possible to disregard her apparent wishes. Lord Winworth presently realizes that it is still Lady Betty whom he loves, but he feels that a withdrawal of his proposal to Miss Marchmont would be dishonorable. Thus the motives of these characters are of the highest.” 13 This play has been variously interpreted. One critic says, "The very title of Kelly's comedy is, in fact, evidence that sentimental delicacy may be carried to false extremes. Yet with every allowance of non-sentimental elements in Kelly's work, it remains indisputable that the primary appeal of the dramatist is to sentimental emotion. The chief personages voice their sentiments and emit their moral platitudes in sober earnest and with a reformer's zeal. Their speeches are without the irony with which Sheridan turned sentimental rant to hypocritical cant in the mouth of Joseph Surface.. . With False Delicacy the stage has become a school of morality." Another says, however: "Such was the success of False Delicacy, and such the superficiality of contemporary criticism, that the play came to be regarded as one which carried sentimentalism to an extreme, and was by enemies of sentimental comedy declared to be destitute of humor: when, as a a matter of fact, it is a peculiar variation of the type, and sometimes satirizes the very tendency it is supposed to support." 15 99 14 Richard Cumberland (1732-1811) was largely influenced by Kelly, but coming even as late as he did seems to have regarded himself as the real creator of sentimental drama. A native of Cambridge, the nephew of Dr. Richard Bentley, Cumberland enjoyed the benefit of training at Westminster and Trinity College. He wrote more than 1 Bernbaum, 225. 14 Nettleton, 271. 15 Bernbaum, 226. fifty dramatic pieces. The Brothers (1769), one of the earlier plays, was an unquestioned success. Cumberland's real reputation, however, is based on The West Indian (1771). Conscious that this play would be regarded as his masterpiece, he "recorded in his Memoirs the place and the circumstances of its composition with a particularity and seriousness resembling Gibbon's on an incomparably worthier occasion." 16 He might be excused for being proud of his achievement. The four characters that are at the center of the action are young Belcour, the West Indian, Lady Rusport, and Charles and Louisa Dudley, children of a retired captain. Belcour was believed by his grandfather to be a foundling. He has prospects of an inheritance and goes to London to Stockwell, the merchant. Lady Rusport has rejected Charles Dudley because of his poverty. In reality, however, her fortune belongs to Dudley, and she bribes her lawyer to destroy the will proving this. Louisa Dudley is the intended victim of a design of Belcour's. The landlady who aids this design is baffled, however, and' the hero at length honorably wins Louisa. Major O'Flaherty moreover, an Irish officer, makes known the secret of the will, so that Dudley and Miss Rusport are also united; and there is the further disclosure of the fact that Stock well is in reality Belcour's father. The questionable ethics in this plot needs no comment; by an ingenious rearrangement of old themes, however, Cumberland produced a play that became very popular. He deliberately made a West Indian and an Irishman his heroes; Belcour receives many suggestions from Tom Jones, and Major O'Flaherty is a prototype of Sir Lucius O'Trigger. As in 10 Bernbaum, 237. the admirable person of the Major, Cumberland tried to overcome a national prejudice against the Irish, so in Colin Macleod in The Fashionable Lover (1772) he tried to do away with any lingering feeling against the Scotch. 73. Summary of the Period.—It is evident that in the period we have been considering the legitimate drama was subjected to many opposing forces. Such forms of entertainment as pantomime and ballad-opera naturally raised some question with the orthodox, while the embarrassing Licensing Act largely accounts for the comparative dearth of new plays and the numerous adaptations from old ones by such a manager as Garrick. To this must be added the consideration of the popularity of the novel, the new form of literature that so rapidly developed in an age emphasizing common sentiment. The legitimate drama moreover was itself not altogether certain of its channel. The romantic impulses showed the possibility of development in a direction largely new. For the most part, however, the form struggled under the weight of sentimentalism, an influence that reached its height within the period. Already the forces of revolt against it were gathering. The burlesque of Fielding was only the prelude to the encounter. The tearful and pathetic Muse had had her day and was soon to be driven from the scene by the more genuine comedy of Goldsmith and Sheridan. CHAPTER X GOLDSMITH AND SHERIDAN 74. Reaction from Sentimentalism.-For some years now sentimentalism had been regnant as an influence in the English Drama, and Richardson and Sterne had carried the impulse into the novel. The forces of reaction were gathering, however, and were soon to make themselves felt with no uncertain sound. We have already seen how such a man as Fielding burlesqued the tearful productions of his day; and even when he passed to the composition of his novels the great realist did not cease his attack. He, however, was mainly destructive. It remained for Oliver Goldsmith constructively to show the way to a healthier and saner comedy. For some years those who favored the sentimental drama had dignified this by the word "genteel." Anything that dealt with common people, however rich might be its dramatic possibilities, was stigmatized as "low." Goldsmith first took up the cudgels of the attack in 1759, in the preface to The Present State of Polite Learning. Said he: "By the power of one single monosyllable our critics have almost got the victory over humour amongst us. Does the poet paint the absurdities of the vulgar; then he is low; does he exaggerate the features of folly, to render it more thoroughly ridiculous, he is then very low. In short, they have proscribed the comic or satirical muse from every walk but high life, which, though abounding in fools as well as the humblest station, is by no means so fruitful in absurdity. Among well-bred fools we may despise much, but have little to laugh at; nature seems to present us with a universal blank of silk, ribbands, smiles, and whispers; absurdity is the poet's game, and good breeding is the nice concealment of absurdities." 1 More relentlessly did he return to the attack in 1772 after the rather cool reception given to his first play and before his second had as yet appeared before the public. In December of this year he contributed to the Westminster Magazine, An Essay on the Theatre; or A Comparison between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy, in which he spoke in part as follows: "Comedy is defined by Aristotle to be a picture of the frailties of the lower part of mankind, to distinguish it from tragedy, which is an exhibition of the misfortunes of the great. When comedy, therefore, ascends to produce the characters of princes or generals upon the stage, it is out of its walks, since low life and middle life are entirely its object. The principal question, therefore, is, whether, in describing low or middle life, an exhibition of its follies be not preferable to a detail of its calamities? Or, in other words, which deserves the preference,-the weeping sentimental comedy so much in fashion at present, or the laughing, and even low comedy, which seems to have been last exhibited by Vanbrugh and Cibber? If we apply to authorities, all the great masters in the dramatic art have but one opinion. . . . Yet notwithstanding this weight of authority, and the universal practice of former ages, a new species of dramatic composition has been intro 1 See Dobson: Introduction to The Good Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer, xiii. |