another murder." In the play there is considerable change from all this. With a certain sense of chivalry Barnwell protects Millwood; after he has resolved never to see her again he is won back only through an appeal to his sympathy for her supposed troubles; and his committing of the murder is not much more than an accident. "Throughout the last two acts his penitence is extreme; and his final endeavor is to save the soul of the woman who has so vilely betrayed him."

"We may safely conclude that the audiences which crowded to the early performances of The London Merchant troubled themselves little about either the artistic defects or the artistic merits of the play. What they welcomed in Lillo's tragedy was, in the first instance, the courage with which, resuming the native freedom of the English drama, he had chosen his theme from a sphere of experience immediately familiar to them; and, secondly, the plainness of the moral which he enforced, and the direct way in which he enforced it.” 5

In The Christian Hero (1735) Lillo wrote tragedy of a more conventional type. He used blank verse and dealt not with a London apprentice but a "patriot king," shifting the scene from London to Albania. In Fatal Curiosity (1736), however, while still using blank verse, he reverted to domestic tragedy.

In the history of English drama, Lillo holds a position wholly disproportionate to his actual dramatic achievement. Like D'Avenant, his importance is chiefly that of a pioneer. [He] set in motion powerful forces that pointed toward natural tragedy. He deliberately put

aside the dignity of rank and title and the ceremony of 'Ward: Introduction, xxxii.

• Bernbaum, 153.

verse. He animated domestic drama, and paved the way for prose melodrama and tragedy. . . . To [his] influence on the subjects of English tragedy must be added his no less marked influence upon its language. He deliberately adopted prose as the vehicle of expression for domestic tragedy. He accepts, indeed, the convention of rime-tags at the end of every act and at the conclusion of some scenes during the act; but his main intent is to give domestic drama the vocabulary and phrase that suit his theme." •

In connection with Lillo may be mentioned Edward Moore (1712-1757), who also knew the London trading class, having served as apprentice to a mercer. His comedy, The Foundling (1748), indebted for some suggestion to Steele's The Conscious Lovers, was fairly successful. His representative production, however, was The Gamester (1753), an attack on the evils of gambling. In this work Moore labored under some restraint, and generally he showed the career of the gambler "by effect rather than by cause; "thus he sacrificed considerable dramatic possibility when he kept any actual gaming off the stage. The play, however, in spite of all shortcomings, was a distinct success and furnished Garrick with a leading rôle. Especially effective from the sentimental standpoint was the scene in the last act between Beverley and his wife.

68. Burlesque: Henry Fielding.-Henry Fielding (1707-1754), the distinguished journalist and novelist, walks amid the sentimental comedy and the domestic tragedy of his day with a cool head, a slight smile of cynicism, and a general air of detachment. He has 6 Nettleton, C. H. E. L., X, 85-88.

7

breadth and keenness and delicate irony. The one thing he lacks is the thing that Jonson lacked, and that any satirist is in danger of lacking charm. He has a keen sense of the right, and a good heart, but no poetry. "The first decade of [his] literary career was given over to the production of twenty-six comic plays of various sorts and conditions-regular comedies, adaptations from Molière, farces, satirical pieces, and burlesque." In the history of the drama he is remembered primarily for his burlesques, of which the outstanding example is The Tragedy of Tragedies, or The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (first form, 1730). In this production he makes ridiculous the tragedy Ghost, parodies lines from various plays, commits half a dozen murders in as many lines, and also echoes the noise of the Shakespearean wars that have already begun. Somewhat more constructively Fielding labored to give genuine comedy and farce a place on the stage.

8

Historically, in legislation affecting the stage, Fielding has further importance. In 1736, as manager of the Haymarket, he produced Pasquin, "a dramatic satire on the times," in which the bribery and other political methods of Walpole were rather boldly suggested. The next year, however, he went still further with The Historical Register for 1736, referring again to Walpole, satirizing Colley and Theophilus Cibber, and indulging in much social pasquinade as well. A movement for the restriction of the license of the theatres had for some time been under way,

"Hillhouse: "The Tragedy of Tragedies," 1.

For an interesting analysis of the play and comparison with The Rehearsal and The Critic, see the introduction to it in F. Tupper and J. W. Tupper's Representative English Dramas.

Allocks

you I

Procured the scencing act, limiting sonson posts to two, army of Covent garden, & hyposed Ceresordip of Lord Chamberle gardenW OF SENTIMENTALISM

169

and Walpole had begun to regard Fielding as a most
dangerous enemy. Accordingly "the Licensing Act of
1737 limited the metropolitan theatres to two, and brought
plays, prologues and epilogues under direct legal au-
thority. With the passage of this act and the
appointment of a licenser under his jurisdiction, in 1738,
the Lord Chamberlain was formally invested with the
censorship of the Stage." There was considerable popu-
lar indignation and some rioting; nevertheless henceforth
the stage acknowledged the authority of the censor, and
the dramatic career of Fielding was ended. He now
turned to the composition of his novels, and English litera-
ture was richer by the exchange.

69. Adaptation: David Garrick.-David Garrick
(1717-1779), as the greatest actor of the middle of the
century, belongs rather to the history of the English stage
than to that of the drama. Nevertheless, even if he had
never made his adaptations from other dramatists, he would
still deserve mention on his own account. In 1767, with
George Colman, he wrote The Clandestine Marriage, and
among the other plays, sketches, and farces attributed to
him are The Lying Valet, in two acts, Lethe, "a dramatic
satire," Lilliput, "a dramatic entertainment," The En-
chanter, or Love and Magic, "a musical drama," The
Farmer's Return from London, "an interlude," The Irish
Widow, in two acts, Bon Ton, or High Life above Stairs,
in two acts, etc. The adaptations are from numerous
sources; altogether Garrick produced more than a score of
the plays of Shakespeare alone. One meets such titles as
Romeo and Juliet, "with alterations, and an additional
scene;" The Fairies, "taken from A Midsummer Night's

Dream;" Catherine and Petruchio, "a comedy in three acts; "The Country Girl, "altered from Wycherley;" Alfred: a Masque, "with some few alterations, and with some new music," etc. Modern scholarship, with its great emphasis on faithfulness to text, sometimes deplores the liberties taken with Shakespeare by Cibber and Garrick. These were men, however, who held aloft the ideal of the drama in their day, and preserved a great tradition. The atmosphere of the scholar's cloister is very different from that of the eighteenth century theatre with the sweep of Garrick or Peg Woffington. In a large way adaptation was to be attributed to the change that had come over the art of the actor. James Quin (1693-1756), the last tragedian of the old school, recognized this when he said of Garrick that "if the young fellow was right," he and the rest of the players had been all wrong; and far more significant than might have been realized at the time was Rich's dismissal of Charles Macklin from Lincoln's Inn Fields. In the new day the actor's own personality was capitalized, and the mere text of a play was often a very secondary consideration. Macklin was the first who thus brought his personality into his interpretations, and Garrick was the foremost exponent of the school.

Two other names, of persons who enjoyed quite a vogue in their own day, are at least worthy of mention in connection with the Garrick era. William Whitehead (17151785), poet laureate in his later years, with The Roman Father (1750), a classical tragedy, won a success comparable with that of Philips's The Distrest Mother. Isaac Bickerstaff (1735 ?-1812?) was popular as a playwright, but is best remembered as a librettist, his representative production being The Padlock (1768), a musical