DRAMATIC POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS.
After Dryden, the metrical dramatists of the Restoration, as of other
epochs, may be accurately divided into two classes, the poets and the
playwrights. As was to be expected in an age when even genuine poetry
drooped earthward, and prose seldom kindled into poetry, the latter
class was largely in the majority. Only three dramatists can justly
challenge the title of poet--Dryden, Otway, and Lee. In Dryden a mighty
fire, half choked with its own fuel, struggles gallantly against
extinction, and eventually evolves nearly as much flame as smoke. In
Otway a pure and delicate flame hovers fitfully over a morass; in Lee
the smothered fire breaks out, as Pope said of Lucan and Statius, 'in
sudden, brief, and interrupted flashes.' Dryden was incomparably the
most vigorous of the three, but Otway was the only born dramatist, and
the little of genuine dramatic excellence that he has wrought claims a
higher place than the more dazzling productions of his contemporary.
[Sidenote: Otway (1651-1685).]
Thomas Otway, son of the vicar of Woolbeding, was born at Trotton, near
Midhurst, in Sussex, March 3rd, 1651. He was educated at Winchester and
Christchurch, but (perhaps driven by necessity, for he says in the
dedication to _Venice Preserved_, 'A steady faith, and loyalty to my
prince was all the inheritance my father left me') forsook the latter
ere his academical course was half completed to try his fortune as a
performer on the stage, where he entirely failed. His first play,
_Alcibiades_ (1675), a poor piece, served to introduce him to Rochester
and other patrons; and in the following year _Don Carlos_, founded upon
the novel by Saint Real, obtained, partly by the support of Rochester,
with whom Otway soon quarrelled, a striking success, and is said to have
produced more than any previous play. Two translations from the French
followed; next (1678) came the unsuccessful comedy of _Friendship in
Fashion_, and in 1680 _Caius Marius_, an audacious plagiarism from
_Romeo and Juliet_. In the interim Otway had made trial of a military
career, but the regiment in which he had obtained a commission was
speedily disbanded, his pay was withheld, and he had to support himself
by plundering Shakespeare. In the same year in which he had stooped so
low he proved his superiority to all contemporary dramatists by his
tragedy of _The Orphan_, in which he first displayed the pathos by which
he has merited the character of the English Euripides. Johnson remarks
that Otway 'conceived forcibly, and drew originally, by consulting
nature in his own breast;' and it is known that he experienced the pangs
of a seven years' unrequited passion for the beautiful actress, Mrs.
Barry. In 1681 he produced _The Soldier's Fortune_, a comedy chiefly
interesting for its allusions to his own military experiences. According
to Downes, its success was extraordinary, and brought both profit and
reputation to the theatre. If it brought any of the former to the
author, this must have been soon exhausted, since in the dedication to
_Venice Preserved_ (1682) he speaks of himself as only rescued from the
direst want by the generosity of the Duchess of Portsmouth. For this
great play, as well as for _The Orphan_, he is said to have received a
hundred pounds. _The Atheist_, a second part of _The Soldier's Fortune_
(1684), was probably unproductive; and in April, 1685, Otway died on
Tower Hill, undoubtedly in distress, although, of the two accounts of
his death, that which ascribes it to a fever caught in pursuing an
assassin, is better authenticated than the more usual one which
represents him as choked by a loaf which he was devouring in a state of
ravenous hunger. Such a story, nevertheless, could not have obtained
credit if his circumstances had not been known to have been desperate.
It is not likely that he had much conduct or economy in his affairs, or
was endowed in any degree with the severer virtues. The tone of his
letters to Mrs. Barry, however, and the constancy of his seven years'
affection for her, seem to indicate a natural refinement of feeling, and
if there is truth in the dictum,
'He best can paint them, who can feel them most,'
the creator of Monimia and Belvidera must have been endowed with a heart
tender in no common degree. 'He was,' we are told, 'of middle size,
inclinable to corpulency, had thoughtful, yet lively, and as it were
speaking eyes.'
Otway's reputation rests entirely on his two great performances, _The
Orphan_ and _Venice Preserved_. His other plays deserve no special
notice, although _Don Carlos_, which is said to have for many years
attracted larger audiences than either of his masterpieces, might have
been a good play if it had not been written in rhyme. The action is
highly dramatic, and the characters, though artless, are not
ineffective; but the pathos in which the poet excelled is continually
disturbed by the bombastic couplets, ever trembling on the brink of the
ridiculous. The remorse of Philip after the murder of his wife and son
is as grotesque an instance of the forcible feeble as could easily be
found, and is a melancholy instance indeed of the declension of the
English drama, when contrasted with the demeanour of Othello in similar
circumstances. Otway, however, was yet to show that his faults were
rather his age's than his own. The fashion of rhyme must have had much
to do with the bombast of _Don Carlos_, for in _The Orphan_, his next
effort in serious tragedy, there is hardly any rant, even when the
situation might have seemed to have excused the exaggerated expression
of emotion. The central incident of this admirable tragedy--the
deception of a maiden beloved by two brothers, through the personation
of the favoured one by his rival--seems now to be held to exclude it
from the stage. The objection would probably prove to be imaginary, for
the play was performed as late as 1819, when no less an actress than
Miss O'Neill represented Monimia, and the diction is in general of quite
exemplary propriety for a play of the period. Its principal defect as a
work of art is that the pathos springs almost solely from the situation,
and that the personages have hardly any hold upon our sympathies except
as sufferers from an unhappy fatality. So powerful is the situation,
nevertheless, that the sorrows of Castalio and Monimia can never fail to
move; the poet's language, too, is at its best, simpler and more remote
from extravagance than even in _Venice Preserved_. The description of
the old hag is justly celebrated:
'I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double,
Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself;
Her eyes with scalding rheum were galled and red;
Cold palsy shook her head, her hands seemed withered,
And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapt
The tattered remnant of an old striped hanging,
Which served to keep her carcase from the cold;
So there was nothing of a piece about her;
Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsely patched
With different coloured rags, black, red, white, yellow,
And seemed to speak variety of wretchedness.'
There are also delightful touches of poetry:
'Oh, thou art tender all:
Gentle and kind as sympathizing nature!
When a sad story has been told, I've seen
Thy little breasts, with soft compassion swelled,
Shove up and down and heave like dying birds.'
The opening speech of act iv., sc. 2, also reveals a feeling for nature
unusual in Restoration poetry, and may be taken to symbolize Otway's
regrets for the country. The items of the description are in no way
conventional, and would not have occurred to one without experience of
rural life:
'Wished morning's come! And now upon the plains
And distant mountains, where they feed their flocks,
The happy shepherds leave their homely huts,
And with their pipes proclaim the new-born day.
The lusty swain comes with his well-filled scrip
Of healthful viands, which, when hunger calls,
With much content and appetite he eats,
To follow in the fields his daily toil,
And dress the grateful glebe that yields him fruits.
The beasts that under the warm hedges slept,
And weathered out the cold bleak night, are up,
And looking towards the neighbouring pastures, raise
Their voice, and bid their fellow-brutes good-morrow.
The cheerful birds, too, on the tops of trees
Assemble all in quires, and with their notes
Salute and welcome up the rising sun.
There's no condition here so cursed as mine.'
_Venice Preserved_, Otway's most memorable work, though inferior in mere
poetry and unstudied simplicity to _The Orphan_, surpasses it in tragic
grandeur, in variety of action, and in intensity of interest. It has the
further great advantage that the interest does not entirely arise from
the situation, but that at least one of the characters is a skilful
piece of painting from the life, and very probably from the author. In
Jaffier we have a vivid portrait of the man who is entirely governed by
the affections, and who sways from ardent resolution to a weakness
hardly distinguishable from treachery, as friendship and love
alternately incline him. The little we know of Otway warrants the
impression that he was such a man, and assuredly he could not have
excited such warm interest in a character so feeble in his offence, so
abject in his repentance, and in general so perilously verging on the
despicable, without a keen sympathy with the subject of his portrait.
_Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner._ Pierre, though an imposing
figure, is much less subtly painted than his friend; and Belvidera, her
husband's evil genius, interests only through her sorrows. The
'despicable scenes of low farce' which eke the drama out, are a grievous
blot upon it. M. Taine may be right in deeming some comic relief
allowable, but such trash is neither relief nor comedy. The language of
the serious portion of the play, however, is in general dignified and
tragic. Perhaps the best conducted, as it is the best known, is that in
which Pierre spurns the remorseful Jaffier:
'_Jaff._ I must be heard, I must have leave to speak.
Thou hast disgraced me, Pierre, by a vile blow:
Had not a dagger done thee nobler justice?
But use me as thou wilt, thou canst not wrong me,
For I am fallen beneath the basest injuries;
Yet look upon me with an eye of mercy,
With pity and with charity behold me;
Shut not thy heart against a friend's repentance,
But, as there dwells a godlike nature in thee,
Listen with mildness to my supplications.
_Pier._ What whining monk art thou? what holy cheat,
That wouldst encroach upon my credulous ears,
But cant'st thus vilely? Hence! I know thee not.
Dissemble and be nasty: leave me, hypocrite.
_Jaff._ Not know me, Pierre?
_Pier._ No, know thee not: what art thou?
_Jaff._ Jaffier, thy friend, thy once loved, valued friend,
Though now deservedly scorned, and used most hardly.
_Pier._ Thou Jaffier! thou my once loved, valued friend?
By Heavens, thou liest! The man so called, my friend,
Was generous, honest, faithful, just, and valiant,
Noble in mind, and in his person lovely,
Dear to my eyes and tender to my heart:
But thou, a wretched, base, false, worthless coward,
Poor even in soul, and loathsome in thy aspect;
All eyes must shun thee, and all hearts detest thee.
Pr'ythee avoid, nor longer cling thus round me,
Like something baneful, that my nature's chilled at.
_Jaff._ I have not wronged thee, by these tears I have not,
But still am honest, true, and hope, too, valiant;
My mind still full of thee: therefore still noble.
Let not thy eyes then shun me, nor thy heart
Detest me utterly: oh, look upon me,
Look back and see my sad, sincere submission!
How my heart swells, as even 'twould burst my bosom,
Fond of its goal, and labouring to be at thee!
What shall I do--what say to make thee hear me?
_Pier._ Hast thou not wronged me? Dar'st thou call thyself
Jaffier, that once loved, valued friend of mine,
And swear thou hast not wronged me? Whence these chains?
Whence the vile death which I may meet this moment?
Whence this dishonour, but from thee, thou false one?
_Jaff._ All's true, yet grant one thing, and I've done asking.
_Pier._ What's that?
_Jaff._ To take thy life on such conditions
The Council have proposed: thou and thy friends
May yet live long, and to be better treated.
_Pier._ Life! ask my life? confess! record myself
A villain, for the privilege to breathe,
And carry up and down this cursed city
A discontented and repining spirit,
Burthensome to itself, a few years longer,
To lose it, may be, at last in a lewd quarrel
For some new friend, treacherous and false as thou art!
No, this vile world and I have long been jangling,
And cannot part on better terms than now,
When only men like thee are fit to live in't.
_Jaff._ By all that's just--
_Pier._ Swear by some other powers,
For thou hast broke that sacred oath too lately.
_Jaff._ Then, by that hell I merit, I'll not leave thee,
Till to thyself, at least, thou'rt reconciled,
However thy resentments deal with me.
_Pier._ Not leave me!
_Jaff._ No; thou shalt not force me from thee.
Use me reproachfully, and like a slave;
Tread on me, buffet me, heap wrongs on wrongs
On my poor head; I'll bear it all with patience,
Shall weary out thy most unfriendly cruelty:
Lie at thy feet and kiss them, though they spurn me,
Till, wounded by my sufferings, thou relent,
And raise me to thy arms with dear forgiveness.
_Pier._ Art thou not--
_Jaff._ What?
_Pier._ A traitor?
_Jaff._ Yes.
_Pier._ A villain?
_Jaff._ Granted.
_Pier._ A coward, a most scandalous coward,
Spiritless, void of honour, one who has sold
Thy everlasting fame for shameless life?
_Jaff._ All, all, and more, much more: my faults are numberless.
_Pier._ And wouldst thou have me live on terms like thine?
Base as thou'rt false--
_Jaff._ No; 'tis to me that's granted.
The safety of thy life was all I aimed at,
In recompense for faith and trust so broken.
_Pier._ I scorn it more, because preserved by thee:
And as when first my foolish heart took pity
On thy misfortunes, sought thee in thy miseries,
Relieved thy wants, and raised thee from thy state
Of wretchedness in which thy fate had plunged thee,
To rank thee in my list of noble friends,
All I received in surety for thy truth
Were unregarded oaths; and this, this dagger,
Given with a worthless pledge thou since hast stolen,
So I restore it back to thee again;
Swearing by all those powers which thou hast violated,
Never from this cursed hour to hold communion,
Friendship, or interest with thee, though our years
Were to exceed those limited the world.
Take it--farewell!--for now I owe thee nothing.
_Jaff._ Say thou wilt live then.
_Pier._ For my life, dispose it
Just as thou wilt, because 'tis what I'm tired with.
_Jaff._ O Pierre!
_Pier._ No more.
_Jaff._ My eyes won't lose the sight of thee,
But languish after thine, and ache with gazing.
_Pier._ Leave me.--Nay, then thus, thus I throw thee from me,
And curses, great as is thy falsehood, catch thee!'
[Sidenote: Nathaniel Lee (1653-1691).]
The only tragic dramatist of the age, after Dryden and Otway, who had
any pretension to rank as a poet, was Nathaniel Lee, and his claims are
not very high. Notwithstanding his absurd rants, however, there are fire
and passion in his verse which lift him out of the class of mere
playwrights. After receiving a Cambridge education, Lee came up to town
to seek his fortune. Thrown on the world, it is said, by the failure of
the Duke of Ormond to redeem his promises of patronage, Lee became an
actor, but obtained no success, although celebrated for the beauty of
his elocution as a dramatic reader. The transition from actor to author
was easy. Lee produced three bad rhyming plays in the taste of the time,
and in 1677 did himself more justice in _The Rival Queens_, a tragedy
on the history of Alexander the Great, which kept the stage for nearly a
century and a half. _Mithridates_ (1678) was also successful, and Dryden
thought sufficiently well of Lee to combine with him in the production
of an _Oedipus_, which continued to be acted until 1778, when the
situation, rather than the diction, was found unendurable. Kemble wished
to revive it so late as 1802, but was prevented by the reluctance of
Mrs. Siddons. It is true that on a modern stage the piece must want the
religious consecration which accompanied it on the Greek. Lee wrote on,
enjoying the notoriety of the prohibition by authority of his _Lucius
Junius Brutus_, in which allusions, merely imaginary, to the vices of
Charles II., were discovered by the Court, and regaining his lost favour
by the tragedy of _The Duke of Guise_ (1682), a play full of political
allusions, in which also Dryden had a hand. In 1684 he was disabled by
an attack of insanity, brought on, it is alleged, by his intemperate
habits; and although he recovered sufficiently to be released from
confinement, he wrote no more, his last two published plays being
compositions of an earlier date. He died miserably in returning from the
tavern on a winter's night, fallen down and stifled in the snow.
That Lee was a poet, a passage quoted by Mr. Saintsbury would prove, had
he written nothing else:
'Thou coward! yet
Art living? canst not, wilt not, find the road
To the great palace of magnificent death,
Though thousand ways lead to his thousand doors,
Which day and night are still unbarred for all?'
A variation of this thought in Lee's _Theodosius_ might well have
inspired Beckford with the conception of his Hall of Eblis, nor would it
be difficult to find other impressive passages. Lee's rants of mere
sound and fury are unfortunately much more frequent, and his
pre-eminence above all competitors in this line is so indisputable, that
it is no wonder if he is remembered by his gigantic faults rather than
by his comparatively tame and temperate merits. The following speech of
Roxana in _The Rival Queens_, for instance, is quite an average specimen
of her conversation:
'And shall the daughter of Darius hold him?
That puny girl? that ape of my ambition,
That cried for milk when I was nursed in blood?
Shall she, made up of watery element,
Ascend, shall she embrace my proper God,
While I am cast like lightning from his hand?
No, I must scorn to prey on common things.
Though hurled to earth by this disdainful Jove,
I will rebound to my own orb of fire,
And with the wrack of all the heavens expire.'
Even when the thought is dignified and noble, it frequently loses
dramatic propriety from want of keeping with the speaker or the
situation:
'Therefore, my friend,
Let us despise the torrent of the world,
Fortune, I mean, and dam her up with fences,
Banks, bulwarks, all the fortresses which virtue,
Resolved and manned like ours, can raise against her:
That, if she does o'erflow, she may at least
Bring but half ruin to our great designs;
That being at last ashamed of her own weakness,
Like a low-based flood, she may retire
To her own bounds, and we with pride o'erlook her.'
Into what Cato's mouth has Lee put this deliverance of Stoic dignity?
Truly, into Caesar Borgia's. Machiavelli having been privy to all
Borgia's villainies, is selected to pronounce the moral of the play:
'No power is safe, nor no religion good,
Whose principles of growth are laid in blood.'
A proposition supposed to have been irrefragably established by five
acts full of poniards and poisons. This childish want of nature Lee
shares with most of the tragic dramatists of the Restoration period. He
is mainly glare and gewgaw, and seldom succeeds but in those scenes of
passion and frenzy where extravagant declamation seems a natural
language. There is little to remark on his dramatic economy, which is
that of the French classical drama. His characters are boldly outlined
and strongly coloured, but transferred direct from history to the stage,
or wholly conventional. His merit is to have been really a poet. 'There
is an infinite fire in his works,' says Addison, 'but so involved in
smoke that it does not appear in half its lustre.' The following scene
from _Mithridates_ is a fair example of the mingled beauties and
blemishes of his tragic style:
'_Ziph._ Farewell, Semandra; O, if my father should
Fall back from virtue, ('tis an impious thought!)
Yet I must ask you, could you in my absence,
Solicited by power and charming empire,
And threaten'd too by death, forget your vows?
Could you, I say, abandon poor Ziphares,
Who midst of wounds and death would think on you;
And whatsoe'er calamity should come,
Would keep his love sacred to his Semandra,
Like balm, to heal the heaviest misfortune?
_Sem._ Your cruel question tears my very soul:
Ah, can you doubt me, Prince? a faith, like mine,
The softest passion that e'er woman wept;
But as resolv'd as ever man could boast:
Alas, why will you then suspect my truth?
Yet since it shews the fearfulness of love,
'Tis just I should endeavour to convince you:
Make bare your sword, my noble father, draw.
_Arch._ What would'st thou now?
_Sem._ I swear upon it, oh,
Be witness, Heav'n, and all avenging pow'rs,
Of the true love I give the Prince Ziphares:
When I in thought forsake my plighted faith,
Much less in act, for empire change my love;
May this keen sword by my own father's hand
Be guided to my heart, rip veins and arteries;
And cut my faithless limbs from this hack'd body,
To feast the ravenous birds, and beasts of prey.
_Arch._ Now, by my sword, 'twas a good hearty wish;
And, if thou play'st him false, this faithful hand
As heartily shall make thy wishes good.
_Ziph._ O hear mine too. If e'er I fail in aught
That love requires in strictest, nicest kind;
May I not only be proclaim'd a coward,
But be indeed that most detested thing.
May I, in this most glorious war I make,
Be beaten basely, ev'n by Glabrio's slaves,
And for a punishment lose both these eyes;
Yet live and never more behold Semandra. [_Trumpets._
_Arch._ Come, no more wishing; hark, the trumpets call.
_Sem._ Preserve him, Gods, preserve his innocence;
The noblest image of your perfect selves:
Farewell; I'm lost in tears. Where are you, Sir?
_Arch._ He's gone. Away, my lord, you'll never part.
_Ziph._ I go; but must turn back for one last look:
Remember, O remember, dear Semandra,
That on thy virtue all my fortune hangs;
Semandra is the business of the war,
Semandra makes the fight, draws every sword;
Semandra sounds the trumpets; gives the word.
So the moon charms her watery world below;
Wakes the still seas, and makes 'em ebb and flow.'
[Sidenote: John Crowne (1640-1703?).]
The remaining dramatists of the Restoration, with the exception of the
brilliant group of comic authors near the end of the century, who demand
a separate notice, undoubtedly belong to the class of playwrights. The
most characteristic playwright of all, taking the term in the sense of a
steady competent workman destitute of originality, was perhaps John
Crowne. Crowne was the man to supply the playhouses with a regular
output of respectable work, and, as he had no other object than to suit
his market, we perhaps learn better from him and his like than from
writers of genius what the public of the day required. It seems rather
extraordinary that such heavy tragedies as Crowne's should have been
marketable in any age; but it must be considered that the tragic stage
had to be kept going for the sake of the actors, and that if people
would not have Shakespeare they must take what they could get.
Indifferent plays, moreover, may make fine spectacles; and Crowne's
Julianas, Reguluses, and Caligulas served the purpose of habitual
playgoers, that is, of playgoers from the force of habit, as well as
better pieces.[7] The success of Crowne's comedies is less difficult to
understand. Here he really gave the public a fair reflection of itself,
and exhibited contemporary manners with truth, if with no great
brilliancy. On one occasion he soared higher, and (1685) created a real
type in the exquisite coxcomb, Sir Courtly Nice. The rest of the play is
partly imitated from the Spanish, but the character of Nice is Crowne's
own. The humour is considerably overdone, but is still a genuine piece
of comedy, which culminates at the end, when the infuriated fop rushes
from the stage, vowing to be avenged, 'as far as my sword and my wit can
go.' _The English Friar_ (1689), a satire on the Tartufes of the Roman
Catholic persuasion, is also a remarkable piece, the parent of a long
line of imitations. In _City Politics_ (1673), Crowne's first comedy,
the Whig party in the City is held up to obloquy in the transparent
disguise of a Neapolitan rabble, and the satire is keen and vivid. _The
Married Beau_ (1694) is remarkable as a reversion towards the style of
Fletcher and Shirley. _Calisto_ is an interesting attempt to revive the
ancient masque. The only one of Crowne's serious dramas entitled to much
attention is _Darius_, where the poetry is frequently fine, but the
characters are tame. Not much is known of his life. He appears to have
been taken in youth to America, and to have returned by 1665, when he
published a romance entitled _Pandion and Amphigenia_. His connection
with the stage commenced in 1671 with _Juliana_, and terminated with
_Caligula_ in 1698. He would seem to have been a precise and
matter-of-fact man, and is ridiculed by Rochester as 'Little starch
Johnny Crowne with his ironed cravat.' He was fond of accompanying his
plays with long prefaces and dedications, which throw some light on his
opinions and private history, and, so far as they go, exhibit his
disposition in an advantageous light. From one of them it appears that
he suffered in his latter days from 'a distemper seated in my head.' His
tantalizing gleams of talent as a lyrist have been already mentioned.
[Sidenote: Thomas Southern (1660-1746).]
Thomas Southern undoubtedly belonged to the genus playwright, and has
none of the flashes of poetry which occasionally seem to exalt Crowne to
a higher rank. His distinction rather arises from the financial success
of his pieces, which was such that he died 'the richest of all our
poets, a very few excepted.' For this, however, he is said to have been
indebted not so much to the actual vogue of his pieces as to his
assiduity in soliciting tickets. It is to be wished that he had been
equally assiduous in collecting facts about Shakespeare, if, as is
somewhat doubtfully asserted, his father came from Stratford-on-Avon. He
was born at Dublin in 1660, and is said to have been a servitor at
Oxford and a student at the Middle Temple. This he forsook for the army,
but his service cannot have been of long duration. His first play, _The
Loyal Brother_ (1682), was designed to compliment the Duke of York upon
the failure of the Exclusion Bill. He was not a very industrious writer,
producing only ten plays down to 1726, and of these only two, _The Fatal
Marriage_ (1694) and _Oroonoko_ (1696), had any considerable reputation
even in his own day. Both, however, kept the stage until an advanced
period of the nineteenth century. The diction of both pieces, though
never rising into poetry, and interlarded with dull scenes intended to
be comic, is by no means contemptible; the main strength, however,
consists in the situations, which are really powerful, and in the
writer's art in arousing an interest both in his innocent and his mixed
characters. Respected as a relic of the past, a decorous church-goer
with silver hair, Southern lived far into the eighteenth century, and
came sufficiently under its influence to repent of his mingling of
tragic and comic action in the same piece; which indeed he had reason to
regret, not because he had done it, but because he had not done it
better.
[Sidenote: Thomas Shadwell (1640-1692).]
Thomas Shadwell is remarkable as the leading Whig votary of _belles
lettres_ after the death of Marvell, a distinction which secured him the
laureateship upon the cashiering of Dryden. To call him poet would be a
gross misapplication of the term, and Dryden's withering couplet might
seem justified if he had nothing but his serious verse to rely upon:
'With all his bulk, there's nothing lost in Og,
For every inch that is not fool is rogue.'
His title to recollection, however, rests upon things as remote from
poetry as possible--his coarsely indecent, but humorous comedies, which
are undoubtedly of value as reflecting the manners of the time.
Shadwell, in imitation of Ben Jonson, laid himself out to study
'humours,' so well defined by Ben himself:
'When some peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers
From their complexions all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humour.'
We have seen the like in Dickens, who, possessing little delicacy of
psychological observation, laid himself out to study obvious
eccentricities of character, the more grotesque the better, and
frequently made the entire man the incarnation of an attribute. This is
certainly not very high art, but has recommendations for the stage which
it lacks in the novel; it is easy to write, easy to act, and gives
genuine entertainment to the crowd of spectators. Shadwell valued
himself so much upon his performances in this way as to declare in his
preface to _The Virtuoso_ that he trusted never to have less than four
new humours in any comedy. Shadwell's plays, though poorly written,
might still be read for their humour, were it not for their obscenity;
his chief merit, however, is to bring the society of his time nearer to
us than any other writer. No other records such minute points of
manners, or enables us to view the actual daily life of the age with so
much clearness. This is especially the case in his _Epsom Wells_
(1675), _Squire of Alsatia_ (1688), and _Volunteers_ (1692). From
Dryden's satire, which must have had a basis of truth, he would seem to
have been just the boisterous corpulent _bon vivant_ we might expect.
'If,' said Rochester, 'Shadwell would burn all he writes and print all
he says, he would have more wit and humour than anybody.' His friend,
Dr. Nicholas Brady, vouches for the openness and friendliness of his
temper; and further describes him as 'a complete gentleman.' But this
was in a funeral sermon. The regard for Otway, imputed to him by
Rochester, is creditable to him.
The violent death of Archbishop Abbot's gamekeeper would have passed
unnoticed if the poor man had been shot by anybody but the archbishop
himself; and Elkanah Settle (1648-1724) would have slipped away in the
crowd of poetasters if Rochester had not taken it into his head to pit
him against Dryden. In the sense in which the mysterious W. H. was 'the
only begetter of Shakespeare's sonnets,' he may hence claim to be the
parent of one of the most scathing pieces of invective in the language.
Although, however, Doeg is undoubtedly Settle, Settle is not wholly
Doeg. Miserable as his lampoons are, a line here and there is not
destitute of piquancy; and if his _Empress of Morocco_ (1673) has no
literary pretensions, it is important in literary history for having so
moved the wrath of Dryden, and in the history of the drama for having
been issued with plates which contribute greatly to our knowledge of the
internal arrangements of the Restoration Theatre. By a singular irony of
fortune, his fate bears some analogy to that of his mighty antagonist.
Settle lost caste by changing his politics at the wrong time, as Dryden
his religion; but while Dryden bore up against the storm of adversity,
Settle sunk into obscurity, and ultimately into the Charter House. Of
his twenty plays none but _The Empress of Morocco_ is now ever
mentioned, unless an exception be made in favour of _Ibrahim, the
Illustrious Bassa_ (1676), noticeable, as Professor Ward remarks, for
being founded upon one of the voluminous French romances of the day.
Some other playwrights would deserve extended notice in a history of the
drama, but are only entitled to the barest mention in a general literary
survey. Among these are Sir Robert Howard, Dryden's brother-in-law, and
joint-author with him of _The Indian Queen_, the most important of whose
plays is _The Committee_ (printed 1665), a satire on the Commonwealth,
described by Sir Roger de Coverley as 'a good old Church of England
comedy:' John Wilson, Recorder of Londonderry, author of three comedies
and a tragedy of more than average merit; Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery;
Sir Charles Sedley, Major Thomas Porter, and John Lacy, all very
mediocre as dramatists; Thomas D'Urfey, better known than any of the
above, but not by his writings, which are below mediocrity. The ten
plays of Edward Ravenscroft procured him no other reputation than that
of a plagiarist. Some female dramatists will be mentioned in another
place.
Before passing to the opulent comedy of the latter part of the century,
two writers remain to be mentioned, one of whom stands alone in the
drama of the period, while the other forms the transition to the comedy
of Wycherley and Congreve. In describing George Villiers, second Duke of
Buckingham, as one standing apart, we refer to the character of his
solitary work, and not to his share in it; for, though passing solely
under his name, there can be little doubt that it was the production of
a junto of wits, of whom he was not the wittiest. Butler, Sprat, and
Martin Clifford are named as his coadjutors. Buckingham, who must be
credited with a keen sense of the ridiculous, had already resolved to
satirize rhyming heroic plays in the person of Sir Robert Howard, when
the latter's retirement diverted the blow to Dryden, whom Butler, as we
shall see, did not greatly relish, and against whose device of rhyme,
Sprat, as we have seen, had committed himself by anticipation. The play
chiefly selected for parody is _The Conquest of Granada_, which
certainly invited it. Dryden appears as Bayes, in allusion to his
laureateship; and, although his perpetual use of 'egad' seems derived
from the usage by one of his _dramatis personae_ rather than his own, we
cannot doubt that his peculiarities of speech and gesture were mostly
copied to the life. Within a week the town were unanimously laughing at
what they had been unanimously applauding; and, scurrilous and ill-bred
as the mockery of _The Rehearsal_ was, it must be allowed to have been
neither uncalled for nor unuseful. The machinery of the piece is
sufficiently indicated by its title. Bayes entertains the dissembling
Johnson and the unsympathetic Smith with a rehearsal of _The Two Kings
of Brentford_, commenting meanwhile and explaining, vaunting beauties
and extenuating miscarriages with a verve that still amuses,
notwithstanding the far superior treatment of the same theme in
Sheridan's _Critic_. Some of the scenes are highly farcical; and some of
the passages are very fair hits at the bombast and other extravagances
of the writers of heroic plays, for Dryden is by no means the sole
object of satire:
'The blackest ink of fate was sure my lot,
And when she writ my name, she made a blot.'
'Durst any of the Gods be so uncivil,
I'd make that God subscribe himself a Devil.'
'The army's at the door, and in disguise
Demands a word with both your majesties.'
'Yes, I think, for a dead person, it is a good way enough of
making love, for being divested of her terrestrial part, and
all that, she is only capable of these little, pretty, amorous
designs that are innocent, and yet passionate.'
One of Bayes's precepts may be commended to the attention of any who may
think of reviving rhyming tragedy. It also shows the cramped condition
of the theatre in Dryden's day:
_'Bayes._ Gentlemen, I must desire you to remove a little, for
I must fill the stage.
_Smith._ Why fill the stage?
_Bayes._ O sir, because your heroic verse never sounds well but
when the stage is full.'
[Sidenote: Sir George Etheredge (1634-1691).]
Sir George Etheredge is neither an edifying nor an attractive writer of
comedy, but his plays are of considerable historical importance as
prototypes of the comedy of manners afterwards so brilliantly developed
by Congreve. They are _Love in a Tub_ (1664), _She Would if She Could_
(1668), and _The Man of Mode_ (1676). The last is celebrated for the
character of Sir Fopling Flutter, who is said to have been the image of
the author, though it is added on the same authority that his intention
had been to depict himself in the character of the heartless rake
Dorimant, whom others took for Rochester. All the plays suffer from a
deficiency of plot, a deficiency of wit, and a superfluity of
naughtiness, but cannot be denied to possess a light airy grace, and to
have imbibed something of the manner, though little of the humour, of
Moliere. By his own account the author was lazy, careless, and a
gamester. Little, except that 'he was knighted for marrying a fortune,'
is known of his history until 1685, when, unexpectedly to himself, he
was appointed envoy to Ratisbon, and details become copious from the
accidental preservation of his letter-book, now in the British Museum.
The general tone of his correspondence is good-natured and easy; he
seems to have made just the kind of ambassador to be expected from an
idle man of fashion without diplomatic experience; while he may well
have merited his friends' description of him as 'gentle George,' and his
repute as easy and generous. The Revolution deprived him of his post; he
seems to have refused allegiance to William, and to have died at Paris
in 1691.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Crowne himself assigns another reason, which may have had weight in
some quarters: 'I presume your ladyship nauseates comedies. They are so
ill-bred, and saucy with quality, and always crammed with our odious
sex. At tragedies the house is all lined with beauty, and then a
gentleman may endure it,'--a confirmation of the statement that modest
women avoided the comic theatre, or went masked.