As an earnest student of dramatic literature Lamb early turned his
attention to the theatre, and was moved with an ambition to write for
the stage. In his twenty-fourth year he started upon a piece to be
entitled "Pride's Cure," and his letters about this time contain many
references to its progress and give various extracts from
it--extracts which by themselves might suggest that the play would be
a notable one, but the event turned out otherwise. At the end of 1799
the piece was submitted under the title of "John Woodvil" to Kemble,
and a year later it was rejected. "John Woodvil" is poor indeed as a
play; it has some capital scenes, it has some beautiful passages, but
of dramatic story or characterization there is nothing. The play is
concerned with the fortunes of the Woodvils, a Devonshire family, at
the time of the Restoration. Sir Walter Woodvil is a Cromwellian,
living in hiding with his younger son, Simon, while John holds high
revel with boon companions. Sir Walter's ward, Margaret, who is
beloved by John, finds that young man's affection cooling, and thus
leaves him and goes (disguised as a boy) to join her guardian in
Sherwood Forest. Then John, in a moment of intoxication, blabs to one
of his companions of his proscribed father's whereabouts, and follows
it up by quarrelling with that companion, who forthwith sets off with
another to arrest Sir Walter. The old man believes that his son has
betrayed him and promptly dies of a broken heart. The play ends with
the reconciliation of John and Margaret. A ridiculously slight story
for a five-act play. Much in the writing of it shows the author's
loving study of seventeenth-century models, as may be seen from this
speech of Simon's on being asked what are the sports he and his father
use in the forest:
Not many; some few, as thus:--
To see the sun to bed, and to arise,
Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes,
Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him,
With all his fires and travelling glories round him.
Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest,
Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast,
And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep
Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep.
Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness,
Nought doing, saying little, thinking less,
To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air,
Go eddying round; and small birds, how they fare,
When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn,
Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn;
And how the woods berries and worms provide
Without their pains, when earth has nought beside
To answer their small wants.
To view the graceful deer come tripping by,
Then stop, and gaze, then turn, they know not why,
Like bashful younkers in society.
To mark the structure of a plant or tree,
And all fair things of earth, how fair they be.
Lamb's next attempt on the theatre was the prose farce of "Mr. H----,"
in which a wholly inadequate motif was made to supply material for two
acts. The piece was played once (Drury Lane, 10th December, 1806) and
damned. The eponymous hero, who chooses to be known merely by his
initial, creates quite a sensation at Bath, as he is believed to be a
nobleman travelling incognito. Hitherto always rejected by the ladies
on account of his unfortunate patronym, he has wooed successfully
under an initial, when he nearly spoils all by betraying that his
name is--Hogsflesh! He is forthwith shunned, but his ladylove remains
faithful to him on his making the very natural change of Hogsflesh
into Bacon. In his method and atmosphere, Lamb had passed from the
seventeenth to the late eighteenth century; he got a hearing, but he
did not get--and it must be admitted that he did not deserve--success.
The farce is interesting as containing in an inquisitive landlord,
Jeremiah Pry, the original, it may be assumed, of a whole family of
Paul Prys, of which to-day John Poole's is the best remembered.
Two other dramatic pieces were written by Lamb in his later years:
"The Wife's Trial, or, The Intruding Widow" (founded upon Crabbe's
"The Confidant"), in blank verse, and a second farce, "The
Pawnbroker's Daughter," in prose. In these two pieces he had made
distinct advances, yet neither was perhaps suited for stage
representation. In "The Wife's Trial" we have a couple--Mr. and Mrs.
Selby--five years married, on whose hospitality a widow forces herself
owing to some mysterious hold which she has over the wife. Mrs. Selby
had been secretly married as a schoolgirl, though her husband left her
at the church door and had died abroad. The widow striving to use this
knowledge for purposes not far removed from blackmail, is neatly hoist
with her own petard, and the slight play ends with the cordial
reconciliation of the Selbys. In "The Pawnbroker's Daughter" once more
the story is of the slightest, though the farce seems more fitted for
the stage than "Mr. H----." Marion, the daughter of a pawnbroker, is,
against her father's wishes, wooed by a gentleman, and, thanks to the
trick of a maid, goes off with her lover while carrying some valuable
jewels with which her father has entrusted her. There are two other
lovers, Pendulous--who has been unjustly hanged and only reprieved
just in time to save his life--and Marian Flyn, and out of their
by-play comes the reconciliation of all. The feelings of the
half-hanged man had earlier been dealt with by Lamb in a letter "On
the Inconveniences Resulting from being Hanged," which he contributed
(as "Pensilis") to "The Reflector" in 1811.