Chapter II: Preface (2)

In the edition of Crowne in the series of _The Dramatists of the Restoration_, the editors maintain Cibber’s greater indebtedness to Crowne than to Molière, in a way that makes one doubt whether they had ever read either Molière or Cibber. So far as plot is concerned there is absolutely no resemblance, except that in both a priest attempts to seduce a decent woman. The characters, style, and management are both different and inferior in Crowne, although some slight similarity may be discovered in the attempt of Finical and Dr. Wolf to allay the consciences of the respective objects of their attentions. As suggested by Van Laun, Father Finical, like Dr. Wolf, is based on Tartuffe.

Cibber has handled his sources very freely, and in some particulars has improved both the plot and the characters. That is not to say that _The Non-Juror_ is a greater play than Molière’s _Tartuffe_, for as a whole it is not. The parts of Dorine, who in _Tartuffe_ is the life and source of the humor, of Cléante, and of Madame Pernelle, are omitted, but the part of Mariane is enlivened into one of the best coquettes of the stage. The other characters and incidents correspond in _The Non-Juror_ and Molière’s _Tartuffe_, though the dénouement is more artistically handled in Cibber.

_The Refusal_, an adaptation of Molière’s _Les Femmes Savantes_, published in 1721, was acted at Drury Lane, February 14, 1721, and had a run of six performances. Molière’s play had been adapted by Wright as _The Female Virtuosoes_ in 1693, and this play was revived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on January 10, 1721, to anticipate _The Refusal_. In like manner with the effort to discredit Cibber’s hand in _The Non-Juror_, though in this case after the run of Cibber’s play was over, Curll published, with a dedication to Cibber, “the second edition of _No Fools Like Wits_,[55] as it was acted at Lincoln’s Inn Fields or _The Refusal_, as it was acted at Drury Lane.”

In his adaptation Cibber has made more changes than is usual with him, both in plot and in character; and in the dialogue he has anglicized the idiom to an extent not found in his adaptations of tragedies from the French.

Molière’s comedy is a satire on false learning in men as well as in women, while Cibber has added some satire on business trickery, in the same way that he added political satire in his adaptation of _Tartuffe_. Cibber has supplied the elder daughter with a successful suitor, and the dénouement is brought about by different, more complicated, and more characteristically English means. In the incident in Molière’s play in which Bélise takes the love of Clitandre to herself, Cibber substitutes the mother for Bélise, omits the maid, along with her impertinences, and adds some slight original incidents.

Trissotin, the poet, becomes one of the typical would-be wits of English comedy, and Chrysale is changed to a typical promoter. In Molière, Chrysale is a purely humorous character, whose vacillation and lack of force were no doubt very laughable on the stage; Sir Gilbert, his equivalent in Cibber’s play, on the other hand, is in no way a weakling and is in no way admirable or a source of laughter, but embodies a satire on contemporary business practices.

The directness and simplicity of Molière’s play, the unity of tone and plot, give way in Cibber to complication of plot and character, in which the whole piece loses the delightful quality of the humor of the original.

_The Provoked Husband_ was presented at Drury Lane, January 10, 1728, and had a run of twenty-eight nights. There was an unsuccessful attempt on the part of Cibber’s enemies to damn the play on the first night; the interruptions were so great that during the fourth act the actors were compelled to stand still until it was quiet enough for them to be heard. On January 31, Cibber published Vanbrugh’s unfinished play and his own completion of it. The critics, who had condemned the play unmercifully, especially the supposed additions of Cibber, found, when the plays were published, that it was not Cibber but Vanbrugh they had been condemning. According to Cibber,[56] on the twenty-eighth night the play took in one hundred and forty pounds, a greater amount than had been taken in at the last night of any play for fifty years.

Vanbrugh’s _Journey to London_ consists of four acts, the first two practically complete, but the last two apparently unfinished. Cibber has used practically all that Vanbrugh left, omitting the trip to the theatre in the last part of Act II, and adding much of his own to the whole play. He has interspersed his additions between the parts of Vanbrugh’s play, and has changed very little of the Vanbrugh part, except to “water it down” where it had been too strong for the changed taste of the theatre goers.

Cibber’s additions to Steele’s _Conscious Lovers_ are mentioned on a later page of these _Studies_.

Several of Cibber’s comedies were translated into foreign tongues: in German _The Double Gallant_ appeared as _Der doppellte Liebhaber_, translated by Johann Friedrich Jünger and published in Leipzig in 1786, _The Careless Husband_ as _Der sorglose Ehemann_, published in Göttingen in 1750, and _The Provoked Husband_ as _Der erzürnte Ehemann und der Landjunker_, published in Frankfurt in 1753; in French _The Provoked Husband_ appeared as _Le Mari poussé à bout, ou le voyage à Londres_, published in London, 1761.

The adaptations, except _The Non-Juror_ and _The Refusal_, seem to have been produced merely to furnish amusement which should be in accordance with changed stage conditions and changed taste. They show little originality, being merely the stringing together of scenes without alteration, though Cibber in the prologue to _The Double Gallant_ says:

“Nay, even alter’d Plays, like old houses mended,
Cost little less than new, before they’re ended;
At least, our author finds the experience true.”

His method seems to have been to take two plays of an older author, often plays which contained both a serious and a comic action, to select such scenes as suited his purpose, and to join them into a play, either alternating the scenes of the separate plays with link characters, or putting the two plays end on end, as in the case of _Love Makes a Man_. This latter method entailed much greater labor, as many of the characters were made by consolidating two characters from different plays.

Cibber’s comedies, which constitute his best and most important work, may be divided into two general classes: comedies of manners and intrigue, and sentimental comedies. The first class includes two adaptations from Beaumont and Fletcher which are not strictly comedies of manners but are more closely allied to the “comedy of humours,” namely, _Love Makes a Man_ and _The Rival Fools_; one adaptation made out of two plays by Dryden, _The Comical Lovers_; two from Molière, _The Non-Juror_ and _The Refusal_, into both of which he introduced contemporary social and political interest; and three other plays, _Woman’s Wit_, _She Would and She Would Not_, and _The Double Gallant_, the last of which takes its title, if not its plot, from Corneille’s _Le Galant Double_. The sentimental comedies, in which form Cibber was one of the very first to write, are _Love’s Last Shift_, _The Careless Husband_, _The Lady’s Last Stake_, and _The Provoked Husband_, the last being a completion of Vanbrugh’s _Journey to London_. The first class consists almost altogether of adaptations; the second class is essentially original.

II

CIBBER AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SENTIMENTAL COMEDY

1. CIBBER, NOT STEELE, THE IMPORTANT FIGURE IN ITS EARLY DEVELOPMENT.

The fully developed form of sentimental comedy may be said to begin with Steele’s _Conscious Lovers_ (1772) and to end with the attack upon it made by Goldsmith, Foote, and their followers. Goldsmith was “strongly prepossessed in favour of the poets of the last age and strove to imitate them,”[57] and by his reintroduction of humor into comedy he exerted a strong influence toward the downfall of the sentimental type. The end of this vogue is generally well understood, but the beginning of it has not been investigated with the same thoroughness. Steele is generally given the credit of being the innovator who reformed the stage,[58] although Ward and others give some credit to the work of Cibber. The importance of Cibber in the development of this form and in the moral reformation of comedy, the effect of social conditions, and the gradual change from the Restoration type, have not been fully studied. Colley Cibber was the most important writer of comedy in preparing the way for the new form, and practically every element of the later sentimental comedy is found in his work. But Cibber was not a reformer calling on his age to repent; he was rather answering a general demand of his time.

Three stages may be discerned in the development of sentimental comedy: first, that in which the morals of comedy were purified and the new sentimental material was intermixed with the old humorous material, represented by the work of Cibber; second, that in which the sentimental theme is presented with very little comic entertainment, represented by _The Conscious Lovers_; and third, that in which the comedy of this second stage degenerates and in which the work becomes artificial and lifeless, represented by the plays of Holcroft and his school.

Sentimental comedy as seen in its second phase may be briefly described as comedy of manners in which the main action tends to inculcate a moral lesson, in which the incidents no longer deal with illicit intrigues, and in which the action is complicated by distressingly pathetic situations. The chief characters are generally serious and supersensitive in regard to such matters as filial duty, honor, and the like; and while these persons are in no need of being reformed, their exaggerated conceptions of honor have caused them to act so that they are placed in an equivocal position and they appear to the other characters as vicious. The language is chaste, there is constant introduction of extremely stilted moralizing, and there is a notable absence of humor.

Cibber’s work in other lines was conventional and commonplace. It is true that his _Apology_ is lively and interesting, and his pamphlets in reply to Pope’s attacks are keen and humorous though vulgar, but the rest of his prose is extremely conventional. His poetry, except a few songs, is inexpressibly poor. Aside from one opera in which he takes the same stand in regard to virtue that he does in his comedies, his operas are merely the commonplace following of a vogue. His tragedies are generally imitative; with two exceptions they are adaptations of Corneille or Shakspere. His farces are about equal in merit to his poetry, and are devoid of originality.

Nor does Cibber’s life indicate the qualities that appear in his sentimental comedies. The moral standard he displays in his pamphlets in reply to Pope is far from high, and from the testimony of his contemporaries concerning his personal character it would seem that he was far from being the sort of man who would set about reforming anything. And in all probability he would not have done so if there had not been a general public movement in that direction.

2. SENTIMENTAL COMEDY A PRODUCT OF VARIOUS FORCES.

But sentimental comedy did not spring full grown from the brain of a single man. Nor was it the result of a single revolutionary force. Sentimental comedy resulted from gradual modifications of the drama of the time, developing from the prevalent type little by little until it finally appeared as an independent form. The reform of the stage was not an isolated phenomenon, nor was it directly the result of the attacks made by Collier and others. Rather are all these the result of a changed public conscience, which was manifested not merely in literature and on the stage, but in the Revolution of 1688 and a subsequent social reformation as well.

Immediately after the Restoration there may be discovered two elements in the life of the nation which had an influence both on the form and on the content of literature. On the one side was the court, whose standards affected both the form and content in the direction of foreign models. Through the long period of exile on the continent, Charles and his followers had become foreign in their literary taste and they had great influence in the direction of a French type as regards form; and because of the low and vicious standards of living prevalent at court their influence stimulated the sympathetic handling of low and vicious subjects.

On the other hand, there were the people, strictly native in their preference, who influenced the drama in the direction of native standards in form, and Puritan standards in content. As to the form of comedy, there was nothing essentially antagonistic in these two influences; the one could easily combine with the other so that a new thing, congruous and consistent, might result; but in the material presented antagonism was bound to arise and soon did arise. In the development of sentimental comedy from the type which predominated during and after the Restoration, there was not at first any modification in structural elements; the comedy of manners was adopted, so far as form was concerned; the change, which was gradual and was a direct response to changed social and moral conditions, was at first entirely in the matter of content. This change first appears in the sincere reformation of the hero at the end of the play; then in the attitude towards cuckoldom, which Restoration comedy had treated as a humorous fact; and then in the character of the language, which was altered in the direction of moral decency.

Under Charles II and James II the court, on which the theatre depended for its right to live and also for its patronage, was vicious and depraved. Its one grace was wit, and that it had in a superlative degree.

3. PROGRESS IN ENGLISH SOCIETY.

The people in general, except the court and those more or less fashionable classes of society which would naturally follow it, were not affected by this mode. They learned to despise Charles II personally because of his lack of honor and morals, and hated his followers as well as their mode of life. In the city the Puritan element, which was “at once the most substantial and sober” part of the community, began to exercise some of the same control of manners and morals that it had practised under the commonwealth, and checked the constant disregard of its moral principles by the court.

But even during this corrupt time there were manifestations of activity on the part of other elements of society, which looked toward the betterment of conditions. In the life of the state there were events which made for general progress and a more moral life among all the people. With special reference to the regulation and restraint of the theatre, certain elements in Parliament attempted, in 1669, to tax the playhouses, which were situated in the disreputable part of town and had become centers of prostitution; but the ministers of the king intervened and the attempt to compel some restraint was unsuccessful.

In the reigns of William and Mary and of Anne a reaction is seen in the life of the court, and there appears a still greater progress in all classes of society.

The expulsion of the Stuarts brought about certain very positive results which made for progress in all directions. So too the principle of natural action and reaction was operating; but, considering the historical circumstances, it was only to be expected that the reaction toward a more moral and saner view of life should be less marked and less rapid than the preceding reaction from Puritanism.

Until after the downfall of the Stuarts, the Protestants in England had never been united; but after that event even Presbyterians joined with ecclesiastics of the Church of England in public ceremonies on terms of friendship. Now that the question of political and religious supremacy was permanently settled, the Protestants were free to turn to some of the questions which are popularly supposed to be the real objects of religious organizations--worship and the encouragement of right living. However far it may have failed to measure up to modern ideas in these respects, the church now began to be a greater moral force.

The court became a very different sort of place. However far William might fall short of middle class standards of today, he was a very different sort of man from Charles or James, and had a very different influence. As opposed to the Catholicism of the Stuarts, he was a Presbyterian. Instead of haunting the theatre, where Charles found more than one mistress among the actresses, William never even showed himself at the theatre. Because of William’s prolonged absences on the continent, during which Mary reigned in her own right, the person of the queen became more important than in former reigns. Mary “had been educated only to work embroidery, to play on the spinnet, and to read the Bible and the _Whole Duty of Man_.”[59] “Her character was unimpeachable, and by the influence of the king and queen the whole court became most proper, even if it was somewhat dull.” But unlike her husband, she went frequently to the theatre, where she showed special favor for Shadwell and where she ordered such plays as _The Old Bachelor_, _The Double Dealer_, and _The Committee_. It must be admitted that Mary’s taste in regard to plays did not show great literary or moral discrimination.

Both under William and Mary and under Anne the court took positive grounds on moral questions. In Evelyn’s _Diary_ for February 19, 1690, we read:

“The impudence of both sexes was now become so greate and so
universal, persons of all ranks keeping their courtesans publicly,
that the King had lately directed a letter to the Bishops to order
their Cleargy to preach against that sin, swearing, &c. and to put
the Ecclesiastical Laws in execution without any indulgence.”

Mary, on July 9, 1691, wrote to the justices of the peace directing that they execute all laws against the profanation of the Sabbath, and even went so far as to have constables stationed on street corners to capture pies and puddings that were being taken to the bakers to be cooked on that day. In 1697 and 1698 King William issued two orders concerning the acting of anything contrary to good morals or manners. Queen Anne, who never went to the public theatre, made frequent proclamations against immoral plays, masked women, and the admittance of spectators behind the scenes, and in 1703 she issued a proclamation against vice in general.

Altogether, the forces of the court and of the government were acting in accord to suppress the abuses which their predecessors had countenanced both by favor and by participation.

But however potent may have been the influence of the court, the real movement for social reform came from the people, whose will the court was really carrying out. The movement on the part of the people was forwarded by the rise of various societies which were established for moral, philanthropic, and religious purposes.[60]

The Society for the Reformation of Manners, inaugurated by a small number of gentlemen in 1692, was probably the most influential and best known of these organizations. It was organized primarily for the purpose of informing on evildoers, and that there might be no criticism concerning their sincerity, the fines were paid over to charity. In addition to carrying on this work of informing, the society established quarterly lectures on moral subjects, secured the preaching of sermons on its objects, and in 1699 it claimed to have secured thousands of convictions.[61] The church was brought into the movement by Archbishop Tenison’s circular to the clergy encouraging them to cooperate with the laity in the movement. This movement went farther than the prosecution of overt acts against morality, for in 1701-2 the players at Lincoln’s Inn Fields were prosecuted for uttering impious, lewd, and immoral expressions.[62]

4. COLLIER.

Collier’s attack on the stage, published in 1698, was no doubt a potent influence in crystallizing public opinion in regard to the drama, but it does not stand alone; it is merely a sign of a movement which the stage had begun to notice and profit by several years previously. During the year 1698 not less than sixteen books and pamphlets were published in the controversy. Collier’s book had great influence in furthering the work of reformation; but, low as was the tone of the drama at the time, one must confess that in some particulars Collier is radical and far-fetched in his arguments and conclusions.

Cibber, though he had two years previously written a play with a distinct reformatory and moral purpose, did not much relish Collier’s attack or agree with it. In the prologue to _Xerxes_ he intimates that Collier might prove a good index for those who desired to read immoral literature:

“Thus ev’n sage Collier too might be accus’d,
If what h’as writ, thro’ ignorance, abus’d:
Girls may read him, not for the truth, he says,
But to be pointed to the bawdy plays.”

In _The Careless Husband_ we find Lord Morelove saying:

“Plays now, indeed, one need not be so much afraid of; for since the
late short-sighted view of them, vice may go on and prosper; the
stage dares hardly show a vicious person speaking like himself, for
fear of being call’d prophane for exposing him.”

To this Lady Easy replies that,

“’Tis hard, indeed, when people won’t distinguish between what’s
meant for contempt, and what for example.”

Perhaps Cibber’s most interesting contribution to the controversy is contained in his dedication of _Love Makes a Man_, published in the first edition, but omitted in the collected edition of his plays:

“But suppose the stage may have taken too loose a liberty? Is there
nothing to be said for it? Have not all sciences been guilty? Was
it to be expected in a reign of pleasure, peace and madness, that
the poets should not be merry? Did not the court then lead up the
dance? And did not the whole nation join in it? Was it not mere Joan
Sanderson,[63] and did not the lawn-sleeves, cuffs, and cassocks
fill up the measure? But since those dancing days are over, I hope
our enemies will give us leave to grow wise, and sober, as well as
the rest of our neighbors: Why shall we not have the liberty to
reform, as well as the clergy, and lawyers? I believe upon a fair
examination we may find, that prophaneness, cruelty, and passive
obedience, are now less than ever the business of the stage, the
bench or the pulpit; and I doubt not, but we can produce examples of
new plays, lawyers, and pastors that have met with success without
being obliged to immorality, bribery, or politics ...

“Now if the stage must needs down, because ’tis possible it may
seduce, as instruct; the same rule of policy might forbid the use of
physic, because not only their patients, but physicians themselves
die of common diseases; or call in the milled crowns, because they
are but so many patterns for coiners to counterfeit by, or might
as well suppress the Courts of Judicature, because some persons
have suffered for what a succeeding reign has made a new law, that
makes that law that sentenced them illegal: The same conclusion
might discountenance our religion, because we sometimes find pride,
hypocricy, avarice, and ignorance in its teachers: So that if our
zealous reformers do not stick fairly to their method we may in time
hope to see our nation flourish without either wit, health, money,
law, conscience, or religion....

“But this sort of reformation I hope will never be thoroughly
wrought, while the king, and the Established Church have any friends:
The stage I am sure was never heartily oppressed but by the enemies
of both.”

Though Cibber thought Collier extreme and unjust in his criticism, his own attitude concerning the abuses of the stage was hardly less censorious than Collier’s, but he blames the audiences for the low moral standards of the entertainments:

“However gravely we may assert, that Profit ought always to be
inseparable from the Delight of the Theatre; nay, admitting that
the Pleasure would be heighten’d by the uniting them; yet, while
Instruction is so little the Concern of the Auditor, how can we hope
that so choice a Commodity will come to a Market where there is so
seldom a Demand for it?

“It is not to the Actor therefore, but to the vitiated and low Taste
of the Spectator, that the Corruptions of the Stage (of what kind
soever) have been owing.”[64]

His own attitude, which he held from the first of his career as a dramatist, may be illustrated what he says in the _Apology_:[65]

“Yet such Plays (entirely my own) were not wanting at least, in what
our most admired Writers seem’d to neglect, and without which, I
cannot allow the most taking Play, to be intrinsically good, or
to be a Work, upon which a Man of Sense and Probity should value
himself: I mean when they do not, as well _prodesse_, as _delectare_,
give Profit with Delight! The _Utile Dolci_ was, of old, equally
the Point; and has always been my Aim, however wide of the Mark, I
may have shot my Arrow. It has often given me Amazement, that our
best Authors of that time, could think the Wit, and Spirit of their
Scenes, could be an Excuse for making the Looseness of them publick.
The many Instances of their Talents so abused, are too glaring, to
need a closer Comment, and are sometimes too gross to be recited.
If then to have avoided this Imputation, or rather to have had the
Interest, and Honour of Virtue always in view, can give Merit to
a Play; I am contented that my Readers should think such Merit,
the All, that mine have to boast of.--Libertines of mere Wit, and
Pleasure, may laugh at these grave Laws, that would limit a lively
Genius: But every sensible honest Man, conscious of their Truth,
and Use, will give these Ralliers Smile for Smile, and shew a due
Contempt for their Merriment.”

Davies tells us:[66]

“So well did Cibber, though a professed libertine through life,
understand the dignity of virtue, that no comic author has drawn more
delightful and striking pictures of it. Mrs. Porter, on reading a
part, in which Cibber had painted virtue in the strongest and most
lively colors, asked him how it came to pass, that a man, who could
draw such admirable portraits of goodness, should yet live as if he
were a stranger to it?--‘Madam,’ said Colley, ‘the one is absolutely
necessary, the other is not.’”

Possibly this inconsistency in personal conduct and public confession explains why comedies which aimed to teach lessons of virtue were sentimental and did not ring true. The men who wrote them wrote from the head and not from the heart, influenced by a growing public demand and without real sincerity or conviction.

5. CHARACTERISTICS OF RESTORATION COMEDY.

Restoration comedy up to about 1696, while it was essentially a native development, was influenced both in technique and in content by the drama to which the court had been accustomed in its exile in France. The Jonsonian comedy was developing both in the period immediately preceding the Commonwealth and during the Restoration into the same sort of thing that we have here, and Shadwell, poet laureate and especial favorite of Queen Mary, definitely took the work of Jonson as his model. The Jonsonian satire had thrown emphasis on fundamental traits of human nature, but in this later type satire is centered on manners, dress, the non-essential elements of life, though the characters continue to be embodiments of single traits. Molière, whose earliest effective follower in England was Etherege, taught the English writers of the comedy of manners to aim at polish, refinement of style and dialogue, and his influence confirmed the tendency of English comedy to follow the unities as they were then understood. Restoration comedy, then, is native Jonsonian comedy, influenced by the comedy of Molière.[67] The chief literary sources of its plots are the comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, of Molière, of Corneille, and Spanish comedies and novels.

Though the late Elizabethans had been gross in word, there had always been in their work a tendency to punish vice and reward virtue, or at least to make vice ridiculous. But in the Restoration this grossness becomes grossness of word, character, and idea, and it is not the violator of virtue that is made ridiculous, but his victim. The Elizabethan gaiety, spontaneity, healthy overflow of spirits, become a cynicism which is absurd in its artificiality and deliberate pose. The Jonsonian reaction from earlier Elizabethan romanticism continues its advance toward realism.

The Restoration dramatist lacks the power to construct effective plots. He is able to handle his separate incidents with skill, but when it comes to sustaining an action through five acts, he fails. His chief fault lies in too great intricacy, excessive elaboration, and complexity, which are due to his endeavor to tell too many stories. In the construction of his plays he commonly takes two, and sometimes three, plays from Molière, or Beaumont and Fletcher, to form one play of his own. Hence there is in the handling of the plot a lack of unity. Furthermore, in his extreme elaboration of single situations, which one must admit have qualities to make them lively and interesting on the stage, the dramatist fails in the great essential quality of probability; if one regards the unity of time, he makes his stories impossible. Lack of sequence is caused by the constant interruption of conversation, which is brilliant and entertaining in itself, but has nothing to do with the story.

The dramatist tends to the elaboration of stock themes, dealing with the pursuit of illicit pleasure, assignations, and love intrigues. The typical story might be stated as follows: a young man is entangled with one or more women, a widow, the wife of an elderly or foolish husband, or a mistress whom he is keeping or who is keeping him, and while he is carrying on these intrigues he falls in love with the virtuous young woman he eventually wins. Sometimes his mistresses object to his marrying some one else, sometimes they do not, and in the latter case the opposing force is centered in a rapacious guardian or some other complicating person or circumstance. There are usually many minor love affairs, sometimes legitimate, sometimes not, and usually so complicated that it is difficult to keep the various threads separate. Collier did no injustice when he said that “the stage poets make their principal persons vicious and reward them at the end of the play.”

The love is mere sensuality. There is tacit acknowledgment that the men will be untrue to their wives and a fear on the part of the husbands that their wives will cuckold them.[68] This fear is not because of any moral scruples, but is merely because of the ridicule that cuckoldom brought on the husband. The treatment is frankly gross, licentious, cynical.

In a sense this treatment is highly realistic; to this extent, that it is a general reflection of the standards and manners of the life of the court. The fashions are contemporary, the manners and morals are those of the upper classes. The playwrights confine themselves to a limited section of but a part of the people. Social and religious institutions are treated so as to make them ridiculous and contemptible.

That any other treatment would have been difficult is seen by considering the relationship existing between the theatre and the court. The theatre had its authority for existence directly from the court, one theatre receiving its license from the King, the other from the Duke of York, while the companies of actors were known as the King’s or the Duke’s servants.[69] These licenses were moreover revocable at the pleasure of those who gave them. Controversies and differences within the theatre were often settled personally by the King or Duke, and Charles is said to have suggested subjects to the dramatists in many instances. With so direct and personal a relation, anything other than compliance with the taste of the court could result in nothing but the downfall of the theatre. The theatre’s very life depended on its selection and presentation of themes that would satisfy and reflect the taste of the most morally degraded court that England has ever had.

The characterization in these plays is conventional and often vague. For example, it may be laid down as an almost invariable rule that a widow is never virtuous. In the embodiment of a single trait there is the continued tendency to exaggeration seen in the “humourous” characterization of Jonson, with the same use of descriptive names--Courtall, Mrs. Frail, Lady Wishfort, Justice Clodpate--to save the labor of characterization. The characters are likewise lacking in complexity and development.

There is the tendency to Jonsonian division of characters into dupes and dupers,[70] but this division is not so clear as in Jonson, nor is the division based on the essential qualities of human nature, but is rather on the basis of wit and power in repartee. The heroes are all witty, usually wealthy, popular, and their life work is the pursuit of women. The women are all witty, beautiful, and all rakes, except the heroine, and even the heroines bid fair to become so in a few months after marriage. The hero or heroine of one play might be the hero or heroine of any other play so far as any distinctive characterization is concerned.

There is the pretended wit, a simpleton who apes the men of wit and fashion, who thinks himself most clever, and who is perfectly unconscious of the fact that he is being made a butt for the wit of the sensible characters. Such are the Dapperwits, the Witwouds, and the Tattles. Somewhat similar is the fop who imitates the French, thinks only of his dress, his appearance, and the figure he makes. He is all ostentation, is entirely self-centered and simple in his mental processes, but is really not such a fool as one imagines at first. Etherege’s Sir Fopling Flutter, and Cibber’s Sir Novelty Fashion--the Lord Foppingtons of _The Relapse_ and _The Careless Husband_--are two well drawn presentations of this character. An interesting female type is the Miss Hoyden-Prue-Hippolyta young woman, who has been kept in secluded ignorance of the world, but who shows a sudden ingenuity, knowledge of the world, and desire for the sensual joys of life. There are, of course, the elderly cuckolds, dominated and fooled by their wives, and the wives who profess virtue but do not practise it.

That the view here given is not prejudiced by modern standards may be seen by a description of the characters by one of the dramatists themselves. Shadwell in the preface to _The Sullen Lovers_ expresses himself, not without vigor:

“But in the Plays, which have been wrote of late, there is no such
thing as perfect Character, but the two chief Persons are commonly
a Swearing, Drinking, Whoring, Ruffian for a Lover, and an impudent
ill-bred _Tomrig_ for a Mistress, and these are the fine People of
the play; and ... almost any thing is proper for them to say; but
their chief Subject is Bawdy, and Profaneness, which they call _Brisk
Writing_, when the most dissolute of Men, that relish those things
well enough in Private, are shock’d at ’em in Publick.”

The dialogue, which often interrupts the movement of the plot, and often surpasses in interest the more solid quality of representation of life, is usually marked by the most brilliant and biting wit, by keenly satiric repartee, and by epigrammatic polish. The dialogue has often nothing to do with the story, but is merely the exhibition of the author’s ability in the cynical treatment of contemporary manners. The attitude is one of satire and raillery against all established institutions, against marriage, the manners of society, the Puritans, the newly developing sciences, the court, dueling, the country and its inhabitants, the opera, the new songs and novels, the affectation of foreign airs, the adoption of foreign words, poetry and dilettante writing, polite literary conversation, legal abuses, and almost everything that one can conceive.

The locality in which the plays are set is extremely narrow at first, being confined to the town; for most of the plays are set in London, in localities familiar to the audiences. Within the class and localities to which the comedy restricts itself, it is a most interesting social document; but it must always be remembered that it is no sense representative of the whole people. Sometimes we are taken to Spain or Italy, but it is Spain or Italy only in name, the people and the customs are all English. The scene may sometimes be one of the fashionable watering places in England; but it is never in the despised country.

Whether one agrees with it or not it is well to keep in mind Lamb’s defense in his essay _On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century_:

“We have been spoiled with ... the ... drama of common life; where
the moral point is everything; where, instead of the fictitious
half-believed personages of the stage (the phantoms of old comedy)
we recognize ourselves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies,
patrons, enemies,--the same as in life.... “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 fairyland.... 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.... He [Congreve] has spread
a privation of moral light ... 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.... “... When we are among
them [the characters of Congreve and Wycherley], 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.... There is neither right nor
wrong,--gratitude or its opposite,--claim or duty,--paternity or
sonship....

“The whole is a passing pageant.... But, like Don Quixote, we take
part against the puppets, and quite as impertinently.... We would
indict our very dreams.”

6. BEGINNINGS OF THE CHANGE IN THE DRAMA.

Such had been the conditions surrounding the drama and in the drama itself before the reformation began. When one comes to look at the stage and the audiences, one finds very little indication of change at first. In 1682 there seems to have been objection to _London Cuckolds_ on the ground of indecency, and Ravenscroft in the prologue to _Dame Dobson_ (1682) claims to have complied with the objections which had been raised by making his own play dull and civil. In 1684 appeared Southerne’s first comedy, _The Disappointment_, which he calls a “play,” and in this we have the serious treatment of the marriage relations and the preservation of a wife’s chastity. Throughout, Southerne’s tendency was towards morality.

In 1696 there begins a real and easily discernible movement towards the moral treatment of dramatic themes. _The She Gallants_ (1696) was so offensive to the ladies that it had to be withdrawn; in _She Ventures and He Wins_ (1696) the man who would carry on an amour with a married woman is exposed and tricked and made the butt; and in Mrs. Manley’s _The Lost Lover_ (1696) there is the noticeable introduction of a virtuous wife.

In 1697, the epilogue to _Boadicea_, a tragedy, tells us that

“Once only smutty jests could please the town,
But now (Heav’n help our trade) they’ll not go down.”

Waterhouse[71] finds traces of sentimentality in Vanbrugh’s _Aesop_, which appeared the same year. Then in 1698 matters were brought to a head by Collier, and we find Congreve’s _Double Dealer_ advertised to be acted “with several expressions omitted,” while in _The Way of the World_ (1700) his muse is somewhat more chaste. _The Provoked Wife_ was altered, probably in 1706, so that the clergy might not seem to be attacked.

From this time on the changed attitude was increasingly manifest in the new plays, though the old were still acted with little or no change.

In _The State of the Case Restated_[72] it is contended that the royal patent to the Drury Lane Theatre was given to Sir Richard Steele for the purpose of correcting the abuses of the theatre, but that Sir Richard had not done this; in fact that

“The same lewd plays were acted and reviewed without any material
alteration, which gave occasion for that universal complaint against
the English stage, of lewdness and debauchery, from all the sober and
religious part of the nation; the whole business of comedy continuing
all this time to be the criminal intrigues of fornication and
adultery, ridiculing of marriage, virtue, and integrity, and giving
a favorable turn to vicious characters, and instructing loose people
how to carry on their lewd designs with plausibility and success:
thus among other plays they have revived _The Country Wife_, _Sir
Fopling Flutter_, _The Rover_, _The Libertine Destroyer_, and several
others, and it is remarkable, that the knight, or coadjutors, had
condemned _Sir Fopling Flutter_, as one of the most execrable and
vicious plays that ever was performed in public.”

The change that was occurring may be fairly illustrated by quotations from plays by Etherege and Steele, which are characteristic of the alterations not only as to morals but as to moralizing. In speaking of marriage Etherege says, “your nephew ought to conceal it [his marriage] for a time, madam, since marriage has lost its good name; prudent men seldom expose their own reputations, till ’tis convenient to justify their wives;”[73] while Steele’s sentiment is that “wedlock is hell if at least one side does not love, as it would be Heaven if both did.”[74]

7. CIBBER’S COMEDIES.

Cibber at the very outset of his career as a dramatist, in _Love’s Last Shift_ (1696), deliberately attempted to reform the stage, and that the audience was ready for the innovation is shown by the way it was received, for we are told that “never were spectators more happy in easing their minds by uncommon and repeated plaudits. The honest tears, shed by the audience, conveyed a strong reproach to our licentious poets, and was to Cibber the highest mark of honor.”[75] Davies further gives Cibber the credit of being the first in reforming the English stage, and of founding English sentimental comedy. “The first comedy, acted since the Restoration, in which were preserved purity of manners and decency of language, with a due respect to the honor of the marriage-bed, was Colley Cibber’s _Love’s Last Shift, or The Fool in Fashion_.”[76] Cibber himself makes no claim to decency of language, nor is it found to any greater extent in this play than in the other plays of the period. Certainly there can be nothing bolder than the first act, or the epilogue, which reads as follows:

“Now, gallants, for the author. First, to you
Kind city gentlemen o’ th’ middle row;
He hopes you nothing to his charge can lay,
There’s not a cuckold made in all his play.
Nay, you must own, if you believe your eyes,
He draws his pen against your enemies:
For he declares, today, he merely strives
To maul the beaux--because they maul your wives.
Nor, sirs, to you whose sole religion’s drinking,
Whoring, roaring, without the pain of thinking,
He fears he’s made a fault you’ll ne’er forgive,
A crime beyond the hopes of a reprieve:
An honest rake forego the joys of life,
His whores and wine, t’ embrace a dull chaste wife!
Such out-of-fashion stuff! but then again,
He’s lewd for above four acts, gentlemen.

* * * * *

Four acts for your coarse palates were design’d,
But then the ladies taste is more refin’d,
They, for Amanda’s sake, will sure be kind.”

The main action, that which deals with the reformation of the wandering husband, seems to be original with Cibber in every respect. It deals with the reformation of a husband who eight or ten years before has deserted his young wife for a dissolute life on the continent, and who returns to England still more degenerate in mind and morals than when he left, and so entirely depleted in purse that he has not money enough to buy a meal or pay for a night’s lodging for himself and his servant. The husband is finally led to return to his wife, whose appearance has so changed that he does not recognize her, by her pretense of being a new mistress. This subterfuge is more or less remotely suggestive of Shakspere’s _All’s Well that Ends Well_ and Shirley’s _Gamester_, both of which have been suggested as its source; but it owes nothing to them in the working out of the situation.

The theme is practically that of _The Careless Husband_: the reformation of a husband not entirely spoiled at heart. The moral teaching is that there is the same pleasure in legitimate enjoyment as in the baser and illicit sort.

The innovation consists in the very moral ending of the piece, particularly in the definite decision of the hero to reform, a determination which he expresses as follows:

“By my example taught, let every man, whose fate has bound him to
a marry’d life, beware of letting loose his wild desires: for if
experience may be allow’d to judge, I must proclaim the folly of a
wandering passion. The greatest happiness we can hope on earth,

And sure the nearest to the joys above,
Is the chaste rapture of a virtuous love.”

It is to be noticed that the illicit affair of Sir Novelty Fashion and Mrs. Flareit is made ridiculous and not happy at the end, nor does Sir Novelty acquire a mistress or a wife who has previously been chaste. Likewise there is no husband who is made ridiculous by being cuckolded, and the only amour, if it can be called an amour, that which Amanda’s maid unwillingly has with Snap, is made right the next morning by the marriage of the two.

On the other hand, the play, aside from these particulars, exhibits the technique and the material of the typical Restoration comedy. The chief incident deals in most frank style with the sex relations of the hero and heroine, treated essentially in the Restoration way, with the exception that the audience knows they are man and wife while the characters do not. The cellar incident is as frank and gross as anything of the sort in the earlier drama, though in this case the final outcome is a wedding. There is the same succession of lively and disconnected incidents, incidents which would go well on the stage, and which make up five separate threads of story. The substitution of the name of one person for another in the marriage bond is the same sort of thing that occurs over and over again in the earlier comedy.[77]

The characters represent the same more or less stiff drawing of conventional figures. Sir Novelty Fashion is of the same family as Sir Fopling Flutter; Lovelace and Young Worthy are the same drunken rakes as those who make the principal characters in the unreformed drama, with the exception that here they are not presented to us as carrying on their amours. Snap is the witty servingman who is invariably paired with the maid of the heroine in Restoration comedy. There is the same presentation of local scenes, particularly that in the park; there is the same coarse speech; and there is the same interruption of the story by raillery.

But the play as already suggested is a very distinct step in advance in its treatment of fundamental morality, and marks a conscious beginning of a new mode; not an inconsiderable achievement for the first play of an author twenty-four years old.

The two plots of _Woman’s Wit_ (1697) are entirely dissimilar in tone and dramatic handling, and, moreover, have no essential connection with each other. The main plot, which gives the name to the piece, is in the Restoration manner, while the sub-plot, which deals with the Rakishes, is in the mould of the minor late Elizabethans. In its portrayal of manners it belongs to the type represented by the plays of Brome, marked by coarseness rather than finish, and implying about the same standard of morals.

The main plot consists of a series of complications caused by the efforts of Longeville to unmask Leonora’s unfaithfulness to Lovemore, to whom she is engaged. She convinces Lovemore that Longeville’s efforts are the result of a plot, the purpose of which is to alienate Lovemore and Leonora so that Longeville may have her to himself; and there then follows one complication after another, until the characters are at last gathered together and Leonora is made to confess her duplicity.

The situation on which the main action is based is original and highly dramatic, but in order to maintain the intrigue Cibber has had to use incidents which are marked by improbability and dramatic blindness to such an extent that the action becomes wearisome. Cibber seems to be groping for something different from the conventional Restoration intrigue. His conception is worthy of more success than he attained, but he lacked the dramatic skill and experience to carry it out.

Some of the character drawing is good. Longeville and Lovemore are rather decent young men, but are no doubt too sentimental for success on the stage at this time. The Rakishes are overdrawn and farcical. The women, with the exception of Leonora, are lacking in the spontaneity and wit demanded of seventeenth and early eighteenth century heroines, and like the men are possibly too sentimental. Leonora is the intriguer and is the best drawn and most important personage in the play. Her downfall is the result of her own character and conduct, and in the disapproval of her character and actions Cibber has repeated, to some extent, views he expressed in his first play.

The vulgar sub-plot which deals with Old Rakish and Young Rakish, when separated from _Woman’s Wit_ and acted in 1707 as _The School Boy_, was a greater success than the original play. With the exception of the change in the names of some of the personages, minor alterations of the dialogue, the omission of parts of the incidents, and the addition of such incidents as are necessary to make it stand by itself, the play is verbatim as it appeared when a part of _Woman’s Wit_.

From the point of view of the reformation of the stage it must be confessed that _Woman’s Wit_ was not of great importance. The moral tone of the main action is high; at least virtue is rewarded and vice disgraced, and there are no amours carried on. But the sub-action, which was later transformed into _The School Boy_, is entirely opposed to both good taste and good morals, and after a series of low comedy scenes, ends with the promise of Young Rakish to Master Johnny that he will take Johnny to the playhouse, where the latter may satisfy his disappointment in the failure to marry his mother’s woman. Although notable progress in the morality of the drama had been made, as we have seen, the fact that this sub-action was successfully presented by itself shows that the taste of the theatre-going public was not yet entirely regenerate.