainsayed:--"Here and there a pretty
saying, and that not very many either." "Bellamira" is remembered
only as the play, during the first representation of which the roof
of the Theatre Royal fell in, with such just discrimination as to
injure no one but the author. Sir Fleetwood Shepherd said that "the
wit of the latter had blown the roof from the building." "Not so,"
rejoined Sedley, "the heaviness of the play has broke down the house,
and buried the author in the ruins!"
Etherege's comedies were, in their day, the dear delight of the
majority of playgoers. I say the majority; for though "Love in a
Tub" brought £1000 profit to Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, in a
single month of 1664, and was acted before enraptured gallants
and appreciating nymphs, at Whitehall, some found it a silly play.
It gave Etherege a name and a position; and when his next comedy
appeared, "She Would if She Could," a thousand anxious people,
with leisure enough of an afternoon to see plays (it was only at
Court that they were acted at night), were turned away from the
doors. To me, this piece is very distasteful, and it is not without
satisfaction I read that it was on the first night "barbarously
treated," according to Dennis, and that Pepys found "nothing in
the world good in it, and few people pleased with it." The plot
and denouement he pronounces as "mighty insipid;" yet he says of
the piece as a whole, that it was "dull, roguish, and witty." The
actors, however, were not perfect on the first night. Dennis praised
the truth of character, the purity, freedom, and grace of the
dialogue; and Shadwell declared that it was the best comedy since the
Restoration, to his own time. All this eulogy is not to be accepted.
Etherege's third comedy, the "Man of Mode," has been described as
"perhaps the most elegant comedy, and containing more of the real
_manners_ of high life than any one the English stage was ever
adorned with." In the latter respect alone is this description true;
but, though the piece is dedicated to a lady, the Duchess of York, it
could have afforded pleasure, as the _Spectator_ remarks, only to the
impure. People, no doubt, were delighted to recognise Rochester in
Dorimant, Etherege himself in Bellair, and the stupendous ass, Beau
Hewitt, in Sir Fopling; but it must have been a weary delight; so
debased is the nature of these people, however truly they represent,
as they unquestionably did, the manners, bearing, and language of the
higher classes.
How they dressed, talked, and thought; what they did, and how they
did it; what they hoped for, and how they pursued it; all this, and
many other exemplifications of life as it was then understood, may
be found especially in the plays of Etherege, in which there is a
bustle and a succession of incidents, from the rise to the fall of
the curtain. But the fine gentlemen are such unmitigated rascals, and
the women--girls and matrons--are such unlovely hussies, in rascality
and unseemliness quite a match for the men, that one escapes from
their wretched society, and a knowledge of their one object, and
the confidences of the abominable creatures engaged therein, with a
feeling of a strong want of purification, and of that ounce of civet
which sweetens the imagination.
Of the remaining amateur writers there is not much to be said.
Rhodes was a gentleman's son without an estate, a doctor without
practice, and a dramatist without perseverance. His one comedy,
"Flora's Vagaries" (1667), gave a capital part to Nelly, and a
reputation to the doctor, which he failed to sustain. Corye was
another idle gentleman, who, in the same year,[54] produced his
"Generous Enemies," and that piece was a plagiarism. Ned Revet
also exhausted himself in one comedy, "The Town Shifts," which the
town found insipid. Arrowsmith was in like plight, and his sole
comedy, "The Reformation," was obliged to give way to Shakspeare's
"Macbeth," converted into an opera. Nevil Payne was the author of
three pieces--"Fatal Jealousy," in which Nokes earned his name of
_Nurse Nokes_; the "Morning Ramble," which was less attractive in
1673, than the "Tempest," even in an operatic form, or "Hamlet," with
Betterton for the hero; and the "Siege of Constantinople," a tragedy,
in which Shaftesbury and his vices were mercilessly satirised. Tom
Rawlins wrote three poor plays, the last in 1678, and he had as great
a contempt for the character of author as Congreve himself. He was,
like Joe Harris, "engraver of the Mint," kept fellowship with wits
and poets, wrote for amusement, and "had no desire to be known by a
_thread_bare coat, having a calling that will maintain it _woolly_!"
Then there was Leanard, who stole not more audaciously than he was
stolen from, when he chose to be original--Colley Cibber having taken
many a point from the "Counterfeits," to enrich "She Would and She
Would Not." Pordage was about as dull a writer as might be expected
of a man who was land-steward to "the memorable simpleton," Philip,
Earl of Pembroke. Shipman enjoys the fame of having been highly
esteemed by Cowley--he certainly was not by the public; and Bancroft,
the surgeon, had the reputation of having been induced to write, as
he did, unsuccessfully, for the stage, because he prescribed for,
or rather against, the most fashionable malady of the day, when it
attacked theatre-haunting fops and actors who stooped to imitate
the gentlemen. From these he caught the stage fever, and suffered
considerably. Whitaker's one play, "The Conspiracy," is remarkable
for the sensation incident of a ghost appearing, leading Death by the
hand! Maidwell's comedy of "The Loving Enemies" (the author was an
old schoolmaster), was noticeable for being "designedly dull, lest by
satirising folly the author might bring upon his skull the bludgeon
of fools."[55] Saunders, and his "Tamerlane the Great," are now
forgotten; but Dryden spoke of the author, in an indecent epilogue,
as "the first boy-poet of our age;" who, however, though he blossomed
as early as Cowley, did not flourish as long.
Wilson was another professional writer, but less successful on the
stage than in his recordership of Londonderry. Another lawyer,
Higden, was one of the jolliest of fellows; and wishing the actors to
be so too, he introduced so many drinking scenes into his sole play,
"The Wary Widow," that the players, who tippled their real punch
freely, were all drunk by the end of the third act; and the piece was
then, there, and thereby, brought to an end!
In the last years of the seventeenth century, a humble votary of
the muses appeared in Duffet, the Exchange milliner; and in Robert
Gould, a servant in the household of Dorset, where he caught from the
wits and gay fellows assembled at Knowle or at Buckhurst, a desire
to write a drama. He was, however, a schoolmaster, when his play
of the "Rival Sisters"--in which, other means of slaughter being
exhausted, a thunderbolt is employed for the killing a lady--was but
coldly received. Gould was not a plagiarist, like Scott, the Duke of
Roxburgh's secretary, nor so licentious. The public was scandalised
by incidents in Scott's "Unhappy Kindness," in 1697. Dr. Drake was
another plagiarist, who revenged himself in the last-named year, for
the condemnation of his "Sham Lawyer," by stating on the title-page
that it had been "damnably acted." That year was fatal, too, to Dr.
Filmer, the champion of the stage against Collier. Even Betterton
and Mrs. Barry failed to give life to the old gentleman's "Unnatural
Brother;" and the doctor ascribed his want of success to the fact,
that never at any one time had he placed more than three characters
on the stage! The most prolific of what may be termed the amateur
writers, was Peter Motteux, a French Huguenot, whom the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes brought, in 1660,[56] to England, where he
carried on the vocations of a trader in Leadenhall Street, clerk
in the foreign department of the Post Office, translator, original
writer, dramatist, and "fast man," till the too zealous pursuit of
the latter calling found Peter dead, in very bad company, in St.
Clements Danes, in the year 1718. Of his seventeen comedies, farces,
and musical interludes, there is nothing to be said, save that one
called "Novelty" presents a distinct play in each act,--or five
different pieces in all. By different men, Peter has been diversely
rated. Dryden said of him, in reference to his one tragedy, "Beauty
in Distress:"
"Thy incidents, perhaps, too thick are sown;
But too much plenty is thy fault alone:
At least but two in that good crime commit;--
Thou in design, and Wycherly in wit."
But an anonymous poet writes, in reference to one of his various poor
adaptations, "The Island Princess:"
"Motteux and Durfey are for nothing fit,
But to supply with songs their _want_ of wit."
How Motteux found time for all his pursuits is not to be explained;
but, much as he accomplished in all, he designed still more--one of
his projects being an opera, to be called "The Loves of Europe," in
which were to be represented the methods employed in various nations,
whereby ladies' hearts are triumphantly won. It was an odd idea;
but Peter Motteux was odd in everything. And it is even oddly said
of him, "that he met with his fate in trying a very odd experiment,
highly disgraceful to his memory!"[57]
Hard-drinking, and what was euphoniously called _gallantry_, killed
good-tempered Charles Hopkins, son of the Bishop of Londonderry. Had
he had more discretion and less wit, he might have prospered. His
tragedies, "Pyrrhus," "Boadicea," and "Friendship improved," bear
traces of what he might have done. He has the merit, however, of not
being indecent,--a fact which the epilogue to "Boadicea," furnished
by a friend and spoken by a lady, rather deplores, and in indecent
language, regrets that uncleanness of jest is no longer acceptable to
the town!
Walker merits notice, less for his two pieces, "Victorious Love,"
and "Marry or do worse," than for the fact that this young Barbadian
was the first actor whom Eton school gave to the stage. He appeared,
when only eighteen, in the first-named piece, but quickly passed
away to the study of the law and the exercise of the latter as a
profession, in his native island. I know nothing worthy of record
of the few other gentlemen who wrote plays, rather as a relaxation
than a vocation, save that Boyer, a refugee Huguenot, like Motteux,
and a learned man, adapted Racine's "Iphigenia in Aulis," for
representation; that Oldmixon was an old, unscrupulous, party-writer;
and that Crauford was historiographer for Scotland to Queen Anne, and
has left no name of note among dramatic writers.
FOOTNOTES:
[51] "Valentinian" was probably produced in 1684.
[52] The Bond was entered into in 1663.
[53] Genest says that "Bellamira" is by far the best of Sedley's
plays.
[54] Should be 1671.
[55] This is, of course, satirically said by the author.
[56] The Edict of Nantes was not revoked till 1685. Motteux was born
in 1660.
[57] _Biographia Dramatica._
[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT.]