Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3)

Wilson was another professional writer, but less successful on the stage than in his recordership of Londonderry. Another lawyer, Higden, was one of the jolliest of fellows; and wishing the actors to be so too, he introduced so many drinking scenes into his sole play, "The Wary Widow," that the players, who tippled their real punch freely, were all drunk by the end of the third act; and the piece was then, there, and thereby, brought to an end!

In the last years of the seventeenth century, a humble votary of the muses appeared in Duffet, the Exchange milliner; and in Robert Gould, a servant in the household of Dorset, where he caught from the wits and gay fellows assembled at Knowle or at Buckhurst, a desire to write a drama. He was, however, a schoolmaster, when his play of the "Rival Sisters" – in which, other means of slaughter being exhausted, a thunderbolt is employed for the killing a lady – was but coldly received. Gould was not a plagiarist, like Scott, the Duke of Roxburgh's secretary, nor so licentious. The public was scandalised by incidents in Scott's "Unhappy Kindness," in 1697. Dr. Drake was another plagiarist, who revenged himself in the last-named year, for the condemnation of his "Sham Lawyer," by stating on the title-page that it had been "damnably acted." That year was fatal, too, to Dr. Filmer, the champion of the stage against Collier. Even Betterton and Mrs. Barry failed to give life to the old gentleman's "Unnatural Brother;" and the doctor ascribed his want of success to the fact, that never at any one time had he placed more than three characters on the stage! The most prolific of what may be termed the amateur writers, was Peter Motteux, a French Huguenot, whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes brought, in 1660,56 to England, where he carried on the vocations of a trader in Leadenhall Street, clerk in the foreign department of the Post Office, translator, original writer, dramatist, and "fast man," till the too zealous pursuit of the latter calling found Peter dead, in very bad company, in St. Clements Danes, in the year 1718. Of his seventeen comedies, farces, and musical interludes, there is nothing to be said, save that one called "Novelty" presents a distinct play in each act, – or five different pieces in all. By different men, Peter has been diversely rated. Dryden said of him, in reference to his one tragedy, "Beauty in Distress:"

"Thy incidents, perhaps, too thick are sown;But too much plenty is thy fault alone:At least but two in that good crime commit; —Thou in design, and Wycherly in wit."

But an anonymous poet writes, in reference to one of his various poor adaptations, "The Island Princess:"

"Motteux and Durfey are for nothing fit,But to supply with songs their want of wit."

How Motteux found time for all his pursuits is not to be explained; but, much as he accomplished in all, he designed still more – one of his projects being an opera, to be called "The Loves of Europe," in which were to be represented the methods employed in various nations, whereby ladies' hearts are triumphantly won. It was an odd idea; but Peter Motteux was odd in everything. And it is even oddly said of him, "that he met with his fate in trying a very odd experiment, highly disgraceful to his memory!"57

Hard-drinking, and what was euphoniously called gallantry, killed good-tempered Charles Hopkins, son of the Bishop of Londonderry. Had he had more discretion and less wit, he might have prospered. His tragedies, "Pyrrhus," "Boadicea," and "Friendship improved," bear traces of what he might have done. He has the merit, however, of not being indecent, – a fact which the epilogue to "Boadicea," furnished by a friend and spoken by a lady, rather deplores, and in indecent language, regrets that uncleanness of jest is no longer acceptable to the town!

Walker merits notice, less for his two pieces, "Victorious Love," and "Marry or do worse," than for the fact that this young Barbadian was the first actor whom Eton school gave to the stage. He appeared, when only eighteen, in the first-named piece, but quickly passed away to the study of the law and the exercise of the latter as a profession, in his native island. I know nothing worthy of record of the few other gentlemen who wrote plays, rather as a relaxation than a vocation, save that Boyer, a refugee Huguenot, like Motteux, and a learned man, adapted Racine's "Iphigenia in Aulis," for representation; that Oldmixon was an old, unscrupulous, party-writer; and that Crauford was historiographer for Scotland to Queen Anne, and has left no name of note among dramatic writers.

CHAPTER X

PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS

The men who took up dramatic authorship seriously as a vocation, during the last half of the seventeenth century, amount to something more than two dozen. They begin with Davenant and Dryden; include Tate and Brady,58 Lee and Otway, Wycherley, Congreve, Cibber, and Vanbrugh; and conclude with Farquhar, and with Rowe.

I include Sir John Vanbrugh because he preferred fame as an author to fame as an architect, and I insert Congreve, despite the reflection that the ghost of that writer would daintily protest against it if he could. When Voltaire called upon him, in London, the Frenchman intimated that his visit was to the "author." "I am a gentleman," said Congreve. "Nay," rejoined the former, "had you been only a gentleman, you would never have received a visit from me at all."

Let me here repeat the names: —Davenant, Dryden, Shirley, Lee, Cowley, Shadwell, Flecknoe, Settle, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Otway, Durfey, Banks, Rymer, Tate, Brady, Southerne, Congreve, Cibber, Dilke,59 Vanbrugh, Gildon, Farquhar, Dennis, and Rowe. The half dozen in italics were poets-laureate.

All of them were sons of "gentlemen," save three, Davenant, Cowley, and Dennis, whose sires were, respectively, a vintner, a hatter,60 and a saddler. The sons, however, received a collegiate education. Cowley distinguished himself at Cambridge, but Davenant left Oxford without a degree, and from the former University Dennis was expelled, in March 1680, "for assaulting and wounding Sir Glenham with a sword."

Besides Cowley and Dennis, we are indebted to Cambridge for Dryden, Lee, and Rymer. From Oxford University came Davenant, and Settle, degreeless as Davenant, with Shirley, whose mole on his cheek had rendered him ineligible in Laud's eyes, for ordination; Wycherley, Otway, Southerne, and Dilke. Dublin University yielded Tate and Brady; and better fruit still, Southerne,61 Congreve, who went to Ireland at an early age, and Farquhar. Douay gave us Gildon, and we are not proud of the gift.

Lee, Otway, and Tate were sons of clergymen. Little Crowne's father was an Independent minister in Nova Scotia, and Crowne himself laid claim, fruitlessly, to a vast portion of the territory there – unjustly made over by the English Government to the French. Cibber was an artist, on the side of his father the statuary, and a "gentleman" by his mother.

It may be said of a good number of these gentlemen that idleness and love of pleasure made them dramatic poets. Shadwell, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Durfey, Bankes, Southerne, Congreve, and Rowe, were all apprenticed to the law; but the study was one too dull for men of their vivacious temperament, and they all turned from it in disgust. According to their success, so were they praised or blamed.

The least successful dramatists on the above list were the most presumptuous of critics. Rymer, who was wise enough to stick to the law while he endeavoured to turn at least Melpomene to good account, tried to persuade the public that Shakspeare was even of less merit than it was the fashion to assign to him. In 1678,62 Rymer boldly asserted that "in the neighing of a horse as the growling of a mastiff, there is a meaning; there is as lively expression and, may I say, more humanity than many times in the tragical flights of Shakspeare." He says, that "no woman bred out of a pigstye could talk so meanly as Desdemona," in that tragedy which Rymer calls "a bloody farce without salt or savour." Of Brutus and Cæsar, he says Shakspeare has depicted them as "Jack Puddins." To show how much better he understood the art, Rymer published, in 1678, the tragedy he could not get represented, "Edgar, or the English Monarch." He professes to imitate the ancients, and his tragedy is in rhyme; he accuses Shakspeare of anachronisms, and his Saxon princess is directed to "pull off her patches!" The author was ambitious enough to attempt to supersede Shakspeare, and he pooh-poohed John Milton by speaking of Paradise Lost as "a thing which some people were pleased to call a poem."

Dennis was not quite so audacious as this. He was a better critic than the author of the Fœdera, and a more voluminous writer, or rather adapter, of dramatic pieces. He spoke, however, of Tasso as compassionately as the village-painter did of Titian; but his usefulness was acknowledged by the commentator, who remarked that men might construct good plays by following his precepts and avoiding his examples. Boyer has said something similar of Gildon, who was a critic as well as dramatist – namely, "he wrote an English Art of Poetry, which he had practised himself very unsuccessfully in his dramatic performances."

Cowley, although he is now little remembered as a dramatic writer, was among the first who seized the earliest opportunity after the Restoration to set up as playwrights; but Cowley failed, and was certainly mortified at his failure. He re-trimmed a play of his early days, the "Guardian," and called it the "Cutter of Coleman Street." All there is broad farce, in which the Puritan "congregation of the spotless" is coarsely ridiculed, and cavalierism held up to admiration. The audience condemned the former as "profane," and Cowley's cavaliers were found to be such scamps that he was suspected of disloyalty. Gentle as he was by nature, Cowley was irritable under criticism. "I think there was something of faction against it," he says, "by the early appearance of some men's disapprobation before they had seen enough of it to build their dislike upon their judgment." "Profane!" exclaims Abraham, with a shudder, and declares it is enough to "knock a man down." Is it profane, he asks, "to deride the hypocrisy of those men whose skulls are not yet bare upon the gates since the public and just punishment of it," namely, profanity. Thus were the skulls of the Commonwealth leaders tossed up in comedy. He adds, in a half saucy, half deprecatory sort of way, that "there is no writer but may fail sometimes in point of wit, and it is no less frequent for the auditors to fail in point of judgment." Nevertheless, he had humbly asked favour at the hands of the critics when his piece was first played, in these words: —

"Gentlemen critics of Argier,For your own int'rest, I'd advise ye hereTo let this little forlorn hope go bySafe and untouch'd. 'That must not be!' you'll cry.If ye be wise, it must: I'll tell ye why.There are 7, 8, 9, – stay, there are behindTen plays at least, which wait but for a windAnd the glad news that we the enemy miss;And those are all your own, if you spare this.Some are but new-trimm'd up, others quite new,Some by known shipwrights built, and others tooBy that great author made, whoe'er he be,That styles himself 'Person of Quality.'"

The "Cutter" rallied a little, and then was laid aside; but some of its spars were carried off by later gentlemen, who have piqued themselves on their originality. Colonel Jolly's advice to the bully, Cutter, if he would not be known, to "take one more disguise at last, and put thyself in the habit of a gentleman," has been quoted as the wit of Sheridan, who took his Sir Anthony Absolute from Truman, senior. And when Cowley made Aurelia answer to the inquiry, if she had looked in Lucia's eye, that she had, and that "there were pretty babies in it," he little thought that there would rise a Tom Moore to give a turn to the pretty idea, and spoil it, as he has done, in the "Impromptu," in Little's Poems.

One of the most remarkable circumstances in Cowley's character, considering how he distinguished himself at college, is, that he never thoroughly understood the rules of grammar! and that in seriously setting up for a dramatic author, he took, like Dryden, the course in which he acquired the least honour. When Charles II., on hearing of Cowley's death, declared that he had not left a better man behind him in England, the King was, assuredly, not thinking of the poet as a dramatist.

Several of Cowley's contemporaries who were considered better men by some judges, were guilty of offence from which he was entirely free. That offence consisted in their various attempts to improve Shakspeare, by lowering him to what they conceived to be the taste of the times. Davenant took "Measure for Measure," and "Much Ado about Nothing," and manipulated them into one absurd comedy, the "Law against Lovers." He subsequently improved "Macbeth" and "Julius Cæsar;"63 and Dryden, who with at least some show of reason, re-arranged "Troilus and Cressida," united with Davenant in a sacrilegious destruction of all that was beautiful in the "Tempest." Nat Lee, who was accounted mad, had at least sense enough to refrain from marring Shakspeare. Shadwell corrected the great poet's view of "Timon of Athens," which, as he not too modestly observed, he "made into a play;" but, with more modesty in the epilogue, he asked for forgiveness for his own part, for the sake of the portion that was Shakspeare's. Crowne, more impudently, remodelled two parts of "Henry VI.," with some affectation of reverence for the original author, and a bold assertion of his own original merits with regard to some portions of the play. Crowne's originality is shown, in making Clifford swear like a drunken tapster, and in affirming that a king is a king – sacred, and not to be even thought ill of, let him be never so hateful a miscreant. Ravenscroft, in his "Titus Andronicus," only piled the agony a little more solidly and comically, and can be hardly said to have thereby molested Shakspeare. There was less excuse for Otway, who, not caring to do as he pleased with a doubtful play, ruthlessly seized "Romeo and Juliet," stripped the lovers of their romance, clapped them into a classical costume, and converted the noble but obstinate houses of Capulet and Montagu into riotous followers of Marius and Sylla – Caius Marius the younger wishing he were a glove upon the hand of Lavinia Metella, and a sententious Sulpitius striving in vain to be as light and sparkling as Mercutio. Tate's double rebuke to Shakspeare, in altering his "King Lear" and "Coriolanus," was a small offence compared with Otway's assault. He undertook, as he says, to "rectify what was wanting;" and accordingly, he abolishes the faithful fool, makes a pair of silly lovers of Edgar and Cordelia, and converts the solemn climax into comedy, by presenting the old king and his matchless daughter, hand in hand, alive and merry, as the curtain descends. Tate smirkingly maintained, that he wrought into perfection the rough and costly material left by Shakspeare. "In my humble opinion," said Addison, "it has lost half its beauty;" and yet Tate's version kept its place for many years! – though not so long as Cibber's version of "Richard III.," which was constructed out of Shakspeare, with more regard for the actor than respect for the author.

In the last year of the century, the last attempt to improve that inefficient poet was made by Gildon, who produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields his idea of what "Measure for Measure" should be, by omitting all the comic characters, introducing music and dancing, transposing incidents, adding much nonsense of his own to that of Davenant, and sprinkling all with an assortment of blunders, amusing enough to make some compensation for the absence of the comic characters in the original play.

It seemed to be the idea of these men, that it were wise to reduce Shakspeare to the capacities of those who could appreciate him. There were unhappy persons thus afflicted. Even Mr. Pepys speaks of "Henry VIII." as "a simple thing, made up of a great many patches." The "Tempest," he thinks, "has no great wit – but yet good, above ordinary plays." "Othello" was to him "a mean thing," compared with the last new comedy by another author. "Twelfth Night," "one of the weakest plays I ever saw on the stage." "Macbeth," he liked or disliked, according to the humour of the hour; but there was a "divertissement" in it, which struck him as being a droll thing in tragedy, but in this case proper and natural! Finally, he records, in 1662, of the "Midsummer's Night's Dream," which he "had never seen before, nor ever shall again," that "it is the most insipid, ridiculous play, that ever I saw in my life."

Of the characteristics of the chief of these dramatists, it may be said, first of Davenant, that, if he was quick of fancy and careful in composition, the result is not answerable to the labour expended on it. One of the pleasantest features about Dryden was, that as he grew old he increased in power; but his heart was untouched by his own magic, and he was but a cold reader of the best of his own works. Lee, as tender and impassioned as he is often absurd and bombastic, was an exquisite reader of what he wrote, his heart acknowledging the charm. Shadwell's characters have the merit of being well conceived, and strongly marked; and Shirley (a poet belonging to an earlier period), has only a little above the measure of honour due to him, when he is placed on a level with Fletcher. Crowne is more justly placed in the third rank of dramatists; but he had originality, lacking the power to give it effect. Ravenscroft had neither invention nor expression; yet he was a most prolific writer, a caricaturist, but without truth or refinement; altogether unclean. Wycherley, on the other hand, was admirable for the epigrammatic turn of his stage conversations, the aptness of his illustrations, the acuteness of his observation, the richness of his character-painting, and the smartness of his satire; in the indulgence or practice of all which, however, the action of the drama is often impeded, that the audience may enjoy a shower of sky rockets.

Pope said that Wycherley was inspired by the Muses, with the wit of Plautus. He had, indeed, "Plautus' wit," and an obscenity rivalling that of the "Curculio;" but he had none of the pathos which is to be found in the "Rudens." But Wycherley was also described as having the "art of Terence and Menander's fire." If by the first, Pope meant skill in invention of plot, Wycherley surpassed the Carthaginian; and as to "Menander's fire," in Wycherley it was no purifying fire; and Wesley was not likely to illustrate a sermon by a quotation from Wycherley, as St. Paul did by citing a line from Menander.

We are charmed by the humour of Wycherley; but after that, posterity disagrees with Pope's verdict. We are not instructed by the sense of Wycherley, nor swayed by his judgment, nor warmed honestly by his spirit; his unblushing profligacy ruins all. But if his men and women are as coarse as Etherege's or Sedley's, they are infinitely more clever people; so clever, indeed, that Sheridan has not been too proud to borrow "good things" from some of them. Wycherley is perhaps more natural and consistent than Congreve, whose Jeremy speaks like an oracle, and is as learned, though not so nasty as his master. It may be, that for a man to enjoy Congreve's wit, he should be as witty as Congreve. To me, it seems to shine at best but as a brilliant on a dirty finger. As for his boasted originality, Valentine and Trapbois are Don Juan and M. Dimanche; and as for Valentine, as the type of a gentleman, his similes smack more of the stable-yard than the drawing-room; and there is more of impertinent prattle generally among his characters than among those of Wycherley. His ladies are a shade more elegant than those of the latter poet; but they are mere courtezans, brilliant, through being decked with diamonds; but not a jot the more virtuous or attractive on that account. Among the comedy-writers of this half century, however, Congreve and Wycherley stand supreme; they were artists; too many of their rivals or successors were but coarse daubers.

In coarseness of sentiment the latter could not go beyond their prototypes; and in the expression of it, they had neither the wit of their greatest, nor the smartness of their less famous masters. This coarseness dates, however, from earlier days than those of the Restoration; and Dryden, who remembered the immorality of Webster's comedies, seems to have thought that the Restoration was to give the old grossness to the stage, as well as a new king to the country. It is, nevertheless, certain, that a large portion of the public protested against this return to an evil practice, and hissed his first piece, "The Wild Gallant," played in the little theatre in Vere Street, Drury Lane, in 1662. "It was not indecent enough for them," said the poet, who promised "not to offend in the way of modesty again." His "Kind Keeper, or Mr. Limberham," under which name the Duke of Lauderdale is said to have been satirised, and which Dryden held to be his best comedy, was utterly condemned. "Ah!" said he, "it was damned by a cabal of keepers!" It never occurred to him that the public might prefer wit to immorality. Long before, he had written an unseemly piece, called "The Rival Ladies;" he seasoned it in what he maintained was the taste of the town, and in a prologue – prologues then were often savagely defiant of the opinions of the audience, asserted his own judgment by saying: —

"He's bound to please, not to write well, and knowsThere is a mode in plays as well as clothes."

I do not know how true it may be that Dryden, the coarsest of dramatic writers, was "the modestest of men in conversation;" but I have small trust in the alleged purity of a writer who stooped to gratify the baser feelings of an audience, according to their various degrees; who could compose for one class the filthy dish served up in his "Wild Gallant," and for another the more dangerous, if more refined, fare for youthful palates, so carefully manipulated in the Alexis and Cælia song, in his "Mariage à la Mode."

We must not forget, indeed, that the standard of morals was different at that time from what it is now. Later in the half century, Jeremy Collier especially attacked Congreve and Wycherley, as men who applied their natural gifts to corrupt instead of purify the stage. The public too were scandalised at passages in Congreve's "Double Dealer," a comedy of which the author said "the mechanical part was perfect."64 The play was not a success, and the fault was laid to its gross inuendoes, and its plainer indecency. "I declare," says the author, in the preface, "that I took a particular care to avoid it, and if they find any, it is of their own making, for I did not design it to be so understood."

This point, on which the author and the public were at issue, proves that on the part of the latter the standard was improving – for Congreve is deep in the mire before the first scene is over. He had looked for censure for other offence, and says in his usual lofty manner with the critics: – "I would not have anybody imagine that I think this play without its faults, for I am conscious of several, and ready to own 'em; but it shall be to those who are able to find 'em out." This is not ill said. For the critics there was at least as much contempt as fear. In "The Country Wife," Wycherley speaks of "the most impudent of creatures, an ill poet, or what is yet more impudent, a second-hand critic!" The less distinguished writers were, of course, severer still against the critics.

In later years, Sheridan expressed the greatest contempt for such part of the public as found that the grossness of Congreve was not compensated for by his wit. Sheridan avowed that Congreve must be played unmutilated or be shelved. He compared his great predecessor to a horse whose vice is cured at the expense of his vigour.

Sheridan must, nevertheless, have felt that he was in error with regard to these old authors. In his "Trip to Scarborough," which is an entire recasting of Vanbrugh's "Relapse," he makes Loveless (Smith) say, "It would surely be a pity to exclude the productions of some of our best writers for want of a little wholesome pruning, which might be effected by any one who possessed modesty enough to believe that we should preserve all we can of our deceased authors, at least, till they are outdone by the living ones."