CHAPTER XIII.

THE RESTORATION DRAMATISTS AND POETS.

§ 1. Contrast between Elizabethan and Restoration drama. Tragedy. § 2. Restoration comedy. § 3. SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE. § 4. WILLIAM WYCHERLEY: The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer. § 5. SIR JOHN VANBRUGH. § 6. GEORGE FARQUHAR. § 7. Life of WILLIAM CONGREVE. § 8. His comedies: Love for Love and The Way of the World. § 9. Congreve as a tragic writer: The Mourning Bride. $10. Tragic writers of the Restoration: THOMAS OTWAY. § 11. NATHANIEL LEE. § 12. THOMAS SOUTHERNE. § 13. NICHOLAS ROWE: The Fair Penitent. § 14. Minor dramatists: THOMAS SHADWELL; APHRA BEHN; JOHN CROWNE; GEORGE LILLO and bourgeois tragedy. 15. Poetry of the period. Noble poets: ROSCOMMON ; ROCHESTER; SIR CHARLES SEDLEY; the DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE; DORSET. § 16. JOHN PHILIPS and JOHN Pomfret.

Character

I. THE elements of contrast between the Elizabethan era and the Restoration are nowhere more obvious than in the drama. We have already detected signs of a transition in istics of post- the work of such writers as Shirley, and these Restoration become more pronounced as time advances, until drama. the drama of the Restoration, tragic and comic, is at length fully developed in the plays of Dryden. But, although there is this tendency in the plays (and especially the comedies) of the late Elizabethan writers, the main features of the new drama were due, not to any systematic influence at work in English literature, but to foreign example. The comedy of Wycherley and Congreve, the tragedy of Dryden and Otway, are in the best sense exotic; they owe their life to an external influence; and the natural decay of this outer force explains the sudden death of English drama at the end of the century. History sufficiently explains this phenomenon. In 1642 the theatres were closed by order of Parliament, and, a few years

later, came the Commonwealth. The exiled King French and his Court, in their continental wanderings, came influence. across an entirely new kind of stage entertainment, something quite different from the romantic and poetical drama of their fathers. When they returned, they brought back its principles with them, and all plays were modelled upon the French pattern. Tragic writers ceased to take an interest in the "absolute man" for his own sake, and devoted themselves

to the study of rhymed declamation, working after the model of Corneille and Racine. The effect, to the modern reader, is weak, commonplace, and artificial. Restoration Tragedy: tragedy (with only one or two exceptions) is devoid its morbid of that genuine passion which is the glowing charac- exaggeration teristic even of Ford's most unnatural pieces. Its of virtue. tone is certainly romantic, but with a romance far removed from the reality of common-sense. Its heroes are supernaturally brave; they involve themselves in subtleties of amorous casuistry worthy of the Troubadours; they push the virtue of self-sacrifice to the verge of caricature; and so, in violating all the feelings of nature, attain an impossible ideal of heroic and amorous perfection. Dryden is the chief sinner in this respect, but his great genius covers many of his defects. The real weakness of this type of play is to be seen in Congreve's Mourning Bride and Rowe's Fair Penitent.

§ 2. Comedy, on the other hand, took exactly the opposite line. While tragedy courted the hopelessly unreal, comedy busied itself with an accurate picture of manners, Comedy: drawing its material from society and not from its connature, and consequently depending on wit rather temporary than humour. This brilliant interlude in our litera- value; ture is eminently superficial, but, as a picture of contemporary manners, it remains unsurpassed. Its types, its conquering lovers and frail heroines, doubtless had their own reciprocal influence on the morals of their time; their own mimic licence gave fresh encouragement to their originals. The morality of Restoration comedy-if we can speak of its lack of morality. such a thing where it is non-existent-is horribly bad; its utter disregard of decency is an entirely different thing from that Rabelaisian coarseness of thought and speech which we find, for example, in Ben Jonson. Macaulay's famous criticisms are only very slightly exaggerated, and any reader with a tender conscience will feel inclined to justify them at every point. Invention was a gift denied to Wycherley and the other comic writers: they adapted brilliantly, and clothed their adaptations in a garment which was covered with dazzling ornaments of wit, but had in every case the same hard texture of monotonous profligacy. Their favourite original was Molière, the prince of comic writers, whose portraits were considerably more than superficial, and have a singular tenderness, purity, and humour of their own. In borrowing, our dramatists transferred certain well-marked characteristics of these heroes and heroines, and, with these, certain striking situations, but wilfully changed the true bearing of everything they borrowed. Virtue became sheer vice, and vice became something unspeakable. It is, however, only fair to remember that this moral brutality is of secondary interest; it is but the groundwork, the atmosphere, of the piece, which we realise without giving it the first place in our thoughts. The prime motive is the ingenious

to intrigue.

use of stratagem and the corresponding brilliance of dialogue with which each trick and ruse is carried to success. The figures themselves leave us with a very slight imSubservience pression; our lasting remembrance of them resides of character in their intrigues and clever devices-their "tricks to catch the old one." The essence of their comedy is the triumph of youth, the lusty Juventus of the old Moralities; the recognition of the law that "crabbed age and youth cannot live together." Mirabel and Dorimant deceive and entrap old fathers and old husbands; and we look on at their schemes with a certain complacency, feeling sure that their butts and dupes have done the same thing before, and that they themselves, after a few years, will fall under the same condemnation.

This is, briefly speaking, in the arraignment of Restoration comedy, the case for the defendant. It must be acknowledged that he only just escapes a richly deserved senIntroduction tence. Another wide difference, however, exists beof scenery. tween the drama of this age and that of the age preceding. The unadorned stages of the Southwark theatres were become a thing of the past. A taste for splendour of scenery, dances, music and decoration, had usurped the place of that intense truth to life and nature which needed no external help. This change was in some measure the result of expediency. Drama was not revived all of a sudden, but the way for its return was stealthily prepared by exhibitions known as "entertainments" and "operas," which were actually plays interspersed with songs and enlivened by scenery. Thus the mechanical accessories of the stage were immensely improved, and it remained for the French taste, with its classical distinctions between tragedy and comedy, to complete the metamorphosis. Sir William D'Avenant is chiefly responsible for D'Avenant the operatic form of play, which he cultivated on his stage at Rutland House during the later years of the Commonwealth. Although his own dramatic talent was very mediocre, and his admiration of Shakespeare did not prevent him from garbling that poet's work in an egregious series of adaptations, he was really the great patron and benefactor of the revived stage; and when, in August 1660, two companies were licensed by royal patent, one of them was his. But a change in stage mechanism even more radical Alteration in than the introduction of scenery was the substitution female parts of women instead of boys in the representation of on the stage. female parts. With the Restoration begins that series of great actresses whose lives and love-affairs are a mine of information upon the social condition and polite history of their age-Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs. Oldfield, and the rest.

and the drama.

§3. Taking the comic writers of the age first, as being infinitely more representative of their time than the tragic authors, we may say the French influence which created the

comedy of manners is first visible, in its full development, in SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE. He was a man of fashion and a courtier, who had been much in Paris, and was, SIR GEORGE therefore acquainted with the French stage. His ETHEREGE work begins with a tragi-comedy, The Comical (1634?1691?) Revenge, acted in 1664, which combines rhymed tragic with prose comic scenes. If it did not create an epoch, this play marks a very important point in dramatic history. In 1667 appeared Ethereges second work, a comedy called She Would if She Could. Finally, in 1676, came the play to which he owes his reputation-the impersonation of the fashionable coxcomb in The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling "Sir Flutter. Dialogue and intrigue are here at their Fopling best, and, for the first time, we are face to face with Flutter" (1676). that gaiety and vivacity of style which, in its variety and constant change of expression, reaches its immortal climax in Congreve. Etherege, too, like Congreve, had the good sense to leave the stage at the height of his reputation. He became a diplomatist, and, after occupying a place at the Hague, was sent (1685) as ambassador to Ratisbon, where, it is said, he died of a fall. It is, however, fairly certain that he was forced to leave his post by the Revolution, and died at Paris early in 1691.

§ 4. One of the acknowledged masters in this school was only a few years younger than Etheregc, and wrote for the stage at the same time. WILLIAM WYCHERLEY was the son of a country squire whose estate lay seven miles WILLIAM out of Shrewsbury. His father, probably disgusted (1640-1715). with the puritanical manners in vogue, sent him

WYCHERLEY

to be educated in France, where he associated with the brilliant household of the Duc de Montausier, and joined the Roman communion, less, perhaps, from sincere conviction than from the social advantages attending his change of faith. He returned to England, a polished man of the world, and made his way in the gay and profligate society of his time. Sir Peter Lely's portrait testifies to his remarkable personal beauty. He entered Queen's College, Oxford, at the Restoration, and changed his faith a second time; but, leaving Oxford without a degree, became a member of the Temple, and abandoned himself to the diversions of London life. In his later years he boasted that his plays had been written at a ridiculously early age; but this statement was due to his inordinate vanity, and is denied by the comparison of dates with facts. His first comedy, Love in a Wood, or Saint James' Park, was not produced, at any rate, until the spring of 1671, when it was acted at Drury Lane. He was then over thirty. There can be no doubt that he had been a long time over his work: the small number of his productions testifies to his patient labour and revision. His second comedy, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, whose main idea was freely borrowed from Calderon's El Maestro de Danzar, was performed at the Duke of York's Theatre in Dorset Garden,

Wycherley's society.

success in

during the winter season of 1671-2. But this piece proved a failure, and is, indeed, infinitely surpassed by The Country Wi ife, acted between 1672 and 1674, and The Plain Dealer, which belongs to the spring of 1674. These are both adaptations from Molière, the first taking its motive from L'École des Maris and L'Ecole des Femmes, and the second from Le Misanthrope. The Country Wife was published in 1675; The Plain Dealer in 1677. During his brilliant social career Wycherley was engaged in many intrigues, the most celebrated of which, his liaison with the notorious Duchess of Cleveland, was one result of the performance of Love in a Wood. His grace and gaiety attracted the King's notice, and he was selected to superintend the education of Charles' natural son, the young Duke of Richmond. This was just after the publication of The Plain Dealer. But, at this fortunate moment, Wycherley His marriage lost his head. He met the young and widowed and its fatal results. Countess of Drogheda at Tunbridge Wells, fell in love with her, married her secretly, and, when the whole story came out, lost the royal favour. Lady Drogheda proved a jealous wife; and, after her death, her husband fell into distress and remained for seven years a debtor in the Fleet prison. James II, however, liberated him and paid his debts. About this time, too, Wycherley returned to the Church of Rome. The remainder of his life is melancholy and ignoble. He came out of the Fleet into a world whose ways were not those of his youth: the Revolution changed association everything. His constitution was broken; his forwith Pope. tune was embarrassed; but he continued to thirst vainly and impotently after sensual pleasure and literary glory. In 1704 he published a large volume of miscellaneous verses, written in the utterly indecent manner of forty years before. It was worthless; but he continued to compose, and enlisted the services of Pope, who was then a mere boy of sixteen, as his reviser and emendator. The result of this curious friendship is to be seen in the miscellaneous collection published after Wycherley's death with the aid of Theobald, in which the old dramatist's stupid and obscene verse is relieved by passages obviously due to Pope. The friendship of the two was only momentary: Wycherley soon complained of Pope's revisions, and the bitter quarrel which followed forms a curious and instructive picture. He quarrelled with his nephew and heir much about the same time, and, in order to cut him out of the succession, married, ten days before his own death, a young girl of sixteen, who afterwards became the wife of a Captain Shrimpton. He died in 1715, and was buried in the vault of St. Paul's, Covent Garden.

His later life and

It is by The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer that posterity has consented to judge Wycherley's dramatic genius. They are the crowning examples of the lack of invention