PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS.
The men who took up dramatic authorship seriously as a vocation,
during the last half of the seventeenth century, amount to something
more than two dozen. They begin with Davenant and Dryden; include
Tate and Brady,[58] Lee and Otway, Wycherley, Congreve, Cibber, and
Vanbrugh; and conclude with Farquhar, and with Rowe.
I include Sir John Vanbrugh because he preferred fame as an author to
fame as an architect, and I insert Congreve, despite the reflection
that the ghost of that writer would daintily protest against it if
he could. When Voltaire called upon him, in London, the Frenchman
intimated that his visit was to the "author." "I am a _gentleman_,"
said Congreve. "Nay," rejoined the former, "had you been only a
gentleman, you would never have received a visit from me at all."
Let me here repeat the names:--_Davenant_, _Dryden_, Shirley, Lee,
Cowley, _Shadwell_, Flecknoe, Settle, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Wycherley,
Otway, Durfey, Banks, Rymer, _Tate_, Brady, Southerne, Congreve,
_Cibber_, Dilke,[59] Vanbrugh, Gildon, Farquhar, Dennis, and _Rowe_.
The half dozen in italics were poets-laureate.
All of them were sons of "gentlemen," save three, Davenant, Cowley,
and Dennis, whose sires were, respectively, a vintner, a hatter,[60]
and a saddler. The sons, however, received a collegiate education.
Cowley distinguished himself at Cambridge, but Davenant left Oxford
without a degree, and from the former University Dennis was expelled,
in March 1680, "for assaulting and wounding Sir Glenham with a sword."
Besides Cowley and Dennis, we are indebted to Cambridge for Dryden,
Lee, and Rymer. From Oxford University came Davenant, and Settle,
degreeless as Davenant, with Shirley, whose mole on his cheek had
rendered him ineligible in Laud's eyes, for ordination; Wycherley,
Otway, Southerne, and Dilke. Dublin University yielded Tate and
Brady; and better fruit still, Southerne,[61] Congreve, who went to
Ireland at an early age, and Farquhar. Douay gave us Gildon, and we
are not proud of the gift.
Lee, Otway, and Tate were sons of clergymen. Little Crowne's
father was an Independent minister in Nova Scotia, and Crowne
himself laid claim, fruitlessly, to a vast portion of the territory
there--unjustly made over by the English Government to the French.
Cibber was an artist, on the side of his father the statuary, and a
"gentleman" by his mother.
It may be said of a good number of these gentlemen that idleness and
love of pleasure made them dramatic poets. Shadwell, Ravenscroft,
Wycherley, Durfey, Bankes, Southerne, Congreve, and Rowe, were all
apprenticed to the law; but the study was one too dull for men of
their vivacious temperament, and they all turned from it in disgust.
According to their success, so were they praised or blamed.
The least successful dramatists on the above list were the most
presumptuous of critics. Rymer, who was wise enough to stick to the
law while he endeavoured to turn at least Melpomene to good account,
tried to persuade the public that Shakspeare was even of less merit
than it was the fashion to assign to him. In 1678,[62] Rymer boldly
asserted that "in the neighing of a horse as the growling of a
mastiff, there is a meaning; there is as lively expression and, may
I say, more humanity than many times in the tragical flights of
Shakspeare." He says, that "no woman bred out of a pigstye could
talk so meanly as Desdemona," in that tragedy which Rymer calls "a
bloody farce without salt or savour." Of Brutus and Cæsar, he says
Shakspeare has depicted them as "Jack Puddins." To show how much
better he understood the art, Rymer published, in 1678, the tragedy
he could not get represented, "Edgar, or the English Monarch." He
professes to imitate the ancients, and his tragedy is in rhyme;
he accuses Shakspeare of anachronisms, and his Saxon princess is
directed to "pull off her patches!" The author was ambitious enough
to attempt to supersede Shakspeare, and he pooh-poohed John Milton
by speaking of _Paradise Lost_ as "a thing which some people were
pleased to call a poem."
Dennis was not quite so audacious as this. He was a better critic
than the author of the _Foedera_, and a more voluminous writer, or
rather adapter, of dramatic pieces. He spoke, however, of Tasso
as compassionately as the village-painter did of Titian; but his
usefulness was acknowledged by the commentator, who remarked that men
might construct good plays by following his precepts and avoiding
his examples. Boyer has said something similar of Gildon, who was a
critic as well as dramatist--namely, "he wrote an _English Art of
Poetry_, which he had practised himself very unsuccessfully in his
dramatic performances."
Cowley, although he is now little remembered as a dramatic writer,
was among the first who seized the earliest opportunity after the
Restoration to set up as playwrights; but Cowley failed, and was
certainly mortified at his failure. He re-trimmed a play of his
early days, the "Guardian," and called it the "Cutter of Coleman
Street." All there is broad farce, in which the Puritan "congregation
of the spotless" is coarsely ridiculed, and cavalierism held up to
admiration. The audience condemned the former as "profane," and
Cowley's cavaliers were found to be such scamps that he was suspected
of disloyalty. Gentle as he was by nature, Cowley was irritable
under criticism. "I think there was something of faction against
it," he says, "by the early appearance of some men's disapprobation
before they had seen enough of it to build their dislike upon their
judgment." "Profane!" exclaims Abraham, with a shudder, and declares
it is enough to "knock a man down." Is it profane, he asks, "to
deride the hypocrisy of those men whose skulls are not yet bare
upon the gates since the public and just punishment of it," namely,
profanity. Thus were the skulls of the Commonwealth leaders tossed
up in comedy. He adds, in a half saucy, half deprecatory sort of
way, that "there is no writer but may fail sometimes in point of
wit, and it is no less frequent for the auditors to fail in point of
judgment." Nevertheless, he had humbly asked favour at the hands of
the critics when his piece was first played, in these words:--
"Gentlemen critics of Argier,
For your own int'rest, I'd advise ye here
To let this little forlorn hope go by
Safe and untouch'd. 'That must not be!' you'll cry.
If ye be wise, it must: I'll tell ye why.
There are 7, 8, 9,--stay, there are behind
Ten plays at least, which wait but for a wind
And the glad news that we the enemy miss;
And those are all your own, if you spare this.
Some are but new-trimm'd up, others quite new,
Some by known shipwrights built, and others too
By that great author made, whoe'er he be,
That styles himself 'Person of Quality.'"
The "Cutter" rallied a little, and then was laid aside; but some
of its spars were carried off by later gentlemen, who have piqued
themselves on their originality. Colonel Jolly's advice to the bully,
Cutter, if he would not be known, to "take one more disguise at last,
and put thyself in the habit of a gentleman," has been quoted as
the wit of Sheridan, who took his Sir Anthony Absolute from Truman,
_senior_. And when Cowley made Aurelia answer to the inquiry, if she
had looked in Lucia's eye, that she had, and that "there were pretty
babies in it," he little thought that there would rise a Tom Moore to
give a turn to the pretty idea, and spoil it, as he has done, in the
"Impromptu," in _Little's Poems_.
One of the most remarkable circumstances in Cowley's character,
considering how he distinguished himself at college, is, that he
never thoroughly understood the rules of grammar! and that in
seriously setting up for a dramatic author, he took, like Dryden, the
course in which he acquired the least honour. When Charles II., on
hearing of Cowley's death, declared that he had not left a better man
behind him in England, the King was, assuredly, not thinking of the
poet as a dramatist.
Several of Cowley's contemporaries who were considered better men
by some judges, were guilty of offence from which he was entirely
free. That offence consisted in their various attempts to improve
Shakspeare, by lowering him to what they conceived to be the taste
of the times. Davenant took "Measure for Measure," and "Much Ado
about Nothing," and manipulated them into one absurd comedy, the
"Law against Lovers." He subsequently _improved_ "Macbeth" and
"Julius Cæsar;"[63] and Dryden, who with at least some show of
reason, re-arranged "Troilus and Cressida," united with Davenant in a
sacrilegious destruction of all that was beautiful in the "Tempest."
Nat Lee, who was accounted mad, had at least sense enough to refrain
from marring Shakspeare. Shadwell corrected the great poet's view
of "Timon of Athens," which, as he not too modestly observed, he
"made into a play;" but, with more modesty in the epilogue, he asked
for forgiveness for his own part, for the sake of the portion that
was Shakspeare's. Crowne, more impudently, remodelled two parts of
"Henry VI.," with some affectation of reverence for the original
author, and a bold assertion of his own original merits with regard
to some portions of the play. Crowne's originality is shown, in
making Clifford swear like a drunken tapster, and in affirming
that a king is a king--sacred, and not to be even _thought_ ill
of, let him be never so hateful a miscreant. Ravenscroft, in _his_
"Titus Andronicus," only piled the agony a little more solidly
and comically, and can be hardly said to have thereby molested
Shakspeare. There was less excuse for Otway, who, not caring to do
as he pleased with a doubtful play, ruthlessly seized "Romeo and
Juliet," stripped the lovers of their romance, clapped them into a
classical costume, and converted the noble but obstinate houses of
Capulet and Montagu into riotous followers of Marius and Sylla--Caius
Marius the younger wishing he were a glove upon the hand of Lavinia
Metella, and a sententious Sulpitius striving in vain to be as light
and sparkling as Mercutio. Tate's double rebuke to Shakspeare, in
altering his "King Lear" and "Coriolanus," was a small offence
compared with Otway's assault. He undertook, as he says, to "rectify
what was wanting;" and accordingly, he abolishes the faithful fool,
makes a pair of silly lovers of Edgar and Cordelia, and converts
the solemn climax into comedy, by presenting the old king and his
matchless daughter, hand in hand, alive and merry, as the curtain
descends. Tate smirkingly maintained, that he wrought into perfection
the rough and costly material left by Shakspeare. "In my humble
opinion," said Addison, "it has lost half its beauty;" and yet
Tate's version kept its place for many years!--though not so long
as Cibber's version of "Richard III.," which was constructed out
of Shakspeare, with more regard for the actor than respect for the
author.
In the last year of the century, the last attempt to improve that
inefficient poet was made by Gildon, who produced at Lincoln's
Inn Fields _his_ idea of what "Measure for Measure" should be, by
omitting all the comic characters, introducing music and dancing,
transposing incidents, adding much nonsense of his own to that
of Davenant, and sprinkling all with an assortment of blunders,
amusing enough to make some compensation for the absence of the comic
characters in the original play.
It seemed to be the idea of these men, that it were wise to reduce
Shakspeare to the capacities of those who could appreciate him. There
_were_ unhappy persons thus afflicted. Even Mr. Pepys speaks of
"Henry VIII." as "a simple thing, made up of a great many patches."
The "Tempest," he thinks, "has no great wit--but yet good, above
ordinary plays." "Othello" was to him "a mean thing," compared
with the last new comedy by another author. "Twelfth Night," "one
of the weakest plays I ever saw on the stage." "Macbeth," he liked
or disliked, according to the humour of the hour; but there was a
"divertissement" in it, which struck him as being a droll thing in
tragedy, but in this case proper and natural! Finally, he records,
in 1662, of the "Midsummer's Night's Dream," which he "had never
seen before, nor ever shall again," that "it is the most insipid,
ridiculous play, that ever I saw in my life."
Of the characteristics of the chief of these dramatists, it may be
said, first of Davenant, that, if he was quick of fancy and careful
in composition, the result is not answerable to the labour expended
on it. One of the pleasantest features about Dryden was, that as he
grew old he increased in power; but his heart was untouched by his
own magic, and he was but a cold reader of the best of his own works.
Lee, as tender and impassioned as he is often absurd and bombastic,
was an exquisite reader of what he wrote, his heart acknowledging
the charm. Shadwell's characters have the merit of being well
conceived, and strongly marked; and Shirley (a poet belonging to
an earlier period), has only a little above the measure of honour
due to him, when he is placed on a level with Fletcher. Crowne is
more justly placed in the third rank of dramatists; but he had
originality, lacking the power to give it effect. Ravenscroft had
neither invention nor expression; yet he was a most prolific writer,
a caricaturist, but without truth or refinement; altogether unclean.
Wycherley, on the other hand, was admirable for the epigrammatic turn
of his stage conversations, the aptness of his illustrations, the
acuteness of his observation, the richness of his character-painting,
and the smartness of his satire; in the indulgence or practice of all
which, however, the action of the drama is often impeded, that the
audience may enjoy a shower of sky rockets.
Pope said that Wycherley was inspired by the Muses, with the wit of
Plautus. He had, indeed, "Plautus' wit," and an obscenity rivalling
that of the "Curculio;" but he had none of the pathos which is to be
found in the "Rudens." But Wycherley was also described as having the
"art of Terence and Menander's fire." If by the first, Pope meant
skill in invention of plot, Wycherley surpassed the Carthaginian;
and as to "Menander's fire," in Wycherley it was no purifying fire;
and Wesley was not likely to illustrate a sermon by a quotation from
Wycherley, as St. Paul did by citing a line from Menander.
We are charmed by the humour of Wycherley; but after that, posterity
disagrees with Pope's verdict. We are _not_ instructed by the sense
of Wycherley, nor swayed by his judgment, nor warmed honestly by
his spirit; his unblushing profligacy ruins all. But if his men and
women are as coarse as Etherege's or Sedley's, they are infinitely
more clever people; so clever, indeed, that Sheridan has not been too
proud to borrow "good things" from some of them. Wycherley is perhaps
more natural and consistent than Congreve, whose Jeremy speaks like
an oracle, and is as learned, though not so nasty as his master. It
may be, that for a man to enjoy Congreve's wit, he should be as witty
as Congreve. To me, it seems to shine at best but as a brilliant
on a dirty finger. As for his boasted originality, Valentine and
Trapbois are Don Juan and M. Dimanche; and as for Valentine, as the
type of a gentleman, his similes smack more of the stable-yard than
the drawing-room; and there is more of impertinent prattle generally
among his characters than among those of Wycherley. His ladies are a
shade more elegant than those of the latter poet; but they are mere
courtezans, brilliant, through being decked with diamonds; but not
a jot the more virtuous or attractive on that account. Among the
comedy-writers of this half century, however, Congreve and Wycherley
stand supreme; they were artists; too many of their rivals or
successors were but coarse daubers.
In coarseness of sentiment the latter could not go beyond their
prototypes; and in the expression of it, they had neither the wit
of their greatest, nor the smartness of their less famous masters.
This coarseness dates, however, from earlier days than those of the
Restoration; and Dryden, who remembered the immorality of Webster's
comedies, seems to have thought that the Restoration was to give the
old grossness to the stage, as well as a new king to the country.
It is, nevertheless, certain, that a large portion of the public
protested against this return to an evil practice, and hissed his
first piece, "The Wild Gallant," played in the little theatre in Vere
Street, Drury Lane, in 1662. "It was not indecent enough for them,"
said the poet, who promised "not to offend in the way of modesty
again." His "Kind Keeper, or Mr. Limberham," under which name the
Duke of Lauderdale is said to have been satirised, and which Dryden
held to be his best comedy, was utterly condemned. "Ah!" said he, "it
was damned by a cabal of keepers!" It never occurred to him that the
public might prefer wit to immorality. Long before, he had written an
unseemly piece, called "The Rival Ladies;" he seasoned it in what he
maintained was the taste of the town, and in a prologue--prologues
then were often savagely defiant of the opinions of the audience,
asserted his own judgment by saying:--
"He's bound to please, not to write well, and knows
There is a mode in plays as well as clothes."
I do not know how true it may be that Dryden, the coarsest of
dramatic writers, was "the modestest of men in conversation;" but
I have small trust in the alleged purity of a writer who stooped
to gratify the baser feelings of an audience, according to their
various degrees; who could compose for one class the filthy dish
served up in his "Wild Gallant," and for another the more dangerous,
if more refined, fare for youthful palates, so carefully manipulated
in the Alexis and Cælia song, in his "Mariage à la Mode."
We must not forget, indeed, that the standard of morals was different
at that time from what it is now. Later in the half century, Jeremy
Collier especially attacked Congreve and Wycherley, as men who
applied their natural gifts to corrupt instead of purify the stage.
The public too were scandalised at passages in Congreve's "Double
Dealer," a comedy of which the author said "the mechanical part was
perfect."[64] The play was not a success, and the fault was laid to
its gross inuendoes, and its plainer indecency. "I declare," says the
author, in the preface, "that I took a particular care to avoid it,
and if they find any, it is of their own making, for I did not design
it to be so understood."
This point, on which the author and the public were at issue, proves
that on the part of the latter the standard was improving--for
Congreve is deep in the mire before the first scene is over. He had
looked for censure for other offence, and says in his usual lofty
manner with the critics:--"I would not have anybody imagine that I
think this play without its faults, for I am conscious of several,
and ready to own 'em; but it shall be to those who are able to find
'em out." This is not ill said. For the critics there was at least
as much contempt as fear. In "The Country Wife," Wycherley speaks of
"the most impudent of creatures, an ill poet, or what is yet more
impudent, a second-hand critic!" The less distinguished writers were,
of course, severer still against the critics.
In later years, Sheridan expressed the greatest contempt for such
part of the public as found that the grossness of Congreve was not
compensated for by his wit. Sheridan avowed that Congreve must be
played unmutilated or be shelved. He compared his great predecessor
to a horse whose vice is cured at the expense of his vigour.
Sheridan must, nevertheless, have felt that he was in error with
regard to these old authors. In his "Trip to Scarborough," which
is an entire recasting of Vanbrugh's "Relapse," he makes Loveless
(Smith) say, "It would surely be a pity to exclude the productions
of some of our best writers for want of a little wholesome pruning,
which might be effected by any one who possessed modesty enough to
believe that we should preserve all we can of our deceased authors,
at least, till they are outdone by the living ones."
Dryden said of Congreve's "Double Dealer," that though it was
censured by the greater part of the town, it was approved of by those
best qualified to judge. The people who had a sense of decency were
derided by Dryden; they were angry, he insinuated, only because the
satire touched them nearly. Applying the grossest terms to women,
in a letter to Walsh, he protests that they are incensed because
Congreve exposes their vices, and that the gallants are equally
enraged because their vices, too, are exposed; but even if it were
true that Congreve copied from nature, it is also true that he laughs
_with_ his vicious and brilliant bad men and women, makes a joke of
vice, and never attempts to correct it.
Dryden, as an erst Westminster boy and Cambridge man, may have
felt some annoyance on the exposure of his false quantity in the
penultimate of "Cleomenes," but to a pert coffee-house fop, who
presumed to review his tragedy of that name, he could deliver a
crushing reply. In that play Cleomenes virtuously resists the
blandishments of Cassandra. "Had I been left alone with a young
beauty," said a stripling critic to glorious John, "I would not have
spent my time like your Spartan." "That, sir," said Dryden, "perhaps
is true; but give me leave to tell you, you are no hero!" Good as
this is, Lee said even a better thing to the coxcomb who visited
him in Bedlam, during Lee's four years sojourn there. "It is an
easy thing," observed this fellow, "to write like a madman." "No,"
answered Lee, "it is not an easy thing to write like a madman; but it
is very easy to write like a fool."
Dryden, however, could criticise himself with justness. He confessed
that he was not qualified to write comedies. He saw, too, the
defects in his tragedies. He was ashamed of his "Tyrannic Love,"
and laughed at the rant and fustian of his Maximin. He allowed that
in his "Conquest of Granada" the sublimity burst into burlesque,
and he could censure the extravagance of Almanzor as freely as he
did the bombast of Maximin. Still he was uneasy under censure; he
was disappointed at the reception given to his "Assignation," and
complained bitterly of the critics, especially of Settle. His best
defender was Charles II. Some courtiers ventured to wonder at the
King going so often to see "The Spanish Friar," as the piece was a
wholesale robbery. "Odds fish!" exclaimed Charles, "select me another
such a comedy,[65] and I'll go and see it as often as I do 'The
Spanish Friar.'" "All for Love" is Dryden's most carefully written
play, and the author repeatedly declared that the scene in Act I.,
between Anthony and Ventidius, was superior to anything he had ever
composed.
Dryden attributed whatever merit he had as a writer of prose to
having studied the works of Tillotson, and the prelate, it will be
remembered, owed some of his graces of delivery to Betterton. In his
comedies, Dryden was the encourager, not the scourger of vice; and
yet he could warmly approve the purity of Southerne, when Southerne
chose to be pure, and acknowledge that it were as politic to silence
vicious poets as seditious preachers. If there were few good poets
in his day, Dryden sees the cause in the turbulence of the times;
and if people loved the stilted nonsense of heroic tragedies, it was
simply, he says, because "the fashion was set them by the court." To
court-protection, he himself owed much, and he states what one may
smile at now, that the King's kindness, in calling the "Maiden Queen"
_his_ play,--that singular piece, in which there are eight women and
three men, saved the drama from the malice of the poet's enemies.
There is no such privilege for poets in our days!
Had Shadwell, who left the law to find a livelihood by literature,
not been a Whig, we should have heard less of him in parallels or
contrasts with Dryden. Of his dramatic pieces, amounting to about a
dozen and a half, there is scarcely one that does not please more in
perusal than any by the poet of the greater name,--always excepting
Dryden's "Love for Love." Shadwell's "Squire of Alsatia," "Bury
Fair," "Epsom Wells," and some others, were necessarily favourites
with _his_ public, as they are good character comedies, brisk with
movement and incident. For attacking Dryden's "Duke of Guise,"
Dryden pilloried the assailant for ever, as "Mac Flecnoe;" but when
he says that "Shadwell never deviates into sense," he has as little
foundation for his assertion as he has for his contempt of Wilmot,
when he says in the _Essay upon Satire_, "Rochester I despise for
want of wit." Rochester may have praised Shadwell because he hated
Dryden; but Dryden's aspersions on the other two spring decidedly
more from his passion than his judgment. To Shadwell was given the
laureateship of which Dryden was deprived. The latter would have
borne the deprivation better if the laurel-crown had fallen on
another head, as he sings to Congreve:
"Oh that your brows my laurel had sustained;
Well had I been depos'd, if you had reigned!"
In one respect, Dryden was no match at all for Shadwell; and, indeed,
he has, inadvertently, confessed as much. When speaking of his
incapacity for writing comedy, he says, "I want that gaiety of humour
which is required in it; my conversation slow and dull; my humour
saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour
to break jests in company, and endeavour to make repartees; so that
those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point
of profit; reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall
pretend." This is the picture of a dull man, of which Shadwell, whose
comedies, to say the least of them, have as much merit as Dryden's,
was the exact opposite. He was a most brilliant talker; and Rochester
remarked of him that even had Shadwell burnt all he wrote, and only
printed all he spoke, his wit and humour would be found to exceed
that of any other poet.
We come, however, to a greater than Shadwell, in Sir John Vanbrugh,
who belongs to two centuries, and who was a man of many occupations,
but a dramatist by predilection. He was architect, poet, wit, herald;
he stole some of his plots; and he sold his office of Clarencieux,
to which he had been appointed, _because_ he was a successful
playwright. He had humour, and was exceedingly coarse; but, says
Schlegel, "under Queen Anne, manners became again more decorous;
and this may be easily traced in the comedies. In the series of
English comic poets, Wycherley, Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, Steele,
Cibber, &c., we may perceive something like a gradation from the
most unblushing indecency to a tolerable degree of modesty." This,
however, is only partly true; and Schlegel himself remarks in the
same page, "that after all we know of the licentiousness of manners
under Charles II., we are still lost in astonishment at the audacious
ribaldry of Wycherley and Congreve."
Of Vanbrugh's ten or eleven plays, that which has longest kept
the stage is the "Relapse," still acted, in its altered form, by
Sheridan, as the "Trip to Scarborough." This piece was produced
at the Theatre de l'Odeon, in Paris, in the spring of 1862, as
a posthumous comedy of Voltaire's! It was called the "Comte de
Boursoufle," and had a "run." The story ran with it that Voltaire had
composed it in his younger days for private representation, that it
had been more than once played in the houses of his noble friends,
under various titles, that he had then locked it up, and that the
manuscript had only recently been discovered by the lucky individual
who persuaded the manager of the Odeon to produce it on his stage!
The bait took. All the French theatrical world in the capital flocked
to the Faubourg St. Germain to witness a new play by Voltaire.
Critics examined the plot, philosophised on its humour, applauded
its absurdities, enjoyed its wit, and congratulated themselves on
the circumstance that the Voltairean wit especially was as enjoyable
then as in the preceding century! Of the authorship they had no doubt
whatever; for, said they, if Voltaire did not write this piece,
who _could_ have written it? The reply was given at once from this
country; but when the mystification was exposed, the French critics
gave no sign of awarding honour where honour was due, and probably
this translation of the "Relapse" may figure in future French
editions as an undoubted work by Voltaire!
On looking back upon the names of these authors by profession,
the brightest still is Otway's, of whom his critical biographers
have said that, in tragedy, few English poets ever equalled him.
His comedies are certainly detestable; but of his tragedies,
"Venice Preserved" alone is ever now played. The "Orphan" is read;
"Alcibiades," "Don Carlos," "Titus and Berenice" are all forgotten.
Successful as he is in touching the passions, and eminently so
in dealing with ardent love, Otway, I think, is inferior to Lee,
occasionally, in the latter respect. Of Lee, Mrs. Siddons entertained
the greatest admiration, notwithstanding his bombast, and she read
his "Theodosius, or the Force of Love," with such feeling, as to at
once wring sighs from the heart and tears from the eyes. She saw in
Lee's poetry a very rare quality, or, as Campbell remarks, "a much
more frequent capability for stage effect than a mere reader would
be apt to infer from the superabundance of the poet's extravagance."
Let it not be forgotten that Addison accuses Lee _and Shakspeare_
of a spurious sublimity; and, he adds, that "in these authors, the
affectation of greatness often hurts the perspicuity of style!"
The professional authors were not equally successful. Davenant
achieved a good estate, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, like a
gentleman. Dryden, with less to bequeath, was interred in the same
place, without organ or ceremony, two choristers walking before the
body, candle in hand, and singing an ode of Horace--like a poet. His
victim, Tom Shadwell, acquired wealth fairly; he lies in Chelsea
Church, but his son raised a monument to his memory in the Abbey that
he might be in thus much as great a man as his satirist. Congreve,
too, is there, after enjoying a greater fortune than the others
together had ever built up, and leaving £10,000 of it to Henrietta,
Duchess of Marlborough, who so valued the "honour and pleasure of
his company" when living, that, as the next best thing, she sat of
an evening with his "wax figure" after he was dead. Among the dead
there, also, rest Cibber, Vanbrugh, and Rowe, of whom the first, too
careless of his money affairs, died the poorest man.
Better men than either of the last sleep in humbler graves. Poor
Nat Lee, tottering homeward from the Bull and Harrow, on a winter's
night, and with more punch under his belt than his brain could bear,
falls down in the snow, near Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields,
and is dead when he is picked up. _He_ is shuffled away to St.
Clement's Danes. If Lee died tipsy, outside a public-house, Otway
died half-starved, within one, at the Bull, on Tower Hill. The merits
of Lee and Otway might have carried them to Westminster, but their
misfortunes barred the way thither. Almost as unfortunate, Settle
died, after hissing in a dragon at Bartholomew Fair, a recipient of
the charity of the Charter-house. Crowne died in distress, just as
he hoped his "Sir Courtly Nice" would have placed him at his ease.
Wycherley, with less excuse, died more embarrassed than Crowne, or
would have done so had he not robbed his young wife of her portion,
made it over to his creditors, and left her little wherewith to bury
him in the churchyard in Covent Garden. Two other poets, who passed
away unencumbered by a single splendid shilling, rest in St. James's,
Westminster--Tom Durfey and Bankes. Careless, easy, free, and
fuddling Tate, died in the sanctuary of the Mint; and St. George's,
Southwark, gave him a few feet of earth; while Brady pushed his way
at court to preferment, and died a comfortable pluralist and chaplain
to Caroline, Princess of Wales. Farquhar, with all his wit, died a
broken-hearted beggar, at the age of thirty-seven; and Dennis, who
struggled forty years longer with fortune, came to the same end,
utterly destitute of all but the contemptuous pity of his foes, and
the insulting charity of Pope.
I think that, of the whole brotherhood, Southerne, after he left the
army and had sown his wild oats, was the most prudent, and not the
least successful. He was a perfect gentleman; he did not lounge away
his days or nights in coffee-houses or taverns, but after labour,
cultivated friendship in home circles, where virtue and moderate
mirth sat at the hearth. In his bag-wig, his black velvet dress, his
sword, powder, brilliant buckles, and self-possession, Southerne
charmed his company, wherever he visited, even at fourscore. He kept
the even tenor of his way, owing no man anything; never allowing
his nights to be the marrer of his mornings; and at six and eighty
carrying a bright eye, a steady hand, a clear head, and a warm
heart--wherewith to calmly meet and make surrender of all to the
Inevitable Angel.
As Southerne originally wrote "Oroonoko," that tragedy could not now
be represented. The mixture of comic scenes with tragic is not its
worst fault. His comedies are of no worth whatever, except as they
illustrate the manners and habits of his times. They more closely
resemble those of Ravenscroft than of Congreve or Wycherley. His
"Sir Anthony Love" was successful; it is impossible to conjecture
wherefore. It has not a wise sentiment or a happy saying in it;
and all to be learned from it is, that Englishmen, when abroad, in
those days, used to herd together in self-defence, against being
cheated; that they were too wise to learn anything by travel; and
were fond of passing themselves off as having made a campaign. As
Cowley anticipated Moore, in the "Cutter," so, in "Sir Anthony,"
has Southerne anticipated Burns. "Of the King's creation," says the
supposed Sir Anthony to Count Verola, "you may be; but he who makes a
count, never made a man." There is the same sentiment improved in the
well-known lines:
"A king may mak' a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Gude faith he canna fa' that."
Southerne was not more famous for the nicety of his costume than
"little starched Johnny Crowne" was for his stiff, long cravat; or
Dryden for his Norwich drugget suit, or his gayer dress in later
days, when, with sword and Chadrieux wig, he paraded the Mulberry
Garden with his Mistress Reeve--one of that marvellous company of
1672, which writers with long memories used to subsequently say could
never be got together again. Otway's thoughtful eye redeemed his
slovenly dress and his fatness, and seemed to warrant the story of
his repenting after his carousing. Lee dressed as ill as Otway, but
lacked his contemplative eye, yet excelled him in fair looks, and in
a peculiar luxuriance of hair.
Shaftesbury, in his "Characteristics," shows us how the play-house
authors throned it in coffee-houses, and were worshipped by small
wits. There were, however, dramatic authors who never went thither;
and of these, the ladies, I have now to speak.
[Illustration: Mrs. Barry and Mr Garrick in "The Wonder."]
FOOTNOTES:
[58] Brady was in no sense a professional dramatic author.
[59] I doubt if Dilke is correctly included in this category.
[60] A grocer. (Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_.)
[61] Southerne is said to have been at Oxford and Dublin Universities.
[62] This is a quotation from Rymer's second work, "A Short View of
Tragedy," published in 1693.
[63] Whether Davenant altered "Julius Cæsar" is somewhat doubtful.
[64] Congreve (ed. 1774) merely says that it was _regular_.
[65] "_Steal_ me another such."
[Illustration: MRS. CENTLIVRE.]