duced, under the name of sentimental comedy, in which the virtues of private life are exhibited, rather than the vices exposed; and the distresses rather than the faults of mankind make our interest in the piece. These comedies have had of late great success, perhaps from their novelty, and also from their flattering every man in his foible. In these plays almost all the characters are good, and exceedingly generous; they are lavish enough of their tin money on the stage; and though they want humour, have abundance of sentiment and feeling. If they happen to have faults or foibles, the spectator is taught, not only to pardon, but to applaud them, in consideration of the goodness of their hearts; so that folly, instead of being ridiculed, is commended, and the comedy aims at touching our passions without the power of being truly pathetic. In this manner we are likely to lose one great source of entertainment on the stage; for while the comic poet is invading the province of the tragic muse, he leaves her lovely sister quite neglected. Of this, however, he is no way solicitous, as he measures his fame by his profits. But there is one argument in favour of sentimental comedy, which will keep it on the stage, in spite of all that can be said against it. It is, of all others, the most easily written. Those abilities that can hammer out a novel are quite sufficient for the production of a sentimental comedy. It is only sufficient to raise the characters a little; to deck out the hero with a riband, or give the heroine a title; then to put an insipid dialogue, without character or humour, into their mouths, give them mighty good hearts, very fine clothes, furnish a new set of scenes, make a pathetic scene or two, with a sprinkling of tender melancholy conversation through the whole, and there is

doubt but all the ladies will cry, and all the gentlemen applaud.” 2

75. Oliver Goldsmith.-Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) has left to literature a legacy of singular charm. "Even his failings leaned to virtue's side;" and however much hackwork of his earlier years he might later have preferred to forget, however much his foibles excited the amusement or the sympathy of his friends, when he passed to the composition of his serious efforts he worked with a clear conception of the requirements of art and wrote with unfailing good taste. The Traveller and The Deserted Village show as do few other poems the narrow line between sentiment and sentimentality, while The Vicar of Wakefield is so clearly constructed that it can easily be made into a five-act play. His first drama, The GoodNatured Man, was offered to Colman at Covent Garden in 1767; but even though apparently accepted it had an exceedingly hard time in actually getting before the public. Something of the manager's indifference communicated itself to the players, and Garrick, who as manager at Drury Lane had recently become reconciled with Colman, and who had on hand a new play, False Delicacy, for which he wished success, arrived at an understanding with Colman by which Goldsmith's play should not be produced until Kelly's had enjoyed a preliminary run. The result was that False Delicacy was produced January 23, 1768, and The Good-Natured Man not until six nights afterwards. As Colman feared would be the case with an audience attuned to sentimentality, special objection was raised to the bailiff scene in Act III, though the parts 2 Quoted from Dobson's edition, 126-30.

3

See Dobson's Introduction, x-xxi.

of Croaker and Lofty did not fail to impress the discerning. Goldsmith "was bitterly disappointed. Yet al though his play ran but for nine nights, three of these brought him profits which reached to £400, to which the sale of the book, with the restored bailiff scene, added some £100 more. Compared with the success of False Delicacy, however, these returns were inconsiderable."

Five years passed before Goldsmith brought forth his second play. He was doubtless discouraged by the difficulties of actually getting a drama upon the stage; more over he realized that sentimental comedy, while it might be despised, was a rival that could not be disregarded, for in the meantime Cumberland's The West Indian (1771) had appeared. She Stoops to Conquer, though still unnamed, was evidently finished by the end of 1771. The manuscript was in Colman's hands early in the next year; but again ensued a long season of harassing waiting. At length Goldsmith wrote to Colman a moving appeal, to which the manager replied "by returning the manuscript, reiterating his intention to bring out the piece, but freely decorating the 'copy' with vexatious remarks and criticism." Deeply mortified, Goldsmith, with no great hope, sent it on as it was to Garrick. Johnson, however, with his usual kindness, now intervened, had the manuscript hastily withdrawn from Garrick's hands, and himself went to see Colman, with the result that the play was at last produced March 15, 1773. Colman still was not enthusiastic, however; one after another of the actors had given up their parts; and further embarrassment had been caused by the author's uncertainty about the title. The Belle's Stratagem (a title afterwards used by Mrs. Cowley) and The Old House, A New Inn were among the suggestions,

while still a third one was The Mistakes of a Night. Finally recalling a line from Dryden, "But kneels to conquer, and yet stoops to rise," Goldsmith decided on She Stoops to Conquer, with The Mistakes of a Night as a subtitle. With such handicaps it was only by dint of sheer merit that the play succeeded on its opening night and thus began its triumphant progress through English theatrical history.

She Stoops to Conquer is one of the landmarks of English comedy. The play was primarily based upon an episode in the author's life, his mistaking of a private house for an inn while still a youth in his native Ireland. The tying of Mr. Hardcastle's wig to a chair was taken from a trick that had been played on Goldsmith himself while he was writing the play. The weak points in the comedy, which on one hand has similarities with Farquhar's play and on the other with Mrs. Cowley's, the critics were not long in finding. The play abounds in farcial elements, in improbabilities and inconsistencies; Tony Lumpkin, for instance, who is so illiterate as not to be able to read more than his own name in script, is clever enough to have composed the excellent song of "The Three Pigeons. All shortcomings, however, recede before the abounding good humor and high spirits of the play. Mr. Hardcastle's old-fashioned courtesy, Diggory's unconscious humor, and Tony Lumpkin's little designs were all warm-hearted and genuine, and even in the eighteenth century could relieve the commonplace qualities of other characters that were more conventional.

76. Richard Brinsley Sheridan.-The attack that Gold

The remark is to be credited originally to Dobson, Introduction, xxviii.

smith had begun upon sentimentalism was carried still further by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), who differed, however, from his contemporary in his emphasis on high comedy. Goldsmith recalled Farquhar; Sheridan was the heir of Congreve. He was the son of brilliant parents, his father being an actor and a fashionable teacher of oratory, while his mother, beautiful and charming in manner, was accomplished with her pen and herself wrote a play, The Discovery. Under highly romantic circumstances he married the attractive singer and belle of the day, Elizabeth Linley, the daughter of a fashionable teacher of music; and now face to face with the problem of supporting a wife he turned to the business of playwriting. "Like Goldsmith, he reverted to classical comedy and chose, as the basis of his plot, the marriage conflict be tween parent and child which had come down from Terence through Italian and French theatres. A father and an aunt arrange a suitable marriage for their respective son and niece, while the young people have already chosen for themselves. Out of this hackneyed situation he extracted the equally hackneyed humors of mistaken identity and of domestic discord, but with a dramatic sense which borders on genius." The Rivals appeared at Covent Garden January 17, 1775. The play did not succeed at 'first; it was not well performed and was altogether too long. Revision, however, greatly improved it and then it met with the success it deserved." The rivals are of course

5

Routh: "The Georgian Drama," C. H. E. L., XI, 294.

It is an open question, however, if for acting purposes it was not capable of still further revision; see, for instance, account of Joseph Jefferson's version in Nettleton: Major Dramas of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 323-25.