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Restoration comedy

[1664-1707 as Congreve, as its nomenclature tends to show; but in comedy, more perhaps than in any other branch of literature, the Restoration period started afresh to study the life of the moment, the instances, not the exceptions. The field is narrow at first, including only the men and women of the Court and "the town;" it widens in Vanbrugh, and in Farquhar it expands still further. Its debt to French comedy, especially to Molière, and through French comedy to Plautus and Terence, there is no disguising and no need to disguise; for here there is no question of forcing a foreign taste on people with no taste of their own, but of borrowing a form for independent use. It was early discovered (and perhaps unfortunately, says a historian of the English drama) that one French plot was not enough for an English comedy; indeed, there is only one good English comedy, Congreve's Double-Dealer, that has a single plot: the English stage needed more persons and more action, just as it needed stronger characterisation than it could find in the Spanish comedies of intrigue. With regard to its morality, such a perversion as that of Molière's Alceste into the Manly of Wycherley's Plain-Dealer is a comprehensive comment on the general degradation of tone for which no condemnation is too strong. It is ungracious and unpleasant work to call attention to the glaring error in work which is unmatched in all English literature; but it must be stated again that Restoration comedy is gross, licentious, and cynical, and more important still that just because of its want of a moral standard it failed, for all its wit and its use of the microscope, to interpret human life in enduring terms. It began its career as the plaything of a corrupt Court; and it reflected the gross temper of a materialistic period among a people always inclined to confuse grossness with humour and the gratification of the appetites with pleasure. The accession of James made no difference in this respect. After the Restoration it took some years for the purer influence of Queen Mary - a good woman and a good judge of a play to make itself felt. But the growing disgust with the immorality, not only of the drama but of the theatre, before and behind the curtain, found expression in 1698 in a book, which all must admire but the necessity for which all must regret, Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage. By so much as Collier was better acquainted with his subject and less of a fanatic than Prynne, by so much is the Short View a more damning indictment than Histriomastix. It was answered by Congreve, among others, with deplorable flippancy. Farquhar tried to turn it against the purpose of its author, and failed. Dryden protested against its exaggerations, and, like the great man he was, confessed with contrition its substantial justice. But its effect was not seen immediately. Farquhar's Sir Harry Wildair (to take a single instance) dates from three years after its publication.

It was not till the Sentimental Comedy of Steele, who followed up a

1661-82]

Sir George Etherege

129

hint given by Colley Cibber, that the reform really began. Meanwhile, from Etherege to Farquhar we find a social comedy which represents, with some brilliance and a fair show of completeness, certain aspects of the actual life lived by a small circle of men and women sufficiently "elegant," leisured and self-conscious to be interested in themselves and to provide food for the "wit" which had changed its meaning since the days of the metaphysical poets. All the types that composed the small circle are revealed to us with an elegance and fineness of characterisation unknown before. If plots, incidents, and people are alike borrowed from Molière, the effort is always towards approximation to the English social life of the day. In 1661 Cowley had caused offence by daring to hint, in Cutter of Coleman-Street, that there were black sheep among the Royalists: Mrs Behn, in The Roundheads (1682) and The Rover (1677 and 1681), boldly shows the new society regarding as objects of humour not only the Roundheads, who, of course, are outrageously caricatured, but the Cavaliers themselves. Old heroism and ideals are forgotten or scorned, and the town is engrossed in its own little affairs of gallantry or roguery. Immensely interested in itself, it likes to see itself reflected on the stage, with some exaggeration of its wit, and possibly of its immorality. The pioneer in this new comedy was Sir George Etherege. The date of Etherege's return to England is, like many other facts in his life, uncertain, but there is reason to believe that he lingered in Paris long enough to see the production of some of Molière's plays. On his return he wrote The Comical Revenge (1664), a tragi-comedy in which the serious portions are written in rhymed heroics. To Etherege, therefore, belongs the honour of writing the earliest regular play in which the use of rhyme was adopted. But his significance does not end there. He was the first to introduce to England the new comedy, which forsook eccentricities and moral castigation, and simply attempted to transfer to the stage the life of the time. A witty man himself, Etherege made the mistake of endowing all his characters with his own wit; and the fault persisted throughout most of the Restoration comedy; nevertheless his characters are portraits. Of them, as of the characters of Restoration comedy in general, it may be said that, so far from being abstractions, they represent the attempt to be as exact and realistic as possible. The few chances enjoyed by modern playgoers of seeing Restoration comedies acted are quite enough to prove these men and women very much alive indeed. In She Would if She Could (1668) Etherege developed the idea of the new comedy, and produced the brightest and gayest of his pictures of contemporary life. In the underplot of his only other play, The Man of Mode (1676) — the play which contains the first of a long line of fops Etherege, says Gosse, virtually founded English comedy as it was understood by Congreve, Goldsmith, and Sheridan.

Dryden's first essay in comedy, The Wild Gallant (1663), is, in effect,

C. M. H. V.

9

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Dryden, Wycherley, and Congreve

[1663-1700

a comedy of the old Jonsonian type of "humours." The value of Etherege's work may be seen by a comparison of this play of Dryden's and the plays of Wilson and Shadwell with Dryden's later comedies and the school of younger writers, Wycherley, Congreve, Mrs Behn, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar. Dryden's comedy, as a whole, shows more sense and less wit than that of his fellows. In general, he is a large borrower of plots, scenes, and characters from the French, which, however, he stamps with his own mark and that of his country. He coarsens what he takes, as a comparison of Sir Martin Mar-all (1667) with its original, L'Étourdi, is enough to show. He leans a little towards farce, and is no whit less licentious than his fellows in the art; on the other hand, he does not suffer from the bleak cynicism and cruelty of Etherege and Wycherley. Some of his women, indeed, have breadth and sweetness. Possibly, his best dramatic work is to be found in some of his tragi-comedies, Marriage à la Mode (1672), Don Sebastian (1690), Amphitryon (1690), and even Love Triumphant (1694). An even more important figure is that of Wycherley, a born playwright. To The Plain-Dealer we have already referred. This, with his three other comedies, was written before he had reached forty. His gaiety is almost hideous; he sees the worst of everything, and has no spark of nobility to counteract his bitterness; but he is an effective if clumsy satirist, and the possessor of strong dramatic power.

With Congreve we reach the summit of this form of expression. His output was very small, being checked partly by Collier's Short View and partly by the social ambitions of the playwright, whom offices and rewards had relieved of the necessity of work. The Old Bachelor (acted in 1693) had been highly praised and adapted for representation by Dryden. The Double-Dealer (1693) we have mentioned before. The skill and vigour with which the single plot is kept alive and full of interest to the end are masterly. With Love for Love (1695) he opened the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields after the secession of Betterton and others from Drury Lane; and in 1700, after the attack of Collier, appeared his finest play, The Way of the World. It was his aim in this play to substitute the folly of affectation for the folly of grossness, and the result is a severe satire on the world of fashion and foppery. Congreve cannot be acquitted of the charges of frivolity, cynicism, and indecency. On the other hand, he is never, like Wycherley, Vanbrugh, or Otway in his comedies, offensive, and Millamant, in his last play, is a woman so entirely fascinating in her wit and her wilfulness as to prove him aware of something higher than the gross attractions dwelt on by his fellows. It may be pointed out, too, that in The Double-Dealer virtue is rewarded; and, on the whole, it may be said that the faults of Congreve are largely the faults of his age, while his merits are of his own contriving. In him the characteristic "wit" of the age finds its most perfect expression. Like Etherege, he suffers from too much of

1673-1707]

Politics in the drama

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it; his servants talk as elegantly and pointedly as their masters and mistresses; but, as representing the talk of a society which had leisure and ambition to be "polite" and exquisite, it is, in all probability, not far from the truth, while the attainment by English prose of such finish, flexibility, and point as his marks the advance on the previous age. The writers of comedies in deserting poetry, with Etherege, rendered invaluable service to the development of prose. On Mrs Behn and other writers we need not dwell. Sir John Vanbrugh, a writer and architect of mixed English and Flemish parentage, is noteworthy for the unsurpassed gaiety and ease of his dialogue and his vivid pictures of contemporary life. In Farquhar we reach a writer of greater significance. No fine gentleman, but an Irish adventurer of genius, he extended the field—especially in his last two plays, The Recruiting Officer (1706) and The Beaux's Stratagem (1707) to embrace types outside the little parish of St James' and sentiments more modern and humane than those of the "beaux " and "belles." His comedy comes nearer to being national, to dealing with the life of the people at large, than that of his contemporaries. His frequent references to current events are apt and diverting, and his rejection of the traditional topics. of Restoration comedy in favour of wider and more actual material was the basis of a similar advance on the part of Lessing, whose Minna von Barnhelm owes more to Farquhar than some of its incidents.

It was in this age that the drama, especially the tragic drama, began to be used for political ends, if not with the virulence shown by Henry Fielding and others in the next century, at any rate with almost unabashed openness. In Dryden's own case we have, notably, Amboyna (1673), which raked up an old story for the purpose of inflaming public opinion against the Dutch, and The Spanish Friar, a "Protestant play " (1681); and The Duke of Guise (1682), written by Lee with Dryden's aid, drew a parallel between Guise and Monmouth, and practically foretold for the latter in spite of the disclaimer in the epilogue and the subsequent Vindication - an end similar to that of the former. Otway's shameful caricature of Shaftesbury as Antonio in Venice Preserved, though personal rather than political, is another instance. Even more frequently than the play itself the prologue and epilogue were used as political weapons. The curious custom by which the playwright spoke personally to the public through the mouth of an actor or actress was at its height during this period. The result was almost always inartistic, in some cases disgusting, as in the famous epilogue to Tyrannic Love or in the first version of that to The Duke of Guise; the language was often indelicate, and the sentiments highly objectionable. At the same time, in the hands of Dryden the prologue and epilogue reached a very high level of epigrammatic point, and were admirably adapted in their freedom to inflame political passions by sneers, innuendos, or open attack or defence.

[1660-1700

In the plays of the period, too, may be found embedded to its disadvantage and neglect by posterity—most of the lyrical poetry of the time. In a self-conscious age, when feeling was at a low ebb and the passion of love debased by the prevailing mode, good lyrical poetry was rare. Marvell and Waller carried on the characteristics of the former age; for the rest, the lyrics of Dryden, Crowne, Congreve, Pordage, Rochester and others are both small in quantity and deficient in genuine. lyrical quality. Rochester, indeed, is often worthy of comparison with Catullus; but his lyrics, like those of his contemporaries, are rather neatly finished than spontaneous, and their harmony is a matter of rule more than of essence. A favourite form was the ode, and here, as elsewhere, Dryden outstripped his fellows. The Pindariques of Cowley were freely imitated by Sprat, and to Congreve belongs the honour of pointing out that a Pindaric ode proper was not of irregular structure. Dryden's odes are irregular in structure, but almost faultless in accomplishment. If Alexander's Feast (1697) is not poetry of the highest sort, it has been justly called "the best thing of its kind"; and the first portion of the Ode to the Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew (1685–6) is famous as one of the most superb pieces of verbal organ-music in the language.

The age, however, was not an age of song-birds, but of enquirers, critics, prose-writers; and the best prose of the time was the work of the critics. The men of "science" exercised an influence of their own, for it was one of the merits of the new Royal Society to exact from its members a "close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness." From the turbulent splendours of Milton we pass to the ordered, clarified prose, which is the work of men who use it for the purpose of saying what they have to say, of communicating their discoveries, thoughts, and arguments, as clearly as possible. It is, as befits its purpose, for the most part a plain and useful means of expression; yet in the hands of Dryden, that great man of letters, it rises, with no professed aim at ornament, into a thing of dignity and beauty. Dryden used prose for many purposes: the Epistle to the Whigs that precedes The Medal is a piece of political argument so clear, forcible, and ordered that it is difficult to believe it a work not forty years younger than the Areopagitica. But his most important prose-works are in literary criticism, a new branch of activity introduced into England from France, partly by Charles and his Court, partly by a French exile, Saint-Évremond, who exercised a very important influence on the criticism of his time. Modern French writers find him too much dependent on prejudice imbibed in the France of his youth, on personal fancy and taste, and lacking in reason and conviction. To modern England, accustomed to an even more thoroughly "impressionist "style of criticism, such a verdict seems strange. Saint-Évremond's letters (for they are little more) on the English, French, and classical drama seem full of principle and reason, however little