The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is quite extinct on our
stage. Congreve and Farquhar show their heads once in seven years
only, to be exploded and put down instantly. The times cannot bear
them. Is it for a few wild speeches, an occasional license of
dialogue? I think not altogether. The business of their dramatic
characters will not stand the moral test. We screw every thing up to
that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of
an evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming indications
of profligacy in a son or ward in real life should startle a parent
or guardian. We have no such middle emotions as dramatic interests
left. We see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours'
duration, and of no after consequence, with the severe eyes which
inspect real vices with their bearings upon two worlds. We are
spectators to a plot or intrigue (not reducible in life to the point
of strict morality) and take it all for truth. We substitute a real
for a dramatic person, and judge him accordingly. We try him in our
courts, from which there is no appeal to the _dramatis personæ_, his
peers. We have been spoiled with--not sentimental comedy--but a tyrant
far more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded to it, the
exclusive and all devouring drama of common life; where the moral
point is every thing; where, instead of the fictitious half-believed
personages of the stage (the phantoms of old comedy) we recognise
ourselves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons,
enemies,--the same as in life,--with an interest in what is going on
so hearty and substantial, that we cannot afford our moral judgment,
in its deepest and most vital results, to compromise or slumber for
a moment. What is _there_ transacting, by no modification is made
to affect us in any other manner than the same events or characters
would do in our relationships of life. We carry our fire-side concerns
to the theatre with us. We do not go thither, like our ancestors,
to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our
experience of it; to make assurance double, and take a bond of fate.
We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was the mournful
privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All that neutral
ground of character, which stood between vice and virtue; or which in
fact was indifferent to neither, where neither properly was called in
question; that happy breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual
moral questioning--the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted
casuistry--is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to the
interests of society. The privileges of the place are taken away
by law. We dare not dally with images, or names, of wrong. We bark
like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic
representation of disorder; and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety
that our morality should not take cold, we wrap it up in a great
blanket surtout of precaution against the breeze and sunshine.
I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to answer
for) I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond the diocese of
the strict conscience,--not to live always in the precincts of the
law-courts,--but now and then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine a
world with no meddling restrictions--to get into recesses, whither the
hunter cannot follow me--
--Secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove--
I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and more healthy
for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly for having respired
the breath of an imaginary freedom. I do not know how it is with
others, but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of
Congreve's--nay, why should I not add even of Wycherley's--comedies. I
am the gayer at least for it; and I could never connect those sports
of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to
imitation in real life. They are a world of themselves almost as much
as fairy-land. Take one of their characters, male or female (with
few exceptions they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and
my virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch as
warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in a modern play
I am to judge of the right and the wrong. The standard of _police_
is the measure of _political justice_. The atmosphere will blight
it, it cannot live here. It has got into a moral world, where it has
no business, from which it must needs fall headlong; as dizzy, and
incapable of making a stand, as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has
wandered unawares into the sphere of one of his Good Men, or Angels.
But in its own world do we feel the creature is so very bad?--The
Fainalls and the Mirabels, the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, in
their own sphere, do not offend my moral sense; in fact they do not
appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper element. They
break through no laws, or conscientious restraints. They know of none.
They have got out of Christendom into the land--what shall I call
it?--of cuckoldry--the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is duty,
and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a speculative scene
of things, which has no reference whatever to the world that is. No
good person can be justly offended as a spectator, because no good
person suffers on the stage. Judged morally, every character in
in these plays--the few exceptions only are _mistakes_--is alike
essentially vain and worthless. The great art of Congreve is
especially shown in this, that he has entirely excluded from his
scenes,--some little generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps
excepted,--not only any thing like a faultless character, but any
pretensions to goodness or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did
this designedly, or instinctively, the effect is as happy, as the
design (if design) was bold. I used to wonder at the strange power
which his Way of the World in particular possesses of interesting you
all along in the pursuits of characters, for whom you absolutely care
nothing--for you neither hate nor love his personages--and I think it
is owing to this very indifference for any, that you endure the whole.
He has spread a privation of moral light, I will call it, rather
than by the ugly name of palpable darkness, over his creations; and
his shadows flit before you without distinction or preference. Had
he introduced a good character, a single gush of moral feeling, a
revulsion of the judgment to actual life and actual duties, the
impertinent Goshen would have only lighted to the discovery of
deformities, which now are none, because we think them none.
Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his friend
Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strumpets,--the business of
their brief existence, the undivided pursuit of lawless gallantry. No
other spring of action, or possible motive of conduct, is recognised;
principles which, universally acted upon, must reduce this frame of
things to a chaos. But we do them wrong in so translating them. No
such effects are produced in _their_ world. When we are among them, we
are amongst a chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our usages.
No reverend institutions are insulted by their proceedings,--for
they have none among them. No peace of families is violated,--for
no family ties exist among them. No purity of the marriage bed is
stained,--for none is supposed to have a being. No deep affections
are disquieted,--no holy wedlock bands are snapped asunder,--for
affection's depth and wedded faith are not of the growth of that soil.
There is neither right nor wrong,--gratitude or its opposite,--claim
or duty,--paternity or sonship. Of what consequence is it to virtue,
or how is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir Simon, or
Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha; or who is the father of Lord
Froth's, or Sir Paul Pliant's children.
The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as unconcerned at
the issues, for life or death, as at a battle of the frogs and mice.
But, like Don Quixote, we take part against the puppets, and quite
as impertinently. We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, out
of which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little transitory ease
excluded. We have not the courage to imagine a state of things for
which there is neither reward nor punishment. We cling to the painful
necessities of shame and blame. We would indict our very dreams.
Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon growing old, it
is something to have seen the School for Scandal in its glory. This
comedy grew out of Congreve and Wycherley, but gathered some allays of
the sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that it
should be now _acted_, though it continues, at long intervals, to be
announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was
Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn
plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice--to express it
in a word--the downright _acted_ villany of the part, so different
from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,--the hypocritical
assumption of hypocrisy,--which made Jack so deservedly a favourite
in that character, I must needs conclude the present generation of
play-goers more virtuous than myself, or more dense. I freely confess
that he divided the palm with me with his better brother; that, in
fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but there are passages,--like
that, for instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a pittance to a
poor relation,--incongruities which Sheridan was forced upon by the
attempt to join the artificial with the sentimental comedy, either
of which must destroy the other--but over these obstructions Jack's
manner floated him so lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked
you, than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality any
pleasure; you got over the paltry question as quickly as you could, to
get back into the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns.
The highly artificial manner of Palmer in this character counteracted
every disagreeable impression which you might have received from the
contrast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. You did not
believe in Joseph with the same faith with which you believed in
Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality, the former a no less
pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous;
a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety
upon the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art of
Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements.
A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, would not dare to do
the part in the same manner. He would instinctively avoid every
turn which might tend to unrealise, and so to make the character
fascinating. He must take his cue from his spectators, who would
expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as
the death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints, which
I am sorry to say have disappeared from the windows of my old friend
Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's Church-yard memory--(an exhibition
as venerable as the adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad
and good man at the hour of death; where the ghastly apprehensions
of the former,--and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a
toasting fork is not to be despised,--so finely contrast with the
meek complacent kissing of the rod,--taking it in like honey and
butter,--with which the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle
bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive finger of
a popular young ladies' surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would
not covet to meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate mower?--John
Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part. He was playing to
you all the while that he was playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. You
had the first intimation of a sentiment before it was on his lips.
His altered voice was meant to you, and you were to suppose that his
fictitious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all of it.
What was it to you if that half-reality, the husband, was over-reached
by the puppetry--or the thin thing (Lady Teazle's reputation) was
persuaded it was dying of a plethory? The fortunes of Othello and
Desdemona were not concerned in it. Poor Jack has past from the stage
in good time, that he did not live to this our age of seriousness.
The pleasant old Teazle _King_, too, is gone in good time. His
manner would scarce have past current in our day. We must love or
hate--acquit or condemn--censure or pity--exert our detestable
coxcombry of moral judgment upon every thing. Joseph Surface, to go
down now, must be a downright revolting villain--no compromise--his
first appearance must shock and give horror--his specious
plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers
welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic
harm even) could come, or was meant to come of them, must inspire a
cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real canting person of the
scene--for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends,
but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in downright
self-satisfaction) must be _loved_ and Joseph _hated_. To balance one
disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer
the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings
(while King acted it) were evidently as much played off at you, as
they were meant to concern any body on the stage,--he must be a real
person, capable in law of sustaining an injury--a person towards whom
duties are to be acknowledged--the genuine crim-con antagonist of the
villanous seducer Joseph. To realise him more, his sufferings under
his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life--must
(or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same
predicament would move you in a neighbour or old friend. The delicious
scenes which give the play its name and zest, must affect you in
the same serious manner as if you heard the reputation of a dear
female friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree, and Sir
Benjamin--those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your
mirth--must be rippened by this hot-bed process of realization
into asps or amphisbænas; and Mrs. Candour--O! frightful! become a
hooded serpent. Oh who that remembers Parsons and Dodd--the wasp and
butterfly of the School for Scandal--in those two characters; and
charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished
from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part--would forego
the true scenic delight--the escape from life--the oblivion of
consequences--the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection--those
Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the world--to
sit instead at one of our modern plays--to have his coward conscience
(that forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with
perpetual appeals--dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without
repose must be--and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional
justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without the spectators'
risk, and fortunes given away that cost the author nothing?
No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its parts as
this _manager's comedy_. Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abingdon
in Lady Teazle; and Smith, the original Charles, had retired, when I
first saw it. The rest of the characters, with very slight exceptions,
remained. I remember it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble,
who took the part of Charles after Smith; but, I thought, very
unjustly. Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with a
certain gaiety of person. He brought with him no sombre recollections
of tragedy. He had not to expiate the fault of having pleased
beforehand in lofty declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of
Richard to atone for. His failure in these parts was a passport to
success in one of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could
judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal
incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this part
came steeped and dulcified in good humour. He made his defects a
grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only served
to convey the points of his dialogue with more precision. It seemed
to head the shafts to carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling
sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he delivered each in
succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any of them could be
altered for the better. No man could deliver brilliant dialogue--the
dialogue of Congreve or of Wycherley--because none understood it--half
so well as John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for Love, was, to my
recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the intervals of
tragic passion. He would slumber over the level parts of an heroic
character. His Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always seemed
to me to be particularly alive to pointed and witty dialogue. The
relaxing levities of tragedy have not been touched by any since
him--the playful court-bred spirit in which he condescended to the
players in Hamlet--the sportive relief which he threw into the darker
shades of Richard--disappeared with him. He had his sluggish moods,
his torpors--but they were the halting-stones and resting-places of
his tragedy-politic savings, and fetches of the breath--husbandry of
the lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist--rather, I
think, than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less painful
than the eternal tormenting unappeasable vigilance, the "lidless
dragon eyes," of present fashionable tragedy.