LIBRARY NEWPORT R.1I. GARDNER BLANCHARD PERRY FUND A HISTORY OF RESTORATION DRAMA 1660-1700 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: Fetter Lane New Yor«x The Macmillan Co. Bomsgay, CatcuTta and Mapras Macmillan and Co., Ltd, ‘Toronto The Macmillan Co. of Canada, Ltd. Toxyo Maruzen-Kabushiki-Kaisha All rights reserved A HISTORY OF RESTORATION DRAMA 1660-1700 BY ALLARDYCE NICOLL SECOND EDITION CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1928 First Edition 1923 Second Edition revised 1928 (49942. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN PREFATORY NOTE of tragedy in the Restoration period but the history of the theatres and stage conditions as well, condensation was obviously necessary. I should have wished to present in full the documents from the Lord Chamberlain’s department of the Public Record Office, and to indicate the sources of in- formation regarding the dates of plays produced during this period. The documents, however, could not all have been given in extenso, and the-entries of plays in the Term Cata- logues, the Stationers’ Register and other books and manu- scripts would have gravely encumbered the already numerous notes. It will be realised that many of the dates of first production of Restoration plays are conjectural. The records of Herbert, Pepys and Evelyn for the earlier period enable us to fix on an actual month and day for many; but thereafter ‘ the only guides are the play-lists given in Appendix B (first printed in The Times Literary Supplement in 1922 and 1923 and reproduced here by permission), the Stationers’ Register, the Term Catalogues and a few scattered sources such as the newsletters catalogued in the Reports of the Historical Manu- scripts Commission and Motteux’ Gentleman’s fournal. Where the date is more or less strictly determinable, I have placed it without any comment; where it is conjectural merely, I have indicated the fact by prefacing it with a circa. Through- out the whole of the book I have shortened the Theatre Royal in Vere Street to T.R. in V.St., the Theatre Royal in Bridges Street to T.R. in B.St., the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane to D.L., the playhouse in Lincoln’s Inn Fields to L.I.F., and that in Dorset Garden to D.G. For the more obvious critical works and stage histories similar abbreviations have been employed. Langbaine, unless otherwise indicated, refers to An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691), Gildon’s Langbaine to The Lives of the Poets (1699), Biographia le this work, covering not only the history of comedy and vi PREFATORY NOTE Dramatica to the work of Reed and Jones issued in 1812, Downes to Roscius Anglicanus (1709), Wright to Historia Histrionica (1699), Genest to Some Account of the English Stage (1832), Ward to the History of English Dramatic Literature (1899). ‘These works are so well known to students of the theatre that they seemed to require no further comment. The hand-list of Restoration plays given in Appendix C is, as I have indicated there, a condensed account based on a larger bibliography which I have in preparation. Some half a dozen editions mentioned I have not been able to see, and these I have indicated by a question mark. They no doubt exist ; but the bibliography of this period has been so confused in the past by the careless copying of careless early chrono- logers of the stage that I did not wish to perpetuate in any way facts which might, after all, be wrong. Quotations are usually from original editions, although a few are taken from later reprints, where these differed in no essentials from the primal text. As in this work quota- tions are employed merely to illustrate a general or a par- ticular thesis, it has not been thought necessary to pay such exact attention to the original forms as would be required in the editing of a writer’s works. In every case, however, the reading of the quotations has been compared with that of the first editions. ‘These remarks do not apply, of course, to the excerpts from the Lord Chamberlain’s documents, in which I have endeavoured to reproduce faithfully the precise text of the manuscripts. In the somewhat arduous task of gathering materials I have to thank several persons. The officials of the British Museum and of the Public Record Office, by their courtesy and helpfulness, frequently made my toil the lighter, and there are others to whom my debt of gratitude is equally great. This work, however, would probably never have seen the light had it not been for the encouragement and assistance of my wife, to whom my debt is immeasurably greatest. A.N. September, 1923. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION throughout in order to bring the survey of drama from 1660 to 1700 up to date. No new documentary matter has been printed on the subject since the appearance of the first edition in 1923, but research into the works of particular authors has revealed a number of fresh facts, principally con- nected with the dating of plays. A summary of the more im- portant studies is given in a series of additional notes to this volume, which incorporate also the results of some original work. ale HE text of this volume has been revised and corrected A.N. July, 1927. CONTENTS Chapter One: THE THEATRE Introductory The Audience. . Influence of the Audience on o Drama. . The Theatre: Scenery and Show The Actors and Actresses Chapter Two: TRAGEDY 3 rf, Restoration Tragedy and Comedy: Introductory Elizabethan and Foreign Influences . : . The Rimed Heroic Tragedy: 1664-1677 . Other Types of Tragedy: 1660-1677 Tragedy and Opera: 1678-1700 : Adaptations of Shakespeare and of other Elizabethan Dramatists. . . , . - : Chapter Three: COMEDY Ze Introductory: Elizabethan and F oreign Models II. Types of Restoration Comedy . . III. The Jonsonian Element: Shadwell . IV. The Comedy of Intrigue: Mrs Behn V. The Comedy of Dryden . VI. The Comedy of Manners VII. Farce and Comedy of Sentiment Appendix A. HisToRY OF THE PLAYHOUSES: 1660-1700 Index . # - . . “s m A . - Be B. Sevecr DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE C. HAaNnpD-LIsT OF RESTORATION PLAYS D. AppitionaL Notes To SECOND EDITION . PAGE CHAPTER ONE THE THEATRE I. Introductory 4 historian of those forty years which are usually called the period of the Restoration is faced probably by more difficulties than is the historian of any other portion of our literature. The works of which he treats have been, rightly or wrongly, neglected by scholar and by layman alike. There are many reprints of Elizabethan plays, an index no less of academic than of general interest in the subject, but the majority of the late seventeenth century dramas are to be found only in their original editions. The whole period is one which for long has been untouched, and precisely because of that he who would now deal with it is confronted with countless problems, all of them important but of which two— the one of treatment and the other of appreciation—would seem to call for detailed mention. The first of these two main problems, the difficulty of presenting a strict and impartial account of this drama, has been well expressed by M. Beljame in his illuminating study of Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres au Dixhuitiéme Siecle. It may be summed up by saying that, owing to the mass of prejudiced opinion, he who would now bring the works of Ravenscroft and of Tate to light lies in the danger of being accused by modern moralists of a perverted judgment and of an uncultured taste. If the historian is to be exact, if he is to give a true picture of his period and its productivity, he must quote characters, incidents, plots and words—all four often not at all in the taste of the present time. If he is too reticent and omits some of these characters, incidents, plots or words his picture will not be complete, rather will it be false and one-sided: and yet, on the other hand, if he NRD I 2 THE THEATRE does present everything which he feels bears upon the social life, the audiences and the theatrical atmosphere of the age, he undoubtedly runs the risk of being accounted faulty both in critical acumen and in moral probity. This first difficulty, however, real and serious as it may be, is not so important or disturbing as that other one, the difficulty of appreciation. Granted that the student has chosen this subject for his study, it is easily seen that it behoves him faithfully and without any omissions to present whatever documentary evi- dence he may have to make his account complete. There is truly nothing that for him should be unquotable. The risk of being misunderstood is there, ever-present before him, but it must be ignored. After all, every aspect of our literature and every period of our social history deserves our closest attention: and only one who is wholly swayed by ethical considerations would deny that a student may write a bio- graphy of Wilde or an analysis of court corruption without ' thereby identifying himself with the persons or the period of his particular choice. The second difficulty, more personal as it is, offers a problem which must be more subtly considered, a problem which each student has carefully to take account of before entering on a subject such as this. There is always a ten- dency, when working on a period almost universally neglected and despised, either to exaggerate the follies and the vices of the time or to indulge in uncritical enthusiasm for anything that may have the remotest semblance to beauty, even for what has in it but an imaginary worth. There is the danger, that is to say, of adopting the attitude of Macaulay and of condemning wholesale, and there is the danger of escaping to the other extreme—of professing to believe that the age of the Restoration has in it a glory which it utterly lacks, of extolling Dryden at the expense of Shakespeare, Congreve at the expense of Jonson. These dangers seem all the greater when we consider that the historian of literature is hardly in the same position as the historian of social life or of national events. He is more apt to be swayed by sudden personal judgments, more subject to losing sight of a whole period in INTRODUCTORY 3 an emotional enthusiasm for an individual work of art, or of a complete work of art in a particular scene or passage. More than all others, the study of Restoration drama demands a continual care, a restrained enthusiasm, a balanced and un- emotional weighing up of the facts presented before us. What, above all other things, is demanded from anyone who would render a true and faithful account of these forty years of dramatic excitement is impartiality—a recognition both of the limitations and of the excellencies of the subject under discussion. These limitations cannot too often be insisted upon. In dealing with the dramatic literature of this time we must remember that the people to whom the comedies and the tragedies appealed formed but an infinitesimal portion of one town in the whole of Britain. There was no theatre estab- lished in any provincial English town until long after this date. Puritanism in Scotland forbade the acting of plays until the eighteenth century. Only Dublin had during the time of the Restoration a definite playhouse, and that play- house did not call forth anything very noticeable in the way of dramatic productivity. Its repertoire was made up largely of comedies and of tragedies which already had met with a favourable reception on the London stage. Beyond this, we have to remember that not by any means all of the citizens of London itself attended the public theatres. Plays and poems, we may say, for the middle classes of London and elsewhere had little or no interest: for them were issued the numerous pamphlets and heavy tomes dealing with theo- logical controversy which make up more than three-quarters of the entries in The Term Catalogues. Nor must it be pre- sumed that the circumscribed audience of upper class people had a monopoly of scintillating wit, of good taste, of fine cultured judgment or of wisdom. All through their drama, their poetry, their criticism runs a lack of thought, a strange absence of sympathy for anything outside of their own futile lives. They had not sufficient aesthetic sense to hiss the heroic tragedy off the stage; they had not sufficient moral probity to condemn the utter filth which dramatists, small I-2 p THE THEATRE and great, professional and amateur, flung before their jaded senses in the playhouse. Contemporary science, contem- porary philosophy did not touch them, The struggles of the newly-born Royal Society were about as alien to their sympathies as the more rhetorical calls to godliness on the part of pamphleteering Puritan divines. On the other hand, despite and sometimes because of those limitations, this drama of a small and select few gave to art something which could not have been achieved either in the theatre of Athens, with its thirty thousand spectators, or in the theatre of Elizabeth, with its mixed audience of appren- tices and peers. The elegance, the precision, the recaptured classic grace which mark out the best poetic works of Sedley and of Rochester even as they mark out the better comedies of manners of the time would have been unattain- able in any period where the limitations were less stringent. The satiric power of Dryden, the rapier-like thrust of the heroic couplet, the easy repartee of the dramatic prose were the results of a new audience, of a new reading and playgoing public, of a new aim. This new aim, moreover, was not confined to mere literary expression. It is to be sought for in many different channels, the most important for our purpose being the structure of the theatre itself. The first years of the Restoration period certainly saw the birth of the modern stage, and with the birth of the modern stage, the arising of the modern spirit in drama. The introduction of actresses, the employment of scenery, the change of platform to picture-frame stage, all these things and many more are the results of a fresh outlook on the part of the audience, the reflex of a new set of spec- tators in the theatre. It would not be going too far to say, when we look at D’Avenant and Betterton on the one hand and at Dryden, Congreve and Rowe on the other, that almost all the manifestations of the modern theatre, from the music- hall to the most serious playhouse, from Masefield to Shaw, had their origin in this period of the Restoration. Mere historical interest of this kind, however, would not serve to make the study of this age of very paramount im- INTRODUCTORY 5 portance. No study of art productivity can be justified unless aesthetic considerations are entered into. Some literary excellence must be descried if any period is to be allowed as the hunting ground for literary historians. Happily, and even when we recognise the depravity of so many of the comedies, the follies of so many of the tragedies, that literary excellence in the period of the Restoration is not far to seek. No half century could be styled worthless that, in one small and circumscribed form of art, could produce such permanent beauties as the heroic couplet and blank verse of Dryden, the pathos and the terror of Otway, the flashing wit and scintillating dialogue of Congreve. We may condemn certain aspects of Restoration life and of Restoration dramatic literature: we may see in both the last wave of decadence which had been gathering force from the early years of the seventeenth century : but we must, at the same time, recognise that that period, too, deserves our attention as literary historians, and that it has given to us a type of art, different from the art of Shakespeare, yet containing beauties unknown on the earlier stage. Il. The Audience All dramatic art depends ultimately for its form and content on the audience. The spectators of 1590 gave birth to As You Like It: the spectators of 1600 to Hamlet and to Every Man in his Humour: the spectators of 1670 to The Conquest of - Granada and to The Man of Mode. Fundamentally, inde- pendent genius counts for less in the world of the theatre than does the general atmosphere of the time: ‘‘the drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give” is a rule which, it seems, may never be broken. Less than any other art is the drama ahead of its time. It reflects, very rarely prophesies: its basis is the world of sentiment around, not before, it. Of all audiences, the audience of the years 1660 to 1700 is perhaps the easiest to analyse. Save for the very first year or two of the Restoration, two theatres, and for over twelve years, one theatre, supplied the wants of the London play- 6 THE THEATRE going public of the time. Instead of cries that admittance was unobtainable, we meet with lament after lament that the managers and promoters could barely make ends meet’. If one theatre had a new play by a well-known author the other was as if deserted, sometimes summoning barely sufficient spectators to make a performance either advisable or even possible? Outside of London, except for several strolling 1 See, for the history of the theatres, Appendix A. 2 References to small audiences are frequent in prologue and in epi- logue from the earliest to the latest period. The first, probably, is that which appears in D’Avenant’s prologue to the second part of The Siege of Rhodes: “Oh! Money! Money! if the Wits would dress With Ornaments, the present face of Peace; And to our Poet half that Treasure spare, Which Faction gets from Fools to nourish War; Then his contracted Scenes should wider be, > And move by greater Engines, till you see (Whilst you securely sit) fierce Armies meet....” About 1675-6 the T.R. seems to have been in a peculiarly bad way. See the prologue to a revival of Every Man out of His Humour (July, 1675) in Duffett’s New Poems, Songs, Prologues and Epilogues, Never before Printed (1676), p. 72, and the epilogue to Lee’s Gloriana (D.L. 1676): “ They told me at t’other House y’had left us quite... Good faith I'm very glad to see you here! Tis well you can at a New Play appear.” About the year 1667 Pepys has many references to paucity of audiences. On Wed. 17 April, 1667, the King’s house for Rollo was empty: it was “mighty empty” on Thurs. 1 Aug. for The Custom of the Country: it was poor on Mon. Aug. 26 for The Surprisal: and “not one soul’’ was in the pit by three o’clock on Mon. 16 Sept. The Union of 1682, when the two theatres amalgamated, was really the result of financial failure, and no one appears to have been inconvenienced because only one play- house was open. When Betterton had seceded to the long disused L.1.F. house in 1695, the old complaints started again. Thus Jo. Haynes spoke the epilogue to Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle (D.L. 1699) “‘in Mourning”: “T Come not here, our Poet’s Fate to see, He and his Play may both be damn’d for me: No, Royal Theatre, I come to Mourn for Thee. And must these Structures then untimely fall, Whilst th’ other House stands, and gets the Devil and all?” * Pepys found the T.R. empty on Thurs. July 4, 1661, at Claracilla because of the recent opening of D’Avenant’s “opera”: on Mon. Mar. 7, 1663-4, he found L.I.F. empty because of a new play at the T.R.: the emptiness of the T.R. on Mon. Aug. 26, 1667, was due to the production of Sir Martin Mar-ail at L.1.F.: on Mon. Sept. 16, 1667, Pepys noted that L.I.F. was full for Tu Quoque but the T.R. empty for The Scornful Lady: on Sat. 5 Oct. 1667, the T.R. was empty for Flora’s Vagaries because of a “new play” at L.I.F.: on Thurs. 14 May, 1668, the T.R. house was THE AUDIENCE 4 companies and for visits of the London companies to Oxford and Cambridge", plays were unknown, and in the metropolis itself only a very small proportion of the people favoured the theatre. Charles had been restored with practically the full consent of the nation, but the Puritan tenets which had made possible the eighteen years duration of the Common- wealth régime could certainly not have vanished with the mere restoration of a king to his throne. Had the courtiers been less debauched, had Charles been less the slave to his passions, had the playwrights maintained a more sedate attitude towards life, the citizens might, too, have flocked to the playhouses as in Elizabethan times. Of direct reference to the middle classes in the theatre we have practically no record®. During the Dutch wars when a certain number of the gallants and the beaux were gone to sea, an appeal might be made from the stage to the citizens ‘‘ of Lombard-street,” but in the main those who were engaged in business, unless they were younger sons of the nobility, were ridiculed in plays, undesired among the spectators. The courtiers made of the theatre a meeting-place of their own, with licence of all kinds, bringing there their dubious loves, so that those citizens who still retained some of their Puritan convictions shunned the place like a plague®. More personal motives may have entered in as well. In the comedies, and the small for The Country Captain because of The Sullen Lovers at L.I.F.: “not £10” was in the T.R. for The Faithful Shepherdess on Fri. Feb. 26, 1669, because The Royal Shepherdess had been performed for the first time at L.I.F. the day before. 1 See Appendix A. 2 The presence of citizens in the theatre was four times noted by Pepys and always as an exception, on Sat. Dec. 27, 1662 (second part of The Siege of Rhodes), on Thurs. Jan. 1, 1662-3 (The Villain), on Wed. 1 Jan. 1667-8 (Sir Martin Mar-all), on Sat. Dec. 26, 1688 (Women Pleas’d). It is noticeable that all of these were at the Duke’s theatre, and all round the Christmas or New Year season. It is possible that the citizens visited the playhouse only on special occasions such as this, and that the “show” of D’Avenant’s house particularly appealed to them. 3 See Wright, Historia Histrionica, p. 6; he avers that ‘“‘many of the more Civilised Part of the Town are uneasy in the Company, and shun the Theater as they would a House of Scandal.” Tom Brown in his Play-house makes a similar remark that “‘ Men of Figure and Consideration are known by seldom being there, and Men of Wisdom and Business by being always absent” [Works, 1708, 11. 41]. 8 THE THEATRE comedies are but a reflex of real life, the citizens’ wives are made fair game for the debauched sparks, their husbands the mere butts for ill-placed wit and buffoonery. It must cer- tainly have appeared to many that the introduction of their women-folk into this place of ogling eyes and significant leers was a proceeding injudicious, to say the least. The spectators, then, for whom the poets wrote and the actors played were the courtiers and their satellites. The noblemen in the pit and boxes, the fops and beaux and wits or would-be-wits who hung on to their society, the women of the court, depraved and licentious as the men, the cour- tesans with whom these women of quality moved and con- versed as on equal terms, made up at least four-fifths of the entire audience. Add a sprinkling of footmen in the upper gallery, a stray country cousin or two scattered throughout the theatre, and the picture of the audience is complete. All of these took their cue from the king. Charles returned from his exile with a very definite love of the drama and of literature in general. The theatre became with him a par- ticular hobby. Of the two licensed houses, one, that which included the actor Mohun, was styled the Theatre Royal, its players, His Majesty’s Servants, the other, that which in- cluded Betterton, was called the Duke’s Theatre, from the fact that it was patronised by the brother of the King, the Duke of York. Charles was the first English sovereign to attend in any frequency a public playhouse, his initial appearance there being, according to Downes, at the opening of the new Duke’s Theatre on Friday, June 28, 16612. He had, of course, his own private playhouse at Whitehall, and there performances were given occasionally®, but his * “ The City neither likes us nor our Wit,” says Shadwell in the epilogue to The Lancashire Witches (D.G. 1681). “ They say their Wives learn ogling in the Pit; They’r from the Boxes taught to make Advances, To answer stolen Sighs and naughty Glances.” * Downes, p. 34. Downes is wrong in the actual date, which is deter- _ tined from a reference in Pepys. * In 1666 one Glover was appointed keeper of this theatre (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, Charles II, 1666-7, p. 278). There is a letter dated Feb. 26, 1600, mentioned in the Hist. MSS. Commission Report, v. 202, THE AUDIENCE 9 main interest seems to have been in the public theatres. He acted as judge whenever anything happened to disturb the equanimity of the management, even going so far as to allot shares which had fallen vacant!, and governing the actions of the players?. He had his favourites among the actors, Lacy in particular, whom he caused to be painted for his palace. He had his loves among the actresses, the children of Nell Gwyn becoming Dukes and Lords. He it was who set the fashion for rimed plays, as Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, expressly informs us. He set Tuke to write The Adventures of Five Hours and Crowne to pen Sir Courtly Nice. He it was who provided vestments for the actors on special occasions, passing his state robes over to Mohun or to Betterton as the case might be. Fora revival of D’Avenant’s Love and Honour at L.I.F. sometime before 1665 the royal coronation suits were worn in the theatre®, and the same suits apparently were lent again to the Duke’s playhouse for the production of Orrery’s Henry V in 16644. On Dec. 11, 1667, Pepys heard that Charles was to give {500 for garments to deck up Catiline at the 'T.R., but seemingly the lending of state robes was an easier thing to get out of the merry monarch than a sum of money, however small. A month later the production of Catzline was being held over, the King’s present not forthcoming. From this royal countenance of the theatre the actors and the playwrights gained a certain amount of prestige. Of all artists they were nearest the court. They expressed in every way the sentiments of the court, and, unhappily, not only the wit they met with there in the persons of Rochester and which states that plays at court were thereafter to be abolished, but for many years both troupes of players presented dramas there. For details see Appendix B and the records of Pepys. 1 That which lapsed owing to the death of Theophilus Bird was assigned by him (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, Charles II, 1663-4, p. 121). 2 Thus in July, 1663, Henry Harris left the Duke’s company for the royal troupe, but was forced by royal command to return (Pepys, July 22, 1663). The year before, in 1662, John Richards had similarly deserted for the Dublin theatre. The King thought fit to issue a warrant immediately, commanding the Lord Lieutenant to arrest him at once and ship him back to England (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1661-2, p. 455). 3 Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, p. 21. * Downes, p. 27. 10 THE THEATRE of Sedley or the exalted romance of Mdlle de Scudéry, but also the profound royalism of the Stuart régime. The ultra- monarchism which pervades this theatre may astound us nowadays, but it must be remembered that, not only were the dramatists and the actors cavaliers by necessity, the Puritans condemning and decrying their very means of liveli- hood, but that they were fettered by a fairly strict and pre- judiced censorship. At first, certainly, some slight latitudes seem to have been allowed, as when the lost play of Howard’s, The Change of Crowns, was acted before the King, who flew into a most uncharacteristic passion and ordered it to be restrained—only, characteristically, to permit its revival in a few days’ time. Other plays, we know from contemporaries, were regarded as attacks at the court, and were allowed, but for the most part the office of censor, held in turn by Herbert and by Killigrew, was rigidly exercised. An interdiction was laid sometime or another on The Maid’s Tragedy1. Crowne’s Henry the Sixth, part I (1681), because of some anti-Catholic. sentiments expressed in it, was suppressed”. Charles allowed, but James disallowed, the acting of Dryden’s The Spanish Fryar (D.G. 1680)?. Shadwell suffered for some injudicious remarks in The Lancashire Witches (D.G. 1681), Lee for Lucius Junius Brutus (D.G. 1680)*, Banks for The Innocent Usurper (1693) and for Cyrus the Great (L.I.F. 1695)°. At several definite points in the history of this period, however, a certain amount of criticism would seem to have been tolerated, precisely because men did not know where to stand. At first, naturally enough, all the “‘ political” plays 1 See Fowell, F. and Palmer, F., Censorship in England (1913), p. 101. 2 Dedication to The English Frier (D.L. 1690). * The order of suppression is in the P.R.O., L.C. 5/147, p. 239: it is dated Dec. 8, 1686, and commands “‘that y® play called y® Spanish Friar should bee noe more Acted.”’ ; 4 The order is dated Dec. 11, 1680 (L.C. 5/144, p. 28): “‘ Whereas I am informed that there is Acted by you a Play called Lucius Junius Brutus... wherein are very Scandalous Expressions & Reflections vpon y® Govern- ment these are to require you Not to Act y® said Play again.” ° Tate’s Richard II was similarly banned on Dec. 14, 1680 (P.R.O., L.C. 5/144, p. 29). Dryden and Lee’s The Duke of Guise on July 18, 1682 (P.R.O., L.C. 5/16, p. ror) and Crowne’s The City Politiques on June 26, 1682 (P.R.O., L.C. 5/16, p. 83). See also Fowell and Palmer, op. cit. p. 103. THE AUDIENCE Il were violently monarchist, but later the indecision of the court in regard to religion led to a definite break of the dramatists into two camps, some, like Mrs Behn and D’Urfey, supporting the court as far as lay in their power, others, such as Settle and Shadwell, violently condemnatory of all but Protestant principles. The first era of keen political and re- ligious controversy in the playhouses may be dated from 1679 to 1685, and in that era we do find a mass of conflicting satire, the dramatists carrying on what was literally a little verbal war of their own!. Another period of extreme excite- ment centres around the years 1689 and 1690, but then most of the political plays produced, such as The Abdicated Prince, The Bloody Duke and The Royal Voyage (all 1690), were either not meant to be acted, or were unable to secure a theatrical production. This keen party and religious atmosphere, this intimate interest of the King in all affairs theatrical, this audience intent upon their own pleasures and upon court affairs rather than upon the plays themselves, were bound to produce a type of drama different from the drama of the former years. The theatre was their toy: they could do with it what they liked. They could appropriate a certain portion of the play- house, that apparently between the front curtain and the outer edge of the stage, and stand there, conversing more or less wittily, picking their teeth and ‘“‘oft combing their Hair?.” This was no doubt between the acts, for, peculiarly enough when we think of Elizabethan example, no very great body of spectators, if any at all, would appear to have occupied seats on the stage itself until a comparatively late date in the century. In 1664 Sorbiéres particularly observed that this vice was not in practice then®, and it is not until 1 See, for this whole question, an article of mine in the Mod. Lang. Review, xvi, July—Oct. 1921. Tatham’s The Rump (1659-60), the anony- mous Cromwell’s Conspiracy (1660) and Howard’s The Committee (1662) are typical examples of the anti-Commonwealth productions of the early years. The plays mentioned above may be regarded as typical also of the later controversy. Note might be taken of Settle’s The Female Prelate (D.L. 1679). 2 D’Avenant’s The Man’s the Master (L.1.F. c. 1668) epilogue. ® Relation d’un Voyage en Angleterre (Paris, 1664), p. 63. 2 THE THEATRE about 1690 that we find many references to the custom. In 1674 it was apparently unknown, for Vincent saw fit to omit all references to gallants on the stage when he was re-writing Dekker’s Gul’s Horn-Book. On the other hand, in 1691, one of the characters in D’Urfey’s The Marriage-Hater Match’d (D.L. 1691), declares of a lord: ‘I have seen him spoil many a Comedy, by baulking the Actors entrance, for when I have eagerly expected some Buffoon to divert, the first nauseous appearance has been my Lord.” In the next year Settle, if he be the author, issued an imploring prologue to The Fairy Queen (D.G. 1692) against those new Beau-Skreens, That stand betwixt the Audience and the Scenes, while in 1693 Thomas Wright in his The Female Vertuoso’s (D.G. 1693) emphasised the fact that once the stage had been “Rept free from Beaux and Bullies*.”” ‘The edict of William and Mary, made about this time, stating expressly that no person should either stand or sit upon the stage, evidently had no effect, the habit persisting on to the time of Garrick. In this theatre, this toy of the upper classes, gentlemen apparently could enter without payment for a single act, or could rely on credit if they had not sufficient money to pay the door-keeper. Of the latter custom there is ample proof in the playhouse scene in Shadwell’s A True Widow (D.G. 1678)*. Even as early as Dec. 30, 1667, Pepys thought it “‘a shame” that Sir Philip Cartaret was known at the theatre TTY ols * Prologue. Similar references are to be found in the epilogue to Scott’s The Unhappy Kindness (D.L. 1697), “a Beau-crowded Stage”: vi Nee epilogue (by Motteux) to Mrs Pix’ The Innocent Mistress (L.1.F. “Then all thus stor’d, tho Money’s scarce this Age, We need not fear t’have a Beau-crowded Stage:” and in Iv. i of Motteux’ Love’s a Fest (L.1.F. 1696) where Airy declares wal can easily believe you’ve been...Side-boxing at the Play-house, Acting in the Pit, nay on the Stage too.”” Gildon, in A Comparison between the Two Stages (1702), in mentioning the great success of A Trip to the Jubilee states that “at that play” he had seen “the Pit, Box, and Stage... crowded.” ° Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, William and Mary, Feb. 13, 1689- April, 1690, p. 321. * Act Iv. THE AUDIENCE 13 “and do run upon the score for plays,” and as late as 1693 F. P. in some verses prefixed to Higden’s The Wary Widdow (D.L. 1693) could mention gallants who at the ‘“ Playhouse judge on tick.” The free act was regularly satirised by the poets, and attempts were made to put an end to it, but apparently not until about 1690 was it in any way limited?. D’Avenant murmured against the fashion in the epilogue to The Man’s the Master (L.1.F. 1668) and with perfect justice, if we may take Pepys as a typical spectator. On Jan. 7, 1667/8, for example, the latter “‘to the...two playhouses, in the pit, to gaze up and down, and there did by this means, for nothing, see an act in ‘The Schoole of Compliments’ at the Duke of York’s house, and ‘Henry the Fourth’ at the King’s House.” Even as late as 1693 Wright in the prologue to The Female Vertuoso’s (D.G. 1693) had some satire on the ‘‘ One-acters,”’ and Farquhar in his Essay on Comedy (1700) has satiric reference to the “‘saucy impudent Fellows...call’d Door- Keepers, that can’t let a Gentleman see a Play in Peace without jogging and nudging him every minute. Sir, will you please to pay?...Sir, the Act’s done, will you please to pay, Sir?”? On the other hand, gentlemen who objected to disbursing their money to the ordinary door-keeper were often-times not unwilling to pay more than the simple half- crown in order to have access to the ‘‘tyring-room”’ where they might chat with the actresses. Whether a fixed charge was made for this or not, we know that some sort of payment was made. In spite of the fact that the actresses may not have been averse to this easy entrance to the tyring-house— the affability of a woman there was proverbial*—it is almost certain that the managers of the theatres were careful to gain some profit by it. Another frequent abuse, partly connected with the privilege of the free act, is referred to by Lacy in Sir Hercules Buffoon 1 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1689-90, p. 321. 2 The earliest warrant against the practice is dated Dec. 7, 1663 (P.R.O., L.C. 7/1 and 5/138 last page). See also Cal, State Papers, 1664-5, Feb. 27, 1665, p. 223, and May 16, 1667 (id. 1667-8, p. 395). 3 Wycherley’s The Plain Dealer (D.L. 1676), 11: see also the same author’s The Country Wife (D.L. 1675), prologue, and The Gentleman Dancing-Master (D.G. 1672), epilogue. 14 THE THEATRE (D.G. 1684) where he gives a satirical recipe for seeing plays “for nothing—one act in the Pit, another in a Box, and a third in the Gallery1.”” It seems that in the Restoration theatre extra money for box and other seats was collected after the performance had well begun, a general small charge only being made at the doors. Thus men of an easy sense of morality and a nimble pair of heels could dodge the attendants as they came round, moving rapidly from box to pit and from pit to gallery. “I’m told,” says D’Urfey in his prologue to The Bath (D.L. 1701), I'm told that Beaus with Perukes cover’d o’re, Make such strange shift to save poor shillings four*, They'll in Side-Box three Acts for nothing sit, At last sneak down for Six-pence to the Pit. When we conjure up before our minds such an audience and such a management fearful at every moment of offending the slender clientele, we can understand that attention to the play in hand was often grievously lacking. Women of doubtful character, “‘vizard Masks” as they were euphemistically styled®, flocked the playhouses, sitting alongside of the highest of the land in the side-boxes+, in the pit®, and in the upper gallery, the last-mentioned gaining by reason of their presence none too enviable a reputation®. So numerous did they be- come that in 1688 Crowne could declare that they made up ‘half the Pit, and all the Galleries’.”” It was to meet these, aioe * 'The price of admission to the boxes. 3 The habit of mask-wearing seems to have come in shortly after the Restoration, and, although abandoned by ‘Civil Gentlewomen” by 1680, it was not suppressed entirely until the edict of Anne in 1704. It rapidly became the recognised mark of a prostitute, although even “ladies of quality,” such as Mrs Behn’s Feign’d Curtizans seem not to have minded being taken by their gentlemen friends as femmes d’amour. See infra, p. 23. * Epilogue to Lee’s Gloriana (D.L. 1676). ° Epilogue to Wycherley’s The Plain Dealer (D.L. 1676). ® Etherege’s She Wou’'d if she Cou’d (L.1.F. 1668), tt. iii. See also the epilogue to Crowne’s Sir Courtly Nice (D.L. 1685) which speaks of the galleries “finely us’d of late, where roosting Masques sat cackling for a Mate.” The gallants often ascended “(for dangerous Intrigues) to th’ Gallery,” we are told in the prologue to Shadwell’s The Woman-Captain (D.G. 1679). ? Crowne’s Darius (D.L. 1688), epilogue. THE AUDIENCE 15 to indulge in their own doubtful intrigues with courtesan or with merchant’s wife that the gallants flocked to the theatre. The women, for their part, were equally eager. Little Gatty in Etherege’s She Wou’d if she Cou’d (L.1.F. 1668) laments in a song, To little or no purpose I spent many Days, In ranging the Park, th’Exchange, and th’Plays; For ne’er in my rambles till now did I prove So luckie to meet with the man I cou’d love. As a consequence noise seems often to have “‘drowned the Stage’s Wit!.” The epilogue to Lee’s Sophonisba (D.L. 1675) says of the typical beaux that One half o’ the Play they spend in noise and brawl, Sleep out the rest, then wake and damn it all. General disregard of other’s feelings appears to have charac- terised the audience of the time. The gallants, so we are informed in Etherege’s She Wou’d if she Cou’d (L.1.F. 1668) are in the habit of moving From one Play-house, to the other Play-house, And if they like neither the Play nor the Women, They seldom stay any longer than the combing Of their Perriwigs, or a whisper or two with a Friend; and then they cock their Caps, and out they Strut again?. Sedley can hold loud and animated conversations in the pit with ladies of doubtful propriety, even though Pepys tends to believe that they are “‘virtuous” and “‘of quality,” or can pass witticisms on the action of an heroic tragedy. The Age is alter’d now, he that has Wit, Ne’re uses it abroad, but in the Pit, There spreads it all, and e’re one Scene does know, Cails friend aside, Cryes, Dammy Jack lets go, * * * * e Others that want Wit, hither come to glean, Seem to find fault and cavil at a Scene, Because they understand tt not, yet will Dislike, because ’tis Modish, and Gentile’. 1 Prologue to Lee’s The Rival Queens (D.L. 1677). a peat, 3 D’Urfey’s prologue to The Siege of Memphis (D.L. 1676). 16 THE THEATRE Scenes of licence must have been frequent. Shadwell in the first act of The Virtuoso (D.G. 1676) speaks of those who ‘come drunk and screaming into a Play-House, and stand upon the Benches, and toss their full Periwigs and empty Heads, and with their shrill unbroken Pipes cry, Damme, this is a damn’d Play.” Not only, therefore, did the actors play to empty houses!, of which a fair proportion were gallants who did not pay and another fair proportion were “ dead- heads?,” but the meagre audiences who did put in an ap- pearance barely gave the actors leave to perform. Higden in the dedication to his The Wary Widdow (D.L. 1693) makes complaint of some who “with a barbarous variety of Noise and Tumult” so disturbed his play ‘‘that many of the well meaning Spectatours (for I am sure it had very few Hearers) must conclude it a very criminall performance.” Only with 1 D’Urfey in the epilogue to The Fool turn’d Critick (D.L. 1676) speaks of the nonconformist preacher melting ‘in durance half his Grease away, To get, like us, poor thirteen Pounds a day.” In The Theatricai Inquisitor and Monthly Mirror of July, 1816,a document is printed purporting to be a list of takings at the T.R. for a performance of All for Love on Wed. Dec. 12, 1677. According to this £7. 4s. came from the boxes, £14. 12s. 6d. from the pit (117 spectators in all), £14. 14s. 6d. from the mid-gallery (63 spectators), and £1. 13s. from the upper gallery (33 spectators)—£28. 4s. altogether, from which rent took £5. 14s., leaving £22. 10s. for the actors and running costs. The total number of paying persons in the house was but 249. Almost certainly takings of over £50 must have been abnormal. The anti-Cibber pamphlet The Laureat and documents in the P.R.O. both agree that about 1692 the daily receipts were “often under £20 per diem” (see Appendix B, and consult E. Thaler, Shakespeare to Sheridan, pp. 241-244). Not much stress can be put upon Herbert’s early estimates, which were based on probably imaginary evidence, but he asserts that in 1662 D’Avenant was getting £200 a week from the Duke’s house. As D’Avenant had 10 out of 15 shares, this represents a weekly total of £300, or an average of £50 a night, possibly fairly near the truth, when we consider that in 1662 the theatres were in the hey-day of their prosperity (see J. Q. Adams, Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, 1917, p. 120). * Farquhar in his Essay on Comedy imagines a gallant talking to himself: “Before gad, I'll be plagu’d with ’em no longer; I’ll e’en write a Play my self; by which means, my Character of Wit shall be establish’d (and) I shall enjoy the Freedom of the House.” As Farquhar observed this gives ‘“‘the Liberty of the House to him and his Friends for ever after.” Possibly these dead-heads were no more intent on keeping quiet when the plays of other poets were produced than were the courtiers and the fops who paid for admittance. THE AUDIENCE ~ 17 a sort of pathetic gesture did the players make pretence that these gallants aided their productions. He who comes hither with design to hiss And with a bum revers’d to whisper Miss, To komb a Peruke, or to show gay Cloaths, Or to vent antique Nonsense with New Oaths; Our Poet welcomes as the Muses Friend, For he’ll by Irony each Play commend...+ Such a declaration rings hollow: it has a note of pathos in it rather than a note of happy satire. For the actors, indeed, conditions must often have become well-nigh intolerable. Pepys has several references to irritating noises in the public playhouses, and Betterton declared that the voices of the spectators “‘put the very Players out of Counten- ance?,”” On they went with their loves and their quarrels and their sallies, heedless of the play before them. It was at the theatre that Wycherley had his first conversation with his later mis- tress, the Duchess of Cleveland, she sitting in the first row of the King’s Box and he standing in the pit®. It was at the Dorset Garden playhouse that Langbaine saw Mr Scroop killed by Sir Thomas Armstrong during a performance of Macbeth*. Quarrels, in point of fact, both among the actors and among the spectators, were of frequent occurrence. “Scow’ring the Watch,” says Dryden in the prologue to his The Spanish Fryar (D.G. 1680), Grows out-of-Fashion Wit, Now we set up for Tilting in the Pit, Where ’tis agreed by Bullies, chicken hearted, To fright the Ladies first, and then be parted. 1 Second prologue to The Amorous Old Woman (1674) repeated later as the prologue to D’Urfey’s The Fool turn’d Critick (D.L. 1676) and printed as the prologue to Orrery’s Mr Anthony (D.G. c. 1671, printed 1694). 2 The Amorous Widow (L.1.F. c. 1670), 11. ii. Even as early as June 23, 1660, Thomas Jordan could write “A Speech by way of Epilogue to those that would rise out of the Pit at the Red Bull in the last Scene, and disturb the Conclusion, by going on the Stage” (A Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie, 1660, p. 19). 3 Dennis quoted by Lowe, Life of Betterton, p. 33. 4 Langbaine, p. 460. This was on Sat., Aug. 28, 1675. A newsletter of Aug. 31 mentions the incident (Hist. MSS. Commission Report, X11. vii. p. 121). NRD 2 18 THE THEATRE Not always, however, were the disturbances in the theatre such mild affairs of craven-hearted hectors. There was a serious affray among some gentlemen who had gone to see’ The Unfortunate Lovers at Salisbury Court on Nov. 19, 16601. On July 20, 1667, Henry Killigrew was sent to the Tower for an altercation with Buckingham in the playhouse?. A private quarrel which developed into a general fight en- tailed a temporary prohibition of acting in 1679%. On April 27, 1682, ‘‘ Mr. Ch(arles) De(ering), son to Sr. Edward D., and Mr. V(aughan), quarrelled in the Duke’s Playhouse, and presently mounted the Stage and fought, and Mr D. was dangerously wounded, and Mr. V. secured lest it should prove mortal*.” In a newsletter contained in the State Papers there is mentioned a quarrel between a Captain Leinster and another, during which many swords were drawn in the pit , while in the Post-Boy of June 22-25, 1695, we read that ‘“‘on Saturday last, words arose between Mr. Cary and Mr. Young in the Playhouse, about a Gentlewoman, and the next morning they fought a duel in Hide Park, where they were both wounded: the former died in the evening at the Star Inn in the Strand.” The following year one of the Clerks of the Exchequer was killed at the playhouse in a quarrel which rose there*, Smith, the actor, succeeded in killing his man in the theatre’, and Mrs Barry and Mrs Bracegirdle had an almost fatal struggle when playing ‘“‘rival queens.” The actors, indeed, were apparently not one whit better than the spectators. Whincop, for example, tells us that there was so much punch-drinking business in Higden’s comedy of The Wary Widdow (D.L. 1693) that the players all got intoxicated and had to close the piece at the third act®, while Vanbrugh, in a cynical preface to The Relapse (D.L. 1696) declares that, owing to the uproarious drunkenness of Powell in the char- 1 Fist. MSS. Commission, v. 200. 2 [bid., XU. vii. p. 51. 3 Gazette, Feb. 5-9, 1679. 4 Fanuary’s Impartial Protestant Mercury, May 2, 1682. ® Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, May 1690—Oct. 1691, p. 312. ® London Post, April 19-22; Post-Bay, April 23-5, 1700. 7 Pepys, Nov. 14, 1666. 8 Whincop, p. 247. THE AUDIENCE 19 acter of Worthy, he “once gave Amanda (acted by Mrs Rogers) for gone.” Probably the only thing that could stay the din of noise and of rowdy gaiety was the acting of Betterton, the charm of Nell Gwyn as she ran forward with her risque sallies, or else the sweet free grace of Mrs Bracegirdle. Undoubtedly the only other thing that could have stayed them would be the flashing wit of Congreve, or the rude bombast of the heroic tragedy tricked out with what their Palates relished most, Charm! Song! and Show! a Murder and a Ghost! This audience looked for nothing more?. They expected naught but brilliant colour, elegance and wit—a fit setting for their own coloured and elegant lives. Ill. Influence of the Audience on the Drama None of these wits or fops or courtiers of the audience were thinkers: hardly any of them had a faith beyond vague attachment to royalty: every one of them was eager for the day’s pleasure, eager for love and cynical laughter and the enjoyment of the senses. Their influence on the theatre and on dramatic productivity, moreover, was twofold. It was not limited solely to the influence they might exert from their position as spectators, for they acted in that age in the double capacity of audience and of playwrights. Art with them was a gentleman’s toy, and so long as a well-bred indifference was displayed, the penning of a comedy and a tragedy or two could but add to their renown. With them poetry and the drama sank to the level of a playful essay, a game to be indulged in for a brief hour or two, an easy method of whiling away the time. Etherege thus amused himself with 1 Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus (D.G. 1679), epilogue. 2 Motteux, in the preface to his Beauty in Distress (L.I.F. 1698), apologizes for the fact that this play is “‘ divested of all the things that now recommend a Play most to the Liking of the Many. For it has no Singing, no Dancing, no Mixture of Comedy, no Mirth, no change of Scene, no rich Dresses, no Show, no Rants, no Similes, no Battle, no Killing on the Stage, no Ghost, no Prodigy; and whats yet more, no Smut, no Profaneness, nor Immorality.” 2-2 20 THE THEATRE comedy: Sir Robert Howard with tragedy. Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, wrote his heroic dramas only when confined indoors with gout. There was, therefore, from these men no attempt to express great ideals, because there was no definite sincerity, no individuality of utterance, and unfortunately such professional authors as appeared in this age took their lead from these more aristocratic dramatists even as the latter invariably took theirs from the king. Dryden, D’Urfey, Shadwell to a certain extent, Settle, Lee, all on the fringe of the elegant circle, strove as far as they could, not to give utterance to any beliefs they might individually have held, but merely to reflect what had been said before them by others more fortunately born. Only a very few men, such as Otway in Venice Preserv’d and in The Orphan, seemed to find expression definitely their own. To their own elegance these courtly playwright-spectators added an elegance taken from a study of certain periods of classic and of pseudo-classic art. They knew their Ovids and their Horaces certainly: they took from Tibullus and from Juvenal satiric elements and adapted those elements to their own time: they felt truly and appreciated the grace and the cynicism of the poetry of Augustan Rome. But even more, they appreciated the pseudo-classic grace of France. Many of them had been, for varying periods, exiles abroad, and they had captured some part at least of that style and finish which allowed of the growth, on the one hand, of Racine, on the other, of Moliére. Not that they translated faithfully into London the spirit of Paris. Their harder, coarser, English temperament would not allow them to do that: but they certainly, from 1660 to 1680, came as near to that French ideal as any body of men in England before or after them. It must be confessed that what they most liked in French art and life were not always the best things in that art or life. They took often the outward instead of the inner: imitated the temporary and the ephemeral instead of the permanent and the truly classic. At the same time they were able to give to English literature exactly what at that time it needed— a body of common-sense opinion, a precision and a lucidity, INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 21 such as were lacking in the poetical rhapsodies of the Ford school in tragedy, in the blunt humours of the Jonson school in comedy, in the conceits of the Donne school in poetry. The effect of this peculiar audience and of these special playwrights is to be seen in many directions. It caused the unutterable coarseness which distinguished so much of Re- storation workmanship, and which has made the works of this period neglected during the past Victorian century. A discussion of that will be more fitting hereafter. Suffice it to be noted here that this immorality, this coarseness, call it what we will, extended from the very first years of the century to the very last: but that all through the forty years there were men who endeavoured in various ways to counter the tendency of the times by writing “‘moral plays,” and that the more definitely “‘moral” tendency visible after 1690 was mainly outward. Thus D’Urfey in the dedication to the third part of The Comical History of Don Quixote (D.L. 1695) informs us that some ladies of the audience considered certain portions of it coarse, but not the portions which we to-day would consider unutterably indecent. ‘Those same ladies who objected to Mary the Buxome, yet evidently found nothing wrong in the prologue between Horden and Miss Cross, who was at this time only about twelve years old, or the incredibly indecent ‘‘boy and girl” songs incorporated in the body of the play. The atmosphere of the court of Charles was vulgar in the extreme, but it was a more open immorality than, as I shall endeavour to show later, distinguished the years 1690-1700. Not that we can go any way to condone the earlier immorality. The stories of Rochester’s and of Sedley’s hideous pranks are too well-known to be repeated. All sort of moral ties, all sense of decency had gone. Women had become as libidinous as the men: “‘common Women” were “ publick grown...in this damn’d lewd Town”: nothing was left to occupy the minds of this circumscribed clique but intrigue and sen- suality. Every name and title given to a woman came during this period to have an evil significance. ‘‘ Lady,” as Pepys 22 THE THEATRE shows us!, had thus become debased in meaning, as had ‘“‘ other?” and ‘‘ Madam,” ‘‘ Miss” and ‘‘ Mistress4.” The utter filth that marks many of the lyrics contained, for example, in such a collection as the Poems on Affairs of State, is but the ordinary speech of women of this type and of their men companions made a trifle more “poetical.” As is evident from the dialogues in the comedies the conversation of men with men or of women with men reaches a freedom seen at no other period of our history. If we listen to the words of a couple of lovers of the time we wonder sometimes whether our ears be not deceiving us. Turn even to a work of one of the geniuses of the age, turn to Dryden’s Secret Love, and read the words of Celadon and Florimel: in spite of the wit, we stand aghast. That such a conversation as appears in the fifth act of this play—and it is evidently realistic—could ever have taken place between two cultured persons in a civilised society, or that it could ever have been presented on the stage to a general audience, shows us probably as clearly as any- thing the peculiar temper of the age with which we are dealing. There was refinement in this time, but there was also sensuality: the minds of the wits were filled with a succession of images in which fancy and carnal thought alternated or became confused, clashed and grew into what we know as the comedy of manners. It is natural, perhaps, that with a man of the calibre of Rochester such thoughts and images should preponderate, but when we discover that the most serious, nay some of the ultra-religious writers, indulge in similar carnal images, we are reminded of the all- pervading influence of the time. The truth is, that, in the period of the Restoration, the love of pleasure which had come as a reaction to the restrictions of the Puritan régime, led towards a recrudescence of brutality. No one in that age could possibly conceive of sucha thing asinnocence. Miranda, in The Tempest, is reft of her modesty: Eve in The State of 1 Pepys, May 30, 1668. * Dryden’s Sir Martin Mar-all (L.1.F. 1667), Iv. i. 8 See The Poor-Whores Petition, 1668. * Flecknoe, Euterpe Reviv’d (1675). INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 23 Innocence is made a woman of quality in the garden of Eden. Very little separated the women of ‘“‘virtue” and the women of vice. In Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle (D.L. 1699), for example, Lucinda, who is presented to us as virtuous and modest, puts on a mask, goes out into the park, and, after some rather disagreeable talk with her maid, “slaps” a strange man “‘o’ th’ Shoulder with her Fan}.” This lack of distinction between the women of quality and the others naturally led to an intensification of the free speech indulged in by the men*. Women in that age found nothing strange in such conversation: they themselves could pose to their lovers as courtesans®, or delight in puzzling the poor brains of the gallants as to who and what they were‘. Such notes on the general attitude of the time may prepare us for the scenes which in those days could find visible pre- sentment on the stage itself. Men and women in Restoration comedies and tragedies could be shown rising from couch or bed. The stage directions are quite explicit about the matter: there is no opportunity for us to presume that such scenes were glozed over in the acting®. Every means was employed to make the immorality more striking. The Parson’s Wedding, one of the most flagrantly indecent of Restoration productions, was put on the Theatre Royal stage acted solely by women®. Actresses were given the most vulgar and sug- gestive epilogues to recite, casting out broad hints to an audience not uneager to accept them. Nor did matters stop there. Sexual disease had been carried over from France, and this horrible thing was treated ieee 2 In Act m1 of Shadwell’s A True Widow (D.G. 1678), Theodosia tells Carlos that he “must not talk with Vizors in the Pit; though they look never so like Women of Quality.” 3 See Mrs Behn’s The Feign’d Curtizans (D.G. 1679). 4 Pepys, Feb. 18, 1666-7. 5 See Mrs Behn’s Sir Patient Fancy (D.G. 1678), 111. vii, and tv. iv. Similar scenes are to be found in Leanerd’s The Rambling Fustice (D.L. 1678), IV. iii; in Crowne’s The City Politiques (D.L. 1683), v. ii; in Raw- lins’ Tom Essence (D.G. 1676), IV. ii; in Shadwell’s The Volunteers (D.L. 1692), Vv. i; in Vanbrugh’s The Relapse (D.L. 1696), v. ii; and in D’Urfey’s The Campaigners (D.L. 1698), V. ii. S Pepys, Oct. 11, 1664, 24 THE THEATRE half as a joke, half as a glory. Florio in Crowne’s The City Politiques (D.L. 1683) could pretend to a disease he had not, could flaunt it openly for his own immoral ends. Beyond even that did the age penetrate. Incest and similar relation- ships are referred to again and again, not only in secret pieces like the Sodom, or, The Quintessence of Debauchery which Rochester may have penned, but in ordinary comedies and tragedies. The presence of such seems to have added pi- quancy to many a play. In Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe(D.L. 1675), for example, Indamora is loved by the old Emperor, by Aureng-Zebe, his son, and by Morat, the son of the wife of the emperor, Nourmahal, while Nourmahal is in love with her step-son, Aureng-Zebe. Here a father, his son and his step-son are all rivals in love. In Oedipus (D.G. 1679) Dryden again introduces the theme of incest, and touches upon it later in Don Sebastian (D.L. 1689). Crowne treats the subject tragically in Thyestes (D.L. 1681) and comically in The City Politiques (D.L. 1683). More thoughtful presentations may — be given in the anonymous Fatal Discovery (D.L. 1698) and in Otway’s The Orphan (D.G. 1680), but the majority of dramatists, like those mentioned above or like Mrs Behn in The Dutch Lover (D.G. 1673), used it merely to pander to the depraved tastes of the audience. Occasionally, even, the spectators were content, perhaps eager, to see more than mere themes of incest. Unnatural sex relationships certainly existed in that age, and these too were reflected in the dramas. Rochester, when he was rewriting Valentinian (D.L. 1684) saw fit to drag in reference to this, and there is more than a hint of the vice in the speech of Damocles to his page in Edward Howard’s The Usurper (T.R. in B.St. 1664). When we have thus passed over in review all these follies, these vices and these depravities, for a moment it would seem as if the Macaulays were in the right—that nothing possible of good could come from the study of such a theatre and of such an age. In this time of degenerate manners, which seems * See the prologue to D’Urfey’s Madam Fickle (D.G. 1676) and the epilogue to Duffett’s The Spanish Rogue (L.1.F. 1673). Shadwell’s The Humorists (L.1.F. 1670) might also be noted in a like connection. INFLUENCE OF THE AUDIENCE 25 separated as if by aeons from the more spacious days of Elizabeth, it might be thought that neither gallants nor play- wrights could have risen above the crudest expression of carnal licence. Yet, as we have seen, this Restoration audience could and did give something to the theatre. The spectators might be thoughtless and depraved, but they were cultured, and the grace and the wit and the elegance which they brought into life and the playhouse was something quite new. Nothing precisely like their ease and refinement of dialogue appears in the preceding dramas. We feel that the characters of the comedy of this time are true aristocrats, tutored to ease and a kind of delicacy in language, if not in thought, of which their forefathers never could know. If they have lost the valour and the strength of Drake and of Ralegh, they have captured the fine spirit of Etherege and of Congreve. Almost all the writers of the time have something of it, from Dryden and Shadwell to the greatest masters of the manners school. If, again, the women of the Restoration court seem to our eyes to have lost that modesty which was yet frank and clear-eyed, the modesty of Miranda and of Rosalind, we must bear in mind that their free relations with their men companions provided the basis on which the true comedy of life could be built. Aphra Behn may have been licentious, but she was establishing a surer position for her sisters than any of the Elizabethan women had succeeded in establishing. This new position of women and the grace of the courtiers are not things to be defined: they lie rather in suggestion and in atmosphere than in particular scenes or forms. In all the literature of the age, nevertheless, we feel their influence, the spirit which separates off the comedy of Jonson from this gay, witty, immoral comedy of Restoration manners. IV. The Theatre It is quite obvious that the small and mean audience of the Restoration theatre could have, besides those mentioned above, even more far-reaching effects on dramatic and thea- trical productivity. Being few in numbers they made of the 26 THE THEATRE theatres practically what our repertory theatres are nowadays. No play, however brilliant, however splendidly produced, however popular by means of poetic beauty or of immoral suggestion, could count on a run of over a few days. We know that the gallants did not object to coming once or twice to see the same performance’, especially when, as in the case of Shadwell’s The Sullen Lovers (L.1.F. 1668), there was personal satire that everyone was talking about, but, even if each member of the audience did visit the same play twice, a run of a week was about all that was possible. Many plays died on the first night: the majority of the others saw no more than three consecutive performances. A few, such as Tuke’s The Adventures of Five Hours (L.1.F. 1663) or the rehashing of Henry VIII (L.1.F. 1663) may have seen up- wards of a dozen nights”, but they were exceptions. Constant change was what was necessary, if the playhouses were even scantily to be filled. Even when plays had a slightly longer run than was ordinary, we find that the management often deemed it advisable to break that run by the insertion of a revival or two. Thus The Sullen Lovers, which Downes says ran for twelve nights, was seen by Pepys on Sat. May 2, 1668, Mon. May 4, Tues. May 5, but at the same theatre on Thurs. May 7, the diaryist saw The Man’s the Master and on Mon. May 11, The Tempest. Naturally, if new plays could be thus summarily dismissed, revivals of older productions were allowed to survive for barely a night or two. Here again the records of Pepys are for us invaluable®. At the Theatre Royal on four consecutive nights, from Mon. Aug. 12, 1667 to Thurs. Aug. 15, that playgoer saw Brenoralt, The Com- mittee, The Country Captain and The Merry Wives of Windsor. A week later, on four similarly consecutive days, from Thurs. Aug. 22 to Mon. Aug. 26, The Indian Emperor, The Maiden _ 1 Even Charles, who was easily tired of his pleasures, was at three of the first five nights of D’Urfey’s A Fond Husband (D.G. 1676); see The Guardian, No. 82, June 15, 1713. 2 Pepys, Jan. 1, 1663-4 and Downes, p. 29. 8 We have also Herbert’s records of performances at the T.R. where he notes 16 different plays on 16 consecutive nights from Th. Nov. 5, 1660 to Mon. Nov. 26, 1660, but at the first opening of the theatres such a variety is quite understandable. THE THEATRE 27 Queen, The Cardinal and The Surprisal were performed. On Tues. Sept. 15, 1668 The Ladies a la Mode, or Damoiselles a la Mode, was given for the second time, on Thurs. the 17th Rollo, on Fri. the 18th Henry IV, on Sat. the 19th The Silent Woman; on Thurs. May 14, 1668, The Country Captain was performed, on the Friday The Committee, on the Saturday The Sea Voyage, on the Monday The Mulberry Garden. This rapid change of programme quite obviously must have affected the theatre in several distinct ways. It made a very high standard of acting necessary, and, even although such did exist, we have frequent complaints from playwrights and from public that the players were not always word-perfect}, How they could even have attempted to learn half of their numerous parts must be our wonder now. Looked at from another point of view, this rapid change made for a constant demand for new plays, and, the demand being ever-present, the supply, although profits from playwriting in Restoration days were not over-great, naturally followed. The dramatic literature of the years 1660 to 1700 is fairly vast. There were, as Downes tells us, “plenty of new Poets” about the year 16707, professional writers and courtly poets all flocking to give their wares to the playhouse. Only during the period when the theatres were united between 1682 and 1695 was there such a “‘reviveing of the old Stock of Plays” that “the Poets lay dormant” and “‘a new Play cou’d hardly get ad- mittance*.” For that time ‘‘ Union and Catcalls...quite spoyl’d the Stage*,” there being no demand, and a consequent decline in the supply. The contemporary references to this dearth of new plays in the period of the union of the theatres is amply borne out by an analysis of the fresh plays printed during the years 1682 to 1695. Thus, in the five years from 1689 to 1694 fewer new comedies were produced than in the two and a half years from 1696 to 1698. The corresponding relations as regards tragedy display exactly the same pheno- 1 Pepys, Sat. Mar. 1, 1661-2, and Higden in the dedication to The Wary Widdow (D.L. 1693). Cf. infra p. 63. 2 Downes, Pp. 34. _ 3 Powell’s preface to The Treacherous Brothers (D.L. 1689). # Prologue to Jevon’s The Devil of a Wife (D.G. 1686). 28 THE THEATRE mena. As soon as Betterton broke the united playhouse into two, the poets rushed again to write up their comedies and their tragedies and their farces and their operas. “ The Plague of Scribling’s grown so rife of late,” says the prologue to Timoleon (unacted?, 1697), “‘Player and Poet share one common Fate\.’”” Congreve the year before in his prologue to the young Dryden’s The Husband his own Cuckold (L.1.F. 1695) noted that the season had ‘‘ been Remarkable two ways” —for the number of new poets and of plays damned by the spectators. We have, then, in this period two wholly antagonistic movements—one which seemed to tend towards a crushing out of all vital life in the theatre, and another which seemed to inspire towards increased dramatic productivity: just as, from a different point of view we discovered tastes that at one and the same time led towards the most debased of sentiments and towards the finest and the most perfect dialogue that might be conceived possible for the dramatic form. The truth is that, whatever way we look at it, this courtly audience and its theatre will be found to possess both grievous defects and outstanding merits. The spectators could appreciate fine things, both in comedy and in tragedy, but they also were swayed by external ephemeral things of no value or permanent consequence. For this latter reason, the arts which may be called contributory to the drama, and which, in all great productions, should be rendered sub- servient to the characters and to the dialogue, grew to assume a larger and larger place in the reigns of Charles II and of James. As the years advanced we find scenery, and all that goes along with scenery, playing a more and more important part in the success or failure of plays: we find managers impoverishing themselves to glut the eager tastes of a show- loving public. The year 1642, as is well known, had left the theatres much in the same state as they had been in when Shakespeare wrote, that is to say, with an Elizabethan platform stage and no scenery. In the latter years of the reign of Charles I, 1 See also the prologue to The Unnatural Mother (L.1.F. 1697). THE THEATRE 29 certainly, we do meet more frequently with references to “scenes” than we do in the preceding years, a sign possibly that the Elizabethan theatre would have changed naturally even though there had been no break in the Commonwealth period and a subsequent revival of the drama in 1660. On the other hand, all these references to scenery, save one, point to private and not public productions. Thus the sum of £300 necessary for the scenes of Aglaura in 1637 was defrayed by Sir John Suckling, the author, while the then Lord Chamberlain paid for ‘‘the cloathes and scaenes” of Habington’s Queen of Arragon in 16401. Masques, of course, had always had gorgeous scenery, and that that scenery must have had a considerable influence on later theatrical endeavour admits of no doubt: but after all the masque was purely a private affair and lies outside the history of the drama proper. The one reference mentioned above which does not come under the “private” category, is that contained in the patent granted to Sir William D’Avenant in 1639, authorising him to build a playhouse for music, scenes and dancing. This last proves, at least, that D’Avenant had made his plans, to be carried out only in 1656 and in 1661, more than three years before the closing of the theatres. The first hint, how- ever, that we have of anything definitely new on the stage, appears in the title-page to The Siege of Rhodes, ‘‘made a Representation by the Art of Prospective in Scenes, and the Story sung in Recitative Musick,’’ D’Avenant’s “opera” of 1656, followed by The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru and by The History of Sir Francis Drake. The first. was played originally ‘‘at the back part of Rutland House, in Aldersgate Street,” possibly in September 1656: the latter two at the Cockpit in Drury Lane towards the close of 1658. The scenery employed in these pre-Restoration productions must have been of a sufficiently crude and elementary char- acter but it formed nevertheless the origin of modern stage decoration in England. It is certainly true that the value of 1 See, for this whole subject, Lawrence, W. J., The Elizabethan Play- House, 2nd ser., p. 121 ff., and also a work which has appeared since the writing of this book, Lily B. Campbell’s Scenes and Machines on the English Stage during the Renaissance (1923). 30 THE THEATRE the innovation was not at once perceived either by playgoers or by actor-managers, but by the year 1670 D’Avenant’s enterprise had borne full fruit. The old Elizabethan theatres, of course, which were occupied by the hastily-gathered bodies of actors who started to play immediately on the King’s re- turn, were naturally innocent of scenery, and even Killigrew’s first playhouse, that in Vere Street, save for its tennis court form, was different in no wise from the theatres in which Shakespeare and Burbage had exercised their histrionic talents. As soon as D’Avenant succeeded in getting his patent, it is true, he reintroduced the various innovations which he had heralded in 1656, but even then the effects must have been of the crudest and possibly displayed errors and weaknesses due to the haste of organisation. Pepys visited D’Avenant’s ‘‘opera,” as it was called, a few days after it had been opened and noted the “fine scenes,’ fine, because he had nothing with which to compare them!. A few days later, however, this “‘opera” was closed, to reopen on Aug. 15 with The Witts, and on visiting it during the run of that play Pepys again duly noted the “‘admirable scenes.” The next month he saw Twelfth Night at the same theatre, which again was evidently closed to allow of ‘‘some alteracion of their scene?.”” It was open once more on Oct. 21 with Love and Honour. It is difficult and hazardous to build any fabric of theory on facts meagre as these, but we might, I think, legitimately deduce from these notes of the diaryist that D’Avenant’s innovations were but experiments and needed a great amount of re-casting before they were fit for public displayal. Still, however inartistic they may have been, however ridi- culous they might appear to our eyes nowadays, they certainly must have come as a new ray of light to the audiences of the early sixties of the century. About six days after the opening of D’Avenant’s house, Pepys visited the Theatre Royal and this he found empty as it had been since the opera had started. ‘The spectators, as we have seen, were not sufficient 1 July 2, 1661. He saw The Siege of Rhodes. See Downes, p. 20. 2 Sept. 11, 1661. THE THEATRE 31 to fill both the theatres, and it was the Duke’s playhouse that they preferred. Betterton was there, of course, to swell the house with his acting, but far more than this it must have been D’Avenant’s scenery that attracted the audiences away from the erst-while thickly-crowded Theatre Royal to the newer “‘opera.”’ D’Avenant had been clever enough to divine the fresh tastes of the play-going public. His endeavours without a doubt were simply directed towards making his theatre pay, but by reason of these novelties he stands now as the father of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century theatres in England. He it was who, to employ the scenery which he had introduced, moved his stage half-way between the “ platform” of the Elizabethans and the “‘ picture- frame” of our own days. No longer did the spectators com- pletely surround the actors on all sides; no longer was the scene of each play performed against curtains that concealed an inner stage. All that was gone and in its stead was born the modern theatre. While we recognise this fact, however, we must be careful to remember that all the traditions of the older stage were by no means lost. In the world of the theatre customs and traditions are perhaps more difficult to eradicate than in any other branch of working life. Instead of regarding D’Avenant’s L.I.F. house as the first modern theatre, we shall be nearer to the truth if we say that the play-houses of 1661-1700 represent a compromise between the Globe of 1600 and the Covent Garden of 1900, modern and ancient ideals meeting in one, tradition and innovation warring one with another. The stage itself serves as well as anything for an illustra- tion. If we glance at the engraving prefixed to the opera of Ariane, performed at the King’s playhouse in March 1673-4, we note at once that, although the main part of the stage is as ours is to-day, a remnant of the platform is still to be dis- covered in the shape of an oval “‘apron” jutting out for a few feet into the pit. Or else we may glance at the plan drawn by Wren, possibly for the second T.R., where the long apron is plainly visible, fully 17 feet deep, almost as long as the space from the proscenium to the back-cloth. 32 THE THEATRE There were therefore in the Restoration theatres two stages, one to the front of the proscenium, and the other behind, corresponding to the Elizabethan stage and inner stage?. ‘The actors thus entered now into a space enclosed by the back- scene and the two side-wings: but that is not where the action of the play took place. Almost invariably the performers stepped onto the oval projection in front, not quite surrounded by spectators as before, but in a much more intimate position than the actors of modern times. Here lovers moaned and - villains cursed, heroes fought and died. How great a part was acted on this apron may be seen by a reference to such a play as Vanbrugh’s The Confederacy (Hay. 1705) where in Act v a stage direction occurs “‘ They come forward, and the Scene shuts behind them.” From that direction to the end of the play, notwithstanding the fact that no less than eleven characters enter and speak, the whole of the action takes place on the forward part of the stage. Practically always in the dramas of the time when a person is “discovered” by a curtain rising or a scene drawing a stage direction instructs him or her to ‘‘come forward” before he or she begins to speak. Thus in Act 11. Sc. iv of Dilke’s The Lover’s Luck (L.I.F. 1695) the ‘‘ScENE opens to Collonel Bellair’s Chamber, and discovers Bellair...he rises and comes forward?.” In The Rehearsal (T.R. in B.St. 1671) it may be noted, much of the business takes place on the oval in front of the curtain while in Act 11 (‘‘ The Play-House”’) of Dennis’ A Plot and no Plot (D.L. 1697) Frowsy, Friskit and Brush are bidden to “‘ appear at the Curtain” and take their stands in a similar position. Only after the gradual disappearance of the “‘apron” in the eighteenth century did the actors retire behind the footlights into the interior of the stage itself, abandoning their sense of kinship with the audience and becoming far-off figures set in a distant world. * ‘The Wren drawings are in the Library of All Souls, Oxford. They have been reproduced in the Architectural Record, April 1913. The inner stage appears to have been known as the “House” in contrast to the ‘‘Stage’’ which is the apron. 2 So in Hopkins’ Boadicea (L.1.F. 1697), U1. i, where Camilla is dis- covered asleep. THE THEATRE 33 The stage, however, is but one example out of many, and we need not be surprised, as we examine the other appur- tenances and conventions of this theatre, if we find on every hand evidence of a similar clash between old and modern. Scenery, as introduced by D’Avenant, was bound to have an almost incalculable effect on the structure of plays, rendering them less chaotic in the matter of scenes, moving from the constant change of the Elizabethan theatres to the more stable forms of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; yet even till 1690 plays could be found shifting easily from short scene to short scene without the least regard to the new con- ditions surrounding them. In Settle’s spectacular The Empress of Morocco (D.G. 1673) a separate scene could be shown for three single lines!. In Mrs Behn’s Sir Patient Fancy (D.G.1678) at Act 11. Sc. v there is “‘A confus’d Noise of the Serenade, the Scene draws off to La. Fancy’s Anti Chamber.”’ Isabella enters, speaks five lines, and then the “‘scENE changes to Lady Fancy’s Bed-Chamber.” A similar swift alteration of the scenery occurs in Tuke’s The Adventures of Five Hours (L.1.F. 1663) where in Act 111. Sc. iii we find “‘the City of Sevil,” a scene of five lines, changing immediately to ‘‘Don Henriques House.” Often the mere introduction of a table and chairs could alter the locality of a particular scene, as in D’Avenant’s The Man’s the Master (L.1.F. c. 1668). There at one moment we are in Don Ferdinand’s house: suddenly the characters leave and “Enter Stephano, Sancho. A Table spread with Linen Tren- chers and Spoons are (sic) set out, and five Chairs.” Apparently no change of scenery accompanied this, for D’Avenant, following Elizabethan custom, saw fit to make Stephano explain—‘‘ This Room, standing in the Garden, at distance from the House, seems built for our purpose.” This is par- ticularly interesting as appearing in a play of D’Avenant’s own acted at the Duke’s house, after the introduction of the “scenes” which Pepys so much admired?, In many early 1 q11.i. “ Scene the Palace” and then, immediately following, ‘‘ Scene a Bed-Chamber.” 2 With probably no change of scenery were presented Iv. ii and vV. iii of D’ Urfey’s Squire Oldsapp (D.G. 1678). In the former the stage NRD 3 34 THE THEATRE comedies and tragedies of the Restoration period no attempt was made by the authors to mark separate scenes, and although this does not prove that different pieces of scenery were not utilised, it does show that the dramatists for some years at least failed to think out their plays in terms of the new theatrical conditions. Gradually, however, the influence of D’Avenant’s improve- ments drove its way home in stage affairs. Even in 1663 Flecknoe could speak of the “‘present heighth of magnifi- cence” in decoration and in setting, which made plays “‘more for sight, then for hearing!.” By 1667 a foreigner, Chappuzeau, accustomed to the gorgeous theatres of the continent, was able sincerely to compliment English stage- craft which ‘‘véussit admirablement dans la machine, et...va maintenant du pair avec les Italiens*.” ‘This is an important piece of evidence and shows that within six years of the opening of the ‘‘ opera” the new art of the theatre in England had almost caught up the similar art of the continent, early as that had been introduced. Conservatives like Flecknoe might still continue to cry out, fed by old prejudices. Shadwell might exclaim— Then came Machines brought from a neighbour Nation, Oh! how we suffered under Decoration! direction has merely ‘‘ Table, Chairs, and Wine,” and in the latter, “‘ Table, Chairs, and Bottles of Wine.” 1 A Short Discourse of the English Stage appended to Love’s Kingdom (unacted, 1664). He qualified the statement by the assertion that “Scenes and Machines...are no new Invention, our Masks and some of our Playes in former times (though not so ordinary) having had as good, or rather better then any we have now....Of this curious Art the Italians (this latter age) are the greatest masters, the French good proficients, and we in England only Schollars and Learners yet, having proceeded no further then to bare Painting...especially not knowing yet how to place our Lights, for the more advantage and illuminating of the Scenes.” 2 L’ Europe vivante (Geneva, 1667). This was of the L.I.F. house, or, as Chappuzeau styles it, “‘la Troupe de Monsieur...dans la place de Lin- colne.”’ Other foreign writers were equally laudatory. Sorbiéres remarked the “‘beaucoup de changements et de perspectives”? of the 'T.R. in B.St. in 1663, while Monconys, writing of the same theatre on May 22, 1663, declares that “les changements de Thédtre et les machines sont fort ingénieuse- ment inventées et exécutées.” ‘Les Changements”’ at L.1.F. pleased the latter equally well on June 5 (see W. J. Lawrence, A Forgotten Restoration Playhouse in Englische Studien, vol. xxxv). THE THEATRE 35 Dramatists might recognise that a play unattractively put forward was almost bound to fail—as Banks Who not one Plea for Favour can pretend, Song, Show, nor Dance, these Scenes to recommend: And Sirs full well you know where that must end, yet this new “Show” had come to stay, and for good or bad had duly to be reckoned with. In Italy, in France, and in England the dramatist only too often was forced to sub- ordinate himself to the machinist. In all countries, wit, good sense and character drawing seemed continually sacrificed for nonsensical sound and voluptuous sight. At the same time, the innovations were to form the basis of our modern theatre. By them the stage had advanced from medieval conditions into a fresh world. At first the English theatres, naturally enough, must have had but a small stock of scenes, and as is evident from the designs of Webb for The Siege of Rhodes, the effects must often have been illustrative rather than realistic?. Convention still ruled over a great part of the theatrical world. The old chambre a quatre portes may occasionally have served®, while for a masque in Stapylton’s The Slighted Maid (L.1.F. 1663) a ‘‘ Scene is discovered, over which in Capital Letters 1s writ Campi Etysi!,” a relic of ancient times. Apart from this, the actual painted scenes were no doubt extremely limited. We frequently find references in stage directions to new pieces introduced into the Theatre Royal or the Duke’s house, and those new pieces must have served over and over again, in not particularly fitting situations. On other occasions drama- tists intimately connected with the theatres undoubtedly wrote up plays to stock scenery in hand. Special scenic effects had been devised for Howard and Dryden’s The Indian Queen, acted first in Jan. 1663-4. Pepys heard say on Wed. Jan. 27 that for show it exceeded the rival play at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Henry VIII, which itself had special scenery. On 1 Preface to Edward Howard’s The Six Days’ Adventure (L.1.F. 1671). 2 See Burlington Magazine for May 1914, and Tupper’s edition of The Siege of Rhodes (1909). Several are reproduced in E. Thaler’s Shakespeare to Sheridan. 8 See Flecknoe’s The Damoiselles a la Mode (printed 1667), preface. 37-2 36 THE THEATRE Fri. Feb. 5 Evelyn went to see The Indian Queen and duly noted the “‘rich scenes.”” The managers quite evidently had expended a good deal of money on it, and the spectators were bidden to See what Shifts we are infore’d to try, To help out Wit with some Variety; Shows may be found that never yet were seen, Tis hard to find such Wit as ne’er has been: You have seen all that this old World cou’d do, We therefore try the fortune of the new, And hope it is below your Aim to hit At untaught Nature with your practis’d Wit... ’Tis true, y have Marks enough, the Plot, the Show, The Poet’s Scenes, nay, more, the Painter’s too; Lf all this fail, considering the Cost, ’Tis a true Voyage to the Indies lost. Such scenes, apparently, those particularly of the prison (Iv. i), and the temple (v. i) could not be put aside as useless after the run of the play, and accordingly we find, about a year later, the production of The Indian Emperour, ‘‘ Being the Sequeal of the Indian Queen,” evidently written to order. That it was not penned to provide a sequel to the plot of the former play is proved by the facts that Dryden was forced to confess that “‘the Conclusion of the Indian Queen...left little matter for another Story to be built on” and that he therefore pro- vided readers and audience with a ‘‘ Connection of The Indian Emperor to The Indian Queen,” in order to introduce them to the new characters he was compelled to supply. Of the persons in The Indian Queen there remained ‘‘but two alive.” The prologue, moreover, was sent out to advise the audience that The Scenes are old, the Habits are the same, We wore last year... and probably were to wear repeatedly again in the following decade or two. The temple duly appeared in Act 1. Sc. ii, the prison in Act Iv. Sc. i and iv and in Act v. Sc. ii, while the ‘‘ Pleasant Indian Country1,” the ‘“‘ Magician’s Cave?,” the Pi. a3 TE Gii)e CR wir, THE THEATRE ey “‘Chamber Royal,” the ‘‘ Camp?” and the “‘ pleasant Grotto®”’ had all no doubt appeared in the former play*, At the Theatre Royal later records of the prison scene are to be found in Settle’s The Female Prelate (D.L. 1679)°, in the same author’s Fatal Love (D.L. 1680)* and in Harris’ The Mistakes (D.L. 1690)’, and of the grotto in D’Urfey’s Commonwealth of Women (D.L. 1685)® and in Lee’s Sophon- tsba (D.L. 1675). Our most interesting materials, however, for a knowledge of Restoration scenery are obtained, not from the Theatre Royal plays, but from those of the house of D’Avenant. There the scenic influence must have been considerably greater, and possibly the fact that the spectators seem on the whole to have preferred that theatre permitted the managers to indulge more largely in show and in finery. From the seventies of the century onwards we find continually critical remarks in Theatre Royal prologues and epilogues to the expenditure of the other house and the comparative success of that expenditure. Indeed about 1673-1674 the manage- ment of the King’s company appear to have engaged in a fairly extensive series of burlesques which hit directly at the operatic versions of Macbeth and The Tempest and at the gorgeous Empress of Morocco®. The Siege of Rhodes, produced in June 1661, we know had a number of ambitious scenes— Rhodes with the Turkish fleet, the town besieged, Mount Philermos and the storming of the city—and these were no doubt augmented by a series of interiors employed in The Me Tibsis iV. 317 V- 1 “ab 3 C8. ayia tits 4 In a similar way Shadwell’s Psyche (D.G. 1675) and Gildon’s Phaeton (D.L. 1698) were written expressly to show off scenery, in these cases brought over from oe © HD; _ STs OM bile akle ® See the plays of Daffett. He had already made an attack on the rich scenery of the Duke’s house in the prologue to The Spanish Rogue (L.1.F. c. June 1673). Note may also be taken of Fane’s epilogue to Love in the Dark (D.L. 1675) which hits at the success of Psyche: “For Songs and Scenes, a double Audience bring, And Doggrell takes, which Smiths in Sattin sing. Now to Machines, and a dull Mask you run, We find that Wit’s the Monster you would shun, And by my troth ’tis most discreetly done.” 38 THE THEATRE Witts, performed on Thursday, Aug. 15, 1661. Scenery, pro- bably rather crude, was used for Hamlet, ‘‘ done with scenes very well,” played on Sat. Aug. 24, 1661. For the revival of Love and Honour in October of the same year D’Avenant was probably able to make use of some of the older scenes, as no doubt for The Bondman (November) and Cutter of Coleman Street (December). All this time, however, he was, almost certainly, adding to his collection of properties, “the New Scene of the Hall” which we find mentioned in Porter’s The Villain: (L.1.F. Sat. Oct. 18, 1662) being assuredly only one of many. The Adventures of Five Hours, produced on Thurs. Jan. 8, 1662-32, was, according to Downes, “‘cloath’d Excellently Fine in Proper Habits,” and we know that in it appeared one or two novel scenic effects such as ‘‘ The Rising Moon” of Act 1*. ‘‘ The Dress, the Author, and the Scenes are new,” the prologue informs us, and from the stage direc- tions we can make out that among these new scenes were “Don Henrique’s House®,” ‘Don Octavio’s House®,” “‘ Don Carlos’s House’,” “‘a Garden®” and “ The City of Sevil®.” These we may presume were utilised later in other dramas, almost certainly for Stapylton’s The Slighted Maid (Feb. 1662-3) and The Stepmother (possibly Nov. 1663). In plays such as Etherege’s Love in a Tub (March, 1664) there was ample opportunity for employing the interiors already men- tioned. About April 1665, Mustapha was set on the L.I.F. stage and there all the scenery was new!, as was also that used for Tryphon (Dec. 1668). Possibly the most interesting stage directions in the whole of Restoration drama are those POIV ods * Pepys marked this as the first performance, but Evelyn saw a re- hearsal on Tues. Dec. 23. In the text we find that ‘‘ The Prologue enters with a Play-Bill in his hand, and Reads This Day being the 15th of December, shall be Acted a New Play”—from which it seems that the oo rehearsal (semi-public) was even prior to that date. noes * Professor Odell, in his Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving (1. 150), marks other appearances of this moon which had escaped my notice: Mrs Behn’s Widow Ranter (D.L. 1689), v. i; Mountfort’s Greenwich Park (D.L. 1691); The Fairy Queen (D.G. 1692), Iv. ° 1; 111; v (ii). 8 tv (i). ? v (i); v (iii). Sith. 9 31 (i); 111 (iii). 10 Downes, p. 26. THE THEATRE 39 which are to be found in the same author’s Guzman (April, 1669) where certain scenes of Mustapha and of Tryphon are directly referred to. “A Flat Scene of a Chamber'” might be any one of the preceding pieces, as might also ‘‘ The Scene with the Chimney in’t®,’ reminding us of that used many years after in Mrs Centlivre’s Marplot (D.L. 1710)8, but of others we are particularly told their origin. ‘‘ The Scene a Garden (The Garden in Tryphon as a Back Scene)*” and “‘ The Queen of Hungary’s Chamber®” are taken directly out of the former tragedies, the first from Act 1. Sc. i of Tryphon and the second from Act Iv.Sc. i of Mustapha. In Guzman,more- over, there is mention, besides these, of ‘‘ The New Black Scene®,” of “The New Flat Scene” representing a Piazza’, and ‘‘ The Scene a Grove of Trees (The Forest)’.” The two theatres, as has been observed above, vied in rivalry, and we can see at L.I.F. and later at D.G., not only such new scenes as are given above, but others on the model of the T.R. Indian Queen decorations. The Forest last men- tioned was a great favorite, appearing in Mrs Behn’s The Young King (D.G. 1679) as ‘A Flat Wood®” and in the same authoress’ The Dutch Lover (D.G. 1673) as ‘‘ A Flat Grove?®.” A “Wood” was among the L.I.F. possessions in 169611. Barren wastes were also much favoured in both theatres, as in D’Urfey’s A Commonwealth of Women (D.L. 1685), “A flat Rock'*” and “A Barren Island*8.” One of the spectacular scenes presented by the Royal Academy of Music in their production of Ariane (Mar. 1673-4) was ‘A Desart or Wilder- ness,” possibly, however, a desert that blossomed _as the rose, e30r. 2 11 and Iv, ap Rae SatV: 5 and vy. 8 i (iii). Probably that used for the ““Room hung all with Black” in Act v of Whitaker’s The Conspiracy (D.G. 1680). ” Wt: ag Saver 10 tI. ii. The grove appears also in Settle’s The Conquest of China (D.G. 1675), Iv. ii; v. iii: in the same author’s The Fairy Queen (D.G. 1692), 11: in Shadwell’s The Libertine (D.G. 1675), Iv: in Otway’s Alci- biades (D.G. 1675), 11. i: in D’Urfey’s Squire Oldsapp (D.G. 1678) as “‘4 Wood or Grove,” 1. ii: in Powell’s Brutus of Alba (D.G. 1696), tI. i: and in Scott’s The Mock Marriage (D.G. 1695), Il. i. 11 Harris’ The City Bride (L.1.F. 1696), m1. i. ‘““A Wood” is also to be found at D.L. in Powell’s The Treacherous Brothers in 1689. BS) TaD. J: Rr vats 40 THE THEATRE like that ‘‘ Wilderness or Desart” given “‘on a Stage near St. Lawrence-Lane” during the performance of Jordan’s pageant, London Triumphant (1672), which ‘‘doth consist of divers Trees, in severall sorts of green Colours, some in Blossom, others wealthily laden, with some green and some ripe and proper Fruits and Spices...inhabited with Tawny Moors, who are laborious in gathering, carrying, setting, sorting, sowing, and ordering the Fruits.” Prisons, too, were as common at D.G. as at the royal house. One appeared early in Settle’s Cambyses (L.I.F, 1671)?. Later examples are to be dis- covered in Pordage’s The Siege of Babylon (D.G. 1677) and Hopkin’s Boadicea (L.1.F. 1697)4. Settle’s Cambyses, besides, shows us at the Duke’s house a temple® precisely on the lines of Dryden’s Temple of the Sun. More ornate effects, such as Eliziums®, Heavens and Hells’, occur fairly frequently, and fire scenes are common’. What exactly these scenes looked like we can hardly tell now. In the majority of cases they must have been crude enough, featuring a background rather than anything else. They were of course probably of two or three various types. That denoted by the Aviane picture gives us a back cloth, or a back shutter, with side wings running down the length of the stage, practically a ‘‘box-set.” The same structure is presented in the prison engraving of Settle’s The Empress of Morocco where a vaulted roof covers the rectangular whole, while Flecknoe in the preface to his Damoiselles a la Mode 1 Note may be taken in this description of the illustrative nature of the scenery referred to supra p. 35. SOY, BG ahs Pavadtls Pay ® Lacy’s The Dumb Lady (T.R. in B.St. 1669), Iv: Otway’s Alcibiades (D.G. 1675), v. 7 Shadwell’s Psyche (D.G. 1675). Hell appears in Powell’s Brutus of Alba (D.G. 1696), 1.i and ii: a “‘ Poetical Heil” is in Dryden’s Albion and Albanius (D.G. 1685), 11: and Heaven in D’Avenant’s Circe (D.G. 1677), 16 im tle 8 Pepys noted a fire scene in The Island Princess on Thurs. Jan. 7, 1668-9. One had already appeared at the same T'.R. in Howard’s The Vestal Virgin (1664), 111.1. Later at D.L. there is one in Act tv of Settle’s The Female Prelate (1679) and another in the last act of Crowne’s The Destruction of Ferusalem (1677). At D.G. houses are on fire in Act 111 of Settle’s Love and Revenge (D.G. 1674) and in Dr D’Avenant’s Circe (D.G. 1677), 1. i. THE THEATRE 41 speaks confidently of “‘ Italian Scaenes with four Doors” as a likely piece of property in the Theatre Royal in 1667. At the same time, the Wren design displays the usual grooves running crossways over the stage and on these must have run the innumerable “‘flats” and side-wings of the Restora- tion theatre. In all, there appear to be five separate grooves indicated in this drawing, which would give the requisite number of changes demanded in many a spectacular play of the time. These flats employed were probably of two kinds; the usual shutters meeting in the centre or running across the stage, and the “relieves,” where some part was cut out to reveal a distant prospect far behind. By means of all, the Duke’s and King’s companies sought to feed the public with new and gorgeous novelties, by all accounts succeeding fairly well in their attempt. Two or three things may be noted in connection with these scenes of an ornate character. Their influence on the drama- tists has already been touched upon, but a glance at their origin and later development may not here be unfitting. They were destined to survive over the Restoration period, pene- trating into the eighteenth century, being utilised then both for the ordinary drama and for the opera, until towards the year 1740 they were ridiculed out of existence. In origin, some at least were undoubtedly continental. In the Bodleian there is an interesting pamphlet entitled The Description of the Great Machines, of the Descent of Orpheus into Hell; Presented by the French Comedians at the Cock-pit in Drury Lane (London, 1661), the work, no doubt, of the same troupe which Evelyn saw at the court on Monday, Dec. 16, 1661. This pamphlet describes many scenes identically similar to those we have met with above. The Grotto appears in 1. i, the Garden in 11. ii, the Grove in v. i, barren rocks in I and in m1. i, a “dismal Hell” in 1v. i. The scenery employed by those French actors may well have been left at the theatre on their return to their native land, and in any case their example must have gone far to influence later English theatrical endeavour. We certainly know by name seven English scene-painters of this time, Webb, Aggas, 42 THE THEATRE Streeter, Stevenson, Towers, Fuller and Robinson!, but we may suspect that they were all influenced by the scenic devices of the continent. Many of the scenes detailed above are subsequent to the performance of Psyche in 1674-5, for scenes to which Betterton had journeyed across the Channel. In this art of scene-painting we in England were, according to Flecknoe, but as “‘schollars” and learners: we looked to France in almost every way for inspiration and for tutoring. Only towards the end of the century was it possible for a dramatist to declare that he had “‘thrown away all our old French Lumber, our Clouds of Clouts, and set Theatrical Paintings at a much fairer Light®.” All the temples and the palaces, all the groves and the heavens and hells, all the scenes of spirits and of sorcery and of wonder such as in Tate’s Brutus of Alba (D.G. 1678), were but the English tribute in the form of imitative flattery to the scenic art of Les Grands Comédiens who put on their stage Des Mers, des Rivages, Des Temples, Rochers et Bocages, Des Concerts, Danses et Balets, Dragons, Démons, Esprits-folets*. Alongside of the more spectacular ‘“‘heroic” scenes, bor- rowed, I feel, largely from French example, must have been many which realistically depicted English scenes. One of 1 The last three have before never been mentioned as scene painters: I have discovered their names in documents in the P.R.O. Robert Aggas or Angus, we are told, worked for the T.R. till his death in 1679. Along with Samuell Towers he appears as petitioning the Lord Chamberlain against the T.R. company for £40 “‘ for worke done in ye Theatre Royall” on Aug. 8, 1677; that his death did not occur in 1679 seems to be proved by another petition, dated Dec. 2, 1682, when the two “‘Paynters”’ petitioned for a payment of £32 (L.C. 5/190 and 191). “ Isaacck ffuller paynter”’ similarly petitioned for £250 due on Jan. 26, 1669-70 (L.C. 5/187). Robinson is now known to us through a unique agreement pre- served in the P.R.O. and given in Appendix B of this work. Webb’s designs for The Siege of Rhodes are extant (see Burlington Magazine, April and May, 1914). Streeter’s work for The Conquest of Granada was noted by Evelyn on Feb. 9, 1671 (see also Cal. State Papers, Treasury Books, 1669-72, pp. 1158 and 1330). Stephenson was occupied on Shadwell’s Psyche at the Duke’s theatre. * Settle, The World in the Moon (D.G. 1697), preface. * J. Loret, La Muze Historique quoted in Charlanne, L’ influence francaise en Angleterre au xvit® siécle. THE THEATRE 43 these, peculiarly enough, is to be seen in the above-mentioned frontispiece to Ariane. There we discover two rows of con- ventional palaces ending in a quite realistic picture of Thames Bridge obviously painted on a back cloth or shutter. A similar scene in which a street of palaces ends in a picture of the Royal Exchange is described to us in Dryden’s Albion and Albanius (D.G. 1685). There ‘the Scene is a Street of Palaces, which lead to the Front of the Royal-Exchange; the great Arch is open, and the view is continued through the open part of the Exchange, to the Arch on the other side, and thence to as much of the Street beyond, as could properly be taken,” that is to say, the two lines of “palaces” as in Ariane, with a central “relieve” of the arches and a back shutter at the rear of the stage showing through them. Of London sights the Mall seems to have been a favourite subject. At D.G. “‘the Mail” occurs in Act 1. Sc. iii of Etherege’s The Man of Mode in 1676, and at L.I.F. in Act 11. Sc. i of Granville’s The She-Gallants in 1695. Etherege’s She Wou’d if she Cou’d (L.I.F. 1668) has Mulberry Garden in Act 11. Sc. i, and the “New Spring Garden” in Act Iv. Se. ii. ‘The Mulberry Garden” appears once more in D’Urfey’s The Fool turn’d Critick (D.L. 1676)? alongside of Covent Garden?. In all probability these references to scenes taken from those very places where the audience loved to stroll and preen them- selves could be multiplied an hundred-fold’®. 1 v. iii (really iv). 2 1.i; 11. i; 1. i; v. i. Covent Garden was a common setting at both theatres: cf. Mrs Behn’s The Town-Fopp (D.G. 1676); D’Urfey’s Madam Fickle (D.G. 1676), and Leanerd’s The Rambling fustice (D.L. 1678). 3 In the Public Record Office (L.C. 5/141, p. 551) is an interesting order regarding the alteration of the Royal Whitehall stage, evidently for the production of Calisto. It is dated Jan. 25, 1674-5 and instructs that the stage should be brought forward into the pit, then follows the orders “To widen the whole Stage by drawing Back the Side Sceenes & altering the frames & Groves accordingly, To alter all the Cloudes aboue suiteable to the same by heighthening them and ading to them, To make an openinge for a Heaven aboue with all the Sceenes of Cloudes & shutter of cloudes necessary, To make a new paire of shutters of Boscage, To make a new paire & (? of) releiues rep'sentinge y® prosspect of Somersett-house & y® Thames, To make a Temple in the Cloudes with Sceenes of Varnished Silks & places for lights for y° same, To make Seates for y° Goddesses & diverse Releiues proper for that rep™senta€on, to fix a new Curtaine To make severall new partitions in y® Tireing roomes....” 44 THE THEATRE As in the case of scenery proper, we find that the machinist’s art during the Restoration times was also deeply influenced by the example of France and of Italy. Betterton, we are told, took many an idea from the former country, executing them with the aid of his chief man, Thomas Wright, who contributed one comedy to the theatre. Many startling effects seem to have been achieved, most of the more elaborate, however, not until after the opening and development of the new Duke’s house in Dorset Garden. If we take up the text of Shadwell’s The Tempest (D.G. 1674) we find sufficiently ambitious effects. In the very first scene there is ““a Tem- pestuous Sea in perpetual Agitation” accompanied by ‘“‘many dreadful Objects to it, as several Spirits in horrid Shapes flying down amongst the Sailors, then rising and crossing in the Air. And when the Ship is sinking, the whole House is darken’d, and a Shower of Fire falls upon ’em. This 1s accompanied with Lightning, and several Claps of Thunder, to the End of the Storm.” A transformation scene follows: ‘‘the Cloudy Sky, Rocks and Sea vanish; and when the Lights return, discover a beautiful Part of the Island, which was the Habitation of Prospero.” “Miraculous Effects...marvellous Changes, and strange Metamorphoses” had characterised the French actors’ Descent of Orpheus into Hell in 1661, and these no doubt gave the tone to future English performances. Those few directions taken from the opening scenes of The Tempest display to us how far even in 1674 the managers had reached in the ability to present wondrous panoramas before their audiences. All the operas of the age, however, are rich in descriptions of novelties in machine and stagery, some of the most interesting, perhaps, being found in Dryden’s Albion and Albanius (D.G. 1685). ‘These particular descriptions, Dryden tells us, he had from Betterton himself. They are, therefore, not a poet’s dream of what might have been, but was not, accomplished, but an actor-manager’s account of what he had actually put upon the boards of his theatre. I have already quoted the first scene of this play with its street of palaces and the “‘relieve” of the Royal Exchange. Outside of this, we are told, between the apron in front and THE THEATRE 45 the back “house” or stage behind, were a couple of statues on horseback, ‘‘on Pedestals of Marble, enrich’d with Gold, and bearing the Imperial Arms of England.’ One of these represented Charles I (it was taken from the famous statue now standing at Charing Cross) and the other, Charles II. The changes that take place within this setting are so im- portant that I shall give them in full. First “Mercury descends in a Chariot drawn by Ravens” and approaches Augusta and Thamesis “‘ She attended by Cities, He by Rivers.” Shortly after “A double Pedestal rises: On the Front of it is painted in Stone colour, two Women.”’ Democracy and Zeal fall asleep on this pedestal ‘‘and it sinks with them.” This probably took place in the centre of the back stage or house, through one of the numerous traps which we know cut up the boards there. A few lines further on ‘‘ The Clouds divide, and Juno appears in a Machine drawn by Peacocks; while a Simphony ts playing, it moves gently forward, and as it descends, it opens and discovers the Tail of the Peacock, which is so Large, that it almost fills the opening of the Stage between Scene and Scene.” As the width of the Dorset Garden stage was about thirty feet, this indicates an extent of well over twenty feet for the peacock’s tail. Still further on in the same play, “Iris appears on a very large Machine. This was really seen the 18th of March, 1684. by Capt. Christopher Gunman, on Board his R.H. Yacht, then in Calais Pierre: He drew tt as tt appear’d, and gave a draught of it to us. We have only added the Cloud where the Person of Iris sits.” This scene continues for a time and then “Part of the Scene disappears, and the Four Triumphal Arches erected.at his Majesties Coronation are seen.” Act 1 starts with the “Poetical Hell” already men- tioned. ‘‘ The Change is Totalt. The Upper Part of the House, as well as the Side-Scenes. There is the Figure of Prometheus chain’d to a Rock, the Vulture gnawing his Liver. Sisiphus 1 Professor Odell relies on this stage direction to prove that in the Restoration theatre the side-wings of one scene were often left when another back-shutter was drawn in. This seems to have occurred in the early Siege of Rhodes. Possibly, however, Betterton means only that this is a deep scene, not a poetical Hell shown by a shutter towards the front of the house. 46 THE THEATRE rowling the Stone, the Belides, &c. beyond, Abundance of Figures in various Torments. Then a great Arch of Fire. Behind this three Pyramids of Flames in perpetual agitation. Beyond this, glowing Fire, which terminates the Prospect.” When we consider the lighting arrangements of the late seventeenth century we must agree that this scene must have required very careful management on the part of the ma- chinist, a good deal of thinking out, and a considerable expense. Yet this ‘‘ Poetical Hell” is not allowed to remain for long. It soon ‘‘ changes to a Prospect taken from the middle of the Thames; one side of it begins at York-Stairs, thence to VWVhite-Hall, and the Mill-Bank, &c. The other from the Saw-Mill, thence to the Bishop’s Palace, and on as far as can be seen in a clear Day.” ‘This continues for some time, during which Mercury descends and ascends, then ‘‘ The farther Part of the Heaven opens and discovers a Machine; as it moves forwards, the Clouds which are. before it divide, and shew the Person of Apollo, holding the Reins in his Hand. As they fall lower, the Horses appear with the Rays and a great Glory about Apollo.” This advances and eventually “goes forward out of sight.”” Meanwhile “Neptune rises out of the Water, and a Train of Rivers, 'Tritons, and Sea-Nymphs attend him.” It is not stated how they retire, their singing concluding the act. One wonders whether perhaps the curtain may not have been utilised here to mark the break between this scene and the next. Act 111 opens with “a View of Dover, taken from the Sea: a row of Cliffs fill up each Side of the Stage, and the Sea the Middle of it, which runs into the Peer: Beyond the Peer, is the Town of Dover: On each Side of the Town, ts seen avery high Hill ; on one of which ts the Castle of Dover; on the other, the great Stone which they call the Devil’s drop. Behind the Town several Hills are seen at a great distance which finish the View.” Here Nereids “‘rise out of the Sea” and dance with Tritons, but this is not the most startling effect. Some- what further on in the scene “‘ The Cave of Proteus rises out of the Sea, it consists of several Arches of Rock work, adorn’d with mother of Pearl, Coral, and abundance of Shells of various Kinds: Thro’ the Arches is seen the Sea, and parts of Dover THE THEATRE 47 Peer: In the middle of the Cave is Proteus a sleep on a Rock adorn’d with Shells, &c. Like the Cave. Albion and Acacia seize on him, and while a Simphony ts playing, he sinks as they are bringing him forward, and changes himself into a Lyon, a Crocodile, a Dragon, and then to his own Shape again.” 'This rising of the Cave must have necessitated a very large trap in the floor of the “house”: out of the same trap must have issued the “‘ sland” which “arises to a soft Tune” in the last act of Dryden’s King Arthur (D.G. 1692). The cave, however, is soon done with. Fire now bursts forth “betwixt them and Albion,” then “a Fire arises from behind: They all sink to- gether.” A little later ““A Machine rises out of the Sea: It opens and discovers Venus and Albanius sitting in a great Scallop-shell, richly adorn’d: Venus is attended by the Loves and Graces, Albanius by Hero’s: The Shell is drawn by Dolphins : It moves forward, while a Simphony of Fluts-Doux, &c. is playing till it Lands ’em on the Stage, and then it closes and sinks.” 'Those who remember the Ariane engraving may well wonder whether this shell be not the very same one which is to be seen guided by dolphins from Thames Bridge to the floor of the Duke’s Theatre. It is a piece of property which, in all probability, would be preserved. Almost immediately, in Albion and Albanius, we pass from this sea machine to an aerial one. “Whilst a Simphony is playing ; a very large, and a very glorious Machine descends ; The figure of it Oval, all the Clouds shining with Gold, abun- dance of Angels and Cherubins flying about ’em, and playing in em; in the midst of it sits Apollo on a Throne of Gold; he comes from the Machine to Albion.” After a few words Albion “mounts the Machine, which moves upward slowly.”’ And then the final transformation. “The Scene changes to a Walk of very high Trees: At the end of the Walk ts a view of that part of Windsor, which faces Eaton: In the midst of it 1s a row of small Trees, which lead to the Castle-hill: In the first Scene, part of the Town and part of the Hill: In the next the Terrace Walk, the King’s Lodgings, and the upper part of St. George’s Chappel, then the Keep; And lastly, that part of the Castle, beyond the Keep. In the Air is a Vision of the Honours of the 48 THE THEATRE Garter ; the Knights in Procession, and the King under aCanopy : Beyond this, the upper end of St. George’s Hall. Fame rises out of the middle of the Stage, standing on a Globe ; on which ts the Arms of England: The Globe rests on a Pedestal: On the Front of the Pedestal is drawn a Man with a long, lean, pale Face, with Fiend’s Wings, and Snakes twisted round his Body : He is incompast by several Phanatical Rebellious Heads, who suck Poison from him, which runs out of a Tap in his Side.” So ends Albion and Albanius, with a not very pretty allusion to the despised Shaftesbury. I have quoted the scenic direc- tions here in full in order to give some idea of what could be accomplished in the theatre even fifteen years before the close of the century. The same machines, of course, would be used in more operas than one. We find, for instance, similar directions in D’Urfey’s Cinthia and Endimion (D.L. 1697). At the same time, we must not suppose that the wonders of Albion and Albanius in any way reached the acme of the machinist’s art in this age. In the stage directions to The Prophetess (D.G. 1690) we are informed that “‘ Figures come out of the Hangings and Dance: And Figures exactly the same appear in their Places : When they have danc’d a while they go to sit on the Chairs, they slip from ’em, and after joyn in the Dance with ’em}.” In the same play there are magic trans- formations in Act Iv, and in Act v there is a machine with four separate stages. This last four-staged machine was sur- passed in Settle’s The World in the Moon (D.G. 1697) where eight stages make their appearance. In the first act of the same opera a “‘Flat-Scene draws and discovers Three grand Arches of Clouds extending to the Roof of the House, terminated with a Prospect of Cloud-work, all filld with the Figures of Fames and Cupids; a Circular part of the back Clouds rolls softly away, and gradually discovers a Silver Moon, near Fourteen Foot Diameter : After which, the Silver Moon wanes off by degrees, and discovers the World within, consisting of Four grand Circles of Clouds, illustrated with Cupids, ete. Twelve Golden Chariots are seen riding in the Clouds, fill'd with Twelve Children, representing the Twelve Celestial Signs. The 2 Act Ill. THE THEATRE 49 Third Arch intirely rolling away, leaves the full Prospect ter- minating with a large Lanschape of Woods, Waters, Towns, etc.” There is no need to quote more. Reading one spectacular piece after another, we come to realise that the machinist’s art in Restoration times had reached a very high pitch of perfection, that one theatre vied with another in producing more and more gorgeous shows, and that often the poet had to be subordinated to the scene shifter. All of this, too, led, naturally enough, towards increased expenditure on the part of the theatres, and these increased expenses, coupled with the small audiences, rendered more inevitable the Union of 1682. Already we have seen Dryden remarking on the cost entailed by The Indian Queen in 1664. Wright in his Historia Histrionica (1699) remarks upon the “great expense and continual charge of the players” due to “the scenes” and “curious machines” of Betterton and his rivals, and the prologue to Shadwell’s Tempest in 1674 betrays quite clearly the condition into which the Duke’s Theatre had then placed itself: Wee, as the ffathers of the Stage have said, To treat you here a vast expense have made; What they (the King’s players) have gott from you in chests ts laid, Or is for purchas’d Lands, or houses paid, You, in this house, all our estate may find, Wch for your pleasures wholly are design’d. As regards the costume employed on the Restoration stage, considerable diversity would seem to have ruled. The comedy of the time, of course, required nothing but contemporary garments, or, as Flecknoe expresses it, “‘any French Cloaths A la Mode1,” but in tragedy such were hardly so suitable, and there does seem to have been some attempt made to gain an approach to a kind of historical accuracy. In point of fact, in costume the theatre must have presented the same phenomenon as it did in scenery and in other respects, modern meeting with ancient on the same platform. Thus in the fourth engraving (for Act 1. Sc. i) of Settle’s The Empress 1 Preface to The Damoiselles a la Mode (1667). NRD 4 50 THE THEATRE of Morocco (D.G. 1673) although the Moors dancing in the foreground are black enough and sufficiently scantily dressed, the Moorish heroes and heroines in the background are just seventeenth century ladies and gentlemen of quality, attired in the latest Parisian fashions. On the one hand, the old careless, unhistorical traditions of the Elizabethan stage reigned unchecked. Periwigs for all characters seem to have been the order of the day, and Wilson appears to have discovered nothing ridiculous in making Manuel’s periwig fall off and in causing that gentleman with most Shakespearian accents to exclaim: Take up that, and help me To put it on again. So—so! Tis well! The stage direction informs us that “PHILO takes up his grey Perriwig, and helps him on with it again.” ‘This occurs in Act 1. Se. iii, of a play styled Andronicus Comnenius (1664). Salome, in Pordage’s Herod and Mariamne (L.I.F. 1673), similarly, disguising herself as a man, evidently made use of a wig, for, in fencing, “‘her Perriwig falls off in making a pass at TyripaTEs.” The alternative of the wig for heroes would seem to have been the hat of lofty feathers which preserved its existence up to the time of Garrick!. These convention- alities and inaccuracies must, we may well imagine, have oft-times been sufficiently blatant, so blatant indeed that they were taken note of by continental visitors to our theatre?. On the other hand, from prints and from descriptions of seventeenth century costuming, there does seem to be evidence of a certain tendency at least towards historical accuracy. On Tues. March 8, 1664, Pepys saw Heraclius acted, ‘‘the garments like Romans very well.” The prologue to Howard and Dryden’s The Indian Queen speaks of ‘“‘our naked Indians” and already we have noted the Moors in The Empress of Morocco. Mrs Behn informs us that the Indian Queen’s dress used at the playhouse was one she had brought fe Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies (1785), 11. 97. See also the print of Quin as Coriolanus. 2 Muralt, Lettres sur les Anglois (written c. 1695, Geneva 1725), quoted by Joseph Texte in Fean-Facques Rousseau (London, 1899), p. 41. THE THEATRE 51 from Surinam and which she had presented to the players’. A print of ‘“‘ The Indian Queen”® displays a variant of this. How far these attempts at accuracy extended it is very difficult now to say: probably not far, merely registering the slight tendency towards a change of outlook on the part of managers and of audience. The theatres must have pre- sented a mass of conflicting garments, Elizabethan meeting with Eastern, Roman with American Indian. As we have seen, what the managers most thought about was show and novelty: nor was there a body of critical opinion in the audience which was likely to force a change of orienta- tion. As we pass in review the various aspects of the Restoration theatre, indeed, we come more and more to the conclusion that that theatre owed its whole being to Elizabethan example. The changes made were tentative rather than anything else and we must beware against thinking that they were more far-reaching than they were in reality. In spite of the scenery, as we have seen, actors still did most of their speaking on the forward oval, only a few feet away from the front rows of the pit: and to reach this forward oval, entrances, as with us, from the back part of the stage, would have been both tedious and awkward. As a matter of fact, very few such exits or entrances occur in Restoration comedies and tragedies, the players coming in and leaving the stage through four ordinary doors fixed, obliquely or square, well to the front, just ad- joining the end box of the first row*. References are frequent 1 Mrs Behn, Oroonoko. 2 Reproduced in Odell, op. cit. 1. 206. % In this connection there is an interesting paragraph in the Lord Chamberlain’s order regarding the new Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre (P.R.O., L.C. 7/3). It is there stated that the sharing actors have been to great expense “for a variety of Cloaths Forreigne-habitts Scoenes Properties &c.” Evidently these “forreigne-habitts” were deemed necessary for the success of any theatre. 4 The question of whether there were two or four doors in the Restora- tion theatres has been a long-discussed one. Arguing mainly from Cibber’s description of the changes made in D.L. in 1693 Mr Lowe decided that there were four (Thomas Betterton, p. 50). This view Mr W. J. Lawrence combated in his Elizabethan Play-house and other Studies (1. 164). Subsequently Mr Lawrence saw fit to modify his two-door theory, the Wren designs for D.L. having since been published. Without being aware 4-2 52 THE THEATRE in the actual plays of the period to “‘ one Door” and “ the other Door” or “another Door,” and from the fact that entrances “through the Scenes’? (i.e. between the back scene and the wings) are both rarely mentioned and very detailed in stage direction, we are forced to conclude that such were exceedingly infrequent and required special notification. From the direc- tions in one or two plays it would appear that both doors on each side were in regular use. Thus in Edward Howard’s The Man of Newmarket (D.L. 1678) Luce, who is supposed to be overhearing a conversation, “‘peeps out” of one of the doors—so goes the stage direction. Four lines further down she ‘‘ peeps again,” and, on being called by name, she answers, whereupon follows immediately the command—‘ Luce ap- pears at another door’.”” From the action of the piece, which depends upon her immediate appearance, it would manifestly have been impossible for her to move round behind the scenes to the other side of the theatre. What she actually must have done was to “peep” in at the “‘lower” door of entrance and then approach the stage from the “upper” door. A very similar position occurs in the tragedy of Alphonso, King of Naples (D.L. 1690) written by George Powell, the actor. There Cesario and Urania are attacked by banditti. He “‘fights them off” and she ‘“‘ Ex. confusedly, at the wrong Door.” It would certainly have been a very un- natural action on her part if she had mistaken her side of the stage and departed by a door on the opposite side. Had there not been the double door on each side, the dramatist (who, be it remembered, was also an actor) could easily have commanded her to retire “through the scenes.” Those two examples are further strengthened by the notes, which had apparently escaped notice hitherto, printed in a peculiar play of John Banks, entitled The Albion Queens: of this I myself had written an article in the Modern Language Review, arguing from stage directions alone that four doors must have prevailed in both the T.R. and the Duke’s Theatre. There would seem to be no doubt now that there were two doors on each side of the proscenium, although Professor Odell in his Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving ies himself hardly satisfied with the evidence. Ill. ii. THE THEATRE 53 or, The Death of Mary Queen of Scotland. This tragedy was originally written in 1684 as The Island Queens but was in- explicably banned the stage at that period. It was published then “only in Defence of the Author and the Play,” and did not appear on the boards of the theatre until 1704 when it was reprinted with the amended title. The copy from which this reprint was taken seems to have belonged to the prompter, and it is this which contains directions invaluable for any student of Restoration stage conditions. In this play, opposite the entries of various characters, occur combinations of letters, V.D.O.P., V.D.P.S., L.D.P.S., L.D.O.P. and O.P.P.S. Quite obviously P.S. is ‘prompt side,” the actor’s left, and O.P. is “‘opposite prompt side,” the actor’s right. L.D. and V.D. can hardly mean anything but “Lower Door” and “Upper Door”: so that V.D.O.P. is the upper door on the left of the stage (from the point of view of the audience) and L.D.O.P. is the other door on the same side. O.P.P.S. occurs only once (111. i) and that after a double entrance. This no doubt indicates an approach from either of the two doors on each side of the stage. The Wren design proves that the four doors did exist: the stage directions here prove as conclusively that all four were in constant use in the theatre. Over these doors were fixed two windows—likewise used in the progress of plays. There are quite a number of dramas in which these casements are made use of, one character knocking at the door below and another speaking to him above as from the upper part of a house. It is possible, of course, that these were but a couple of boxes sometimes seated with spectators, but they were employed so frequently in comedy and in tragedy that one cares to believe that they were reserved entirely for dramatic purposes. While they are mentioned in the course of many a play, the only reference to them outside of stage directions that I am aware of is in the prologue spoken by “ Mrs Barrer” (Mrs Barry) before D’Urfey’s The Virtuous Wife (D.G. 1679) where the “‘little windows” are duly noted. With the doors to the front of the stage and the windows constantly utilised by the actors, it is perfectly obvious that 54 THE THEATRE our modern use of the curtain, with its drop after every scene, was quite impossible. References to the front curtain are few in Restoration dramatic literature, although there are signs that the playwrights were coming more and more to appreciate its use, especially for plays and operas of a spec- tacular character. It is almost certain that a lowering or raising of the curtain was not indicated every time it was employed. In Powell’s The Cornish Comedy (D.G. 1696), for instance, ‘‘ Exeunt” occurs as a finale to Act 111 (with no mention of the curtain), and yet the first scene of Act IV opens with ‘‘Curtain drawn.” In the same play “Exeunt” appears at the end of Act Iv. Sc. i and ‘‘ Curtain drawn” at the start of Act Iv. Sc. ii. It seems to me that we are, accordingly, permitted to presume that the front curtain was employed rather more frequently than one might have supposed from extant stage references. In the same way we know from Dilke, who in the dedication to his The City Lady (L.I.F. 1697) attributes the cool reception of that play ““to the tedious waiting to have the Curtain drawn after the Prologue was spoke,” that normally the curtain was raised after the delivery of the prologue: yet in only one or two plays do we find mention of the curtain at the commencement of Act 1. D’Avenant’s The Siege of Rhodes and The History of Sir Francis Drake (1658) do have such a mention, as have Payne’s Siege of Constantinople (D.G. 1674), D’Urfey’s Siege of Memphis (D.L. 1676), Ravenscroft’s Edgar and Alfreda (D.L. 1677), Tate’s Brutus of Alba (D.G. 1678), Banks’ Destruction of Troy (D.G. 1678), Saunders’ Tamerlane the Great (D.L. 1681) and Harris’ The City Bride (L.1.F. 1696), but beyond these I question whether we could discover more than one or two plays with references to this initial use of the curtain. At the end of the play, a lowering of the curtain was evidently not usual, just as it was not regular at the close of individual acts, although here again we are bound to note that some dramatists at least had come to a realisation of the value of a sudden as opposed to an Elizabethan long drawn-out, con- clusion, and that we cannot be perfectly sure that the curtain may not have been employed more frequently than is now THE THEATRE 55 apparent'. Among the playwrights who did seem to use the curtain for purposes of their art, Orrery is important because of his influence on the heroic tragedy. It may be noted that three plays of that writer, The Black Prince (T.R. in B.St. 1667), Herod the Great (1694) and Tryphon (L.I.F. 1668) have ‘‘ The Curtain falls” at the close of Act v. Betterton’s The Prophetess (D.G. 1690) and D’Urfey’s Masaniello (D.L. 1699) end in a similar manner. We shall not be wrong, probably, in saying that the average dramatist worked along the old Elizabethan lines, although some, particularly those who indulged in the heroic tragedy and in opera, had at least a faint idea of what could be done with the curtain. Settle in Cambyses, King of Persia (L.1.F. 1671) has a cur- tain fall at the end of Act m1, although at the beginning of Act Iv we have a stage direction as to a “‘ scene-drawing” not a curtain rising. Howard in The Surprisal (T.R. in V.St. 1662) employs the curtain to introduce a masque?: Mrs Behn reveals a spectacular temple by this device in The Forc’d Marriage (L.I.F. 1670)° and again the same authoress in The Young King (D.G. 1679) causes the curtain to be “‘/et down—being drawn up, discovers Orsames.” Not always, however, as we have seen, was the curtain so used. Scenes in the Restoration theatre were habitually changed in full view of the audience, and if any spectacular piece of scenery had to be “‘discovered,” it was done usually by “drawing” the two portions of a flat apart. ‘Thus in Act Iv. Sc. i of Lee’s Lucius Funius Brutus (D.G. 1680) “‘ The SCENE draws, showing the Sacrifice,” and in Act tv. Sc. it of Dryden’s An Evening’s Love (T.R. in B.St. 1668) ‘“‘ The Scene opens and discovers Aurelia.” Here again, we can observe, in some dramatists, a consciousness of the effect which could be pro- duced by a spectacular discovery such as these; towards the end of the century we find the “ discoveries ” increasing very 1 For this question see an article by Mr W. J. Lawrence in Modern Language Review, Oct. 1920. ® a1t. 4; 3 11, Professor Odell has noted references to the curtain also in Caryll’s The English Princess, Mrs Manley’s The Royal Mischief, and Motteux’ The Island Princess (op. cit. 1. 133). 56 THE THEATRE rapidly. Not that the scene-drawing was reserved for this alone: over and above this it was employed in many peculiar ways, exhibiting conventions which quite clearly take us back to the Globes and Fortunes of Elizabethan days. One of these is the peculiar method of drawing a scene in order to indicate the opening of a door into an inner room, the actors being supposed by this simple means to have changed entirely their locality. A typical example is to be found in Act v. Sc. ii of Crowne’s The City Politiques (D.L. 1683) where the Governor enters, and crying ‘‘Force open the Door!” ‘The Scene is” obediently ‘‘drawn” to reveal an inner chamber within. Crowne and Dryden especially seem to have been particularly fond of this stage convention, although numerous instances can be quoted from other and less well-known authors}. In the footnote to this page an example is given of a vision presented by means of such a stage device, and this again 1 'The following examples may serve to show the scope of the convention. Dryden’s The Rival Ladies (T.R. in B.St. 1664), v. i, where the Captain says “Don Rod’rick’s Door opens, Ill speak to him,” and ‘“‘ The scENE draws, and discovers the Captain’s Cabin”: An Evening’s Love (T.R. in B.St. 1668), v. i, where Bellamy commands “ Maskall, open the Door,”’ **Maskall goes to one Side of the Scene, which draws, and discovers’’ several characters: later Bellamy asks Maskall to “shut the Door,” ‘‘ Maskall goes to the Scene and it closes”: Crowne’s Juliana (L.1.F. 1671), Iv. ili, where Juliana asks where the Cardinal is and she is told “‘he is so near, torches may show him.” ‘The Scene is drawn, the CARDINAL presented dead in a Grotto”: The Ambitious Statesman (D.L.. 1679), 11. The Constable, ‘‘ Open these folding Doors!” “‘ The Scene is drawn,” and iv, The Constable, ‘“*Now...open these Doors!” “‘ The Scene is drawn”: Thyestes (D.L.1681), v. i, Atreus ‘‘Open the Temple Gates,” “‘ The Temple is open(ed), Philis- thenes lies bloody”’: Sir Courtly Nice (D.L. 1685), 1, Leonora “‘ Open the Door!” ‘‘ The Scene ts drawn”’ and v, Violante “Open the Door,”’ “‘ The Scene is drawn’’: Regulus (D.L. 1692), V.iv, Xantippus “‘ Open the Door!”? “‘ The Scene is drawn, and REGULUS ts discover’d sitting in a Chair bloody.” Somewhat similar is the stage direction in The History of Charles the Eighth (D.G. 1671), Iv. ii, where Mompensier remarks that “The Gardens, Sir, are nigh,” and ‘‘ CHARLES and MOMPENSIER go out, and the Scene is Drawn.” Inv. ii of the same play a vision is presented by a similar means. This convention lasted throughout the century, appearing as late as 1697 in Dilke’s The City Lady (L.1.F. 1697), 111. i, Lady Grumble “ Here, will some of you open those folding Doors there?”’ and “‘ Scene opens”: and in Drake’s The Sham Lawyer (D.L. 1696), tv.i: Homily ‘‘ This is the Door of the Chamber where he lies,” “‘ Homily knocks, the Scene opens.” There are even a few stray examples which may be quoted from the early eighteenth century. THE THEATRE 57 is paralleled in many another play. In Lacy’s The Dumb Lady (T.R. in B.St., 1669), for instance, there is introduced a conjurer who talks of Elizium. Suddenly crying ‘Stand fast!” “He whistles, Elizium opens ; many Women’s Voices sing...they draw up Squire SorrHeaD with a Devil, and he cries out.” But to give further quotations of this and kindred conventions were needless. The fact is abundantly evident that the new methods, the spectacular devices, the conscious- ness of a new art in the theatre, existed alongside of the Elizabethan traditions. Continually actors could shift their places without moving one step from the stage: even, by a similar device, a certain portion of the characters could be cut off by a scene-shutting, leaving one or two on the front apron to continue the action of the play. In Dryden’s The Duke of Guise (D.L. 1682), for example, Malicorne moves forward with a servant. Malicorne: Bid him enter and go off thyself. [Exit SERVANT [ScENE closes upon the Company leaving of course Malicorne alone in the front. Such a con- vention, indeed, is commoner even than those enumerated immediately above. It could go so far as to transport, as on a wishing carpet, the character who remained into quite a different locality or position. In Mrs Trotter’s The Fatal Friendship (L.1.F. 1698) Castalio is in prison. Grammont has gone to visit him. The former “‘goes within the Scene. Gra. Advances, the scene shuts representing the outside of a Castle}.” The audience of the later seventeenth century were evi- dently not critical of those things which to-day would be 1 As examples the following are typical. Leanerd’s The Rambling Justice (D.L. 1678), v. v, where “‘ They go into the Scene, and sit down, the ‘Scene closes,’ leaving others on the stage: anonymous, Romulus and Hersilia (D.G. 1682), Iv. ii, where some “come forward, and the Scene shuts upon Feliciana”: Mrs Behn’s The Rover, Part 11 (D.G. 1680), I. ii, “‘ The Forepart of the Church shuts over, except Will. Blunt, Aria.and Lucia”’: Mrs Trotter’s Agnes de Castro (D.L. 1695), V.i, “ Elvira asleep on a Couch, Bianca weeping by her, Alvaro advances. The King enters to him, and the Scene shuts”: Southern’s The Wives Excuse (D.L. 1691), Iv. i, “‘ They go in to Play, The Scene shuts upon’em. WELLVILE and SIGHTLY stay.” 58 THE THEATRE noticed first. Their criticism, we may guess, was, as prologue and epilogue declared, “‘modish.” Give them fine scenes, and they recked not what absurdities might ensue. Give them wit and gallantry or “‘high-astounding terms,” and the char- acters could change position, and open doors, and see very material visions, without much comment on their part. During the first years of the period, moreover, we must remember the majority of the audience were those who had sat in the Blackfriars and the Cockpit watching scenes from Ford and from Shirley, and possibly they might have ob- jected had too sudden an alteration been made. They were bound by indissoluble ties with the Cavaliers of the earlier age, and the little traditions and conventions which had appeared natural and right to their forefathers were bound to seem natural and right to them. Only as the structure of society altered towards the close of the century and in the age of Anne do we find any very marked changes in the theatre, and even then the changes were by no means com- plete or far-reaching. Even in tricks of dramatic construction traces of Elizabethan example are everywhere to be discovered. One instance will stand for many. The old Elizabethan habit of “labelling” or describing a person prior to his entrance was not forgotten when the theatres closed in 1642. It was a favourite custom of the Restoration playwrights and endured well into the eighteenth century. ‘‘My Lord,” says the servant in Crowne’s The City Politiques (D.L. 1683), ‘My Lord! here’s an old Counsellor, Bartoline...’? to which the Podesta makes answer, ‘“‘ This old Lawyer is a strange Fellow: he is very old, and very rich, and yet follows the Term, as if he were to begin the World,” whereat the Bricklayer chimes in, ‘‘ He has lost all his Teeth, that he can hardly speak, and he will be pleading for his Fee; but he is of our side, and sO we must not speak against him?.”’ As late as 1697 there was decided point in Dennis’ jibe: ‘‘ But since this Gentleman is to be shown in the Play-house, pray do what is done in our Comedies, and let me know something of the Character, 1 11.1: ef. also Otway’s Vemce Preserv’d (D.G. 1682), 1. i. THE THEATRE 59 before I see the Person.” Truly very little of the older stage was forgotten in the long eighteen years’ silence of the theatres. All the novelties, then, as we have seen, were rather de- velopments of earlier dramatic or theatrical forms than customs or forms introduced for the first time. Music, song and dance were among other characteristics of the Restora- tion playhouse, but even in the first part of the seventeenth century Jonson had declaimed against the attention which the audience were giving to these and similar adjuncts to plays. Certainly music, song and dance had. never usurped so much attention on the Elizabethan stage as they did on the stage of the Restoration, but we can never forget that they had been introduced long before and only saw their full development in this age and in the age of Anne, being taken up in 1660 from the plays of 1640 and thence carried to a nadir of absurdity. We notice the tendency first in the occasional songs placed, often quite dramatically, in the plays of Dryden and of D’Urfey; as the years advance, we can see it progressing until it reaches its culmination in the dramatic operas and in the numerous late seventeenth century comedies positively interlarded with diverse and frequently unsuitable ditties. Masques, too, moved from the stately atmosphere of the court to take their place in public tragedy and comedy, until hardly a play of any sort whatever could close without the joyous accompaniment of a dance. Foreign, mainly French, terpsichorean artists were brought over to London by various of the theatrical managers. Before that, of course, English artists had performed in plays:—Priest and Moll Davies in Sir Martin Mar-all (L.1.F. 1667), Channel and Priest in the operatic version of Macbeth. In spite of un- limited praise such as Flecknoe showers on ‘“‘ M(adam) M. Davies” for “‘her excellent Dancing and Singing” :— How I admire thee, Davies! Who would not say, to see thee dance so light, Thou wert all air, or else all flame and spright?— 1 A Plot and No Plot (D.L. 1697), 1. 2 Euterpe Reviv’d (1675), p. 64. 60 THE THEATRE in spite of such praise, against her and the other dancers, English and foreign, prologue and epilogue, all through the years of the Restoration period, thundered or cajoled. As we know from play-bills of the eighteenth century these dancers and singers of occasional songs were not careful to make their shows harmonise with the subject of the play performed. In the very early years of the period D’Avenant in The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) had utilised dancing for dramatic effect as when a group of Indians enter “and, gazing on the face of the Scene, fall into a Mimick Dance, in which they express the Argument of the Prospect,” but by 1670 all such dramatic purpose in dance and superimposed song had been lost. The foreign artists brought from across the seas, many of them probably ignorant of the English tongue, could not be expected to adapt their performances to the play of the evening, and dramatists must have felt that they were ruining the theatre of London. In 1676 Etherege in The Man of Mode (D.G. 1676)! was moved to peculiar satire, declaring that the Russians “‘hearing the great respect we have for foreign Dancing, have lately sent over some of their best Balladines, who are now practising a famous Ballet which will be suddenly danced at the Bear Garden”—an unconscious prophecy of Diaghilev and the Alhambra in the present century?. The way to please you ts easie if we knew’t, says D’Urfey in the epilogue to The Injur’d Princess (D.L. 1682), A Figg, a Song, a Rhyme or two will do’t. ““Scenes, Habits, Dancing, or perhaps an Actress,”’ remarks Edward Howard in the preface to his Six Days’ Adventure aeLtes 2 French dancers were brought over by Grabut for the Ariane of March 1673-4. Some of these were engaged by the Theatre Royal but somehow the agreement was broken (P.R.O., L.C. 5/140 last page). On May 6, 1674, the Lord Chamberlain ordered ‘“‘ Mt? Pecurr M? Le Temps Mr‘ Shenan and M* D’muraile ffrench Dancers in the late Opera” to attend Killigrew and perform in his theatre (P.R.O., L.C. 5/140, p. 472). In the masque of Calisto the following year eight French dancers (St An- drée, Le Duc, Lessant, Dumraille, Berteau, de Lisle, Hariette, Le Roy) and at least four English dancers (Isaack, Dyers, Smyth, Mottley) took part (P.R.O., L.C. 5/141, p. 197). See Appendix B. THE THEATRE bi (L.I.F. 1671), “Take more with Spectators, than the best Dramatick Wit,” and the same author, in the preface to his The Women’s Conquest (L.I.F. 1670) emphasises the fact that “serious Plays (now in use)” do not “wholly relie upon their Heroick Foundation” but on their “Scenes, Machines, Habits, Jiggs, and Dances.” The rapid development of the scenical art, even ten years after the opening of the theatres, was having its inevitable result. Symphonies, and the growth of the orchestra, also went along with the introduction of dances and songs. Symphonies, of course, had formed part of the structure of D’Avenant’s musical plays of 1656 and 1658, but his efforts, by 1680 or 1690, would have appeared sufficiently trivial and ridiculous. The whole age was undoubtedly musical. That love of singing and of lute-playing which Elizabethan England had was retained over the Puritanical barriers of the Common- wealth. Great and small, important and unimportant, all seemed to have within them a passion for expressing them- selves through the medium of music. From Shakespeare to Killigrew, from Milton to Pepys, this is equally true: England shared to the full that interest in song and in symphony which was so marked a feature of contemporary Italy and France. The most complete expression of this interest is, naturally, to be sought for in the later opera of the eighteenth century: but, even for the very first years of the Restoration, Pepys has left on record how the patentee of the Theatre Royal, who could neither sing nor play, took pains to perfect his theatre in the matter of music. He it was who removed the orchestra to a new position, a position imaged for it as early as 1600 by Emilio del Cavaliere?. He it was who increased 1 Preface to the Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo (Rome, 1600). As in former days the Restoration orchestra first performed above or at the side of the projecting stage, and probably did so even in D’Avenant’s early theatre, but by Killigrew it was placed where it is now, in front of, or under, the stage and was later enclosed by a row of ominous-looking spiked railings. For D’Avenant’s theatre Pepys’ reference to the “ Musique room” (Nov. 7, 1667) seems conclusive, and even Killigrew’s innovation, when made, would not seem to have been popular. Pepys, certainly, did not like it (May 8, 1663), and in a contemporary ballad concerning the fire of Jan. 25, 1671-2 it is quite evident that the music-room must have been in its old position at the top of the house. In Villiers’ The Chances 62 THE THEATRE the number of its performers from two or three to almost a dozen}. He it was, too, who started to emulate Italy by the introduction of foreign eunuchs for treble singing?. We may trace, therefore, this development of musical accompaniment in several different ways. We can take note of the ever greater and greater number of foreign performers who found a happy home in England. Farquhar in the epilogue to his Love and a Bottle (D.L. 1699) mentions these singers, among them “‘ Seignior Rampony,” a eunuch, and “Don Sigismondo Fideli,” the latter of whom, a note to the epilogue informs us, was receiving ‘“‘ £20. a time.” We may note the gradual development of the orchestra. We may note the introduction of large choruses such as the Chapel Royal boys in Shadwell’s Tempest®. In every way, the ground was being prepared for the introduction after 1705 of the Italian (T.R. in B.St. 1667) there is a stage direction for ‘‘ Musick...above,” and similar directions occur in Orrery’s unacted Zoroastres (see M.L.R. xil, Jan. 1917). In the reproductions to Settle’s The Empress of Morocco (D.G. 1673) the music-room is set right in the centre of the proscenium. The probability is that both the music-room and the recess in front of the stage could be utilised by the performers, and, in certain cases, the stage itself (cf. stage directions in Porter’s The Villain (L.1.F. 1662), 1 and 11, and p. 60, note 2). 1 Pepys, May 8, 1663. The 24 performers mentioned in Shadwell’s Tempest (D.G. 1674) were no doubt specially augmented for the occasion. Chappuzeau mentions 12 as against 6 in Paris (Europe Vivante, Geneva, 1667). 2 Pepys, Oct. 14, 1668. 3 The musicians of the King were frequently employed in the theatres. A grant of £40 of silks “to cloath the Musick for the play called The Indian Queene”? was made to Killigrew in Jan. 1663-4 (P.R.O. L.C. 5/138, p. 15). On Mar. 20, 1664-5, a similar grant was made for habits to clothe 24 “violins” (id. p. 45), and on Mar. 18, an order was issued “to make vp Habitts of seuerall coloured rich Taffataes for fower and twenty violins” (id. p. 46). It may be noted that these entries seem to substantiate Professor Odell’s contention that the musicians frequently played, not under the stage or in the ‘‘ music room,”’ but on the projecting apron itself in full view of the audience, making an integral part of each play. A further warrant, issued on Dec. 20, 1664, commanded Singleton, Clayton, Young, Fitz, Hudson, Strong, Staggins, Bannister and Brockwell “to attend at His Mates Theatre whensoever M* Thomas Killigrew shall desire”’ (td. p. 429). For some reason these musicians came into conflict with Charles Killigrew, so that we find, a decade later, ‘The humble petition of John Singleton Theop ffitz Hen. Brockwell Edmund fflower and Jos ffashion part of his Mats Band of Violins agt Mt Charles Killigrew Master of the Reuells for dismissing them their attendance at the play house—May 8, 1677” (P.R.O., L.C. 5/190 and 5/138, p. 429). THE ACTORS AND ACTRESSES 63 opera in all its entirety. At the same time, the structure of tragedies and of comedies was being weakened Farces like Ravenscroft’s The Anatomist (L.I.F. 1697) came into being solely for the sake of their musical entertainments. The dramatic operas, in the hands of Shadwell and D’Urfey were rapidly driving pure tragedy from the stage. In every way we are watching the dramatic art in a period of change, ere it has swept off its older traditions: and the audience forms both the cause of its development and the reason for the retention of more primitive forms. V. The Actors and Actresses Before leaving the stage and passing to the actual dramatic works of this half-century, we must pause to take into account another highly determining influence on the nature of both tragedy and comedy, an influence itself not dissociated from that of the audience. I refer to the actors and the actresses of the time. As I have indicated above, the noise in the playhouse and the fact that the spectators went to the theatre more for their own private affairs than to watch the scenes before them, necessitated a very high standard of acting if a play were to take even at all. The constant change of repertoire also must have demanded from the performers a considerable ability, if they were satisfactorily to carry through day after day. We do, certainly, hear of cases when the actors, as Pepys says, “were at fault,”’ and one comedy at least, in the opinion of the author, was “damnably acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane}, but for the most part the histrionic talent must have been remarkable. It is difficult now to recapture the tones of an actor long since dead, to revisualise his ap- pearance and his gestures: it is sometimes unsafe to take on trust the comments of contemporaries: but, weighing one thing with another, we must come to the conclusion that the 1 Drake’s The Sham Lawyer (D.L. 1696). Shadwell, after praising Etherege’s She Wou’d if she Cou’d (L.I.F. 1668) in the preface to his The Humorists (L.1.F. 1670), remarks that that play was nearly damned because of the wretched acting. See also Pepys, July 28, 1664. 64 THE THEATRE revival of the theatres saw the growth and development of a most notable body of English actors. Betterton himself must have been a genius, holding himself from the grosser vices of the time, placing before himself a high and noble ideal of the histrionic art. Nor did he stand alone. The age teems with tragic and comic actors, who, judging from all accounts, were worthy of the highest praise the Restoration critic could give them—that they were able by their inter- pretation of the poet’s lines to cause even the fops and the orange-girls to cease their chattering. This group of notable actors, both of the King’s and of the Duke’s companies, affected the drama in diverse ways, for good and for evil. Betterton, for example, must have admirably interpreted Shakespeare to his age—we know that he played Brutus, Falstaff, Hamlet, Henry VIII, Hotspur, Lear, Mercutio, Othello, Pericles, Toby Belch, Timon, Titus and Troilus: he was the original of Jaffier in Venice Preserv’d and of Castalio in The Orphan: but at the same time his undoubted ability enabled him to pass off with applause, not only these outstanding characters, but also “the furious fustian and turgid rants” of contemporary melodrama. “If I tell you,” says Cibber in his chatty Apology, “‘'There was no one tragedy, for many years, more in favour with the town than Alexander (of Lee), to what must we impute this its command of publick Admiration? Not to its intrinsick Merit, surely...(but) plainly, (to) the grace and harmony of the actor’s utterance.’ Betterton in this was again not alone. Doggett could invest a tedious or a truly humorous old alderman with charm: and Mrs Barry could grace a witty Love for Love of Congreve or a weary History of Charles the Eighth of France: or, The Invasion of Naples by the French of Crowne. The audience would cheer at both and only the more penetrating prefer the admirable to the ridiculous character, could dissociate Mrs Barry or Doggett or Betterton from the parts they played. On the other hand, in this intimate theatre of 1660 to 1700, dramatists were much more nearly related to the stage than they have been in later centuries. Of the various eminent THE ACTORS AND ACTRESSES 65 actors whom Cibber found on the united stage in 1690, only one of the men and only two or three of the women had not been acting in the early Restoration period. That is to say, these particular players had become the familiar spec- tacles of audiences at the Duke’s and King’s houses, and spectators and dramatists alike had come to know their little idiosyncrasies and mannerisms. A story typical of the age is told of Sandford, ‘‘an excellent Actor in disagreeable Characters.”” Once, in a new play, he was cast for an honest man. The audience waited impatiently until he should throw off his mask of virtue and appear a villain, and then, dis- appointed of their hope and expectation, they finally damned the play altogether’. This meant, not only that the manage- ment was forced to cast Sandford always for evil parts, but that the dramatists writing for the stage were impelled to create “‘ Macchiavellian” characters specially for him. Most of the actors of Restoration times were in Sandford’s case: few, like Betterton, were all-embracing enough to take parts both grave and gay. The majority took up one line, and aided thus in establishing those “‘stock” characters which appear in comedy after comedy, in tragedy after tragedy, during those forty years. Very few dramatis personae could be taken by ‘“‘Any-Body” as is Ample in The Revenge, or, A Match in Newgate (D.G. 1680). Of them all, of course, Betterton is chief. Born in 1635, he was some 25 years old when first Rhodes engaged him in his Cockpit company of actors, and there apparently he attained at once to a pre-eminent position. On Nov. 5, 1660, his name appears at the head of the actors who entered into agreement with D’Avenant. In 1668 he was associated with D’Avenant and Harris in the management of the theatre in L.I.F. and for it invented several new stage machines’. At 1 Cibber (ed. Lowe, 1. 132 and cf. Tony Aston in same edition of Cibber, 11. 306). 2 Betterton first introduced French dancers and singers, according to Downes, and invented the machines for Albion and Albanius and other operas. It was he who “procur’d from abroad...Monsieur L’ Abbe, Madam Sublini, Monsieur Balon, Margarita Delpine, Maria Gallia and divers others” (Downes, p. 46). ‘‘ He was the first Innovator on our rude NRD 5 66 THE THEATRE the Union of 1682 he assisted in amalgamating the two companies, and in 1695 was the first to break with the patentees and to open the rival house at L.I.F. All through he was regarded as the chief theatrical figure of his time, and there are only one or two satirical notices of him by con- temporaries—a rare thing in that lampooning age}. Not till the beginning of the eighteenth century, when he was up- wards of seventy years of age, did his strength begin to fail, and even then he continued acting, if intermittently, until his death in 1710. It is an undoubted fact that Betterton’s histrionic art im- pressed itself upon the dramatic literature of his age, his dignified, graceful, yet somewhat heavy and florid form inter- preting admirably those interminable heroic generals who abound in that period of Restoration melodrama. In Orrery’s Henry V (L.1.F. 1664) he created the part of Owen Tudor: in the same author’s Mustapha (L.I.F. 1665) that of Soliman: in Banks’ The Destruction of Troy (D.G. 1678) that of Achilles: in Settle’s Cambyses (L.I.F. 1671) and in Banks’ Cyrus (L.1.F. 1695) the two heroes who give their names to those plays: and these, and such-like characters, we may presume, were written with more than half an eye to the distinguished figure who was to interpret them. Like most great actors, however, Betterton did not confine himself to tragedy. Although his figure, which was “serious, venerable, and majestic” in spite of a somewhat “ Pock- fretten” face? and a short thick neck rather inclining to be corpulent, seemed best suited for heavy heroic parts, he was evidently equally good not only in a roistering Falstaff, but in gay, light-o’-love flirters like Wittmore and Fainall. ‘Thus in Tuke’s The Adventures of Five Hours (L.1.F. 1663) we find him creating the part of Don Henrique: in Etherege’s Love in a Tub (L.1.F. 1664) that of Beauford: and in Shadwell’s Epsom Wells (D.G. 1672) that of Bevil. If he has to be taken into account for the development of the “hero” in Stage,”’ says the author of The History of the English Stage (1741, p. 7), forgetting D’Avenant. 1 One of these is the Epilogue to The Fatal Discovery (D.L. 1698). 2 Tony Aston (in Lowe’s edition of Cibber, 11. 300), THE ACTORS AND ACTRESSES 67 tragedy, he is no less important for the development of the character of the contemporary gallant, easy, graceful and debonair. Betterton, however, would not seem to have been the chief lover of the Duke’s company. “‘Ayery” Henry Harris appears to have taken those parts which demanded pathos and amorous passion more than heroism or witty dalliance. Harris is some- what of an ephemeral figure, but contemporaries have told us of his successful parts. Romeo he took on the revival of Shakespeare’s play at L.I.F. in 1665, and he created the parts of Sir Frederick Frollick in Etherege’s Love in a Tub (L.I.F. 1664), of Warner in Dryden’s Sir Martin Mar-all (L.I.F. 1667), of Raines in Shadwell’s Epsom Weils (D.G. 1672), and of Hector in Banks’ The Destruction of Troy (D.G. 1678)}. Corresponding to these two at the rival Theatre Royal we find ‘‘Major” Michael Mohun and Charles Hart, “the Roscius and Aesopus” of that age according to Rymer?, both of them pre-Commonwealth actors who had taken up their profession again on the opening of the theatres. Neither of them acted after the Union of the companies in 1682. Mohun appears to have been a slightly heavier actor than Hart, who, as Davies informs us°, ‘‘shone in the gay gentleman, such as Dorimant and Loveless.” Mohun it was who created Mithri- dates in Lee’s play of that name (D.L. 1678) as well as Augustus Caesar and Hannibal in the same author’s Glortana (D.L. 1676) and Sophonisba (D.L. 1675). Hart character- istically played Caesario in Gloriana and Massinissa in Sophonisba. Downes mentions him as being especially good as Mosca in Volpone, Don John in The Chances and Wildblood in Dryden’s The Mock Astrologer. He is the recipient also of some verses in Flecknoe’s Euterpe Revived (1675) which compares him with Richard Burbage :—“Such—Burbadge was once, And such Charles Hart is now+.” The only other really great serious actor of the time seems 1 He acted from about 1660 on to about 1681. 2 Tragedies of the Last Age (1678). 3 Dramatic Miscellanies, 111. 279. Downes is high in his praise (p. 16). 4 Euterpe Reviv’d, p. 78. 5-2 68 THE THEATRE to have been Edward Kynaston, whom we first meet as impersonating the Duke’s sister in The Loyal Subject, making, as Pepys assures us, “the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life.” Later in the century he developed a kind of stately grace, which enabled him to play such parts as Morat in Aureng-Zebe (D.L. 1675) and Muley Moloch in Don Sebastian (D.L. 1689) with a fitting awe and majesty”. Save for such “majestic” parts, however, he probably did little in in- fluencing the characters created by the dramatists. He was certainly the original Lord Touchwood in The Double Dealer (D.L. 1693), the original Valentine in Love in a Wood (T.R. in B.St. 1671) and the original Freeman in The Plain Dealer (D.L. 1676), but none of these impersonations appear to have been noted. Much more important for their influence on the works of the dramatists are the comedians, both of the Duke’s and of the Royal company. Of these James Nokes or Noke of the L.I.F. house must have been one of the most outstanding. Contemporaries say that no one could equal him in the inter- pretation of a grave English type of folly. Sir Nicholas Cully in Etherege’s Love in a Tub (L.1.F. 1664), Puny in Cowley’s Cutter of Coleman Street (L.1.F. 1661), Ninny in Shadwell’s The Sullen Lovers (L.1.F. 1668)—characters such as these abound in contemporary comedy, and many of them must have been penned especially for this actor. His Sir Martin Mar-all became famous?: Dryden, says the author of The History of the English Stage*, ‘wrote Gomez, in the Spanish Fryar in Compliment to him”: he was the original of Sir Davy Dunce in Otway’s The Souldier’s Fortune (D.G. 1680) and Davies notes that the success of the same author’s The History and Fall of Caius Marius (D.G. 1679) was largely due to the acting of Underhill as Sulpitius and that of Nokes as the Nurse®. Cave Underhill, Nokes’ companion in low comedy, cultivated the stiff, heavy and stupid boobies rather 1 Pepys, Aug. 18, 1660. Downes also refers to his success in women’s ace “He was a Compleat Female Stage Beauty,” says Cibber (1. r21— 2 Cibber, 1. 125. 3 Cibber, 1. 141-5. LEN Se 5 III. 191. THE ACTORS AND ACTRESSES 69 than the simple and foolish nouveaux riches. His First Gravedigger in Hamlet became famous, as did two of his other parts, Obadiah in The Committee and Sir Sampson Legend in Love for Love (L.1.F. 1695)!, Pedagog in Orrery’s Mr Anthony (D.G. 1671?), Diego in Tuke’s The Adventures of Five Hours (L.1.F. 1663) and Moody in Dryden’s Sir Martin Mar-all (L.1.F. 1667) may well have been written for him. Among the actors at the T.R. were several who likewise indulged in specialised types of low comedy. John Lacy, who was a dramatist as well as a player, excelled in ‘‘ humours” of various kinds?, his Teague in The Committee becoming famous. He was a noted Falstaff, and achieved success as Sawney in his own adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew (T.R. in B.St. 1667). On July 13, 1667, Pepys heard that he was dying, but he appears to have continued acting until about 1681. Of the other players, two only remain to be noted, Mountfort and Sandford, the first of whom gave life to the wondrous Sparkishes and Sir Courtly Nices of the comedy of manners?, the other of whom, as we have seen, gave birth to the Machiavellian villains with which Restora- tion tragedy and tragi-comedy abounds. The first was the creator of Young Belfond in Shadwell’s The Squire of Alsatia (D.L. 1688), Wildish in the same author’s Bury Fair (D.L. 1689), Young Reveller in his own Greenwich Park (D.L. 1691) and acted the Rover in Mrs Behn’s play of that name (evidently after the Union of the companies). Sandford of the Duke’s company may have inspired Porter to write Malignii in The Villain (L.1.F. 1662) and Lee to create Creon in Oedipus (D.G. 1679). He was the original Jasper of Payne’s The Fatal Fealousie (D.G. 1672) and the original Gonzalez of Congreve’s The Mourning Bride (L.1.F. 1697). When studying the personnel of the Restoration theatre, however, we find probably more of interest in the women than in the men. It is with the actresses that the Restoration \ 1 Cibber, 1. 154-6. 2 Pepys, May 21, 1662, June 10, 1663. Langbaine, pp. 317-18. 8 Cibber, I. 127-30; also II. 342-5. 70 THE THEATRE made its most characteristic break-away from the traditions of the older theatre, although it is very hard to determine exactly how far women had been allowed to appear on the stage before the year 1642. We know, of course, of the French troupe which visited the Blackfriars, the Red Bull and the Fortune in 1629 and which received a not over-flattering re- ception from their Albion audiences, and we know of the women who regularly acted in the court masques of the early seventeenth century. It would appear very strange if no attempt had been made to introduce some actress or other in the later years of the theatre of Charles I. The very fact that we have found the theatre of 1660 basing itself in all ways on the theatre of 1640 would induce us to believe that D’Avenant and Killigrew before the outbreak of Civil War had both known the charm of seeing Rosalind and Ophelia played by persons of their own sex. However this may be, the first appearance of an actress that we can discover is the personation by Mrs Coleman of Janthe in D’Avenant’s “opera” of 1656, and this appearance did not signify by any means that the older tradition of boy- actors was broken. I have already mentioned the fact that Kynaston appeared in the early years of the theatre as a girl, and there must have been others who, besides him, im- personated the heroines of tragedy and of comedy. At the same time, the tradition had been broken into by the long Commonwealth period. Thus actors who, in 1642, had been playing girls’ parts at the Red Bull and Blackfriars were now fully adult; the training of the boys in the earlier years must have taken time; and now there were none of these on whom the managers might rely. ‘The remedy was perfectly obvious and it is only surprising that it was not thought of sooner. Pepys saw women on the stage for the first time on Jan. 3, 1660/61, at the Royal Theatre. We must remember, however, that the diaryist had attended the theatre only some half a score of times previous to this date, and that because he saw women for the first time then does not mean either that women were, in Jan. 1660/61, fully established on the stage, or that they had not appeared before that date. From the THE ACTORS AND ACTRESSES 71 fact that Jordan in his Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie has ““A Prologue to introduce the first Woman who came to Act on the Stage in the Tragedy, call’d The Moor of Venice” and that Herbert noted a production of Othello on Dec. 8, 1660, it has been presumed that this precise date marks the appear- ance of our first woman actress. I shall not dwell here on the separate problem as to the identity of this ‘‘ blue-stocking ” nor shall I comment on the slight ambiguity in the title to Jordan’s poem, but I may remark that as early as October, 1660, the Red Bull players in a petition addressed to the King, mention that they have come to an agreement with Killigrew to act under his management along with “‘ woemen.” The petition does not actually state that they were so acting, but at any rate we may presume from its wording that the appearance of women on the stage had been well-talked of and probably already experimentally tried by that time. The production of Othello on Dec. 8, 1660, was apparently not the first after the Restoration, as Herbert notes that play among the repertoire of the Red Bull players, and there is just the possibility that another poem in Jordan’s book indicates a much earlier date for the advent of our primal actress. He has, immediately before the prologue for Othello, ‘“A Prologue to a Comedy call’'d The Tamer Tam’d, June 25. 1660” and a corresponding epilogue ‘‘ Spoken by the Tamer, a Woman” — which may, or may not, refer to a particular actress. Whenever the first woman appeared, whoever she was, the fact remains that from the erection of the first houses of D’Avenant and Killigrew we find the actresses fully estab- lished and the boy-actors vanished away. Again, as with most of the Restoration innovations or stage developments, we must distinguish here between a good and a bad influence, both of which were exercised by these actresses. They cer- tainly made possible a more charming presentation of Shake- spearian tragedy and comedy, shedding a fresh light on the Desdemonas and the Ophelias of the past: but the new audience which had called them into being did not, it is to be suspected, regard them always from this artistic point of view. From the King down to the fops, the male spectators 72 THE THEATRE looked upon these actresses as little better than prostitutes, and they themselves were certainly not slow in encouraging promising lovers. The gallants could go behind the scenes, easily, on the payment of a little extra feet. In prologue and in epilogue broad hints were cast out to the audience that the ladies of the theatre were not to be sued in vain. Very few of those actresses lived chaste lives. Nell Gwyn, Moll Davis, Mrs Barry, Mrs Bracegirdle—all were stamped with the same die. It is perfectly exceptional to find one like Mrs Sanderson, later the wife of Betterton, against whom little scandal was cast. We have to recognise that some of these women had a true artistic genius for the stage: but, at the same time, we must be careful not to assume that they always aided unselfishly in the interpretation of the works of dramatic art. The majority must have thought more of a fine gown, or maybe of a coach and pair, than of a fine play. Mrs Barry, who, being the beloved idol of the hopeless and hapless Otway, was the model and the inspiration of Monimia and of Belvidera and who, by her sympathetic acting of the heroines of the heroic tragedy, aided in establishing that form of dramatic art in a place of popularity, was as debased and licentious as the commonest women of the town. A contem- porary critic declares that she could spend the night with a man, take all his money, and refuse to recognise him the following morning unless he could scrape together another pitiful five guineas. The story of Nell Gwyn is too well known to require re-telling. She was the original Florimel, and almost certainly Dryden wrote his light airy parts for her: yet she left the stage to flaunt it in Whitehall, there to found some of the most illustrious of our aristocratic families. The actresses, on the other hand, however low they suc- ceeded in dragging down the playhouse, did, like the men, present to the theatre a series of stock types, and helped to keep alive species of drama which in less able hands would have had but a short existence. Mrs Sanderson, later Mrs Betterton, seems to have been noted in Shakespearian parts, and may have done something toward popularising the works + See supra p. 13. THE ACTORS AND ACTRESSES 73 of that master in the first years of the Restoration. Mrs Anne Bracegirdle, whose advent came somewhat later, gave life to those Statiras and Millamants which mark the last years of the century. She was the favourite of both Congreve and Rowe. “In Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selimain the person of Axalla; in the Fair Penitent, he was the Horatio to her Lavinia; and in Ulysses, the Telemachus to Bracegirdle’s Semanthe. Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in Love for Love; in his Osmyn to her Almeria, in the Mourning Bride; and lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the Way of the World?.” Another actress of the same period, Mrs Leigh, ably per- sonated those antiquated and odious specimens of old- maidism or of wasted age such as the typical Lady Wishfort. Still another, Mrs Verbruggen, played the “‘hoydens” that appear in so many of D’Urfey’s plays and in those of not a few of his contemporaries. Creation of characters, then, whether male or female, use of scenery, structure of dramas, management of plot, dialogue and aim—all these we find, in this narrow little playhouse world where one class ruled and a king’s laugh was the cue for applause, more intimately connected with the stage than in almost any other period of our dramatic history. To-day we may occasionally find a play or two written for a special actor or actress, but the theatrical world is too vast, the temper of the dramatists too abstracted, to permit of a very great subservience of comedy and of tragedy to actual stage con- ditions. Man and Superman, we feel, and Fustice, were written for nobody in particular. They are bound by the general requirements of the modern stage, but those require- ments are less strict now than they were in the last years of the seventeenth century. Justice was not written to utilise a particular prison-set, or Man and Superman to make use of a scene in Hell. For the Restoration period we cannot look at plays, if we are to regard them historically, in a line of dramatic development, from such a purely literary standpoint as that from which we can regard Man and Superman and 1 Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies (1784), U1. 337-8. 74 THE THEATRE Justice. For the Restoration, we have always to think of the particular Duke’s theatre and Theatre Royal for which the plays were written. The basis of the dramas, their structure, their aim, their very being, is to be explained only by a reference to the playhouse itself, the actors and actresses on the stage, and the audience, which sat gallantly indifferent and cynical in pit and side-box and galleries. CHAPTER TWO TRAGEDY I. Restoration Tragedy and Comedy: Introductory N turning from the audience and the theatre to the actual dramatic works written during the reigns of Charles, James and William, we seem at first to meet with a totally different productivity from what we should have expected. The comedy of manners and the coarser comedy of humours were certainly reflexes of the gay immoral aristocratic life of the age. Nothing could more perfectly have mirrored the upper-class life of the time than the comedy of Etherege and of Congreve: nothing could have pictured more faithfully the debased standards of social existence than plays such as The Squire of Alsatia. Opera, also, we might have been prepared for, because in opera we see the quintessence of music, song, show and dance—precisely those things which, we found, appealed to a vast majority of the play-going public of the epoch. But neither opera nor comedy at all exhausts the dramatic productivity of these forty years: there is left out of account that most characteristic of all the Restoration theatrical species, the heroic tragedy. (This heroic tragedy) is obviously a thing entirely apart from the comedy of gay licentious manners. (With its flaunting honour and its im- possibly idealistic love passions, it seems indeed so far away both from that comedy and from social life jas we have seen it displayed in the theatre(that it would appear impossible to find any link between them) Our first impulse might rather be to dismiss the whole of the heroic tragedy as a foreign innovation, or at any rate as a forced half-artificial flower, raised by the false taste of Charles and dying a natura! death about the year 1677. 76 TRAGEDY There are, however, two or three things which must give us to pause.{ Even although many critics have thus regarded the heroic tragedy, we must remember that Charles was intensely of his age. He rarely forced on his courtiers any- thing they did not want, probably he could not have forced it upon them.(In embracing the heroic species) therefore, we may be sure that\he was but reflecting the attitude and expressing the desires of his time. )This belief is further strengthened when we-notice;the) obvious popularity of that tragedy, not only during its recognised reign (1664-77) but even for many years after.) Sedley might crack jokes at some follies in Orrery’s The General: Arrowsmith in The Re- formation (D.G. 1673) might write elaborate burlesque on the species?: Shadwell, who was no tragic expert, might ridicule the love and honour rants in prologue and in epilogue®: Edward Howard, as early as Shadwell, might rate against heroic rime and “‘the wresting in of Dances, when unnatural and improper to the business of the Scene and Plot*”: Buckingham and others might plan a Rehearsal in 1665 and bring it on the stage in 1671: Duffett might be commissioned by the Theatre Royal to write a satire on The Empress of Morocco acted by the Duke’s company: others, not much 1 Pepys, Wed. Sept. 28, 1664. 2 Especially Iv. 1. 3 The prologue to his first play, The Sullen Lovers (L.1.F. 1668) makes fun of the “ Love and Honour Feast”: the epilogue to The Miser (T.R. in B.St. 1672) attacks the school of rime: the epilogue to The Virtuoso (D.G. 1676) speaks of “A dull Romantick whining Play: Where poor frail Woman’s made a Deity, With senseless amorous Idolatry, And snivelling Heroes sigh, and pine, and cry. Though singly they beat Armies, and huff Kings, Rant at the Gods, and do impossible Things; Though they can laugh at Danger, Blood, and Wounds; Yet if the Dame once chides, the Milk-sop Heroe swoons. Those doughty Things nor Manners have, nor Wit; We ne’er saw Hero fit to drink with yet’’: and in The History of Timon of Athens (D.G. 1678) in 1. i it is noticeable that, in the person of the poet, Shadwell aims a direct attack upon the supporters of the popular tragedy. 4 The Usurper (T.R. in B.St. 1664), preface (written probably in 1667). INTRODUCTORY “7 inclined to the heroic species, like Ravenscroft! and New- castle®, might take up the anti-heroic cue: even definitely heroic writers such as Settle in his Ibrahim (D.G. 1676) might show quite plainly their realisation that they were not suiting themselves, but simply giving the public what it wanted. We may marshal quite a small army of anti-heroic utterances from such diverse quarters, but none of them, not all of them taken together, can dispute the fact that the heroic tragedy was popular and that its characters, scenes and emotions were continued long after the year 1677 rang the death-knell of rime. Nor is it possible, even, to make any sharp division between the tragic dramatists and the comic dramatists of the age. Some men, like Nat Lee, wrote nothing but tragedies: others, like Etherege, wrote nothing but comedies: but the most noticeable figures, Dryden, Otway, Congreve, even men like Crowne and D’Urfey, shared serious and light emotion, turning easily from one to the other world as if familiar with both. The two worlds are as utterly different as could possibly be imagined, that we must confess. In Elizabethan times romantic comedy and romantic tragedy, realistic comedy and realistic tragedy, had not been overfar apart. We can compare Rosalind and Juliet, even women of the realistic comedy and 1 The preface to his The Careless Lovers (D.G. 1673) is directed against “* Siedges and Opera’s”’ and the epilogue is on the same theme: “ They that observe the Humors of the Stage, Find Fools and Heroes best do please this Age, But both grown so extravagant, I scarse Can tell, if Fool or Hero makes the better Farce: As for Example, take our Mamamouchi, And then Almansor, that so much did touch ye, That bully Hero, that did kill and slay, And conquer ye Ten Armies in one Day.” 2 See Act m1 of The Triumphant Widow, or, The Medley of Humours (D.G. 1674) where the Musician is made to say: “Come, Sir, go on, I love Tragedy, especially Heroick. Oh, it does chime, and make the finest noise, ’tis no matter whether it be sense or no, so it be Heroick.” 3 Epilogue: “ How many has our Rhimer kill’d to day? What need of Siege and Conquest in a Play, When Love can do the work as well as they?” 78 TRAGEDY Alice Arden, and feel that there are points of resemblance between them. Can the same be said for Florimel and Almahide? Yet our task is clear: the tragedy of the heroic soul cannot be dissociated from its age: it must be explained not as an isolated phenomenon, as a dramatic species out of touch with its time, but as an integral part of Restoration theatrical endeavour. / On a more close examination of the characteristics of Gaed;, and comedy during this period, the difficulties which at first seem to confront one from every side begin gradually to vanish. Not all the features of Restoration comedy and tragedy can be explained by a reference to the changed and changing spirit of the age, but the main basis of that comedy and of that tragedy ultimately depends upon the altered tastes and temper of the époch: The Elizabethan age had been infused with an intangible but ever-present spirit of heroism, a heroism that displayed itself in the exploits of Drake and of Ralegh, in the ardour of those common seamen whose courage sent scattering the mighty pride of the Spanish Armada) in the noble chivalric conceptions of Spenser. The age, if coarse, was accustomed to see actions that were instinct with courage and with faith. The doughty temper thus de- veloped penetrated through all ranks of society, from the aristocrats of the court down to the lower rabble who stood chattering in the pit of the theatres. That there was a gradual weakening of that spirit after 1600 is readily demonstrable, but it gave to our literature, from 1580 onwards to near the outbreak of the Civil War, a certain dignity and nobility of romance. With romance and nobility around them in real life, the audiences at the Blackfriars and at the Globe were content to witness romance and nobility in tragedy and in comedy, a romance and a nobility not far removed from that of their actual experience. The quiet courage of As You Ltke It, the awful nobility of Othello, the perfect gentlemanli- ness of The English Traveller—all these are but reflexes of ordinary life. Many an Elizabethan lady must have seen herself in Rosalind: the courage and the faith of Othello is mirrored in the lives of countless sixteenth century soldiers: INTRODUCTORY 79 not all the gallants who returned from the continent were inglesi ttalianati—diavoli incarnati. In Jonson on the one hand and in Beaumont and Fletcher on the other, however, we may trace the evidence of a weak- ening of this temper. Romance in Beaumont and Fletcher is not the earlier Shakespearian romance: it is removed one step further from real life: and Jonson’s comedy of humours displays before us, not the dignity of happy lives, but all the follies and the vices which he may have seen gathering force around him. Already with these men a greater cleavage is being made between comedy and tragedy: the one growing more and more obsessed with lives not tinged by courage and nobility, the other moving to realms far distant from contemporary England. Shakespeare’s Italy, Denmark and Scotland are real to us: his Bohemia, influenced by the later romance, as well as Beaumont and Fletcher’s “‘Cicilie” are wholly unreal and imaginary. By the time of the Restoration this cleavage was complete. The audiences were no longer noble in temper, and conse- quently the heroic tragedy, removed a further stage from the actual, may be regarded as the true child of the enervation that had come over England. The age was debilitated: it was distinctly unheroic: and yet it was not so cynical as to throw over entirely the inculcation of heroism. To present, how- ever, heroism in real-life plays would have raised too sharp a distinction between what was and what might have been, and accordingly in the heroic tragedy heroism is cast out of the world altogether and carried to an Eastern or an antique realm of exaggerated emotions, mythical and hopelessly ideal. The heroic play is like a Tale of a Land of No-where. We are interested in that land, but we do not hope ever to enter therein. The persons who move and speak there are not our equals, nor do they even draw the same breath as we do. Drake might have felt more than a little of himself in'Tambur- laine, in Othello: Rochester could never dream that he was Almanzor or Charles that he was Maximin. The heroic tragedy, then, may be regarded as the very symbol of its time, with, attached to it, many other subordinate aspects. 80 TRAGEDY Opera was of its kin, and the fanciful adaptations of Shake- speare’s plays—everywhere an endeavour to move from the ideally real to the hopelessly impossible. It is to be observed, also, that this contrast is to be noticed not only between the Elizabethan and the Restoration plays, but between the English Restoration characters and the persons of the corre- sponding plays of the continent. In this connection M. L. Charlanne has drawn an interesting parallel between Félix and Maximin, and between Bérénice and Pauline. Au lieu de ces hommes (he says referring to Felix) vraiment hommes, auxquels nous nous assimilons parfois et que nous voudrions pouvoir égaler toujours, nous n’avons plus, chez Dryden, que des héros sans Gme, chaleur et sans vie, des automates enfin (and of the heroines) mi shakespeariennes, ni cornéliennes, raciniennes moins encore, ces héroines sont sans intérét, parce que sans passions: leur sein est toujours froid, leurs sens sont towjours calmes, et leur ceeur toujours maitre de ces émotions....Ce sont des héroines de roman, ce ne sont pas des femmes". Much as the dramatists might make their heroes and their heroines unreal, however, they knew that the audience did not desire at the Theatre Royal or at the Duke’s playhouse an entirely impossible drama alone. ‘They had inherited from the earlier period, not only the heroic romance of Beaumont and Fletcher, but the Jonsonian realistic and satiric comedy of humours, In comedy, therefore, they demanded a reflex of their own gay immoral lives as well as a series of plays full of personal satire. The comedy of manners was the answer to this demand, faithfully reproducing the upper-class wit, licentiousness and social ideals of the time. Almanzor and Courtal are the two twin symbols of the age. Lampoons flooded the town in the late seventeenth century. Men of the court could pen indecent verses even on the King, calling him “‘ old Rowley” to his face and describing in grossest terms his intercourse with the Duchess of Cleveland and Nell Gwyn. There is no lack of evidence that inwardly the courtiers and the wits saw the evils of their own time, but probably they cared less about the evils than about the follies. 1 L’influence frangaise en Angleterre au xvit° siécle (Paris, 1906), pp. 464-5. INTRODUCTORY 81 Accordingly any play that satirised a contemporary silliness was almost sure of success. T'he would-be wits, the old gentleman who professed to admire the days of good Queen Bess, the virtuosi, the country bumpkins, all of these were ridiculed. Of all that was not fine, elegant and witty the gallants made free sport. On the other hand, of any satire which attacked themselves or their ways the gallants were suspicious. There are few milites gloriosi on the Restoration stage, precisely because at least some of the courtiers have come down in history with the stain of cowardice on their names. Dryden’s Mr Limberham, because it attacked the “crying sin of keeping,” was given as cold a reception by the audience as possible, in spite of the fun and the wit which some modern critics profess to find in it. Smerk in Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches was a satire of the characteristics of many Anglican clerics, and was banned the stage. Occa- sionally only was burlesque of the gallants permitted :—when the burlesque was exclusively personal, and even then the nobleman or knight who was thus singled out could take dire vengeance!, Shadwell’s The Sullen Lovers owed its contem- porary success to its portraits of the Howards, and, as the victims themselves did not protest, evidently no one else did. Impossible heroics, faithful reflections of upper-class social life, satire of everything not associated with their own exist- ence or satire of members of their own circle so long as that satire was purely personal and not general—such were the things demanded by the audience of the Restoration: such the tendencies which made up the heroic tragedy and the comedy of manners. 1 Thus Kynaston was beaten for acting in The Heiress ‘“‘in abuse of Sedley”’ on Sat. Jan. 30, 1668/9 (see Pepys, Mon. Feb. 1, 1668/9). On Thurs. Mar. 4 of the same year, Pepys heard that Buckingham and Sir Robert Howard were writing a play to abuse Sir William Coventry, who declared he would slit the nose of any actor who offended him (see also Sat. Mar. 6). On Nov. 4, 1675, the Lord Chamberlain issued an order declaring that Haines should be suspended because he had “with ill & scandalous language & insolent carriage abused Sir Edmund Wind- ham.” Mrs Slade was suspended similarly on Nov. 25 of the same year (P.R.O., L.C. 5/141, pp. 287 and 294). NRD 6 82 TRAGEDY II. Elizabethan and Foreign Influences Although the spirit of the age does not explain everything, it explains a good deal, so that when we turn to the actual tragedies produced we find that it is the age rather than anything else which interprets these works to us. We must never, on-the-other-hand, forget the influence of past literary models, or the influence of foreign plays upon the cosmo- politan courtiers of Charles. ) We may say, indeed, that the heroic play as well as the comedy of manners is to be ex- plained by a three-fold formula—Elizabethan substratum, the spirit of the age and foreign influence.) \The heroic tragedy, as-we_have-seen, owed its popularity to the debilitated atmosphere of the time, debilitated yet not so degenerate as to deny heroism altogether. (At the same time, this heroic tragedy could never have come into being at all unless there had been some previous foundation for it, and it could not have taken the shape it did, had it not been for the influence of continental dramatists. Popularity is explained by one, groundwork by another, actual form and aes by another. ) . When the theatres opened in 1660, they were naturally eunetee by plays taken from the repertoire of the pre- commonwealth playhouses.) By the King’s company from the commencement of their acting at the Red Bull to May 1663, the date of their removal to the Theatre Royal in Bridges Street, we find revived three tragedies of Shake- speare!, Jonson’s two?, five of Beaumont and Fletcher?, three of Shirley*, as well as Middleton’s Widow, Glapthorne’s Argalus and Parthenia, Webster’s Vittoria Corombona, Mas- singer’s The Virgin Martyr and The Renegade, Suckling’s Brenoralt and Aglaura, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, Rowley’s All’s Lost by Lust and Chapman’s Bussy D’ Ambois. By the Duke’s actors before the opening of the Lincoln’s 1 Othello, Fulius Caesar, Titus Andronicus. 2 Catiline and Sejanus. 3 Maid’s Tragedy, A King and No King, Rollo, Philaster and The Loyal Subject. I include here serious tragi-comedies. * The Example, The Cardinal and The Traitor. ELIZABETHAN INFLUENCES 83 Inn Fields playhouse in June 1661 were revived Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Loyal Subject and Wife for a Month, Heywood’s The Queen’s Masque, Middleton’s Changeling, Massinger’s The Bondman, D’Avenant’s The Unfortunate Lovers, and Shakespeare’s Pericles. Later, from June 1661 to May 1665,\the same company produced Hamlet, Romeo, Henry VIII, King Lear, Macbeth, D’Avenant’s The Siege of ~ Rhodes, Love and Honour, The Rivals and The Unfortunate Lovers, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and Massinger’s Bondman. Among these, omitting The Siege of Rhodes, therey_ were represented several strains of Elizabethan tragic in- vention—the Shakespearian tragedy of outstanding types, the romantic tragi-comedy of Beaumont and Fletcher, with as a variety of that the similar plays of D’Avenant, the blood and horror tragedies of Webster, and the plays of classic restraint represented in Jonson’s couple of Roman dramas) (Of these the last was to exercise but little influence on drama until many years had passed, but the others deeply affected the English heroic plays for the following two decades. {The influence of Marlowe indirectly through those who imitated his domineering types is to be noted in the tragedy of heroics, and above all there is to be observed the prevailing example of Beaumont and Fletcher.)In Beaumont and Fletcher romance was given a new turn, and their romance was popular on the stage right up to the closing of the theatres.) It gave birth to D’Avenant’s Love and Honour, to Habington’s The Queen of Arragon and to Cartwright’s The Lady-Errant, and stepped over the chasm of the Commonwealth into the reign of Charles. From the brief list given above it is evident that Beaumont and Fletcher were exceedingly popular in the first years of the Restoration. Dryden informs us that their plays were acted much more frequently than those of any other author!. The courtiers of 1660 might look back with a certain contempt upon their ancestors, the Cavaliers of the earlier Caroline period, but they felt nevertheless an affinity of 1 Essay of Dramatick Poesie. See Genest, v1. 39-62; he computes that in 1668 two plays of Fletcher were acted to one of Shakespeare: in 1710 the proportion was about even; by the beginning of the nineteenth century barely two of Fletcher’s plays were on the acting list. 6-2 84 TRAGEDY temper with them. They enjoyed what those forefathers of theirs had enjoyed: the romance that they sought was only a development of the romance that had already appeared on the stages of the earlier theatres. The impossible platonic love, the conflict of passion and honour, the distant scenes of countries unknown or idealised, all these Beaumont and Fletcher handed on to their successors, D’Avenant, Dryden and Orrery. Beaumont and Fletcher, however, were not the sole native fathers of the tragic endeavour of 1664-77. The hero of the Restoration tragedy is not the hero of the pure tragedies or tragi-comedies of romance: he moves in a world of greater grandeur, where bombast and rant take the place of clearer and more subdued poetic expression. This heightened atmo- sphere, this rant, this bombast and this egotism, may well have been fostered by that other Elizabethan strain which took its rise in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. ‘That play, certainly, in the time of the Restoration, seems to have been forgotten, an ‘“‘old Cockpit piece” as it was called!, but Marlowe’s influence is imprinted on a great deal of the later Elizabethan productivity. Shakespeare’s heroes, to a Restoration audience, may well have appeared to possess some of that grandeur they craved for. Granville, indeed, in the preface to his The Heroick Love (L.1.F. 1697) lets us know that he con- sidered the Moor of Venice as a “‘Hero” in the Restoration sense of that word. Coriolanus and Lear may well have been the prototypes of Almanzor and Cambyses. Among the Shakespearian revivals noted above we observe Macbeth, Lear, Henry VIII, Othello, all possibly contributing to this strain, besides Pericles, in the romantic manner of Beaumont and Fletcher, and Titus Andronicus. Titus Andronicus reminds us of the third current of Elizabethan tragic example, that represented in the revivals mainly by Webster’s two dramas. The tragedy of blood cannot be here left out of account. It did not die with Ford, but contributed not a little to the make-up of the heroic species. Continental and classic influence but served to emphasise 1 Saunders’ Tamerlane the Great (D.L. 1681), preface. ELIZABETHAN INFLUENCES 85 one or other of these strains. Seneca was taken over by Dryden and Lee for their Oedipus, King of Thebes (D.G. 1679): Thyestes found a translator in John Wright (1674) and was utilised by Crowne for a Thyestes in 1681: the Troades was translated, possibly by Samuel Pordage, in 1660, and by J.T. in 1686. The atmosphere of blood and horror here, and the ghosts, which duly appeared in Restoration plays in unlimited numbers, cannot be disentangled from Elizabethan convention( Italian melodramma contributed to the unreality of the themes and to the development of operatic features. D’Avenant owed the inspiration of his Commonwealth proz ductions indirectly at least to Italy, and-although-the-intro- duction of ““Heroique Story in“Stilo Recitativo1” (was not to be followed out until the eighteenth century, the influence of the Italian music and of the Italian operatic art was felt in England during the latter years of the seventeenth century, not only in dramatic operas but in regular tragedies as well. Only one of Purcell’s pieces, certainly, is in recitative?, but The Siege of Rhodes was sung even when Evelyn heard it on May 5, 1659. Recitative music was introduced by Bannister into Stapylton’s The Slighted Maid (L.1.F. 1663) and Ariane, produced in French in 1673/4, was called by Evelyn an Italian opera in music®. Italian singers, also, as has been noted above, were arriving year by year to teach English audiences something of continental charm long before the appearance of “‘Seignior Rampony” and “Don Segismondo Fideli.” Pepys informs us that ‘‘the Italian Signor Batista (Draghi)” had “proposed a Play in Italian for the Opera, which T. Killigrew do intend to have up*,” while a few months later, on Oct. 12, 1668, at the Theatre Royal, we find the diaryist in raptures over “‘the Eunuch who, it seems, is a Frenchman, but long bred in Italy®.” Italian singers, 1 The Play-House to be Lett (L.1.F. c. 1663). 2 Dido and Aeneas (1689), the libretto by Nahum Tate. 3 If, as I believe, Evelyn refers to a rehearsal of this opera. See my article in The Times Literary Supplement, Sept. 21, 1922, and an article by W. J. Lawrence in The Musical Quarterly, April 1923. 4 Feb. 12, 1666/7. ; he 5 See also Oct. 14, when this “Eunuch” appeared in The Faithful Shepherdess. 86 TRAGEDY Italian music, Italian scenery and the plots of Italian melo- dramma also took a part in the development of Restoration tragic endeavour. Naturally, however, of all outside influences on the English theatre of this time, that of France is most important, not only because France was in more constant touch with England, but because of the greater ease in obtaining copies of French books. The heroic romance had long been popularin London: its influence can be traced back to the first years of the century) and about 1654 we find Dorothy Osborne even more enthusiastic about it than her elder sisters had been. English imitations and translations are numerous in the middle of the seventeenth century: Roger Boyle himself, no doubt during one of his enforced retirements through gout, found time to write a Parthenissa in several books. (The influence on the drama here was all in the direction of the Beaumont and Fletcher romantic atmosphere. If not definitely pastoral in tone, the French romance always lived in unreal worlds. Its tone is high: love and honour play a great part in it: intrigue is not absent: the heroes are drawn on the grand scale even if they possess some of those qualities which to us of to-day appear fier To these romances went many dramatists in search of plot or of character. Dryden rifled Le Grand Cyrus (ix, 3) for Florimel, Celadon, Orinda and Sabina in Secret Love (‘T.R. in B.St. 1667)? and utilised it again, along with Calprenéde’s Cléopdtre, for The Conquest of Granada ('T.R. in B.St. 1670). The same romances proved happy hunting grounds for other playwrights besides Dryden. Banks’ Cyrus the Great (L.1.F. 1695) and Settle’s [brahim (D.G. 1676) openly confess their indebtedness: Mrs Behn covered up a trifle her obligation to Cléopdtre in The Young King (D.G. 1679) just as Lee did in Gloriana (D.L. 1676). Lee is as symptomatic a figure in this connection as any. Lucius Junius Brutus (D.G. 1680) owes a good deal to Clélie, The Princess of Cleve (D.G. c. 1681) to La Princesse de Cléves, YES 1911), pp. 365 ff. and Charlanne, op. cit. pp. 387-404. 1 Consult Upham, The French Influence in English Literature (New = Ey ‘he took also from Ibrahim aad ‘Durfée’s ée. ELIZABETHAN INFLUENCES 87 Theodosius (D.G. 1680) to Pharamound, The Rival Queens (D.L. 1677) to Cassandre. The last-mentioned novel pro- vided Banks with material for The Rival Kings (D.L. 1677) and Cooke with the main plot of his Love’s Triumph (unacted? 1678). We can never forget that D’Avenant, Dryden and Orrery, the three founders of the heroic tragedy, all went to this French romance for their plots, and that Lee, one of the most outstanding heroic writers of the later years, has scene after scene based on the fictional tales that formed the main reading of at least one large section of the audience. French influence was not confined to the romance. The plays of the heroic school also affected deeply the structure of the English drama. Again the influence was not entirely a novel thing. | Even if we omit Le Trompeur Puni of Scudéry and the Alcmedon of Du Ryer, acted in French in London during the year 1635, we may not dismiss the translation of Le Cid by Joseph Rutter in 1637, a translation undertaken practically contemporaneously with the appearance of the original work in F rance. ( It is probable, however, that the direct influence of French drama was very considerably strengthened after 1660, when the English courtiers had had an opportunity, during their exile, of seeing the Parisian theatre, and when newer masterpieces were yearly being produced on the continent.) Pierre Corneille, at the Restora- tion, was fifty-four years of age, destined to live another twenty-four, but Racine was only twenty-one, and was not to write his best work for several years to come. Corneille, in the midst of a tangle of Spanish example, native talent and classic restraint, had only been seeking the light: it was Racine who definitely established the heroic atmosphere on the French stage. His first play, La Thébaide, did not appear till 1664: his first great success came not until the following year with Alexandre le Grand. The French opera, which was to run a course alongside of the Racinised tragedy, was not developed till 1669. Only on Dec. 14 or 24, 1645, was the first Italian opera performed in France1. The primal native 1 Menestrier, Des représentations en musique anciennes et modernes (Paris, 1681). 88 TRAGEDY French opera, Achébar, roi de Mogol, made its appearance in February 1646, but it was fully nine years after the Restora- tion that Cambert’s friend, the ‘‘abbé”’ Perrin, secured per- mission to establish ‘“‘par tout le royaume des académies @’opéra...sur le pied de celles d’Italie.” The Académie Royale de Musique was founded by Lulli three years later}. ( It is evident that the French drama might influence the English plays in four distinct ways: first, towards a chastened pseudo-classicism, second, towards an intensification of love and honour themes, third, towards the further development of operatic elements, and fourth, towards the dialogue in rime.) All these things, as we have seen, were already in native English example, and whatever influence we impute in this direction to French drama, we must remember that many Englishmen were severely critical in their attitude towards France. Even in 1663 D’Avenant could pick many faults in Parisian tragedy: The French convey their Arguments too much In Dialogue: their Speeches are too long. Such length of Speeches seem not so unpleasing As the Contracted Walks of their Designs?, while Dryden, professing admiration for French masterpieces, could remain, all his life, duly critical of those things in which, he deemed, the English theatre was the superior. Dryden, indeed, is fairly typical of his age, preserving a stout patriotic front to the foreigner, yet recognising, not only the “‘modishness” of the French tragedy, but also some of its undoubted excellences. The assimilation and popularisation of this French serious drama was accomplished in two separate ways—by direct translation and by adaptation on the usual Restoration lines. The first was to aid in establishing the rimed couplet as the chief tragic medium for fourteen years, the other was merely to intensify the elements already taken over by the Restora- tion from Beaumont and Fletcher and Scudéry. Rimed 1 Elistoire de l’académie royale de musique, depuis son établissement jusqu’a 1709 (1709). 2 The Play-House to be Lett, Act 1. ELIZABETHAN INFLUENCES 89 renderings of the Pompée of Pierre Corneille appeared in the early years of the period, one by Mrs Catherine Phillips (Smock Alley, Dublin, 1663) and another by Waller, Buck- hurst and Sedley (L.I.F. 1664). Héraclius was Englished in a similar manner by Carlell (printed 1664) and by an anony- mous writer (L.I.F. 1664): Dauncer issued his version of Nicoméde in 16711. All of these, and particularly those first mentioned, must have exercised a marked influence on the development of English drama, although, in their unadapted form, they were too chill to be popular on the stage. Quinault, possibly, was nearer the English temper than Corneille. La Généreuse Ingratitude (1657) had given name and plot to Lower’s The Noble Ingratitude of 1659, and its central theme was utilised by Corye for The Generous Enemies, or, The Ridiculous Lovers in 1671. Agrippa, roi d’ Albe (1660) was freely adapted by Dauncer in his Agrippa, King of Alba, or, The False Tiberinus (Theatre Royal, Dublin, 1674?) and later Gildon’s Phaeton (D.L. 1698) was taken directly from the similarly named French opera of 1683. Racine belongs rather to the later period of pseudo-classic tragedy, but we may note here in passing the translation of Andromaque (1667) published by Crowne in 1675, and the rendering of Bérénice (1671) by Otway in 1677. The fact is that this French tragedy of the reign of Louis XIV, the melodrama of Italy, the heroic play of England, and the French romance, were but so many aspects of a general ebb-tide movement passing over Europe at the close of the great inrush of Renascence enthusiasm: and while we cannot often disentangle the separate threads of influence, we shall not be far wrong in saying that the English representative of this universal movement is the result mainly of a development of already existing English elements altered to suit the temper of the age, modified a trifle by the example of the Italian theatres and by a recognition of the greatness and of the cultured spirit of French rimed tragedy. 1 See Mulert, A., Pierre Corneille auf der englischen Biihne (Miinchen, 1899). Nicoméde was acted at the Theatre Royal, Dublin. 90 TRAGEDY III. The Rimed Heroic Tragedy: 1664-1677 ‘The chief channel through which these streams of in- fluence descended to the Restoration period was undoubtedly D’Avenant, although Roger Boyle may be esteemed the first to give the heroic play its definite form, and Howard and Dryden may be recognised as the popularisers of the “Species. / Before passing to an analysis of what these men did for the particular kind, it may not be unfitting to distinguish here the mere use of rime in plays from the heroic tragedy itself. In spite of the testimony to the contrary by the only writer of a monograph on the subject!, rimed couplets do not mark out plays as being heroic. At-we-can-say_is that, when the heroic type was being evolved, rime came to be utilised for tragic purposes. From 1660 to 1670 there were written about eighteen new plays in this measure, from 1670 to 1680 no less than twenty-four. Only one appeared in the following decade, although there was a slight reaction in their favour from 1690 to 1700 and even later—four appearing previous to the opening of the century and some half-a-dozen subse- sues) However, as Dryden noted in his dedication of The Rival Ladies (‘T.R. in B.St. 1664) to the Earl of Orrery, the employment of couplets in tragedies was “‘not so much a new Way amongst us, as anold Way new Reviv’d.” It had been known in Elizabethan times: it was carried on spasmodically through the earlier part of the seventeenth century, and on into the Commonwealth period. Waller and Denham had rendered the couplet more precise and classic in its non- dramatic use, until it came to D’Avenant ‘‘who at once brought it upon the Stage, and made it perfect, in the Siege of Rhodes.” Meanwhile, it had received a fresh impetus from the rimed translations of French tragedies mentioned above, 1 Chase, L. N., The English Heroic Play (London, 1903). Orrery’s Aliemira of 1702 is The General, acted in 1664: an unacted King Saul was published in 1703; in 1705 was issued a miserable tragedy by Alexander Fyfe, The Royal Martyr, K. Charles I. The last of the type was probably The Batile of Aughrim, or, The Fall of Monsieur St Ruth (Dublin, 1728), by Robert Ashton. THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY gI and evidently the French model, praised by the king, im- pelled Orrery to write his dramas in the same measure. The couplet developed into a thing “‘d Ja mode,” was adopted by Dryden, and eventually formed a passport to tragic success on the stage. Because these rimed couplets, however, syn- chronised with Dryden’s rants and with Settle’s heroics, it is rather uncritical for us to mingle and confuse a distinct school of plot and of character with a certain technical form that had its ramifications far outside that school. There are plays in couplets which are not by any means heroic!?: there are plays in blank verse which partake of the nature of the Drawcansir school*.( Rime in tragedy was but a passing, external fashion in dramatic technique, which synchronised very largely with the main heroic period, but which had an influence slight when compared with the influence of the other characteristics of the heroic plays) Heroic verse in drama is really of very little account, historically or otherwise: the heroic play, although in its pure form ephemeral, is one 1 Apart from the adaptations of Corneille mentioned above, there are comedies wholly or partly in rime, such as Duffett’s The Spanish Rogue (King’s company at L.I.F. 1673) and Bulteel’s Amorous Orontus, or, The Lovein Fashion (unacted 1665) ; there are tragi-comedies, such as Etherege’s The Comical Revenge (L.1.F. 1664), Weston’s The Amazon Queen (un- acted 1667), Mrs Behn’s The Forc’d Marriage (L.I.F. 1670), Tuke’s The Adventures of Five Hours (L.1.F. 1663) and Crowne’s Juliana (L.I.F. 1671); there are pastorals, such as Settle’s Pastor Fido (D.G. 1676) and the anonymous The Constant Nymph (D.G. 1677); and there are unheroic tragedies, such as Fane’s The Sacrifice (unacted, 1686) and Stapylton’s Hero and Leander (unacted, 1669); not to mention unclassifiable plays, such as Ecclestone’s Noah’s Flood (unacted, 1679) and the anonymous The Traitor to Himself (unacted, 1678). 2 Among these may be named Mrs Behn’s Abdelazar (D.G. 1676), which came just at the end of the riming fever. Settle in his Pastor Fido (D.G. c. Dec. 1676) and Ravenscroft in his King Edgar and Alfreda (D.L. c. Dec. 1677) both testify to its abatement at that time, prior, be it noted, to Dryden’s recantation, who, in this case, followed the tendency of the time, instead of leading it (although, of course, Dryden had hinted at his weariness in Aureng-Zebe, which was produced at D.L. in Nov. 1675). Heroic plays, however, did not die with rime, as many produced from 1680 onwards can testify. Note many be taken in particular of the anony- - mous Romulus and Hersilia (D.G. 1682), Southerne’s The Loyal Brother (D.L. 1682), and Settle’s The Heir of Morocco (D.L. 1682), Distress’d Innocence (D.L. 1690) and The Ambitious Slave (D.L. 1694). There was a perfect galaxy of blank verse tragedies in the eighteenth century with most decided heroic characteristics. 92 TRAGEDY of the most interesting and influential productions of our theatre. On the more general question of the rise of the heroic sentiment in the drama!, Dryden, in his Essay of Heroick Playes prefixed to The Conquest of Granada (T.R. in B.St. 1670), is quite explicit: For Heroick Plays (he says) the first Light we had of them on the English Theatre, was from the late Sir Wilkam D’ Avenani: It being forbidden him in the Rebellious Times to Act Tragedies and Comedies...he was fore’d to turn his Thoughts another way; and to introduce the Examples of Moral Virtue, writ in Verse, and perform’d in Recitative Musick. 'The Original of this Musick and of the Scenes which adorn’d this Work, he had from the Italian Opera’s: But he heighten’d his Characters...from the Example of Corneille and some French Poets....He (then) re- view’d his Siege of Rhodes, and caus’d it to be acted as ajust Drama. ...But as few Men have the Happiness to begin and finish any new Project, so neither did he live to make his Design perfect.... There wanted the Fulness of a Plot, and the Variety of Characters to form it as it ought; and perhaps, something might have been added to the Beauty of the Style. From this Dryden proceeds to argue that ‘‘an Heroick Play ought to be an Imitation (in little) of an Heroick Poem; and consequently that Love and Valour ought to be the Subject of it.” D’Avenant, in Dryden’s opinion, had not done this: he had made his Siege of Rhodes a unity but he had not drawn ‘‘all Things as far above ordinary Proportion of the Stage, as that is beyond the common Words and Actions of Human Life,” “‘he comply’d not enough with the Greatness and Majesty of an Heroick Poem.” His attempt was rather “to show us ourselves in our ordinary Habits” than present an exalted picture of extraordinary nobility. For Dryden, on the contrary, ‘‘an Heroick Poet is not ty’d to a bare Representation of what is true, or exceeding probable”: he 1 Practically the only essay on this aspect of the subject is that of Child, C. G., entitled The Rise of the Heroic Play (Mod. Lang. Notes, xix. June 6, 1904). In this study he lays great stress, and justly, on D’Avenant as the founder of the species in England. Professor Saints- bury’s remarks in his Dryden (E.M.L. Series) are also illuminating, al- though a trifle vague and unsubstantiated. THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 93 may, indeed ought, to “let himself loose to visionary Ob- jects.” The rest of Dryden’s discourse is equally valuable. He defends the “frequent use of Drums and Trumpets, and the Representations of Battles” by an appeal to Shakespeare. He affirms Almanzor to be modelled on Achilles, Rinaldo and Artéban of Calprenéde, but professes to love the first two rather more than the last. He casts over the punctilious honour of the French, trusting to magnanimous passion. He defends Almanzor’s words to sovereign powers and to the gods by the example of Achilles and Rinaldo, even of Jonson’s Cethegus. From all of this several definite facts can be gleaned. D’Avenant is recognised as the first introducer of heroic motives. Dryden has observed his imitation of the Italian opera, his imitation of Corneille: he might have added that he was certainly one of the first to go for plot to the contem- porary romance of Mdlle de Scudéry, and that in his Love and Honour he carried on the native romance tradition, re- moving it a step further towards the heroic ideal. On the other hand, several things are noted as lacking in D’Avenant’s work: (1) fulness of plot; (2) variety of characters; (3) extra- ordinary incidents (magic and such like); and (4) almost supernatural nobility of characters. If we turn to The Siege of Rhodes, we can see exactly what Dryden felt was wanting?. The scene is all right—a nebulous Rhodes. There is a hero Alphonso and a heroine Janthe, divided from one another: but, in spite of heroic self-sacrifice on the part of Christians and of pagans alike, there is a softer atmosphere than in any of Dryden’s plays. Alphonso is not all-conquering; he is, in the first part, wounded, in the second, taken prisoner. Soliman is not a villain, but acts as magnanimously as any hero. What Dryden wanted was, first, some thrilling super- 1 The Siege of Rhodes, as printed in 1656 and 1659, was first performed in Rutland House probably in Sept. 1656. The preface is dated Aug. 17 and there is a MS. date in a B.M. copy (E. 498) which looks like Sept. 29. Between Dec. 1658 and May 1659 appeared the second part at the Cockpit. This was printed in 1663 after revivals in the Restoration theatres. 94 TRAGEDY natural incidents, secondly, the presence of some greater complication of plot and of emotions, and, thirdly, the heightening of the character of the hero. The whole atmo- sphere of the play is weak; the characters are shadows; the language is not so refined as in the dramas of Dryden. More- over, although The Siege of Rhodes is written partly in couplets, it is not so regular as the later heroic tragedies. Its operatic origin is still seen in the varying measures employed, and in the choruses, of which any Restoration lyrist might have been contemptuous: Then the hug’ous great Turk, Came to make us more work; With enow men to eat All he meant to defeat; Whose wonderful worship did confirm us In the fear he would bide here So long till he Dy’d here, By the Castle he build (szc) on Philermus. Dryden and the others wanted something more refined than this, something decidedly stronger, more arresting and more pronounced in utterance. In point of fact, Dryden might have found what he was seeking for, those more definite “heroic” elements, in a play written almost contemporaneously with D’Avenant’s, but, because given no performance in the theatres, forgotten by the men of the time. This is The Heroick-Lover, or, The Infanta of Spain (printed 1661) by a certain George Cart- wright, of whom all we know is that he was “of Fullham, Gent.” Scened in Poland, this tragedy is almost entirely in rime, and beyond an amount of contemporary political re- ference not usual in the ordinary heroic tragedy!, it presents in the characters and in the language, the germs of the type to be more fully developed later. Nonantious is the typical magnanimous and loyal lover and friend of the heroic play, exactly equivalent to the Acacis of Howard and Dryden. The Prince of The Heroick-Lover courts Francina, who is passion- 1 The part of the plot which deals with the king and the revolt of Zorates and Selucious evidently refers to Charles I. It is possible that this interesting play was written nearer 1650 than 1660. THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 955 ately adored by Nonantious, and the latter is cast into a swirl of conflicting emotions such as we meet with all through the course of this dramatic form. Do, or not do, criminal ev’ry way. Of evils, chuse the lesser of the two. They are so equal, I know not which to do. My love to fair Francina, bids me not; My duty to my Prince, can’t be forgot: How both, the ballance hold, so just and true, That willing both, I know not which to do!. In such a speech is recognisable the sentiment that runs through all the tragedies of the next fifteen years. In the end, this Nonantious, so magnanimous he is, stabs himself to give the Prince freedom to gain his mistress, and his last words are the words of a later hero: Yet fore I die, here on my bended Knee, Do I bequeath Francina, willingly. All, all the interest, which I have in her, Henceforward I do give, unto you Sir... I know she is too poor, a gift for you, But I can do not more, then I can do. Since that my life to you, is so suspect, ’Tis fit my Death, shoo’d witness my respect. (Stabs himself. Francina, somewhat like Orrery’s Queen of Hungary, departs into a nunnery, rejecting the proffered crown, which, without explanation, is handed to the Princess Flora of Spain, no doubt dragged in for political reasons. In politics, too, this forgotten author reproduces the thoughts of practically every one of his followers. In his play, the Admiral, approached by the conspirators, bursts out in true cavalier wrath at their proposals: Your Doctrine is of Devils; I fear to name The words which you have utter’d, without shame, That I shoo’d help, for to correct the King, Were he the worst, of any living thing! Or were his Royal soul, more black then Hell, Far be’t in me, such wickedness shoo’d dwell... me i aes 2 Iv. iv. 96 TRAGEDY To us, who cannot judge of common things Does not belong, the judgement of great Kings. They shoo’d be like stars, seated in the sky, Far from our reach, though seeming near our eye1, Apart from this play, however, and apart from the rimed translations of French dramas mentioned above, among which Mrs Phillips’s Pompey (Smock Alley, Dublin, 1663) was the first, but the Pompey (L.I.F. 1664) written by Waller, Buckhurst and Sedley2—perhaps a few others as well—was more famous—apart from these, we can number few plays which, prior to 1664, presented those elements which Dryden desired. He did not want such mere alterations: he wanted a native drama of heroic grandeur, different from the French, not dependent upon it. There is no doubt that Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, was first on the field. From one of his letters we learn that as early as Jan. 23, 1661/2, he was penning a play in heroic couplets, as he had heard that the King favoured that type of drama. Orrery, however, was not only less popular than Dryden, not only belongs to a slightly different school of dramatic productivity, but probably got his plays acted a trifle later than those of the future poet-laureate. Henry V was first performed on Sat. Aug. 13, 1664. That this was his primal attempt at actual dramatic representation seems almost certain from the fact that Pepys on Wed. Sept. 28 of the same = Sennen on Affairs of State...the fifth edition, Corrected and much Enlarged (1703), 1. 209—The Session of the Poets, to the Tune of Cock- Lawrel: “B----tand Sydley, with two or three more, Translators of Pompey, dispute in their claim; But Apollo made them be turn’d out of door, And bid them be gone like Fools as they came.” The production, in spite of its contemporary success, is not brilliant; as the writer of the epilogue recognises: “Tt came from France, where it had good success, Which makes us Hope well, though I must confess The Mounsieur’s something Altered in his Dress.” I have also mentioned above the Heraclius of Lodowick Carlell. Ward thought this was lost (111. 554), but the Heraclius that is non-extant is the one acted at L.I.F.on Mar. 8, 1664. Genest (1.73) seems to have confused the dates. For Carlell, see Gray, C.H., Lodowick Carliell (Chicago, 1905). THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 97 year speaks of The General as Orrery’s second play1. More than six months previously, by Wed. Jan. 27, 1663/4, Howard and Dryden’s The Indian Queen had been put upon the stage. On the other hand, if Dryden was the first to get his plays acted, it must be remembered that Orrery was a person of distinction in his day and that his plays in manuscript may well have been circulating among the court wits in 1661 and 1662. His influence can in no ways be disregarded. Dryden himself recognises that in his dedication to The Rival Ladies (T.R. in B.St. 1664). Orrery’s plays are easily divisible into two classes, Henry V and The Black Prince (T.R. in B.St. Oct. 1667) standing together in contradistinction to The General? (issued later as Altemira and acted first in September 1664), Mustapha (L.I.F. April 1665), Tryphon (L.I.F. December 1668), Herod the Great (printed 1694) and the unpublished Zoroastres pre- served in the British Museum in MS. Both groups, certainly, have certain things in common. Both are highly spectacular, both are more restrained that Dryden’s productions, both dwell much with love, both tend to introduce the theme of passion opposed to friendship, a theme already noted in Cartwright’s The Heroick-Lover, both approach more nearly to the French drama than do the more well-known heroic plays of the time, both are inclined towards tragi-comical conclusions. On the other hand, all of the second group deal with unreal romantic worlds: Henry V and The Black Prince continue in an altered strain the native chronicle history tradition. Orrery, then, is to be noted for his important influence along certain definite lines: he has taken up the English historical heroic tragedy; he has decidedly imitated Corneille 1 There is some slight doubt about Mustapha, which may have been performed in 1663. The evidence adduced up to the present, however, that it was acted then, is inconclusive. A student of mine, Mr F. W. Payne, suggests with some plausibility that The Black Prince may have been earlier than Henry V (unpublished thesis in University of London). Of this, however, there is no sure proof. See note at end on Orrery. 2 The General exists in two MSS., one at Plymouth and the other at Worcester College, Oxford. The former was printed by Halliwell- Phillipps in the Plymouth Library Catalogue (1853). Formerly this play was attributed to Shirley. NRD 7 98 TRAGEDY in many a character and scene; he has adopted that inde- terminate realm of drama which, in England and abroad, hovered between the tragedy and the serious comedy. Henry V is not a tragedy: it is rather an heroic history with plentiful love scenes and the introduction of a great deal of argument on the subject of the conflicting claims of passion and friendship. The Black Prince similarly introduces to us a mass of antagonistic amatory sentiments, centering around a widow heroine with four separate lovers. The eternal clash of contrasting emotions is everywhere emphasised: Two Ills he offers, one he bids me choose, I must my Mistress, or my Father loose?. The unnatural scenes, in which Orrery tried to imitate the French, are seen here in the long letter the reading of which Pepys tells us nearly damned the play”, just as they are ex- emplified in another way in The General (Altemira) where Mellizer stands through five or six pages while his son is dying “for they were notto beinterrupted by aninferiour Actor’.” In The General the conflict of Love and Honour is placed mostly in the heart of the character whose position gives the title to the play. This second drama of Orrery’s is another which does not end disastrously. Mustapha is quite evidently de- rived from Georges de Scudéry’s L’Illustre Bassa, and again presents before us a love drama of tragic proportions which in this case ends disastrously. In it the Queen of Hungary is introduced in captivity, Zanger and Mustapha both in love with her. Through false reports Solyman orders Mustapha to be executed, and Zanger, who had sworn that he would not live longer than his brother, dutifully commits suicide. Roxalana, who had complicated the plot, is divorced and the fatal captive queen retires to a nunnery. Naturally the emotional battles of the mind are very pronounced. Mustapha feels them most badly: Fortune did never in one day design For any Heart, four Torments great as mine; I to my Friend and Brother Rival am. She, who did kindle, would put out my Flame; 2 vir, ay, = Genest, I1. 260. THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 99 I from my Father’s anger must remove, And that does banish me from her I love}, Heroic follies there are in abundance, the eternal sophistry and argument inaptly imitated from the French theatre. Thus Zanger: Since Nature no Religion knows but Love, He that loves most, does most Religious prove2— or the same character of the Queen of Hungary in grief: When she her Royal Infant did embrace, Her Eyes such Floods of Tears show’r’d on her Face, That then, oh Mustapha! I did admire How so much Water sprang from so much Fire: And to increase the Miracle, I found At the same time, my Heart both burnt and drown’d3, The same follies, the same sophistries, the same conflicts, occur in all Orrery’s dramas. In Tryphon, the tyrant who gives his name to the piece loves Cleopatra, the beloved of Aretus, the unknown real king, and then shifts his affections to Stratonice. He bids his servant convey the good news to the latter, and remarks that While Siratonice you to my Throne invite, To Cleopatra my Excuse I’le write. Stratonice, however, happens to be the beloved of Demetrius, his friend, and at the conclusion Tryphon and his tool Arcas commit suicide, leaving the good characters toa happy ending. The conflict here appears in the breasts of several dramatis personae. In Act Iv Aretus is in the throes of it: **O Love, O Friendship, and O Fatal Vow!” he cries, “To which shall I pay my Obedience now?” Love is just as mysterious and wonderful a thing as in the other plays. Demetrius comes to adore Stratonice and Aretus upbraids him: Was’t fit this Love from me conceal’d shou’d be? to which Demetrius’ answer is straight and to the point: Alas ’twas till last night unknown to me. 1 qr. i. A comparison of these sentiments with those of The Heroick Lover almost induces one te believe that Orrery had seen that drama. Piated. * ii. 7-2 100 TRAGEDY The follies of the Orrerian drama must have been evident to all. Above has been noticed the disgust of the audience at some of the unnatural scenes, and Sedley’s satiric remarks, chronicled faithfully by Pepys, have enabled us to identify The General as the later Altemira!. On the other hand, Orrery’s plays have a strength that D’Avenant’s lack. Their refined language, their verse skill, their outstanding char- acters, this conflict, which, crude as it may be, is interesting and appealing—all must have been noticed by Dryden when searching for a model. Dryden, however, was no man to write dramas that would bore an audience. He was writing for money, and his heroic tragedies, marking a distinct type of their own, are at once more stirring, more impossible, more bombastic, and more popular in tone than any which had gone before. The spectators could but laugh at some of Orrery’s sentences, they could but hiss at some chill Gallicised scene, they could but be thrilled at Maximin’s notorious vaunt to the gods. In analysing the Dryden species, therefore, we find that he has introduced a larger, fuller, more intricate plot, characters rather more varied and all very much more exaggerated in tone, numerous scenes of strife and battle and murder, a touch of cynicism in the songs and occasionally in the dialogue—an atmosphere, that is to say, rather more “heroic” in the Restoration sense of the word than romantic. The author of The Conquest of Granada is not wrong in saying that he made his hero approach more nearly to Rinaldo than to Artéban. From the first to the last Dryden followed this plan. The Indian Queen, staged at the T.R. in B.St. in Jan. 1663/4, shows it no less clearly than his latest plays. It is impossible now, perhaps, to disentangle in this first play the scenes written respectively by Sir Robert Howard and by Dryden, but the tragedy as a whole approaches so closely in temper and in plan Dryden’s after works that we may presume the general outline and at least a fair proportion of the dialogue to have been by him?. The heroic figure here is Montezuma, 1 Wed. Sept. 28, 1664. * Scott attributed the Montezuma and Zempoalla scenes, along with that THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY IOI general of the Inca’s forces. We are introduced to him just when he has defeated the Mexicans. Flushed with victory, he has asked for the hand of the Inca’s daughter, Orazia (the heroic heroine), whom he, with true ardour, loves to despera- tion. He is refused, and the insult stings his mighty soul to madness, He offers to free Acacis (the heroic magnanimous rival), the Prince of the Mexicans whom he has taken prisoner, but who, full of honourable thoughts, rejects the proffered freedom!. Montezuma then joins the Mexican forces, and, by his prowess alone, defeats his erstwhile inconquerable army and takes prisoner both the Inca and Orazia. Here, however, his troubles are only to begin. Zempoalla (the vengeful woman-type) the usurping Queen of Mexico, falls in love with him, while Traxalla (the heroic villain) her former general and suitor to her hand, does the same with Orazia, who has also honourably smitten the heart of Acacis. From all this intricate mélée of emotions ensue various scenes of love, honour, virtue and vice, interrupted by the entrance of the forces of the rightful queen, Amexia, who turns out to be Montezuma’s mother. The hero therefore is now noble enough by birth to marry Orazia—which he promptly does. To clear the air of his sorrowful presence, the unhappy Acacis commits suicide, as does Zempoalla for shame, while Traxalla, the only other inconvenient character left, is slain by Monte- zuma, so that in very truth, as Dryden himself noted when he was writing his sequel The Indian Emperour, there re- mained ‘‘but two of the considerable Characters alive?.” Noticeable, however, is the fact, that, as in Orrery’s plays, it is only the evil and weaker characters who are thus sum- marily despatched, the play ending happily for the magnani- mous Montezuma and the divine Orazia. On this plan or a plan similar to this were based nearly of the incantation, to Dryden (The Dramatic Works of fohn Dryden, ed. Scott, W. and Saintsbury, G., Edinburgh, 1882, 11. 225). 1 It is noticeable, particularly in the Dryden type of drama, that honour hardly enters into the actions of the hero, but sways the lives of the lesser characters. , 2 Connection of the Indian Emperor to the Indian Queen, dispersed among the audience in 1665. 102 TRAGEDY all Dryden’s later heroic plays, and the stock characters, so pronounced here, appear again and again, disguised as best the author might determine, but quite recognisable. Of the manner in which these characters are presented, not much need be said. Dryden took over enough from Orrery to make his psychological delineations of the same crude yet forceful type. When one hears Montezuma lament: Oh Tyrant Love, how cruel are thy Laws! I forfeit Friendship, or betray thy Cause’, or cry: Thou hast perform’d what Honour bid thee do; But Friendship bars what Honour prompts me to, one recognises the voice of the Black Prince or of Aretus. When one listens to the monologue of Zempoalla: Whence shou’d proceed this strange Diversity In my Resolves?...... Does he command in Chains? What wou’d he do Proud Slave, if he were free, and I were so? But is he bound, ye Gods, or am I free? Tis Love, ’tis Love, that thus disorders me, one hears the authentic voices of those who, in the other dramas, had felt a similar torment in their hearts. Here are the same drivelling, unreal, passionless theorisings of un- imagined types and spurious emotions, yet types and emo- tions, which, as Dryden knew, were bound to appeal to his age. Pepys had found the street ‘‘full of coaches” for The Indian Queen on Jan. 27, 1663/4 and heard it was ‘‘a fine thing.” When he saw it on Feb. 1, he thought it ‘‘a most pleasant show, and beyond my expectation.” Its success, no doubt, as well as the rich scenery which the actors had caused to be painted, led Dryden to write the sequel of The Indian Emperour, printed in 1667, but acted at the T.R. in B.St. about April 1665. This play marks no material advance in the development of the species. Not superior in poetic power, more involved in plot, wholly im- possible in its heroic magnanimity and its passionless, un- psychological love and hate, it is rendered more popular by LD Rata THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 103 a number of scenes of stress and struggle, glutting to the full this new taste in the audience for spectacle and for show. There are magic caves, and temples, and prisons—there are visions and the loud thundering of cannon—everything, in fact, that might make the play more of a popular success on the stage. In Tyrannick Love, or, The Royal Martyr (T.R. in B.St. c. April 1669) there is, however, a slight change. All the elements of the earlier plays are retained here. There are the same rich scenes, the introduction of the supernatural in the astral spirits, the same criss-cross affections, and many of the same types. Maximin is the villain emperor, modelled apparently on the Valentinians of the Jacobean period, with a lust towards S. Catherine, who might be compared with Dorothea of The Virgin Martyr, which, it may be noted, was evidently a fairly popular play in the repertoire of the King’s comedians?. There is nomagnanimous hero, but Porphyrius, Maximin’s general, is the sympathetic character of the piece, loving Berenice, Maximin’s wife, and beloved by Valeria, who is in turn adored by Placidius. Again there is a general carnage at the close which leaves Berenice and Porphyrius to carry on. In Tyrannick Love, however, one new thing, just hinted at in the former plays, is emphasised. It is here that there occur for the first time those notorious rants which were to become such an outstanding characteristic of the heroic drama of the years 1670 to 1677. The Maximin to the gods passage does not appear till near the close of the fifth act, but countless others come down to the same standard of idiotic, inflated and grandiloquent nonsense. In the very first act Maximin shows his character. A messenger an- nounces a misfortune to his son, whereupon this giant super- man bursts out with tumid rhetoric: Some God now, if he dares, relate what’s past; Say but he’s dead, that God shall mortal be. Nor, even in his last words, after he has stabbed Placidius, does he sink to a humbler strain: 1 The Virgin Martyr was first acted on Sat. Feb. 16, 1661. It was played again on Thurs. Feb. 27, 1667/8, Mon. March 2, Th. March 19 and Wed. May 6, 1668. This last production was about a year before the appearance of Dryden’s play. 104 TRAGEDY And after thee I’ll go, Revenging still, and following ev’n to the other world my blow. [Stabs him again. And shoving back this Earth on which I sit, 1’ll mount, and scatter all the Gods I hit. Reading such passages now, one can hardly restrain one’s risibility, but Dryden was sufficiently a man of the time to realise that such rants were precisely the things the audience wanted, something exaggerated to force their attention and to raise the whole above the levels of ordinary life. The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards} (‘T.R. in B.St. c. December 1670) is decidedly a much finer piece of work, our sympathies being actually seized—as they are seized by so few of the heroic tragedies—for the unfortunate loves of the gallant hero and the loveable heroine. The poetry of this play is beautiful, nor can we gain an idea of Dryden’s true worth until we compare such a play as this with one of a writer like Crowne. Romance for dulness, poetry for mere verse, interest, if peculiar, for flatulent bombast—this is what we find: and, even if the play is poetically unreal, it does take us to a world that even our sophisticated minds may delight to dwell in for “‘a dream while or so.” The Conquest of Granada is prefaced by the famous Essay of Heroique Plays and contains the no less famous epilogue on the poets of the past age, as well as the Defence of the Epilogue. Altogether, it and the critical matter which accompanies it, may be taken as a grand vindication of this particular species. Here we can see the magnanimous character of the hero, who sets his vanquished enemies free: But, since thou threaten’st us, I’ll set thee free, That I again may fight, and conquer thee— the frail yet doughty heroine, the half-foolish, half-villainous King Boabdelin, the evil woman character, Lyndaraxa, the villain Zulema. As with the other dramas, this tragedy ends with a universal massacre of the evil characters and the re- tention of the pair of lovers, Almanzor and Almahide. Again The head title and the title to Part II read Almanzor and Almahide: or, the Conquest of Granada. THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 105 we get the ridiculous rants and the cynical songs. Again the continual atmosphere of war, forming a lurid setting for a plot that is full of exaggerated love and passion. Dryden’s last rimed tragedy followed at Drury Lane about November 1675. Aureng-Zebe! is his final word in the typical form of this drama, although he was to continue utilising heroic incidents until his death. Once more the characters are familiar—the noble and valorous Aureng-Zebe, son to the Emperor, loving the equally noble Indamora, a captive queen like the Queen of Hungary in Orrery’s Mustapha, the foolish emperor and his evil consort, Nor- mahal, the semi-villain Morat, son to Nourmahal, married to Melesinda, the pathetic lover, Arimant, left out in the cold. The complication of amatory emotions is greater in this play than ever. Indamora is loved by the father emperor, by his son Aureng-Zebe, by his step-son Morat and by Arimant, Governor of Agra, she loving Aureng-Zebe alone, and Aureng-Zebe for his part being adored in an evil way by his step-mother, Nourmahal. The plot is thus as intricate as, if not more intricate than, before, and these love passions are set in the midst of scenes of fighting, excitement and suspense. Morat is killed, and Nourmahal runs “‘distracted.”’ Eventually the latter dies, leaving once more the pair of true lovers, after innumerable thrills, to marry and settle down in peace. In Aureng-Zebe, which on the whole is one of Dryden’s best plays, the most interesting features are the comparative lack of bombast and the singular freedom of the rimed verse. It would almost appear as if the author had been tentatively feeling his way towards the greater liberty of All for Love. It abounds in run-on lines, and there are passages scattered through it of a pre-eminent beauty. Truly Nettleton is right when he declares that ‘‘ quotation has not staled the fine passage”? in Iv. 1”: When I consider Life, ’tis all a Cheat; Yet, fool’d with Hope, Men favour the Deceit. 1 The 1699 edition has the title Aureng-Zebe; or, The Great Mogul. 2 Nettleton, G. H., English Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (1914), p. 68. 106 TRAGEDY On the three lines noted above, the heroic tragedy de- veloped, one branch tending towards Drydenesque rant, battle and heroics, another towards the Orrerian historical play, and still a third towards the stricter calm, precision and artificiality of the French style and aim. Thus Caryl in The English Princess, or, The Death of Richard the III (L.1.F. March 1667) early took up the hints given in Henry V and presented an heroic tragedy with no outlandish setting of oriental scenery, a fact to which the prologue duly draws attention: You must today your Appetite prepare For a plain English Treat of homely Fare: We neither Bisque, nor Ollias shall advance From Spanish Novel, or from French Romance; Nor shall we charm your Ears, or feast your Eyes With Turkey-Works, or Indian Rarityes. There are ghosts in this play, it is true, and there is scenical display of a very limited sort, but for the most part Caryl’s tragedy is set on a lower key. It unites the English historical subject with a pseudo-classic calm, obviously imitated from Orrery. As Pepys contemporaneously expressed it, ‘‘there was nothing eminent in it, as some tragedys are.” A similar play, the sole production of its author, Thomas Shipman, is Henry the Third of France, Stabbed by a Fryer. With the Fall of the Guise (D.L. c. July 1678). Genest has made a con- demnation of the first four acts of this drama, and modern readers might be inclined to extend that condemnation to the whole five. It is indeed a sorry attempt, even though the author, in his preface with its vigorous defence of rime, evidently thought that his work was a masterpiece. The English historical play with the elements of heroics or classic calm had a considerable importance later, as we shall see when we come to consider the tragedies of 1678-1700, but just for the moment it could not stand up against its more formidable because more thrilling and more spectacular rivals. This spectacular kind was pursued energetically in the first experiment of Elkanah Settle, Cambyses, King of Persia THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 107 (L.I.F. c. Jan. 1671)'. Modelled somewhat on the Dryden plan, it was a huge success and ran to four editions before the close of the century. All the formulae for a popular heroic play are in it—the curtain-falls and dramatic risings®, the overwhelming atmosphere of love, the prison scenes’, the scenes of horror‘, of ghosts, of spirits, of supernatural phe- nomena®, the outlandish country and names. There is the usual stock king, the stage villain, Prexaspes, the “young Captive Prince” Osiris, and the beautiful mistress, Mandana, who sets all hearts aflame. This, like Dryden’s plays, isa tragi- comedy, in the sense that it ends with the overthrow of the evil and the preservation of the good characters. Settle in the following years was destined to become one of the principal masters of the ‘‘ quality he professed.” His next play, The Empress of Morocco (D.G. July 1673), when printed, was so far honoured as to be adorned with six “Sculptures. The Like never done before,” illustrating scenes in the play. The drama, which had been first produced at court®, must have been a tremendous success’, or the Theatre Royal management would not have pilloried it in Duffett’s burlesque: and certainly its success, in spite of obvious absurdities, was not quite unmerited. The show of the Dryden species is there, and the atmosphere is that of love and war. The characters are typical: Laula the-Queen- Mother in conspiracy with Crimalhaz; the honest prince, Muly Hamet, who, after a world of fighting, settles down to marry his love, Mariamne. The plot, however, is slightly modified from the Dryden type, a fact which gives the play a certain novelty, and the verse at times rises to a fair pitch of excellence. 1 Downes says it was the first new play after Christmas, 1666, but a consideration of Settle’s age at this date leads one to postulate 1671 for 1667. The play was performed at Oxford on July 7, 1671, and was probably new then. a Cir Acts, * Ch Act. 3. eNIT. 2V; 5 y and tv. 6 In 1669 or 1670 according to the preface to Ibrahim (D.G. 1676). Ward gives the date of public acting as 1671 (111. 396), but would seem to be wrong notwithstanding the testimony of Anthony 4 Wood (Athenae Oxonienses, Iv. 683). 7 In the preface to Dennis’ Remarks upon Mr Pope’s Translation of Homer (1717), we are told that it ran “‘a month together.” 108 TRAGEDY His success in this play soon led Settle to follow on with similar productions, The Conquest of China, By the Tartars (D.G. May 1675), full of rant, again a tragi-comedy in that, although a love-lorn princess of China sacrifices herself for her love and a villain causes massacres all round, the hero and the heroine are left alive at the end, and Ibrahim, the Illustrious Bassa (D.G. c. June 1676), save for Pastor Fido, the last of his riming productions. Derived obviously from the romance of Madeleine de Scudéry or from the homony- mous play by her brother Georges, the plot and the char- acters of this latter heroic play are on the same plan as before. Ibrahim is the typical prince “‘to whose Success the Sultan’s Glory’s due,”’ and whose Wondrous Arms such Miracles had done, I came but to behold the Fields he won, as the Sultan himself expresses it. The plot is fairly simple, and in a way is a direct complement or contrary to Dryden’s The Indian Queen, Ibrahim, returning victorious from war, asks not but is offered as a bride, Asteria, the daughter of Sultan Solyman. Ibrahim, however, has other thoughts, and dares to refuse the proffered maiden in favour of Isabella, with whom in turn the Sultan falls in love. The monarch is eventually converted by her purity and restores her to Ibrahim. In the meantime, Roxalana, the emperor’s wife, has poisoned herself through jealousy and shame. We may easily recognise Montezuma in Ibrahim, the usual Emperor in Solyman, the forsaken queen in Roxalana, Orazia in Isabella. ‘There is nothing new but a slight juggling of their relations to one another. The heroic play always suffered from a lack of novelty in the conception of the situations. The other play of Settle’s mentioned above, Pastor Fido, or, The Faithful Shepherd (D.G. c. Dec. 1676) may be noted here in passing as the last riming play of this author, and as one of the few pastoral ‘‘heroic” dramas of the time. Many others followed in the same line of popularised, we might almost call them national, heroics. D’Urfey presented The Siege of Memphis, or, The Ambitious Queen (D.L. c. Sept. THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 109 1676), an unsuccessful play, in which Zemlura, Queen of Egypt, falls in love with the Syrian Moaron, who in turn adores Zemlura’s sister, Amasis. This drama, it may be noted, had a definitely tragic ending, a possible cause of its cool reception on the stage. The absence of the magnanimous hero is likewise noticeable. Pordage also came forward with Herod and Mariamne (L.1.F. Oct. 1673) which we are in- formed in the prologue was written in 1661 or in 1662; as this date, however, carries the history of the species even beyond Dryden and Orrery, and as the play has many characteristics of the later heroic dramas, we may presume that the year of composition was nearer 1670 than 1660. The characters of this play are as stereotyped as those of the others, and the rants at the close remind us of Dryden’s Maximin. Herod has murdered Mariamne, then stabs and is stabbed by his rival Tyridates: whereupon the latter cries out that, revenge having done its part, love will now go on: And finish what Mariamnes Eyes begun. Though it grows dark, my Ghost shall rove about, And never stop till it has found thine out. At this the burly Herod is duly distressed. He had never thought of this contingency. “Ha!” he cries. “‘Into what Confusion am I hurl’d, Hee’! be my Rival in the other World,” and then comes to him the remedy, If Souls can fight, I thee to Battle dare. Pordage gave one other heroic drama to the theatre in The Siege of Babylon (D.G. c. Sept. 1677) wherein the “‘ Love and Honour” emphasised in the very first line betray no marked modifications from other previous examples. Rants, badly imitated from Dryden, disfigure Banks’ The Rival Kings, or, The Loves of Oroondates and Statira (D.L. c. June 1677), plainly derived from Calprenéde’s Cassandre and associated 1 Cf. the dedication. 2 The play was produced by the Duke’s players at the old L.I.F house after that was vacated by the King’s troupe in June 1673. See an article by the present writer in The Times Literary Supplement, Sept. 21, 1922. 110 TRAGEDY with Lee’s The Rival Queens, produced earlier in the year at the same theatre. Another play by Banks, The Destruction of Troy (D.G. c. Nov. 1678) was composed probably before the rimed fever gave over and was re-worked in a later strain: the same possibly is true of Mrs Behn’s Abdelazer, or, The Moor’s Revenge (D.G. 1676). This latter play, based on Marlowe’s Lust’s Dominion, connects us with a few plays by Otway and Sedley, where we find a very marked element of Elizabethan reminiscences in the midst of the heroic rants. Here the central figure, brave and bombastic but also half a villain, is Abdelazer, a moor, married to Florella and be- loved by the Queen of Spain. Complications arise when the new king comes to adore the Moor’s wife, who, along with the king, is murdered by the pair of guilty lovers. Abdelazer then for his own purposes strives to kill the Queen’s other son, Philip, together with the Cardinal. There is a mass of fighting and intrigue, in the midst of which the Moor, after murdering the Queen and making love to Leonora, is be- trayed by his own lieutenant, Osmin, and dies ranting. ‘The plot is plainly not of the ordinary Drawcansir type, but the love and honour that pervades the whole is in the typical heroic strain. Even the Cardinal can tell us that “‘ Love and Honour” he has ‘‘always made the Business” of his ‘‘ Life1,”’ or else feel “‘a Contest of Love and Honour” swelling his “Rising Heart?.” Among other plays which belong to this category, Sedley’s Antony and Cleopatra (D.G. Feb. 1676/7), a tragedy which Ward dates ten years earlier and inexplicably calls the ‘‘latest example of the English rimed heroic play,” inevitably fails when placed alongside of Dryden’s or of Shakespeare’s masterpieces on the same theme, but Otway’s Alcibiades (D.G. Sept. 1675) and Don Carlos, Prince of Spain (D.G. c. June 1676) merit fuller attention. The first, possibly, has hardly the graces of the second, but is by no means negligible. Don Carlos is truly a triumph of the heroic species. The characters are all of the same stock type we have met with LEV 2 1Vs ay. i: * This mistake is copied by Schelling in the C.H.E.L. vu. 139. THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY III before—the artificial monarch, the machiavellian Ruy-Gomez and the Edmund-like villain Don John, but the language and the sentiments are much more natural and unaffected than those of the ordinary productions of this school, and Otway has an absence of rant which should gain our appreciative commendation. Of all the authors of the Drydenesque tragedy, however, Lee takes precedence. An entirely tragic writer; he pro- duced not a single line of comedy. His mind seemed too fixed on the gruesome side of life, on the hard and rocky paths of existence, ever to turn aside to happier and to more pleasant prospects. A magnificent reader of his own works, he yet seems to have been of that self-sensitive type of man who fails when the world’s eyes are bent on him: so that, after a short period, he abandoned the actor’s career in disgust. That his mind had a morbid turn cannot be denied : but it is equally impossible to deny that he possessed to no small degree the gifts of the true poet, felicity and enthusiasm. He dwelt too much on those periods of history when vice seemed to rise to abnormal heights—Rome of the Neros, Rome of the Borgias and Paris of Saint Bartholomew’s Day—but in his finest plays he has captured our attention for themes which: are odious in themselves and which do not always contain the requisites for a true tragic plot. Whether he sank to rime or rose with blank verse there are scattered through his works passages which can remind us only of the best of the later Elizabethans—of Webster and of Ford—and sometimes even of Shakespeare himself. Lee’s rimed heroic plays are only three in number, al- though we must remember that he, like many of the others, reproduced the atmosphere of heroism even after he had abandoned rime and adopted blank verse. His dramatic career he opened with The Tragedy of Nero, Emperour of Rome (D.L. May 1674), a play practically wholly written in rime?, and thus tuning in with the popular fancy. So closely indeed has Lee followed the prevailing mood of the age, that his bombast is hardly to be matched even in the worst 1 There is a little blank verse, and one or two passages in prose. 112 TRAGEDY productions of the same cast}. Probably the finest scenes in it are those where Brittanicus runs mad?—an early sign of a fatal bent in Lee’s own mind. These are indeed admirably executed, although the horror of the whole piece is too con- tinuous. There is no working up to a preconceived end, and when we consider that it begins with a murder, we realise that our interest must flag somewhat ere the end be reached. Sophonisba, or, Hannibal’s Overthrow (D.L. April 1675) followed the next year, a decided success, not only in its own time, but through at least the first half of the eighteenth century’. Written in rimed verse, it does not reproduce the slightly amateurish rants so visible in Nero, and is decidedly thrilling in a melodramatic way. Scathing as is Ward’s criticism of it, it does seem to contain characters and language calculated not only to appeal to a poetic taste, but also to arouse the highest emotions in an audience. Follies there are, of course, as in that ridiculous first meeting of Rosalinda and of Massina in Act 11*, but what seventeenth or eighteenth century lady could refuse to cheer Hannibal at his last exit: Haste, haste, Maherbal, and fresh Levies make; Honour that did but now calm Slumbers take, Shall like the Ocean in a Tempest wake: We'll pass new Alpes, new Consuls overthrow, To Rome with far more dreadful Armies go... Nor stop till Rosalinda’s Statue, Crown’d, Sits in the Capitol with Gods enthron’d?5 1 For example Nero’s rants in IJ. iii: “When I look sad, whole Hecatombs should fall. Ha! who are they? my fretting blood does rise: Hands, rest: I’le try to blast him with my Eyes. Make me Basilisk, but one short hour, Some Gop, that would be Nero’s Emperour.” 2 Iv and v. ® There were at least eight editions before 1734. It was revived at the Haymarket in 1707; at D.L. in 1725 and at L.I.F. in 1726 and in 1735. 4 Rosalinda: ‘‘Who’s there? Massina: First instruct me what you are, And how you came to be thus Heavenly fair: What is it makes your Cheeks so fresh and bright, , The Red of Roses, or the Lillies white?” and so on. Vv. THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 113 Undoubtedly, apart from the melodramatic atmosphere, apart from the extraneous trapping of visions and of portents?, there remains in this play a force, an enthusiasm lacking even in the works of Dryden himself. It is the divine passion, the last of the madnesses of poetry, ere poetry of inspiration fell into its slumber of a hundred years. The following year, in Jan. 1675/6, was produced at D.L. Lee’s third tragedy, Gloriana, or, The Court of Augustus Caesar, his “‘worst Tragedy” as Genest styles it?. Genest’s criticism must be accepted carefully. Those who have read this play will agree that in places at least it rises to a certain dramatic intensity by no means unconvincing. Such is that scene in the last act where Gloriana lies in the bed of Augustus, ready to slay him, and Caesario, her lover, comes to part the curtains: Gloriana: Who’s this? am I awake or do I see? Caesario here indeed, can this be he? If thou be Caesar’s Son that did adore The Blood of Pompey, speak, or love no more. Caesario: Love no more. Gloriana: Why dost thou thus with frightful Action gaze? Or art thou but the Ghost of him that was? Caesario: The Ghost of him that was. Gloriana: Such by thy stedfast Eyes thou wou’dst appear, Thy dread replies unusual horrour bear... Who was thy Murd’rer, if thou murder’d be? By Caesar slain, or wert thou kill’d by the... Caesario: Kill’d by thee. These individual passages, wherein Lee rises truly to the heights of his art, make up for the lack of novelty in character drawing and the monotony of the conclusion. Lee was not the kind of man to love tragi-comic endings to his plays, and accordingly we find that the stage at the close of every fifth act is literally strewed with corpses. Deeply influenced by the tendencies of his age, he could not indulge in subtle studies of mind-states, and his characters at this time are simply the stock characters of the heroic tragedy. Augustus 1 Note the ‘‘ Heaven of Blood” and the “‘ Spirits in Battle” in 11. ii. 2 1.182 Ward is equally condemnatory (III. 409). NRD 8 114 TRAGEDY is the ordinary lustful king, to be traced through Dryden from Valentinian and other figures of the early seventeenth century. He develops an evil passion for Gloriana, the mistress of his son Caesario, who in turn is beloved by Narcissa, the pathetic heroine. The last mentioned, as was inevitable in these heroic plays, stabs herself for love. The only other writer during this time who at all ap- proached towards that third type of the heroic tragedy—the duller, more artificial species which tried to imitate the rimed plays of France—was John Crowne, the dramatist patronised by Rochester when that nobleman had cast off Dryden from his good graces. In all Crowne has contributed two heroic plays to the theatre and another, written by an unknown author, he touched up for the stage. The History of Charles the Eighth of France, or, The Invasion of Naples by the French was the first new play acted at the theatre at Dorset Garden in 1671. In spite of its almost contemporary subject matter, it is as heroic as any drama set in Peru or India or China}. The scene is one of war, but the main business of the plot concerns Ferdinand’s love for Cornelia and Charles’ love for Julia, the sister of Ferdinand. It is truly, what the epilogue calls it, “‘a dull Rhiming Play,’ and is interesting only because in type it stands midway between Orrery and Dryden. The Destruction of Ferusalem by Titus Vespasian (two parts D.L. Jan. 1676/7) is almost equally dull although its greater licence and more numerous stirring scenes procured for it a greater need of contemporary approval. The other play, which Crowne merely rendered fit for the stage, is a translation of Racine’s Andromaque*, and has solely an historic significance. In all of these plays Crowne was obviously trying to combine popular elements with his natural leaning towards pseudo- classicism. That leaning towards classicism is more clearly seen in his later dramas, Thyestes, Darius, Regulus and Caligula. In thus passing over in review the actual heroic tragedies of the years 1664~77, I have indicated so much of the plot and structure of the dramas that little need now be said in 1 See particularly 11. i. 2 Andromache (D.G. c. August 1674). THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 115 a general summary of the various characteristics of the species. All three types, as has-been abundantly evident, had qualities in common, the only differences being, in the Dryden species a superabundance of rant and stirring scenes, in the Orrerian a more classic chill and chastened calm. Love, as is perfectly obvious, was the prevading atmosphere of all three, a love that wrapped everything in its control and lost itself in ridiculous similes and nonsensical reasonings. “The Flame of Love,” says Perdiccas in Cooke’s Love’s Triumph (unacted, 1678), The flame of Love no water can asswage, It makes it blaze, and roar with fiercer rage, and although Statira informs him Tis cause you don’t— Fling on fresh buckets at a faster rate: A close supply its fury would abate?, neither he nor any of his heroic companions took the advice, but let the conflagration proceed in merry crackling style. This love affects heroes and heroines, saints and sinners, in the strangest ways. Not only does it conquer and disturb the all-conquering warrior—‘‘ Frail Prince!” says Lelius in Lee’s Sophonisba (D.L. 1675), Frail Prince, how wavering all his Actions be, By Passions toss’d in Love’s Tempestuous Sea?,— but the characters are all afflicted by it with such a sudden- ness that they hardly know at first what it is. Part of Zem- poalla’s soliloquy in The Indian Queen I have already quoted?, and that is but typical of the sentiments of many another character. Sometimes, even, according to their own words, these characters cannot distinguish the force of love from a physical wound. In Banks’ The Destruction of Troy (D.G. 1678) Achilles is in the temple: Paris flings a dart and wounds him, whereat the hero, thinking of his mistress, cries out aloud: Ha! Ha! Polyxena...what ails my Heart! Sure ’twas not Love that gave that deadly smart— I’me hurt...O Gods! who can the Pain indure!* BoE Ville = ep 8 Supra, p. 102. Oe 8-2 116 TRAGEDY It is quite obvious that, given a love of this kind, passion should take away from those whom it seizes all power of common sense. Sertorius in Sir Robert Howard’s The Vestal Virgin, or, The Roman Ladies (T.R. in B.St. 1664) is going to a duel, and bids Caska do a last service for him: I have but one Thing more then to enjoin thee; If I shou’d fall by Tiridates’ Sword, Carry the News thy self unto Hersila, And watch her as thou would’st an Arrow shot, To see whether it hit or no. Caska, who is not in love, sees the folly of this: “To what purpose, Sir?...”’ he asks, **How, Sir, shou’d I send you Word?” This appears to come as an entirely new thought to Sertorius, who, meditatively gazing on his companion, can only murmur “Tis true.” Later he announces his fresh intention to Tiridates : I will be just to you; but if I fall, Carry no News of Love, nor me, at ali; For I have thought upon’t, and find it vain, To me no Message can come back again?. This wonderful love, as we have seen, is usually presented in violent conflict with what may be styled honour, which might be friendship or loyalty, but rarely the point of honour as in the French plays?. The more limited sense of honour appears in only one or two stray dramas of the period. Of the Love and Honour contests I have given sufficient ex- amples above. In the breasts of all the heroes of this drama there proceeds a continual tempest of warring passions: each separate figure could endorse the words of Caesario in Lee’s Gloriana (D.L. 1676): Revenge and Friendship in my Bosom clash’d, Like Mountain billows, each the other dash’d3. Love and honour both could serve towards the making of rivals temporary friends, as in The Indian Emperor, or as in Sith 2 For a more abstract consideration of the heroic conflict see the present writer’s Introduction to Dramatic Theory (1923). eoars THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 117 Howard’s The Vestal Virgin (T.R. in B.St. 1664) where Sertorius bids his enemy and rival join with him: Come, Tiridates, Hersilia’s Danger now our Quarrel ends, And when she is unsafe, we must be Friends: Our Action’s some fantastic Planet guides, Ill-Fortune can unite whom Good divides?. Although love is mostly the dominating note in these plays, even to the exclusion of honour, in some honour has de- cidedly definite claims. Thus in Tuke’s The Adventures of Five Hours (L.1.F. 1663) Octavio requests Antonio to retire: You from a Life of Perils hither come To find a Nuptial Bed, not seek a Tomb, but Antonio will hear naught of it: My Friend ingag’d, it never must be said, Antonio left him so to go to Bed. Even when Octavio reminds him that he is married, he replies: Wedded to Honour, that must yield to none?. In the main, however, honour is subservient to love and to individual passion. Montezuma and Almanzor can shift about as pleases their fancies. The hero is above smaller scruples such as might affect ordinary mortals: None but the Conquer’d should have sence of shame. Shall shows of Vertue darken (your) bright Fame? Success does cover all the Crimes of War, And Fame and Vertue still consistent are?— these words of Rustan’s in Orrery’s Mustapha (L.I.F, 1665) might be taken as a motto by all the heroes of the day. It is not that they are frail, as Dryden points out in his defence of Almanzor, but that they form worlds of honour and of morality for themselves. It may indeed be conjectured whether the tendency of the time did not give rise to this aspect of their personalities. When men could shift easily from Republicanism to adoration of monarchy, from a faithful 1 i, 5 31, LM OF serving of the Catholic church to an embracing of the creed of the English church, from Whiggery to Toryism, it seems but natural that they should introduce their own character- istics into the figures of their idealising imagination. Man is decidedly anthropomorphic in his creative powers, and Almanzor is simply a god idealised from actual Wallers and Drydens. These idealised heroes do not on any occasion hesitate to point out to others their majestic positions. ‘‘I shine above thee,” remarks Scipio in Sophonisba (D.L. 1675), like a Star fix’d higher, Whom though you cannot reach, you may admire?. Araspes in Gloriana (D.L. 1676) tells Caesario he is but a man. The latter’s reply is characteristic: Said you of me? *T'was poor: A man! Araspes, I was always more. When me in Swadling-bands the Nurses rock’d, My Soul was full with God-like Courage stock’d; The Sounds which first my wondrous Voice did move, Were Father Julius, and grandsire Fove: E’en in my Childhood I was more than Man?. Nor did heroes share this self-esteem only among others of their own class: heroes and villains alike have the most exalted notions of themselves and of their actions. The Queen Mother in Settle’s The Empress of Morocco (D.G. 1673) is as bad as Almanzor: From Springs so deep shall sink thee down to Hell. I shed my Tears, as Rain in Egypt falls, Sent for no common Cause, but to foretell Destructions, Ruins, Plagues, and Funerals?, and a character in the same author’s The Conquest of China (D.G. 1675) can decide that Those few Millions we’ve yet vanquisht, are A bare dumb Shew of a poor Pageant War, Our Honour now for greater Action calls*. Il. i. 2n. 3 11 (v). Cn BP fs THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY 119 Even so late as 1694, Pembroke in Banks’ The Innocent Usurper (1694) could remember sufficient of the rants of the heroes and the villains of 1670 to cry: Weep Heav’ns, fall Hail and Torrents from the Skye, And when y’ave drein’d the Briney Ocean dry, Weep on, and pour the watery Globe and Night, On the World’s back, and quench this Orb of Light?. all d propos of his own emotions. These exaggerated emotions, as we have abundantly seen, led to a falsification of all psychology. Not one of the heroes, heroines or villains of the exalted tragedy acts rightly. Their psychology is hopelessly wrong. Whether it is love or war or death their actions and their words are the actions and the words of unreality. Their declarations ring hollow. Massinissa in Lee’s Sophonisba (D.L. 1675) has already shown us the follies and the unnatural sentiments that this exalted temper could produce. The unreality of that meeting of Massinissa and of Rosalinda is paralleled in the same play in the death of Trebellius, who, as he expires, can find energy to pour out a torrent of heroic words: Cut off in my full growth! curse on your strife; To die thus, when I business had for Life! Just Scipio will revenge my Death, beware; I feel I’m going, though I know not where?. The constant straining after exaggerated effect even led the dramatists to create for their characters a special language. The unnatural sentiments and the ranting rhetoric poured forth by them found a counterpart in their marvellous oaths. “‘Zounds,” the fashionable exclamation of real life, would have been too commonplace to appear on their lips. ‘Furies ! and Hell !”® however, was quite in keeping with their per- sonalities: or ‘‘Tortures! and Hell!” or ‘‘Hell! Plagues! and Death! ”> or ‘‘Hell! Furies! Fiends! and Plagues!” IV. 4: ety. 8 Lee’s Gloriana (D.L. 1676), 1. i; The Duke of Guise (D.L. 1682), 1. ii; Banks’ Vertue Betray’d (D.G. 1682), I. i. 4 Settle’s Ibrahim (D.G. 1676), 11. i. 5 Southerne’s The Loyal Brother (D.L. 1682), UI. ii. Sr haaits 1. 120 TRAGEDY “Ravens! and Vultures!’ occurs in Settle’s The Female Prelate (D.L. 1679)! though Lee outshines them all with his “Night ! Horrour ! Death ! Confusion ! Hell ! and Furies !””* his no less inspiring ‘‘ Death and Devils ! Daggers ! Poison ! Fire!” and his ‘Gods! Devils! Hell! Heaven! and Earth !’?4 These heroic exclamations, like the rants, as can be seen from the footnotes to this page, endured long after the rimed fashion had passed away. ‘‘Hell ! Scalding Lead! and Sulphures!” appears as late as 1694 in Banks’ The Innocent Usurper. From the presence of the exaggerated hero, also, and of the exaggerated villain, fed, too, from earlier Elizabethan founts, came the prevalence in the heroic drama of the Dryden school, of situations of horror, murder, torture and blood. Some of the scenes described in the stage directions to the heroic plays equal in bloody suggestion even some of the passages in Titus Andronicus. 'The sixth engraving to Settle’s The Empress of Morocco (D.G. 1673) shows a dungeon filled with mutilated bodies impaled on stakes, the ground littered with the bones of former victims®. Indeed, the horrible presentments that are put forward in so many of the Restoration tragedies, heroic and otherwise, make us realise that, if the poetic spirit of Webster and of Ford was in many ways lost, certainly their love of blood and of riotous torment never was, From Ford and from Webster, too, came to the Restoration dramatists as a whole that dabbling in unnatural sex-relationships which I have taken note of above. Just as the presence of the horrors and peculiar sex themes EOL salt 2 Oedipus (D.G. 1679), U1. i. * Caesar Borgia (D.G. 1679), Iv, where also in v occurs “‘ Racks, Rocks and Fire! Cauldrons of molten Lead!” 4 Nero (D.L. 1674), UI. i. ° Cf. also Settle’s Cambyses (L.1.F. 1671), 111. iv—‘ The Body of Osiris, beheaded; & an Executioner with the suppos’d Head in a Vessel of Blood”: and The Conquest of China (D.G. 1675), where in Vv. iii is a “Scene of Murdered Women,” and in which occurs a stage direction “ Dy omnes.” In Payne’s The Siege of Constantinople (D.G. 1674) we have as a last scene “a great Number of Dead and Dying men in several manner of Deaths. The Chancellor, Lorenzo, and Michael Empal’d,” while in The Treacherous Brothers (D.L. 1689) of Powell, “‘ The Scene drawn discovers Men(aphon) Executed, being flung from a Battlement upon Spikes.” THE RIMED HEROIC TRAGEDY . iar ‘was not due to the influence of Corneille or of Racine, but, taken from earlier Elizabethan example, was working in direct opposition to the French influence, so the multiplicity of action, the innumerable characters and the licence of stirring scenes acted coram populo, were all decidedly English ingre- dients in the cosmopolitan nature of the heroic drama. “Sieges” and ‘‘ Conquests”” abound, and “ Destructions” are not uncommon—all titles, which, avoided on the continent, point to the difference of temperament between the audience of Paris and the audience of London. As a fit background for these stirring scenes the public of the seventeenth century desired settings of rich gorgeous loveliness, full of a strangeness that should reave them away from the drabness of contemporary conditions. In this wise, the Oriental settings given to many a tragedy may be taken as indicating a desire to escape from conventional sur- roundings to a world of unrestrained bustle and turmoil and impossible romance. ‘These scenes most frequently had some vague historical basis, but truth to history and truth to local customs was never insisted upon. To fit them in with the prevailing temper of the time, the characters, were they Romans, Arabians, Mexicans, Chinamen, even Englishmen of the earlier Tudor periods, were all warped out of their national characteristics and made to live in the one world1— the world of heroic ardour and of dauntless courage. Even Orrery, with his historical tragedies, has not more truth to nature than Dryden or Nat Lee has. The heroic tragedy, on all sides, is to be explained by de- claring it a conscious artificialising of early seventeenth century romantic drama, with elements introduced to please the tastes of the Restoration novelty-seeking audience, and all modified just a trifle to make it approach a little nearer to the heroic plays of France. 1 The prevalence of oriental themes will have been noted even in the titles of the dramas I have mentioned above. For the uniform nature of the characters, cp. Saint-Evrémond’s remark on the Alexandre (1665) of Racine: “‘tous ces héros, grecs ou indiens, parlent et sentent en gentilhommes frangais.” 122 TRAGEDY IV. Other Types of Tragedy: 1660-1677 (In thus dealing at length with the characteristics of the rimed heroic play, it must not be presumed that that was the only type of serious drama put before the public during the years 1664-77. Native English influence led to a develop- ment of non-heroic tragedy also, and this, though less popular, must never be forgotten: the prevailing desire for novelty, show, music and dance, coupled with the undoubted influence of D’Avenant, tended towards the elaboration of the opera.) The germs of opera, certainly, may be traced back to native English example as well—in this case, directly to the masque. All through the seventeenth century the opera remained in its ‘‘English” form: it did not adopt the recitativo and aria of Italian productions, presaged though these had been by D’Avenant in The Siege of Rhodes and hinted at by Flecknoe in his early unacted Love’s Dominion (1654) later brought out as Love’s Kingdom at L.I.F. in 1664. (The operas of the late seventeenth century were all dramatic operas, composed of dialogue in prose or verse interspersed with fragments of song and with choruses. Anything indeed that was slightly more musical than ordinary and possessed an additional supply of airs appears in Restoration times to have gained for itself the title of opera.) Thus for Downes Shadwell’s play of The Lancashire Witches (D.G. 1681) because of its songs became “a kind of Opera?,” and Granville in a preface to his Genuine Works in Verse and Prose (1732) reminds us that ‘to introduce Singing and Dancing, by Head and Shoulders, no way relative to the Action, does not turn a Play into an Opera: though that Title is now promiscuously given to every Farce sprinkled here and there with a Song and a Dance.” Un spite of Flecknoe’s and D’Avenant’s early endeavours, and in spite of the fact that D’Avenant’s house seems to have been known generally as the “‘Opera,”’ we do not come to the definitely operatic period of the drama till the seventies of the century. Music was but slowly developing in the APE 38. OTHER TYPES OF TRAGEDY 123 theatres, and Purcell, to whose influence may be attributed a fair amount of the interest in this form of theatrical pro- duction, did not apply his talents to the dramatic sphere until the year 1686) Purcell, certainly, was not alone in contributing to the popularity of the species. We find en- gaged in the writing of dramatic music not only Englishmen such as Matthew Locke, who collaborated with D’Avenant in pre-Restoration times and who later had an interest in composing the music for the operatic versions of Macbeth and of The Tempest, but foreigners as well. Battista Draghi aided Locke in setting the music for Shadwell’s Psyche (D.G. 1674/5): Cambert arrived in England in 1673 and he and his pupil Grabut had a share in the more ornate performances at the Theatre Royal and at the Cockpit in Court. French troupes of opera singers were certainly performing in England several times between 1660 and 17007. I have already men- tioned The Descent of Orpheus into Hell by Chapoton of which “‘the Description of the Great Machines” is still extant. This was no doubt performed by a company under Jean Chamouveau, who received £300 from the king for his services on Dec. 2, 1661, and whom Evelyn records as acting at court on the 16th of the same month. I have also noted the performance of Ariane, ou, Le Mariage de Bacchus in March 1673/4. This was an opera originally written by Perrin and set to music by Cambert himself: it was produced by the newly founded Royal Academy of Music, organised by Cambert and Grabut. Pomone, set by Cambert, and per- formed at Paris in 1671, was very probably set on the English stage about the same time. In May 1677 appeared another opera, this time by Madame La Roche-Guilhen, entitled 1 There has been a considerable amount of controversy over the author- ship of the music to these two Shakespearian operas. See Lawrence, W.J., The Elizabethan Playhouse (Series 1, 1912, pp. 207 ff.): Squire, Barclay, Purcell’s Dramatic Music (International Music Society, vol. 5) and article in The Musical Quarterly, October, 1912: also correspondence in The Times Literary Supplement, Sept. 1918. The music for the original alteration of The Tempest was probably written by Banister and Hum- phreys, added to by Pietro Reggio and Hart. In 1674 may have come Locke’s amendments and additions, and about 1690 Purcell’s score. 2 See the later notes on the French comedians in England, infra pp. 238-241. 124 TRAGEDY Rare en Tout. The foreign composers who got these operas produced, the singers who took the leading parts and the dancers who were got over especially from France, all worked with the regular managements of the theatres. Grabut’s later collaboration with Southerne and with Dryden is well known. The first step towards a fuller development of the English opera was probably that made by D’Avenant and Dryden in The Tempest (L.1.F. Nov. 1667) and by D’Avenant or another in Macbeth (text of 1673 quarto). The earlier Tempest, how- ever, is barely an opera: it has operatic features: it is removed one degree further into the world of romance by the intro- duction of a sister to Miranda, named Dorinda, and of Hippolito, a youth who has never seen a woman, as well as by its emphasis on show. It was left to Shadwell to move the musical adaptation of Shakespeare still another stage, to the full realms of the opera proper?. The description of the orchestra in this opera of Shadwell’s, the elaborate stage settings, the machines and the songs—of which “Arise ye Subterranean Winds” is a masterpiece—all mark out the dramatic opera of the English type. Macbeth, also, by D’Avenant, was carried a further stage into the operatic world (D.G. Feb. 1672/3)8. This second Macbeth is not less typical. ‘The atmosphere is thoroughly operatic. The witches enter and exeunt ‘“‘flying*.”’ There is thunder and lightning to be heard'—that thunder and lightning which was so satirised by Duffett in his epilogue ‘‘ Being a new Fancy after the old, and most surprising way of MACBETH, Perform’d with new and costly MACHINES,” appended to his burlesque The Empress of Morocco (D.L. 1673). The ghost descends and rises again at Macbeth’s feet®. Every attempt is made to 1 See Appendix B, and notes on the play lists given there in The Times Literary Supplement, Sept. 21, 1922. Note should be taken in W. J. Law- rence’s article on Foreign Singers and Musicians at the Court of Charles II (Musical Quarterly, April 1923) of the reference to the Ballet et Musique pour le divertissement du Roy de la Grande Bretagne (1674). * For the relations between the two Tempests, see Lawrence, W. J., The Elizabethan Playhouse (1. 191 f.), Summers, M., Shakespeare Adapta- tions (1922, introduction) and the present writer’s pamphlet on Dryden as an Adapter of Shakespeare (Shakespeare Association pamphlets, No. 8). 8 See the text of the edition of 1674, patents Asal SSrine OTHER TYPES OF TRAGEDY 125 lower the tragic tension and to heighten the artificiality of the piece—a movement analogous to that we have seen in full force in the development of the heroic tragedy. The first real non-Shakespearian opera was Shadwell’s Psyche (D.G. Feb. 1674/5), largely derived from Moliére and again satirised by Duffett. Here we have moved into what is truly the operatic realm of Restoration dramas. The tendency of the heroic play had been merely an exaggeration of the rational tragic endeavour—to raise and to generalise human qualities into an almost divine and infallible content. The tendency of the opera, on the other hand, was towards the completely unreal. It is this that Dryden felt when he declared that “‘the suppos’d Persons” of the opera ‘‘are generally supernatural, as Gods and Goddesses, and Heroes which at least are descended from them, and are in due time to be adopted into their number.” Thus, for the most part, while the heroic tragedy treated of distant oriental realms with a sham historical background, the opera dwelt on mythical episodes and with entirely fanciful scenes. The very title of this play of Shadwell’s, or of Dr D’Avenant’s Circe (D.G. 1677) or of Dryden’s Albion and Albanius (D.G. 1685) and King Arthur (D.G. 1691) or of Settle’s The Fairy Queen (D.G. 1692) and The World in the Moon (D.G. 1697) serve to display the vast chasm which lay between the pure tragedy and its musical contemporary. Naturally, not many of these operas deserve any very lengthy literary mention. Psyche might be produced at the then enormous expense of £800, with vocal music by Locke and instrumental by Giovanni Battista Draghi, with dances by St André and scenery by Stephenson, but for us to-day the whole piece lacks inherent interest. Apart from a stray song or two, it is a thing dead and valueless. Of D’Avenant’s Circe (D.G. May 1677) exactly the same may be said. Here again, packed into the limits of five acts, we find music, song and show, crowds of spirits and furies and syrens, “A Dance of the Winds*” and a dance of ‘‘Pleasant Dreams?.” ‘‘The 1 Preface to Albion and panei ne G. 1685). Siti ie 126 TRAGEDY Heav’ns open” in one scene, and in the last the city sud- denly bursts into flame. All such theatrical accompaniments lacking now, we can barely summon up enough courage to pass over the borders of the initial scene. Nemesis will always follow the opera. One of the most appealing of stage forms, its libretto is doomed to everlasting oblivion. Apart from the opera there remain a certain number of sérious plays written between 1660 and 1677 still unaccounted for. These, either complete tragedies or compounds of tragedy and of comedy, may nearly all be styled Elizabethan in tone. That is to say, they present reminiscences of one or other of the older types of drama, Shakespearian, Websterian, romantic or pastoral, without any marked developments of heroic elements. These plays may be regarded as backwaters in the forward rush of the drama, and yet must have played no inconsiderable part in the future growth of that “‘Shake- spearian” style which was heralded by Dryden in-hisz#itfor Lave, OF all the Elizabethan models; naturally, the romantic ra (> plays of Beaumont and Fletcher played a chiet part, although a « f we can often trace the influence of other and different types ‘in plays that are definitely romantic in tone. Possibly next _.,° in importance we might rank the influence of the school of Pad horrors. Of the latter type, mixed with Shakespearian reminiscence, is The Villain (L.1.F. Oct. 1662) by Thomas Porter, praised by Young Killigrew on its first production?. Here Malignii is another Iago and Charlotte goes mad in imitation of Ophelia. Iago appeared again, ten years later, in The Fatal Jealousie (D.G. Aug. 1672) of Nevil Payne, where he mas- querades as Jasper, in opposition to a not ill-drawn Othello in Don Antonio. Of the same type is Henry Carey’s tragedy The Mariage Night (L.1.F. c.1664) which Sir A.W. Ward finds influenced by Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy and which also betrays decided reminiscences of the master dramatist 3. PPI 1. a Pepys, Oct. 20, 1662. The cast is given by Downes, p. 23. See also Langbaine, p. 407. ° Ward, 111. 336. He is quite in error, however, in stating that “‘ whether it was ever acted seems uncertain.” See Pepys, Mar. 21, 1667. Ward OTHER TYPES OF TRAGEDY 127 Something of the same note is struck once more in Killigrew’s The Imperial Tragedy (unacted? 1669), which is one mass of coffins, black rooms, ‘‘ dismal Vaults,” ghosts, spirits and “‘satyres ” and it finds reflection, also, in Ravenscroft’s altera- tion of Titus Andronicus, acted at D.L. about 1686. We must not forget that Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus was one of the first plays revived after the Restoration and remained a stock drama for many years. It is of course difficult now to determine whether the audience and the dramatists of the time took these and other horrors seriously. Edward Howard, Downes tells us, turned Romeo and Fuliet into a tragi-comedy with a happy ending and this was played on alternate evenings with the Shakespeare original. Similarly Sir Robert Howard, in writing The Vestal Virgin (‘T.R. in B.St. 1664), gave his play a double fifth act, in one of which a general scene of carnage is introduced, Artabaces entering with his eyes out, in the other the whole is ended in “‘a Comical Way” and Lacy in speaking the epilogue cracks jokes about the change of dénouement. The cynicism of the age so permeates the theatre of the Restoration that it is difficult indeed to determine precisely what was a genuine expression of emotion and what was a false sentiment uttered merely to satisfy a passing whim. A few other plays in this period mingle in varying pro- portions elements taken from Shakespeare and elements taken from other sources. Sir Robert Howard’s other tragic drama, The Great Favourite, or, The Duke of Lerma (‘T.R. in B.St. Feb. 1668) is one of the best of these. There is no excess of bloodshed here, although poison is employed for effect, and the Machiavellian Duke of Lerma with his tool, Roderigo del Caldroon, the pure Maria with the complicated touches in her psychology, and the young king, make up a story that causes us to think more highly of Dryden’s apparently took his mistaken statement from the Biographia Dramatica, and this Schelling copied in the C.H.E£.L. vitl. 130. The latter authority is wrong also in stating that the play was by Sir Henry Carey who died in 1633; it was written by the Henry Carey, or Cary, who died in 1664 (sce C.H.E.L. vin. 498, Index). 1 On Killigrew’s authorship, see Appendix C, 128 TRAGEDY collaborator, enemy and friend, than his other works would have warranted. Most of the other Elizabethan-type plays merit but brief historical mention. Most of these are tragi-comedies, and a certain number of them are Arcadian in scene and in char- acter. At the very first opening of the theatres, before the discovery of the heroic play, there seems to have been a slight flutter of interest in pastoral themes. Fanshawe’s translation of Il Pastor Fido by Guarini (printed 1648) was reprinted in 1664. Flecknoe’s Love’s Kingdom (L.1.F. 1664), although scened in Cyprus, has an Arcadian atmosphere. Thomas Forde’s Love’s Labyrinth (printed 1661) boldly sets its “‘scoene” in ‘Arcadia,’ as does John Fountain’s The Rewards of Virtue (printed 1661). This interest in the pastoral form would appear to have lasted erratically through- out the century. We have records of old pastorals revived, and a number of early Restoration pastorals were re-worked later. Fountain’s drama gave Shadwell the basis for The Royal Shepherdess (L.1.F. Feb. 1668/9) and Fanshawe’s translation provided Settle with the model for his Pastor Fido already mentioned. The Constant Nymph, written by ‘a Person of Quality” and staged at D.G. about July, 1677, also attests to the popularity of the species during theacknow- ledged reign of the heroic play. The majority of these plays, however, were rather romantic than definitely pastoral in tone. Edward Howard’s two dramas, The Usurper (T.R. in B.St. Jan. 1663/4) and The Women’s Conquest (L.I.F.c. Nov. 1670) are of this style. The first is set in Sicily and mingles in a peculiar manner allegoric political reference and romantic story. In it Damocles, Hugo de Petra and Cleomenes shroud under thin veils the figures of Oliver Cromwell, Peters and Monk. The scene of the other is Scythia, but a Scythia much alike to the Arcadia of Shadwell and others. The comic part here is sustained by Foscaris, a gentleman who has left his wife but who “longs for” her “after he has parted with her,” and by Andrages, ‘another Husband, who loves his Wife so well that he cannot part with her, though she seems to provoke him to it.” OTHER TYPES OF TRAGEDY 129 Generally the plot is dull, but the language in places rises above the mediocre. Of similar nature are Sir William Killigrew’s three tragi- comedies. Sir William Killigrew, like D’Avenant, was of the older age. Probably only one of his four plays was ever acted on the stage: both from their manner of printing and from their style they seem to have been intended for closet dramas. The Seege of Urbin (1666) is one fantastic story of romance, villainy, duelling, fighting, jealousy and love. Ormasdes (1664), called later Love and Friendship, is scened in Cytherea, and is, unlike the former which is in prose, written in blank verse, with very occasional lapses into rime. It is a love tragedy in which complicated emotions arise out of the passion of Cleandra, Queen of Cytherea, for her general, Ormasdes, who is loved by and who loves Valeriana, Queen of Treconia (not the King, as inthe list of dramatis personae). The sick scene in Act v is rather well conceived, where Ormasdes sleeps by the couch of Valeriana. Selindra (T.R. in V.St., March 1661/2) is set in Byzantium and is highly romantic. In it, Astella, princess of Hungary, disguises herself as Selindra, while her brother, Polinesso, likewise changes his personality, apparently by the use of a periwig and a patch over one eye. The two tragi-comedies of Sir Robert Stapylton have also much of the same characteristics, The Slighted Maid (L.1.F. Feb. 1662/3) being scened in an exceedingly nebulous. Naples, and The Stepmother (L.1.F. c. Nov. 1663) in a no less nebulous province of early Britain. In both the names: of the dramatis personae are Arcadian, Iberio and Pyramena, Filamor and Pontia. Both plays are full of masques?, and both are tricked out with musical additions, ‘‘ The Instru- mental, Vocal, and Recitative Musick” of the former being ““composed by Mr Banister,” one of the principal royal 1 This play is interesting for the preface in defence of tragi-comedies, and against heroic dramas and end-stopped verse. This is indeed more “a Discourse, or Essay on Dramatick Poesie, then a Preface to a Play.” There are in addition no less than three prologues—one spoken by Under- hill, Angel and Nokes, in condemnation of “ Scaramouchos, and fack Puddings,” a second by Jonson’s shade, and a third more regular. 2 'There are at least three in each. NRD 9 130 TRAGEDY violinists. Both are very moral in tone, and both have an entire absence of any psychological sense—the marvellous conversion of the ‘“‘stepmother” being typical of all the characters represented in each. Mrs Behn’s The Dutch Lover (D.G. Feb. 1672/3) might be taken as a tragi-comedy variant of the Spanish intrigue type of comedy, but her The Fore’d Marriage, or, The Fealous Bridegroom (L.1.F. Dec. 1670) may fairly be styled a romantic serio-drama. The scene of the latter is laid in France, but a France peopled with Philanders and Galateas—mythical as Arcadia. The purpose of the play is a solemn one. It conveys a moral precept, or thought at least—and for that is valuable as a vague premonition of graver eighteenth century senti- mental comedies to comet. A play of much less interest is The Amorous Prince, or, The Curious Husband (L.1.F. c. May 1671) set in an equally mythical Florence, and approaching again towards the pas- toral style. It has a mixture of romantic sentiment and intrigue, but has no dramatic or literary value when com- pared with The Fore’d Marriage’. Tragi-comedy was also touched in this period by Dryden in The Rival Ladies, in Secret Love and in Marriage a la Mode, but those three plays have so much of a comic element in them that they may more fittingly be considered among the comedies proper. Crowne approached the type more seriously in his fuliana, or, The Princess of Poland (L.1.F.c. Aug. 1671). This play, in its dull manner, attempts at emotion which, however, runs to nothing but rant. A single example will suffice. “Tl run and kill him!” cries Alexey, to which Paulina answers: No, let me alone! Pll kill him, but it shall be with Torments! Steel, Poison, Fire, Racks, Scorpions, Hell! Oh me unfortunate !3 1 It is based partly on the tale of the curioso impertinente. The romantic plot deals with the love of the Prince of Florence for the fair (and high- born) shepherdess, Chloris, The intrigue concerns Antonio, the jealous husband, who sets Alberto, in love with Ismena, to tempt Clarina, his wife. Of a similar tone to this play is the worthless play of Mrs Boothby, Marcelia, or, The Treacherous Friend (T.R. in B.St. c. Aug. 1669). 2 See also infra, p. 255. Ss iit. OTHER TYPES OF TRAGEDY 131 Rant such as this fills the play, together with improbable incidents and unnatural valour and miraculous escapes, so that the whole appears to us as it does to the Landlord at the close of the piece: What! I warrant this young Man is that young Man’s Wife: why, sure my House was enchanted to Day, lodg’d Princes and Dukes, like Mummers and Masqueraders; and Women and Wenches in men’s Cloaths, and Cloak-bags, and Scufflings, and they kill one another, and they’re alive again, and this, and that, and I know not what. Here’s work indeed! A not unfitting close to this period of Restoration tragi- comedy. V. Tragedy and Opera: 1678-1700 With the year 1678, as we have already noted, we move into a new era of dramatic productivity, the rimed tragedy dying a natural death of old age, and the pseudo-classic and Shakespearian elements rising gradually to a more dominant position. In studying, however, the tragedies written be- tween 1678 and 1700, we must take due notice of the fact that, while Shakespearian adaptations and classic restraint were assuming ever a larger and a larger place in the repertoire of the playhouses, the older elements represented in the heroic tragedy were by no means dead. Opera still flourished, and was embraced by both pseudo-classicist and by Shakespearian alike. George Granville, first baron Lansdowne, could write plays noticeable for their chill and at the same time pen a purely operatic British Enchanters (Haymarket, 1706): Dryden could turn from more or less chastened productions to present an Albion and Albanius (D.G. 1685). Moreover, the heroic atmosphere proper by no means perished when the year 1677 saw the abandonment of rime. Not only did Lee, Settle and Tate continue to pour out plays which for all general purposes may be styled heroic, but even the classic Granville produced a tragedy which he styled by the symbolic title, Heroick Love (L.I.F. 1697). New forces at the same time were already at work, chief among which may be numbered that pathetic type, which, © 9-2 132 TRAGEDY weak in the seventeenth century, was destined to join forces with the sentimental theatre and dominate a great part of the productivity of the eighteenth century stage. ‘There is no possibility, of course, of keeping all these various old and new elements in water-tight compartments, but we can, largely, determine the type of a particular play by a reference to the pathetic, Shakespearian, operatic, heroic or classic school. First in point of importance, probably, because it was to develop along straight lines leading to Addison’s Cato and Johnson’s Irene, is the pseudo-classic movement, but it must be remembered that even in the chillest of late seventeenth century tragedies some of the tendencies of the heroic drama can usually be traced. We have already noted in the pre- ceding decades the stricter type of French drama cultivated in translations, and considerably ‘‘altered in its dress” by Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery. The influence of Orrery was deeply marked on certain of the later classical plays, although there were some men who preferred to abandon even his example and pass to duller and less inspired realms. There were men among the pseudo-classicists who demanded the chillest of plot and of expression, who held frantically to the unities, who would permit none but two speaking characters on the stage at one time. Such ultra-classicism, however, was evidently never very popular. Rymer could not get his Edgar, or, The English Monarch acted, even although he called it “An Heroick Tragedy.” Filmer’s The Unnatural Brother (L.I.F. c. March 1697) was a failure, and the author in his preface definitely states his belief that this was due to the lack of stirring scenes and to the fact that there were never more than two or three speaking characters on the stage at one time, things for which he prided himself and in con- demning which he judged the audience showed a want of taste. The truth seems to be, that whatever dulness fashion may have cast on tragedy at any one time, the English audiences always desired to be aroused by something more than severe chill and classic calm. Dryden, Lee, Settle, Tate, nay Otway himself, knew what they were doing when they left the stricter classic school and chose rather to perpetuate TRAGEDY AND OPERA 133 the atmosphere of heroics or the atmosphere of Shakespeare. Out of some thirty-six tragedies produced on the stage be- tween 1678 and 1688 only one, the Sertorius (D.L. c. March, 1679) of Bancroft is at all classic in this limited sense. Its lengthy soliloquies and its lack of action give it a calmness which marks it out as unique in the period!. That it was not successful may be presumed from the fact that it was never reprinted and that we have no record of any revival of it in the later years of the century. Out of over forty tragedies in the period extending from 1689 to the end of the century barely three or four written in the same style as this can be counted. Edward Filmer’s The Unnatural Brother has already been mentioned?, but even that play betrays some reminis- cences of the Elizabethan drama, just as does Congreve’s The Mourning Bride (L.1.F. 1697) where, set as it were to a 1 The first scene is one long soliloquy, which I quote here because it seems to me to present some of the best dramatic blank verse, outside of Dryden’s, written in this age: **Cease, you Celestial Pow’rs, and give that Ease, Which, to obtain, I, with repeated Pray’rs, The bloud of Hecatombs, and Incense smoke, So oft have fill’d your Heav’ns; and bless the Man Which, from his Infancy to Autumn years, Subject to every Blast, has known the Fate Of greatness, or abjected Poverty. Oh, Marius, through what Paths Ambition led! But thou’rt no more; and Hell has left behind A Janus Fury, who, with Sword and Pen, Or Stabs, or to enevitable Fate thrusts on, Doom’d by Proscription, numbers to attend On gastly Death: while Slaughter, big with Blood, In Sanguine hue, and a 'T'yrannick Pace, Sweeps, like a Plague; and makes Rome’s Senate look Like Sons of Earth, scap’d from Deucalion’s flood... Yet, Gods, be kind, and Sylla’s brood shall know, He that, with Patience, can endure like Me, May weather out the Storm, and Victim make The over-daring Fool who hastes to meet (In Pompey) certain Fate; or Knowledge bought At dear Expence. Down, you rebellious wrongs; Incite me not to acts, that misbecome A Roman mind to bear: Take flight, my Soul, Into a Spere like thy essential make; That I may scatter into open Air The envious mischiefs which inviron me.” 2 One act of this tragedy was reprinted and performed in Motteux’ The Novelty. 134 TRAGEDY dim musical accompaniment, we have resuscitated before us all the incidentals which Ford and Webster drew upon tostir the minds of their audiences to horror. The air is dark and foreboding : there is the sound of tears behind the symphonies. In spite of what seems its calm, it inherits many of the tendencies of the older drama, and any worth that it may have for us to-day, any popularity it may have had in its own time, is due to these more native characteristics. We may say, indeed, looking upon the tragedy of 1678-1700 as a whole, that the theatre was in much the same position it held in 1590, pseudo-classicists like Rymer condemning the popular plays, yet themselves unable to capture the attention or the sympathy of the public. In speaking of the classic movement during this time, we must remember that such classicism was largely a super-imposition: that the basis of the characters and of the language was nearer to Elizabethan or heroic types than to the model of the French stage. If we omit the Shakespeare adaptations, which obviously have a particular value of their own, the most outstanding thing in the tragic drama of 1678-1700 is the heroic note. By no means did Dryden throw off his rants and his stirring scenes when he deserted his long-loved mistress rime. In collaborating with Lee he chose Oedipus (D.G. c. Jan. 1679) as a subject, and in this drama, although he made use of the preceding plays of Sophocles, Seneca and Corneille, the scenic effects and the rants are connected more with The Conquest of Granada than with Cato. After a long silence, when in 1689 Dryden returned to the theatre with Don Sebastian, King of Portugal (D.L. Dec. 1689), he presented to the stage a theme of heroic ‘Love and Honour” replete with the usual ranting bombast. The preface indeed observes that “Love and Honour (the mistaken Topicks of Tragedy) were quite worn out” by the time of its appearance, but sufficient proofs remain to show that the elements of the heroic play lingered on in disguised but not unrecognisable forms. In this very same preface Dryden displays his in- debtedness to former models. There is a “roughness of the Numbers and Cadences...not casual, but so design’d”’: TRAGEDY AND OPERA 135 he has “‘not exactly kept to the three mechanick Rules of Unity” because ‘‘the Genius of the English cannot bear too regular a Play” and he has “‘observ’d that the English will not bear a thorow Tragedy; but are pleas’d, that it shou’d be lightned with Under-Parts of Mirth.” There was no man more capable of analysing the tendencies of his age than Dryden, and he has here shown us in direct words the ten- dencies of the drama of 1689. This play of Don Sebastian, along with Cleomenes, the Spartan Heroe (D.L. April 1692) displays clearly in creative form the strength and the power of the older elements, showing how beautifully these could be joined with the slight chastening tendency of the age. Dryden’s last play, also, a tragi-comedy styled Love Trium- phant, or, Nature wiil prevail (D.L. 1693) may be taken as representing a union of heroic valour! and of low comedy. It failed?, not because of the inclusion of the former, but because the characters are unnaturally and artificially drawn. The critics have probably been too scathing on this drama, but truly the sudden change of Veramond’s mood in the fifth act is nothing short of ridiculous. Only in single scenes does it rise to anything of a height of grandeur. Very little chastening is to be seen in the works of the other tragic dramatists of the period. Lee, with whom Dryden collaborated in The Duke of Guise (D.L. Nov. 1682)%, a political play* which stands out for hardly anything save its fine song, ‘‘Tell me, Thyrsis, tell your Anguish, Why you 1 There are in it several scenes in rime. 2 Cf. letter dated Mar. 22, 1693/4, quoted by Scott and Saintsbury in their edition of Dryden (vu1I. 369-70). 3 For the date see the Bibliography in Appendix C. 4 The political parallel gave rise to not a little controversy. In 1683 appeared The True History of the Duke of Guise, and a trifle later the same year Some Reflections upon the Pretended Parallel in the Play call’d 'The Duke of Guise, a work ascribed to Hunt and Settle. To this Dryden replied with The Vindication or the Parallel of the French Holy League and the English League and Covenant turn’d into a seditious Libell against the King and his Royal Highness by Thomas Hunt and the Authors of the Reflections upon the Pretended Parallel in the Play call’d The Duke of Guise (1683). See also the single page folio sheet entitled Solin Opposition to Saturn, or, A Short Return to the Tragedy call’d The Duke of Guise (1683). 136 TRAGEDY sigh and why you languish,” almost certainly Dryden’s, con- ~ tinued in blank verse the old themes of court corruption and of pure and impure love. Caesar Borgia, the Son of Pope Alexander VI (D.G. c. Sept. 1679) for which Dryden wrote the prologue and in which Betterton sustained the title-role, represents the refashioning from Lee’s somewhat morbid imagination of the terrible court of renascent Rome. Ex- ternally it is but a gruesome murder drama, filled with the true ‘‘heroic” exclamations, with little to stay our attention. Bellamira, the innocent victim of this hotbed of lust and of bloodthirstiness, we somehow cannot feel for: she is too weak and ephemeral. In Caesar, however, Lee has evidently tried to present what is rarely seen in Restoration tragedies—a complex character. In him we see, not the nauseous struggle of love and honour, but of manliness and vicious influence, of conscience warring against the pernicious atmosphere in which he has been bred. This complexity in places is not badly worked out, particularly in the second act, where the action and the dialogue, from the scene between Orsino and Bellamira to that between Caesar and Machiavel, rise to very near poetic heights. Theodosius, or, The Force of Love (D.G. c. Sept. 1680) im- mediately followed this terrible tragedy. The dedication be- trays Lee’s natural sympathy towards a certain part of classic art, although in the body of the play there are numerous Shakespearian reminiscences. With Hounds that open’d like Thessalian Bulls, Like Tygers flu’d, and sanded as the Shore, With Ears, and Chests, that dash’d the Morning Dew...1 is quite obviously a direct imitation from a famous passage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the development of the plot, in which the weak-minded Theodosius leaves the care of his kingdom ever more and more in the hands of his sister, Pulcheria, Lee was evidently striving once again to devise a further opportunity for the displayal of complexity of character. Pulcheria, indeed, is one of the few really artisti- ST: TRAGEDY AND OPERA 137 cally-drawn women figures of Restoration tragedy, a char- acter that inestimably raises in our eyes the worth of Lee as a dramatic poet. The same year saw Lucius Junius Brutus, Father of his Country (D.G. Dec. 1680), a play, that, taken along with the former one, displays well the onward development of the author’s dramatic skill. The plot is well-arranged, and fine emotional situations are carried out with not a small touch of genius. Tiberius and Vitellius enter in one scene: Tiberius: Hark, are we not pursu’d? Vitellius: No; ’tis the Tread Of our own Friends that follow in the dark...1 Such is a true touch of dramatic poetry, and it is merely one of a number of hints of a brighter fire, circling chiefly around the figures of Titus, Brutus and Teraninta. In spite of the fact that love sways the whole piece, in the hard, excessive person of Brutus, in the loyal and loving Titus, in the de- generate Tiberius and in the clinging Teraminta, we are conveyed to a world that breathes of an inspiration far apart from Settle’s heroes and from Howard’s rants. We are there where poetry grips the sense, where the old Romans, even if in a seventeenth century dress, walk again the stony streets of a rock-built Capitol. It is with something of a sigh that one turns from this real triumph to the ineffectual and worthless The Princess of Cleve (D.G. c. 1681). This play, the plot of which is chaotic and the atmosphere corrupt, shows not the slightest hint even of poetic and true dramatic sentiment. Turning to it from the last-mentioned drama is like turning from a shaded but beautiful grove to a rotting dung-heap. Unfortunately, also, Constantine the Great (D.L. c. Dec. 1683) does not do much to heighten Lee’s position. Although it begins with a vision of the Cross, it deals mainly with the threadbare theme of the passion of a father and a son for one woman. Nor is this theme well worked out: the only scenes that have in them anything noteworthy are those few in which the unhappy Fausta appears. Both Constantine and Crispus are ephemeral PPIIY. 1s 138 TRAGEDY figures, and Arius the villain is far too conventional to be considered worthy of detailed mention. Constantine, save for a poor Massacre of Paris (D.L. Oct. 1689)", was Lee’s last drama. Three years after the production of The Massacre of Paris, he died, leaving behind him a broken reputation. He had struck the chord of the poetic lyre with a sure hand, but somehow there were continual discords in his art. We are appalled at the contrast between his rants and his most pathetic and poetic passages. We stand aghast at the wild outflowings of words which but a touch would render into the most beautiful poetry. He had more enthusiasm than Dryden had, more, indeed, than had any writer since the death of Ford, but he lacked balance somewhere, lacked that power of control which lies behind all the highest art. I know of no more striking passage in the whole of Restoration tragedy than that scene, part of which has been already quoted above, in Gloriana, with its heart-dulled repetitions, yet Gloriana is not Venice Preserv’d precisely because it lacks the continued stress of the latter play. Lee flies to fall again, but Otway’s flights are steady as an eagle’s way. On the other hand, as I have endeavoured to show, Lee is of inestimable importance — in any attempt to divine the quality of the tragedy of his age. He was not only one of the chief of the rimed-heroic drama- tists, but he carried on the heroic tradition into his blank verse plays. He not only felt the touch of the classical move- ment, but went back for inspiration to Webster and to Ford and to Shakespeare. Above all we must bear in mind that his dramas were among the most popular of the time. Most of them were reprinted frequently, and, if we may judge by the numbers of copies now in existence, in fairly large editions. Next to Dryden, possibly, he was the most influ- ential man of his age. As in Dryden and in Lee, in Settle we can trace the con- tinuance of the heroic characteristics with elements political introduced to arouse contemporary interest. The Female a Several scenes of Acts 1 and 1v appeared in Act 11 of The Duke of Guise. The only really tragic elements in it are the relations between Guise and Marguerite, which work at the end to really dramatic intensity. TRAGEDY AND OPERA 139 Prelate, Being the History of the Life and Death of Pope Joan (D.L. c. Sept. 1679) is a purely political or politico-religious drama, accorded a clamorous welcome by the Whigs, worked out, as far as such a thing could be, with fair skill’. In it Settle not only continues his strain of popular heroic senti- ment from The Empress of Morocco, but has evidently felt the impress of the new pathetic movement. He has so de- veloped the plot that we can feel a trifle of sympathy for the unfortunate Duke of Saxony and the miserable Angeline. An even poorer play is Fatal Love, or, The Forc’d Inconstancy (D.L. c. Sept. 1680). Based according to Langbaine on a Greek tale, it is interesting solely for the fact that it is a tragedy of horror, closing with a universal massacre, Lysandra alone remaining alive, apparently only for the purpose of speaking the epilogue?. As a kind of blank verse sequel to The Empress of Morocco, appeared about March 1682 at D.L., The Heir of Morocco, with the Death of Gayland, a play decidedly of the heroic species*. The prologue itself draws the attention of the audience to the fact that the author ‘“‘has his Play with Love and Honour cram’d.” Altomar is a pure “‘hero,” marvellous in battle, tender in love, merciful, gracious, constant: Artemira is a pure heroine: and Meroin a regular heroic villain. It is interesting to notice along with Dryden’s remark in the preface to Don Sebastian, the statement made in the epilogue to one of Settle’s later plays, The Ambitious Slave, or, A _ Generous Revenge (D.L. Feb. 1693/4) that this was an ‘‘ Out- of-Fashion” drama. It is possible that all that Dryden and Settle meant by these statements was that the cruder type of heroics was passing away, was being tempered by the incroach of pathetic motives. In any case the popularity of the heroic 1 The piece is plainly anti-Catholic and unfair at that. It deals with the tale of ‘‘Pope Joan,” who for years was believed to have succeeded Leo IV to the pontificial chair in 855. Regarding the authenticity of this story, see Déllinger, J., Fables respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages (English trans. pp. 3-36). 2 “In the Habit of a Nun.” 3 Malone says it was acted on Mar. 11, 1681/2, under the title of The Emperor of Morocco. The prologue and the epilogue were published separately in 1682 under this title. ie TRAGEDY species did not seem to decline. Distress’d Innocence, or, The Princess of Persia (D.L. Oct. 1690) and The Ambitious Slave may be taken as pure examples of the heroic drama in a blank verse dress. The former, which was a success4, has some very good scenes between Hormidas and Cleomira, scenes which mingle the pathetic note with the heroic ardour. Unlike it, The Ambitious Slave was a failure. It is a kind of pot-pourri of revenge, ambition, intrigue and heroic love— a sort of reminiscence of the rimed outbursts of the second decade of the Restoration, allied to elements taken from a certain type of Elizabethan drama. It was no doubt the lack of the pathetic that caused its want of appeal. Settle con- tinued writing on into the second decade of the eighteenth century, but this was his last experiment in the heroic style. Many others, however, in the eighties and the nineties of the century continued in the same strain. Crowne’s works have no great literary value, but in this connection they have a very great historical interest. The Ambitious Statesman, or, The Loyal Favourite (D.L. c. March 1679) in spite of the fact that its author considered it “‘the most vigorous of all” his ‘‘ foolish Labours?,” did not really deserve anything more than the cool reception which was accorded it on the stage. Professedly based on history, it is purely unhistorical, filled with stock characters that hardly ever rouse us to even a momentary interest. Thyestes (D.L. c. March 1681) followed two years later, and received a very favourable welcome. As in the case of Oedipus, this reception no doubt manifests the vitiated state of the public taste. Even in a play such as this, anti-Catholicism had to be introduced, even here indecent sentiments had to be advanced‘, and what with these and with the bloody horrors of Senecan and of Restoration imagination, the play exceeds even the nightmares of John 1 Cf. the dedication. 2 Preface. 3 Cf. the epilogue: “We shewed you in the Priests today, a true And perfect Picture of Old Rome and new.” * Cf. “ The Song at Atreus his Banquet” inserted in the play. TRAGEDY AND OPERA 141 Ford and falls far below Ford’s work in poetic and dramatic power. Crowne seems to have been particularly attracted by subjects taken from the lives of the Roman and other em- perors, for he followed Thyestes with no less than three similar themes, Darius, King of Persia (D.L. c. May 1688), Regulus (D.L. June 1692) and Caligula (D.L. c. March 1698)!. All of these show the same characteristics—the attempt at a classical calm and yet the retention of motives taken directly from the heroic rimed tragedy of the past decades. Darius is the weakest and least interesting of these three, in spite of its Persian setting. Regulus, in blank verse, deals with the various machinations of love and ambition in Carthage, and ends with the death of Regulus and with the running mad of his wife, Fulvia. As a whole it may be counted a dull late heroic tragedy. Caligula has a special point of interest in that it is written in rime and otherwise is a definitely heroic drama in subject and in treatment, full of rants and bombast, but not uninteresting if one can sufficiently disengage oneself from the rather humpty-dumpty verse. Valerius here is the usual noble general: Cesonia the typical heroine: Caligula the weak king—all stock characters of the old stage. From two other points of view this production is worthy of atten- tion. In the first place, the preface shows the effect of the moral change in the age, or at least of the conventional veneer of morality which was but cloaking unbridled licence, for there we discover Crowne valiantly defending himself against the supposition that he had used “‘ Baudy” to gain theatrical success in his former plays and apologising at the same time for the over-generous presentation of atheism in The De- struction of Jerusalem. In the second place, from a scenical point of view, the play is noticeable for the fact that there are five (or possibly only four) changes of scene throughout the whole of the piece—a manifest sign of the influence both of the new stage conditions and of the classic tendencies of the time. Otherwise, however, the tragedy might have been 1 'These themes were evidently popular; cp. Dryden’s Cleomenes. The popularity was possibly due to the revivals of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and similar dramas. 142 TRAGEDY written in 1676 instead of 1698. All through the dialogue there are scattered specimens of the true heroic diction. In the first act Caligula mentions to Cesonia the subject of tombs: Cesonia: Sir, why do you name Tombs? Caligula: Does it become A Heroine to startle at a 'Tomb?1— a question which reveals the highly self-conscious and un- natural psychology of the doughty persons of the Drawcansir theatre. Later in the play, Cesonia shows to us that she truly has no such mean qualms: “The least offensive Vapour strikes me dead,” she says, ‘““T can endure no Sweets but what excel; Yet of dead Enemies I like the Smell?.” The tastes of some of these heroines are certainly peculiar, to say the least. As for Caligula, he vaunts himself in true heroic proportions, and classical legend is called in to support his diction: Wou’d to the Gods all Rome had but one Neck, That I might cut off Millions at a Blow’. One of the few other rimed tragedies of the age is Boadicea, Queen of Britain (L.1.F. 1697) written by Charles Hopkins, of which the only scenes worth noticing are those between Cassabelan and Camilla. These mingle the heroic with the pathetic style so rapidly coming into fashion. Previous to this tragedy, Hopkins had written one other, Pyrrhus, King of Epirus (L.1.F. c. August, 1695). Written in blank verse, it is a very humanised heroic drama without any rants and without much pother of mixed-up loves—turning as it does mainly on the faithful passion of Pyrrhus for his wife, Lanassa. Besides the Boadicea of Hopkins and the Caligula of Crowne there were at least two other rimed or partly rimed tragedies produced during the last years of the century, one, Herod the Great (printed 1694) by the Earl of Orrery, and ea aT ae Rh TRAGEDY AND OPERA 143 the other, The Rival Sisters, or, The Violence of Love (D.L. Oct. 1695) by Robert Gould. Although the first is thoroughly heroic in subject matter and in treatment, the latter can hardly be styled heroic. It is really more of a domestic play based on a theme not unlike that of Shirley’s The Maid’s Revenge. It deals with the forced, or rather cheated, marriage of Antonio to Catalina, whose sister, Berinthia, the husband really loves, and on the miseries consequent on that. The whole is very well executed, and the marriage scene with its accompaniment of thunder and lightning rises to a truly tragic height. Unknown though it be to-day, this drama is decidedly one of the best tragedies of the end of the century and deserves more attention than hitherto it has received. In blank verse the heroic note, mingled with the pathetic atmosphere coming into fashion, was struck once more by Thomas Southerne. His first play, The Loyal Brother, or, The Persian Prince (D.L. c. March 1682), founded on a French romance, Tachmas, is spoilt by the political reference which seemed inevitable in any plays written about the years 1681 to 1685. Here Shaftesbury is but thinly disguised as Ismail, and the Duke of York even less thinly disguised as Tachmas. Otherwise the play is thoroughly heroic. Tachmas, the noble general and loyal brother, lives to enjoy Semanthe whom the Sophy freely gives him, and Ismail, the villain, meets a well-merited death. Ranting exclamations proper to the Drawcansir school fill the tragedy. The only part that breaks new ground is that scene in the second act, between Semanthe and Tachmas, which breathes an air of sylvan calm and of blissful peace foreign to the dramas of Dryden and of Orrery. Most of Southerne’s other serious plays are less heroic than this initial attempt, but in all the influence of Dryden and others of his school is to be felt. The Disappointment, or, The Mother in Fashion (D.L. c. April 1684) is styled a “Play”: for the plot Southerne has borrowed from the tale of the curioso impertinente and from Measure for Measure. Although it deals mainly with the libertine captain Alberto and with 144 TRAGEDY the odious Mother-bawd, it never once offends our sensi- bilities by indecency or vulgar suggestion. The chaste Erminia is a decidedly “moral” type, and, while from a modern standpoint we may censure Juliana, we feel pleased when we see that weak if venturesome lady creep back to Alberto’s heart in the end. With this play, Southerne first made his great and definite break with the pure heroics, pointing forward to what was to be his great endeavour in the future, the development of a new type of sentimental, moral, problem dramas. Closely associated with the rising sentimental school we must also number The Fatal Marniage, or, The Innocent Adultery (D.L. Feb. 1693/4), another “Play” which won a continental celebrity through the French translation in Le Thédtre anglais (1746) and through the German rendering by Von Schréder in 17921. Intrinsically it is a really fine serious drama, although to our modern taste it may appear a trifle artificial. The sentiment in places rings false and many of the actions do not seem to be motived sufficiently. The language, too, is peculiarly erratic. At one moment we may meet with the most execrable blank verse and at the next be confronted with bursts of passionate exclamation that remind us of Ford and Webster at their best. Such is that passage in the last act when Isabella in her misery cries out: Oh! they tear me! Cut off my Hands— Let me leave something with him— They’ll clasp him fast. In a strange and artistic manner here Southerne has united the spirit of the tragedy of blood with the spirit of the new sentimental and pathetic drama, still with a few reminiscences of the heroic stage. Sentiment rather than horror, however, looms over the fatal bride, tossed on a tormented sea of diabolically-human intrigue?. ‘The same atmosphere is once more conjured up in Oroonoko, : Garrick altered it in 1757 and Kemble in 1814. * It is based on a novel of Mrs Behn—The History of the Nun, or, The ee ik oe (see Summers, Montague, in Mod. Lang. Rev. April, 1916). TRAGEDY AND OPERA 145 or, The Royal Slave (D.L. c. Nov. 1695)1. It, too, was based on a novel by Mrs Behn and enjoyed a success hardly less than that of The Fatal Marriage*. In spite of a certain theatricality which is so apparent to us in all Restoration dramatic productions, this tragi-comedy is a decided triumph. It is true that Oroonoko himself is rather much of a stock love-and-honour hero, but even admitting that, the sense of tragedy, with the central figure and his one tragic flaw, if weakly carried out reminds us strongly of the creations of Otway. Imoinda is a delightful picture of a poor Indian maid, a figure interesting as a premonition of those ‘‘noble savages” cultivated by the followers of Rousseau in the eighteenth century. She stands out as a frail flower bent by the rude winds of civilised perversion and vice. The sense of pathos in this play is so great, the cumulative effect is so fine, that it is indeed a pity that the final lines should destroy the spirit of the whole: And if he went astray, There’s Mercy still above to set him right, But Christians, guided by the heavenly Ray, Have no Excuse if we mistake our Way. Southerne, after the production of Oroonoko, wrote only three more plays, but these, although interesting, cannot be dealt with here, produced as they were in the eighteenth century. The fact that Southerne was one of the few drama- tists whose work extends over the border of the two centuries and the fact that he mingled in such an artistic way the various elements heroic, Shakespearian and pathetic make him one of the most interesting figures of the tragedy of the time. He stands with Rowe as one of the chief influences on the development of the later theatre. Numbers of other less well-known dramatists followed in the footsteps of Lee and of Southerne in adopting the heroic 1 It is advertised as about to be published in The London Gazette for Dec, 12-14, 1695. 2 It was altered by Hawkesworth in 1759, and again in 1760 (twice, once anonymously and once by Francis Gentleman). The Prince of Angola. A Tragedy altered (by J. Ferrier)...and adapted to the Circumstances of the Present Time appeared in 1788. The comic portion was used in 1742 for a farce called The Sexes mis-match’d, NRD 10 146 TRAGEDY drama, sometimes in its pure form, sometimes with the introduction of more novel elements. Whitaker’s The Con- spiracy, or, The Change of Government (D.G. c. March 1680) has a certain interest as being the sole rimed play produced between the abandonment of rime in 1677 and the appearance of the little group of rimed plays mentioned above. It is a sort of Fordian variant of the heroic tragedy, ‘‘Death” in person making his appearance in the first and last acts, and rooms ‘hung all with black,” skulls and coffins being plenti- fully utilised. The anonymous Romulus and Hersilia, or, The Sabine War (D.G. c. August 1682) is no more valuable from an intrinsic point of view, but is interesting as being written for many scenes in prose (an anticipation of Lillo in that regard) although ‘“‘Plain Love and Honour,” as the prologue informs us, is the theme. Other heroic plays of the time may be rapidly passed over. Saunders’ Tamerlane the Great (D.L. c. March 1681) is of some importance because of its subject matter. It is interesting to note that the author appears to have been entirely ignorant of the famous work of Marlowe on the same theme, confessing only that he had heard mention of some “‘Cock-pit Play The Scythian Shepherd, or, Tamer- lane the Great,” which, he deemed, was of no great value. Of no interest as a play, but of value when we consider the other plays of its author, is Cyrus the Great, or, The Tragedy of Love (L.1.F. c. April 1695) by John Banks. In spite of the fact that Banks embraced the distinctly domestic drama of the time, and in spite of the fact that in the thunder and lightning and in the witches’ song he has a clear imitation of Macbeth, Cyrus is just a blank verse variation of an heroic motif from Le Grand Cyrus of Madeleine de Scudéry. It is full of horrors. In the first scene is a battle-field with dead bodies lying around, one of which “‘carkasses” is revived by a witch, and in the last act is a terrible picture of a mutilated body, a picture which Sir A. W. Ward justly reprobates. A slightly chillier play of a similar type is The Treacherous Brothers (D.L. c. Dec. 1689) by Powell the actor. This is a very ambitious tragedy, in would-be poetical language, but fails to catch our emotions. The action of Menaphon and of TRAGEDY AND OPERA 147 Orgillus in sending the Queen and Ithocles to sleep and thus stirring the King’s jealousy against them is barely motived. Orgillus has no object for doing so at all, and Menaphon is merely angry because the Queen, Semanthe, had rejected his unlawful love. This tragedy and Alphonso, King of Naples (D.L. c. Dec. 1690) show well the chastening of the heroic element of the earlier years and the re-introduction of an Elizabethan atmosphere. Alphonso seems to aim at a saner tragic type. The pathos arising out of the misfortunes and the deaths of Cesario and Urania is well portrayed, and the author all through has evidently been striving to arouse our sympathies and our emotions. With The Royal Mischief (L.I.F. c. April 1696) of Mrs Manley, we are back again at the Fordian blood tragedy, again with elements of heroics, not only in the Eastern setting but in the language of the piece. It seems to have met with some opposition from “‘the warmth in it’”—an opposition not ill-directed. Two other typically heroic plays must close this brief account. The first of these, the Victorious Love (D.L. 1698) of William Walker, is poor enough with its ghosts and its priest scenes, but the Heroick Love, or, The Cruel Separation (L.1.F.c. Dec. 1697) of George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, may not be dismissed so easily. Downes tells us that it was well acted and suc- cessful, and, indeed, for its type, it deserved to be. As a dramatic work of art it may seem to fail in many particulars and certainly wants that essential element of individuality, but, in a fairly calm kind of way, it presents a very fine and beautiful development of the Drydenesque tragedy. It has no characters worth speaking of save Chruseis, yet the atmo- sphere of the whole, in which heroic ardour is softened by a classical influence, is well deserving of our critical attention. Besides the pure type of heroic tragedy exemplified so well in this last play, besides the heroic play modified by elements taken directly from previous Elizabethan example, it is quite natural that there should be a number of dramas wherein heroics should be amalgamated with operatic tendencies. Of such a nature are the two dramas of Charles Gildon, a play- wright who carried on his work into the eighteenth century. Io-2 148 TRAGEDY Phaeton, or, The Fatal Divorce (D.L. 1698) is a mixture of Quinault and Euripides1, with reminiscences of the English heroic species. The unities are preserved, but the spirit is romantic, with typical ghosts and groves and love-scenes. From the prologue we learn that many of its “Ornaments,” that is to say scenery and costumes, had been brought over ‘from France”? as in the case of earlier operatic productions. The Roman Bride’s Revenge (D.L. 1697) is also a variant on the heroic style. Martian may stand as the typical hero-lover: Portia as the usual heroine: and the Emperor as the wicked potentate of the early Restoration school: but classical and operatic elements are worked in here, too, so that the play differs little in atmosphere from the more decidedly operatic Phaeton. Regular opera was, naturally enough, exceedingly popular among the audiences of the last years of the century, although the managers looked on it with suspicion because of the additional cost it entailed on the playhouses. Dryden’s Albion and Albanius (D.G. June 1685), planned as a vast piece of royal flattery, is finest of these, although, because of political disturbances, it was something of a failure on the stage. Planned originally as a kind of symbolic history of the reign of Charles and in this form put on rehearsal, it was just about to be performed publicly when Charles died. It was then enlarged so as to embrace Albanius, who is James. On June 3, 1685, it was put on the stage, and was promising a lengthy run, when on the sixth night news came of the landing of Monmouth. Hurriedly the ill-fated thing was laid aside?. Nearly all the characters in this opera are allegorical. Augusta is London: Thamesis appears in person, as also does Democracy, symbolising the Republicans, while Zelota stands for the hypocritical ‘‘zealots” of contemporary times. 1 The preface confesses that the author had started his scheme from the French and had finished by borrowing hints from the Greek. Quin- ault’s opera of Phaéton appeared in 1683 with music by Lully. It was the first opera seen by Louis XV. Cf. Delandine, A. F., Bibliographie Drama- tique (Paris, N.D.), p. 441. The music to the English version was by Daniel Purcell. * See Downes, p. 40: the exact date is derived from a MS. note by Luttrell, and by an entry in the Lord Chamberlain’s records. TRAGEDY AND OPERA 149 Albion, clearly, is Charles, and Albanius has been already indicated as James. Monk is presented under the faint dis- guise of Archon. Compared with other operas of the age Albion and Albanius is a triumph: in the shorter measures of this play Dryden has excelled himself: See the God of Seas attends Thee, Nymphs Divine, a Beauteous Train; All the calmer gales befriend Thee In thy passage o’re the Main; Every Maid her Locks is binding, Every Triton’s Horn is winding, Welcome to the watry Plain. This opera Dryden followed with another, King Arthur, or, The British Worthy (D.G.c. May 1691). His former work had been set by Grabut, but for the score to this he turned to Purcell. With Purcell’s music and with the dances arranged by Priest, it gained a tumult of praise in its own day, praise that did not, for a hundred years, die away1. Written in blank verse that breaks at times into aria, it is much more beautiful as a whole than Albion and Albanius, although none of the lyrical measures rise to the level of a number in the former opera. The most lovely of these lyrical measures here is the song in the last act: Fairest Isle, all Isles Exceiling, Seat of Pleasures, and of Loves; Venus here will chuse her Dwelling, And forsake her Cyprian Groves. Cupid, from his Fav’rite Nation, Care and Envy will Remove; Fealousie, that poisons Passion, And Despair that dies for Love. Gentle Murmurs, sweet Complaining, Sighs that blow the Fire of Love; Soft Repulses, kind Disdaining, Shall be all the Pains you prove. Every Swain shall pay his Duty, - Grateful every Nymph shall prove; And as these Excel in Beauty, Those shall be Renown’d for Love. 1 Tt was still played in the nineteenth century. 150 TRAGEDY Had all operas such beautiful libretti as these two have, there would be small cause for complaint. Another opera similar to King Arthur, is the Brutus of Alba, or, Augusta’s Triumph (D.G. c. Oct. 1696), a play published by Powell and Verbruggen, not, as some have said, an alteration of Tate’s similarly named play, but rather a sequel to that!. This opera has all the scenical devices dear to the machinist’s heart. There is in it a magic wand that can call up a misty cloud and then change it into a great windmill from whence come millers and country wenches to dance, turn it again into a witch from whom issue devils to join in a romp with the aged beldame and finally cause the whole to vanish. While the general level of the dialogue and the songs is much lower than that of Dryden’s opera, both blank verse and aria are by no means to be despised. Brutus of Alba is among the really interesting productions of the age. The ‘“‘moral”’ tone of the time found its way even into this species of dramatic production in the opera of Thomas D’Urfey, Cinthia and Endimion, or, The Loves of the Deities (D.L. c. Sept. 1697), which is a kind of ‘‘morality” play of gods and goddesses, “‘morally fashioning the Vertues and Vices of Human Nature.”’ From the preface one learns that it was written some three years previously, but that its public exhibition was delayed by the death of Queen Mary. It is by no means contemptible, for D’Urfey had the true flair of the song-writer. He has presented here one truly beautiful lyric: From the vast Empire of the Sea below?. Elements of disintegration are very visible in the kindred work of Elkanah Settle, who, besides adapting Philaster into an operatic shape, produced two interesting operas, one tending towards modern pantomime and the other towards musical comedy. The Fairy Queen (D.G. April 1692) is derived directly from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but has such scenic and other alterations that the whole is completely transformed. 1 ‘This was set to music by Daniel Purcell. 2 Act Ir. TRAGEDY AND OPERA 151 There are masques of allegoric figures, such as Night and Sleep': there are masques of Shepherds and of Shepherd- esses: there are masques of the Seasons*: and there are ““Chinese Dances,” in which, among many other things, are introduced six monkeys. Likewise set by Purcell and with the dances arranged by Priest, it does not seem to have been such a success as the productions of Dryden and of D’Urfey, although why this should have been we cannot tell‘. It certainly had all the scenic attractiveness of the other pieces, and even in modern times when revived was welcomed en- thusiastically5. From a stage point of view it is valuable as containing the earliest example of a “‘transformation scene,” in the modern sense, of which I know. In the fifth act enters “a Machine drawn by Peacocks.” These latter spread their tails until they fill the entirety of the stage: and then the whole suddenly vanishes and becomes transmogrified into some- thing quite different®. If pantomime saw a premonition in The Fairy Queen, comic opera took its rise with The World in the Moon (D.G. c. May 1697), set to music by Daniel Purcell and by Clark. Unlike the authors of Psyche and of Circe, Settle has here flung off all Gallic tradition in stage craft,and boasts of having “‘ thrown away all our old French Lumber, our Clouds of Clouts, and set Theatrical Paintings at a much fairer Light’. Contem- poraries, including the author himself, seem to have been at a loss where to classify the play. Called an “‘opera” and a “comedy” by Settle himself®, it was styled by Gildon a “comical opera?” and by Whincop a ‘‘dramatic-comic- opera!°.” In effect it is a kind of hybrid, alternating the most wondrous of scenic effects, with scenes of real-life comedy. PY. aOXEr- ar avi * Downes, p. 43. 5 The music, edited by Shedlock, J. S., was published by the Purcell Society in 1903 (Works of Henry Purcell, vol. 02); 6 The first Quarto was printed in 1692: another “with Alterations” appeared in 1693. The alterations consist mainly of the addition of a few songs. The B.M. copy of Q 2 is not so defective as Browne, F. C., avers (Elkanah Settle, Chicago, 1910, p. 95). It lacks only four pages. 7 Cf. dedication to Christopher Rich and the epilogue. 8 The latter appears over the dramatis personae. ® Gildon’s Langbaine, p. 124. 10 List of all the Dramatic Authors in Scanderbeg (1747), p. 283. 152 TRAGEDY For the former, apart from the examples given before in this work!, one may note the Dance of the ‘Green Men” in Act 1, the entertainment at Cinthia’s Court in Act 11 and the scenic wonders of Act Iv (a “Prospect of Terras Walks on Eight several Stages”). As regards the latter ingredient, the comic scenes are decidedly interesting, taking the form of a “re- hearsal” of the opera itself. In Act 11 Wildblood, Stanmore and Tom sit with Jo Haynes on the stage watching the per- formance, their remarks being exceedingly interesting and valuable from an historical point of view. Altogether the piece deserved that success which, we are informed, it received. A consideration of Settle’s operas has led us almost to the bounds of pure comedy. It will now be necessary to turn back from the musical drama to trace the development of the more pronounced Elizabethan and pathetic plays of the age. Both of these we have already met with, mingled with elements heroic: my endeavour now will be to indicate, first of all those tragedies which are more particularly to be associated with the rise of sentimental drama and the bour- geois tragedy, and secondly those productions which seem to be related more nearly either to Webster or Shakespeare than to Orrery and Dryden. The two groups are not mutually exclusive. It is quite evident, even from a cursory glance at the domestic and pathetic dramas of the time, that the authors of such tragedies were influenced directly by a new reading of Shakespeare and of other Elizabethan dramatists. The same men who were chief in the school of pathos wrote also more distinctly “Elizabethan” tragedies: Otway gave on the one hand The Orphan, on the other, Venice Preserv’d. A consideration of Otway’s work shows us also that we must not expect to find heroics entirely absent from the most pathetic of tragedies. Otway, as we have seen, had started in the heroic school. He passed on from that to deface Romeo and Juliet by turning it into The History and Fail of Catus Marius (D.G. c. Sept. 1679), and then, inspired pro- 1 See supra, p. 48. TRAGEDY AND OPERA 153 bably by the love which he bore towards the talented but morally vicious Mrs Barry, he created two of the finest tragedies of the time, revealing in them his appreciation of the work of the Elizabethans and his interest in domestic sorrows. The Orphan, or, The Unhappy Marriage (D.G. c. March 1680)", “‘a very moving Tragedy” as Langbaine described it?, is derived from a seventeenth century novel called The English Adventures. It deals with the love of two brothers for one girl, the orphan Monimia, that of one of them, Castalio, in a pure way, that of the other, licentious. Castalio marries her, but for several reasons has to retain his marriage a secret. While arranging to come on his marriage night to her room he is overheard by his brother: and the latter, deeming the whole matter but a libertine’s jest, forestalls him and enters first the darkened and silent room. This theme, which is wrought to the end with a consummate art, Sir A. W. Ward has declared quite unfit for a tragedy, although precisely why he does not make perfectly plain*. The plot undoubtedly presents a situation with untold possibilities for psychological and emotional development, and that Otway did not neglect those possibilities is evident from Mrs Barry’s declaration that she never uttered that fatal and pathetic **O Castalio!”’ after the cheat is discovered, without the tears rising to her throat and to her eyes. Viewed from amidst the dull heap of expiring heroes and of banal heroines, this tragedy is one of utmost merit. It has brought true pathos into drama, pathos and sentiment, told in a manner at once vigorous and calm. It would have been a masterpiece in any age: it was a triumph in its own, Two years later, Dorset Garden saw the production of an even finer play, Venice Preserv’d, or, A Plot Discovered (D.G. Feb. 1681/2), a drama, which, like The Orphan, not only had 1 This play reached a fifth edition by 1711. It was translated into French by Desclozeaux about 1822, and into German the same year. a P2308; 8 Mrs Barry acted Monimia, and Betterton Castalio. Curll informs us that Mrs Bracegirdle, then six years old, acted the page. “ Op. cit. 111. 416. 154 TRAGEDY a lengthy and dignified stage career in England, but carried Otway’s fame to the most distant corners of the earth’. The comic parts, mainly centring around the character of Antonio, which is in all probability a satiric portrait of Shaftesbury, are the only marring features in it, not because these are badly written, but because they do not harmonise well with the general theme of the play. They were omitted by Kemble in his acting version of 1795, but were retained in the recent revival of the tragedy by the Phoenix Society. Assuredly no age could be completely worthless that produced such a drama as this. The impression it leaves on the reader’s mind is stupendous, and that impression is but intensified when it is seen well-acted upon the stage. The characters are finely and delicately handled. The development of Jaffier’s psychology, veering from hatred to desire for revenge, from desire of liberty to active revolution, is an almost perfect study—all confused as it is by his love. Pierre, too, is a beautiful picture of the firm and clear-hearted rebel, steady to the last: “And Liberty!” he cries, his words ex- pressing his inmost soul, to which Jaffier’s ‘‘Revenge! Re- venge !” forms a not unfitting and uninstructive counterpart?. What though the other characters are more conventional— Priuli, Antonio, Aquilina and Renault—when we have these two for ever before us? Particularly of note are the speeches of Pierre, especially those at the beginning of the play: “‘So, indeed, men think me...’ and ‘‘Yes, a most notorious 1 It has been revived probably oftener than any other play save those of Shakespeare. All through the eighteenth century it was kept on the stage. Garrick played in it. Kemble’s version appeared in 1795. It was produced by Macready at Covent Garden in 1838, and by Phelps at Sadler’s Wells in 1845. Nor is its inspirational value for our own time gone: Gordon Craig’s impressionistic designs for scenery and the recent Phoenix Society revival testify to that. A Dutch translation by G. Muyser (Het Gered Venetie) appeared in 1755. La Fosse adapted it as Manlius Capitolinus in 1698. It was translated into French by de la Place (Théétre anglais, tom. V) in 1746, and again by Baron A. G. B. Brugiére de la Barante (Chefs-d’ cewvre des thédtres étrangers, tom. 11) about 1822. In German it made its appearance in 1847, and in Italian as Venezia Salvata (translated by M. Leoni) in 1817. As early as 1764 a Russian trans- lation was issued by Ia. Kozelski (Bosmymjenie nporuss Benenin Tparelis). 3 The 3 1 i, TRAGEDY AND OPERA 155 Villain...” and that fine outburst in Act 11, when swords are directed at Jaffier: Who talks of killing? Who’s he’ll shed the Blood That’s dear to me? Is’t you? or you? or you, Sir?! And the ending of the play is magnificent, closing upon the poor misguided Belvidera’s madness and the noble release of Pierre from the ignominy of the gallows. There is something in a poet’s heart always revolutionary, and even though Otway was one of Dryden’s persuasion—a monarchical absolutist— in this play he shows his sympathy for souls who struggle up out of the rut of life—out into the spacious sunlight of rebellion. There are firm-hearted, single-spirited Pierres who live to-day: there are cowardly Renaults, half-conspirators, half-egotistical-libertines : there are Jaffiers who sway between the ideal of revolution and other ideals: there are Belvideras, too, who, unconscious of the fact, mar men’s ideals and men’s lives. It is truly the highest art that is universal in this way and for all time: and who will deny that Otway has reached the very summit in that regard?? Another writer of undoubted merit who stands alongside Otway in the imaging of emotional and pathetic scenes is John Banks, whom we have already met with as an exponent of the heroic tragedy. Like Otway’s Alcibiades, The Rival Kings of this writer and The Destruction of Troy were but ephemeral things obviously produced simply to satisfy the tastes of the public of the seventies of the century. By 1682, like Otway again, Banks had completely turned round, and, although to the end of his career he retained traces of the heroic style, in all of his after works save the peculiar Cyrus the Great of 1695, he pointed deliberately towards that type of drama which was destined to be taken up in the eighteenth century by Rowe and to form the basis of a new tragic pro- ductivity. The Unhappy Favourite, or, The Earl of Essex ert: $ pe pe that Sir A. W. Ward has deemed this play artificial and the rebels but fancied closet conspirators. His opinion, however, much as I value it, cannot reave from me the impression which this play gave me on a first reading and on subsequent readings. Sir A. W. Ward’s criticism of Otway, indeed, in general would seem to be too severe. 156 TRAGEDY (D.L. ¢. Sept. 1681) in its very title shows the tendency of his art. Evidently a popular success in its own times and later?, The Unhappy Favourite is interesting because, in the scenes between the Earl and the Countess of Essex there is struck a note rarely felt in Restoration drama, a note, however, that has its echoes in Otway and even in Southerne. In spite of follies in it, such as the numerous asides and as that first line ridiculed in Tom Thumb: Help me to raile, prodigious minded Burleigh, it shows a decided attempt to produce a tragic spirit higher and more perfect than that of the heroic tragedy. This attempt Banks continued in Vertue Betray’d, or, Anna Bullen (D.G. c. April, 1682)%, again an historical work and again pathetic and emotional in tone. It is, in the words of the suppressed epilogue, a “‘ distrest Domestick Tale,” stressing most of all the truly affecting scenes between Piercy and Anna. In some ways it has affinities with the older heroic drama: it is purely a love play: Lady Blount cries “‘ Hell and Furies !” in the time-honoured strain: Henry is but the typical monarch, Wolsey the typical villain and Lady Diana Talbot the typical love-lorn maiden who dies of a broken heart. These re- miniscences of the popular drama of 1664-77, however, do not take from the fact that this is a sentimental tragedy, with close affinities to the school of pathos developing rapidly from the year 1682. It is also to be observed that it is the first of those ‘‘she-tragedies” made popular more than twenty years later. A somewhat similar play is The Island Queens, or, The Death of Mary Queen of Scotland. Publish’d only in Defence of the Author and the Play, against some mistaken Censures, occasion’d by its being prohibited the Stage (1684), also a ‘‘she- tragedy” but evidently not so pleasing to the court faction as Vertue Betray’d. The latter had had a pronounced royalist ' See the dedications to Vertue Betray’d and to Cyrus the Great. * It long held the stage in the acting version of Ralph (1731). It was translated into German in 1786. * Sir A. W. Ward gives the date wrongly as 1692, op. cit. 111. 429. TRAGEDY AND OPERA 157 note, but this following play, although it does not seem to our eyes a very dangerous piece of work, was suppressed. It was not seen on the stage until it had been altered into The Albion Queens, or The Death of Mary Queen of Scotland (acted at D.L. and printed 1704). As in the other produc- tions of Banks, there is a poetic touch here, chiefly in the pitiful figure of Mary. Elizabeth’s last words in The Albion Queens end on a despairing note heard seldom in the mouths of Restoration stage potentates. ‘‘O Cecil,” she cries, O Cecil! Shall I never be at rest? We are but Gawdy Executioners at best; Fixt to our Crowns, we bear the galling Weight, Of censuring Fools, and flattering Knaves of State. It was sentiments like this which in all likelihood the then monarch did not exactly appreciate. Equally important and equally neglected is The Innocent Usurper, or, The Death of the Lady fane Gray (1694)?. This tragedy was likewise prohibited by the censor again for what reason is not made quite plain. The Innocent Usurper, the last of this series of historical plays, is as typical as any of Banks’ productions. We meet here once more with the occa- sional heroic exclamations—‘‘Hell! Scalding Lead! and Sulphures !” is only one of them—and Pembroke’s already- quoted soliloquy in Act Iv: Weep, Heav’ns, fall Hail and Torrents from the Skye, And when y’ave drein’d the Briney Ocean dry, Weep on, and pour the Watery Globe and Night, On the World’s back, and quench this Orb of Light, reads as if it came from some tragedy of 1675. Again, how- ever, the atmosphere of the play is not heroic but pathetic, and domestic sorrows are duly insisted upon. The tragedy of Lady Jane is very pitifully painted for us, and the Duchess of Suffolk is a figure at once vital and vigorously delineated, 1 Henry VIII closes the play with the words: “A Prince can do no Till... For Heav’n ne’er made a King, but made him just.” 2 The dedication is dated Oct. 23, 1693. Siyoi. 158 TRAGEDY a kind of Restoration Lady Macbeth. ‘‘Go to a Man?” she asks, Have you that Blood Yet left within you that your Birth created? Or did it only boast (hoping to mix With mine) that you were Noble and Ambitious? O Gods! that Woman should so far excel Mankind in ev’ry thing, yet be so curst To be born Slaves, and live in loath’d Subjection!# Are you On the whole Banks merits a position much higher than that which is usually accorded to him. As a pioneer he stands alongside of Mrs Behn and of D’Urfey and of Otway and of Southerne in the development of the newer drama. In no way can one agree with the hasty dismissal of him by Mr Whibley as “‘an admirer of Lee” and as one who “‘faith- fully reproduced that author’s worst characteristics?.” Only of the earlier two dramas and of the later Cyrus the Great (which, the author informs us, was written before The Un- happy Favourite, most probably in the last years of the heroic fever) is this true, and all these plays stand quite apart from what were Banks’ main works. As an artist he stands next to Otway: as a precursor of Rowe he stands almost unique in his age. Connected with Banks in the adoption of historical themes mingled with pathos is John Bancroft, to whom in fair cer- tainty may be ascribed the two plays of King Edward the Third, with the Fall of Mortimer Earl of March. An His- tortcall Play (D.L. c. Dec. 1690) and Henry the Second, King of England; with the Death of Rosamond (D.L. Nov. 1692)?. These two plays are both very Elizabethan in character. The 1 1. i. Banks was evidently greatly influenced by Macbeth. I have already drawn attention to other reminiscences in Cyrus the Great. pelea in The Innocent Usurper where the Duchess meets Suffolk “What has alarm’d my Lord To be thus early up? Is Edward dead?” reminds us strongly of similar scenes in Shakespeare’s play. 2 See C.H.E.L., vol. vitt. ° Coxeter attributes King Edward the Third to Bancroft, and Gildon (p. 5) similarly Henry the Second. Both were published by Mountfort the actor, who disclaims authorship. TRAGEDY AND OPERA 159 former is but a poor piece of work, in which the comic scenes centring around the person of Serjeant Eitherside, are in- finitely superior to the serious portions of the play. Henry the Second on the other hand is a very fine historical tragedy. It betrays obvious reminiscences of preceding plays, but the blank verse is good and the characters fairly successfully worked out. The satire of priests and the person of Sir Thomas Vaughan, a kind of replica of Pandarus, recall to us Troilus and Cressida of Dryden, and the revengeful abbot seems a copy of Wolsey in Banks’ Vertue Betray’d. The last words of Rosamond, however, owe more to Elizabethan example: I do. Thus I submit, and Drink the Bane of Life; The Bane of Love. Oh Henry! thus I fall thy Sacrifice, and it was Elizabethan example that urged on this revival of plays dealing with English history. The pathetic note merging in with Elizabethan imitation is to be seen in many tragedies of the later years of the century. Many instances of how it crept even into the heroic plays of the time have been noted above. Similarly there has been noted the insistence on what had already appeared in the rimed heroic dramas of 1664~77, the atmosphere of. horror. Those dramatists, who in this later time, went in for such plays, seem to have been more successful on the whole than most other tragic dramatists. They are much more numerous, and obviously their productions made wide appeal to con- temporary audiences. The main thing that separates them from those who had before introduced horror into heroic plays is that they all made a fresh return directly to Eliza- bethan sources. A play like Ravenscroft’s The Italian Husband (L.I.F. 1697) betrays much closer similarities to some Eliza- bethan and Jacobean dramas than to horror elements either in the heroic or in other plays written between 1660 and the date of its production. Possessed of a certain power of appeal and rather strikingly written, it leaves us aghast at the frightful scene at the end where the lover and the wife lie dead in the chamber, to remain there until the latter’s father so TRAGEDY shall come. The husband has no doubt but that this scene will find the approbation of his father-in-law: I know ’twill greive his Heart, he lov’d her well, But Princes have noble Souls, His Sense of Honour will excuse the Deed. Such a scene reminds us at once of Shirley or Ford or Webster. The attempt to raise the emotions, and at the same time the endeavour to achieve something of powerful calm, is truly fed directly from Elizabethan founts. Most of the horror plays of this time are revenge dramas, and this theme again was in most cases taken over from older pre-Restoration sources. Thomas Scott’s The Unhappy Kind- ness, or, A Fruitless Revenge (D.L. 1697) is but an alteration of Fletcher’s Wife for a Month, and William Phillips’ tragedy of The Revengeful Queen (D.L. 1698) betrays deeply the influence of D’Avenant’s Albovine1. Other dramas deal with kindred atmospheres. The Fatal Discovery, or, Love in Ruins (D.L. c. March 1698), a play published by Powell?, turns on the unwitting double incest of Cornaro, who is not only the father of his own sister, Eromena, but later falls in love with and marries her. It has a comic underplot which merely serves to intensify the disgust and horror the whole tragedy casts upon us. Beauty in Distress (L.I.F. c. April 1698) by Motteux is likewise interesting, as being still a further specimen of the tragedy of blood, although written ‘‘to a Moral,” with the external format of classic restraint. The duration of the tragedy is three hours, and the place remains fixed in an ante-chamber. In spite of that, it is as noisy as any swash-buckling Cockpit production, and is valuable pre- cisely because of that. Many plays of the period, of course, cannot be crushed into one or other of the separate schools, being like this last-mentioned work of Motteux. Brady’s The Rape, or, The Innocent Impostors (D.L. Feb. 1691/2) with its theme of ‘ It is not certain whether the eighteenth century William Phillips is the same as this author ; circumstances tend to make us believe that he is. * Who, in his preface, makes a vigorous attack on Dryden for his “‘Praelude”’ to Heroick Love. 3 Preface. TRAGEDY AND OPERA 161 Goths and Vandals is thus difficult to classify, as well as plays like the anonymous Timoleon, or, The Revolution (un- acted, 1697)! and The Unnatural Mother (L.I.F. c. Aug. 1697)”, the latter with an Eastern setting but no very decided heroic features*. On all, however, to some extent the seal of the heroic or of the Elizabethan drama was set. Shake- speare had been found again, and the age was slowly creeping away from Beaumont and Fletcher to a new appreciation of the master’s works. VI. Adaptations of Shakespeare A consideration of the plays which present such marked features of Elizabethan imitation may well lead us to an ex- amination of the definite adaptations of the period and that to a general summary of this rapid analysis of tragic endeavour in the age of the Restoration. Probably nowhere better than in these adaptations can we find the key to the whole dramatic productivity of the period. Nowhere better can we find ex- pressed the likes and the dislikes of the time. If we take Shakespeare and watch the Restoration attitude towards his work, we shall at once penetrate deeply within the hearts and the minds of the dramatists and of the audience. I shall not here refer to Pepys’ critical strictures on Romeo or on Hamlet, because Pepys seems to me a highly unsatis- factory witness. He was prone to express his thoughts in rather an exaggerated form, and he was often influenced un- duly by external considerations. Sometimes he was breaking a vow Not to enter the theatre for a period of months, some- times he was disappointed in the company or in the acting. His value as a critic, moreover, is clearly enough displayed in his ludicrous comparison of The Adventures of Five Hours 1 This has been attributed to Southly (cf. MS. note in the Bodl. copy, Mal. 116). 2 Written by a “young lady,” possibly the same as the authoress of She Ventures and He Wins (L.1.F. 1696). 3 A fairly worthless play is Pausanius, The Betrayer of his Country (D.L. 1696) written in strict imitation of the French school. It was brought on the stage by Southerne and has been attributed to one Norton. It was esteemed by eighteenth century classicists (see Garth, The Dis- pensary, p. 51 of the 1699 edition), NRD Ir 162 TRAGEDY and Othello. There are many other men in the period who can better be trusted. Dryden in some of his works might be ruled out as being a man far and away superior to his age, but after all Dryden, his life through, was trying to plumb the tastes of his time. We may take his word for certain things. And we may take Tate’s, for Tate, as is evident from the prefaces to The History of King Lear and to The Loyal General, evidently thought a good deal of and about Shake- speare and was prepared honestly to like or to dislike as his mind bade him, not swayed by sudden fancies but basing his ideas on definite critical precepts. Before we come to the adaptations and to the prefaces in particular we may briefly note what the age did not like in Shakespeare. The comedies for the most part were neglected by the men and women of the time, the reason being that in the early comedies there is too much romance and in the later too chaotic plots. Thus there were never seen in the Restoration Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, All’s Well, As You Like It, and The Winter’s Tale. The Tempest was taken and altered because it had a unified plot, as well as possibilities for operatic display. Measure for Measure was run in with Much Ado by D’Avenant, but apparently without success. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was made into an opera. The Taming of the Shrew was sufficiently realistic to be a fair success in Lacy’s adaptation, and The Merry Wives, similarly a realistic play, was performed as early as Nov. 9, 1660, and as late as Dec. 17, 1675. Of all the romantic comedies which now we adore, only Twelfth Night in an unadapted form was given a half-hearted show on the stage during those forty years. With the histories and the tragedies it was different. The latter obviously appealed to the age, although there were many things that seemed to the Restoration courtiers inde- corous in them. Romeo, the early lyrical tragedy, was made into a tragi-comedy by Howard and classicised by Otway. Macbeth was made into an opera by D’Avenant. Lear was made happy in Tate’s version. Antony was rendered heroic ADAPTATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 163 and. sedate in Dryden’s famous tragedy. Othello and Hamlet escaped the hands of the adapter, why is not quite clear : they were presented in cut, but unadded-to, versions. Of the other tragic dramas, Troilus was heroicised by Dryden: Coriolanus made political by Tate: Titus Andronicus rendered more bloody by Ravenscroft: Timon turned “‘into a Play” by Shadwell: Julius Caesar feebly tampered with by an anonymous author: Cymbeline made pathetic by D’Urfey. Pericles apparently saw a solitary performance early in the Restoration period at the Cockpit: there is no record of any later revival. The histories made their appeal in other ways. They were easily turned into political parallels, as in Crowne’s Henry VI and Tate’s Richard IJ. Sometimes, as in Henry VIII, they could well be utilised to set off the rich scenes then coming into fashion. Even such a brief survey as this has shown us many of the likes and the dislikes of the age. The adapters, Dryden in particular, have pointed out still more clearly what they pre- ferred and what they thought wrong in Shakespeare’s works. Dryden, let us remember, had as great a veneration for Shakespeare as any man in his age. There is no hesitancy in his words in the preface to Troilus and Cressida, when he states that “‘our Reverence for Shakespear (is) much more just, than that of the Grecians for Aeschylus.” He is filled with a glow of admiration for his great English predecessor. This glow of admiration, however, did not blind him to what appeared to be errors and weaknesses in Shakespeare; in this very preface we find four objections to Shakespeare’s work clearly enunciated. First, he says, writing of the earlier Troilus but thinking of many other plays, much of the language is obsolete, coarse and too figurative. This is merely an echo of what almost everyone in that age was saying. That which the World call’d Wit in Shakespeare’s Age, Is laught at, as improper for our Stage, said a prologue written for a 1667 performance of James Shirley’s Love Tricks, and in 1673 one Richard Ward, when 1II-2 164 TRAGEDY looking about for a quotation to illustrate the use of “un- profitable and ineffectual Words,” chose some ten lines from The Merchant of Venice as a prime example?. Dryden’s second objection is that the whole play of Trozus and Cressida moves with a careless incoherent motion. Here again he was but expressing a common criticism of the age, the age that was growing rapidly classical, that disliked romantic incoherency and adored precision, mathematical though that might be. Thirdly, ‘‘the latter part of the Tragedy is nothing but a confusion of Drums and Trumpets, Excursions and Alarms” —the words are Dryden’s own. On turning to his own adaptation, one might think that he has increased the fighting and this “‘confusion of Excursions and Alarms”—but Dryden’s criticism was directed rather at what seemed to him the purposeless confusion than at the confusion itself. Finally, as a fourth objection, Dryden finds that ‘the chief Persons...are left alive: Cressida is false and is not punish’d.” We may, perhaps, looking over these statements and these facts, now tabulate briefly some of the things that the Restora- tion age saw in Shakespeare and some of the things which they whole-heartedly condemned. They liked the heroes of the tragedies, but as these were not sufficiently exaggerated, in their alterations they tried to make the Shakespeare figures approximate as closely as possible to the late seventeenth century standard; or else they took away from the reality of the types by the introduction of operatic features. Hamlet and Othello alone they permitted to be seen unadapted. Hamlet, hesitating, dallying, did not offend their suscepti- bilities, and in Othello, I have often suspected, the contem- porary audience must have looked upon Iago as the central figure. Othello, I am certain, they could not have possibly 1 A few of the sentences in this chapter I have taken from my own pamphlet on Dryden as an Adapter of Shakespeare (Shakespeare Asso- ciation Pamphlets, No. 8, 1922). On this subject Professor QOdell’s Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving should be consulted, and also Mon- tague Summers’ Shakespeare Adaptations. There is also an interesting little paper in The Library for 1913 by Wheatley on Post-Restoration Quartos of Shakespeare. ADAPTATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 16s appreciated. They liked, also, the settings of many Shake- speare plays, because they realised the possibilities in them of theatrical display, and they liked, in the later years; the scenes of pathos. They were conscious of the greatness of Shakespeare, but probably conscious of it in a vague way which defied analysis or definition. On the other hand, they objected to Shakespeare’s language. They objected to his romantic comedy. They objected to the too-great realism of his heroes. They objected to the chaos of his scenes. They objected to his lack of poetic justice and to the universal calamities which overwhelmed good and bad alike. The adaptations, therefore, made of those plays they liked, followed certain very definite critical lines. There was practi- cally no tampering with the text simply for the sake of tampering. The language was made easier and less involved. The heroes were made more heroic. Tragedies and comedies alike were turned into operas. The eternally changing scenes of the Shakespearian dramas were made more unified. The comedies and the comic scenes in the tragedies were made witty and vulgar in the Restoration way. Both tragedies and histories were rendered into political parallels. It is impossible here to do more than glance at some of the more important of the adaptations as illustrating these various points. The Tempest of Dryden and D’Avenant may be taken as displaying the tendency towards the introduction of “‘classically ” regular, almost mechanically regular, groups of characters in the plays. Ferdinand and Miranda, Hippolito and Dorinda, Ariel and Milcha, Caliban and Sycorax pair off in a wonderful way. Our only surprise is that the happy thought did not come to D’Avenant of providing Prospero with a female counterpart. This comedy may be taken also as illustrating the introduction of political elements, the Duke Trincalo scenes, evidently the most popular parts in the play, satirising the Republican parties. The new spirit of vulgar wit and suggestiveness is to be noticed here, coarseness in the Duke Trincalo scenes and innuendoes in the dialogue 166 TRAGEDY between Miranda and Dorinda. This debasing of Shakespeare’s humour is only part of what went on all through the age. Pandarus in Dryden’s Troilus and Cressida, in a similar way, is made inexpressibly coarse. One might cite in the same connection the indescribable indecencies introduced by Rochester into his alteration of Fletcher’s Valentiman. Two other alterations of D’Avenant’s present equally entertaining features. Macbeth, as I have noted, was turned into an opera. This in itself is interesting, but there are other changes in it, more detailed changes, which have an even greater importance. The language is consistently sim- plified and made regular. “To us fair Weather’s foul, and foul is fair!”’ say the witches, “Come hover through the foggy, filthy Air....” The words of Lady Macbeth and of Macbeth himself are robbed of their strength in an attempt to make them be more readily understood. There wou’d be Musick in a Raven’s Voice, Which shou’d but croke the Entrance of the King Under my Battlements, r : v No, they wou’d sooner add a Tincture to The Sea, and turn the Green into a Red— = She shou’d have Di’d hereafter, I brought her here, to see my Victimes, not to Die. To Morrow, to Morrow and to Morrow, Creeps in a stealing pace from Day to Day, To the last Minute of Recorded Time; And all our Yesterdays have lighted Fools To their Eternal Homes— any of these is typical of the silent changes made throughout. Here, also, in this Macbeth, beyond the mere alterations made in order to use machine and scenery, we may trace the in- fluence of the new stage conditions. Lady Macduff’s part is enormously lengthened, purely for the sake, apparently, of giving opportunity to some rising actress of the Duke’s Theatre. The other plays present equally valuable and interesting ADAPTATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 167 evidence of the tastes of the age. D’Avenant’s The Rivals, made out of The Two Noble Kinsmen, is a tragi-comedy, with the same simplification of language, and with a reduction of the spirit of Thebes to the spirit of Arcadia. Of Theocles and Philander (Arcite and Palamon) we are told that they killed With such regret, as if they did embrew Their Swords in Blood to blush for those they slew. Dryden’s Troilus and Cressida shows us the attempt to make heroic those plays of Shakespeare which to the Restoration seemed to lack the exaggerated sentiment necessary for tragedy. Troilus here has become a hero, Cressida a heroine, just as in All for Love Antony is made the brother of Almanzor, Cleopatra the sister of Almahide, Dolabella the image of Acacis. Troilus and Cressida and All for Love, however, differ from most of the adaptations in ending seriously and tragically. Romeo, we remember, was given a happy conclusion, and Cordelia and Edgar were paired off in Tate’s Lear. All these last-mentioned dramas display in common the tendency to make more unified and more sym- metrical the romantically irregular plots of Shakespeare. While this was in general due to the pseudo-classic criticism of the time, it was probably urged forward by the changing conditions of the stage. Shakespeare’s works, written for the platform of the Globe, were being adapted for performance in the picture-frame of the Duke’s and the Theatre Royal. In these adaptations, then, we may find the key to the age, an age, dependent on the old, but with new conditions and with new ideals: an age intent on its own wit, on its own ideas, on its own conceptions, able dimly to appreciate the great work of the past, but filled with an over-weening sense of its own importance and offended at any attempt to in- culcate in a reasonable way honour or virtue: an age that has inherited great and noble things, yet debilitate and weak, nursing the degenerate descendants of a powerful race, glorious sometimes in its decay, but graceless, if debonair, corrupt, if airy and splendid. CHAPTER THREE CONEY I. Introductory: Elizabethan and Foreign Models / "TF tragedy all through these forty years owed most to the \ I Elizabethan substratum, taking only some external charac- teristics and bye-forms from France and from Italy, comedy may be said to have been even more English still, having developed along lines which can be traced directly back to Jonson and to Beaumont and Fletcher. Again, as in the case of tragedy, we find the theatres playing for the first few years after the Restoration nothing but Elizabethan plays.) From the first organisation of the company until the opening of the L.I.F. house, in 1661, the Duke’s players acted at Salisbury Court no less than eight comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton’s Changeling and D’Avenant’s The Unfortunate Lovers. From June 1661 to the closing of the theatre in May 1665 they produced Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, four comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher?, D’Avenant’s The Wits, The Rivals and The Unfortunate Lovers, Middleton’s A Trick to Catch the Old One, Brome’s Sparagus Garden, Cooke’s Tu Quoque and Glapthorne’s Wit in a Constable. Later, from the re-opening of the playhouse in 1666 to April 1669, appeared Shakespeare’s The Tempest (in an altered guise), Twelfth Night, D’Avenant’s The Wits, The Rivals and The Unfortunate Lovers, Beaumont and Fletcher’s Maid in the Mill, Women Pleas’d and The Mad Lover, Shirley’s The Grateful Servant, The Witty Fair One and The School of Compliments, Ford’s The Lady’s Trial, Field’s Woman’s a Weathercock, Cooke’s Tu Quoque, and Cowley’s The Guardian. 1 Maid in the Mill, Wild Goose Chase, Spanish Curate, Mad Lover, Wife for a Month, Rule a Wife, Woman’s Prize, Little Thief. 2 Maid in the Mill, Mad Lover, Spanish Curate, Rule a Wife. INTRODUCTORY 169 ' It is noticeable that in this list Jonson is not represented at all. Apparently his plays were the sole property of the Royal troupe, by whom we find them frequently acted!, Between 1660 and May 1663, the date of the opening of the T.R. in B.St., there were performed at Vere Street and else- where fully seven of his comedies. During this time the King’s company also produced Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a few plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Shirley’s The Opportunity and The Example and Love in a Maze, Brome’s Jovial Crew and Antipodes, Heywood’s Love’s Mistress, Newcastle’s The Country Captain, and The Merry Devil of Edmonton, besides a few other comedies and tragi-comedies of lesser note. The majority of these found frequent revivals both by the two separate companies and by the united troupes after the Union of 1682. This rather tedious list of names is not without its purpose. It enables us at a glance to see the types of older plays which might exercise an influence on the new race of dramatists. Shakespeare’s comedy of romance is not well represented. Of those which did appear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was not successful and Twelfth Night was thought by Pepys, who probably reflected the opinions of at least a certain body of spectators, ‘‘ but a silly play.” (What obvieusly appealed more’ to the audiences were the comedies of Jonson and the comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher. It was these which were to form the basis of almost every single type of lighter play written from 1660 to 1700. Jonson, with his classic mind, his rich powers of observation, his fine technique, and his satiric tendencies, was bound to make an appeal to the later seventeenth century audience. The old ‘‘ humours” were still there in social life, and in addition there was arising a new set of eccentrics, the fops and the affected ladies and the bullies, all awaiting representation in the Jonsonian manner. Almost all felt the impress of his art. He gave to Dryden in his earlier dramas many a hint, sometimes well employed, 1 See the list of T.R. plays in Appendix B. . ‘2 Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair, The Devil’s an Ass, Everyman in his Humour, Everyman out of his Humour. 1470 COMEDY sometimes, as in the wearisome “‘little Bibber,”” but blunder- ingly taken over. He was the master in chief of Shadwell. He presented to the comedy of manners, if not the main types, at least the background against which these main types moved. Dryden and others may have found him on occasion a trifle rough: but that roughness the age of the Restoration thought it could plane down. The fabric at least was there: but the finishing process remained) That finishing process, however, was not entirely new. It had already started in the early years of the seventeenth century in the able hands of F letcher.) The Wild Goose Chase we have noted above as produced at L.I.F. in the first years of the Restoration period, and this play, not untypical of Fletcher’s later art, this “‘famous play” as Pepys called it on Jan. 11, 1667/8, this play that was to form the basis of Farquhar’s The Inconstant, might almost be mistaken forthe work of one of the writers of the manners school. The dramatis personae have the names and the characteristics similar to those given by Congreve to his stage figures— Mirabell, ‘a Travell’?d Monsieur and great defyer of all Ladies in the way of Marriage, otherwise their much loose Servant, at last caught by the despis’d Oriana,” Pinac ‘‘his fellow Traveller, of a lively Spirit, and Servant to the no less sprightly Lillia-Bianca,” Oriana ‘‘a witty follower of the Chase,”” Rosalura and Lillia-Bianca \‘Airie Daughters of Nantolet.” There is hérejust such a play as the best Restora- tion authors present to us, just the same subservience of the plot to witty dialogue, just the same air of graceful abandon, just the same loss of all more sober moral standards. This type of play added to characteristics taken from Jonson gave the comedy of Dryden: carried one step farther into the realm of aristocratic licentiousness it produced the master- pieces of Congreve. ) (Whatever foreign influences entered to provide fresh hints and give rise to new developments, we must never forget that this English substratum is always present, and that these foreign influences often coalesced with, rather than altered, the tendencies already taken over from the Eliza- INTRODUCTORY rt bethan playwrights.) Thus the classic influence, the influence of Terence and of Plautus, really could give nothing to the stage that had not been given to it by Jonson}. Sedley, cer- tainly, seems to have gone straight to the Eunuchus for his Bellamira (D.L. May 1687) and Wilson to the Aulularia for his The Projectors (acted? 1665), but most of the more apparent reminiscences of classical plays can be traced, not directly, but through either earlier English or continental imitations. Thus many of the lovers, astute servants and cheated parents, while obviously owing their ultimate being to the dramatic art of Rome, might have been taken not only from plays of Moliére or from plays of the commedia dell’ arte, but from those of native English dramatists. C It is certainly true that the influence of contemporary France and even of contemporary Italy cannot be left out of account in any history of Restoration drama. As has often been pointed out, this age, classical as it deemed itself, looked more directly to Paris and to Rome and to Madrid than to ancient Italy or to Periclean Athens. Without doubt the people with whom the Restoration courtiers found them- selves most in sympathy were the French—gay, fearless, godless as themselves, with a royalist régime, and a comedy brimming over with the veriest cream of wit. Audacious, beautiful, with a classical perfection in the rapier thrust of their humour, they would have charmed the Ethereges and the Congreves of the age even if so many of the royalist supporters had not been forced to live among them for many long years of exile, learning their manners, their morals and their oa 1 Of plays more or less directly influenced by Roman dramatists, one might mention Dryden’s Amphitryon (D.L. 1690), The Mistaken Husband (D.L. 1675) which owes to the Stichus, and Shadwell’s The Squire of Alsatia (D.L. 1688). In the last the two elder Belfords seem based on Mico and Demea and the two younger on Eschinus and Ctesipho of the Adelphi. 2 See Harvey-Jellie, W., Les Sources du Théatre anglais a l’époque de la Restauration (Paris, 1906), chapter 2, pp. 29-35: “L’exil des poétes anglais.” A study of Killigrew’s Comedies and Tragedies (1664) is in- teresting in this connection. The Princess was written at Naples; The Parson’s Wedding at Basle; Cicilia and Clorinda at Turin; The Pilgrim at Paris; Bellamira at Venice; Claracilla at Rome; The Prisoners at London. 172 COMEDY If, in considering the classic influence on English drama of the late eighteenth century we were met with a fair appre- ciation of Terence and of Plautus, how much more en- thusiasm do we find when we turn to the representatives in England of Moliére! Here are Wycherley and Congreve and Farquhar and Dryden and Etherege, a great host of names, whose comedy has been acclaimed as one of the most perfect types in English literature. They have caught at the wit of Moliére and have striven to reproduce it in cognate forms. It may not be, certainly, that Lacy should, in adapting such a play as Le Médecin malgré lui, have vastly improved the original material, as Langbaine foolishly thought, yet, not- withstanding, the dramatists of undoubted merit in that age, rival Moli¢re in the realm of comedy. Wycherley and Congreve, taking from Moliére, yet different from Moliére, have something in them that gives them a claim to stand alongside of the French master. The translations and adaptations of Moliére during those forty years are indeed imposing. Not all are great, certainly, but nearly every one has about it, if but in parts, the sparkle of impulsive wit. Very few are pure translations. The English dramatists, inheriting the characteristics of their own earlier stage, loved above all incident and preferred to unite into one comedy what had furnished the Parisian theatre with three or four. The instance of Sir Martin Mar-all (L.1.F. 1667) is typical. Taken from L’étourdi (Lyons, 1656?), Moliére’s first play, its two primal acts owed more than a 1 In the following list of English borrowings I have purposely en- deavoured to summarise rather than to elaborate. Apart from such plagiary-hunters as Langbaine and the detailed theses on particular plays mentioned in the footnotes, see for this subject the very exhaustive essay of Gillet, J. E., Moliére en Angleterre, 1660-1670 (Mémoires de I’ Acad. Royale de Bruxelles, N.S. tom. Ix. 1913) and the more general study of Miles, D. H., The Influence of Moliére on Restoration Comedy (New York, 1910). These two volumes supersede the earlier investigations of Hum- bert, C. H., Moliére in England (London, 1874), and of Van Laun, Les plagiaires de Moliére en Angleterre (in Le Molieriste, Aug. and Nov. 1880, Jan., May and Aug. 1881). The thesis of Besing, M., Moliére’s Einfluss auf das englische Lustspiel bis 1700 (Borna-Leipzig, 1913) is amore ordinary work but has a fair summary on pp. 105-108. A good general survey of the French influence on English drama is to be found in Charlanne, L., L’influence frangaise en Angleterre au xvit® siécle (Paris, 1906). INTRODUCTORY 173 little to L’amant indiscret of Quinault. This tendency to multiply plots was noted by contemporaries, both continental and English. Thus in 1663 the author of Love a la Mode declared that “‘the French are commonly content in their Comedies with one single Humour and Rime,” in contra- distinction to the English who delighted in complexity, while Luigi Riccoboni in An Historical and Critical Account of the Theatres of Europe (London, 1741) noted how in adaptations of the French dramas English “Authors have doubled the Intrigue.” Moliére’s first play of L’étourdi, utilised for Sir Martin Mar-all, was re-utilised by Dryden later for some sugges- tions in the third act of The Assignation (King’s company at L.IL.F. 1672)?. Le dépit amoureux (Bezier, 1656) supplied the basis for the garden scenes of An Evening’s Love (T.R. in B.St. 1668), itself taken, as we shall see, through the French of Thomas Corneille, from the Spanish of Calderon?. It also provided Etherege with the sub-plot of The Comical Revenge (L.I.F. 1664). A translation of Les précieuses ridicules (Paris, 1659) appeared in Flecknoe’s The Damoiselles a la Mode (T.R. in B.St. 1668), a play that also owes suggestions to other French works*. Betterton united it with George Dandin to form his The Amorous Widow (L.I.F. 1670) and in diverse ways it furnished materials for Ravenscroft*, Etherege®, Crowne®, Shadwell? and Mrs Behn§. Sganarelle (Paris, 1660) appears to have been a universal favourite. D’Avenant intro- 1 For Dryden, see Hartmann, K., Einfluss Moliére’s auf Dryden’s Komisch-Dramatische Dichtungen (Leipzig, 1885) and Ott, P., Uber das Verhdltniss des Lustspieldichters Dryden zur gleichzeitigen franzdsischen Komédie, inbesondere zu Moliére (Munchen, 1885). On Sir Martin Mar-all in especial, Miles, op. cit., p. 236 and Gillet, pp. 50-63. 2 In Harvey-Jellie, op. cit. Appendix vill, there is an interesting ex- amination of the respective réles in the corresponding works of Dryden, Corneille, Moliére and Scudéry, and also in Appendix 1x a parallel between Iv. iii of An Evening’s Love and V. iii and iv of Le dépit amoureux. 8 Gillet finds suggestions in this play from Les précieuses ridicules and L’étourdi as well (op. cit. pp. 33-39 and 147). 4 The Careless Lovers (D.G. 1673), Iv. ® The Man of Mode (D.G. 1676), 11. ii. ® The Married Beau (D.L. 1694), 1. ? Bury Fair (D.L. 1689) character of La Roche. 8 The False Count (D.G. 1682). 174 COMEDY duced a translation of it, in broken French, into the second act of The Play-House to be Lett (L.1.F. 1663) besides which it gave Rawlins much of the plot of Tom-Essence (D.G. 1676). L’école des maris (Paris, 1661) was utilised by Sedley in The Mulberry-Garden (T.R. in B.St. 1668) and by Otway for a scene or two of The Souldier’s Fortune (D.G. 1680). It formed also the basis of Shadwell’s The Squire of Alsatia (D.L. 1688). To Les fdcheux (Paris, 1661), likewise, Shadwell went for several scenes of The Sullen Lovers (L.1.F. 1668). Along with the above-mentioned L’école des maris, L’école des femmes (Paris, 1662) was made use of by Wycherley in The Country Wife (D.L. 1675)!. Part of the latter was employed by Ravenscroft in The London Cuckolds (D.G. 1681) and by Dryden in The Spanish Fryar (D.G. 1680) while it received a free translation by Caryl as Sir Salomon (L.1.F.) in 16697. La critique de [école des femmes (Paris, 1663) was also used by Wycherley, furnishing a scene of The Plain Dealer (D.L. 1676) which, for its main plot, is quite obviously founded on Le misanthrope (Paris, 1666)®. This last French play, more- over, gave Shadwell the main theme of The Sullen Lovers (L.I.F. 1668) and suggested part of the first act of Bury Fair (D.L. 1689). Le mariage forcé (Paris, 1664) was utilised by Ravenscroft for his Scaramouch (D.L. 1677)4 and for parts of the first two acts of The Canterbury Guests (D.L. 1694). Tartuffe (Paris, 1664), naturally, was eagerly seized upon, and not only had the honour of being translated during the century®, but suggested scenes and episodes for many plays, among them Crowne’s The English Frier (D.L. 1690), Dryden’s The Assignation (King’s company at L.I.F. 1672), Congreve’s The Double Dealer (D.L. 1693)? and Dryden’s 1 See Sandmann, P., Moliére’s Ecole des Femmes und Wycherley’s Country-Wife. * He joined it on to scenes taken from four other comedies: cf. Gillet, op. cit. p. 147 and pp. 97-100. ® Cf. Ferchlandt, H., Moliére’s Misanthrop und seine englische Nachah- mungen (Halle, 1907). * 'To which he added parts of Les fourberies de Scapin and of Le bour- geois gentilhomme, : Medbourne’s Tartuffe (T.R. in B.St. 1670). Iv. iv. * Along with hints from Les Femmes savantes. INTRODUCTORY 175 Mr Limberham (D.G. 1678). Contrary to appearances, Le Festin de Pierre, ou, Don Fuan (Paris, 1665) did not supply Shadwell with The Libertine (D.G. 1675) but a lesser known Nouveau Festin de Pierre of Rosimond?. L’amour médecin (Paris, 1665), however, received many flatteries in the form of imitation. Along with Le médecin malgré lui (Paris, 1666) it gave birth to Lacy’s The Dumb Lady (T.R. in B.St. 1669), the play Langbaine thought so much improved in the English dramatist’s hands*. The latter French comedy, moreover, gave scenes to Dryden for The Spanish Fryar (D.G. 1680) and to Shadwell for Epsom Wells (D.G. 1672)*. Le Sicilien (Paris, 1667) was employed by Crowne for The Countrey Wit (D.G. 1676) and Amphitryon (Paris, 1668) by Dryden for his homonymous drama (D.L. 1690)°. In The Miser (T.R. in B.St. 1672) Shadwell freely rendered L’avare (Paris, 1668) which also furnished suggestions for the fourth act of The Squire of Alsatia (D.L. 1688). When we reach Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (Paris, 1669) we come upon an even greater measure of assimilation by the English playwrights—an assimilation shared in extent only by Le bourgeois gentilhomme (Paris, 1670). Satire of such types as are depicted in the French comedies was not an uncommon thing in the native Restoration dramas, and the keen biting delineation of them by Moliére, his episodes and his wit, seized upon the English fancy with a powerful hand. The main action of Ravens- croft’s The Careless Lovers (D.G. 1673) was taken from the first of these plays, while the same author’s The Citizen turn’d Gentleman (D.G. 1672) employed the title of the other and fused both into one. In The Canterbury Guests (D.L. 1694) reminiscences of the latter make a further appearance. 1 Character of Mrs Saintly. 2 Miles, op. cit. p. 231. 2 See Wernicke, A., Das Verhdltniss von John Lacy’s The Dumb Lady zu Moliére’s Le Médecin malgré lui und L’amour médecin (Halle, 1903) and Ohnsorg, R., ohn Lacy’s “Dumb Lady,” Mrs Susanna Centlivre’s “‘Love’s Contrivance’”’ und Henry Fielding’s “Mock Doctor” in threm Verhdltnis zu einander und zu ihrer gemeinschaftlichen Quelle (Hamburg, 1900). % In the fourth acts of both plays. 5 For an analysis of Dryden’s indebtedness to Moliére in this play see Appendix x to Harvey-Jellie, op. cit. 176 COMEDY Dryden utilised a trifle of Monsieur de Pourceaugnac in Love Triumphant (D.L. 1693)! and Shadwell some part of Le bourgeois gentilhomme in Bury Fair (D.L. 1689) while with La malade imaginaire (Paris, 1673) both served to contribute to Mrs Behn’s Sir Patient Fancy (D.G. 1678). Psyche (Paris, 1671), as has already been mentioned, was transformed into Shadwell’s opera?. Les Fourberies de Scapin (Paris, 1671), besides inspiring part of Ravenscroft’s Scaramouch, was directly translated by Otway in 1676 as The Cheats of Scapin (D.G.). With The Female Vertuoso’s (D.G. 1693) of Wright, a translation of Les femmes savantes (Paris, 1672), a play that had given hints to Congreve the same year for The Double Dealer (D.L. 1693), we come to the end of the definite borrowings of Moliére during the century. Other comedies may be pointed out, it is true, with what appear to be para- phrases of Moliére’s words and scenes, very likely were such, but which cannot be proved to be imitations with absolute certainty. Moliére, however, was by no means the only comic dramatist of the French stage whom the English playwrights followed; to trace thoroughly all the manifold resemblances would require a comparative research into the most arcane and forgotten productions of the Parisian theatre. Thomas Corneille, with certain of his plays, furnished a considerable stock of wit to the English stage. His L’amour a la mode (1655), taken itself from El amor al uso of Antonio de Solis, gave Bulteel the plot of Amorous Orontus, or, The Love in Fashion (unacted, 1665) besides providing the title for the Love a la Mode (Middlesex House, 1663) of Thomas Southland. Le feint astrologue (1648), also taken from a Spanish original, E/ astrologo fingido of Calderon, presented Dryden with more than a hint for An Evening’s Love, or, The Mock Astrologer (T.R. in B.St. 1668). It was translated as well as The Feign’d Astrologer (unacted) the same year. Along with Quinault’s La généreuse ingratitude, Corneille’s Don Bertran de Cigarral (1650) gave many incidents in the + 1. i and v. i have been traced to 11. vi and 1. viii of Moliére’s play. 2 Cf. infra, p. 256. INTRODUCTORY 177 plot of Corye’s The Generous Enemies (‘T.R. in B.St. 1671). Le Menteur (1642) of Pierre Corneille gave birth, not only to the anonymous The Mistaken Beauty, or, The Lyar (‘T.R. in V.St. 1661?) but to scenes in many otherwise unadapted comedies of the age. To Scarron, also, the English dramatists owed much. Fane, in his Love in the Dark (D.L. 1675), rendered the main plot of The Invisible Mistress as D’ Avenant did those of Fodelet, ou, Le maistre valet (1645) and of DPhéritier ridicule (1649) in The Man’s the Master (L.1.F. 1668). Otway in The Souldiers Fortune (D.G. 1680) adapted part of Le roman comique (1649-57) as Dryden did in The Rival Ladies (T.R. in B.St. 1664). It is just possible also that the character of Major Oldfox in The Plain Dealer (D.L. 1676) owes somewhat to Leroman bourgeois: part of Farquhar’s The Constant Couple (D.L. 1699) is derived from the same source. Such a mere enumeration of names, of translations, of borrowings, may seem but a dry and uninteresting affair, but if ‘‘the English mind...moves freely only under the pressure of facts,” as Mr E. B. Taylor imagines, these enumerations are by no means unnecessary as proving the intense cosmopolitanism of the English drama of this period. The enumerations are but the tangible expression of the countless resemblances which are to be felt as we read almost any of the dramas of the age. Go where we will, we are conscious of the foreign strata, the remembrance of foreign phrases, graces, dresses. We cannot in any way limit the influence. The cataloguing of great names is nothing. For his T’yrannick Love (T.R. in B.St. 1669) Dryden could go to a comparatively insignificant and unimportant Saite Catherine, for his Dame Dobson (D.L. 1683) Ravenscroft could pass to an almost unknown comedy, La Devineresse. The facts detailed above may give us but a hint of the close bonds, still largely unfathomed, perhaps unfathomable, which must have existed between the two stages of Restoration London and the Paris of Louis XIV. At the same time, we must be particularly careful to dis- tinguish between the mere taking over of plot or of character NRD IZ 178 COMEDY and the reproduction of the atmosphere of the French comedies, The audience of London was not quite the audience of Paris. Moliére was not precisely the same in spirit as either Etherege or Congreve. In the first place, the Restoration writers are more sensual than the French master. They delight more in double entendre and playing with their wit on subjects vulgar or immoral. Thus Etherege, although he lived in Paris during the first years of Moliére’s success and although he probably came as near as did any of his contemporaries to an appreciation and to a re-presentment of the French atmosphere, is divided from the continent by a huge chasm, well-nigh impassable. Wycherley, who has been called Moliére in English, is far too vulgar and too disgusted at his own vice ever to merit that title. Congreve really belongs to a different type of comic writers altogether, and the same is true of Farquhar and of Vanbrugh. The English courtiers of the years 1660 to 1700 were indulging, as has been pointed out, in a false gaiety. Their laughter rings forced and hollow, their cynicism is exaggerated because of the Puritan opposition. Hardly ever does one of them ap- proach towards the free easy laughter of Moliére. For the same reason they barely touch Moliére’s fine humanitarian spirit. Their outlook and the aim of their work is narrow. They do not look beyond their narrow circle, and as a conse- quence we feel that, brilliant though their work may be, it can never have that universal appeal which places Moliére close alongside Shakespeare in the ranks of dramatic writers. ‘One other thing must be noted. It has been seen that in taking over the French comedies the English playwrights found it necessary to amalgamate into one single play a number of diverse incidents taken from two or more con- tinental pieces. Instead, therefore, of having a delicate three act cameo, unified and harmonious, they made their plays almost as chaotic with plots and underplots as the Elizabethan playwrights had made theirs. Even the classicising ten- dencies of the time could not check the truly English tastes of the audience. What the spectators at the King’s or at the Duke’s wanted to see was plenty of bustling incident, not INTRODUCTORY 179 these harmonious cameos of delicate art. The whole structure of the Moliére comedy was by them thus destroyed. In conclusion, therefore, we may say that although Moliére and his companions were a tremendous force in English drama, that force was not sufficient to alter in any serious way the national tastes of the audience, and that the spirit of Moliére was never once translated faithfully into a play of English workmanship. ( The same or a similar criticism is true also of the influence exercised’ by the dramatists of the Spanish and Italian theatres. Closely allied to the influence of France, because of its own influence on the French dramatists, was the appeal made by the stage of Madrid. Many of the Spanish reminis- cences, it is true, can often be traced indirectly through inter- mediate Gallic sources, but it must never be forgotten that Spanish could be quoted in English Restoration plays without any undue air of pedantry, and that Spanish scenes, if not quite as common in the comedies as English scenes, could frequently be resorted to. While due ridicule was made of Spanish punctilio and of the absurd attitude adopted by Spanish grandees towards their women-folk, the English were sufficiently close to the Spanish aristocratic position to appre- ciate in some small measure their ideas of honour and of dis- honour. ) Dryden’s bon mot “I hate your Spanish Honour, ever since it spoil’d our English Plays” is too much of an epigram to be taken absolutely seriously. /The gallantry was there in London life, and, if the intense jealousy was absent, it was because that emotion seemed to the English People of Quality more the attribute of the Town than of the sophisti- cated dwellers round the Court. The indifference to evil was there as well, not because it could be expiated by the church, but because it seemed to the courtiers a thing of no conse- quence in face of all that was charming in this delicate and joyous world. At bottom the attitude of both was the same. The Spaniard was a religious cynic: the Restoration English- man a pagan one. The question of Spanish influence on English drama at this time has never fully been worked out. The immensity 72-2 180 COMEDY of the task might well dissuade any student from attempting it. From what already has been done on this line, however, we know that the influence was no slight one. Calderon, mainly because he was a contemporary of Moliére and Etherege and Congreve, was eagerly looked to. Charles seems to have known him well. At the advice of the king Sir Samuel Tuke translated Los Empefios de Seis Horas as The Adventures of Five Hours (L.1.F. 1663). Another courtier, George, Lord Digby, rendered No siempre lo Peor es Cterto as Elvira (L.I.F. 1663) and Downes mentions two other comedies by the same writer, "Tis Better than it was and Worse and Worse, which no doubt are from Mejor esta que estaba and Peor esta que estaba. Killigrew’s The Parson’s Wedding (T.R. in B.St. 1664) seems to have suggestions from Dama Duende}, as is part of Wycherley’s The Gentleman Dancing-Master (D.G. 1672) from El Maestro de danzar. Calderon, along with Moreto, was the Spanish dramatist probably with the nearest ties of kinship to the Restoration playwrights. Lope de Vega, although he too was made use of, lay further away with his over-strained intrigue, his jealousy and his flagrant honour. It was Moreto’s No puede ser that gave birth to Crowne’s finest comedy, Sir Courily Nice (D.L. 1685), a play which, like The Adventures of Five Hours, was written at the command of the king. No puede ser was also the source of St Serfe’s earlier drama, Tarugo’s Wiles (L.1.F. 1667). Vega, Alarcon, Molina and the others came to us mainly through the medium of the French, al- though there are scores of plays of ‘‘ Spanish extraction,” the sources of which have never been discovered. Italy, too, played its part in the development of the comic types of Restoration drama, not so much through its in- tellectual lays, the commedia erudita, as through the commedia dell’ arte descendant of the old Roman drama and the ancestor of modern farce and pantomime. Many of the most brilliant plays of Italy, such-as Macchiavelli’s. Maudragola, appear at this time to have gone completely unnoticed.) Macchiavelli may have remained a type of evil and of great- * But see Montague Summers’ Restoration Comedies (1921), pp. XXv-Vi. INTRODUCTORY 181 ness, may have retained the position he held during the Elizabethan period, may, through his tales, have inspired one or two plots in Restoration comedies, but his work for the Italian theatre was unknown and uncared for. The commedia del? arte, on the other hand, seized powerfully on the fancies of the English audiences. It competed successfully with the comedy of manners. Its types were taken over into English dramas, and it itself gave impetus to that farcical element which becomes so pronounced in the last years of the century. A fuller consideration of its power and influence may well be left over to a later chapter of this book. II. Types of Restoration Comedy Out of Jonson and Fletcher, then, tempered by reminis- cences of Moliére, of the commedia dell’ arte and of Calderon grew the comedy of the Restoration: and the study of the development of that comedy really resolves itself into a disentangling of such diverse founts of inspiration. It must, of course, be realised at the very start that Restoration comedy is something far wider than is connoted by the modern use of that term. We have been rather apt to make it include solely that group of major dramatists which is composed of the outstanding figures of Etherege, Wycherley, Congreve, Farquhar and Vanbrugh, to the almost complete exclusion of all those innumerable writers who supplied the Theatre Royal and the Duke’s with their daily fare. It is perfectly true that that group of major dramatists undoubtedly repre- sents English comedy at its highest, not only in its own age but probably in all ages, but the result of the over-treatment of these playwrights by scholars and enthusiasts has been to cast into comparative neglect a mass of lesser comic writers who stretch from the Shadwells and the Drydens down to the insignificant Ravenscrofts and Tates. To gain a true and an historical view of the complete development of comedy from 1660 to the close of the century one must include every- thing, good and bad, in one’s researches, and not confine oneself to two or three outstanding figures. The spirit of the 182 COMEDY Elizabethan age would but ill be realised if we limited our- selves to Shakespeare, or that of the Romantic Revival if we read Wordsworth alone. In the first place, by embracing more than those major five dramatists of the Restoration mentioned above, we come to realise that Restoration comedy is by no means a thing wholly of the manners style. The manners style was in point of fact too high to be attained by all the playwrights of the age, who chose rather the humbler paths of pure Jonsonian imitation. The strata of Restoration comedy, indeed, are truly infinite, and any attempt at rigid classification is bound to fail. At the same time, some classification is necessary,and happily one can enumerate several divergent types which will include almost if not quite all of the theatrical productions of the epoch. ‘ When the theatres opened in 1660 there were roughly three distinct or semi-distinct schools of comic invention, that of Jonson, described as the school of humours or of satire, that of Shakespeare, which may be called the comedy of romance or of humour, and that of Spanish intrigue?. These represented almost all the older styles of comic drama as inherited from Elizabethan sources and were, of course, the first that were ransacked by the band of new playwrights eagerly seeking for models and plots.) With The Wild Gallant (T.R. in V.St. 1663) and with The Rival Ladies (T.R. in B.St. 1664) lof Dryden came in a variation of the intrigue type, a more distinct tendency towards the later manners school, more especially to be noticed in the presence of the pair of lovers, witty, gay, anti-moral and sprightly. Dryden’s endeavour serves to register a step in the direction of Etherege. With the latter we are fully within the new reign, that reign which was to continue through Congreve and Vanbrugh into far distant decades of another century. For many years these five distinct types remained the recognised schools in which the comic dramatists worked, until, about the sixties and the early seventies of the century, farce, de- rived largely from French and Italian imitation, crept into 1 See the present writer’s Introduction to Dramatic Theory. TYPES OF RESTORATION COMEDY $183 favour and for a time dominated the theatres. Finally, in the last decade of the century, although hinted at as early as 1680 if not before even that date, there developed that still newer type of comic drama to which has been given the name of sentimental None of these seven separate schools can be wholly dis- sociated from another, and most often we see merely general mixtures of two or three of them more or less successfully welded together. Dryden, following Jonson and Fletcher in half a hundred ways, yet delineates the new type of comic hero in his Celadons and Lovebys. Ina similar way, Shadwell, who, in The Sullen Lovers (L.1.F. 1668), condemns the new comedy of manners, the two chief persons of which, he de- clares, ‘are most commonly a Swearing, Drinking, Whoring Ruffian for a Lover, and an impudent, ill-bred tomrig for a Mistress,” yet obviously gives many a hint to Congreve, as, for instance, in the Gartrude and Selfish scenes in A True Widow (D.G. 1678) which are quite clearly connected with the similar Miss Prue and Tattle episodes in Love for Love (L.I.F. 1695). In one of his later plays, too, Bury Fair (D.L. 1689), he introduces precisely that pair of lovers whom he had so inveighed against, twenty years previously. As a typical play of the period one might take Mrs Behn’s The Luckey Chance (D.L. 1686) which has characteristics of the manners school in Bellmour, of the humours school in Sir Feeble Fainwood, all wrought into a complicated scheme of intrigue. Again, the chronology of the period must, in any treatment of Restoration comedy, be carefully watched. Charles died in 1685, and before that date only two of the five major dramatists had presented any of their works before the public. Congreve did not produce his Old Batchelor until January 1693 and The Way of the World did not make its appearance till 1700. Farquhar’s eight plays date from 1699 to 1707, Vanbrugh’s eleven from 1696 to 1715. The school of manners, therefore, is by no means confined, as the school of rimed heroics had been, to a single decade or two. It was nota thing peculiar to the court of Charles. It flourished long after 184 COMEDY Jeremy Collier’s outburst of 1698, even after the fuller de- velopment of the sentimental comedy in the hands of Cibber and of Steele. At the same time, we are bound to recognise that the comedy of manners, brought to fulfilment only in the last years of the century, was in itself a relic of the licence and the wit and the ease instituted by Charles in his Restora- tion court. This comedy of manners is a peculiar, intangible sort of thing. In plot and in character it was not much of an inno- vation. Fletcher’s The Wild Goose Chase, as we have seen, contains a good deal of its atmosphere. Jonsonian personages abound in Etherege and in Congreve. The intrigue of the Spanish school is to be marked in almost every Sat sas peer and his companions of the French stage gave merely a touch to the wit and to the theme. The title itself—Comedy of Manners—is rather difficult to explain, but here at least there are indications which point to the characteristics of the type. Schelling calls Jonson’s comedy a comedy of manners: so perhaps it is, but obviously there is something in Congreve different from Jonson.) Manners, in the mouths of the Restoration dramatists themselves, meant something quite apart from the modern meaning of the term. “‘A Manner?” cries Cynthia in The Double Dealer, ‘‘What’s that, Madam?” and Lady Froth replies, ““Some distinguishing Quality, as for example, the Bel-air or Brilliant of Mr Brisk...or some- thing of his own, that should look a little Fene-scay-quoysh.” This quotation seems to make the question easier4 When we say that Jonson’s comedy is a comedy of manners we are using the word manners in its ordinary sense of ways of men: when we say that Congreve’s comedy is a comedy of manners we are using the word in its Congrevian sense, betokening something brilliant about a man or a woman, not a humour, but a grace or a habit of refined culture, something that “looks a little Jene-scay-quoysh.”’ Genteel comedy—to em- ploy Addison’s phrase—is this late seventeenth century drama, not the ungenteel comedy of oe Even with these indications as to its inner nature it is 1 ot. ii. TYPES OF RESTORATION COMEDY 18s difficult to hazard even an indistinct definition of the type. The manners school, after all, depends rather on an atmo- sphere which cannot be precisely analysed than on out- standing characteristics. We may say that D’Urfey’s plays are not as Congreve’s: but to lay one’s finger on the exact point of departure is rather difficult. We may, however, disentangle some of what appear to be the true characteristics of the species/ In the main, we may say, the invariable elements of the comedy of manners are the presence of at least one pair of witty lovers, the woman as emancipated as the man, their dialogue free and graceful, an air of refined cynicism over the whole production, the plot of less conse- quence than the wit, an absence of crude realism, a total lack of any emotion oe) This, certainly, will not take us very far, but it may serve at least to indicate in some ways the differences between the comedy of manners and the other types of Jonsonian and sentimental dramas. It is assuredly true that Dryden presents to us a pair of lovers somewhat after the style of the manners heroes and heroines, and that Spanish intrigue could take part in the plays of Etherege and of Congreve: but Dryden after all, although he may be re- garded as one of the fathers of the typical Restoration comedy, is yet divided from Etherege by the presence in him of a certain passion and enthusiasm, while Spanish or other in- trigue, appearing though it does sometimes in the plays of manners, never usurps all of the attention as it does, for example, in Tuke’s The Adventures of Five Hours. The comedy of manners could make use of the French and the Spanish theatres, could reproduce some of Dryden’s scenes or some of Jonson’s characters, but, by its intellectualism, succeeded in remaining something independent and separate. Before passing to an examination of the diverse dramas of the various writers or groups, a few words may still be said concerning that eternally vexing problem of immorality in Restoration comedies. It is often hastily assumed and stated that the school of manners had a monopoly in this im- morality, and that Jeremy Collier put an end both to vice on the stage and to the comedy of manners in 1698. The 186 COMEDY second part of this assumption, to be discussed fully, would have to be taken well into the eighteenth century, a task impossible in this book, but it may be stated fairly dogmati- cally that neither the first nor the second supposition has any foundation in fact. That the Congrevian comedy was immoral, no one can dény, unless by a species of sophism not unknown to modern critics, but the Jonsonian comedy was just as licentious, with the quality of brutality added thereto) Indeed, it is interesting to note that such a man as Shadwell in The Squire of Alsatia (D.L. 1688), where he more or less adopts the critical attitude he had expressed in The Sullen Lovers, is (hopelessly and permeatingly vulgar, brutal and immoral—for reasons which will be seen presently—}-while in Bury Fair (D.L. 1689), where he succumbs to the influence of Etherege’s manners, he is at any rate fairly pure and modest(_ Neither the one type nor the other can be acquitted on the score of immodesty, but neither can the whole immorality of the age be foisted on one at the expense of the rest. Rather one might hazard the statement that the comedy of manners is less vicious and harmful than many other types of Restoration plays which, because less witty, escape scot free.) Addison’s and Steele’s strictures on Etherege are well known. The Man of Mode for them is ‘‘a perfect Contradiction to good Manners, good Sense and common Honesty.” It is allowed by them to be nature, ‘‘but Nature in its utmost Corruption and De- generacy!.” ‘This may be true.\ The upper-class life of the days of Charles was not a very pretty life, and the comedy of manners certainly reflects certain aspects of that existence. The problem of the comedy of manners, however, hardly lies here: in reflecting this upper-class life it stands alongside of many other types of drama and of many other forms of literature. The problem, of course, has been deeply compli- cated by the exaggerated pronouncements, on the one hand, of Puritans who see all art through the dark spectacles of their own morality, and, on the other, both of moral perverts who take delight in pornographic literature of any sort, and of \ Spectator, No. 65, May 15, 1711. TYPES OF RESTORATION COMEDY 187 fanciful enthusiasts like Lamb who weave airy fancies out of their own imaginations. A truejudgment can be gained only by a strictly impartial critic, one who recognises that morality is a word of very indefinite meaning and yet that there is a line of vulgarity below which art ceases to be art and becomes mere vicious and vulgar writing) (The first point to notice, it seems to me, is that in the hands of Etherege and of Congreve, comedy is wholly intellectual and passionless.) There is no “‘warmth” in their works, as a Restoration critic might have said. (There is little of that deliberate propaganda for evil which marks out the works of Rochester. If there are vulgar scenes or sensual jokes they are dragged in not for the sake of the vulgarity or of the sensuality, but because they are witty and amusing. There is nothing amusing in vulgarity itself: art alone can make it so. The second point to be noted is not unconnected with this first. The life reflected in the comedies of Etherege and of Congreve is not the whole of life: it is rather the essence of the upper-class existence of the time. The world pre- sented before us, then, is certainly not artificial in Lamb’s sense, it is only too real: but it is not realistic to the extent of dragging in forcibly the cruder aspects of life. The best plays of the manners school have about them a species of inverted spiritual existence which takes away from them a part of that brutality which is so painfully evident in the more ordinary “‘realistic” plays of the age.) Actual sensuality is not needlessly emphasised. One example, which I feel is typical, may be taken from The Old Batchelor. Vainlove there wanders carelessly after ‘‘/’amour,” not for the “‘blisses ” thereof, but for the joyous sense of the chase itself. A great deal of the intrigue of the age, a great deal of the free con- versation of the men and of the women, was of this type: it was not necessarily carnal, but was indulged in purely as an intellectual stimulant. Flirtation in that time was an art: assignations were planned with subtlety: indelicate hints in conversation were devised with skill and precision and grace. I am not here striving to defend Restoration life: far from it: but I am endeavouring to place the comedy of Etherege 188 COMEDY and of Congreve in a place by itself, where the question of morality hardly enters in, where licentiousness is an intel- lectual thing and is not always reduced to worldly essence. Wherever there is emotion, this whole airy fabric vanishes. The Plain Dealer is disgusting and appalling precisely because Wycherley has in that play taken upon himself to display all of life as he saw it, not to rear delicate fancies in a spirit’s name. In the comedy of Etherege and of Congreve no emotion can enter in: the dialogue of Millamant and of Mirabel is as cold and chill as Cinthia’s beams. This question of actuality and of emotion is well brought out in a study of Shadwell’s plays. I think no one, reading this author’s The Squire of Alsatia (D.L. 1688), but would feel, I should not say shocked, but disgusted. The realism of the play brings to the fore all our ideas of refinement, of delicacy, if not of actual morality. There is not wit enough to cloak the sheer vulgarity: and yet the strangeness of it all is that Shadwell imagined he had before him a moral purpose —to show how an indulgent father produces in his son good qualities and how an intolerant one produces the opposite. As soon as deliberate morality and emotion are introduced into the plays of the age, they become at once vulgar and dis- gusting: for what are we to say concerning the two Belfonts? The elder is a poor fool rooked by the audacious villains of Alsatia: the younger, who is the model of goodness, after abandoning a mistress, Mrs Termagant, who has had a child by him and who has loved him passionately, after despoiling, too, an attorney’s silly little daughter, leaves them both for his future wife, Isabella, paying the wretched attorney for what he had done. Isabella, true to her age, shows no re- pulsion, although the hero is as heartless, as cruel and as cynical as he was before. Fundamentally, there may be as much vice at the back of Congreve’s or of Etherege’s plays, but it is never so forced on our attention as here. With emotion gone, with only one side of life treated, we become for the moment pagan, without a thought of the morrow, existing solely for the joy of the hour. We are given a finely polished art of the intellect that TYPES OF RESTORATION COMEDY 189 gives us amply in return for the vulgarity. Congreve has taken the more ethereal, graceful, fantastic, joyous qualities of the time and has expressed them in perfect form: Shadwell and the others have taken the sensual brutality of the age, deadening, dulling, uninspiring. Both could feed the mind with the most revolting of thoughts, but the one could give something in atonement therefor and the other could not. What a difference between the wantonly vulgar “purge” scenes in James Howard’s All Mistaken (T.R. in B.St. 1667) or the banalities of the drolls in The Muse of Newmarket and the double-entendres of the “china” scene in Wycherley’s The Country-Wife (D.L. 1675)! Both could show most ful- some scenes of carnality: both could play with what they thought the humorous side of sexual disease: but somehow, in writers of Shadwell’s calibre, all that filth seems exag- gerated, seems dragged to our notice as it were, in writers of a more polished taste it comes in only as an incidental. III. The Fonsonian Element: Shadwell In any summary of the comic productivity of the Restora- tion period it is not unfitting to start with Jonson. Jonson was the first great classicist in our drama, and in his humours he succeeded in stamping his impress heavily and securely on all later dramatic endeavour. When the theatres opened in 1660, his plays, as I have indicated above, were exceedingly popular at the Theatre Royal. No one thought of adapting him. However rough he may have appeared to some of the refined wits (“‘Refin’d Wits?” cries Sir Thomas in Crowne’s The Countrey-Wit, ‘‘ With a pox: unrefin’d, lewd, debauch’d Fops, that scarce ever read a Book in their Lives, except it were a Play”) his love of the Roman theatre, his satiric bent and his presentation of contemporary types must have en- deared him to a certain section of the audience, if not to all. Some, like Shadwell, idolised him as a god, following him step by step: some, like Congreve, took over from him a certain amount but refined upon his manner and his style: some, like Dryden, professed a greater love for Shakespeare 190 COMEDY than for him but still imitated and followed certain elements in his art. By no one was he forgotten, In the mid-decades of the period there might have been some controversy about his actual position in the history of literature, but from 1660 to 1700 he remained one of the chief of the old dramatists in the theatrical repertoires. Although Jonson’s style of comedy was taken up at an earlier date by other writers, his chief disciple throughout the entirety of the period was Thomas Shadwell. This author, remembered mostly because he was at one time poet laureate, and, greater distinction still, had quarrels with John Dryden, is not yet quite so unworthy of regard as Sir A. W. Ward! and Mr Whibley? evidently consider him. He is coarse, it is true, but not coarser than many others of his age. He is positively nauseating with his ‘‘ humours,” yet he could be almost as witty as Etherege if he chose. He had opinions of his own, and, if he did not always act up to them, no one can deny that his plays have to a large extent that artistic finish and workmanship which characterise the work of a master hand. Dryden might call him “dull,” echoing the criticism made by Settle in the dedication to Love and Revenge (D.G. 1674). Many might laugh at his idiosyn- crasies, his love of beer and his habit of declaring that his plays were written in unconscionably brief spaces of time, but for all that he remains one of the chief of the comic dramatists outside of the school of manners. Shadwell’s entry into the world of the theatre was a trium- phant one. On May 2, 1668, there was produced at L.I.F. The Sullen Lovers, or, The Impertinents, a play that at once attracted attention, not only because of the easy development of the plot and of the ludicrous scenes, but because of the vast amount of satire in it. Sir Positive At-all was at once recognised as a burlesque portrait of Sir Robert Howard, and this, in the words of Pepys, did ‘“‘take, all the Duke’s and every body’s talk being of that, and telling more stories of him, of the like nature, that it is now the town and country 1 Who dismisses him very curtly, op. cit. 111. 45 5-61. * Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit. vitt. 173-4. JONSONIAN ELEMENT: SHADWELL 191 talk, and they say, is most exactly true.”” Ninny, “‘a conceited Poet,” was as obviously an attack upon Sir Robert’s brother, Edward. Woodcock, Pepys heard on the 6th, was meant for St John. Shadwell himself, at the appearance of this work, must have _ been about twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, evidently a young man sure of himself, spoiling for a fight and bent on rivalling that other young man who had only four years previously made his debut as a dramatist, John Dryden. Two things that Dryden had adopted he attacked stoutly— the new style in comedy and the new style in tragedy. The “Love and Honour Feast” is opposed in the prologue to this his first play, and in Act 111, Sc. i, occurs a reference to a play of Sir Positive At-all’s called ‘‘ The Lady in the Lobster,” wherein, as we are told, one hangs himself at the command of his mistress. This looks suspiciously like a direct hit at The Indian Queen with its pathetic, or would-be pathetic, figure of Acacis. The new style in comedy is likewise opposed in the preface, which, as a whole, is decidedly well-written and interesting. After referring to the success of his own comedy, the author condemns the “‘Composer and Dancing- Master” of the age, who, even in 1668, had evidently become the ‘‘ best Poets.” He praises the pseudo-classical rules, draws attention to the fact that he has observed faithfully the three unities, and gives rich praise to Jonson. Then he turns on the new style. Possibly here he was thinking chiefly of Dryden. Already I have quoted his criticism of the two chief persons of this new drama—‘‘a Swearing, Drinking, Whoring Ruffian for a Lover, and an impudent, ill-bred tomrig for a Mistress”—these forming “‘the fine people of the Play.” This is the first attack on the new style in comedy that I know of, and it is particularly interesting because Shadwell himself in later years came to be influenced by Etherege and by Dryden. It is observable, also, that Shad- well, in this play, and in others, did not confine himself strictly to Jonson as a master. Here he owes decidedly to Moliére in Les Facheux. Within a couple of years Shadwell had continued his comic 192 COMEDY output. After providing a pastoral in The Royal Shepherdess, he came forward, about December 1670, with The Humourists (L.L.F.). That he had not been thinking of Etherege in the preface to The Sullen Lovers seems to be proved by the preface to this third play of his: for in it he declares that She Wou’d if she Cou’d, which had appeared two months before The Suilen Lovers, was “‘the best Comedy that has been written since the Restauration of the Stage.” Why pre- cisely he approved of this particular comedy he did not make quite plain: the rest of his preface being taken up with a defence of Jonson’s comedy of humours, a style which he defines in the regular Jonson way: A Humour ts the Brass of the Mind, By which with Violence ’tis one Way inclin’d: It makes our Actions lean on one Side still, And in all Changes that way bends our Will. The Humorists is particularly noticeable for two things: one has reference to the age, and the other to Shadwell’s own conception of drama. After the success of the satire in The Sullen Lovers, he apparently repeated the experiment by ridiculing a number of the follies and the vices of the age, but, as I have already indicated, the Restoration strongly objected to general satire, and evidently The Humorists fell flat on the stage. The other point of interest is the appearance here of the fairly pure Raymund and Theodosia, a pair of lovers conceived evidently in opposition to Dryden’s “Ruffian” and ‘‘Tomrig.”’ This pair of lovers Shadwell was to repeat with many minor variations in later plays. Apart from these two, The Humorists, with its Sneak, Crazy, Briske, Drybob and others, is a regular comedy of humours. Ridicule of the popular tragedy appears once more in the epilogue to The Miser (T.R. in B.St. Jan. 1671/2) in the shape of an attack on the riming drama then at the height of its fame. The Miser is confessedly but an alteration of Moliére’s D’avare’, although Shadwell thought fit to ‘‘say without 1 Genest points out that Shadwell’s main alteration of the French play consists in the introduction of eight additional characters—the action in Moliére not being sufficient to maintain interest on the English stage (op. cit. 1. 119). JONSONIAN ELEMENT: SHADWELL 193 Vanity, that Moliere’s Part of it” had “‘not suffer’d in” his “Hands,” and to add the words, significant for an under- standing of that age, ‘‘nor did I ever know a French Comedy made use of by the worst of our Poets, that was not better’d by ’em.” The Miser is not an entirely negligible play, and illustrates well Shadwell’s probably unconscious movement towards the wit of the manners school, as when Theodore declares he is in love and Ranter is prompt with his repartee: “But it’s in an honourable way, I hope: not at all inclining to Wedlock?” This style of wit, with even more spice in it, is continued in Epsom Wells (D.G. Dec. 1672) which was not only one of Shadwell’s best plays, but also one of his most successful ones!, While Sir A. W. Ward has, rightly, found its coarse- ness very revolting”, one cannot fail to appreciate its manifest talent. It is true that marriage is at a premium, that nothing seems to exist in its world but the fine art of cuckolding, yet the conversation, on the whole, comes very near in refinement to the Congreve strain. One can only wish that the atmo- sphere of the piece were not so debased. In this atmosphere we see the reverse of the heroic. In the very years that heard the most glorious rants of love and honour, the same audience listened to the query of Raines: Art not thou a Villain to cuckold this honest Fellow, and thy Friend, Ned? and to the answer of Bevil: Gad, it’s impossible to be a man of honour in these cases. Out of the two contrarieties must a picture of the time be wrought. For the next few years, Shadwell busied himself with opera and with tragedy, producing the operatic Tempest in April 1674, the spectacular Psyche in Feb. 1674/5 and the blank verse Libertine in June 1675. In the latter he makes a violent attack upon Settle, a return for the rival dramatist’s remarks in the preface to Love and Revenge (D.G. Nov. 1674), de- claring that he “‘had rather try new ways to please, than to 1 Tt continued on the stage till 1726. 2 Op. cit. 111. 456. NRD 13 194 COMEDY write on in the same Road, as too many do.” With The Virtuoso (D.G. May 1676) Shadwell returned to comedy. Again there is a lengthy epistle dedicatory discussing the aim of comedy and of the presentation of humours. The author informs us that he has ‘‘endeavour’d in this Play at Humour, Wit, and Satyr” and that ‘“‘ Four of the Humours are entirely new.” He dismisses as unsuitable for comedy, humours based on mere word-affectations, on dress-fashions, and on Gallo- mania, as well as ‘“‘unnatural Farce-Fools.”” He admits into his gallery of humour-portraits only a certain class: ‘the artificial Folly of those, who are not Coxcombs by Nature, but with great Art and Industry make themselves so,” he tells us, “‘is a proper object of Comedy.” No one Man’s Humour makes a part alone, he insists in the prologue, But scatter’d Follies gather’d into one. In The Virtuoso, Shadwell has again given to us his pairs of pure lovers, here named Longvil and Bruce, adoring honestly Clarinda and Miranda. In these portraits he errs as far from Dryden as he does from his more illustrious contemporary, Congreve, marring his art, indeed, by them, for too frequently his plays are thus divided sharply into two atmospheres almost independent the one of the other. What Dryden thought of them may be seen by a reference to the line in MacFlecknoe concerning ‘‘Whole Raymond Families and Tribes of Bruce.” The satire in The Virtuoso is more subtly chosen. The Restoration gallants must have appreciated the picture of Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, the “‘ Virtuoso,” and of Snarl, who admires nothing but the things of a former age?. Shadwell’s work in comedy was continued after this till towards the close of the century. About March 1678 ap- 1 The comedy is interesting, also, for a sentence of Bruce’s in the first act: that gentleman declares “‘the Race of Gentlemen is more degenerated than that of Horses.” It is just possible that Swift may have had this in mind, just as he seems to have had in mind another play of the later period, D’Urfey’s Wonders in the Sun (Hay. 1706), when he was writing the tales of the Brobdingnags and Houyhnhnms. JONSONIAN ELEMENT: SHADWELL 195 peared at D.G. A True Widow, which, because it showed up the “‘crying sin of Keeping,”’ was a failure on the stage!. In this play Shadwell, who was evidently on friendly terms with Dryden, has indulged in no direct satire at any particular form of dramatic art, the whole being a pure comedy of humours with, even, a few touches reminiscent of the poet laureate. Some of these humours are “‘ new,” to use Shadwell’s ownepithet, Lump, ‘‘a methodical Blockhead ” anda Christian by trade, being a distinctly novel type. The plot, however, is more confused than is Shadwell’s usual, and the rather vulgar touch of the author is painfully visible in the character of Lady Busy, who, in spite of her title, acts precisely as a bawd. The Woman Captain (D.G. c. Sept. 1679) is, intrinsically, a poorer play, although it was not unsuccessful on the stage. Mrs Gripe’s male part, certainly, is a fine acting one, and the manner in which she escapes from her husband and her obtained freedom in the end are not without interest for us, and must have had a similar interest for contemporary audiences. It may be noted that Shadwell displays less of the direct influence of Jonson here than he does in any of his comedies. The Lancashire Witches, and Tegue o Divelly the Irish Priest appeared at D.G. about Sept. 1681, and was followed by a sequel, The Amorous Bigotte, with the Second Part of Tegue o Divelly at D.L. about March 1690. The first of these two companion plays is interesting almost solely for its political element and for the presence in it of the witches. “‘Fops and Knaves,” Shadwell informs us, “ Are the fittest Characters for Comedy, and this Town was wont to abound with variety of Vanities and knaveries till this unhappy Division. But all run now into Politicks, and you must needs, if you touch upon any Humour of this Time, offend one of the Parties.” Shadwell had analysed his difficulties aright, but he had not been able to avoid them. Again he was unfortunate in his satire. Instead of ridiculing the Roman Clergy alone, he turned on the Anglican church in the character of Smerk, 1 See the dedication to Sedley. 13-2 196 COMEDY with the result that the censor cut out vast scenes to the detriment of the play. In this, Shadwell had not the skill and the grace of a Dryden. The witches are interesting as a relic of Elizabethan example. Whether Shadwell really believed in them is un- certain. Probably he was truly “‘somewhat Costive of Belief”’: possibly, on the other hand, he had a slightly greater faith in them than Dr Ammann would admit. In any case, the witches are fine spirity creatures acting according to the best recipes, the author appending to the first three acts voluminous ‘Notes upon the Magick,” in an endeavour to find medieval authority for some of the not too savoury pranks of his weird sisters. In his next comedy Shadwell turned away from politics, presenting in The Squire of Alsatia (D.L. May 1688) a picture of that underground existence of villains and rooks which Scott has repainted for us in The Fortunes of Nigel. Here Shadwell has turned from the upper-class life of the time, an aspect of life which after all he was less qualified to depict, and has displayed a realistic and valuable picture of middle- class citizens, of thieves, of rascals in the London of the seventeenth century. Severe as Langbaine is on this play as a plagiarised performance, there is no question that it is a real life—often too real life—picture of the times. It is very difficult, indeed, attempting to analyse our feelings on reading such a comedy as this is. With Congreve as we have seen we are in a comparatively artificial world, at least a world of the intellect, and it is almost with an effort that we relate the puppet figures of his stage to what we know of the author, _of Dryden, of Rochester. With Shadwell, somehow, it is different. Congreve is the pure artist. Shadwell is something besides. He is a perverted moralist: and it is precisely his perverted morals—his relating of art to life—that causes us to shrink in horror from the picture which he presents to us. That his audience felt no horror is proved by the phenomenal success of this comedy, a fact which incidentally serves to 1 Ammann, Dr E., Analysis of Thomas Shadwell’s Lancashire Witches, Bern, 1905. JONSONIAN ELEMENT: SHADWELL 197 emphasise the relationship it held to their own thoughts and to their own lives. : Shadwell’s next few comedies hardly reach the level of those which went before. They reflect the new love of farce which was so rapidly taking possession of the comic stage in the last years of the century, and there is just the faintest touch in them of the disintegrating spirit of sentimentalism. Bury Fair (D.L. c. April 1689) is a well-written play, and, unlike most of Shadwell’s, not too coarse. It has a great deal of tomfoolery in it, mainly centring around the characters of Sir Humphrey and Oldwit, and there is the inevitable girl disguised as a boy as well as the improvised count: but even these farcical elements do not make Bury Fair a bad play. Wildish, one of the heroes of the piece, is not so vulgar as some others of his companions on the comic stage and Lord Bellamy, if a trifle priggish, is a living and vital character, who, in his “‘moral” aspect, indicates the change of tone visible after 1690. The Scowrers (D.L. c. Dec. 1690) followed in little more than a year, a comedy to which Langbaine paid the, for him, tremendous compliment of absolving it from any doubts as regards plagiarism. The prologue emphasises its ““moral” tendency, and in the relations between Sir William Rant and his father we are already far away from the typical Restoration filial and paternal rapprochements. “‘ Good Sir,” says Sir William, “‘No more: you’ll break my Heart. Gentle and kind Reproof I cannot bear.”’ It is a speech that would have come but artificially from the mouths of any of the graceless rascals of the preceding decades. The con- version of the same gentleman and of his friend Wildfire by the pure love with which they are suddenly smitten for Eugenia and for Clara respectively has elements in it that also have relationships with the sentimental fashion?. The Scowrers was Shadwell’s last comedy to be issued in his lifetime. His widow, however, published posthumously a still further, but not very brilliant one, The Volunteers, or, 1 Although in 11. i there is a sentence that ably sums up the philosophy of the manners heroes: ‘“‘ When a man is lewd with a bon Grace there’s something in it, but a Fellow that is aukwardly wicked is not to be born i.e. borne).” 198 COMEDY The Stock Fobbers (D.L. c. Nov. 1692). Although there is more than one good character in this piece, General Blunt and Colonel Hackwell being most excellently drawn, this last comedy shows a falling off from the former two plays. It has almost the appearance of having been written earlier and laid aside until it was resurrected by the poet’s relict. The sentimental style, save in Eugenia’s country-loving pro- pensities, is conspicuous by its absence, the whole comedy being taken up with an intrigue plot of doubtful propriety mingled with often undigested satire against affected ladies and beaux of the “‘ Fantastick, Concited”’ type. Notwithstanding the comparative neglect which has been accorded him by critics, it must be apparent, from even the short notices of his plays which I have given here, that Thomas Shadwell is an author by no means to be so lowly rated. No writer has so covered the entire Restoration period with his work as he has done. No writer has revealed with such a life-like touch the details of the society of his age. If, on the one hand, as Professor Saintsbury avers}, he was in a way a father of the comedy of manners, although that claim be somewhat doubtful, in his old age he was one of the fathers of the comedy of sentiment. Undoubtedly, for sheer merit, as for historical importance, he stands next to Dryden after the great masters of the manners comedy. The school of Jonson, while it saw its most pronounced disciple in Thomas Shadwell, had many other supporters in the age, some of them men who had already written comedies and tragedies in pre-Commonwealth days. Indeed, Shadwell himself may well have taken some of his inspiration from these early Restoration writers rather than always directly from Jonson, his master. On the other hand, we must remember that the majority of these humours dramatists do not display that type of comedy in its purest form. Their workmanship is frequently crude, and only too often their efforts descend to the levels of farce. It is, indeed, the debased comedy of humours and the debased imitations of Moliére mingled with the influence of the commedia del? arte tradition that produced 1 Preface to the Mermaid Shadwell. JONSONIAN ELEMENT: SHADWELL 199 the farce type of drama proper in the latter years of the century. Of these dramatists, first must be named Abraham Cowley, whose Cutter of Coleman Street was produced in 1661 by the Duke’s company. This play was but a rehashing for changed conditions of the same author’s The Guardian (1650) which had been acted at Cambridge in 16411. Its scene was altered to “‘ London, in the year 1658” and its main purpose devoted to the lashing of the Puritans in the person of ‘“‘Mistris Fear-the-Lord Barebottle.” Save for a few touches of more refined wit, and in spite of Lamb’s enthusiasm for it, it seems to be remarkable in no very particular way, although, as Elia has pointed out, the character of Puny does have a certain interest in that he was the ancestor of the ‘‘half- witted wits” of a later period?. A play of somewhat similar tendencies was The Rump, or, The Mirrour of the Late Times, written by John Tatham, an author who had already produced several plays both before the closing of the theatres and during Commonwealth times. This play, which had apparently been penned before the dissolution of Parliament by Monk in Feb. 1659/60, was certainly on the market by Nov. 1660, and was perhaps one of the first plays produced at Whitefriars in Dorset Court by Rhodes under Monk’s licence. Not very remarkable save for its political bias, much of its humour turns on the Scots dialect spoken by Lord Stoneware, a dialect that seems to have been a favourite with the author, as it had appeared also in Jocky and Billy, the two Scots beggars in The Scots Figgaries and in the ‘‘Scotch Mountebank” of The Dis- tracted State. Possibly the play’s best feature from a literary point of view is the portrayal of ambition and folly in the figure of Lady Lambert. Another writer, thoroughly “loyal,” who produced scenes after the old manner, was John Wilson, a native of Plymouth, who, besides a tragedy and a tragi-comedy, contributed two 1 See Smith, G. C. Moore, College Plays (1923), pp. 70 and 9o. 2 Lamb, G., Specimens of the English Dramatists (ed. Macdonald, W.,; 1914, Il. 275). 200 COMEDY Jonsonian pieces to the stage. Both of these have received plaudits of praise from dramatic historians—from Langbaine, hard to please, from Genest, from Maidment and Logan, who call The Cheats “‘cleverly written,” and from the editors of the Biographia Dramatica, not to mention more numerous modern instances. Wilson is certainly one of the best of those later Elizabethans who endured over the Common- wealth period, but hardly, one would imagine, deserves all the laurel that has been bestowed upon him. The Cheats (T.R. in V.St. March 1662/3) is but a would-be imitation of Jonson, with little to relieve its incoherent brutality save the rather good scene in I. iit where pedantic experts in etymology are satirised?. The Projectors (unacted? 1665)? did not make its appearance till later. It, too, is an imitation, though not a slavish one, of Jonson’s manner, but it has simplicity and coherency of plot and of style, which the other has not. Cognate as it is with Moliére’s L’avare, it does not seem to be founded on that play, but develops somewhat of the same theme in a fairly original and boisterous manner, Boisterous and farcical plays of a like sort were produced by John Lacy, an actor at the Theatre Royal. The pupil of John Ogilby in dancing and in acting®, he was the pupil, albeit a poor one, of Jonson in his dramatic art. His The Old Troop, or, Monsieur Raggou (‘T.R. in B.St. 1665) is remarkable for not whitewashing altogether the Cavaliers, but even ultra- loyal Tatham and Cowley had not done that’. It is but a poor farcical piece of work, although it held the stage for nearly sixty years. Lacy’s adaptation of Shakespeare in Sauny the Scott, or, The Taming of the Shrew (T.R.in B.St. April 1667) has no more merit. ‘The main humour is kept up by the title-character, whom Lacy himself played, the wis comica of whose personality seems to come from the fact that he habi- 1 On the Worcester MS. of The Cheats see Boas, F. S., Shakespeare and the Universities (1923). 2 There is no satisfactory proof that it was ever acted. The B.D. is probably wrong in saying that it was “‘acted with success.” ® Aubrey, Brief Lives (ed. Clark, A., Oxford, 1898, 11. 28). 4 Cf. the “two Hectors” in The Cheats, Bilboe and Titere Tu, “the one usurping the name of a Major, the other of a Captain,” as well as Cutter and Worm in Cutter of Coleman Street. JONSONIAN ELEMENT: SHADWELL 20r tually employs words not commonly mentioned in polite society. For his third play, The Dumb Lady, or, The Farrier made Physician (T.R. in B.St. 1669), Lacy travelled to Moliére, forming his farcical comedy of humours out of Le médecin malgré lui and L’amour médecin. In spite of the fact that this, as well as his other comedies, has been favour- ably noticed by dramatic historians, Lacy’s genius appears, on careful examination, to have been of the flimsiest sort. The Dumb Lady is hardly anything more than a mere farce and its dialogue is execrable. The characters are of no value either as psychological studies or as humours, and all that comedy rises to is a kind of miserable tom-foolery unrelieved by gracious sentiments or the presence of intellectual clarity. Sir Hercules Buffoon, or, The Poetical Squire (D.G.c. Sept. 1684) is equally poor, farcical elements being everywhere prominent. The most interesting portions of it have merely an historical significance. These are the little satiric touches on wits and on heroic poetry, touches which display a certain feeling abroad in the age, a surfeit of the glorious sentiment, a kind of boredom at those clamorous denizens of the pitt. The comedy of humours, with many variations into the other types of intrigue and of farce, continued through the whole forty years of the Restoration period. Sir Robert Howard, who holds such an important position in the de- velopment of the theatre in the years following 1660, pre- sented one important specimen of the humours comedy in 1 “To be witty now is to be more troublesome in a Play-house than a Butcher at a Bear-Garden....That’s Wit to see Plays for nothing,—one act in the Pit, another in a Box, and a third in the Gallery—that’s Wit.” And again: “* Squire: But, Father, which do you hold to be the most honourable, your comick or heroick Poet? Hercules: Oh your Heroick without doubt because he comes nearer to the Romantick strain than the other. Squire: Romantick! what signifies the word Romantick? Hercules: Why it comes from the word Romance, and Romance is the Arabic word for a Swinger, and Swinger is the Hebrew word for a Liar. Squire: By this you prove the Heroic Poets to be Liars? Hercules: No, no, by no means, Romantically inclined, only.” 202, COMEDY The Committee (T.R. in V.St. Nov. 1662). This, undoubtedly the most valuable of Howard’s plays, is interesting for several things, first, because it is a “ political” comedy, with rancour at the Commonwealth régime, and secondly, because, with no very striking originalities, it yet catches somewhat of the breezy air of Ben Jonson’s characters. The “‘Committee” is the Sequestration Committee, and the plot circles around the hypocritical Mr and Mrs Day, their daughter Ruth, their ward Arabella, and Colonels Bluntand Careless, the last being a couple of idealised portraits of true Cavalier spirit and honesty. Running through this plot, with a free and easy broad comedy manner, goes Teague or Teg, Careless’ Irish servant, a character, taken from life it is said, which was one of the favourites of the actor Lacy and did much to make the play a permanent success throughout the whole of the Restoration period. Howard’s other comedies, when placed alongside The Committee, hardly merit much attention. The Blind Lady (1660) was never acted in any theatre, and is a poor piece of work, while The Surprisall (T.R. in V. St. Nov. 1662), with its Italian scenes, chockfull of asides and ‘‘drawings” of swords and daggers, is almost entirely negligible. Edward Howard, like his brother Robert, also wrote comedies much in the same strain. Six Days’ Adventure, or, The New Utopia (L.1.F. c. March 1671) is one of the few omissions of the patient Genest. In spite of a poor reception on the stage it was ushered out in print by four sets of laudatory verses, two of them by Aphra Behn and Ravens- croft respectively. It is a fair production, but in its sad admixture of semi-classical and of modern names, it grates on the edges of our more fastidious taste?. The Man of Newmarket (D.L. ¢. April, 1678), Howard’s other comedy, has a certain interest of its own as being a kind of adaptation * It was seen by Evelyn on Nov. 27, 1662. Genest gives the date wrongly as April 10, 1665. Pepys saw it on June 12, 1663, and thought it “‘a merry but indifferent play, only Lacy’s part, as Irish footman, is beyond imagination.” Fi Eugenia, Euphorbus, etc., alongside Franckman and Foppering. For a similar admixture of names see Sedley’s The Mulberry-Garden. JONSONIAN ELEMENT: SHADWELL 203 of the Jonsonian style to the race-course, but as a dramatic work of art it falls below the Six Days’ Adventure. During the early years of the period, William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, is to be remembered, partly for the fact that he took over some of Jonson’s style, partly for the fact that he succeeded in fusing that style with something of novelty. The Humorous Lovers (L.1.F. March 1667) which appeared in the same year as his joint work with Dryden, Sir Martin Mar-aill, is interesting for its ‘‘theatre” scene! and for the snatches of song and of masque, elements which the noble author was to develop more largely in his later play?. This later play, The Triumphant Widow, or, The Medley of Humours, produced at D.G. certainly by Nov. 1674, is a decidedly peculiar comedy, worth noticing, not only for its occasional flashes of wit and for its satire of heroic poetry®, but also for its strange structure, a structure that reminds us forcibly, as Sir A. W. Ward has pointed out‘, of the later comic opera. Newcastle, no doubt, was simply developing suggestions left by the Elizabethans in that direction, but those developments of his effectually separate off the play from the average contemporary drama®. It is observable that some of the characters of this play of Newcastle’s—Justice Spoil-wit and Sir John Noddy—gave to Thomas Shadwell suggestions for his masterpiece, Bury Fair. The other humours plays of the Restoration period stand on a much lower level than those already mentioned. They are of value only from an historical point of view, as being fairly typical specimens, of the ordinary fare of the theatres. Thomas Rawlins, principal engraver at the Mint, published anonymously after the Restoration two such comedies, Tom 2 vind ii; 2 The character of Boldman here and that of Comely in The English Monsieur no doubt did much to popularise the anti-love and marriage type that was so common during this period. 3 Chiefly in the character of Crambo, but also in other scattered pas- sages: cf. the Musician in 111. i. * Op. citi. 3345 5 The play is full of Shakespearian reminiscences. The Footpad is Autolycus: Lady Haughty and her maid in one scene remind us of Portia and Nerissa: the Constable has touches of Shakespeare’s clownish officials. 204. COMEDY Essence, or, The Modish Wife (D.G. c. Sept. 1676) and Tunbridge-Wells, or, A Day’s Courtship (D.G. c. March, 1678)!. The former, which was a vacation production, has at least half of its plot derived from Moliére’s Le cocu imaginaire. It is quite well worked out, but is too realistic in places where realism might conveniently have been omitted from a stage production. Tunbridge-Wells is a very similar play, with nothing particularly noteworthy in it save that, although greatly concerned with Jonsonian humours, particularly in the characters of Owmuch, Paywel and Parson Quibble, it pays tribute also to the manners style in Fairlove, Wilding, Alinda and Courtwit. The Town-Shifts, or, The Suburb-Fustice (L.1.F. c. April 1671) by Edward Revet, is hardly worth mentioning. It again is a comedy of humours, wherein the author has aimed at reproducing certain Elizabethan tones in the characters of Clowt the Constable, Goody Fells and Mold the Sexton. A similarly summary dismissal may be given to the anony- mous The Woman turn’d Bully (D.G. c. July 1675), an exceedingly dull comedy in spite of Langbaine’s criticism of it”, and of value only when considered with other plays, such as that of Revet, as forming part of the repertoire of the play- houses. Indeed, it is hardly worth while descending much further into the depths of the ordinary rank and file of Restoration workmanship in this style. By a brief mention of one or two other minor plays, memorable for certain definite points of interest, we may fitly close this account of the comedy of humours as it appeared in the Restoration. Again for Shakespearian reminiscences, particularly in the scene of the Watch, we may recall The Morning Ramble, or, The Town Humours (D G. Nov. 1672) ascribed by Langbaine to Nevil Payne. The plot of this play is exceedingly weak, but the dialogue moves easily and the author, Payne or 1 It is possible that neither of these were by him. Rawlins had published in 1640 The Rebellion, declaring that that was to be his sole attempt at dramatic production. Tom Essence is anonymous, and Tunbridge-Wells, according to the title-page, ‘“‘by a Person of Quality.” The ascription to Rawlins is due to Langbaine (Momus Triumphans, p. 32 note h). 2 It was “A very Diverting Comedy,” he thought (p. 556). JONSONIAN ELEMENT: SHADWELL 205 another, had some conception at least of the delineation of character. Laurence Maidwell’s The Loving Enemies (D.G. c. Oct. 1679) on the other hand, is to be remembered, not for any decided beauties in it, but for its promise. Its plot certainly is hopelessly artificial!; it is obviously the work of an amateur, but had Maidwell produced some other comedies he might have given something quite valuable to the stage. The character of Circumstantio, that ‘‘formal Valet de Chambre very troublesome with impertinent Rhetorick,” is exceedingly well-drawn. Besides these, are a certain number of Jonsonian “‘political ” pieces which may for a moment claim our attention. Mr Turbulent, or, The Melanchollicks (D.G. Jan. 1681/2) re- issued three years later as The Factious Citizen, or, The Melancholy Vistoner”, is one of the best of these. Another is The Rampant Alderman, or, News from the Exchange (printed 1685), a three-act piece, largely a farcical rendering of Marmion’s The Fine Companion, with recollections of Jonson. The appearance of this latter comedy in 1685 shows well the way towards which the Jonson comedy was tending in the last years of the century. After Shadwell, we may say, there are few of the rich rough, realistic comedies of the old style. Of the very few The Lover’s Luck (L.1.F. c. Dec. 1695) by Thomas Dilke is probably the most noticeable. Rather coarsely written, it yet succeeds in presenting in a fairly fresh manner such well worn stock characters as Sir Nicholas Purflew, ‘‘a formal Herald and Antiquary” and Alderman Whim, ‘“‘a Projector and Humourist.’”’ Than this, Dilke’s other two comedies are considerably weaker, although of the 1 Lorenzo and Marcello hate one another through a family feud, but Julia, Lorenzo’s sister, loves Marcello without his ever having seen her. In exactly similar manner, Camilla, Marcello’s sister, loves Lorenzo. Antonio loves Lucinda, old Paulo’s daughter, while pretending to pay suit to the Widow, whom Paulo courts for himself. There is a scene of Camilla’s coming to a duel, very similar to a situation in one of the plays of Mrs Behn. 2 This fact seems to have been unnoticed by Genest, who does not mention Mr Turbulent, and enters The Factious Citizen as acted at D.G. sat) bake Oats,” i.e. Titus Oates, appears in person—‘‘ one who squeaks Sedition in the Coffee-House.” 206 COMEDY same spirit and style. The City Lady, or, Folly Reclaim’d (L.L.F. c. Jan. 1697) appears, from the dedication, to have been a failure on the stage, wherein it shared the fate of many of these Jonsonian or Shadwellian pieces. The Pre- tenders, or, The Town Unmaskt (L.1.F. 1698), with its lengthy descriptive list of dramatis personae, shows clearly its indebted- ness to the same source. The Fortune-Hunters, or, Two Fools well met (D.L. c. March 1689), by Capt. James Carlisle’, ridiculous as some of its incidents are, is a comedy that merits attention along with the first mentioned of Dilke’s. Unlike Dilke’s, however, it appears to have been successful’, and was later heavily plundered by Cibber for The Woman’s Wit. ‘‘ Shadwellian” humours of a low type fill, likewise, The Wary Widdow, or, Sir Noisy Parrat (D.L. Feb. 1692/3) the sole production of Henry Higden. Neither it nor the some- what similar anonymous comedy?, The Bragadocio, or, The Bawd turn’d Puritan (1691) presents anything very note- worthy. The truth is, that, after 1680, the pure play of humours appears to have made little appeal to the audiences of the time. The comedy of humours thereafter passed away, and the humours farce came to take its place. If pure humours of a really comic standard appeared in the drama, they did so not in Jonsonian plays but in the comedies of manners, where the spirits of Jonson and of Fletcher seemed to meet, or in the comedies of sentiment where often they were introduced as a background for other more modern char- acters. Those who, like Shadwell, continued in the older strain, were deemed out of date, relics of a bygone age, un- worthy the attention of an elegant and witty audience of courtiers tutored to something more delicate and more re- fined. * He fought in Ireland under William III. Captain is the title given him in the advertisement of this play at the end of Shadwell’s The Scowrers (D.L. 1690). 2 See Gildon’s Langbaine, p. 16. 3 The title-page states it was “‘by a Person of Quality.” COMEDY OF INTRIGUE: MRS BEHN 207 IV. The Comedy of Intrigue: Mrs Behn The same phenomenon may be seen, although in not so marked a degree, in the development of the comedy of Spanish intrigue. Here again the Restoration theatre bor- rowed wholesale from the older stage, adding to the earlier Caroline Spanish impress by direct translation or adaptation from Calderon and his compeers. Again, however, as with the comedy of humours, the pure comedy of intrigue failed to hold its own to the end of the century. Popular from 1660 to 1670, it rapidly drifted away into the types of manners or of farce, remaining in its pure form only in the hands of a few dramatists who, like Mrs Behn, retained a love for the particular species with which they had started their theatrical careers. The popularity of the intrigue style in the earlier years of the period must have been influenced considerably by the tastes of Charles. He it was, as we have seen, who suggested to Sir Samuel Tuke the Spanish drama from which was fashioned The Adventures of Five Hours (L.1.F. Jan. 1663)1, a comedy which proved one of the greatest successes of the first years of the new theatres. Like many of these “‘Spanish”’ plays, The Adventures of Five Hours is an admixture of fun and of seriousness. It is a regular intrigue play of love, revenge, and honour, alternating grave with gay, dignified Spanish manners with the ludicrous tomfooleries of serving men. From its pure style and its admirable workmanship one may well regret that it was the sole comedy which its author produced, even although one cannot now subscribe to Pepys’ violently encomiastic criticism of it?. About the same date as the production of 'Tuke’s play, Porter was composing his The Carnival (L.I.F. 1663 ?), a well- 1 It had been on rehearsal before that date, and seems to have been intended for a first production on Dec. 15, 1662. 2 See Pepys for Jan. 8, 1662/3, when he thought it “the best...that ever I saw, or think ever shall.” Othello became insipid to him after reading it. It was printed in 1663 and reprinted in 1664; “Revis’d and Corrected” in 1671. Several other editions followed in the eighteenth century. 208 COMEDY written drama, although now completely forgotten. It, too, is a comedy of the Spanish intrigue class, cast in a kind of blank verse, very irregular, but not at all harsh. To Porter is also ascribed A Witty Combat, or, The Female Victor, which, if Genest’s supposition be right!, is The German Princess which Pepys saw at L.IL.F. on April 15, 1664. This latter play is interesting as being a more middle class drama than is typical of Restoration literature. The hypocritical parson and Mr King are two characters well-drawn, and there is a fresh little song in the third act that deserves remembering: Away, away, flatter no more My easie Faith, for now I see What thou in me seem’d to adore Thou mak’ st thy pleasures property; No more, no more will I believe The man that can so soon deceive. Like The Carnival, of Spanish extraction also is Tarugo’s Wiles, or, The Coffee-House (L.I.F. Oct. 1667) by Sir Thomas St Serfe. Its coffee-house scene is particularly good, although probably not very germane to the plot. It, like The Adven- tures of Five Hours, had a great popularity in the first years of the Restoration, a popularity that continued till well on in the century. The Adventures of Five Hours as well as The Carnival and Tarugo’s Wiles must have done much to fix the success of the Spanish comedy in the period 1660-70. From that date, however, this particular type was popularised chiefly by one writer, Mrs Aphra Behn, those others who adopted it mostly mingling it with manners or with farce. Mrs Behn, we may say, holds, in relation to the development of the comedy of intrigue, much the same position that Shadwell holds in relation to the development of the comedy of humours. Of all the dramatists of the Restoration, Mrs Behn is probably the best known, mostly because of the frequent reprints of her works, reprints which culminated in the recent excellent critical collection edited by Mr Montague Summers. 1 1, 51-53. It is declared on the title-page to be by T. P. COMEDY OF INTRIGUE: MRS BEHN 209 On the other hand, Mrs Behn, by almost every Puritan critic, has been cold-shouldered on account of her supposed in- decency. The fact is that she is no worse, and is often a great deal better, than the average playwright of her age. Indecent, free, sometimes positively vulgar, she was in several of her plays; but, on the whole, when we compare her works with similar productions of D’Urfey and Shadwell, even of Dryden, we can only stand amazed at the comparative purity of her dialogue. She has, moreover, on many occasions introduced thoughts and ideas which not only display her unconventional and modern attitude towards life’s relations, but also formed the basis for not a few moralisations in the sentimental eighteenth century to come. Modern she was, and in more senses than one. Mr Whibley has noted that “‘her success depended on her ability to write like a man,” and in this assuredly there is some truth. She is the first of the modern women. The Renascence gave us woman types who were the perfect complements of men— Vittoria Colonna, or even her frailer sister, Veronica Franco —the modern world has givenus the ideal of woman’s equality with man. It is the latter ideal which Mrs Behn represents. Her postal communication with Major Halsall is as between one man and another?: her secret service work was the work of a man: she was probably the first woman to earn her living by her pen. It is as such, if we are to be just, that we must think of her: not as the companion of the Restoration roué, more dissolute than he, but as the pioneer of our modern womanhood. She herself did not wish to outrival Dryden in his looseness of phrase, or Shadwell in his vulgarities: Her humble Muse soars not in the High-rode, Of Wit transverst, or Baudy A-la-Mode... she cried in one play®, and a fuller feminist apologia may be found in the epilogue to another‘. Apart from the tragedies and the tragi-comedies with which 1 Camb. Hist. Engl. Lit. vu. 142. 2 See Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1666-1667, pp. 44, 72, 82. 3 Epilogue to The Dutch Lover. 4 To Sir Patient Fancy (D.G. 1678). NRD 14 210 COMEDY she started her dramatic career, Mrs Behn’s plays may be divided into three several classes: those in which intrigue plays the chief part, those of a “‘moral” or “problem” tendency, and those wherein pure farce predominates. Of the first type she has given us several examples. The Dutch Lover (D.G. Feb. 1672/3) is based it is said on a so-called Spanish novel of “‘De las Coveras” entitled Don Fenise, the same that furnished D’Urfey with material for his Banditti (D.L. 1686). This comedy depends entirely on intrigue for its effect; all the characters are Spanish save “‘myn heer Haunce van Ezel” and his man, who are comically Dutch. It reads well, but is too complicated, turning on ill- sorted lovers and almost incestuous attachments. Three separate characters in the play are found to be of different parentage from what they thought. Noticeable is the song in Act 111, Sc. iii!, which has quite an Elizabethan ring about it, and the soliloquy immediately following, very reminiscent as it is of Shakespearian phrasing. A variant of the same species of comedy appears in The Debauchee, or, The Credulous Cuckold (D.G. c. Feb. 1676/7), a play not mentioned by Sir A. W. Ward, and little more than an adaptation of Brome’s The Mad Couple Well Match’t. The Rover, or, The Banish’t Cavaliers (First Part, D.G. March, 1677; Second Part, D.G. April, 1680) is a decidedly better and more individual play. Again a comedy of intrigue, set this time in Naples and in Madrid, it divides itself 1 Ah false Amyntas, can that Hour So soon forgotten be, When first I yielded up my Power To be betray’d by thee? God knows with how much Innocence I did my Heart resign Unto thy faithless Eloquence, And gave thee what was mine. I had not one Reserve in store, But at thy Feet I laid Those Arms which conquered heretofore Though now thy Trophies made: Thy Eyes in silence told their Tale Of Love in such a way, ‘That ’twas as easy to prevail, As after to betray. COMEDY OF INTRIGUE: MRS-BEHN ar naturally into two “camps” of characters—the Englishmen, centring around Willmore, the Rover, and the Spaniards. The characters of Willmore and of his mistress, Hellena, here recall to a certain extent the pair of lovers beloved by Dryden. Hellena speaks exactly like Florimel in Secret Love. At the close of the First Part these two are united happily, but in the Second, which is inferior to the former, we meet with Willmore alone, he having lost her by death. “Ay, faith,” he says, ““And nothing remains with me but the sad Remembrance—not so much as the least Part of her hundred thousand Crowns.” In that comment, for Mrs Behn had made us love Hellena, we truly feel at its worst the callous- ness of the age, a callousness that was more disastrous and soul-destroying than the vilest libertinism. The sole interest the Second Part can have for us to-day is in the introduction in it of Harlequin and Scaramouch, the former of whom, apparently, spoke extempore in Italian. Sir Patient Fancy (D.G. Jan. 1677/8) is of the same intrigue school, but is much more indecent than the former plays already mentioned, and probably more so than any of those which were yet unwritten. This is the play, indeed, which, more than any other, has inclined the minds of the critics to attribute a systematic looseness to the works of Mrs Behn. In point of fact, and taken in conjunction with The Rover, I should be inclined to think that it is almost entirely the influence of Dryden which has led this authoress away from the comparatively pure plots to this of most immodest in- trigue. Mr Limberham could contaminate a whole shoal of writers: and Dryden with his immodesty was showing to the playwrights of his time exactly what the audiences of the time desired. Typically of the intrigue type as intrigue appeared towards the close of the century is Mrs Behn’s next play, The Feign’d Curtizans, or, A Night’s Intrigue (D.G. c. March, 1679). Here can be seen very clearly the gradual tendency of this species towards the morass of farce. Genest has chosen to call it a good comedy, but to me it seems a poor and dull ay. 2706 14-2 212 COMEDY performance. There are no characters worth speaking of and the plot is a sorry contrivance, There is much disguising as men on the part of the woman, and in the fifth act appears Marcella “‘in Man’s Cloaths” and meets Fillamour for a duel in place of her brother, Julio, who stands behind—a situation already utilised by Mrs Behn in The Dutch Lover. Even a brief glance at the printed text of the comedy shows clearly enough that new farcical “business” was coming to take chief place in the building up of a comedy, the skill of the performer taking precedence over the skill of the play- wright. This, indeed, is the last play of Mrs Behn’s, except for the “problem” dramas and a couple of ‘‘true-blue Protestant” plays, The City Heiress, or, Sir Timothy Treat-all (D.G. c. March, 1681/2) and The Round-Heads, or, The Good Old Cause (D.G. c. Dec. 1681), the second merely a rehashing of Tatham’s The Rump, which can be styled by the name of comedy. The rest are farces of the flimsiest description, created purely to satisfy the particular tastes of the audiences of 1680 onwards. Intrigue seems, in this age, to have been peculiarly accept- able to the women writers, Mrs Pix and Mrs Manley uniting with Mrs Behn in presenting dramas of this type with, running through them, threads of sentiment and of moralisa- tion. The Spanish Wives (D.G. c. Sept. 1696) of the former, which in spite of its date, moves in a purely Restoration atmosphere, is set in Barcelona and deals mainly with the Governor, “‘a merry old Lord,” who gives his wife, but not successfully for himself, more liberties than appear to have been usual in contemporary Spain. The Innocent Mistress (L.I.F. c. Sept. 1697) appeared a few months later at the rival house. In it the tone is changed considerably, there being quite a definite sentimental tone running through it, in spite of the fact that it borrows more than a little from Etherege’s final comedy. The epilogue is valuable for some 1 'The scene is Rome and the persons are all Italian or English. Notice- able are the quasi Italian phrases scattered through it and the song in the same tongue (III. i)—‘‘ Crudo Amore, Crudo Amore.” COMEDY OF INTRIGUE: MRS BEHN 2x historical references. The Deceiver Deceiv’d (L.1.F. c. Dec. 1697), published the year following, was entirely unsuccessful. It is distinctly less brilliant than the former two. Mrs Manley’s one comedy, The Lost Lover, or, The Fealous Husband (D.L. c. April 1696) is almost entirely negligible, being a hastily written comedy and exceedingly short. It belongs, however, to the same tradition, and for that is interesting. Beyond the comedies of Dryden, which, as we have seen, form a special category of their own, very few of the intrigue plays of the period after 1675 merit special attention. John Corye’s The Generous Enemies, or, The Ridiculous Lovers (T.R. in B.St. Aug. 1671) is, in the words of the editors of the Biographia Dramatica, one “entire piece of plagiarism from beginning to end!,” being derived from Quinault, Corneille, Randolph and Fletcher. ‘The various elements are hardly amalgamated with any signal success. Mountfort’s The Successfull Straingers (D.L. c. Dec. 1689) is more serious, and contains some blank verse that is decidedly felicitous. It is, however, neither touching in its tragic portions nor over-witty in the comic. In spite of a prologue by Dryden and an epilogue by Tate, Harris’ The Mistakes, or, The False Report (D.L. c. Dec. 1690), another tragi-comedy of the same class, merits no greater attention. Scened in Naples, with Spanish characters, it does not rise to higher levels than does the comedy of Corye. All these plays, however, bad as some of them individually may be, are valuable as showing the last relics of this style of drama existing alongside, but being rapidly submerged by, its debased farcical form. Intrigue comedy had a great influence on the theatre of the Restoration: intrigue plays a great part in the structure of the comedy of manners, and intrigue forms the largest element in the comedies of John Dryden. On the other hand, in its pure form, except for the 1 Biographia Dramatica, 1. 259. 2 There seems to be no good reason for presuming that the play has been wrongly fathered on Harris. His name appears on the title-page, although the preface admits that Mountfort wrote one scene in the first act. 214 COMEDY few odd dramas of Mrs Behn and the others, it ceased to be "very popular on the stage, for much the same reasons that explain the disappearance of the Jonsonian drama. V. The Comedy of Dryden Dryden, in the progress of Restoration comedy, holds somewhat of a central position. In him appear the intrigue strain and the humours strain, alongside of suggestions which led on the one hand to the comedy of manners and on the other to the comedy of sentiment. In general, it may be said that Dryden’s comedy owes more than that of the majority of his contemporaries to the theatre of the pre-Commonwealth period. It is certainly true that, in many ways, the comedy of manners owes to him, if not its actual inception, at least its heralding, yet, on the other hand, the entire ensemble, the spirit of Dryden, is by no means similar to that of Congreve. Dryden introduces a kind of spurious romance into his comedies which Congreve never knew. Sometimes he is more given to humours: and nowhere did he know the fine sparkle and zest with which the masters of the new comedy irradiated their compositions. The heroes of Etherege and of Congreve, too, are more dilettante than Dryden’s are: there is a certain intensity about the wild madcap flirtations of Dryden’s Lovebys and Fainalls that is more emotional and more real, in the ordinary sense of that word, than the cynical intellectualism of the characters, let us say, of Etherege. The world of roués did not sit very well on Dryden. He had a heart and he showed it, and, although he could be more vulgar and more indecent than the worst of them, he sets our sympathies a-trembling for his lovers, wicked, frivolous, stupid creatures though they be. In their best plays neither Etherege nor Congreve ever touches our hearts. Herein lies the secret of their art. Dryden’s main contribution to the comic theatre was his lovers. ‘These lovers, adumbrated in his first play, and sug- gested probably by Nell Gwyn and by Hart, were the proto- types of the heroes and the heroines of the comedy of THE COMEDY OF DRYDEN 215 Etherege, however far the two may stand apart in essentials. In Dryden’s very first play they make their appearance. The Wild Gallant (T.R. in V.St. Feb. 1662/3) is saved from utter imbecility only by the presence of Lady Constant and of Loveby. The plot, professedly modelled on the intrigues of the Spanish theatre, with an episode probably more ridiculous than any before or since put upon the stage, is incoherent and amateurish; the characters, too plainly borrowed from Jonson and from the followers of Jonson, are dull and mono- tonous. Surely no more tedious and clownish humour has ever been invented than that of the incessant jest-loving qualities of Bibber, the tailor. The Wild Gallant was un- successful, both in 1663 and when revived in an altered form in 1667, but it must have shown to the new dramatists of the first decade of the Restoration what could be done with the fresh wit and the realistic presentation of the gallants and their lady-loves. The intrigues of The Wild Gallant Dryden continued in The Rival Ladies (T.R. in B.St. c. June 1664), this time with the addition of a Spanish setting. Part of the plot seems borrowed from Scarron’s L’écolier de Salamanque, ou, Les généreux ennemies. 'This play, tragi-comical in its develop- ment, has a considerable historical importance because of the introduction in it of several scenes in rime, and because of the presence of the first of those wearisome love-disputes, happily styled by Professor Saintsbury “‘amatory Battle-dore and Shuttlecock!” with which Dryden seems deliberately to encumber so much of his later work. The pair of witty lovers, presented in The Wild Gallant, were repeated again, in a much finer form, in Dryden’s next tragi-comedy, Secret Love, or, The Maiden Queen (‘T.R. in B.St. March, 1667), a play derived from Le Grand Cyrus with hints from other exotic romances. By this time Etherege had produced his first play, but, because of The Wild Gallant, to Dryden must be given the credit of having invented first these lovers whom he has symbolically immortalised in 1 Scott, W., and Saintsbury, G., The Dramatic Works of John Dryden (Edinburgh, 1882), 11. 128 and Ward, op. cit. 111. 347. 216 COMEDY Celadon and Florimel. The whole worth of Secret Love lies in its comic scenes, and the very centre and life of those comic scenes are Celadon and Florimel. From this date the history of Dryden’s progress in comedy is a history of repetitions of these themes of intrigue and these characters of frivolous wit. Sir Martin Mar-all, or, The Feign’d Innocence appeared at L.I.F. six months after Secret Love (L.1.F, Aug. 1667). It would seem that this comedy was merely a re-working by Dryden of a translation made by the Duke of Newcastle of Moliére’s L’étourdi:. What- ever the story of its composition, however, it is evident that it was, as an early dramatic historian informs us, written solely for that apparently inimitable comedian, Noke or Nokes. No play proved more popular on the stage than Sir Martin Mar-all: it is to be questioned whether Dryden was better known in his own day by any play more than this. It certainly is a clever piece of work, uniting the intrigue loved during the early years of the Restoration, with French characters rendered coarser and more English in the spirit and the manner of Jonson, On June 19, 1668 appeared, again with a reversion to the T.R., An Evening’s Love, or, The Mock Astrologer, once more Spanish in scene and borrowed from a Spanish source, Calderon’s El astrologo fingido through Le feint astrologue of Corneille. The scene is Madrid of the Carnival, anno domini 1665. Once more Celadon appears born again in Wildblood, acted by Hart, and Florimel in Jacintha, acted by Nell Gwyn. The more sedate character of Bellamy was taken by Michael Mohun, who, the year before, had impersonated Philocles in Secret Love. Not as beautiful or as striking as the comic scenes in this earlier play, An Evening’s Love does not give one quite such a sense of flagrant immorality, and why Pepys and Evelyn singled it out as “very smutty” and as ‘‘very profane” one can hardly tell—although one can well imagine the sense of shocked righteousness with which such a man as Jeremy Collier must have read the chapel scene. One notable feature is presented in An Evening’s Love, and that is Dryden s first important critical preface on comic themes, a preface THE COMEDY OF DRYDEN 217 which reveals clearly enough his aim in dramatic art, showing plainly how broadly he stood at the parting of the ways of Jonson and of Congreve. Noting Jonson’s lack of repartee, he yet praises his humours, and ends by desiring a comedy with “‘neither so little of Humour as Fletcher shows, nor so little of Love and Wit as Fonson.”’ In those words the comedy of Dryden is defined : in those words is prophesied the comedy of manners. For the next few years Dryden does not seem to have been particularly successful in the realms of comedy, partly per- haps because of the rise of new and promising dramatists, partly because of the fact that he himself was engaged on tragedies and on other non-dramatic literary works. By 1672, when, about the month of May, there was acted by the King’s Company at L.I.F. the comedy called Marriage a la Mode, Dryden was well known in the intellectual circle of London, but by that date as well, Shadwell had established himself as a master of humours, Mrs Behn as an expert in intrigue, Ravenscroft as an able producer of rough farces, Etherege and Wycherley as captains of a new comedy of manners. Dryden, therefore, was by no means alone in the dramatic world of his day, but he continued, if not the most noted, at least one of the most popular writers of comedies. It is surprising to note how little, professional author as he was, he allowed himself to be influenced by the new styles coming into fashion. Marriage a la Mode is just such a play as Secret Love. One of the mixed species of romantic tragi- comedies, it has serious portions which do not seem to merit the slightly qualified condemnation given to them by Sir Walter Scott, Professor Saintsbury and the editors of the Biographia Dramatica. 'They are reminiscences, certainly, of the Sicilian episodes in the former play, but have a decided beauty of their own. In the same way, Celadon and Florimel are recalled in the Palamede-Doralice, Rhodophil-Melantha couples. Doralice is a kind of married Florimel, a Restora- tion Rosalind. It is noticeable that this comedy, licentious as is so much of the dialogue!, containing a song in Act IV 1 See particularly the final scene. 218 COMEDY indecent even beyond any of Dryden’s earlier ones, flaunts in the epilogue a kind of stage morality leading (by the Rhodophil story) to “‘the way to Reformation.” So far, possibly, Dryden felt faintly the impress of the rising reaction to the flagrant manners of the early Restoration days. A trifle later than Marriage a la Mode, appeared on the same stage The Assignation, or, Love in a Nunnery, and some six years later at D.G., The Kind Keeper, or, Mr Limberham (March, 1678). Both of these were unsuccessful, possibly because of the lack in them of the graceless couples which had dominated the early plays, possibly because of the in- decencies which marked out at least the second of them. For their failure, Dryden, as is the way with authors, blamed the actors, but the reason of the non-success, one would suspect, is to be sought for rather in the plays themselves. In The Assignation Dryden obviously tried to repeat Celadon and Florimel in Ascanio and Hippolita, but he has failed to give them the life which animated his first creations. In Mr Limberham he abandoned even any attempt to revitalise the pair, and left a drama which has in it not one figure of out- standing excellence. The Assignation is dull: Mr Limberham is indecent. It seems surprising that critics, from Langbaine to Saintsbury, have professed to find the latter comedy one of the best of Dryden’s. Judged even by the standards of its own time, it is terrible in tone. A sickening atmosphere of sex and of animalism hangs over it; nor is that atmosphere relieved by the presence of any airy wit. It may be a satire— a satire on “‘credulous Cuckolds” and on ‘‘ Keepers”’—but the satire passes little beyond the crudest realism. There is nothing to atone for the foetid odour that seems to hang about it. It is one of the truly immoral works of the period, and its failure may have been partly due to the gradual rise of sentimental feeling which subconsciously was filling the hearts of some with horror at the licentiousness of the times, which was driving others to hypocrisy and the concealing of outward immorality. No other comedy definitely known to be Dryden’s appeared until the production at D.G. of The Spanish Fryar, or, The THE COMEDY OF DRYDEN 219 Double Discovery in March, 1680. On this play opinion has been very divided in the past. In its own day it was praised or condemned according as the critics were Protestants or Catholics. In later times it found a defendant in Sir Walter Scott, an opponent in Professor Saintsbury. To the average modern reader it seems an unsatisfactory piece of work. Its serious and comic portions are kept rather rigidly apart, and the masses of supposed fathers and hidden sisters and kings murdered only to be brought to life again, take from our appreciation of any wit there is in it. Its atmosphere is false, nor has it wit to bear it through. It has not the passion of Otway’s muse or the gaiety of Congreve’s, and is hardly likely ever to be resuscitated from the obscurity into which it has fallen. By 1680 Dryden’s work in comedy was nearly done. Amphitryon, or, The Two Socia’s was yet to make its ap- pearance at D.L. in April 1690, but Amphitryon differs in almost all things from Dryden’s other works. Confessedly based on Plautus and Moliére, it parts from both in the introduction of the love of Mercury for Phaedra, a love that reminds us again of Celadon and Florimel. It is Celadon and Florimel, however, in another age, less witty, less gay, more evilly suggestive. Mercury and Phaedra reflect in their own way the changing spirit of the time, just as the carnal love of Jupiter shows how the airy licentiousness of the court of Charles was moving towards a Puritanical lewdity. Amphi- tryon is an amusing and an interesting play, but it has not the charm which lingers over Dryden’s early works. On surveying the influence which Dryden exerted on the tragedy of his time, and noting his large productivity in comedy, it must seem surprising that the direct impress of his art was not greater than in reality it was. Indirectly he led the way towards the comedy of manners, yet the comedy of manners, as we have seen, stands sharply separated from his works. Of direct followers he had few. Mrs Behn, as we have seen, has reproduced his pair of lovers in The Rover, and Ravenscroft seemed to have Secret Love in mind when he was writing The Careless Lovers, but possibly the only 220 COMEDY dramatist who consciously imitated him was the Hon. James Howard, Dryden’s own kinsman by marriage, author of All Mistaken, or, The Mad Couple (T.R. in B.St. Sept. 1667) and The English Monsieur (TR. in B.St. Dec. 1666). ‘The second of these two plays, produced just after Dryden’s triumphs, owes much to The Wild Gallant and to The Rival Ladies. Loveby and Lady Constant are reproduced there in Wellbred and Lady Wealthy. The comedy differs in type only in that the other characters, Comely, Vaine and Frenchlove, are more strongly coloured humours than the majority of the dramatis personae of Dryden, The same mad couple re- appears once more in the tragi-comedy, All Mistaken, in the persons of Philidor and Mirida, characters who call to mind at once Celadon and Florimel. Beyond these, however, and a few plays which are more directly associated with Dryden’s name, there is little that shows the definite impress of his style. Of the plays which are associated with him, two or three call for attention. About Sept. 1675, appeared at D.L.aplay called The Mistaken Husband, which, according to the address of the printer to the reader, had been given by a person of quality to Dryden about the year 1663. Considerable controversy has circled round this comedy, Professor Saintsbury denying any of it to the laureate+, Swinburne postulating Ir. i and Iv. iv as his?, The play, it must be admitted, has certain interesting and peculiar features. Mrs Manley has remained for nine years in her father’s (Learcut’s) house, her husband being gone abroad and she in mourning for his supposed death. Arrives an impostor, Hazard, and his friend, Underwit, who pretend that the former is in reality Manley, altered during the decade of his absence. Mrs Manley is wholly or partly deceived, and Hazard is accepted as the long-lost husband. In the interval Manley himself makes his appearance and proves his identity, but Mrs Manley has found out, on acquaintance, that she rather prefers Hazard. The real husband is paid off 1 Scott, W., and Saintsbury, G., The Dramatic Works of John Dryden (Edinburgh, 1882), vii. 645-7. 2 Gentleman’s Magazine, N.S., CCLXIX. 416-55. THE COMEDY OF DRYDEN 221 and a marriage between the wife and the impostor is arranged. This Mrs Manley and Hazard situation does not lack of a certain spicy wit which might well have come from the pen of the laureate, Mrs Manley being rather an interestingly drawn prototype of the Shavian heroine, such as Hypatia in Misalliance. In 1663, when, we are told, Dryden was given this play by a person of quality, no dramatic works had come from his pen, so that it is probable that the unknown author was a friend, probably connected with the Howards, and it may be suggested that he may have been no other than T. Southland, brother-in-law of Sir R. Colbrand, who issued in 1663 Love a la Mode (acted at Middlesex House) and to whom might also be attributed The Ungrateful Favourite published as by “‘a Person of Honour” the following year. Both of these latter plays were printed by John Cotterel and both had the same Horatian motto on the title-pages, although only the first has the initials “‘J.S.”’ which led to the identification of the author. Neither The Ungrateful Favourite nor Love a la Mode is as good a play as The Mistaken Husband, but both are fairly well written, and the latter, in especial, has touches in it that remind us of the witty passages of the Drydenesque lay. i A somewhat similar controversy has arisen over another peculiar comedy, styled The Mall, or, The Modish Lovers, which appeared at D.L. about Jan. 1674, and was published a few months later with a preface signed “‘J.D.” Professor Saintsbury, indeed, has denied categorically that this comedy has anything to do with Dryden', and the supposition of Mr Gosse that The Modish Lovers is the same as The Ladies a la Mode seen by Pepys on Sept. 15, 1668, is invalidated by an entry in the Lord Chamberlain’s records. On the other hand, the Easy-Amorous scenes are very similar to several in Sir Martin Mar-all, Sir Martin being even referred to by name in III. i, and in the abandonment of his wife by Easy there is a situation which speaks highly for the individuality of the author, whoever he may be. 1 Op. cit. vill. 645. 222 COMEDY Apart from these, the Dryden comedy as a separate type did not continue to exist in Restoration literature. It was the work of a single man, who, probably, with no very special bent towards the theatre, hammered out a path of his own, not by genius, but by sheer hard endeavour and painstaking effort. We can look for reminiscences of Dryden in many Restoration plays, from the comedies of manners to the farces, but we can nowhere find comedies, apart from those already mentioned, modelled directly on his own style, as we found tragedies modelled on The Indian Emperour and on Almanzor and Almahide. VI. The Comedy of Manners In some ways, of course, as I have already pointed out, Dryden may be regarded as a father of the comedy of manners, his pairs of lovers undoubtedly influencing greatly the work of Etherege, perhaps the work of Wycherley. Other writers, too, not usually associated with the main figures of the comedy of manners, both paid tribute to the strength of that type by direct imitation, or themselves wrote works which, partly manners in style, influenced the development of that species. One of these, Thomas Rawlins, with his Tunbridge Wells of 1678, has already been noticed. Another, of still greater importance, is Sir Charles Sedley, who produced at the T.R. in B.St. in May 1668 The Mulberry-Garden, and at D.L. in May 1687 Bellamira, or, The Mistress. These two plays are especially interesting as displaying the passage of the Committee type of humours, to a more vivid, refined and courtly wit. The Mulberry-Garden, as a whole, is not a good comedy, being too sharply divided into two separate, distinct portions. Indeed, on reading it, one comes to the conclusion that one of these portions, that which is in rimed verse and includes the characters of Horatio, Eugenio, Philander, Althea and Diana, may have been written several years earlier than the other, which, in nervous prose, presents the real-life persons of Ned Estridge, Jack Wildish and Harry Modish—typical figures of Restoration comedy. THE COMEDY OF MANNERS 223 The play is by no means “‘worthless,” as Sir A. W. Ward avers'; rather, when we consider that it was “‘long expected” and therefore likely to be of some influence on contemporary drama, and when we place it alongside of She Wou’d if she Cou’d, produced three months earlier and-of The Sullen Lovers acted barely a fortnight previously, it appears one of the most interesting plays of the first decade of our period. It is not rendered negligible even when placed alongside of Bellamira, which, based confessedly on the Eunuchus,is a much more decisive play. Satirical, witty, licentious, with that air of finesse which characterises the comedy of manners, it well deserves to be placed alongside of the works of Etherege and of Wycherley. If Dryden, Shadwell, Sedley and Rawlins each presented something to this particular type, however, it is Sir George Etherege to whom must be given the credit of definitely establishing the species. A typical Restoration beau and man of letters, a roué and a wit, he infused into all his comedies that air of the beau-monde which was later to be so clarified and rendered gracious by the inimitable genius of Congreve. The Comical Revenge, or, Love in a Tub (L.1.F. March, 1664)? was really only a tentative effort. Marred by the introduction of rimed verse, which, however, makes it of interest histori- cally, and by several other crudities, it does not really grip one as do so many other plays of the manners school. It has. wit, particularly in the person of Sir Frederick, whose attitude towards the world is summed up in the bon mot that “Men are now and then subject to those Infirmities in drink which Women have when they’re sober®.”” The wit, however, is not on the whole of that sparkling variety which charms us above the intricacy and the improbability of a complicated plot. With She Wou’d if she Cou’d (L.1.F. Feb. 1667/8), on the other hand, we may say that the new age had fairly started. 1 Op. cit. 111. 448. 2 Downes (p. 25) says it brought more profit and esteem to the house than any other comedy. ek it. 224 COMEDY Probably due to the poor acting1, it was not the success that one might have expected from that of The Comical Revenge; even in print it achieved only three editions by the end of the century to set against the seven or eight of the former play. It is interesting to note, in regarding the work of Etherege and later of Congreve, that the audiences of the time did not appear capable of separating the gold from the dross. They condemned The Way of the World even as they condemned this comedy of Congreve’s predecessor. What- ever its reception, She Wouw’d if she Cou’d is undoubtedly a much superior piece to The Comical Revenge. It captured completely that spirit of the fine world that had been merely hinted at in the former comedy. Instinct with life, it passed beyond mere humours and types to a realm of living human beings, representative probably of a class, but not caricatured out of all resemblance to their actual prototypes. Very similar in general tone is The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter (D.G. March, 1676), a play which has become, as it were, one of the very symbols of the comedy of manners?. Steele in The Spectator saw fit to condemn it as a sort of type specimen of its class, and others, who defend that class, have accordingly given it highest praise. This comedy, which, unlike the last-mentioned play of Etherege, was a tremendous success, displays, perfectly, that fine brilliancy of prose dia- logue, that easy, cultured, heartless atmosphere which we must associate with the works of this school. How fine is Dorimant! He is the gentleman par excellence—but how heartless ! He casts off Mrs Loveit for Belinda, as easily as he casts off the latter for Harriet, whom he marries. How exquisite is the character of Sir Fopling, father of what an innumerable progeny of descendants, stretching from Sir Patient Fancy and Sir Courtly Nice to Cibber’s beaux of the age of Anne and later! The plot is complicated, but, like 1 Cf. Downes, pp. 28-9, and Shadwell, The Humorists, preface. See also Pepys’ account of the first performance on Feb. 6, 1667/8, when he overheard Etherege “ mightily...find fault with the actors.” 2 Several writers have presumed it to be a satire with Dorimant as Rochester and Young Bellair as Etherege (see Earl of Oxford’s Works, II. 315 and note of Oldys to Langbaine, p. 187). THE COMEDY OF MANNERS 225 Congreve’s, seems a part of life, life of a world far from ours, where hearts are atrophied and polite manners and graceful bearing cover a multitude of sins. The characters, some of them, are stereotyped!, yet they are not overdrawn nor do they shadow the gayer, livelier figures of Dorimant and of Bellair. With The Man of Mode the comedy of manners came to its majority, just as with Cibber it sank to a shamefaced and emasculated old age. The comedy of manners, meanwhile, had been taken up by others, in especial by William Wycherley, who, as an artist, falls far below Etherege, as a powerful force in con- temporary life, rises far above him?. The lover of the Duchess of Cleveland, the tutor of the King’s son, the husband of the Countess of Drogheda, the prisoner in the Fleet, was a quite different being from the airy ambassador, patron of a deserted comédienne in the Low Countries. Mr Palmer is not far wrong in styling him a Puritan with the external veneer of a Restoration gentleman®. He burst up the foetid air of the time with a force equal to that of Collier. He lashed the age with his plain-dealing pen, lading out his disgust upon a slightly fluttered world of roués and their mistresses. He has not the style of the greater masters of the manners school, polished and fine: his wit does not over- shadow his plots as does the wit of Etherege or of Congreve: yet, in scenes where his moral horror is not aroused, he can be almost as delicate as they. The whole of Wycherley’s plays, it may be noted, fall within half a decade, his first comedy appearing in 1671 and his last in 1676. Living on to the age of Pope, he seems to have spent his energy in those few brilliant years. In Love in a Wood, or, St fames’s Park (T.R. in B.St. c. April, 1671) we are led into a world somewhat similar to that of Etherege, 1 Such as Old Bellair, the lover of the past age. 2 'The effect which he had on his contemporaries may best be realised from the countless references to his chief play. “‘ The Author of the Plain Dealer,” thought Dryden, “‘Has oblig’d all honest and virtuous Men, by one of the most bold, most general, and most useful Satyrs which has ever been presented on the English Theatre” (Preface to The State of Innocence, 1677). 3 See for this whole subject Palmer’s Comedy of Manners. NRD 15 226 COMEDY yet hardly so fine, and, as in the Alderman Gripe and Lucy scenes, tending to vulgarity. From the very first opening sentence of the play, however, we may see the masterly con- struction. The plot is ably and interestingly developed: but something remains indefinably incongruous. There is almost something of Shadwell in Wycherley’s work. There is always the sense that the heart is struggling for entry into the world of the intellect. Of like nature, though less successful, was The Gentleman Dancing-Master (D.G.c. Jan. 1672)1 in which the construc- tion, with its opposed types of French and Spanish foppery, is even simpler than in the comedy preceding. The Gentleman Dancing-Master is interesting as* being nearer in spirit to Etherege than almost any other of Wycherley’s plays: it stands furthest in tone from The Plain Dealer. In The Country Wife (D.L. Jan. 1674/5)” Wycherley has continued in the same free easy strain. The Country Wife is a bright and glorious farce, in which the innuendo so suc- cessfully employed in The Gentleman Dancing-Master is brought to a stage of utmost perfection. The famous ‘‘China” scene of Horner is probably unrivalled in our literature, and, much as it has been condemned by moralists, can be nothing but admired for its sheer cleverness and for its swift biting humour. It has not the vulgarity which is apparent in the work of Shadwell: it is a piece of intellectualism, wherein the wit takes from the harmful effect it otherwise might have had. The name of Wycherley, however, “manly,” “brawny” Wycherley, stands not so much with these former plays, although they were enough to make the fame of any drama- tist, but with a comedy almost unique in its age—The Plain Dealer (D.L. Dec. 1676). In it the roué joins hands with the 1 Its production must have been in the first half of 1672, for the prologue is addressed “To the City, Newly after the Removal of the Duke’s Company from Lincolns-Inn-Fields to their new Theatre.” 2 There seems no reason for placing The Country Wife in 1673. The entry in the Lord Chamberlain’s records (see Appendix B) is in all probability of the first performance. The Plain Dealer, likewise, appeared, not in 1674 but in 1676. 3 Dryden’s and Rochester’s epithets for him. THE COMEDY OF MANNERS 227 moralist, realism is mingled with artificial manners, emotions with the intellect. It satirises perfectly the infidelity and the foppishness of the time, at the very moments that it sinks to the depths of carnal viciousness. There is only one pure character in the whole of its five acts, and that is Fidelia, devoted Fidelia who follows her rough and faithless lover with a tenderness that almost draws the tears from our eyes. Everyone else is swallowed up in sense. The chief figure is, of course, Manly himself, a pessimistic hater of man’s hypocrisy, and one who owes not a little to the Alceste of Moliére’s Le misanthrope. Beside him and Fidelia, with the possible exception of Olivia, Manly’s former mistress, all the other characters seem mere shadows of personified qualities. Lord Plausible is simply the typical fop with nothing indi- vidual in his composition, just as Novel is the representative of the would-be wits, and Widow Blackacre of the law-mad amateurs. On women, fops, wits and lawyers indiscriminately the satire falls, intermixed with that loathsome description of passion which only men like Shadwell and Wycherley among the Restoration dramatists could give to us. Wycherley, says Congreve, was sent “‘to lash the crying Age,” but he has lashed its sores into more fulsome aspects, until we have naught to do but turn our eyes away in misery and in disgust. In Wycherley’s Plain Dealer, then, we see inherent all the elements which were to lead towards the complete decay of the species of comedy which he had adopted in his first dramas. The reality of the mind, in this comedy, has been replaced by the reality of the body: the airiness of the liberated cavalier has given way to the moral horror of the sinning Puritan. By 1676 the age was moving steadily in the direction of sentimentalism, pure intellect was being banished by feeling ; emotion was taking the place of wit. This change, certainly, is not felt with any strength till after the year 1680 and Congreve, writing in the last decade of the century, felt little more than a touch of it, but we can note the first hints of it, in so diverse forms as The Plain Dealer, the plays of Dryden and the plays of Mrs Behn. The age was rapidly 15-2 298 )// COMEDY undergoing a transformation: even in the time of Charles the spirit was not quite the same as it had been in 1665. After the Revolution a new era commences. It is peculiar to note that in Wycherley, in Dryden, in Mrs Behn and in others the elements of sentimentalism could exist alongside of humorous qualities which might well be thought entirely contrary to their aim. In this respect the three comedies produced by Thomas Southerne have a special interest. Southerne is probably best known to-day for his tragedy, The Fatal Marriage, and for his “‘ play,”’ The Disappointment, dramas in which he definitely took his stand with Otway and with Cibber in an endeavour to introduce the problem play and the bourgeois tragedy. In his own time, however, he was no doubt more famous for his three comic pieces, each with rich elements of the manners style. Sir Anthony Love, or, The Rambling Lady (D.L. c. Dec. 1690) is a ‘‘she-comedy,”’ Sir Anthony Love being none other than Lucia, a former kept mistress, now in love with Valentine. It is worth noting that he or she gives vent to the same theory concerning a certain class of women chasers, who pursue the chase for the mere pleasure of the hunt, as is to be found in Congreve’s Love for Love. This play, which was a success in its own days, is a fair specimen of mannerised comedy, its dialogue being good and witty, although marred by Southerne’s prevailing weakness—the over-use of thea- trical broken sentences, wherein the meaning of one speaker is continued or perverted by another. This mannerism, which Southerne occasionally employs effectively, becomes weari- some and monotonous by the end of the play. The Wives Excuse, or, Cuckolds make themselves appeared at the same theatre precisely a year later (c. Dec. 1691). It was a failure, and the author, possibly because of that, obtained some congratulatory verses from Dryden which he inserted in the printed edition of the text. These verses liken the author to Terence, a somewhat exaggerated comparison. The Wives Excuse is not a very good play, although it is of the same class as Sir Anthony Love. Probably its main point of interest for us is an historical one—the introduction in the comedy THE COMEDY OF MANNERS 229 itself of a reference to Southerne’s own work, a sort of pre- monition of Shavian methods of self-advertisement?. In The Maid’s Last Prayer, or, Any rather than Fail (D.L. Jan. 1692/3), the title of which, like that of the last mentioned play, is both ironical and explanatory, Southerne sinks below even the level of The Wives Excuse. The ‘‘maid” in question is an old maid, Lady Susan. Apart from the song by Congreve’, the most noticeable thing in the comedy is the scene in the last act where Lady Malapert discovers she has had an assignation with Gayman instead of with Valentine, a theme handled with not a little skilful, if a trifle indelicate, humour’, All along, indeed, Southerne gives us these witty scenes in his plays, but he just fails of great dramatic triumph through a certain inability to sustain his highest flights. Some of those individual scenes are worthy of Congreve himself, but they are buried in a mass of uninteresting padding which the author seemed unable to refine. ‘The atmosphere of the school of manners, of course, in its most perfect form, is to be found in the works of Congreve. Congreve is not a courtier of the age of Charles: he is rather a city beau of the age of Anne, a companion of Pope, a friend of Walsh: yet he has inherited to the full the spirit of Etherege. His first comedy, The Old Batchelor, appeared at D.L. in Jan. 1693, when its author was but twenty-one, a truly wonderful production for a young man just upon his majority. It had a brilliant cast—Betterton playing the title-part, Powell Bellamour, Williams Vainlove and Doggett Fondle- wife, with Mrs Barry, Mrs Bracegirdle and Mrs Mountfort to bear them company—and with such a cast, a play so witty could hardly fail of success*. Brilliancy characterises the whole of it: the wit rises and falls with a continual vivacity, so that we overlook the artificiality of the plot and the some- times too grievous lack of individuality in some of the characters®, With a racy prologue spoken by Mrs Bracegirdle, , esbentias thinks this was the poet’s first acknowledged work. * The situation appears with variations in The Mall (D.L. 1674). * It had a run of over fourteen nights. 5 Such as Wittol and Bluffe. 230 COMEDY with the sharp nervous dialogue, it must have seemed to that fin de siécle audience, so rapidly to become hypocritical in its theatrical pleasures, as a last banquet of wit, as the last joyous and flagrant outburst before a dark and lowering storm. Wholly immoral as it is, it yet clothes that immorality with a profusion of wit that assuredly disarms, as it must in that age have disarmed, what one can only style the moral sense. There is no pain in this world, only wit and laughter and freedom, and wit and laughter and freedom, divorced from emotion, can never kill. After this glorious success, Congreve must have received an unpleasant surprise at the cool reception given to The Double Dealer (D.L. Oct. 1693). Hardly a comedy in the full sense of the term, it strikes the evil note, and because of that, had our emotions been in any way aroused, we might have styled it a tragi-comedy. As it is, although the love of Mellefont and Cynthia is good and true—almost Shake- spearian in a way—and although wit, but not in such rich profusion, does permeate the whole, we are left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. We have neither the pathos which, for example, Southerne in his serious plays was able to call into being, nor have we the sense of over-abundant intellect spent in conversation of the most airy and the most delicate kind, as we have when we read The Way of the World or even Love for Love. It is just possible that here Congreve was misled by his age. His spirit is the spirit of free gallantry: the scenes of Mellefont and of Cynthia, striving to call up a picture of honest love, appear artificial and forced. There are even touches of a definitely sentimental sort, as in that passage in Act 111 where Cynthia, thinking of the follies of Sir Paul and his confréres, looks into her heart and finds a moralisation. ‘“‘Why should I call them Fools?” she asks, showing that in her the barriers between the emotions and the intellect had been shattered. This slightly sentimental touch, visible in The Double Dealer, has vanished entirely in Congreve’s following play, Love for Love, acted at the new theatre in L.I.F. in April 1695. Although it was a glorious success, as a dramatic THE COMEDY OF MANNERS 231 production it falls just below The Way of the World precisely because, as Dr Johnson pointed out, it is more realistic, in the ordinary meaning of that term. The sailor Ben, a finely drawn type in its way and one of the causes of the success of the comedy, seems out of place, and the immorality of the piece, although not so flagrant as that of The Old Batchelor, is drawn more closely to our notice. In this drama Congreve has come nearer to the spirit of Shadwell than he has done in any other of his four works, and the Miss Prue and Tattle scenes, imitated from that antagonist of Dryden, raise in us the same disgust which must be felt on reading The Squire of Alsatia. Congreve was no moralist, such as Wycherley was, but the rapidly changing spirit of the age, leading here to a semi-hypocritical sentimentalism, here to a coarser realism, had laid its impress upon him: even he could not escape entirely. The triumph of Congreve in The Way of the World, which appeared at L.I.F. in the last year of the century, derives from the fact that he was able to shake off for once all grosser ties. It was not a success, a cool reception which did not seem to surprise the author. He knew well enough, as he expressed it in his dedication, that “‘but little of it was pre- pared for that general Taste which seems now to predominate in the Palates of our Audience.” It was, in fact, too rarefied, too refined for the spirit of its time. There is no sentiment in it, no realism, no coarseness. Mirabell and Millamant, about whom the plot, such as it is, gyrates continually, are not complete figures: they are merely automata, devised as mouth-pieces for the poet. The theme is artificial and the conclusion is artificial, if we test it by the standards of every- day life: yet both have a brilliancy and a truth which make of The Way of the World the master-creation of the school of manners. With Etherege, Wycherley and Congreve the comedy of manners is seen at its best, although in the two last mentioned there are already visible the elements of decay and of dis- integration. Those elements of decay and of disintegration become more pronounced as we pass to the two other writers 232 COMEDY whose names are usually associated with the greater three, Vanbrugh and Farquhar. A study even of those few comedies which the former presented to the seventeenth century theatre must display at once the complete disseverance which exists between the works of Congreve and the works of his followers. There is no finesse about Vanbrugh’s work. How- ever much he accepted the manners convention, he yet lies as far from Congreve and from Etherege as do D’Urfey and Mrs Behn. ‘The majority of his pieces are but glorified farces: and, although he is as wantonly indecent as his pre- decessors, he seems to have appreciated to the full the emotions that were gathering round him, and by bringing sensibility into his themes and feeling into his wit, he served, along with others, to hasten the break-away of comedy from the Etheregian model. His first three plays all appeared in the years 1696-1697, two at D.L. and one at L.I.F. The first of these, The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger (D.L. Dec. 1696) is a good play, the preface to which is exceedingly instructive for our knowledge, not only of the writer’s aims, but of the audience and of the stage conditions of the period. Fairly immoral, it seems to have met with considerable censure, although the author, with an airy kind of dissimulation, professes himself duly innocent. In this play Cibber carried on his enduring success in the character of Sir Novelty Fashion, now Lord Fopping- ton, ‘‘a Man whom Nature has made no Fool” but ‘‘ who is very industrious to pass for an Ass”—a definition which reminds us strongly of the critical precepts of Shadwell, presented several decades previously. Aesop, the second comedy given by Vanbrugh to the Theatre Royal (Part I, c. Dec. 1696; Part II, c. March, 1696/7) is confessedly but little more than a translation of Boursault. It is rather a poor performance in two parts, by no means brilliant at its best, and in places excessively dull. The whole is composed, of course, to display the aphorisms and the apologues of Aesop, who proves a very objectionable and cynical personage in his stage existence. In The Provok’d Wife (L.1.F. May, 1697), however, we THE COMEDY OF MANNERS 233 reach one of the masterpieces of Vanbrugh’s art. There is Not in it the sparkle of Congreve, but there is throughout a show of wit, adorning a very definite plot, well contrived and well executed. The characters, too, are well, if roughly, drawn. Sir John Brute, indeed, is one of the living figures in Restoration dramatic literature. There are violent attempts in almost every act on the part of ‘the author to capture the manners style, but in the main his strength lies far apart from that. The succession of ludicrous incidents, the continual wave to and fro of action never for a moment still, the assigna- tions and the discoveries and the fears and the explanations, all keep our attention focussed on a scene, slightly satirical, but always instinct with life. Of Vanbrugh much has been said by the critics, both laudatory and condemnatory. He stands, it is true, much below Congreve, lacking his wit and his finesse; at the same time he has other qualities, lower in degree, but stamping him as a true son of the theatre. ‘‘His best jokes are practical devices,” says Hazlitt in his fourth lecture on The English Comic Writers, ‘“‘Not epigrammatic conceits.... He has more nature than art: what he does best, he does because he cannot help it.”’ It is this “‘nature,”’ as Mr Palmer has noted, which renders his work immoral. His adultery is no longer comic and airy: it is passionate. “He killed the comedy of sex for the English theatre.”” One might suspect, indeed, that Vanbrugh owed in his art two masters, Congreve and Shadwell. He differed from both, yet he had some of the qualities of both. Shadwell is sometimes heavy : Congreve is airy: Vanbrugh is buoyant—buoyant with a sort of up- roariousness, upheld by wine. The companion of Vanbrugh, George Farquhar, hardly had made his début in this century. His first play, Love and a Bottle, appeared at D.L. only in 1699, at the time when its author was but twenty-one. It is certainly a play of promise, although it has not that finer temper which Farquhar put into his later works. Its plot, certainly, is but poor and artificial with manifest tendencies towards the degeneration of the pure manners style by the introduction of a species of 234 COMEDY spurious sentimentalism. Already in his first comedy he showed where exactly he stood, the heir of Congreve breathing the spirit of the changing age. A few months later, also in 1699, was performed at D.L. his second play, The Constant Couple, or, A Trip to the Jubilee, a play which had a phenomenal success in its own time. Although much of the plot is borrowed, and a certain amount of the wit strained, The Constant Couple is well wrought out and not all of its contemporary triumph was due, as Farquhar himself modestly declared, to the acting of Wilks as Sir Harry Wildair. In spite of the fact that the prologue tells us ...Here’s no slander, No Smut, no lewd-tongued beau, no double entendre, the whole is as licentious as any play of earlier times. What is Wildair if not a “‘lewd-tongued beau” in the scene where, under a misapprehension, he offers Angelica money as he would have offered it to a courtesan? The statement in the prologue, however, is valuable in considering the temper of the age. Farquhar owes, undoubtedly, much of his success to his inimitable portraiture of this age. He had, moreover, learnt at least sufficient of Congreve’s wit to make his comedies amusing and piquant. Beyond those comedies already mentioned, the school of manners in these forty years is hardly represented. There are a few plays, such as The She-Gallants (L.1.F. c. Dec. 1695) of George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, which can definitely be placed in the Etherege school of comic pro- duction: and there are a number of comedies, such as those of Mrs Behn, where the impress of Etherege and of Wycherley is to be traced; but in the main only the chief figures stand out. Altogether these five major dramatists have not given, in the seventeenth century, more than a score of works, and several of these were not very successful on the stage. They had not, that is to say, the force and the influence which we of to-day postulate for them. They have given us what is finest in the Restoration age, but they by no means dominated the theatre of their time. Not only had they to battle for THE COMEDY OF MANNERS 235 supremacy with the exponents of humours and of Spanish intrigue, but they were surrounded by a mass of popular dramatists who, in the early days, filled the T.R. and L.L.F. with rude tempestuous works, and who, in the last years of the century, provided D.L. and D.G. with farce and with sentiments. The chief things to remember about the de- velopment of the comedy of manners are, that it was not the principal fare of the theatres from 1664 to 1700, and that it was not even distinctively of the Restoration age at all. Some of its principal exponents live after the death of Charles. VII. Farce and Sentimentalism The gradual growth of a fine and well-nigh perfect comic expression in the last years of the century appears all the more strange when we consider that these last years display, alongside of the growth of the comedy of manners, a decided weakening of the true comic spirit. In two distinct directions is this weakening to be observed. More and more, farce was coming to dominate the theatres, and from 1680 onwards may be traced the slowly gathering force of sentiment, the incursion of feeling and of emotion, spurious and sincere, into the world of the intellect. Sentiment was destined to be a force guiding and altering all types of literature for over two centuries to come, but it killed the spirit of Congreve. Farce was destined to weaken and to destroy the finer ex- pression of the comic muse. The elements of both, of course, can be noted from the very first years of the Restoration period. There were farcical elements in the comedies of Dryden, of Wilson and of Mrs Behn. The Man’s the Master of D’Avenant (L.I.F. March, 1668), founded on Fodelet, ou, Le maistre valet and L’héritier ridicule, was but a farcical comedy of intrigue with many characteristics of the pre-Commonwealth minor dramat. The 1 See the epilogue for D’Avenant’s consciousness of his non-Restora- tion spirit, as well as the epilogue to The Siege of Rhodes, Part II: “You Witts, not of your Duller-Fathers mind. Which, well-consider’d Mistress-Muse will then Wish for her old Gallants at Fri’rs agen; Rather than be by those neglected here, Whose Fathers civilly did Court her there.” 236 COMEDY same author’s The Play-House to be Lett (L.1.F. c. 1663) with its skits at opera, its presentation of a ‘‘ Monsieur” and his farce, and its ‘‘ Travesti” of a tragedy, is nothing but a set of farces and burlesques loosely pinned together in one framework}. This latter play of D’Avenant’s is to be connected with several other burlesques of a later decade, burlesques which must have had some influence on the development of farce proper after 1680. At D.G. about Sept. 1673 appeared The Reformation, a comedy attributed to Arrowsmith, not un- humorously satirising the heroic tragedy of the time. At T.R. in December two years before had been acted The Rehearsal of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. The Rehearsal had first been penned in 1663; it had been ready by 1665: and had been laid aside owing to the closing of the theatres during the time of plague. It was taken up again after 1667, and thus presents a continuous and all-embracing burlesque of the heroic species. The original “hero”.was Bilboa, none other than Sir Robert Howard. This gentleman, however, had soon to cede place to Bayes—John Dryden himself—or, at least, a combination of Dryden, Howard and D’Avenant, the holy trinity of the heroic muse. That Villiers was assisted in its composition seems not now to be doubted, and Butler probably took more than an equal share in it. Whatever its authorship, however, and whatever its success as a reforming medium, it is a work that deserves far more attention, even, than it receives at the present day. Less finished than Sheridan’s masterpiece, it is yet a fine and uproarious ex- posure of contemporary Love and Honour follies. It is, too, the first of its kind. The plays ridiculed are numerous enough, extending from The Conquest of Granada to The Indian Emperour, The Siege of Rhodes, Tyrannick Love, The Villain, The Slighted Maid and Love and Friendship. Besides these, one or two comedies, also, of the heroic writers were satirised —notably The Wild Gallant, The Assignation and The Play- 1 This play contains D’Avenant’s own History of Sir Francis Drake and The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, as well as the broken French translation of Sganarelle, and the ‘‘ Travesti” of Cleopatra. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 237 House to be Lett. Much of what must have had keen con- temporary savour is, of course, now insipid. Bayes is but a lay figure for us, not a living model: but the main wealth of sometimes academic, but always pointed, ridicule remains imperishable. It is unfair often, often not in good taste: but as a brilliant piece of burlesque it is, for the student of the stage no less than for the student of the times, invaluable?. A few years later, farcical burlesque, in the hands of Thomas Duffett, took on an even more decided form?. The Empress of Morocco (D.L. c. Dec. 1673), The Mock Tempest, or, The Enchanted Castle (D.L. Nov. 1674) and Psyche Debauch’d (D.L. 1675) all presented in coarse way travesties of popular successes at D.G. Possibly Duffett’s earlier comedy in heroic verse, The Spanish Rogue (L.1.F. c. June, 1673) was also intended as a burlesque. If it was not, it was a very poor production. None of Duffett’s plays is valuable. To a contemporary audience each must have had some piquancy, but the fun is strained and only too often descends to the very depths of vulgarity. The best part of any is the Epilogue spoken by Witches after the Mode of Macbeth, appended to Psyche Debauch'd. To the early farcical strain as expressed in Dryden’s The Wild Gallant and in the plays of Wilson, and to this burlesque expressed in the plays of D’Avenant, Villiers and Duffett, came, in increasing waves throughout the reign of Charles, the influence of the commedia dell’ arte tradition. Italian, apparently, was sufficiently well known among the courtly audiences of 1660-1680 for plays to be presented by native performers in that language. Even in regular English plays we find its appearance. In Act 111, Sc. i of Mrs Behn’s The Feign’d Curtizans (D.G. 1679) occurs a song in “‘Italian,” commencin 5 Crudo Amore, Crudo Amore, Il mio Core non fa per te, 1 The Rehearsal should be read in Mr Montague Summers’ excellent edition. 2 For Duffett see Downes. The title-page of Psyche Debauch’d declares that play was written by ““T. D.” For the ascription to Duffett, see Langbaine, Momus Triumphans, p. 27, note f. 238 COMEDY whilst a stage direction in Southerne’s The Wives Excuse (D.L. 1691) instructs the characters “After an Italian Song” to ‘Advance to the Front of the Stage.” An “‘Itahan Song by Mr Pate” is referred to in Act 11 of The Female Wits, or, The Triumvirate of Poets at Rehearsal (printed 1704). As early as Oct. 22, 1660, the King had granted a patent to Giulio Gentileschi to build a theatre for Italian musicians, and, no doubt, for Italian players as well?. By 1668, troupes of Italian comedians appear to have been well enough known to give point to a phrase in the prologue to Tarugo’s Wiles (L.I.F. 1667)—“A Trivolino, or a Skaramuchio that’s dex- trous at making of mouths will sooner raise a Clap then a high flown Fancy.” On Nov. 11, 1672, Charles issued through the Lord Chamberlain an order signifying his royal pleasure “That Antonio di Voto Doe sett forth Exercise & Play all Drolls and Interludes, He not receiuing into his Company any person belonging to his Mates or Royal Highnesse Theatres Nor Act any Play usually acted at any of y® said Theatres Nor takes peeces or Sceenes out of y® Playes Acted at y® said Theatres®.” This order is entered in the books to “Antonio Divoto punchenello.” On April 21, 1673 another troupe had but “‘newly arrived*”: on September 4 of the same year the King ordered “‘to be prepared & deliuered vnto Scaramouchi and Harlekin vnto each of them a Medall & Chayne of Gold” as well as a chain and medal for four others of their company®. Two days later, on Sept. 6, 1673, twenty ounces of white plate were sent as a present to ““Scaramouchi®.” On Sept. 11 they were granted a warrant of £52 for a stage, which sum was advanced to them by St Albans. Shortly after, they left England’. This band, under Tiberio Fiorilli, a famous scaramuccio, performed 20Y. i. 2 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1660/1, p. 319. 5 P.R.O., L.C. 5/140, p. 129. Di Voto was a shower of puppets; see Adams, J. Q., Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, pp. 138-9. * A warrant to the customs officers to admit their properties was issued on that date (Cal. State Papers, Treasury Books, 1672-75, 119). ® P.R.O., L.C. 5/140, p. 328. eld. Da320- * Cal. State Papers, Treasury Books, 1672-75, pp. 392 and 837. The £52 was not repaid until June 6, 1676 (id. 1676-79, p. 234). For the warrant to export their goods see id. 1672-75, p. 826. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 239 apparently at Whitehall, and returned in 1675 to act in Inigo Jones’ banquetting hall, accepting money for admission and thereby giving great offence to some honest citizens of London. Marvell, for example, in a private letter dated July 24, 1675, speaks of “‘Scaramuccio acting daily in...White- hall, and all sorts of people flocking thither, and paying their money as at a common play-house; nay, even a twelvepenny gallery is builded for the convenience of his Majesty’s poorer subjects!.”” Marvell probably reflected the sentiments of a fair number in the London of that day, and there were doubtless many who appreciated to the full his satire of the Italians in his poem The Statue at Charing Cross, where he refers to the former booth erected for the foreign troop in that locality: *T were to Scaramouchio too great disrespect To limit his troop to this theatre small; Besides the injustice it were to eject That mimic so legally seized of Whitehall?. Satire of the Italians and their fare may also be found in Dryden’s reference to the “Italian Merry-Andrews” in his epilogue ‘“‘to the University of Oxford.” ‘Their presence probably caused the introduction of Punch into the Oenone of 1673°. This troupe returned again in Nov. 1678, and left in Feb. 1678/9*, carrying with them six portmanteaux, two great baskets and twenty-two trunks; in the summer of 1683 they were playing again at Windsor where a stage was erected for them®. From this date references to the commedia dell’ arte are frequent. Ravenscroft’s Scaramouch a Philosopher, Harle- quin a School-Boy, Bravo, Merchant and Magician. A Comedy after the Italian Manner appeared at D.L. in May, 1677. 1 Grosart’s edition, vol. 11. p. 467. 2 Muse’s Library edition, vol. 11. p. 98. Evelyn saw these Italian players on Sept. 29, 1675. 3 In the earlier Acteon and Diana, With the Pastorall Story of the Nymph Oenone (n.d.), Punch makes no appearance. He was introduced only into the enlarged edition of this pastoral printed in Kirkman’s The Wits, or, Sport upon Sport (1673). 4 Cal. State Papers, Treasury Books, 1676-9, pp. 1160 and 1230. 5 See Hist. MSS. Comm. vu. 286 and 331: also a document re the Windsor theatre in P.R.O. 240 COMEDY Mrs Behn in the second part of The Rover (D.G. 1680) apparently introduced a real Italian harlequin1, and in 1686 Mountfort felt the taste of the time sufficiently to produce his The Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Made into a Farece.... With the Humours of Harlequin and Scaramouche (D.G. c. 1686). Dryden has a reference to the same characters in his A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693)2, while in the same year Tate saw fit to increase what had been but a page and a half of preface to his A Duke and no Duke into a full blown discourse ‘‘concerning Farce” in which he elaborately proves the genesis of Harlequin and of Scaramouch from “‘ the Personae and Larvae...of the Ancient THEATRE.” ‘‘Two Scaramouch Men, and two Scaramouch Women” as well as “two Harlaquin Men and Women” ‘Enter and Dance” in Powell’s New Opera: called, Brutus of Alba (D.G. 1696) while, in the following year, Motteux made the last act of The Novelty. Every Act a Play, “‘A Farce after the Italian Manner” entitled Natural Magic. Nor, in thus dealing with the influence of the commedia dell arte, must we forget the presence in England of French as well as Italian comedians. These French comedians fre- quently, it is true, performed in opera and in regular comedy, but they, too, were under the spell of Italy. The commedia dell arte had already fully established itself in the French capital. As early as Aug. 30, 1661, Pepys was at a “‘ French comedy,” given by continental players, at the Cockpit in Drury Lane. Evelyn records their presence at court on Dec. 16 of the same year and on the 2nd of that month Jean Chamouveau had received £300 for their services*, among which was no doubt a performance of The Descent of Orpheus into Hell by Chapoton, of which, as I have already mentioned, “the Description of the Great Machines” is still extant. On Aug. 25, 1663, another band received a licence to come over, and these were duly ridiculed by the dramatists. On Oct. 26, 1 In this play Harlequin speaks “In Italian” (1v. iv) probably extem-- pore. 2 Essays of John Dryden, ed. Ker, W. P. (1900), 11. 55. ® Cal. State Papers, Treasury Books, 1660-67, p. 311. 4 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1663-64, p. 253. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 241° 1669, an order was issued signifying the King’s. pleasure “That y® french Comoedians haue liberty to Act and Play And that noe persons ptsume to molest or disturbe them in theire Acting and playing’.” In 1672 they returned2, much to Dryden’s disgust, the laureate writing a prologue (that to Carlell’s Arviragus and Philicia, 1672) against them and their customs. They stayed till May of the following year. French opera was given in 1673 and in 1674 while in Nov. 16773 there came a new band which was satirised by Porter in the epilogue to The French Conjurer (D.G. 1677). They did not leave London till April of the following year*. Besides a visit of the Prince of Orange’s French players in 16845, and another in 1688®, we may note the considerable influence which must have been exerted indirectly through the visits of our actors, Betterton and Haynes, to the Parisian theatres: The French and the Italian improvised comedy in all ways left an indelible mark upon our dramatic productivity. The chief figure in the acclimatisation of farce in England was Edward Ravenscroft, one of those many lawyers who turned from the Bar to the stage. He is really the first of a new set of writers, who, following after D’Avenant and Dryden, continued their work to the end of the century. SPIO, LC. 5/12; 252. ; 2 On Dec. 17, 1672, they were allowed to import their properties (Treasury Books, 1672-5, p. 14). On Jan. 1, 1672/3, those properties were ordered to be sent from Portsmouth to London (id. p. 24) and arrived on Jan. 9 (id. p. 29). On May 1, 1673, was issued an order to inspect their goods at York House (id. p. 127) and on June 1, 1674, they were given their warrant to depart (id. p. 533) which departure seems to pace been. delayed till aay - (id. p. 571). 3 Id. 1676-9, p. 4 A warrant was ae on April 12, 1678, to examine their goods before exportation to France (id. p. 962). ® Cf. letter from B. Grenville to W. L. Gower, June 10, 1684 (Hist, MSS. Comm. Report, v. Part 1. p. 186). On Sept. 29, 1684, an order was issued to prepare the Cockpit for them (P.R.O., L.C. 5/145, p. 90). For this whole question, see Lawrence, W. J., on French players in England in An Elizabethan Play-House, and other Studies (Series 1. p. 125 ff.). From this several of the references above are quoted. On the Italian comedians Mr Montague Summers has a note in his Works of Mrs Behn, t. 444 ff. 6 The French players arrived on Aug. 13 and stayed at Windsor till Sept. 22 (P.R.O., 5/17). A licence was issued to them on Aug. 11 (id. 65), and the theatre was being got ready for them on July 25 (id. p. 60). NRD 16 242 COMEDY Without any very marked qualities to stamp him as a poet, Ravenscroft was yet superior to Langbaine’s contemptuous dismissal of him—‘‘one who with the Vulgar passes for a Writer.”” A plagiary undoubtedly he was, but a plagiary who not always failed of success. His great claim to fame lies in the particular type of farcical drama which he adopted and popularised. He knew exactly what the audiences of the later Restoration period desired, and, with a ready pen, he set himself to supply that want. In the creation of this par- ticular form of farce he has, as is natural, borrowed from many sources. Jonson, occasionally, supplied him with humours: Dryden’s “‘Wild Gallant” couples provided the model for Careless, Lovell and Hillaria in The Careless Lovers: Spanish intrigue he employed with effect: but, above all, he looked to France and Italy. Moli¢re he went to again and again, reducing his comedies to the meagre limits of the farcical show. The commedia dell’ arte provided him with one definitely “Italian” piece, and with many a hint for other plays. With Moliére and hints from Dryden he started his dramatic career. The Citizen turn’d Gentleman (D.G. July, 1672) and The Careless Lovers (D.G. March, 1673) were taken bodily from Le bourgeois gentilhomme and from Monsieur de Pourceaugnac respectively, and display well the forces that were working towards the reduction of the Moliére comedy to mere farce, the weakening of Moliére’s humour and the running together of two or three of his comedies so as to increase the incident at the expense of the characterisation and of the wit. The Wrangling Lovers, or, The Invisible Mistress followed at D.G. about Sept. 1676, and in this Ravenscroft first essayed another style of comic writing, the Spanish school of intrigue. Langbaine traces its source to a novel of that country”, the same to which Mrs Centlivre was indebted for The Wonder. A Woman keeps a Secret (D.L. 1714). In it the ‘“‘wrangling lovers,” Don Diego and Octavia, as well as Sancho, the inevitable servant, are a Republished in 1675 as Mamamouchi. 2 Op. cit. pp. 423-4. > Genest, I. 193-4. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 243 characters quite well sustained, but are not supported suffi- ciently by the rest. Ravenscroft’s most interesting play, however, is none of these. In Scaramouch a Philosopher. Harlequin a School-Boy, Bravo, Merchant and Magician. A Comedy after the Italian Manner (D.L. May, 1677) the author realised that he was introducing a novelty on the London stage. ‘‘ The Poet,” says the prologue, The Poet does a dang’rous Trial make, And all the common Roads of Plays forsake... (He) rather chose in new attempts to fail Than in the old indifferently prevail. Scaramouch a Philosopher is partly to be traced to Le mariage forcé and to Les fourberies de Scapin of Moliére, but its immediate inspiration is undoubtedly to be sought for in some of the unrecorded improvised comedies performed by Fiorilli and his troupe at Whitehall. The snatches of Italian phrasing scattered throughout, as well as the typical char- acters of the commedia dell’ arte, prove that by this time the popular comedy of Italy had become a definite part of English theatrical life. Punch and Scaramouch and Harlequin had been thoroughly acclimatised Ravenscroft’s later plays all follow the lines laid down in these his first essays in the drama. If we omit the tragi- comedy of King Edgar and Alfreda and the alteration of Titus Andronicus, we find five plays of his produced between 1677 and 1697. Of these, The English Lawyer (D.L. c. Dec. 1677) is merely a popular adaptation of the Latin Jgnoramus of Ruggles, performed at Trinity College Hall in 1614/51. The flagrant London Cuckolds was not produced at D.G. until Nov. 1681. This notorious piece, with a perfectly immoral plot, descending, because of its workmanship, to utter vul- garity, was followed at D.G. about Sept. 1683 by a more or less pure Dame Dobson, or, The Cunning Woman. 'These two plays are interesting when considered together. The success of the first was of a somewhat scandalous nature, it having 1 A translation of the same play is said to have appeared in 1662, possibly by Robert Codrington (see Langbaine, p. 518). 16-2 244 COMEDY the honour of being played every Lord Mayor’s day until in 1751 Garrick stopped it at his theatre’. Its wit is purely tomfoolery and its satire ugly. Dame Dobson, on the other hand, pays tribute to the growing force of moral sentiment rising after 1682. “‘No Line in this,” says the prologue, will tempt your Minds to Evil, It’s true, ’tis dull, but then ’tis very Civil. Probably no better instance could be given of the rapid change in the spirit of the age, and of the conflicting ideals which hardly gave the dramatists a suggestion as to where they stood. By this time Ravenscroft’s career was nearly over. ‘There follows in his career a lengthy period of silence, his return to the theatre coming not until a decade had passed by. The Canterbury Guests, or, A Bargain Broken, his next comedy, was not produced at D.L. until Sept. 1694. This was fol- lowed by The Anatomist, or, The Sham Doctor, given at L.I.F. about March 1696/7. Both are fairly amusing pieces of work, with touches of rather superficial wit. There is a *‘mad couple” in the first, imitations of the pair in The Careless Lovers, and The Anatomist presented Underhill with a fine acting part. In general, I believe, no writer had more of an influence on the usual fare of the theatre than had Ravenscroft. A third-rate dramatist, he yet divined what was desired by the public, and in meeting that desire he set a fashion which many others were only too happy to follow. Of these, Nahum Tate merits perhaps first attention. Tate had started his dramatic career in 1678 with tragedy. Two original pieces and three adaptations of Shakespeare had brought him some fame. In 1682 he continued with Dryden the second part of Absalom and Achitophel. Later, in 1692, he became poet-laureate, continuing in that office until 1715. His work was diverse. In 1686 he had written a free rendering of Fracastoro’s Latin poem, entitling it Syphilis: A Poetical 1 It continued for another year, till 1752, at Covent Garden. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 245 History of the French Disease : in 1696 he translated the Psalms with Dr Brady. This popular and varied writer did not turn to comedy until his reputation was well made. At D.L. in Nov. 1684, he brought out his A Duke and No Duke, merely an alteration of Cockain’s Trappolin creduto principe (1658), but altered so that it proved popular on the stage until the end of the eighteenth century. This comedy has interest for us only because it contains a song written by Sir George Etherege, and because the 1693 edition has a lengthy preface in defence of farce “‘With an Account of the Personae and Larvae etc. of the Ancient THEATRE.” By 1693, even earlier, farce was finding champions to defend it on the grounds of classical antiquity. Cuckold’s Haven, or, An Alderman no Conjurer (D.G. c. May, 1685) is also an adaptation, being based on Jonson’s Eastward Hoe! and The Devill is an Asse. It shows, as clearly as Ravenscroft’s plays show the weakening of the spirit of Moliére, the deliberate reduction of the comedy of humours to a slight and unexalted form. Both before and after Ravenscroft and Tate, farce found many supporters, and it is noticeable that many of them were men connected with the theatre, men who best of all could know what was demanded by the audience. Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, who is better known as the originator of the heroic tragedy, presented at L.I.F. in April 1669 his comedy of Guzman, borrowed from a Spanish source and farcical in spirit. As a play it would seem not to merit the whole-hearted condemnation which Pepys and Sir A. W. Ward! have seen fit to bestow on it, although certainly its main interest for us to-day lies in its lengthy and elaborate stage-directions. Mr Anthony (L.I.F.c. 1671)? is of the same type of comic drama, the duel scene in Act 111 resembling in many ways scenes of more pronounced farces. Amateurish and evidently harking back to Elizabethan 1 Op. cit. WI. 345. 2 Not printed till 1690, nor licensed till Aug. 27, 1687. From the fact, however, that Angel and Mrs Long acted in it, Genest suggested 1671-2 as the probable date of production (1. 129). Haynes, who acted Mr Plot, also returned to the T.R. in 1672. 246 COMEDY predecessors is Love in the Dark, or, The Man of Business (D.L. May, 1675) by Sir Francis Fane. There is a fair song in the first act: : Let us turn Usurers of Time, And hot mispend an Hour... but otherwise, with its long dull intrigues, it is not over- remarkable. Of the type of the more modern farces is Otway’s The Cheats of Scapin (D.G. c. Dec. 1676)! which derives wholly from Moliére and probably was of some influence in the later development of the species. It is Otway’s only attempt at this class of writing, his three other comedies being more Elizabethan in structure and in plot, with a fair infusion of Restoration vulgarity. Of these, Friendship in Fashion (D.G. April, 1678) met with applause in its own day?, but was hissed off the stage on its revival at D.L. in 1750%. For The Souldier’s Fortune (D.G. March, 1679/80) Otway went back to Moliére for a theme (that of the husband agent) which, as old as Boccaccio, had appeared already in The Fawne, in Rhodes’ Flora’s Vagaries, and in Fane’s Love in the Dark. The characters are negligible save the person of Sir Jolly Jumble, a figure probably suggested by Dryden’s Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida, one of those types which display in all their fulness the horror and the degradation of certain aspects of Restoration life. The dénouement of this play, however, is decidedly interesting, presenting as it does the forced renunciation of a young wife to a youthful lover by an old and betrayed husband, the last of whom is treated by Otway towards the close of the play in an almost pathetic manner. The Souldier’s Fortune was continued in The Atheist (D.G. c. Sept. 1683) but not in a very satisfactory way. Another farcical adaptation of Moliére was fathered upon the world by Matthew Medbourne in Tartuffe, or, The French 1 It appeared along with Titus and Berenice. 2 Gildon, C., An Account, p. 108. ® It has a very cynical prologue: LP tl next place, Ladies, there’s no Bawdy in’t, No, not so much as one well-meaning Hint. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 247 Puritan’ (T.R. in B.St. c. April 1670). The original play had appeared in Paris three years previously, and Medbourne’s was the first rendering into English of the ever-popular French comedy. It follows the original fairly closely, but descends, as is usual in these plays, frequently into farce. The actor-authors of this period are well headed by Thomas Betterton. Of his comedies, one, The Woman made a Justice, is non-extant. All we know of it is that the female justice was taken by Mrs Long?. Of the others, The Counter- feit Bridegroom, or, The Defeated Widow (D.G. c. Sept. 1677), if that play be indeed by Betterton$, is but a farcical adapta- tion of Middleton’s No Wit, no Help, like a Woman’s. The Amorous Widow, or, The Wanton Wife (L.1.F. c. 1670), how- ever, was, save for its indebtedness to Moliére’s George Dandin, ou, Le mari confondu, entirely written by the actor, and received praise in its own day‘. It is a fairly well-wrought play, and although it has no brilliant wit in it, it has inter- esting characters in the figures of Cunninghame and Phila- delphia, the amorous Lady Laycock and Barnaby Brittle. It does much to prove to us the all-round excellence of that great and deservedly honoured actor of a youthful stage®. The comedies of Lacy, half of the type of humours, half farces, have already been noted, but Lacy was not the only actor who stood alongside of Betterton as an actor-dramatist. Thomas Jevon, originally a performer of low-comedy parts, who assumed later on as one of his favourite characters the type of Scaramouch, presented at D.L. about March, 1686, The Devil of a Wife, or, A Comical Transformation, in which he himself acted the part of Jobson the Cobbler’. This comedy, which was exceedingly popular in its own and in later times, is purest of pure farce, and the manner in which 1 The running title is “‘or, The French Zealot.” It was “‘rendered into English with much Addition and Advantage.” 2 History of the English Stage, p. 92. 3 It was issued anonymously. Genest (1. 213) from internal evidence was inclined to think it by Mrs Behn. See also Langbaine, p. 528. 4 See Gildon, A Comparison (1702), p. 15. 5 It was frequently reprinted in the eighteenth century. € It ran to seven editions by 1735 and continued on the eighteenth century acting list in Coffey’s alteration as The Devil to Pay. 248 COMEDY it was issued showed that the author had no great thoughts of his own abilities as a writer!. Jevon’s friend, William Mountfort, is much more interesting and important. Some time about 1686 appeared at D.G. the latter’s The Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Made into a Farce...with the Humours of Harlequin and Scaramouche?. 'This play is an admixture of the Italian commedia dell’ arte and the tragedy of Marlowe. Somewhat less than a half of its dialogue is from the Elizabethan play, with omissions to suit the Re- storation taste. On the stage the conjuring Harlequin andthe silly Scaramouch, who, by using the name of God, is for ever scaring away the spirits that the other has raised, must have been laughable enough. _ Win her and Take her, or, Old Fools will be Medling (D.L. c. 1691) attributed to John Smith’, but put on the market by another low comedian, Cave Underhill, I can see no reason for doubting was the work of the latter. In style it is similar to the work of Jevon. It is practically pure farce, with, as its main figures, the clownish characters of Dulhead and Waspish. Beyond a little stage hilarity, it has nothing to recommend it. Among stage writers, also, may be num- bered Thomas Wright, machinist at the T.R. whose one play, The Female Vertuoso’s (D.L. April, 1693) was confessedly an adaptation from Moliére’s Les femmes savantes, with the addition of one new character, most probably designed for Doggett. The five acts of the French piece are reduced to three in the English, which, on the whole, are not as worthless as some other renderings from the continental literatures. Doggett himself gave to L.I.F. in May 1696 a single 2 Cf. epilogue. The motto on the title-page is ‘‘ Vent, Vidi, Vici !”? It was printed in 1697, but acted between 1684 and 1688 (see Genest, See Wood, Anthony a, Athenae Oxonienses (ed. Bliss), 1v. 601. This was not the John Smith who was the author of Cytherea (unacted, 1677); see Wood, op. cit. 11. 228 and Biographia Dramatica, 111. 411, also Coxeter’s note to Gildon, pp. 171 and 134. Cytherea, or The Enamouring Girdle, A New Comedy, was licensed May 30, 1677. From the dedication it seems to have been refused at L.I.F. Coxeter’s note on it is: “He tells, that it had not been presented publickly upon the stage before ’twas printed: I refer it to the impartial reader whether ’tis likely it has ever been since.” FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 249 comedy called The Country Wake, a play which falls in with the other farces of the period. It may be noted, however, as an indication of the taste of this age and of that which followed, that The Country Wake, although to our minds very loose in talk and in action, was not only successful on its first appearance but was frequently revived in the eigh- teenth century?. The last actor-dramatist of the period to be considered is George Powell, to whom three comedies are due. The first of these, A Very Good Wife (D.L. March, 1693) is almost negligible because of its many borrowings”. It seems how- ever to have been a success in its own time’, and for that, and for the prologue written by Congreve for Haynes, it deserves attention. The Imposture Defeated, or, A Trick to Cheat the Devil (D.L. c. Sept. 1697), which he himself con- sidered but “‘a trifle of a Comedy...only a slight piece of Scribble, purely design’d for the Introduction of a little Musick, being no more than a short week’s work‘,”’ is hardly worth the noting save that it represents very well a certain type of play which was becoming more and more popular as the century drew to its close. The Cornish Comedy (D.G. 1696), the third play given to Powell, although he possibly had some share in its composition, would seem to be not wholly by him. The attribution appears to be due to the fact that he published the drama. Written in the Shadwellian style, it introduced a vast amount of singing and dancing®, being of the same school as The Imposture Defeated. The only character worth noticing, and that purely from an historical point of view, is Swash, the hunting squire. The other farces of this period present a somewhat varied collection of theatrical pieces. Mrs Behn, as has been already noted, adopted this type of comedy in two of her productions. The False Count, or, A New Way to play an old Game (D.G. 1 In an altered form as Flora, or, Hob in the Well. 2 There is much imitation of Brome’s The City Wit and The Court Beggar, besides scenes and names from Hide Park and No Wit, no Help, Like a Woman’s. 3 See the dedication. 4 Preface. 5 See the “ Dialogues” between Acts 11 and 111, and between 111 and Iv. 250 COMEDY c. Sept. 1682) is a farce of the older school, laughable enough, but weak in characterisation!. It is of considerable interest only because of the final renunciation of Julia to Carlos, a conclusion similar to that of The Souldier’s Fortune and of The Mail. Much more valuable historically is The Emperor of the Moon (D.G. c. March, 1687) which, of the newer type, may be classed alongside of Ravenscroft’s and of Mountfort’s pieces. Derived directly from Arlequin Empereur dans le Monde de la Lune (1684), a comedy itself taken from the Italian, it introduces the typical figures of the commedia dell’ arte—Harlequin, Scaramouch and Dr Baliardo. As a farcical experiment, it is exceedingly interesting, especially when considered with other similar dramas of the time: but of intrinsic value it has none. The solitary comedy by Dryden’s son, The Husband his own Cuckold (L.1.F. c. 1695) is confessedly but a “‘Hotch- podge”’ ‘‘un pasticcio Inglese.” It is a fair piece of farcical work, and probably deserved greater success than it actually received. Another play of the same school, Wilson’s Bel- phegor, or, The Marriage of the Devil (D.G. c. June 1690) has a certain interest, as being derived from the ‘‘ Matchiavellian” source which had already given Grim, the Collier of Croydon (1662) and Jonson’s The Devill ts an Asse. In Wilson’s hands the story is seriously treated, in a well-executed and readable manner. The characters of Roderigo and of Imperia are particularly noticeable. Finally, before we leave farce to the neglect which intrinsically it deserves, we must turn from Wilson, representative of an older age, and pass to Pierre Antoine Motteux, representative of the age to come. Motteux is one of the most interesting figures of his period, one of the men who connects the seventeenth century with the age of Anne. An able translator and a fine linguist, he was a French Huguenot who had come over to London at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His chief work was a rendering of Don Quixote, but he was probably more famous in his own day for his work in acclimatising the Italian commedia dell’ arte and in furthering the development of opera. 1 This owed considerably to Moliére’s Précieuses Ridicules. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 251 His first comedy, Love’s a fest (L.I.F. c. Sept. 1696) was an extraordinary success. It owes confessedly its main theme to an Italian play, the authorship of which is unknown. It is a fair piece of work, although lacking, as all Motteux’ plays lack, brilliancy of dialogue. For us, The Novelty. Every Act a Play. Being a Short Pastoral, Comedy, Masque, Tragedy, and Farce after the Italian Manner (L.1.F. 1697) is even more interesting. It truly is a ‘‘ Hotch-podge,” including as it does a poor pastoral—in octosyllabic couplets—entitled Thyrsis, written by Oldmixon: a comedy translated from the French by Motteux: a worthless masque of Hercules by the same author: an act from Filmer’s The Unnatural Brother: and the “‘ Farce after the Italian Manner,” entitled Natural Magic. This last introduces the regular Italian characters, Pantalone, Pasquarel, Mezzetin and Columbina, and undoubtedly forms the most important part of the whole collection. These last plays, indeed all the farces of the period, have had to be run over in a somewhat cursory fashion. As acting pieces they may have had success, but, in reading, their wit seems remarkably dull. They are all of importance, however, as showing the rapid disintegration of the late seventeenth century stage. They must be taken in consideration with the “musical” plays so speedily coming into fashion, and with the sentimental drama. The dramatic movement in France of the eighteenth century which led towards the drame and the comédies a ariettes found its counterpart here, first in the introduction of farce, sentiment and “dialogues,” later in the fuller development of the “ballad opera” of the eigh- teenth century. The fact that the sentimental drama is older than is usually thoucht must be duly emphasised. Sir A. W. Ward has stated that Steele’s The Lying Lover (D.L. 1704) is the first sentimental comedy!. Mr Bernbaum goes back nearly a decade to Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift (D.L. 1696)? but neither of these two plays marks the upward limits of the species. A certain amount, of course, lies in the particular definition adopted of this very unclassifiable type, and, in general, 1 Op. cit. III. 493. 2 Op. cit. 10 and 17. 252 COMEDY critics are not agreed upon the main characteristics of the school. Sir A. W. Ward has found its root in “pity1,” Mr Bernbaum in a certain “‘ confidence in the goodness of human nature.” Probably neither has quite included all the varieties of the type. Pity and this confidence in the goodness of human nature are, moreover, rather characteristics of the particular drama of sentiment which arose after 1740 in imitation of the French school of Didérot. Even Cibber and Steele do not display much appreciation of either. At bottom, the sentimental drama, early and late, appears to be distinguished rather by the presentation of a moral problem. Neither the comedy of humours nor the comedy of manners asks any questions: both exist solely for laughter, and, if both lash vice as their defenders warmly averred they did, it was not for the purpose of lashing that they had their being, but purely and simply for the sake of the ridiculous and the witty. Lack of any moral code is the real, if not the theoretical, characteristic of the intrigue, humours and manners schools, as the presence of a definite ‘‘moral,”’ even if it was only a seventeenth or an eighteenth century moral, is of the sentimental. All through the Restoration period sporadic attempts had been made to chasten the drama but the more pronounced “‘moral” works did not make their appearance in any numbers until after 1680. Tuke’s The Adventures of Five Hours (L.1.F. 1663), Stapylton’s The Slighted Maid (L.1.F. 1663) and The Stepmother (L.1.F. 1663), Porter’s Carnival (T.R. in B.St. 1663), Flecknoe’s Love’s Kingdom (1664), Shadwell’s The Royal Shepherdess (L.1.F. 1669), Leanerd’s The Country Innocence (D.L. 1677) and The Counterfeits (D.G. 1678)—all profess to have moral aims, to present no “ bawdy,” to indulge in no loose wit, and in none of them are those professions cynical or hypocritic. During the last years of the century such plays increase in number. Mrs Behn and D’Urfey, as we shall see, produced many. Ravenscroft paid tribute to the new style in Dame Dobson (D.G. 1683), Southerne in The 1 Op. cit. 111. 495. 2 Op. cit. 2 and 144.n. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 253 Disappointment (D.L. 1684), Shadwell and Motteux in not a few dramas. From without, too, the attacks on the drama, which had been going on spasmodically since ever the theatres opened, found their culmination in the last years of the century. From 1690 onwards we can trace, in critical dicta, the growing moral sense, a moral sense that was not aroused by, but rather only given full expression in, Collier’s out- burst of 1698. At the same time, it must be observed that the age was passing through a period of extremes. If, in some ways, Restoration licence was being cloaked over or attacked, a new viciousness was arising more ugly than any flagrancies of Rochester or of Sedley. In many ways the later seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries had about them precisely the same immoral elements which the Restoration period proper had: they only clothed those elements a little better in sophisticated phrase and in easy philosophy. Whatever fifth-act repentances they may have had in the hands of Cibber or of Steele, the rakes of the age of William and of Anne were as hardened, heartless sinners as any of the days of Charles. In this way, sentimentalism was but the artistic clothing assumed to counter puritan prudery: it was a piece of hypo- critical deceit. The comedy of sentiment, save in the case of a very few authors, was but a palliation used to cover an even greater callousness and viciousness in the age. This callousness and viciousness are nowhere better to be seen than in the notorious and ugly “‘girl epilogues” and child ‘‘ dialogues” which gave, in the last years of the century, piquancy to many a play. The men and the women of 1685- 1700 who professed to abhor the immoralities of Charles’ court appeared to love hearing the enunciation by lisping infants of sexual ideas not usually referred to even by adults in polite society. Many of the dialogues introduced into the comedies of 1680-1700 were intended for girls not in their teens. The instances, which I have already mentioned, from D’Urfey’s The Comical History of Don Quixote are neither worse nor better than scores of others. Children, too, made up for the comparative innocence of the body of the play, 254 COMEDY by uttering the most filthy obscenities in the licence of the epilogue. In Powell’s Bonduca (D.L. 1695) particularly ob- jectionable verses are ‘spoken by Miss Denny Chock, But Six Years Old.” The next year this Miss Chock spoke the epilogue to the same author’s The Cornish Comedy (D.G. 1696), uttering there the most atrocious sentiments: and two years later (when she was eight years of age) she delivered the epilogue to The Revengeful Queen (D.L. 1698) by William Philips. A Miss Howard similarly closed off Dilke’s The Lover’s Luck (L.1.F. 1695) and a Miss Bradshaw Mrs Manley’s The Royal Mischief (L.I.F. 1696) as well as The Deceiver Deceiv’d (L.1.F. 1697) of Mrs Pix. Miss Cross, too, who ran off in her girlhood to France, came in useful for many a dramatist wanting something risqué wherewith to spice the dullness of his work. Young girls, of course, had appeared on the early Restoration stage, but, for the most part, the early Restoration drama is an adult drama: the actresses were nearly all women of an age capable of looking after themselves. The girl epilogue as a regular addition to comedy or to tragedy did not come in until after 1680, the writer of the Lenten Prologue refus’d by the Players (1682) informing us that ’Tis now no Fest to hear young Girls talk Baudy. The very expression of such a fact proves to us that the presence of young girls in the theatre was somewhat of an innovation. Such a brief consideration as this of the age as being probably more immoral than before and yet full of moral sentiment, and of the sentimental comedy itself as presenting a genuine moral problem, as being a hypocritical cloak put over vice and as giving rise to violent reactions, may well lead us to an analysis of the growth of the species. Peculiarly enough Mrs Behn was the first in this age to raise her voice against the fashionable vices of the time, to preach a return to more natural modes of life, and to present a genuine problem in her comedies. The Amorous Prince, or, The Curious Husband (L.1.F. c. May, 1671) and The Young FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 255 King, or, The Mistake (D.G. c. 1679) both urge the delight of sinless nature: How much more charming are the works of Nature Than the Productions of laborious Art! cries a character in I. ii of the latter. This tendency away from the civilised world, and towards an untutored freedom, so premonitory of the ideas of Rousseau in the eighteenth century, is expressed again in the character of the Indian queen in The Widow Ranter (D.L. 1689). Her cry was to be taken up in later years: even in the seventeenth century itself Dryden in King Arthur (D.G. 1691) could call out: O artless Love, where the Soul moves the Tongue, And only Nature speaks what Nature thinks! and Shadwell could present to us the figure of Eugenia in The Volunteers (D.L. 1692). In Mrs Behn’s The Fore’d Marriage, or, The fealous Bride- groom (L.I.F. Dec. 1670) we are confronted with the second aspect of the incipientsentimental school. The Forc’d Marriage is a romantic serio-drama, scened in an Arcadian France. It is not its scene, however, or its characters that interest us, but its purpose. That purpose is a solemn one. The play is written about a moral problem, a problem of social life which evidently weighed heavily upon the authoress. The plot deals mainly with the forced marriage of Erminia, loved by Phi- lander, to Alcippus. The last-mentioned, stung by jealousy, strangles her, but not, as he thinks, fatally. In the end she reappears, to wed Philander, Alcippus being paired off a second time with Galatea, Philander’s sister. Crude as this plot is, we can see below it a strain of thought which was later to be developed more clearly and more realistically both in the English theatre and in the eighteenth century drame of France. The same, or a similar, theme appeared in The Town-Fopp, or, Sir Timothy Tawdrey (D.G. c. Sept. 1676) and in The Luckey Chance, or, An Alderman’s Bargain (D.L. c. April, 1686). The former of these is a comedy of intrigue, largely derived from Wilkin’s The Miseries of Inforst Marriage. It 256 COMEDY like The Fore’d Marriage, is chiefly interesting, not for its dialogue or its plot, but for this attempt to relate a moral problem to the real life of the day. “Till then,” says Bellmour, ‘“T’ll let mistaken Parents know The mischiefs that ensue a broken vow.” The Luckey Chance is more farcical, but again it reproduces that peculiar kind of moral seriousness which was so marked a trait of Mrs Behn. Love, with her, is something more than simple sensual passion, and mere cuckolding does not suffice for her lovers. Her women, however, are, for the most part, much weaker in constancy than her men, although Bellmour in The Town-Fopp is a noticeable example to the contrary. Bellmour of The Luckey Chance, on the other hand, returns from abroad to find Leticia, his former love, about to marry Sir Feeble Fainwou’d, the thought of which sends him into despair. Gayman, his friend, advises him to let the marriage go through, and then renew his protestations to the lady, to which Bellmour’s reply is decidedly interesting:—‘Oh Heavens ! Leticia marry him ! and lie with him!” The very phrase, rough as it is with Restoration roughness, betokens a feeling which in the majority of the contemporaries of Mrs Behn was entirely lacking’. In this play, moreover, Lady Fulbank is made the mouthpiece for the theories of the authoress against forced marriages. ‘‘Oh how fatal,” she cries, Oh how fatal are forc’d Marriages! How many Ruins one such Match pulls on! Had I but kept my Sacred vows to Gayman, How happy had I been—how prosperous he! Whilst now I languish in a loath’d Embrace, Pine out my Life with Age—Consumptions, Coughs?... thus emphasising the Bellmour-Leticia plot more keenly. The figure of the Indian queen in The Widow Ranter, or, The History of Bacon in Virginia (D.L. c. Nov. 1689) has already been drawn attention to, but the play as a whole is 1 Apart from this, the comedy is largely of the style of manners and intrigue. The scene of Lady Fulbank and the reference to a “canvas Bag full of wooden Ladles” is very reminiscent of Otway’s The Souldier’s Fortune. ? I. ii, reading “‘Consumptions” for ‘‘ Consumptious.” FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 257 not so sentimental as are those others I have mentioned above. As a play, too, it hardly seems to merit the praise which Genest gives to it. It is a peculiar admixture of farce and intrigue, tricked out with some stale humours and a dash of the sentimental in that one pathetic figure. Mrs Behn’s last play, The Younger Brother, or, The Amorous Filt (D.L. c. Dec. 1696) is also a poor piece of writing, but again has interest for its serious, and in places almost bitter, character. It reveals, as do the others, the real worth and spirit of this authoress, an authoress who unfortunately prostituted her gifts in many an intrigue play for the purpose of achieving success in a licentious theatre. Noticeable as being produced about the same time as Mrs Behn’s first plays are the three comedies of John Leanerd, all “moral” in tone, although not so pronouncedly sentimental as the dramas just considered. The Country Innocence, or, The Chamber-Maid turn’d Quaker (D.L. c.. April, 1677), which is but a slight adaptation of Brewer’s The Country Girl, is a mediocre piece of work, but has value for its theme. The Rambling Justice, or, The Fealous Husbands. With the Humours of Sir John Twiford (D.L. c. March, 1678) is more valuable intrinsically. Although part of it is taken from Middleton’s More Dissemblers besides Women}, it works out its intrigue theme in a fairly pure manner, introducing hints here and there of the sentimental style. The Counter- feits (D.G. May, 1678) is only ascribed to this author, and is notable as being the precursor, in plot at least, of Cibber’s She Wou’d and She Wou’d Not (D.L. 1702). This play, too, has a decidedly moral tone and again presents hints of the sentimental. Along with Leanerd’s three comedies might be mentioned Sir Salomon, or, The Cautious Coxcomb (L.1.F. c. 1669) of John Caryl, a surprisingly moral play containing a well- drawn psychological study in Sir Salomon Single, as well as Revet’s The Town Shifts, or, The Suburb-fustice (L.1.F. c. April, 1671), already mentioned for its Elizabethan re- 1 Notably in the scene between Sir Generall Amorous and Bramble, and in that of the gypsies (Act 11). NRD 17 258 COMEDY miniscences, which has been singled out as an early senti- mental comedy}!. At as early a date as this, however, there were many who were following along the lines of embryonic sentimentalism. In 1675 Crowne was putting into the mouths of his characters, in the very midst of Restoration licence, sentimental thoughts not unlike many later ones of the eighteenth century. Crowne, indeed, is as symptomatic a dramatist of the age as any. Although he had started his dramatic career fully four years before, his first comedy was The Country Wit, which ap- peared at D.G. about Jan. 1675/6. Based on Le Sicilien, ou L'amour peintre of Moliére, and scened in contemporary London (“Pail Mall, 1675”) it gives a realistic picture of fashionable life in the seventeenth century. The plot hinges around a favourite Restoration theme—the love of a girl (Christina) for a debauched rake (Ramble), and their com- bined cheating of the girl’s formal fiancé (Sir Mannerly Shallow). In the course of his courtship of Christina, Ramble falls in with not only one or two other and more dubious love adventures. He is the typical hero of the comedy of manners, ' save that he is a trifle more brutal and sensual than they: yet on occasion he can suddenly fall into moralisation : ‘‘ How like a barbarous Villain do I use that divine Creature Mrs Christina |”? he cries. “If I were fifty Rambles bound to- gether, I had not merit enough for her Love, and I, though I am but one, yet parcel myself out every minute to fifty Women; yet ’tis not for want of Love to her, for the enjoy- ment of other Women, give (sic) me not so much Delight as a Smile from her.”’ That is the sentiment of a hero of 1750, and, even though it is followed here by the cynical thought, “And yet, I’gad, the enjoyment of her would not keep me from the chase of other Women,” we realise that it is highly premonitory of moral sentimentalism to come. Crowne was not destined to attempt comedy for another ten years, he engaging himself with heroic tragedies and with adaptations of Shakespeare, and when he did return to the 1 Scheurer, C. M., An Early Sentimental ine in Anglia, 1913, XXXVII. pp. 125 f. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM — 259 comic theatre it was to present purely political plays, framed mostly in the manners style, and permitting of moralisations only on occasion. City Politiques (D.L. Jan. 1682/3)! is closely to be related to D’Urfey’s and to Mrs Behn’s plays of the same date. Its whole raison d’étre lies in a bitter attack upon Shaftesbury, and to a modern palate its semi-incestuous attachments and its presentment of Florio, one who counter- feits ‘‘ Disease his Vices brought upon him” make it not very pleasant reading. Equally political is Sir Courtly Nice, or, It Cannot Be (D.L. May, 1685) fashioned at Charles’ request from the No puede esser of Augustin Moreto, a play that had served nearly twenty years previously as a model for the Tarugo’s Wiles of Sir Thomas St Serfe?, but here the loose atmosphere of the preceding comedy has given place to a strictly moral atmosphere. Farewel is a pure character, and the women, Leonora and Violante, are less mobile than their contemporary sisters.on the stage. Satire of “this corrupt Age” shows clearly enough the tendency of the play as a whole. About March, 1689/90, again after an incursion into tragedy, came The English Frier, or, The Town Sparks (D.L.), another violently political drama. It is a fairly good comedy, with a truly excellent scene in the fifth act between Pansy and Father Finical (bishop zm partibus infidelium). 'The senti- mental tone is here seen somewhat strengthened, as for example in Lord Wiseman’s remarks in the first act con- cerning Young Ranter. The English Frier was Crowne’s last noticeable work, The Married Beau, or, The Curious Im- 1 Sad blunders as to the date of this play have been made. The Biographia Dramatica gives it as 1675: Maidment and Logan as 1688: Sir A. W. Ward as 1682. All doubt is set at rest by three entries in the Lord Chamberlain’s books. On June 15, 1682, a ““new Comedy” of Mr Crowne’s was licensed (L.C. 5/144, p. 247). Eleven days later, how- ever, on June 26, the Lord Chamberlain wrote a hurried order to Betterton: “Whereas I did signifie His Ma*®s pleasure in my Order dated y® 15'” of June instant that a New Play of M' Crownes called (blank) should be lyncensed & Acted at His Royall Highnesse Theatre I doe now againe signifie His Ma‘e* pleasure that you forbeare acting y® said play vntill further Order.” The further order did not come until Dec. 18, 1682, when leave was given to act The City Politiques, banned on June 26. In all probability it did not appear until the commencement of the new year. 2 Which Dennis believes Crowne did not see until he was well through with his comedy (Original Letters, 1721, 1. 52). 17-2 260 COMEDY pertinent, which followed at D.L. about Jan. 1694, being but a light farce taken from the ever-popular tale of Cervantes. Crowne’s value as a writer of comedy will rest on his wit, which, if not so refined as that of Congreve, is yet akin to that of the manners school, and on those touches of sentiment which bind him to the new school of dramatists. So far we have traced the very faintest glimmerings of sentimentalism in the first decades of the Restoration period. By 1680, however, the new movement was growing in strength. By that year Otway had produced The Orphan, a play the phenomenal success of which during the following century shows clearly enough its tendency, while Lee in The Princess of Cleve (D.G. c. 1681) and Banks in Vertue Betray’d (D.G. 1682) and in The Unhappy Favourite (D.L. 1681) accompanied him in the realms of tragedy by devising tearful and sentimental situations replete with that pity-moving and thought-moving quality inherent in the sentimental drama. Comedy, too, was rapidly moving along the same lines. More and more ‘‘moral” plays were being produced. Mrs Behn’s experiments and Ravenscroft’s Dame Dobson (D.G. 1683) have already been noticed. In 1689 Shadwell contributed something to the species in Bury Fair and later in The Scowrers, and Shadwell was only one of many who, belonging to other schools of drama, felt the impress of the sentimental. Chief of these undoubtedly was Thomas D’Urfey. He more than anyone else aided in urging forward the progress of sentiment. Thomas D’Urfey truly holds a most peculiar position in the history of Restoration drama. Endowed with considerable ability, he eschewed the wit of Congreve for external farce. Gifted with originality, he based nearly all his works on other plays, English or foreign, earning thus the contempt of Langbaine. ‘‘He is accounted by some,” says that critic with disdain, ‘‘For an Admirable Poet, but it is by those who are not acquainted much with Authors, and therefore are de- ceiv’d by Appearances!.” A French Huguenot, he attached 1 Op. cit. p. 179. For a fairly reliable account of D’Urfey’s dramatic work, see Forsythe, R.S., A Study of the Plays of Thomas D’ Urfey (1916-7). FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 261 himself mostly to the Tory interest, and, besides his thirty odd plays, produced an innumerable number of songs and ditties, mostly of an ephemeral, because of a contemporary and political, interest. Broad farce as most of his comedies are, they are not wholly negligible, Farquhar, even, not dis- daining to appropriate ideas from some of them for his more finished productions. Every one of D’Urfey’s plays we may say is an adaptation of some previous theme farcically conceived. Madam Fickle, or, The Witty False One (D.G. Nov. 1676) can thus be laid aside as being nothing more than a series of incidents bor- rowed from Marmion, Marston, Mayne, and Rowley!, some- times, it is to be confessed, rather skilfully put together. Suggestions from Elizabethan plays occur also in D’Urfey’s second comedy, The Fool turn’d Critick (D.L. Nov. 1676)?. This is a quite readable farce, marred by an over use of the theatrical disguise device. Largely Jonsonian in its char- acters, it possesses, even more than the former play, a certain amount of somewhat pawky humour. A Fond Husband, or, The Plotting Sisters followed at D.G. in May 1676, and was well received*. This might be taken as a specimen of the intrigue play veering to farce. It is humorous enough, but, like the majority of this species, artificial in character-drawing and in plot-weaving alike. D’Urfey was a prolific writer, one of the most prolific, indeed, of the whole period, and other comedies followed fast on the appearance of these his first endeavours. Trick for Trick, or, The Debauch’d Hypocrite (D.L. c. March, 1678) was, certainly, but an alteration of Fletcher’s Monsieur Thomas*, but with Squire Oldsapp, or, The Night Adventurers (D.G. c. June, 1678) he returned, with Sir A. W. Ward’s couple of pages on him are obviously unreliable as he himself confesses to have read only a couple of his works and those the last, unacted and unimportant, operas. Whibley’s note in the Camb . Hist. Engl. Lit. (vi11. 174) is just but the bibliography at the end is highi yfaulty. 1 See Forsythe, op. cit. 1. 16: Miles, D. H., op. cit. p. 108. 2 See Biographia Dramatica, 11. 243 and Forsythe, op. cit. 1. 19. 3 See the dedication. It was licensed June 15, 1676, but I believe the first performance was on the date given in the L.C. records, 4 The alterations are considerable. For an analysis of the changes made, see Forsythe, op. cit. 1. 23. 262, COMEDY his usual borrowings in the subordinate portions, to an indi- vidual main plot, much involved, and, with the possible exception of Welford, ‘‘a wild, debauch’'d Town-Spark,” is practically wholly peopled by Jonsonian characters. It is decidedly weaker than A Fond Husband or The Fool turn’d Critick. The Virtuous Wife, or, Good Luck at Last (D.G. c. Sept. 1679) goes for inspiration to more modern sources. Its plot was quite evidently inspired by Dryden’s Marriage a la Mode (L.1.F. 1672) and its main theme, dealing with the marriage of Olivia to Beverley under the impression that he was Beauford, has reminiscences of the conceptions of ‘Mrs Behn. The play is farcical, but there is an incipient problem underlying the fun, a problem not fully expressed, but showing the tendency of D’Urfey’s art!. It is from this time indeed that we note a change in his comic plays. About Sept. two years later (1681)* appeared at D.L. Sir Barnaby Whigg, or, No Wit like a Woman’s, a purely party play, Sir Barnaby being a “‘ Phanatical Rascal, one of Oliver’s Knights.” It is, however, not so farcical as his earlier works, and in a way marks a progress on the part of D’Urfey towards presentation of characters of the manners type—particularly in the persons of Wilding, 'Townly and Livia—in another, as I shall endeavour toindicate, itmarks a step towards the elaboration of sentiment This political comedy was followed up in Jan. 1681/2, with The Royalist, a violent outburst against the Whigs which Genest says was well received®, contrary to the hint in the preface. It is written in blank verse and in prose, the scene being London in Commonwealth times with members of the Sequestration Committee in the cast. It is a fair pro- duction, but very loose in morals, looser indeed in our eyes when we remember that D’Urfey was trying to hold up a duly white-washed picture of the Cavaliers. Like Mrs Behn again, D’Urfey, after those political dramas, kept silent for a year or two, his next comedy, The Banditti, or, A Ladies + Apparently it was a huge success: cf. among other references that in the anonymous Wit for Money (1691, p. 12). * There is no 1679 edition as the Camb. Hist. Engl. Lit. states (vit. 438). 5 1.355. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 263 Distress (D.L. c. Feb. 1685/6) not appearing till nearly four years had elapsed. Based partly on the novel of Don Fenise which had already been utilised by Mrs Behn, one part of it, that dealing with Don Antonio, Elvira, Laura and Don Ferdinand, is closely allied to The Dutch Lover. It is a true comedy of Spanish intrigue, with rather much matter in it and hence unduly complicated. This may have been the reason why, although it is well-written, it was unsuccessful on the stage!. A similarly cold reception was given to A Fool’s Preferment, or, The Three Dukes of Dunstable (D.G.c. April, 1688), the songs of which were set by Purcell. Based partially on Fletcher’s The Noble Gentleman, it introduces a ‘‘ Bassett scene” or two, professedly designed to satirise the noble art of gaming. | With this play fitly closes the second period of D’Urfey’s art. It shows him tentatively feeling at a new species of dramatic expression which was to lead him later to attempts in the sentimental comedy proper. The relation between his career and that of Aphra Behn is one which, for an under- standing of the age, must be kept closely in mind. Not only do their dramatic productions peculiarly coalesce, but a study of those productions proves to us the correspondence that undoubtedly exists between the political excitement of 1681-2 and the rise of the sentimental drama. Both of the writers mentioned, about the same year, 1681, drew comedy from the pure realms of intrigue and of wit, down to the arena of politics, thus more or less relating it to life’s affairs. Politics have little enough to do with morals or moralisations, but once comedy had taken it as its mission to “puff” opposing parties, or to take sides on national issues, it was but a short step ere it came to treat of social and hence of domestic questions and aims. Practically all D’Urfey’s last plays show traces, greater or less, of sentimentalism. Love for Money, or, The Boarding School (D.L. c. Dec. 1689) was a fair success in its time*, 1 See the dedication. 2 In the eighteenth century it was revived in 1708 and in 1718. It was altered by Coffey in 1733 as The Boarding House Romps, or, The Sham Captain. 264 COMEDY and has peculiar value for us in connection with the points referred to above. It is one of the first of our Restoration plays to exhibit an interest in “local colour” and it is de- cidedly modern in revealing through the romantic Merriton and Mirtilla plot elements of a melodramatic kind as well as distinct features of the sentimental comedy”. The former of the two characters just mentioned is the regular serious, emotional, philosophic young man of the later drama, just as Mirtilla is the typically pure and misused heroine, rendered happy at the end. In The Richmond Heiress, or, A Woman once in the Right (D.L. c. Feb. 1693) we find the sentimental note so apparent in the last-mentioned play even deeper and more pronounced’. ‘The last speeches of Fulvia and of Sophronia might have come from a drama of 1750, and the former’s rejection of mankind has something in it of the later temper. As a work of art, however, it lacks the individuality of Love for Money. When taken into consideration with these sentimental pro- ductions, D’Urfey’s other works of the same period have a decided interest as showing the lack of fixity in the age, the continual complication of diverse ideals. The Marriage- Hater Match’d (D.L. c. Dec. 1691) is, certainly, of interest for little more than its Elizabethan, and particularly for its Shakespearian reminiscences®, but the three parts of Don Quixote and The Campaigners deserve more thorough atten- 1 In the preface D’Urfey stated he lived all the summer at a boarding school in order to get his ideas and atmosphere. 2 Particularly in v. iii; Merriton, hearing that Mirtilla has become rich, has scruples about marrying her, for fear he should be accused of in- triguing after her money. This plot is strictly in accord with that of such a later sentimental play as Morris’s The Secret (D.L. Mar. 1799). ® ‘This play in particular and D’Urfey in general, came in for a fairly severe attack in Wit for Money, or, Poet Stutier: A Dialogue Between Smith, Fohnson, and Poet Stutter Containing Reflections on some late Plays ; and particularly on Love for Money, or, The Boarding School (1691). This accuses D’Urfey of plot-stealing and of general folly and conceit. He is styled there “a conceited, touchy, illiterate, pragmatical Nothing” (p. 30). This piece is interesting in many ways, but is too bitter to be taken very seriously. * It was well received (Gildon, C., An Exact Account, pp. 51-2). 5 Cf. Forsythe, op. cit. p. 86. In iv. iii Lady Subtle declares: ‘I'll wear thee here, here next my Heart, where thou shalt grow for ever” —an obvious echo of Duncan’s words in Macbeth. FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 265 tion’. Peculiarly, when we consider the movement of D’Urfey’s art as expressed in these latter plays, The Comical History of Don Quixote (Parts I and II, D.G. May 1694; Part III, D.L. ce. Nov. 1695) was so licentious that it was given a slightly doubtful reception on the stage. I have already referred to certain scenes and songs in that play, or series of plays, and have indicated my belief that the Mary Buxome scenes were objected to on hypocritical grounds, while nothing but pleasure was gained by the contemporary audiences from the indecent ditties song by Miss Cross. These three parts Collier saw fit to pillory in his famous invective and D’Urfey was actually prosecuted for profanity in May, 1698?. As a series of plays, the set is a failure. D’Urfey has done as much as he could possibly have done with his material, but a fantastic novel does not present fit matter for a play. One might as well think of dramatising Tristram Shandy as of making the novel of Cervantes into a comedy. The Intrigues at Versailles, or, A Filt in all Humours® (L.1.F. c. Feb. 1696/7) is not a particularly interesting work, either for plot or for language, but The Campaigners, or, The Pleasant Adventures at Brussels (D.L. 1698) has many points of value. It contains, in the first place, D’Urfey’s reply to Collier in the shape of A Familiar Preface upon a Late Re- former of the Stage, which, from an intrinsic point of view, is certainly a weak enough affair. In the second place, we cannot regard The Campaigners as anything else but a flagrant outburst on the part of the author in opposition to the attack made upon him. The play is immoral, indecent, vulgar: scene after scene of crudest realism is put before the eyes of the spectators: and yet even here the author has had to succumb to the new forces at work. Back as we are in the graceless atmosphere of earlier Restoration days, there is, particularly in the words of Colonel Dorange, sure evidence of the altered tone. If comedy sinned now, it sinned, not 1 An analysis of the relations between the novel and the plays may be found in Forsythe, op. cit. I. 101. 2 Gosse, E., Life of Congreve (1888), p. 119. 3 Not “ In all her Humours,” as Genest gives it (11. 119). 266 COMEDY unconsciously as Etherege had done, but with a full realisa- tion of its errors, with a guilty glance around as if it feared the blow that was about to fall. By this time, of course, Cibber had appeared and with him the acknowledged reign of the sentimental comedy. Love’s Last Shift (D.L. Jan. 1695/6) is typical, not only of the whole personality of the actor-author, but of what were to be the main characteristics of this type of drama for several years to come. Undoubtedly the most penetrating criticism passed upon it was that of Congreve who declared that it ‘‘had only in it a great many Things that were like Wit, that were in reality not Wit!.”” This comedy inaugurated definitely the Cibberian epoch of comedy, although it was, as we have seen, not alone in owing a great part of its success to “‘the mere Moral Delight receiv’d from the Fable.” Like some comedies of D’Urfey and others it merely aided in standard- ising that special code of dramatic morals which set a super- ficial veneer over manners not far removed from those of the court of Charles. The fifth act conversion atoned for all. Such superficial, and, to our eyes, hypocritical, methods of morality are hardly likely to please a modern public, and often we feel more annoyed, as Fielding felt annoyed, with the sham of virtue than with the most flagrant exhibition of vice. The age still enjoyed its evil, gallant heroes, as Cibber himself confesses in a somewhat apologetic epilogue to this particular play, where he refers to the unlooked-for con- version of his sinning lover: But then again, He’s lewd for above four Acts, Gentlemen! Possibly no other quotation so aptly sums up the thought of the age’. Cibber’s genius was by no means of the quality of Etherege or of Congreve. Less deep, less artistic, apt to be fluttered by praise and ever with abundant self-conceit, he was not 1 Lowe’s Cibber, 1. 220. 2 Love’s Last Shift was acted on the recommendation of Southerne. It was last revived at Covent Garden in 1763. Dennis in his Original Letters, Familiar, Moral, and Critical (1721), pp. 138-143, casts doubt upon the authorship of this comedy, but apparently without any just cause. =— es ee FARCE AND SENTIMENTALISM 267 content with the few carefully-worked masterpieces of those authors; on the success of his first play he had naught to do but rush into hasty productivity, a productivity which ex- tended to the age of Anne and after. His other seventeenth century piece, however, Woman’s Wit, or, The Lady in Fashion (D.L. c. Dec. 1696) is a poor piece of work: his best plays belong to the later age. With Cibber we are in the company of a new race of authors, authors who, like Pierre Antoine Motteux, were to drive forward the sentimental drama on its triumphal career during the eighteenth century, were to inaugurate, too, that dramatic era of song, dance and show, weaker, more trivial and less entertaining, than the song and show of the heroic tragedy or of the Restoration comedy. Everywhere in the theatrical world the elements of disintegration are only too evident. Pantomime had already begun, and the comic opera. It required only a little to send comedy careering like a mad country girl along that slightly vulgar and certainly very inartistic path of noise and spectacle which includes the ballets and the pasticcios of the eighteenth century. Cibber and Farquhar and Vanbrugh, each in his own way, kept the spirit of humour alive for a little, as did later Fielding and Moore and Sheridan and Goldsmith, but the free expression of pure laughter, untouched by thought or by conscience, unfed by musical novelties, had passed away for ever. The halcyon days of the drama were dead. 1 This owes to Mountfort’s Greenwich Park and to Carlisle’s The Fortune Hunters. It was apparently suppressed by the author in later years. The original contract with Rich for its acting is given in Appendix B. APPENDIX A History of the Playhouses 1660-1700 N Sept. 16421, playing had been stopped by the new Puritan government, the ordinance of suppression being confirmed in 16472, and again in Feb. 1647/8%. These edicts, as may be imagined, were duly clamoured against*, and surreptitious performances continued at the various theatres, whenever old actors were able to gather a company and an audience®. The first hint of legalised acting, however, does not come until D’Avenant’s performances of 1656 and 1658, at Rutland House and at the Cockpit, although possibly even he was going just a trifle beyond his rights ®, 1 The Ordinance has been reprinted in Collier’s History of English Dramatic Poetry (1879), 11. 36 and in Hazlitt’s The English Drama and Stage under the Tudor and Stuart Princes, 1543-1664 (Roxburghe Club, 1869), p. 63. This prohibited playing merely while ‘‘these sad causes and set-times of humiliation do continue.” 2 This was “‘for the better suppression of Stage Playes.”’ It has been reprinted in Collier, op. cit. 1. 41 and Hazlitt, op. cit. 64. It gave authority to magistrates and others to enter playhouses and to imprison the players. 3 Reprinted Collier, op. cit. 11. 44-46 and Hazlitt, op. cit. 65-70. * See The Actors Remonstrance, or, Complaint...for the Silencing of their Profession, and banishment of their severall Play-Houses (1643), and The Players’ Petition to Parliament (1643) as well as the petition “‘of divers poor and distressed men, heretofore the Actors of Black-Friers and the Cockpit’’ cited by Firth in Notes and Queries, 8, v. 464. 5 The order of 1647-8 mentioned that acting had been indulged in ““by divers in contempt” of the former two ordinances. See Wright, Historia Histrionica (1699), 8-9 and Whitelock, Memorials, under Dec. 20, 1649. Reference to playing will also be found in The Moderate Intelli- gencer, No. 195, of Dec. 28—-Jan. 4, 1649/50. In Sept. 1656, the players at the Red Bull were ordered to be conscripted, whereat arose a riot (Mercurius Familosus, Sept. 12-19, 1655). See for this whole subject, H. E. Rollins, A Contribution to the History of the English Commonwealth Drama in Studies in Philology, July, 1921. ® On Oct. 15, 1658, he seems to have got permission to act and there was talk of his fitting out the Fortune playhouse for his shows (Hist. MSS. Comm.). An order, however, appeared in The Publick Intelligencer of Dec. 20-27, 1658, to inquire into his operatic productions and in a newsletter from G. Mabbott to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, dated HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 269 These surreptitious performances and the shows of D’Avenant coming just at the close of the Commonwealth régime display well the undercurrent of the time in favour of theatrical productions, and we feel it but natural that, when the arrival of Monk and later of Charles himself removed many of the previous restrictions, this undercurrent added to the enthusiasm of the reinstated Cavaliers should at once assert itself. The first that we hear of acting in the Restoration period is a reference in the Middlesex Records under the date May 12, 16591, to the fact that William Wintershall and Henry Eaton gave recognisances for the appear- ance of Anthony Turner, responsible for plays given at the old Red Bull, and of Edward Shatterall. This theatre Downes and Wright both declare was utilised by a body of pre-Commonwealth Blackfriars actors, who later became the King’s comedians?. The company at the Red Bull, which probably soon received a licence although none is now extant, was later captained by “Major” Michael Mohun or Moon. It seems to have lost Anthony Turner and Henry Eaton at an early date, but kept Edward Shatterall until at least 1667 and William Wintershall or Wintersell until just before 1679. By June 1660 it must have included besides these two and Mohun, Nicholas Burt, Richard Baxter, William Cartwright, Walter Clun, Charles Hart, John Lacy, Robert Shatterell and Thomas Loveday*. A list of the plays given by this company is given in a MS. of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels ®. These older actors, however, were by no means the first on the field. Already on Feb. 4, 1659/60 Thomas Lillieston was arrested for wrongfully playing at the Cockpit or the Phoenix ®. Dec. 28, 1658 (B.M. MS. Lansdowne 823, f. 180) it is mentioned that there has been formed ‘‘a Committee of the Councell to consider by what authoritie the opera in Drury Lane is showne in imetation of a play, and what the nature of it is.”’ It is possible that “the pastoral’’ mentioned in a document referred to in the Hist. MS\S. Comm. Report, xv. vii. 161 which was prevented because of the soldiery was an early endeavour of D’Avenant. It is referred to under the date Jan. 7, 1657/8. 2 T3790. 2 Not all were Blackfriars men: several appear to have belonged to Beeston’s “ young”? company at the Cockpit. 3 He died in July, 1679. 4 The names of the actors are derived from Downes and from lists given in the L.C. books in the P.R.O. 5 This was printed by Malone in his Historical Account of the English Stage, forming part of his Variorum Shakespeare (1821, 11. 273), and reprinted in the recent work of Quincy Adams, The Dramatic Records of Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels (1919). 8 Middlesex Records, 111. 282. 270 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES This house, as Downes informs us}, was first tenanted by a group of younger players, gathered together by John Rhodes, a former bookseller. As Downes mentions that Rhodes received his licence in 1659/60, this company must have been legally recognised between Feb. 4 and March 25. Rhodes, apparently, had depended on few of the older trained players, but had gathered about him a set of young men, of whom Thomas Betterton was chief. This company included, besides these two, one Dixon, ‘Thomas Lovel, Robert Nokes, Thomas Sheppey, Robert Turner, Cave Under- hill, and another six who “‘commonly Acted Womens Parts,” Edward Kynaston, James Nokes, Edward Angel, William Better- ton, John Mosely and one Floid?. Of one company more at this time have we cognisance, a company which acted for a time at Salisbury Court. ‘That theatre in 1652 had been acquired by William Beeston®, who, sometime during the summer of 1660, received official licence to act. What performers produced The Rump there early in 1660 we do not know, but certainly after June, 1661, the theatre was occupied by George Jolly and his troupe*. Up to this date the theatrical history of the time is fairly easy to follow. It is the few months immediately after June, 1660, that seem wrapped in an almost unfathomable obscurity. Happily, however, there are a few stray records in the Public Record Office which throw light on the history of the time, and those help us to reconstruct the events of the following half-a-dozen months with tolerable accuracy, although there will probably ever remain one or two points never to be settled. On July g and on July 19, 1660, warrants were issued to prepare grants of monopoly in theatrical affairs to Thomas Killigrew and to Sir William D’Avenant respectively®, and the patents were formally issued on August 21 of the same year®. On June 20 Sir Henry Herbert Spi 2 The list of names is again derived from Downes and from L.C. records. Dixon and Lovel had acted before 1642. 3 See J. Q. Adams, Shakespearean Playhouses, pp. 381 fi. 4 For Jolly, see infra. ° Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1660-1, pp. 114 and 124. * This patent is given in Fitzgerald, P., A New History of the English Stage (1882), 1. 23. It is not necessary to give this patent in toto, but, as with other documents later to be mentioned a summary of the contents may be presented. The patent mentions (1) that plays have been per- formed for money, (2) that they “doe containe much matter of prophana- tion and scurrility”’ and “for the most part tende to the debauchinge of the manners of such as are present at them,” but (3) might be used to ““serue as innocent and harmlesse diuertisement for many of our sub- jects,” (4) the King therefore presents a licence to “our trusty and well HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 271 was officially sworn as Master of the Revels, enjoying the old dignities of the office, though those were now somewhat shorn of their glory by reason of the patents. One would have expected that from this date the history of the stage would have resolved itself into an account of the theatres organised by the two patentees and the struggle of both against the power of the Master of the Revels. That struggle certainly did take place, but it was con- siderably complicated by other and outside influence. In the first place, the two patentees did not start acting im- mediately after they had received their official warrants. Herbert had issued a complaint before Aug. 4, 1660, which D’Avenant answered with a contemptuous disregard!. Herbert’s complaint addressed to Sir Jeffrey Palmer, Attorney-General, was dismissed on Sept. 14, since, in the words of Palmer, the latter had ‘‘ received an intimation, by letter from Sir William D’Avenant, that” he “was freed from further hearing this matter.” It was probably the actual arrangements of the stage that delayed their actions. Killi- grew, in this respect, was first on the field. He appears to have come to an arrangement at once with the Mohun company?, and to have started them playing on Thursday, Nov. 8, at Gibbon’s Tennis Court in Vere Street, Clare Market, converted for the nonce into a theatre-royal*. Here he remained until on Thursday, beloued Thomas Killigrew, Esq. one of the Groomes of our Bedchamber, and Sir William Dauenant, knight” to form two companies of players and erect two houses “‘ with all convenient roomes and other necessaries thereunto appertayning,” granting them leave, (5) to fix the prices of entrance, “‘as either haue bin accustomely giuen...or as shall be reasonable in regard of the great expences of scenes, musick, and such new decorations as haue not been formerly used,” and (6) to settle the payment of the actors. (7) It is added that considering the licentiousness of certain plays recently given no other company should be allowed to act in the city of London and (8) that the two patentees should present no such play but (9) peruse all the plays before acting and cut out the offensive passages. 1 See the documents in J. Q. Adams, Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, pp. 85-7. 2 The articles of agreement are given in Fitzgerald, op. cit. 1.27. The actors in the agreement are Hart, Bird, Mohun, Burt, Lacy, Robert Shatterell, Clun, Cartwright, Wintershall, Baxter, Kinaston, Blagden and Loveday, entering into conditions with Thomas Killigrew and Sir Robert Howard. 3 The date is given in the Herbert documents mentioned above; see Adams, op. cit. p. 116. Within a few months trouble appears to have arisen, for on Sept. 9, 1661, there is an order for the shutting of the theatre: “To the Company of his Ma‘!¢* Comoedians at the new Theatre These are to will and require you vpon sight hereof to forbeare to act any more playes or showes as you will answer the Contrary at your perills giuen vnder my hand this nynth day of September 166j To his Mat!¢’ Com- madians or Actors at the new Theater.” 272 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES May 7, 1663}, he moved to a more commodious house in Bridges- street, Covent-Garden. D’Avenant was considerably slower: possibly he may have been in France during the first few months, for on Mar. 17 he had received a passport for Paris*. In any case, he did not come to terms with his actors until Monday, Nov. 5°, selecting then for his company the younger men of the Cockpit. 1 See Pepys’ Diary for the exact date of opening. 2 Cal. State Papers, Dom, Series, 1659-60, p. 571. 3 The agreement is printed in Adams, op. cit. pp. 96-100, and in Halli- well-Phillipps, J.O., 4 Collection of Ancient Documents respecting the Office of the Master of the Revels, pp. 27-31. Itis an agreement tripartite between Sir William D’Avenant, the actors (Thomas Betterton, Sheppey, Robert Nokes, James Nokes, Lovell, Moseley, Underhill, Turner and Lillieston), and ‘‘ Henry Harris, of the citty of London, Painter.”” A summary of the document may be given as follows: (1) D’Avenant agreed to constitute the actors above mentioned into a company, settled (2) that they might act by virtue of his patent in any London theatre charging what prices they would until a ‘“‘newe theatre with scenes”’ should be provided for them. (3) It was agreed that they should remain playing for the nonce at Salisbury Court, (4) that there, after expenses for house-rent and “hire- lings”’ had been paid, the profits should be divided into 14 shares, (5) that D’Avenant should have 4 of these and the company to, (6) that during their time at Salisbury Court D’Avenant should depute some of their number to receive his proportion and to watch the accounts, (7) that music might be provided in Salisbury Court, to be defrayed out of the general shares, at a cost not exceeding 30s. nightly, (8) that at a week’s notice the actors should be ready to join D’Avenant, Harris ‘“‘and other men and women provided or to be provided by the said Sir Wm. Davenant”’ at the new theatre. It was further agreed (9) that in the new theatre, after the general expenses had been deducted, the profits should be divided into 15 shares, (10) that 2 shares should go to D’Avenant for house-rent, building, and frames for scenes, (11) and that another 1 share should go to D’Avenant for scenes and costumes, (12) that the other 12 shares should be divided into 7 and 5, D’Avenant to have 7 to maintain the actresses, and the other 5 to go to the company, Harris to have a portion equal with the highest. The document then ends with some interesting points of detail. (13) The receipts were to “bee by ballatine, or tickettes sealed for all doores and boxes.” (14) D’Avenant undertook to provide three men to receive the money for these tickets, the actors appointing some of themselves to supervise the accounts. (15) D’Avenant undertook to provide half the number of doorkeepers necessary for the receipt of the tickets, as well as a wardrobe keeper and barber, their salaries to be de- ducted from the general receipts of the house. (16) D’Avenant had full power to assign any share that fell vacant and to appoint the wages of the “hirelings.”’ (17) D’Avenant was not to provide among the costumes “eyther hatts, feathers, gloves, ribbons, sworde-belts, bandes, stockinges, or shoes, for any of the men actors aforesaid, unless it be a propertie.’ (18) A private box was to be provided for Killigrew. (19) The actors each agreed to enter into a bond of £500, and settled that any new sharer should do the like. (20) Harris likewise agreed to a similar bond. (21) Finally D’Avenant was appointed sole master of the theatre. HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 273 He started them playing at Salisbury Court ten days later, on Nov. 15, but the new theatre mentioned in the document was not ready until the end of June, 166r. Meanwhile, the actors not included in the Killigrew and in the D’Avenant agreements seem to have continued acting for some considerable time. The question of dramatic right and legality was not settled for some few years after this date. On Aug. 7, the case of one John Rogers was referred to Sir Henry Herbert, who directed that the petitioner should be appointed to guard the playhouses “from all molestations and injuries,” receiving therefor a weekly allowance. This order was dated Aug. 20, and was directed “‘to the actors of the playhouses called the Red Bull, Cockpit, and theatre in Salisbury Court1.” On Aug. 11, Herbert declared on July 11, 1662, the King’s company (at the Red Bull), Beeston (at Salisbury Court) and Rhodes (at the Cockpit) agreed to pay him £4 a week”. On Aug. 20, undoubtedly because of the patent given the following day to Killigrew and D’Avenant, the King issued an order to Sir William Wylde and other Justices of the Peace in London that the three houses mentioned should be suppressed*. On Aug. 30, however, from a letter addressed by H. Moseley to Herbert we find the three houses still in existence*. On Oct. 8, Herbert sent a peremptory note to Rhodes inquiring about his licence to act at the Cockpit, to which the latter replied on Oct. 10 that he had authority from the King®. The matter becomes truly complicated when we discover from a letter ad- dressed by the Master of the Revels to Mohun “and the rest of the actors of the Cockpitt play-house,” warning him against the high prices charged there®, that the Mohun company on Oct. 13 were also using that house. It is here, indeed, that the peculiar confusion regarding the state of the theatres really begins. Mr R. W. Lowe in his Life of Betterton’ has conjectured that about this date the King made a union of various companies, a union which lasted for a few months. In support of his contention he has adduced a petition of the 1 Document given in Adams, op. cit. pp. 83-4. The theatres were occupied by the Mohun company, the Betterton company and possibly Jolly’s men respectively. 2 Document given in Malone, op. cit. p. 266. 3 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1660-1, p. 196. 4 Adams, op. cit. p. 90. There is definitely mentioned in this letter “the gentlemen actors of the Red Bull,” “Mr Rhodes of the Cockpitt play-house” and the ‘‘ Whitefryers (z.e. Salisbury Court) playhouse and players.” 5 Adams, op. cit. p. 93. 6 Adams, op. cit. pp. 93-4. 7 pp. 67-9. NRD 18 274 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES actors of the King’s company in which occurs a phrase “And according to your Majesty’s approbation from all the companies we made election of one company,” and a document in the Public Record Office in which the King enumerates His Majesty’s Comedians—Burt, Hart, Mohun, Robert Shatterell, Lacy, Winter- sell, Clunne, Cartwright, Edward Shatterell, Baxter, Loveday, as well as Kynaston and Betterton?. This entry is dated Oct. 6, 1660. On the face of it, this supposition looks very much as if it were the true one, although not all facts bear it out. In the first place, the petition already referred to is signed only by Mohun, Robert Shatterall, Hart, Burt, Cartwright, Clun and Wintershall. It declares that after considerable harassing from Herbert, they had agreed to act with “‘woemen” at a new theatre to be built by Killigrew, where they were to have “‘habitts according” to their “‘sceanes.”’ It is not certain, of course, exactly when this petition was issued, but if it was, as Mr Lowe supposes, an answer to the order of Oct. 13, it is certainly strange that Betterton, if he had been a member of the troupe, should not have signed it along with the others. Again, the entry of Betterton’s name alongside of the Red Bull actors as cited by Lowe, is not the only one in the docu- ments contained in the Public Record Office. In the same volume under the date July 29, 1661, Betterton is included along- side of others as receiving stuff for a livery as a servant of his Majesty®, while on Dec. 17, 1661, it was certified that precisely the same actors had been enrolled as ‘“‘the Queenes Comoedians?#.” On May 30, 1662, a similar list had cut out Betterton. Betterton, it can easily be proved, was acting with D’Avenant long before July, 1661, and certainly very long before the December of that year. This Royal Company surely can have been nothing but a troupe selected for the Cockpit at Whitehall, including in it two of the finest, possibly at that time the only two gifted and trained actors in the Cockpit company. We can never trust one single MS. which contradicts all we know of the history of the stage, and must presume that Herbert’s mention of Mohun at the Cockpit is an error, or that some slight re-arrangement of the theatres had taken place. The mention of Kynaston along with Betterton, it may be remarked, does not in any way complicate matters, as that actor early abandoned the Cockpit company to join the new theatre in Vere-street. 1 Adams, op. cit. p. 95. * L.C. 5/137, p. 332. In giving these lists I have retained the spelling of the names of actors. 27 1-C25/137, Pp. 313 also.am ie.C.7)/ ape. 4 LC. 5/137, p. 333- HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 275 After Monday, Nov. 5, the date of the agreement with D’Avenant, Betterton and the other players working under Rhodes, occupied the playhouse in Salisbury Court, opening it on Thursday, Nov. 15. Precisely a week previously, on Thursday, Nov. 8, the T.R. in V.St. started with a production of Henry IV. Both companies seemed to be acting under considerable difficulties. Money, for both, was scarce. It was always a complaint with the Royal troupe that the theatrical expenses barely allowed them any profit. As I have pointed out, the statements of Herbert “that Mr Thomas Killegrew drawes 109/. 6s. per week from the Kinges Company, as credibly informed” was probably a gross exaggeration’. Similarly his assumption “that Sir William Dauenant drawes 10 shares of 15 shares, which is valued at 200l. per week, cleer profitt, one week with another, as credibly informed” may not have been true to the facts of the case. D’Avenant, we know, was in continual difficulties. From a later document in the Public Record Office? we learn that he ‘stood indebted to M? Cademan in a Bond of roo# and in Consideration that M’ Cademan woud acquit S' W™ of y® s* debt and Act as a Player S' W™ promised to settle upon him 30 p Week to be paid out of y° proffits arising from y® playhouse.” From another document we discover that in order to provide for his theatre he was forced to run into other and more serious debts’. Not only financially, however, were the theatres harassed. Sir Henry Herbert worried them considerably in an endeavour to bring them to their knees. Not finding the petitions already referred to successful, he brought an action against Mohun in October, 1660. The latter was tried in December, the action going in his favour. Later, on Jan. 16, 1662, he flew higher, bringing an action against 1 Adams, op. cit. p.121. Evidently the theatre was burdened by outside claims. In the P.R.O., L.C. 5/184 appears an order to the effect that “It is his Ma‘®* pleasure that his Company of Comoedians at the new Theatre doe obserue and keepe the agreement made with S' William Killegrew for the Lady Butler and that they pay the Lady Butler two hundred pounds a yeare according to the sayd agreement Giuen under my hand this 15th day of May 166j:” Se C5 /5: 3 L.C. 7/3 given in Appendix B. D’Avenant was sued in November, 1662, by William Crow, and by William Creed on Dec. 2, 1663. The Creed case dragged on until on May 14, 1666 the Lord Chamberlain wrote a peremptory letter to him: “St M* Creed hath beene a petition’ soe long against you & I haue giuen you soe often notice both from my selfe and alsoe by direction of y® Councell....I shall therefore desire that you take some speedy course for his satisfaccon....” (This and the other entries are in L.C. 5/184-186.) 18-2 276 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES the two patentees!, and on May 6 of that year he attacked Betterton. The King’s company seem to have been the first to come to terms, which they did on June 4, 1662”. At the end of the same month, D’Avenant, who does not seem to have been brought so easily to book, presented a petition to the King, complaining against Herbert’s pretensions. On the 30th the King referred the whole matter to the Lord High Chancellor, Clarendon, and on July 7 the latter appointed the following Wednesday for the hearing. For this, Herbert drew up an elaborate series of rather grandilo- quent claims, not always based on matter of fact, complaining, too, that it was hard that such a person as he, always devoted to the interest of the King, should ‘“‘bee ousted of his just possession, rightes and proffittes, by Sir William Dauenant, a person who exercised the office of Master of the Reuells to Oliuer the Tyrant, and wrote the First and Second Parte of Peru, acted at the Cock- pitt, in Oliuers tyme, and soly in his fauour*.” What the result of the hearing was we do not know, but possibly D’Avenant also acquiesced in the claims of the Master. At any rate, Hayward, writing to Herbert from the Revels office on July 27, 1663, thought that “‘ Great matters are to bee expected from the Duke of Yorks playhouse*.” ; It will have been noticed that three of the actors and actor- managers referred to above were not included in the general arrangements made by Killigrew and by D’Avenant. ‘These were Beeston, Rhodes and Jolly. All of these appear to have continued playing for some time at least. On Dec. 24, 1660, Jolly received a licence to play, notwithstanding the sole authority given to the patentees®, yet on July 31, 1661, an order was issued to suppress 1 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1661-2, p. 244. 2 Malone, op. cit. p. 269. The clauses of the agreement may be sum- marised as follows: (1) A firm amity to be concluded between the two contending parties. (2) Killigrew agreed to pay before Aug. 4 all monies owing by the King’s company (these are given as Mohun, Wintershall, Robert Shatterall, Cartwright, Burt, Clun and Hart) for new plays at 4os. a play, and for revived plays at 20s. a play acted since Aug. 11, 1660. (3) Killigrew agreed to pay by the same date all losses in Herbert’s law- suits. (4) Killigrew likewise agreed to give Herbert a present of £50,“‘for his damages susteyned from them and by their means.” (5) Killigrew agreed to aid Herbert in restoring the office of the Revels, even against his co-patentee, Sir William D’Avenant “‘and his pretended company of players.” (6) Herbert agreed to assist Killigrew in all ways. (7) Herbert arranged on payment of the money to give back to Killigrew ‘‘the deede of couenants, sealed, and deliuered by the said Mychaell Mohun and y® others named, bearing date the 11 August.”? This was no doubt the agreement, unhappily not now extant, mentioned above. 8 The documents will all be found in Malone, op. cit. pp. 265-6. 4 Adams, op. cit. p. 128. ® Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1660-1, p. 423. ——— HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES~ 277 all licences save those granted to Killigrew and to D’Avenant, mention being made of some that-had been “secretly” obtained from the King!. This order of suppression does not seem to have been operative at once, as we find Jolly and Beeston, quarrelling it is true, at Salisbury Court, in October and November, 16612. Apparently the easiest way to get rid of this George Jolly was to provide him with a licence for the provinces, and this accordingly was prepared on Jan. 1, 1662/3, and actually given to him on Jan. 274. His London licence of Dec. 24, 1660, was revoked on July 23, 16635. This particular matter is also deeply complicated by the fact that in a proviso for a nursery (dated July 23, 1663) Jolly would appear to have been acting in direct conjunction with Killigrew®. The revocation of his licence does not seem to have 1 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1661-2, p. 47. 2 'The first intimation of this is ‘‘ The humble petition of William Beeston agt Mr Jolley” (L.C. 5/184). Both parties were ordered to attend the Lord Chamberlain on the Wednesday following. On Nov. 13 an order addressed to “‘ George Jolly and his Company actors or Commoedians at the Cockpitt”’ was issued (L.C. 5/137, p. 333). This bid him perform no more until the difference between Beeston and the company had been settled. The following Friday was decided upon for the hearing of the case. It is to be noted that there was no question of forbidding them to play as being an unlicensed company. Cockpit was probably a clerk’s error for Salisbury Court. Later in the month a formal order was prepared and sent out. “Whereas his Ma%® Ordered George Jollyes Company of Players should act at W™ Beestons Theater in Salisbury Court And for that the said George Jolley & W™ Beeston haue refered themselves to mee w! he the said George Jollye shall giue for his said Company of Players to Act stage playes in the Theater belonging to W™ Beeston in Salisbury Court and not elsewhere with such priveledges & the vse of such Roomes to dress themselues and reherse in as formerly were allowed St W™ Davenants Players I thus Declare the said George Jolley shall pay vnto y® said W™ Beeston for y® vse of his Theater in Salisbury Court for stage playes once aday with y® vse of such roomes & priveledges as were formerly graunted to S* William Davenants men the sume of thirty shillings Currant money every day there shalbe stage acting in any Theater in or about y® Cyty of London And if at any tyme the said George Jolley shall fayle in paymt of y® said Thyrty shillings any Day where on there shalbe stage playes p'sented in any Theater in or about London that then it shalbe Lawfull for y® said Will Beeston to take his Course at Law agt the said George Jolley Given Vnd' my hand this, 26° day of Novemb* 166j in y® 13*” yeare of his Mat!¢s Reigne.” 3 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1663-4, p. I. Idi p. 27: ldap. SIA. 6 Td. p. 214. This provided a licence for the erection of a third play- house, on the understanding that a theatre temporarily licensed to Jolly and under the care of Killigrew, should be closed. It is immediately after this date that we find an order for Beeston’s arrest: ‘“A Warrant to apprehend Beeston for acting stage playes without leaue— Aug: 29” 1663.” This was followed by a warrant for the arrest of “all 278 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES been efficacious, for as late as March, 1667, his warrant was definitely demanded back!. In April of that year he was ordered to be arrested?, but for a year later he was still in the field®. The same seems to have been the case with Rhodes. On Oct. 17, 1663, a warrant was issued to him for a play he had acted at Court on Nov. 1, 16624, so that he had been playing up to at least the end of that year. He, too, was given a licence for performing in the provinces®. Itis highly probable that while in London he was acting at the Red Bull, just as Jolly was evidently utilising Salisbury Court®. Pepys witnessed Al/’s Lost by Lust there on Saturday, Mar. 23, 1660/1: The Poor Man’s Comfort was given at that house on Tues- day, May 28, 16617; and Dr Faustus on Monday, May 26, 16628. persons acting playes without Authority” (dated August 30, both in L.C. 5/185). The ensuing year saw another ‘‘ Warrt to app W™ Beeston or any other acting Stage playes by his authority Sept 7* 1664’ (document in L.C. 5/186). 1 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1666~7, p. 602. On April 24, 1667, a more formal revocation was ordered (id. 1667, p. 51). 2 L.C. 5/186. “‘ Whereas George Jolliffe p"'sumeth to Act Playes by an old Warrt granted by his Mate which his Mat? hath since recalled & made voyd & that he hath noe new Lycence These are therefore to require you to Appthend the said George Jolliffe & bring him before me to answere y® said Offense And All Mayors &c Dated Aprill 8*4 1667 To Jo: Bradley.” 3 L.C. 5/186. “A Warrt to App George Jolliffe John Russell Paul Ryemes & Peter Green for acting playes Erecting Stages & publishing dumb shewes with out leaue from St H Herbert Master of his Ma‘e* Revells. Dated January 20th 1667” (i.e. 1668). The other players mentioned here must have been members of Jolly’s strolling company: they are otherwise unknown. 4 L.C. 5/138, p. 91. It is addressed “‘to the Trer of ye Chambt* to pay or cause to be pd vnto John Rhodes the sume of Twenty pounds for acting of the play called Ignoramus or the Accademicall Lawyer at Court before his Ma the first of Novemb* 1662.” 5 Cal. State Papers, 1663-4, p. 462; and L.C. 5/138, p. 387. The latter is dated Jan. 2, 1663: “‘ Whereas his Mati¢ hath appoynted & Authorized John Rhodes his Ma*®s sworne Servant together with his Company from tyme to tyme to practize & exercise y® Quality of playinge of Comedyes Historyes Tragedyes Enterludes Morralls Pastoralls Stage Playes Maskes & Showes within his Mates’ Kingdome of England & dominions of Wales y® Cytyes of London & Westm! excepted These are to signifie vnto yo® his Mates Pleasure that yo" forth with p™pare a Bill fitt for his Mates Royall Signature to Lycence & Authorize the said John Rhodes with his Company in any Convenient place wthin the kingdome...to practise y® Art & Quality of playinge...within any Towne Halls Motehalls Guldhalls Schoolehowses or other convenient places,”’ all local bye-laws notwith- standing. 6 See Lawrence, W. J., on A Forgotten Restoration Playhouse in Englische Studien, vol. Xxxv. 1905. ? See Jordan, A Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie. 8 Pepys. HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 279 It is probable that Jolly’s company and Rhodes’ company were created into the Duke of Monmouth’s players and the Duchess of Portsmouth’s players respectively. The latter troupe is referred to in a prologue and epilogue written for The Indian Emperour by Duffett, as “‘ Acted by the Duchess of Portsmouth’s Servants!,” and of the former there is a licence extant. This licence is made out to Edward Bedford, who, as appears from the L.C. papers, was associated with Jolly in money matters®, It is highly probable that Bedford numbered among his men John Perin, who by the beginning of the year 1674 was playing Cieco in The Amorous Old Woman’. Of one other touring company have we cognisance, that of the Duke of Ormond, which was at Oxford on Aug. 1, 1677°. What precisely was the personnel of these wandering troupes, apart from the indications, now for the first time given, which are presented above, is not at present ascertainable, although possibly documents may yet be found which will give us with tolerable accuracy their members. Beeston and some of his men, on the break-up of their company, seem to have joined the T.R. Downes mentions Beeston, Charleton, Goodman, Griffin, Lyddol and Sherley as coming into that theatre about 1664; probably he would have been more correct had he given a date nearer 1666. It may be mentioned, before leaving this rather difficult question, that Pepys saw ’Tis Pity at Salisbury Court, evidently given by Jolly’s company, on Monday, Sept. 9, 1661, and that he also men- tions a performance at the Blackfriars®. Asummary of the situation, therefore, gives us three theatres from the early part of 1660 to 1 Duffett’s New Songs (1676), p. 96. 2 The licence is in L.C. 5/12, p. 185. “‘ Whereas his Mat¢ hath ap- poynted & authorized Edward Bedford his Mates sworne servant together with his Grace the Duke of Monmouths Company from tyme to tyme to practize & Exercise the Quality of playing of Comedies...within his Mats Kingdome of England & Dominion of Wales (the Citty of London & Westm? Excepted) These are to signifie vnto you his Ma‘®s pleasure that you forthwith p'pare a bill fitt for his Ma‘** Royall Signature to Lycence & Authorize the said Edward Bedford with his Grace the Duke of Monmouths said Company.” This document is dated Nov. 25, 1669. 3 Edward Bedford sued against John Perin for a debt of £6 on April 22, 1671 (L.C. 5/188). Sir Henry Herbert had a case against Perin, Jacob Hall and Robert Turner in May, 1669 (L.C. 5/187). 4 Hist. MSS. Comm. xu. 139, cp. Lawrence, Elizabethan Playhouse, Series ii. 5 There was another company in existence later. In L.C. 5/188 appears “A Warr! to App Robert Parker & Samuell Tanton for acting Interludes & Stage playes without Lycence from y® Master of his Mates Reuells And &c. Dated Feb: 254 1670.” This, of course, might be identified with one of the touring companies mentioned above. 280 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES the time of the granting of the patents, four or five up to the close of 1661, three or four until the end of 1662, and thereafter, if we except the nurseries, of which more hereafter, only the two patent houses. All these companies, as we have seen, acted at court, and ap- parently also gave royal performances at their own theatres. On Feb. 29, 1661 (? 1662) a warrant was issued to pay Bird, Hart, Mohun and Clun £160 (at the rate of {10 a play) for performances at Vere-street, and £700 (at the rate of {20 play) for performances at the Cockpit, Whitehall, between Nov. 19, 1660 and Feb. 6, 1661/?2. On April 14, 1662, this grant was transferred to Killi- grew. The claim was no doubt settled. On April 4, 1663, Killigrew was similarly granted £540 for plays at court and £270 for plays at Vere-street, and on Jan. 24, 1664/5, £253 for performances at court and at the T.R. These two grants were evidently not paid as on Feb. 7, 1664/5 another was issued to pay Killigrew £813 for plays acted between Mar. 31, 1662 and Dec. 29, 1664. This remained outstanding, for a grant of Nov. 24, 1666 ordered a payment of {1050 for plays between Mar. 31, 1662 and Nov. 20, 16661. Killigrew apparently kept clamouring for his money: a peremptory order was sent through from the Lord Chamberlain’s office: but the payment was deferred until 1670. D’Avenant similarly received payment for his court performances. A grant of £270 was ordered to him on April 16, 1662, one of £300 on Feb. 9, 1663, and one of £150 on June 5, 1665. In 1670 the Duke’s players were paid {500 for, among other things, a journey to Dover. Later grants I have fully quoted in Appendix B, because of the interesting lists appended to them. Besides these theatres already mentioned, the Cockpit in Drury Lane, the Red Bull, Salisbury Court, Vere-street, L.I.F., and the Royal Cockpit there were, as I have indicated above, nurseries for the training of actors. The first reference we have to one of these is in a licence granted to the patentees in common on July 23, 1663?. In March the following year this was given over to one William Legg to be exercised under their joint supervision®, Where exactly this was situated is uncertain. There certainly appears to have been one nursery in Golden Lane, 1 All the references save the last appear in the L.C. books: as lists of plays acted are not appended, I have not given details as to book and page. For the last see Cal. State Papers, Treas. Books, 1669-72, p. 697. * Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1663-4, p. 214. 3 Id. p. 539. HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 281 Barbican!, and another, built by Captain Bedford, leader of the Duke of Monmouth’s company, and no doubt managed by Killi- grew, in Hatton Gardens*. In 1664, Killigrew seems to have intended erecting one in Moorfields, but was defeated in his purpose*. It is possible, also, that the old theatre in Vere-street and the L.I.F. when deserted by the Duke’s and the King’s players may likewise have been used as training houses. For a consideration of the drama of the period, however, it is the two patent theatres that must occupy most attention. From November, 1660, Killigrew went on playing at Vere-street, with- out scenery, but with a few actresses, some of whose names have been preserved. Downes mentions six of those originally with the King’s players—Mrs Corey, Mrs Eastland, Mrs Hughes, Mrs Kneppe, Mrs Anne Marshall, Mrs Uphill, and Mrs Weaver, and adds that these were later added to by Mrs Boutell, Mrs Nell Gwyn, Mrs James, Mrs Rebecca Marshall, Mrs Knight, Mrs Rutter and Mrs Verjuice. Killigrew seems to have had complete power of this troupe, judging by a document in the Public Record Office, and from a report of the Lord Chamberlain, probably made about December, 1664°: but his actors, as we have seen, joined with him on a sharing basis, and in time came to make demands which they never would have dared to do in the early years of the period. ‘Two interesting documents of the earlier period are still extant; the lease of ground on which was built the T.R. in B.St., and an agreement of the King’s comedians regarding shares and profits*. The first is dated Dec. 20, 1661, and the lessees’ names are given as Sir Robert Howard, Killigrew, Hart, Bird, Mohun, Burt, Lacy, Robert Shatterall, Clun, Cartwright, Wintershall, William Hewytt and Robert Clayton. By this agreement, all of 1 See Dryden, MacFlecknoe, 1. 65-79: An ancient fabrick raised t’inform the sight, There stood of yore, and Barbican it hight}... Near these a Nursery erects its head, Where Queens are formed, and future Hero’s bred; Where unfledged Actors learn to laugh and cry, Where infant Punks their tender voices try, And little Maximins the Gods defy. Langbaine saw The Revenge for Honour of Chapman acted at this Barbican nursery (p. 64). Pepys was at a nursery, probably this one, on Jan. 7, 1667/8, and on Feb. 24, 1667/8. 2 See Tobyas, Thomas, The Life of the Famous Comedian, Fo. Hayns (1701), p. 5. 3 Pepys, Aug. 2, 1664 and Feb. 12, 1666/7. 4 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1663/4, p. 121. 5 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1664/5, p. 146. © Both are given in Fitzgerald, op. cit. 1. 81-2. 282 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES the above-mentioned save Hewitt and Clayton covenanted to build by Christmas, 1662, a theatre to cost £1500. The ground measurements are given there as 112 feet in length, and some 58 feet in breadth. The rent settled was £50. A month later, on Jan. 28, 1661/2, an arrangement was come to whereby Hewitt and Clayton held the ground in trust for the actors and the managers. The whole was divided into thirty-six parts, nine each going to Howard. and Killigrew, two each to Hart, Mohun, Shatterall, Clun, Cart- wright, Wintershall, and four to Lacy, on the understanding that if any of these “‘should not pay his or theire respective proporcon of the sd rents reserved vpon the sd rented lease, then the share of him or them makeing such fayler should be forfeited?.” Meanwhile, D’Avenant had prepared his “‘newe house with scenes” and had engaged the services of other actresses, including Mrs Davenport, Mrs Davies, Mrs Anne Gibbs, later the wife of Shadwell, Mrs Jennings, Mrs Long, Mrs Saunderson, later the wife of Betterton, Mrs Holden, and Mrs Norris. D’Avenant’s company, sometime before 1670, had added to it a number of actors who do not largely appear in the theatrical records of the day. One of these was Thomas Creek?, others Jeremiah Lisle?, Adams and Allenson*. The Killigrew company probably about 1 Apparently trouble soon arose between the two parties as a ““Sumons for y° Comoedians”’ was issued by the Lord Chamberlain on Mar. 16, 1664/5 (L.C. 5/186): “‘These are to require you to giue notice vnto his Mates Comoedians Nicholas Burt [Charles Hart, deleted] Michaell Mohun Robert Shatterell John Lacy William Wintersell Walter Clun William Cartwright Edward Shatterell Edward Kinnaston Richard Baxter Thomas Loueday Thomas Bateston Marmaduke Watson Thomas Hancock Nicholas Blagden & Thomas Gradewell That I doe hereby Comand them to attend mee at my Lodgings at Whitehall vpon Saterday Morning the Eighteenth day of this Instant March And that they bring with them the Articles that were made betweene [them, deleted] Thomas Killegrew Esq? and them And &c. Given vnd™ my hand and Seale this 16: day of March 1664.” 2 He is mentioned in a document in L.C. 5/187: ‘‘ Whereas John Carter and Alexander Younger Bayliffe haue arrested or caused to bee arrested Thomas Creek one of His Royall Highnesse the Duke of Yorkes Servants without leaue...’’ (Dec. 20, 1669). 3 L.C. 5/188: ‘‘Whereas Jeremiah Lisle One of his Royall Highnesse y® Duke of Yorks Comoedians hath absented him selfe from his duty & otherwise Misbehaued him selfe And whereas Complaynt hath beene made vnto mee against him for these Misdemeanors These are to require you to Apprehend and take into Custody the body of the said Jeremiah Lisle And bring him before mee to answere vnto such things as shalbe Objected agt him And all &c. Dated Apprill 26: 1670. To Ralph Carter. 4 L.C. 5/188. “A Warrt to App Adams & Allenson for absenting themselfes from ye Dukes house Theatre To Rich Carter” (c. Aug. 12, 1670). Adams played Draxanes in The Women’s Conquest in 1671 and HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 283 this time became regularly known as the King’s company, and the D’Avenant actors as the Duke of York’s servants. At first, apparently, opinion was divided as to the merits of the two companies, Betterton drawing many spectators to Salisbury Court and the more finished performance of the older actors making the general atmosphere of the Vere-street productions infinitely better than that of their rivals. All doubt, however, seems to have been set at rest when D’Avenant, probably on Friday, June 28, 1661, opened his “opera” at L.I.F., the first Duke’s Theatre?. Here his company continued until the year 1671 saw the erection of a second Duke’s Theatre in Dorset- garden. By July, 1661, if we may judge by the lists of actors given in the L.C. warrants for liveries, Watson came into the T.R. company’, by Nov. 4, 1662, Bird, Blagden, Hancock and one Tanner*. About the same time an actor Gradwell was in the T.R. company®. From that date, until 1665, the personnel of the troupe evidently remained the same®. On Feb. 8, 1667, however, we find a list?, obviously copied from the earlier war- rants, wherein Bird, Clun, Blagden, Baxter and Edward Shatterail are scored out, while one “ Batiman” (z.e. Bateman) is included. The actresses of the Royal company seem to have come into the privilege of receiving a “livery” not until 1666. On June 30 of that year a warrant was issued to Mrs Weaver, Mrs Marshall, Mrs Rutter, Mrs Yates, Mrs Kneppe, Mrs Dalton, Mrs Gwyn, Mrs Hall, Mrs Frances Davenport and Mrs Anne Child, autho- rising them to receive “‘foure yards of bastard scarlet cloath and one quarter of a yard of veluett for their liueryes®.’”’ On Feb. 8, 1667 (probably 1667/8) Mrs Weaver, Mrs Yates, Mrs Dalton, the Second Witch in the epilogue to the burlesque Empress of Morocco in 1674. 1 The exact date is uncertain, but is at any rate roughly determined by a note in Pepys’ Diary. 2 Tt was opened in November, 1671. * L.C. 5/137, p- 31. y ; 4 L.C. 5/137, p. 173. Blagden had probably been associated with Bedford’s company, as on Oct. 15, 1663, the latter was petitioning against him to the Lord Chamberlain (L.C. 5/185). 5 L.C.5/138, p. 10. He appears also in the order given above, p. 282. 8 L..C. 5/138, p.65. The list there, dated Feb. 25, 1665, includes Hart, Mohun, Lacy, Bird, Burt, Robert Shatterell, Clunn, Wintersell, Cart- wright, Kinnaston, Blagden, Watson, Hancock, Baxter, Edward Shattereli and Gradwell. This list is faulty in one respect: Clun had been murdered on Aug. 2, 1664; the inclusion of his name was no doubt a clerical error. 7 L.C. 5/138, p.271. And the list given above, p. 282, and dated Mar. 16, 1664/5 still gives Clun and includes Bateston and Loveday. Sib. 5/198, pega 284 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES Mrs Hall and Mrs Anne Child are cancelled and Mrs Eliza- beth Davenport and Mrs Jane Davenport are added!. So the companies seem to have continued, with minor changes, for some time. While dealing with the actors and actresses a note may be given concerning a frequent source of trouble and abuse. These players were all, on entering either of the houses, regarded as royal servants, with the privilege of being immune from arrest unless by warrant of the Lord Chamberlain. As a result the books of this hard-worked and harassed official are literally full of petitions and complaints from the numerous persons who were owed money by the spendthrift “‘Comoedians.” Many probably took up this profession for ulterior motives, as is hinted in a complaint of one Henry Dobson against Mrs Weaver?. Whether this be the case or not, the actors certainly seem to have been born borrowers. Henry Harris? and Joseph Haynes* were easily the worst offenders, but others, including Lacy®, Blagden®, TAC, RIX, too Cyt 2 «To the Right Honroble &c The humble petition of Henry Dobson Humbly sheweth that one Eliz. Farley hath [by, deleted] gone by the name of Eliz: Weauer wife to a Gent of Grayes Inne to defraud her Creditors and now being discouered that she is none of his Wife although she hath had a child by him and haueing noe other shift for the defrauding of her said Creditors but meerely being sworne one of his Ma®* servants she oweing yo? pet! the summe of 25! 118 064 whereof she hath paid 14! soe there. remaines due 11! 11% 06% which hath beene thirty tymes de- manded and bids defyance to yo" pet’ yo" pet most humble request is that your Hono! wilbe pleased to grant leaue to yo' pet’ to take his course at Law agt her And yo! pet? shall euer pray &c.”’ (c. Sept. 30, 1662; in L.C. 5/184). Mrs Weaver was ordered on June 13, 1663, to appear on account of a petition of Robert Kerby, and on May 24, 1665, Mrs Anne Hame was permitted to go to law against her (L.C. 5/185 and 186). * Harris was ordered to be arrested on June 29, 1663 (L.C. 5/185); ‘Thomas Halfpenny was permitted to go to law against him on Nov. 30, 1667, Robert Bird on Jan. 8, 1667/8, Richard Snow on Feb. 27, 1667/8, Sir Henry Herbert on Mar. 21, 1667/8, Levett on Mar. 27, 1668, Mary Inglesby on Dec. 15, 1668, William Keene on Jan. 9, 1668/9. Harris also was being constantly sued by his wife for maintenance: she petitioned on Jan. 25, 1675/6, and again on Nov. 2, 1677. He was sued for £8 lent to his wife on May 19, 1677 (L.C. 5/185—190). * Haynes was petitioned against by Thomas Jennings on Feb. 1, 1667/8, by Martin Powell on Jan. 9, 1668/9, by William Matthews on the same day, by John Tummins on Sept. 3, 1674, by Tinder on Jan. 26, 1674/5, by Hannah Barton, widow in Gutter lane, Cheapside “‘for dyet & Lodging & part engaged for him which she is likely to pay” on Feb. 10, 1674/5. Haynes was arrested on Mar. 30, 1675, possibly because of this. The list of petitions could be almost indefinitely extended. > A petition of Edward Man against Lacy appears on Mar. 1, 1660/1; at the desire of one Serle Lacy was arrested on or before Nov. 28 of that year. ° Blagden appears as defendant against Bedford on Oct. 15, 1663 ; against HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES _ 285 Loveday", Clun?, Shatterell®, Coysh, Martin Powell‘, Wintersell®, Kent*, Underhill’, Goodman* and Sheppey® shared in their delinquencies. D’Avenant’s patent was ratified on Jan. 15, 1662!°: on Aug. 14 Anthony Wood in 1662; against Sir William Clarke on Mar. 26, 1663/4; against Letchfield on July 8, 1664, and against Robert Toplady on Sept. 17 of that year. * Loveday is associated with Blagden in the last-mentioned petition. Matthew Harris sought for payment from him of a ten guinea debt on July 20, 1663, and there was a petition against him on April 16, 1664. * On Sept. 14, 1663, Mary Meggs petitioned against Clun. This Mary Meggs, mentioned in an entry given in Appendix B, was fruit woman at the theatre. There was issued “A Warr to App Mary Meggs for abuseing Mrs Rebecea Marshall one of his Mat®s Comoedians to ye disturbance of his Ma‘®s Actors and Comitting other Misdemeanours”’ on Nov. 5, 1669 (L.C. 5/187). Clun, of course, was associated with the other comedians in petitions addressed to the actors in general. Thus we find ‘“‘ The humble petition of Edward Dicket and his wife late Wright agt Walter Clunn and the other Comoedians March first 1663”’ (i.e. 1664; L.C. 5/185). % Shatterell was petitioned against by William Phillipps on Sept. 17, 1664; by George Hewett on May 21, 1666; by Bartholomew Barker on Oct. 16, 1667; by Thomas Tunman on Mar. 21, 1670/1; by Jean Assevedo on Feb. 3, 1674/5; and by Cecily Smith, widow, on Feb. 15, 1676/7. * Both Coysh and Powell were petitioned against by Thomas Burry on March 16, 1675/6. 5 Edward Gavile claimed £34 for goods from him on May 23, 1677. ® Kent was associated with the last-mentioned claim against Shatterell. * Anne Allen agreed to receive yearly instalments from Underhill on Jan. 17, 1683/4. 8 Alice Price ‘‘widdow...for lodginge & mony lent in Greate Russell Streete in Bloomesbury,” petitioned against Goodman on Dec. 15, 1677. ® Sheppey’s case is given infra, p. 294. 10 The patent is given in full in Fitzgerald, op. cit. 1.73. It recites the patent granted to D’Avenant by Charles I, mentions the grant made by Charles II in 1660, notes that D’Avenant has surrendered the former patents, grants him full liberty to erect one theatre in London, authorises him to style his company by the title ‘‘the servants of our dearly-beloved brother, James, Duke of York,”’ determines “that the said company shall be under the sole government and authority of the said Sir William Davenant...and all scandalous and mutinous persons shall from time to time be ejected, and disabled from playing in the said theatre.’ The patent then refers to the fact that certain unauthorised companies are playing in London, reiterates the fact that none shall be fully licensed save those of D’Avenant and Killigrew, and makes certain other arrangements: “‘to preserve amity and correspondence betwixt the said companies (of Killigrew and D’Avenant) and that the one maynotencroach upon theother by any indirect means, we will and ordain that no actor or other person employed about either of the said theatres ejected by the said Sir W. Davenant and Thomas Killigrew, or either of them, or deserting his company, shall be received by the governor or any of the said other 286 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES z a warrant had been issued to him for a licence on surrendering of his former patent! and in November the grant was officially ordered?. Killigrew’s patent had been similarly ratified on April 25°. It follows the lines of the D’Avenant grant. A few months later, on May 7, 16634, Killigrew, by virtue of his new warrant, opened his new T.R. in Bridges-street, where for the first time he made use of scenery®. Here he remained until the burning of the Bridges-street theatre on Jan. 25, 16728. The abandoned Vere- street house was evidently used after this date by fencers and such like performers’, and possibly occasionally as a nursery. In 1665 the plague was raging, and accordingly, on June 5 of that year the King ordered a complete cessation of dramatic performances’. The playhouses remained shut for some con- company, or any other person or persons to be employed in acting, or in any matter relating to the stage, without the consent and approbation of the governorof the company, whereof the said person so ejected or deserting was a member, signified under his hand and seal. And we do by these presents declare all other company and companies saving the companies above mentioned, to be silenced and suppressed. And forasmuch as many plays formerly acted do contain several prophane, obscene, and scurrilous passages, and the women parts therein have been acted by men in the habits of women, at which some have taken offence; for the preventing of these abuses for the future we do strictly charge, command, and enjoin that from henceforth no new play shall be acted by either of the said companies containing any passages offensive to piety and good manners, nor any old or revived play containing any such offensive passages as aforesaid, until the same shall be corrected and purged by the said masters or governors of the said respective companies from all such offensive and scandalous passages as aforesaid. And we do likewise permit and give leave that all the women’s parts to be acted in either of the said two companies from this time to come may be performed by women, so long as these recreations, which by reason of the abuses aforesaid were scandalous and offensive, may by such reformation be esteemed not only harmless delights, but useful and instructive representations of human life, by such of our good subjects as shall resort to see the same.” 1 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1661/2, p. 460. 2 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1661/2, p. 577. 3 It is presented in full in Fitzgerald, op. cit. 1. 77. * Downes, p. 3, gives April 8 as the day of opening, but Pepys twice asserts May 7. There is a play-bill extant purporting to substantiate Downes’ assertion, but it is more than probably a forgery (see Lowe, Life of Betterton, pp. 100-1). ® Wright, Historia Histrionica, p. 10. 8 The fire is mentioned in a contemporary ballad, and also in a letter of Jan. 27, 1671/2 (see Hist. MSS. Comm. Report, . p. 22). The fire caused great damage in Russell-street and one actor, Bell, lost his life in the conflagration. 7 Pepys, Monday, June 1, 1663. 8 L.C. 5/138, p. 417. “‘ Whereas it is thought Dangerous that soe greate resort of People should be permitted at yo™ Theatre in this tyme of Infection of the Plague These are therefore to require you that you for- HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 287 siderable time, and the managers probably utilised their enforced leisure in improving their theatres. Pepys, on Mar. 19, 1665/6, went to the T.R. and noticed it all dirt owing to the widening of the stage. He thought that God alone knew “when they will begin to act again.” By the end of that year they were in full swing once more. It would appear that the first performances were in the nature of charity shows and that these were stopped!. At court, however, they must have been fully licensed. Evelyn saw a performance of Mustapha at the Royal Cockpit on Oct. 18, 16662, and Pepys was told by Mrs Kneppe that both houses would begin again on Monday, Oct. 29. On the 2gth, however, Pepys was forced to go to the Court theatre. On Friday, Dec. 7 he went to the T.R. to see The Maid’s Tragedy and noted that the companies had been playing for about a fortnight. The audiences, he ob- served, were considerably attenuated*, and the managers as a consequence were forced to seek for novelties to draw the spectators. From this time onward troubles, trivial and great, seem to have attended the playhouses, and particularly that of the King. In 1667 a stir seems to have been caused by some rather outspoken references in plays. The Change of Crownes was silenced on Tuesday, April 16, and Lacy was put in prison*. On Saturday, July 20, 1667, both the theatres had given over acting for four or five weeks. Shortly after their reopening we read of another arrest, this time of Pepys’ friend, Mrs Knepp®. Other complica- tions seem to have disturbed the equanimity of the T.R. house in especial. Anne Quynn, who had entered the theatre probably only a short time before this date, had evidently quarrelled with beare Acting any more Playes vntill you shall receive further Order from mee.” 1 Cal. State Papers, Dom. Series, 1666/7, pp. 232 and 299. 2 In connection with the performance seen by Evelyn and the slightly differing lists given in the L.C. books, see The Times Literary Supplement for Sept. 14, 1922. 3 Pepys, Tuesday, Feb. 12, 1666/7. 4 Pepys, Saturday, April 20, 1667. Pepys tells us that on his release Lacy abused Howard and the warrant for his re-arrest is extant: “‘ Whereas John Lacyhath both in abusiue words and actions abused the Honoble James Howard Esq! These are to require you to take into Custody the said John Lacy and him safely [keepe deleted] to deliuer into the Custody of the [Marshall of the Marshalsey deleted] Knight Marshall or the Deputy... Aprill 20 1667.”” The order for Lacy to be brought before the Lord Chamberlain is dated April 25 so that the letter in the Hist. MSS. Comm. which states he was freed on the 23rd cannot be correct (Documents in L.C. 5/186). 5 « A Warrt to App M's Nepp One of his Ma‘®s’ Comoedians & to de- liver her to his Ma‘e* Knt Marshall Dated ffeb: 12: 1667” (z.e. 1668: in L.C. 5/186). She was arrested again on April 23, 1668. 288 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES the management because some other actress had taken her parts. She left the house, petitioned the Lord Chamberlain, and an order was issued to Hart that he should immediately reinstate her!. Lord Buckhurst, Pepys heard on Saturday, July 13, 1667, had got Nell Gwyn away from the T.R. company so that she had given in all her parts; on Monday, Aug. 26, he was informed that she had been cast off by that gay nobleman and that Hart, her former admirer, now hated her. From an order dated Dec. 14, it is clear that Mohun for some time had been off acting?. The following year is a noticeable one, for in it D’Avenant died, leaving his theatrical rights to his widow, Lady D’Avenant, and to his son, Dr Charles D’Avenant. The Duke’s playhouse after this seems to have gone on as before, although the loss of its founder was to end in difficulties not many years later. Love, to use Downes’ quaint phrase, still “‘erept”’ many actresses from the stage, Moll Davis being taken by the King?, and the eldest Davenport going into the keeping of some lord*. A few minor changes occurred in the personnel of the companies, but informa- tion regarding details is mostly lacking until the later seventies of the century. For some reason the two companies had stopped acting in October, 16695, and in April, 1671, the houses were shut because of the death of the Duchess of York®. In May, 1670, a summer diversion took place for the Duke’s players in the shape 1 The order appears in L.C. 5/138, p. 376. It bids the actress to be taken on again, and commands that she be given all her old parts, none daring to act these without her express consent, and closes by ordering “yt you Assigne her a dressing roome with a chymney in it to be only for her vse & whom she shall admitt.”’ It is dated May 4, 1667. 2 L.C. 5/138, p. 411. “If M* Mohun hath receiued any money for the tyme that he was absent from playeing that you deteyne soe much in your hands out of the next share he is to haue.” 3 Pepys, Saturday, Jan.11,1667/8. * Pepys, Tuesday, April 7, 1668. 5 All we know of this is an order in L.C. 5/12, p. 251, declaring that the Duke’s comedians and the servants of the King be allowed “to Act & play againe vpon Munday next & soe to continue Acting.” It is dated Oct. 16, 1669. 8 L.C. 5/12, p. 302. Order dated April 1, 1671. Between these dates trouble seems to have been brewing. An order appears in L.C. 5/187: “Whereas Complaynt hath beene made vnto mee That Samuell Sandford And Mathew Medborne two of his Royal Highnesse Comoedians haue beene refractory & disorderly....These are therefore to require you to Apprehend & take into yo" Custody the bodyes of the said Samuell Sandford & Mathew Medburne &c Dated December 9: 1669.” Lisle, Adams and Allenson, as we have seen, were also arrested on April 26, 1670 and on Aug. 12, 1670. Mrs Norton of the King’s house was arrested on Dec. 5 (L.C. 5/188): “‘A Warrt to App and take into Custody the body of M's Norton late one of his Mates Comoedians & to bring her HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 2809 of a journey to Dover, there to perform some of their pieces?. This company was now making full preparations for moving into their new theatre in Dorset-garden, and this, as I have already noted, was occupied on Thursday, Nov. 9, 16712. Money, for them, as for their rivals, must have been scarce, and it is averred in a document preserved among the L.C. papers that Betterton was sufficiently self-seeking to advance funds for the building of the playhouse at 20 per cent. From a statement in a petition of Charles D’Avenant, Charles Killigrew and Christopher Rich in 1709, it seems that the cost of this theatre was upwards of £5000. The Lord Mayor, apparently, petitioned against its erection, but says Baxter in his Reliquiae Baxterianae, “‘he obtained not his desire*.” The fact is interesting as showing the anti-theatrical tendencies in the city beginning once more to reassert themselves. Two months after the opening of this theatre, the T.R. in B.St., as we have seen, was burnt down. For fully a month Killigrew’s company must have ceased acting, but on Monday, Feb. 26, 1671/2, they started again at the old disused L.I.F. playhouse with Wit without Money, a title, without doubt, which expressed their own condition®, Here they continued playing until midsummer, 1673, as is made plain by a L.C. warrant of June 7 of that year®. As Pordage’s Herod and Mariamne appeared on this stage on Tues- day, Oct. 28, 1673, we may presume that the old Duke’s theatre was required by Betterton for use as a nursery. The King’s company must assuredly have been in a bad way. In order to raise money for a new theatre it was found necessary to mortgage the ground, which was done for £23007. On Mar. 20, 1673, money was required for a “‘scene-house” and the company of actors was forced to borrow £160 from one of its number, Nicholas Burt’, before mee to answere vnto such things as shalbe then & there objected agt her And &c Dated Decemb™ 5'* 1670 To Jo: Blundell.”’ Cardell Goodman was similarly arrested on April 4, 1678 ‘‘ for Certaine abuses & ' misdemeanors by him Comitted.” 1 Hist. MSS. Comm. They received £500 for this (Cal. State Papers, Treas. Books, 1669-72, p. 495)- 2 Downes, p. 31. 3 See Appendix B. 4 1696, pt. ili. p. 89. ® Dryden wrote the prologue spoken on the first night (Poetical Works, ed. Sargeaunt, p. 216). Other prologues spoken there are given, id. pp. 216-8. ® L.C. 5/140, p. 263. “‘It is his Ma*s pleasure that there shall not bee acted any playes at the Theatre in Lincolnes Inne fieilds after Midsummer day next ensueing vntill further order.” This is addressed to Killigrew. 7 See B.M. MSS. Ad. 20; quoted in Fitzgerald, op. cit. 1. 138. 8 The agreement is printed in Fitzgerald, op. cit.1.139. The contracting parties are given as Killigrew, Robert Lewright, Dryden, Hart, Mohun, NRD 19 290 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES Several months later, on Dec. 17, 1673, the above-mentioned governors and actors came to a settlement with the builders of the new Drury Lane theatre, whereby they promised to repay the £2400 cost of that structure by a payment of £3. Ios. every acting day until the whole should be paid up’. It will thus be realised that in 1674, when the new theatre opened, the company was very heavily burdened. Possibly that burden was made still heavier by certain impositions. On Mar. 6, 1671/2, for example, the Lord Chamberlain issued an order to Killigrew, bidding that Mohun, Hart and Kynaston should be furnished with certain articles of clothing at the cost of the company”. This new theatre in Drury Lane and the recently-built house in Dorset Garden were to remain, until the end of the century, the two chief playhouses in London. We know something of the appearance of both, the engravings to Settle’s The Empress of Morocco presenting to us the outside and the stage of Dorset Garden, and the Wren design preserved in All Souls, Oxford, evidently presenting a plan of the Drury Lane house. The Ariane frontispiece purporting to give a picture of the T.R. stage is possibly a trifle imaginative. Trouble in the theatres seems to have begun shortly after their opening. A very peremptory order against any actor or actress leaving either company without due notice was issued by the Lord Chamberlain on May 16, 1674. Early the following year Killigrew was complaining that his actors were appropriating to themselves monies due to him4, and the difference between the players and the master, after being adjudicated by the Lord Chamberlain, was finally settled in an agreement undated but Lacy, Wintershall, Cartwright, Shatterall, and Kynaston as representing the management of the theatre, and Burt. By this agreement the actors and the governors of the theatre promised to pay off the obligation, in the event of Burt dying or falling sick, by a payment of £1. 3s. 4d. for every play acted. 1 See the document in Fitzgerald, op. cit. 1. 138. 2 See Appendix B. 3 Given in Appendix B. * This is also twice entered: L.C. 5/141, p. 100 and 7/1, p. 4: “Whereas Complaint is made unto mee by M' Thomas Killegrew Master of the Revells and Master of yo Company that some of you haue violently taken and shared Money against an Agreement betweene you and his positive order to the Contrary I do hereby appoint Friday Morninge next at my Lodgeings at Whitehall to heare the matter in difference And require you whose Names are underwritten to appeare before mee at that tyme And in the meane time that you continue Acting without any dis- turbance.” The names given are those of Kynaston, Mohun, Lacy, Burt, Shatterell, Wintersell and ‘Carterett,”’ z7.e. Cartwright. This is dated Jan. 11, 1674/5. HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 291 probably drawn up about the middle of the month!. Still, how- ever, trouble seems to have gone on. On Dec. 9 of the same year articles were drawn up for the better regulating of the 'T.R. and these were approved on Dec. 14%. Yet, on Feb. 14, 1675/6, we find that the T.R. company had left off playing because of differ- ? Again a double entry: L.C. 5/141, p. 114 and 7/1. “It is agreed and consented by M' Thomas Killegrew and by Mt Mohun, M* Kynnaston, M? Wintersell, M™ Shatterell, M* Cartwright for themselues and theire Company That halfe the proffitt of the House shall go towards the pay- ment of the debts of the House The Company alleadgeing M* Killegrew had resigned His Power, which hee had by His Patent as Master of theire Company unto the Company Mr’ Killegrew produces a Resignation back againe unto him by the Company of all his Power as formerly Except intermedling with the proffitts and shares, which is to be done acaording to Articles betweene them which Agreement concerning the proffitts and shares M* Killegrew declares he will observe and not any waies breake or contradict And according to that Agreement M’ Killegrew expects onely his two shares, And the rest to be divided according to the Articles and Consent of the Company.” It is dated merely “Jan: 167%.” 2 L.C. 5/141, p. 307. “Articles of Agreem!t for the Better Regulateing theire Mat®* Servants the Comoedians at the Royall Theatre humbly presented to yo" Lordpp Consideraton by the Master & Company yot Lordpp being Our Superior Officer. December 9: 1675. 1 That noe man or Weoman shall dispose of theire parts without the consent of the Company Subpoena 20 shillings 2 That neither Man or Weoman shall refuse any part the Company shall thinke them fitt for Subpoena a weekes wages 3 That noe hired man or Weoman neglect rehearsall vpon forfeiture as formerly 4 Whereas by Experience Wee find Our Cloathes Tarnished & Im- berelled by frequent Weareing them out of the Playhouse It is thought fitt noe Weoman presume to goe out of the House with the Play House Cloathes or Properties vpon Penalty of theire Weekes pay 5 That neither Man or Weoman make vse of either Scenes or Cloathes without the Generall consent of the whole Company 6 Vpon Complaynt of People of Quality of Ms Meggs Severall Maydes offending them in the Pitt besides offending the Stage with theire Noise & treading vpon theire Cloathes & other affronts wee desire she may be obliged to strictly observe her Covenants 7 That noe Hired Man or Weoman quitt the Company without three Monethes warninge, & that giuen to M™ Thomas Killegrew vnd" theire hands 8 That noe Man or Weoman be entertained in the Company with[out] the Generall Knowledg & consent of the Company for the future & that they play three Monethes without Sallary by Way of Approbation Acording to ancient Articles 9 That neither Feathers nor Clothes nor Ribbons nor any thing relating to the Stage be taken vp without the Consent of the Company vpon penalty of paying for them themselves ; 10 To p'vent the Disorders of the shareing Table by an Inundation of People that presse vpon them in theire businesse Henry Hayles is appoynted 19-2 292 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES ences among themselves and that the King had to step in to compel them to act again}. As a temporary measure the Lord Chamberlain appointed Mohun, Kynaston, Hart and Cartwright as managers, and later gave Hart complete control. On Aug. 3, Killigrew was ordered not to act until further order*, and on Sept. 9, as we have seen, the Lord Chamberlain took command of the theatre. Minor worries attended the theatre during this period, Haynes being silenced on Nov. 4, 16754, and Mrs Slade suspended on Nov. 25 of the same year®. The effect of all this on the success of the playhouse is to be seen reflected in the pro- logue to Lee’s Gloriana, already quoted®. The difficulties seem to have been temporarily removed by the appointment, on Feb. 22, 1676/7, of Charles Killigrew, son of Thomas Killigrew, as master of the T.R.’, and, on Feb. 24, as to stand at the Dore & there to admitt them as they are called and by one to deliuer vp theire charge & soe dismisse them 11 To avoyd the future inconveniency of strangers frequent Egresse & regresse when a play is done in y® House, it is thought fitt that some one or two be appoynted to stand at the Tyring house Dore till the House is discharged the persons appoynted are David Middleton and Brittaine 12 That noe persons Vnconcerned in the Businesse of the Play be admitted to stand betweene the Scenes 13 Henry Hales is ordered to take vp all fforfeits”’ This document is signed by Lacy, Kynaston, Shatterell, Hart, Wintersell, Killegrew, Mohun, Cartwright and Burt. 1L.C. 7/1, p. 5. “‘His Mat® understanding That His Company of Comoedians have left off actinge upon private differences and disagree- ments betweene themselues is very much displeased thereat And hath comanded mee to require and order the said Company forthwith to act and play as formerly And that none of the said Company presume to leave off Acting.” 2 L.C. 7/1. ‘“Whereas His Mate hath comanded mee to take upon mee the Governement and direction of His Company of Comoedians during the difference betweene M* Killegrew and His Sonne to which the said Company haue submitted th™selues according to a writeing signed by them I do therefore hereby nominate and appoint M? Michaell Mohun, Mr Charles Hart, Mt Edward Kynnaston, and M? William Cartwright under mee from tyme to time to order and direct all things whatsoever belonging to the well orderinge of the said Company.” This is dated Sept. 9, 1676. L.C. 7/1. Order issued Feb. 22, 1676/7. It recites that the L.C. had appointed the four men as managers “and bya second Order I did appoint M? Hart alone.” 3 L.C. 5/141, p. 433. 4 L.C. 7/1 and 5/141, p. 287. “‘ Whereas Joseph Haynes hath with ill & scandalous language, & insolent carriage abused ST Edmund Windham’”’ is the statement in the order. PLC. 5/141, ps 204. 8 Supra, p. 6. ” L.C. 7/1. “Now whereas the Father and the sonne are agreed, and that the Father hath certified the same to mee under his hand writeinge, that hee hath resigned and delivered up all his right power and authority HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 293 Master of the Revels!. The actors, however, seem to have been no better pleased with the son than with the father. The King, on July 30, expressed himself dissatisfied with the management of the T.R. and declared that he would allow the actors self-govern- ment. The sharing actors, notably Mohun, Burt and Shatterall, all of whom had given bonds of {500 to Killigrew, obtained on April 19, 1678, an order forbidding the actors to remove any costume from the theatre or to wear any theatrical garments out of acting hours*. Killigrew himself seems to have been an offender, so that a peremptory order came to him also, in the shape of a Lord Chamberlain’s order dated Oct. 30, 1679, forbidding him to dispose of any of the properties of the House?. with his two voyces as Master of the Company of His Mat®® Comoedians unto his sonne MF? Charles Killegrew I do therefore...hereby order that the said Company do in all things conforme themselues to the orders and directions of M* Charles Killegrew.”’ 1 L.C. 7/1. Entry: “‘ Charles Killigrew Esq. Master of the Revells in Mr! Thomas Killigrews place resigned. Feb. 24: 1678.’ Orders regarding his authority are to be found scattered throughout the L.C. books: cf. 7/x dated Feb. 12, 1678: “‘I do hereby order that His Mate* Comoedians, and His Royall Highnesse Comoedians do observe and obey such orders and directions as they shall from time to time receive from Mr? Charles Killegrew Master of the Revells, to His Mate.” 2 L.C. 5/142, p. 98 and 7/1. “His Ma® being dissatisfied with the Governement of the Players His Servants at the Royal Theatre, upon theire humble petition which I here send you is pleased to gratify them in theire proposition of governeing themselves but withall, that Mr Kille- grews right to his shares and proffitts may bee preserved and that he may haue also security given him to indempnify him from those Articles and debts, which hee alleadges hee is lyable unto, as you willsee in his Answeare to theire petition which I here alsoe send you His Ma®® desires it may be dispatcht by you with all conveniency That the Company may begin to play to support themselues because they suffer every day they lye still.” The letter is addressed from Arlington to Sir William Jones, the Attorney General. Killigrew seems to have been sparing of his money. The dismissal of the musicians has already been noted (supra, p. 62) and on May 12 Robert Baden was petitioning for £135. 12s. due for properties delivered (L.C. 5/190). This was ordered to be paid by Jan. 10, 1677/8 (L.C. 5/191). On April 5, 1678, Thomas Jolly sued the company for £54 “for makeing cloathes for ye vse of ye Company” (L.C. 5/191). 3 L.C. 5/143, p. 69 and 7/1. “Whereas Michaell Mohun, Nicholas Burt, and Robert Shatterell three of His Ma'e® Comoedians haue given Bond of fiue hundred pounds unto Charles Killegrew Esq....to returne the Stock of Clothes and Scenes belonging to the Royal Theatre entire at the end of three yeares...and whereas I am informed that some of the said Clothes hath beene carried out of the House, and embezelled by some of the Company These are therefore to require all His Ma‘** Company of Comoedians both men and women that none of them presume to go out of the House in theire acting Clothes.” 4 L.C. 5/143, p. 399 and 7/1. “His Mat¢ being informed that you are 294 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES Other troubles of a different kind also came upon the Theatre Royal, troubles so great that Haynes’ arrest “for reciteinge...a Scurrilous & obscoene Epilogue” on June 18, 1677, must have appeared a triflet. Dryden, as we have seen, was intimately associated with the company on the rebuilding of their theatre. It would appear that this author had been specially engaged by the King’s comedians to supply them with plays, they providing him with a regular salary. The arrangement, no doubt, had worked well enough for a time, all of Dryden’s plays, except Sir Martin Mar-all in which he collaborated with the Duke of Newcastle and The Tempest in which he was aided by D’Avenant, being acted at the various theatres utilised by the Royal company. In March, 1678, however, Mr Limberham was given at D.G. and the following year appeared the joint work of Lee and Dryden, Oedipus, at the same theatre. The actors immediately put forward their complaint in the shape of a petition, with what result we can, now, only surmise. At any rate, Dryden’s next two plays were both given to the Duke’s company?. going about to dispose of the Players Stock of Clothes, Bookes, and other Properties belonging to His Mate* Theatre Royall, His Mat® hath com- anded mee to require you And I do hereby require you not to dispose of any of the said Clothes, or other properties belonging to the said Play- house, but that you cause them safely to bee kept, and that you take an Inventory of the same, and deliuer a Copy of the said Inventory to Major Mohun to bee by him kept for the rest of the Company that are concerned therein.” 1 An explanation of the following entry will probably never be found, but it shows the troubles of the actors: “‘’ Tho: Johnson one of y° Owners of y® Theatre Royall agt Tho: Sheppey & Hen. Hailes 554i vpon ye account of ye Theatre June 98 1679”’ (L.C. 5/191). 2 'This petition is quoted in Malone’s Life of Dryden, forming the first part of his edition of the prose works and letters. It runs as follows: ‘Whereas upon Mr Dryden’s binding himself to write three playes a yeare, he the said Mr Dryden was admitted and continued as a sharer in * the King’s Playhouse for diverse years, and received for his share and a quarter, three or four hundred pounds, communibus annis, but though he received the moneys, we received not the playes, not one ina yeare. After which, the House being burnt, the Company in building another con- tracted great debts, so that the Shares fell much short of what they were formerly. 'Thereupon Mr Dryden complaining to the Company of his want of profit, the Company was so kind to him that they not only did not presse him for the playes which he so engaged to write for them, and for which he was paid beforehand, but they did also, at his earnest request, give him a third day for his last new play called All for Love; and at the receipt of the money of the said third day, he acknowledged it as a guift, and a particular kindnesse of the Company. Yet notwithstanding this kind proceeding, Mr Dryden has now, jointly with Mr Lee (who was in pension with us to the last day of our playing, and shall continue) written a play called Oedipus, and given it to the Duke’s Company, contrary to his said HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES — 295 The condition to which the T.R. players were brought is amply to be seen in a couple of letters addressed by the Lord Chamber- lain to the authorities at Oxford, recommending the King’s players. It was no doubt in the midst of their greatest chaos that in May, 1680, they received permission from the King to pay a visit to Oxford. On May 15, the Lord Chamberlain wrote to the Vice-Chancellor, advising him of the proposed journey and bidding him welcome the actors!, but misfortune dogged the footsteps of the weary players. From the second letter, dated June 5, we learn. that they had been forestalled. Another company, the players from Smock Alley, Dublin, had been before them in the University town?. agreement, his promise, and all gratitude, to the great prejudice and almost undoing of the Company, they being the only poets remaining to us. Mr Crowne, being under the like agreement with the Duke’s House, writt a play called the Destruction of Jerusalem, and being forced by their refusall of it to bring it to us, the said Company compelled us after the studying of it, and a vast expence in scenes and cloathes to buy off their clayme, by paying all the pension he had received from them ; amounting to one hundred and twelve pounds paid by the King’s Company, besides neere forty pounds the said Mr Crowne paid out of his owne pocket. These things considered, if, notwithstanding Mr Dryden’s said agreement, promise and moneys freely given him for his said lastnew play, and themany titles we have to his writings, this play be judged away from us, we must submit.” This document is signed by Hart, Killigrew, Burt, Goodman and Mohun. As Mr Limberham is not mentioned in this petition, and as Oedipus seems to have been finished in 1678, it is possible that it may be dated either late in 1678 or very early in 1679. The statements given here, save perhaps for the estimate of-the value of a share, are fairly correct. Barely six new plays were produced at the T.R. between 1678 and 1681. 1 L.C. 5/143, p. 506, and 7/1. “Windsor Castle May: 15 1680 “Reverend St ‘“His Mates Comoedians haveing obteyned His leave to go and aire themselves in the Country, now Hee have [‘ have’ written over ‘hath’] no need of theire Attendance at Court and beleiveing no aire better than that at Oxford, having likewise prevailed with His Ma‘® to comand mee to recomend them to your Protection, That they may represent some of theire good Playes, for some convenient time before the University: I do very heartily do it, assureing my selfe, that for the Character and Pre- viledge they have of being His Ma*®’ sworne Servants, and for being men of letters, you will be pleased to afford them all the favour that shall bee necessary towards theire security, whilst they are there, which they pro- mise they shall not abuse in any degree I am with much truth Reverend St Yot most Affectionate and humble Servant, Arlington.” For the Reverd Dt Timothy Haughton Vice Chancell of the University of Oxford. ‘ , : 2 L.C. 7/1. “I wrote to you on May the 1 52 recommending to yo 296 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES The year 1680 introduces us to a new set of complications. It was a year of political unrest, and this was at once reflected in the theatre by the banning of a number of plays?. This, added to the losses of the house, made a union of the two patents not only desirable but necessary. Gildon tells us that this year, on Oct. 14, D’Avenant entered into an agreement with Hart and Smith?, and on May 14, 1682, articles of union were signed between Charles Killigrew, Betterton, Charles D’Avenant and Smith?. favour and protection His Ma‘e® Comoedians, who haveing since com- plained to him, that there is another Company of the same Profession, whose admittance in the University will frustrate them of the Proffitt they promised themselves under His Mate* name His Ma'® hath comanded mee to lett you know His Pleasure that Hee would have His owne Comoe- dians onely gratified with this favour they needing such an Extraordinary Encouragement to repaire them for some misfortunes lately befallen them, and perswadeing himselfe they can singly afford the University as much divertisement as theire vacancie from theire studies will admitt off.” 1 See supra, p. 10. From Jan. 19 to 29, 1680/1 the T'.R. was silenced by royal command. On Aug. 12, 1682, Lady Slingsby and Mrs Behn were both arrested (L.C. 5/191 and 5/16, p. 118): “‘ Whereas the Lady Slingsby Comoedian and Mrs Aphar Behen haue by acting and writing at His Royall Highnesse Theatre comitted Severall Misdemeanors & made abusiue reflections vpon Persons of Quality, & haue written & spoaken Scandalous Speeches without my Lycense or Approbaton of those that ought to pvse & authorize the same These are therefore to require you to take into yo™ Custody the said Lady Slingsby & M*® Aphar Behen....” Mary Meggs on Nov. to of this year petitioned “agt Charles Killegrew Esq a lease to sell fruite in ye Kings playhouse & now hindred.”’ This was probably just before the Union; Mary Meggs may have found her place taken by the Duke’s fruit woman. 2 'The document has been reprinted in Fitzgerald, op. cit. 1. 148. The contracting parties were Dr Charles D’Avenant, Betterton and Smith, on the one part and Hart and Kynaston on the other. The arrangements were as follows: (1) on an understanding that Hart and Kynaston would not act at the King’s theatre, the managers of the D.G. playhouse pro- mised to pay them 5s. each per acting day. (2) If Kynaston should become free to act at the Duke’s theatre, this payment would cease. (3) Hart and Kynaston promised to make over to the Duke’s theatre their share in the properties of the T.R. (4) They also agreed to make over their authority to receive 6s. 3d. per acting day from the T.R. (5) Both promised to aid in furthering a union of the companies, and Kynaston agreed to endeavour to get free to act at the Duke’s but should not be compelled to do so unless he got 1os.a day. (6) Both agreed to go to law with Killigrew to get these articles performed. 8 Fitzgerald, op. cit. 1. 154. By this it was agreed (1) that the patents should be united; (2) that plays should be acted by the Duke’s company under the management of Killigrew and D’Avenant; (3) that the T.R. company should be dissolved and the plays belonging to it given over; (4) that the united companies should be able to use the T.R. but not have the scenery; (5) that every day the T.R. or D.G. was used for acting £3 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES — 297 The joint companies started acting on Nov. 16 of this year!. This union of the patents, which was to éndure till 1695, caused quite a number of famous actors to disappear from the stage. Betterton was left without a rival in the theatrical world. A number of the best-known performers, such as Mohun, appear never to have acted again?, a few joined the united company, and some at least appear to have set off on a journey to Scotland. Among these were Gray, Goodman and Clark. They had returned to London by Feb. 8, 1683 (possibly 1683/4)°. should be paid to Killigrew; (6) that the profits should be divided into 20 shares, 3 of which were to go to Killigrew. + Downes, p. 39. ® That this was involuntary on Mohun’s part, and that the joint managers obviously favoured the Duke’s men is proved by the documents given in Appendix B. ® L.C. 7/1. “Whereas His Mat® hath comanded mee to examine a Complaint of Mt Gray M? Goodman, and Mr? Clarke, against M? Charles Killegrew concerning monies taken up for defraying theire charges in comeing out of Scotland: I haue called Mr Charles Killegrew, M? Gray, Mr? Clarke and M* Goodman before mee, and they haveing submitted the whole matter to my determination, And M* Gray haveing made it appeare, that he with M?* Goodman, and M? Clarke are bound in a Bond of Twenty pounds to M'? Morley, which was taken up for the use of some of the Comoedians there in Scotland, towards the bringing of them back to act in His Mat®® Theatre at London and that he hath beene sued upon that Bond by M* Charles Killegrew to whom that Bond was assigned by M® Morley, In the charges of which suite he makes appeare That by Bills, Answeares, Injunctions in Chancery and Comon Law he hath expended the sume of Twenty Six pounds Sixteene Shillings, and haveing heard all parties, and examined the whole matter, do find that M™ Gray ought to bee freed from the said Bond, and paid his charges by the whole Company, that was then in being for whome hee did that service, and for as much as that Company is dissolved These are therefore to signify His Mates Pleasure, that out of the monies that is in yo™ present possession, or that shall first bee received by you, ariseing out of the Bookes, Scenes, and Cloths, either of the old or new stock belonging to the said former Company at the Royall Theatre, you cause the said Bond of Twenty pounds to bee discharged, and M* Gray freed from the same and alsoe that you satisfy M? Gray his charges of 26!!: 16%: 00%: occasioned by the suite upon the said Bond.’ In the same entry book is another document, dated Mar. 3, 1683/4 identically similar to the above down to “dissolved.” The following is then added: “And the said M* Charles Killegrew is allowed three shares out of yo™T Company, for the Bookes, Scenes, and Clothes, that did belong to them, and ought to haue discharged the debts of that Company, These are therefore to signify His Ma‘¢* Pleasure that out of the said three shares payable to the said M* Killegrew in considera- tion of the said Bookes, Scenes and Clothes, you cause the said Bond of twenty pounds to be discharged and M' Gray freed from the same And alsoe that you satisfy the said M* Gray his charges of twenty six pounds sixteene shillings occasioned by the suite upon the said Bond.” Both of these are addressed to D’Avenant and Betterton. This money was not 298 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES Troubles were not stopped by the union. On Dec. 20, 1682, appeared a petition of the ‘“‘Comoedians agt M* Killegrew,” de- claring that he was not keeping to his agreement?. In February, 1685, Charles, the great patron of the drama, died, and for some two months, apparently, the theatres were closed. An order to recommence their activities was made only on April 20, 16852, James it is clear had inherited some of his predecessor’s love of dramatic shows. On Jan. 12, 1687/8, he constituted a fresh band of royal comedians, including ‘‘Thomas Betterton W= Smyth James Noke Cave Vnderhill Anthony Leigh Edward Kinaston Phillip Griffin Joseph Williams Tho: Jevon John Downes John Verbroggell (sic) John Bowman Samuell Sandford Francis Baker Martin Powell George Bright William Monfort John ffreeman Francis Pauy George Powell Henry Bowtell and John Barr®”’ to whom were added, on May 19, Thomas Sheppey*, and, on May 23, Thomas Sympson and Aaron Darby®. The women in this royal company are also enumerated: “‘Elizabeth Barry Sarah Cooke Margarett Osborne Francis Mariaknight (sic) Katherine Davies and Anne Bracegirle (sic)®.” The theatres, apparently, were still in a bad way financially, and small things, such as the 3s. 4d. made payable to Mrs Lacy, a sum which she claimed from the daily takings of the house, seemed to bother the management’. Possibly the discipline was none too good, for on Oct. 5, 1687, we find in an order to Charles Killigrew as Master of the Revels a curious command ‘‘that he (Charles Killigrew) take care the Comoedians do come in good time’.” The King had evidently had experience of not a few unfortunate delays. James still continued a fair patronage of the theatre. He ordered a certain number of plays at court and attended the public playhouse.as Charles had done. Out of his paid by Dec. 8, 1684, when another order was issued to have the payment made immediately. A reference is made to this Scotch visit in Dryden’s Prologue to the University of Oxford (ed. Sargeaunt, p. 239): “Our House has suffered in the Common woe, We have been troubled with Scotch Rebels too. Our brethren are from Thames to Tweed departed, And of our Sisters all the kinder-hearted To Edenborough gone, or coached or carted.” 1 LAC. 5/191. “William Cartwright & ye rest of His Mate* Servants belonging to y® Theatre Royall agt Mt? Charles Killegrew for keepeing ye Clothes that belonged to the Playhouse & not giueing satisfaccon....” ele 5) TAS) Daro4. S.C. 5/T4S..p.06, triads DuZons DMS PIO ® Td. p. 66. ’ This claim was made on the strength of a loan made in the early years of the Restoration by her husband, the actor Lacy. There are nearly a dozen references to her petitions in the Lord Chamberlain’s books. 8 L.C. 7/1 and 5/148, p. 19. HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 299 Privy Purse he gave Mrs Barry sums of money for her acting!; Crowne he paid £20 for Sir Courtly Nice on Jan. 9, 1687/8 and £20 for Darius on May 8, 16882. On Feb. 13, 1688/9, William and Mary came to the throne of England. The Catholic element of the preceding years was dis- missed, and a slightly more Puritan tone is to be observed in the theatre. Still the monarch paid a certain attention to the play- house. Mrs Barry and others were occasionally given gifts for acting or writing’, and on Aug. 23, 1689, he formed a band of comedians in ordinary*. Notwithstanding all these, however, the old royal countenance of the theatre was gone. By 1690 theatrical affairs were moving towards a new crisis. On Aug. 30, 1687, Alexander D’Avenant had come to take the place of Charles D’Avenant, and on March 24, 1690, this Alex- ander D’Avenant sold his share to Christopher Rich, who, apparently, allowed D’Avenant to “‘farm” it for him. It is not exactly certain who precisely were concerned in the ownership of the theatre during the next few years. Skipwith must have - entered about this time, and from a document of 1691 it seems that a Richard Middlemore and an Andrew Card were chiefly interested with Alexander D’Avenant in the affairs of the play- house®. Disruptions were still rife among the actors and the actresses. On March 11, 1689, Mrs Corey had been petitioning the Lord Chamberlain because she was banished from the play- house, and an order was sent to have her readmitted®. A few months later, the officials of the playhouse were summoned for another matter? Quarrels between the management and the 1 There are three separate entries of such payments: on April 10, 1686, £40 (L.C. 5/147, p. 112, deleted), on April 21, 1687, £35 (Jd. p. 321), May 8, 1686 (Id. p. 136), and Dec. 20, 1687, £20 for her acting in The Emperor of the Moon (L.C. 5/148, p. 59). 2 L.C. 5/148, pp. 64 and 195. 3 See Appendix B. 4 L.C. 5/149, p. 219. These included John Hodgson, John Freeman, Aaron Darby, Powell, Bright and Trefusis: to these were added on July 5, 1690, Francis Pavy (L.C. 5/150, p. 119) and on Mar. 2, 1691/2, Joseph Harris (L.C. 5/151, p. 35) and on April 2 Michael Lee (Jd. p. 51). 5 Hist. MSS. Comm. House of Lords, p. 464. S17. C.15/140, po16: 7 L.C. 5/192: “M? Montfort Mt Charles Killegrew M* Thomas D’Avenant or M? Alexander M?* Betterton M* Powell Junior M™ Bray Danceing Master The Book Keeper The Property Maker M* Ashbun M2 Trefusis Gentlemen M? Haynes complaineing against M™ Montfort, my Lord Chamberlaine hath appointed to heare the Controversy upon Friday morning next And His Lordpp desires the Gentlemen above named to be at His Lodgeings at the Cock pitt at Whitehall at that time Octob' 15‘ 1689 Yo" humble Servant Rich: Colinge.” Early the following year Nicholas Burt petitioned against Killigrew “for deteyneing his share 300 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES actors must have been frequent, and matters had grown to such a state by September, 1691, that Betterton himself abandoned his share and went on salary. On Dec. 7 Killigrew and Betterton were in the Court of Chancery over various differences}. A few days later, from Dec. 16 to 19, the theatres were closed, because of an affront, so it is said, to a peer*. In August, 1692, Williams left the playhouse for several months, probably because of internal differences, and on Sept. 26, Betterton, Mountfort, Leigh and Bowman, no doubt after a great amount of arguing, drew up a document setting forth the rights of the sharing actors. After this, Betterton came into share again. In December, 1692, the theatres lost by death two of their best men, Mountfort and Leigh, although Williams returned to the theatre sometime in January, 1692/3. Going from bad to worse, the company was probably losing heavily, so that on Jan. 16 of this year, Betterton and Bowman went on salary again. All this time, Alexander D’Avenant, acting in an underhand manner, had been cheating and defrauding the actors, until, when the discovery of his impostures was immi- nent, he fled in October, 1693*. A month later, Doggett, Bowen, and others mutinied, but were brought to reason by Betterton and the patentees. It was too late to patch up quarrels, however, and in December, 1694, Betterton, at the head of a great body of the finest actors, laid a lengthy petition before the Lord Chamberlain5. On the roth of the month, after Rich and the other patentees had filed a series of answers to the various counts, the contending parties were ordered to attend at the house of Sir Robert Howard on Monday, Dec. 17. For a month or two, matters dragged on. On Feb. 11, 1694/5, the patentees made advances to Betterton, advances which were indignantly refused. In the beginning of March, the Lord Cham- berlain drew up a series of proposals to which the patentees agreed on Mar. 19°, but Betterton, trusting to get a licence, was well of Cloathes, Scenes, and Bookes belonging to the Theatre Royall” (Feb. 10, 1689/90). The same month Elizabeth Currer was complaining against Killigrew and D’Avenant. 1 See P.R.O. Chancery Affidavit Register, vol. 30, Hilary Term, 1691-2, Nos. 911-3. The question, as usual, was one of money and debts. 2 L.C. 5/150, pp. 340 and 345. 3 See Appendix B. 4 See Appendix B. 5 Given in Appendix B. ® L.C. 7/3. “‘A copy of patentees Submission to the Lord Chamber- laines Proposall....Haveing considered of the Differences between y® Patentees & Adventurers & the Comedians at the Theatres by the Papers on both sides delivered to me; I doe propose it as a thing reasonable That the shares of the profitts and Aftermoney should be diuided into ten HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES _ 301 ahead with his work in preparing a new theatre by the 22nd of the month?. Evidently no more could be done, and on Mar. 25, 1694/5 a fresh licence was granted to the revolting actors®. The newly converted playhouse was opened on April 30, the inhabitants of Lincoln’s Inn Fields vainly protesting against the re-opening of a theatre in their midst. The twelve years’ union was thus definitely broken. As soon as the licence had been granted the old patentees rushed to gain actors, Verbruggen and his wife being engaged on April 10. The Lord Chamberlain evidently feared that all trouble was not yet over, for he issued, during the following few years, a number of orders covering the arrangements of the two theatres. On April 16, 1695, it was commanded that no actor should quit either house, and this decree was confirmed on July 253. In Equall parts, fhue Shares to goe to the patentees and ffiue Shares to the Actors, to be diuided among them, and some of the Cheife Actors to be Sharers the others to haue Sallairey The Lord Chamberlaine reserveing y® Governem! of the Kings Servants to himselfe as allwayes was practiced by his Predecessors, or to whom he should appoint.” This is signed by Killigrew, Skipwith and Rich “In Confidence yo" Lordshipp will vnite us & Compose all disputes & differences between us.” 1 L.C. 7/3. “‘Wee the Patentees of the Theatres in Order to an amicable composure of matters, haveing severall times, & pticularly on the 11 of ffebruary last, sent to M™ Betterton & other Comedians in Combinaton with him, to meet us, They Refused soe to doe, declareing that haueing putt themselues under your Lorpps JurisdicCon & reserved all matters in difference to your Lorpps determinaton, They could doe nothing without your Lorpps Order. That Wee haueing submitted to yo™ Lorpps Proposalls In Confidence That yo" Lorppe would vnite us, and Settle all matters in difference between vs, yet Wee find that they proceed in Converting the Tennis Court in Lincolnes Inn ffeilds to a Playhouse. Wee therefore now humbly pray your Lordshipp That you will be pleased 1 To order a Stopp to be putt thereunto. 2 To require the said Comedians to Act under the Patents at such Sallaires as they had when they left off acting on the 22'" of Dec last vntill such tyme as y® matters in difference shall be Composed, To the facilitateing whereof 3 Wee humbly propose That as to such matters in difference as are too tedious & troublesome for yo™ Lorpes Examinaton That it may (if yo" Lorpne thinke fitt) be referred to M* Henry Harris & M*? W™ Smith who were formerly for many Yeares Shareing Actors & Managers of y® Theatres, and by that meanes well acquainted with the Rules & Methods of the Company That they make their Report to yo Loppe.” 2 A copy of this licence is contained in L.C. 7/1. The authority is given to Betterton, Mrs Barry, Mrs Bracegirdle, Bowman, Williams, Underhill, Dogett, Bowen, Mrs Verbruggen, Mrs Leigh Bright. 3L.C. 7/1 and 7/3. “‘Whereas Thomas Betterton Elizabeth Barry Anne Bracegirdle John Bowman Joseph Williams Caue Underhill Thomas 302 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES spite of this, by April 3, 1696, Doggett was making preparations to leave Betterton!, and on Oct. 26 was acting at D.L. Verbruggen, similarly, had been enticed from the patentees and was per- forming at L.I.F.2 What exactly happened we do not know. The Doggett William Bowen Elinor Lee George Bright are by my Warrant sworne and admitted His Mats servants & Comoedians in Ordinary and have His Mates Leave and Authority Signified under hand and Seale dated y® 25th day of March [over April deleted] 1695 to act Comoedyes Tragedyes Playes Enterludes and Opera’s and to performe all other Theatricall and Musicall Entertainements but so as to be alwayes under my Government & regulation from time to time as hath been Exercised by my predecessors To prevent therefore any disorder or disturbance which may happen among them by y® deserting & quitting y° Company without due notice and my leaue first obtayened as hath been alwayes accustomed I do hereby order that none of His Mat®® Comoedians aboue named, nor any that shall be admitted hereafter into y® said Company by me do presume to desert or quitt y® said Company to act or play in any other place or company whatsoever without my leaue first had.’ The second order, also in L.C. 7/1, is even more explicit: “To prevent all disorders & [the last two words added above the line] disturbances which may arise & happen by reason of y® Actors or any Servants hyred by y® Two Companyes of His Mat’s Comoedians who shall desert & Quitt either of y® said Companyes & goe from one Company to y® other at Theire owne Pleasure after They haue been hyred & Entertained by Either Company I do hereby order in further Confirmation of my former Order dated y® Sixteenth day of Aprill Last That no Actor Actress or Servant hyred & Entertained by either of ye Companyes do presume to desert Quitt or Leaue y® Company wherein hee or shee is hyred & Entertained to goe & Act and be Entertained in y® other Company untill y® time is Expired wherein They haue Giuen Bond or Articles to giue Warning to Quitt y° Company And then to haue y® discharge of y° Company wherein hee or shee was or is first hyred & Entertained and my Leaue under my hand for approbation of y® same at Theire perrills of being punished.” 1 On this date he entered into an agreement with the managers of the T.R., arranging to start at that house on Oct. 10. He was to receive £4 per acting day from Skipwith, the patentee, or have a share “up to the heighth as shall be paid to M? George Powell or M? John Verbruggen,” as well as a benefit of an old play to be acted on a Wednesday or Friday in Lent, the actor paying the charges of the house. Bonds of £500 were given by both the management and the actor. 2 L.C. 7/1. “‘Haveing heard y® differences between y® Comoedians of both Theatres it appeared that both y®° Companies had seduced Actors Mr? Doggett from y® Theatre in Lincolns Inne feilds and M* Vanbruggen from the pattentees Contrary to Theire owne Articles and my Orders pursuant thereunto I doe therefore hereby Order for this time onely that M? Vanbruggen shall remaine to act with the pattentees untill the first day of January next (that they may in the meane time provide them- selues of others to Act his Parts) and that after the first day of Jan™ next Mr Vanbruggen hath free Liberty to Act [the last two words added] at which Theatre he will...and for y® future my Orders of y® 16*® of Aprill 1695 and of y® 25 of July 1695 shall be punctually obserued.’? This is dated Oct. 26, 1696, HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES 303 Lord Chamberlain, according to this document, distinctly ordered that Verbruggen should continue with the D.L. company until Jan. 1, 1696/7; on October 27 the latter entered into an agree- ment with the L.I.F. house, deciding to start there at the beginning of the new year!. Why Doggett was left free we do not know. The order against any actor’s leaving either theatre was reiterated on May 27, 16977, and Doggett, who had got tired of the D.L. management and had abandoned that company, was ordered to be arrested on Nov, 23 of that year*, Probably the comedian acquiesced for the moment, but in October, 1700, he had entered into an agreement with the L.I.F. house‘. Other orders and agreements of these five years all point to the same thing, a state of unrest and of uncertainty in theatrical affairs, a tyrannical government at the D.L. and D.G. houses, a mixed republic at L.I.F. A lengthy and important settlement of the affairs of the latter company is preserved in the Public Record Office®. This evidently was found unsatisfactory, as on Noy. 11, 1700, Betterton was appointed sole manager of the theatre®. The D.L. troupe had its own troubles arising out of the domineering tone of the patentees. Doggett, who had but newly joined that company, headed a petition (undated, but probably about 1697)’ against the management. Rich and Skipwith tried in all ways, legitimate and otherwise, to crush their rivals. They introduced buffoonery, rope-dancing, tumbling, dancing. Better- 1 L.C. 7/3. Unfortunately an order in L.C. 5/192 does not give the ‘Theatre at which Verbruggen was playing; it is incomplete and breaks off half finished : “‘ Whereas M? Van Bruggen one of His Mat®s’ Comoedians hath violently assaulted Boyle Esq? and Broke him agt y® publique peace and hath with reproch full of scandalous words & speeches abused St Thomas Skypwith Barrt I doe hereby discharge M* Van bruggen from Acting in yo™ Theatre, or any other untill I giue further directions herein And I require.” SER. 5/rs2; p..¥5. To.C. sir52) p.4o. 4 L.C. 7/1. This is not dated. “‘M* Doggett is to be wt? y° Company in Little Lincoln’s Inn ffields & to continue acting with them from y® 12 day of October next Ensuing, to y® 21 day of May following, & have for his Salary three pounds a week certain, except in case of any publick Calamity, or prohibition from acting He is also to have y® whole profits of one play acted for his benefit’ without any charge: if the sum does not reach £100 “Y® Company shall be oblig’d to make up to him y® afores* sum of 1oo0!l for y® first play to be acted for his Benefit, namely the first play that shall be acted for him this present year 1700.”’ In later years it was arranged that he should have one benefit, with a minimum income of £60, “provided that M™ Dogget shall not choose to be acted for his benefit any new or reviv’d play during y® first run.” 5 Given in Appendix B. 6 LC. 5/853, pe 22. WIR OAGIEY 304 HISTORY OF THE PLAYHOUSES ton petitioned against these, we must suppose in vain’. The years were rapidly approaching when pantomime was to banish legitimate drama from the stage. The years, too, were coming when Collier’s outburst was to startle London’s theatre-goers and players. On Jan. 24, 1696, the Lord Chamberlain had issued an order that all plays should be fully licensed?. On June 4, 1697 he commanded all scurrilous sentiments and expressions of profanity to be deleted from dramas®. In spite of this, the old tone continued, and a more peremptory order was issued on Feb. 18, 1698/94. The contro- versy regarding morals, however, concerns rather a later period than this. We may well leave the theatres at this point: the Puritan conscience reasserted, the patentee house veering towards buf- foonery, the L.I.F. theatre struggling on with a divided manage- ment, and the one man who had made dignified the actor’s art in Restoration times growing old and weak, ready to retire, just before his death, in the reign of Queen Anne. 1 L.C. 7/3. This ‘‘ sheweth that it appears by the Receipts and constant Charges of the Theatres for some Years past, that the Town will not maintain two Playhouses. That the two Company’s have by their bidding against each other for Singers, Dancers &c who are generally Strangers, rais’d the Prices so high that both are impoverisht by it, and most of their Profitts carry’d away by Forreigners. That both Companys have been fore’d for their Subsistance to bring on the Stage, Dancers on the Ropes, Tumblers, Vaulters, Ladder dancers &c and thereby debas’d the Theatre, and almost levell’d it with Bartholomew ffaire.”’ 2 L.C. 7/1 and 7/3. “‘ Whereas Severall Playes &c are Acted & Prolouges spoken wherein many things ought to be struck out and Corrected And y°® playes approued & Licensed by y® Master of the Revells according to y® Antient Custome of His place and upon the Examination of the said Master I find that he Complaines that of Late severall new & revived playes haue been Acted at y® Theatres of Drury Lane & Dorsett Gardens without any Licence And that of Late y° Managers of that Company haue refused to send such playes to be perused Corrected & allowed by y® Master of y® Revells I doe therefore Order and Command that for y® future noe playes shall be Acted but such as shall first be sent (and that in due time) to Charles Killegrew Esq? Master of y® Revells by him to be perused and diligently Corrected & Licensed....And I doe further Order & Command the said Master to be very Carfull in Correcting all Obsenityes & other Scandalous matters & such as any wayes Offend against y® Lawes of God & Good manners or the knowne Statutes of this Kingdome....”’ BA. Cus tsompe To. $0L7.C.75/152, p..202. APPENDIX B Documents Illustrative of the History of the Stage [The following records are taken from documents or books in the Lord Chamberlain’s department of the Public Record Office. As not all of these are of equal importance, I have condensed a few; actual wording is indicated by inverted commas. Hitherto extracts have been given only from two books in this collection (L.C. 7/r and L.C. 5/138), first by R. W. Lowe in his Life of Betterton and later by E. Thaler in Shakespeare to Sheridan. These books, however, are by no means the most important, the highly interesting play-lists not starting till a date covered by other warrant volumes.] I. Lists oF PLAYS PERFORMED BEFORE ROYALTY. 1. Plays given by the T.R. Company. (a) Warrant dated Aug. 29, 1668, for plays acted from Dec. ro, 1666 to July 31, 1668 (L.C. 5/139, p. 129), and similar warrants (L.C. 5/12, p. 17) carrying on list of performances to May 6, 1669. (In these lists I have condensed the long entries of payments which usually take the form ‘‘20: 00: 00,” and have added the £ marks.) “His Mate,..hath had presented before him those following Comoedies & Tragoedies at Court and at the Theatre Royall. Dec: 101666 The Silent Weoman at Court meet ese. [The second list reads ‘‘ Scornefull Lady: ae 20 The Humorous Leiv‘ at the Theatre the Queenes Ma* there . me Jess” "22 The Indian Emperour : at the Theatre Royall lO ffeb: 14 flora’s Vagaries at Court ... ZO [The second list reads “‘ Rule a Wife and have a Wife. my March 2: The Mayden Queene at the Theater Bae ae ite! 5 The Mayden Queene at the Theatre AE acs LO 1667 Ap: 15: The Change of Crownes his Mat¢ and the pa ae were at the Theatre mea ae 20 18 The Mayden Queene at Court mie ae Beg 238) 27 Bartholomew fayre at the Theatre aon cea EO May 13: The Comittee at the Theatre ee eo [Here the second list adds “‘16 Auglaura at Court. » 20] NRD 20 3066 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF 18 The Country Cap’. at ye Theatre ... TLIO Aug: 17 The Troubles of Queene Elizabeth at the Theatre 10 [The second list reads “7” for “17.”] Aug: 28: The fox at Court... eee Wee eS) [This is omitted in the second list.] Sept: 27 The Sea Voyage His Mate had two boxes at ° Theatre, (2... ae 20 [The second list reads ‘for “ 27, 39 «6 asth, Ag Octo: 7 The Poetesse at the Theatre tes hy! BaP Hi 10) 19 The Black Prince at the Theatre ... Aor a tO 29 The English Monsier at y® Theatre zs oP i) Nov: 11 The Indian Emperour at the Theatre ae seed LLC 16 Philaster at the Theatre be aes one ee 21 The Goblins at y® Theatre ... eee aap BAS 23 The Maydes Tragedie at y® Theatre ina 455 7i0 Jan: 04: The Mayden Queene at the Theatre ins Io 20: The Indian Emperour King & Queene at the Theatre Dae eee pre ele) 27 The Mayden Queene ‘at Court ee fee ose 120 ffeb: 20: The Duke of Lerma at y® Theatre £6 sie MIO March 20 The Virgin Martyr at the Theatre .. be) [The second list reads “2” for ‘‘20,”’ has no date opposite The Mulbery Garden, and writes "Jan. 12 for June 12.] 1668 May 18 The Mulbery Garden His Mate and the Queene at the Theatre aaa 20 June 12 An Evening Loue his Mate ‘and the © Queene at the Theatre | =. ace 20 July 14 Hide Parke at the Theatre ee ae ss ceo aT Mons? Raggou at y® Theatre pass ase sutOe, The second list runs as follows :— “Sep* 14: The Damaseiles A la Mode y® King here ... as ae Sept 28: The Citty Match the King here... Sean LO: Nov: 6: The Island Princesse King & Miser: See ee 20 9 The Tamer tamed at Court be See ee 20 21 The Scornefull Lady at Court ae ane ste, 20 Dec: 3%: 1668. ‘The Vsurper King here ard bbe be SL LO Os The Vsurper at Court tee Aho psa = AS) 18: Cattalines Conspiracie Knig (sic) heré 5 nite. Jan: 24; Cattalines Conspiracie King & Queene here ec 20 7 The Island Princesse King here... As mao HS 13 Cattalines Conspiracie King here ... te ae LO 16: Horace The King here us8 A PA Boon et! 21: Horace The King & Queene ; P 20 29: The Heiresse The King here : a0 TO ffeb: 8% The Comittee at Court ane ane be nee ZO 22 Bartholomew ffayre at Court Me ave Pah oes) March 23: The Coxcombe y® King here Sho dae LIC) Ap.17: 1669 The Alchymist The King here re sce TO May 6:1669 ‘The King & Noe King Bee eek O77 (b) Warrant dated Noy. 26, 1674, for plays acted from Mar. 26, 1674 to Nov. 10, 1674 (L.C. 5/141, p. 73). THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 307 1694. March 26: The Beggers Bush Rad Be] 30 ‘The ffrench Opera. ... 10 Ap: 23 Marriagealamode ... 10 May 11 Loueina Maze an TG 12 Indian Emperor OE 16 Nero oh ane f G: Octo 20 The Traytor ... Sy: 24 Philaster .. 10 Noy. 9 _ Rollo Duke of Normandy 10 A box for y® Queene ... 10 10 =6©>-. Indian Emperor 3... zo.) TO July 4 Cittizen turned Gent. 10 8 the same... - Othelo y® Moor of Venice at Whithall 20 17. The Committe at Whitehall 20 24 The Humorouse Leivt at Whitehall 20 Dec: 1. The Beggars at Whitehall 20 9 A King & no King at Whitehall 20 15 the Mayden Queene at Whitehall 20” (e) Warrant dated June 30, 1687, for plays acted from Jan. 3, 1686/7 to May 16, 1687 (id. p. 361). “1686 His Mates Bill from y® Theatres January 3 The fond Husband at Whitehall £20 to ©The Orphan at Whitehall 20 19 The Rover at Whitehall 20 20 The King & Queene & a Box for y® Maydes of Hono? at y® Rehearsall 15 26 Rolo at Whitehall 20 1687 Aprill 6: The King & Queene & a Box for y® Maides of Hono? at y® Maides Tragedy i5 tr The Spanish Curate at Whitehall 20 18 Julius Caesar at Whitehall 20 25 The Island Princes at Whitehall 20 May y® 9 King Lear at Whitehall 20 12 The King at y® Mistress 10 16: Valentinian at Whitehall 2Ou (f) Warrant dated April 3, 1688, for plays acted from Jan. 31, 1687/8, to Feb. 27, 1687/8 (L.C. 5/148, p. 145). “1687 January 31: The Villaine at Whitehall £20 February 6. The Double Marriage at Whitehall 20 13. The Beggars Bush at Whitehall 20 20 The History of King Lear at Whitehall 20 27 The Humerous Leivetenant at Whitehall 20 314 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF (g) Warrant dated Jan. 2, 1689/90, for plays acted in May, Nov. and Dec. 1689 (L.C. 5/149, p. 368). “71689. Theire Ma®® Bill from the Theatres. May the 28: The Queene a Box, and a Box for the Maids of Hono? at the Spanish Fryer £15 31 St Courtly Nice Acted by the Queenes Command 10 Nov' the 7 The Queen a Box & a Box for the Maids of Hono? at y® Masacre of Paris 15 15 The Joviall Crew acted at Whitehall 20 Dect: the 42 The Queen a Box, and a Box for the Maids Hono? at Don Sebastian King of Portugall Dane (hk) Warrant for plays acted in Jan. 1689/90, April, Oct. and Nov. 1690, Feb. 1690/1, Jan. and Feb. 1691/2, Nov. 1692 and Jan. 1692/3 (L.C. 5/151, p. 369). 16895 Jan™ 162 y® Queen a Box & a Box for y® Maids Hont Alex4 (cancelled) 1690 Y® Queene a Box & a Box for y® Maids Apr. 30% Apr 30 1690 Octo? 21 Nov. 4¢) r7t Febt 4th Jan™ 1694 7% Feb gth Nov: 14% Feb 16 1693 Jan? 13 Hono? Amphytrion Acted at White-hall S™ Courtley Ye Q: a Box & a Box for y® Maids Hon? Amphitrion at Whitehall Rover y® Qa Box & a Box for y® Maids Honot Prophetess y® Q a Box & a Box for y® Maids Hon™ Edward 3 y® Q a Box & a Box for y® Maids Hont K Arthur y® Q a Box & a Box for y® Maids Hont Orphan y® Q: a Box & a Box for y® Maids Hont Henry 2 y® Qa Box & a Box for y® Maids Hont Fairy Queen y® Qa Box & a Box for y® Maids of Hont double dealer II. PLays BELONGING TO THE COMPANIES. 1. Plays allotted to D’Avenant (Dec. 12, 1660). In “Sr Will. Dauenant Acting Playes.” “Whereas S? William Davenant, Knight hath humbly p'sented to us a proposition of reformeinge some of the most ancient Playes that were playd at Blackfriers and of makeinge them, fitt, for the Company of Actors appointed vnder his direction and Comand, Viz: the playes called the Tempest, Measures, for Measures, Much adoe about nothinge, Rome and Juliet, Twelfe night, the Life of Kinge Henry the Eyght, the Sophy, Kinge Lear, the Tragedy of Mackbeth, the Tragedy of Hamlet prince of Denmarke, and the Dutchesse of Malfy, Therefore wee haue margin THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 315 granted vnto the sayd S' William Dauenant, liberty to represent the playes aboue named by the Actors vnder his comand, notwithstandinge any Warrant to the contrary, formerly granted.’’? The warrant proceeds to forbid any but D’Avenant’s actors to present these plays, and declares that he should also have the right in his own works. A note is then in- serted regarding the passing over of actors from one company to another, and the warrant closes by granting D’Avenant two months right in “The Mad Lover, The Mayd in y® Mill, the Spanish Curate the Loyall Subject Rule are and haue a Wife and Persiles prince of Tyre.” (L.C. 5/137, P. 343. 2. Plays allotted to D’ Avenant (Aug. 20, 1668). “Playes allowed to be acted by his Royall Highnesse y® Duke of Yorkes Comoedians The Poetaster Cupids Reuenge Timon of Athens Troyolus and Crisseida Three parts of H: y® 6: The honest mans fortune Woemen pleas’d Witt at Seuerall Weapons The Woemen Hater or The hungry Courtier All fooles Birons Conspiracy Broken heart Bird in a Cage Chabot Admirall of ffranse ffaithfull Shepheard (Shepheardesse in L.C. 5/12) Herod and Antipater Humor out of breath Jealous Louers Loues Melancholy Muliasses the Turke Queene of Arragon Reuenge of Bussy D’Ambois Reuenge for Honor This is the list of the playes allowed to His Royall Highnesse Actors and none other has right to them Aug. 202 1668.” Signed, Manchester. (L.C. 5/139, p. 375.) 3. Plays allotted to Killigrew (c. Jan. 12, 1668/9). “Plays Acted at the Theatre Royall. A Catalogue of part of His Mates Servants Playes as they were formerly acted at the Blackfryers & now allowed of to his Ma‘®* Servants at y® New Theatre Everyman in his Humour Everyman out of his Humour Cyntheas Revells Sejanus The ffox The Silent Weoman The Alchymist Catalin Bartholomew ffayre Staple of Newes The Devills an Asse Magnitick Lady Tale of a Tubb New Inn Beggers Bush Bonduca Custome of y® Country The Captaine The Chances The Coxcombe The Double Marriage The ffrench Lawyer The ffalse One The fayre Mayd of y® Inn The Humorous Leiv* The Island Princes The Knights of Malta The Loyall Subject The Lawes of Candye Loves Progresse The Winters Tale King John Richard the Second Loues Cure 316 Loues Pilgrimage The Noble Gentlemen The Nice Valour The Prophetesse The Marshall Mayd The Pilgrim The Queene of Corinth The Spanish Curate The Sea Voyage Valentinian The Weomans Prize A Wife for a Moneth The Wyd Goose-Chase The Elder Brother The ffaythfull Shephardesse A King & noe King The Maydes Tragedie Phylaster Rollo Duke of Normandy The Scornefull Lady Thiery & Theodorat Rule a Wife & haue a Wife The Gentlemen of Verona The Merry Wives of Windsor The Comoedy of Errors Loves Labour Lost Midsomer Nights Dreame The Merchant of Venice As you like it The Tameing of y® Shrew Alls well y* ends well Henry y® fourth The Second part The Royall Slaue Richard y® Third Coriolanus Andronicus DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF Julius Ceaser The Moore of Venice Anthony & Clopatra Cymbelyne The Doubtfull Heire The Impostor The Brothers The Sisters The Cardinall The Duke of Lerma The Duke of Millan Alphonso The vnnaturall Cumbat The Gardian Aglaura Arviragus & Philitia 15t pt. Arviragus & Philitia 2d pt. The Spartan Ladyes The Bashfull Lover Bussy D’Amboys Brenoralt Country Captaine The Variety The Emperour of y® East The Deserveing flavorett The Goblins The ffatall Dowry The Lost Lady The Devell of Edmonton More Desemblers then Weomen The Mayor of Quinborough The Northen Lasse The Novella Osmond y® Great Turke The Roman Actor The Widdow The Widdows Teares”’ (L.C. 5/12, p. 212.) III. REFERENCES TO PARTICULAR PERFORMANCES. 1. For the warrant for payment of {£20 to John Rhodes in respect of a performance of Ignoramus at Court, Nov. 1, 1662, see Appendix A, p. 278. 2. “A Warrant to the Master of the Great Wardrobe to prouide and deliuer to Thomas Killigrew Esqr to the value of forty pounds in silkes for to cloath the Musick for the play called the Indian Queene to bee acted before their Ma‘ Jan. 25™ 1663” (Ze. 1663/4; L.C. 5/138, p. 15). 3. Order to deliver, to Monsieur Grabut “‘such of the Scenes remayning in the Theatre at Whitehall as shalbe vsefull for the THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 317 french Opera at the Theatre in Bridges Street.”” These Grabut is ai to return within fourteen days, Mar. 27, 1674 (L.C. 5/140, P- 456). A letter to Killigrew demanding the return of the scenes is in L.C. 5/140, p. 471, dated April 27, 1674. Statement regarding dancers: “In his Mates Letters Patents for erecting the two Theaters There is a Clause That One house shall not entertaine any person that are before entertained in the other House without leaue or a discharge giuen by y® house where they were first entertained It was affirmed by Mr Lacy that he had agreed with Mt Grabu that the ffrench Danceing Masters should dance at y® Kings Theatre & that they should haue Tenn Shillings a day for every day they did dance It is further affirmed by M* Killegrew Mr Hart & Mr Lacy that they did agree with y® Six dancers for fiue shillings aday whether they did dance or not, & this agreemt Testified by two Wittnesses ready to take theire Oathes That Accordingly for two Monethes together they practiced theire Dances, had in y® end theire Clothes made fitt for them & theire Money carryed to them according to y® agreem*. The Dancers did not accept of theire Money alledging they had made noe binding agreemt nor could, by reason of a former one they had with Mt Grabu which did not leaue them at Liberty to make any They farther say that when they treated with Mr’ Kille- grew, they Gaue an Intimacon of this agreem‘ but prove it not & those on Mr Killegrewe’s side vtterly deny that any such thing was alleaded Mon* Grabu was often at theire practising, &...therefore very probably not Ignorant of y® agreemt that had beene made betweene them & Mr? Killegrew. May y® Second 1674” (L.C. 5/140; in index at end among letters NOPQ). Order regarding these: ‘“‘I doe hereby Order that Mt Pecurr Mr Le Temps M: Shenan and Mr D’muraile ffrench Dancers in the late Opera doe attend M* Killegrew Master of His Mates Comoedians in His Mates Theatre Royall & observe & performe his Comands according to agreem* betweene them...6: day of May 1674” (L.C. 5/140, p. 472). 4. Order to musicians to attend at the Theatre in Whitehall “‘at such tymes as Madam Le Roch & Mr’ Paisible shall appoynt for y* practiceing of such Musick as is to be in y® ffrench Comedy to be acted before His Mae on y® Nyne & twentieth of May instant,’ May 22, 1677. (L.C. 5/142, p. 38.) 318 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF The Theatre was ordered to be prepared for a play on this day; it may be that the French opera, Rare en Tout, was performed then. (L.C. 5/142, p. 40.) 5. “It is his Mattes pleasure that Mt Turner & Mr? Hart or any other Men or Boyes belonging to His Mat!es Chappell Royall that sing in ye Tempest at His Royall Highnesse Theatre doe remaine in Towne all the Weeke (dureing his Mattes absence from Whitehall) to performe that service, only Saterdayes to repaire to Windsor & to returne to London on Mundayes if there be occacon for them And that (they) also performe y® like Service in y° Opera in y® said Theatre or any other thing in y® like Nature where their helpe may be desired.”” May 16,1674. (L.C.5/15,p.3.) 6. Order for Rule a Wife and Have a Wife to be given at Court on Nov. 15, with command that the actors and the music should be ready “‘'That y® King may not stay for them.” Nov. 11, 1682. (L.C. 5/144, p- 303-) 7. “These are to require you to Act the Play called the Tragedy of Valentinian at Court before His Ma® upon Munday night next being the Eleaventh of this moneth.” Feb. 6, 1683/4. Addressed to actors of T.R. (L.C. 7/1; and L.C. 5/145, p. 14.) “These are to signify unto you His Maes Pleasure That you give order for Candles, & all other usuall Allowances of Bread, Beere, Wine and Coales to bee deliuered unto John Clarke Keeper of the Theatre in Whitehall for the use of His Maes Comoedians who are to act a Play at Court on Munday night next being the Eleaventh of ffebruary instant And that you give order for Coales for ayreing the Play house the day before.” Feb. 9, 1683/4; to the Duke of Ormond, Lord Steward. (L.C. 7/1.) 8. Order to pay Betterton {20 for ‘‘the King & Queenes Mattes Seeing the Play called Alexander at the Theatre Royall.” Dec. 19, 1685. (L.C. 5/147, p. 52.) g. Order to pay M's Barry £20 “for the Play called the Em- perour of the Moone acted before His Mate.”? Dec. 20, 1687. (L.C. 5/148, p. 59-) 10. Order to pay Crowne £20 “‘as a quift from His Mate for His Play called St Courtley Nice.” Jan. 9, 1687/8. (L.C. 5/148, p- 64.) 11. Order to pay Crowne £20 “‘as a quift from His Mate for seeing His Play called Darius King of Persia.” May 8, 1688. (L.C. 5/148, p. 195.) 12. Order to pay Mrs Barry £25 for “‘the Spanish Fryar, or the double discovery” acted before Her Majesty. June 8, 1689. (L.C, 5/149, p. 154.) THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 319 13. Order for a large looking glass to be employed in Sir Courtley Nice that evening. April 30, 1690. (L.C. 5/150, p. 74.) 14. Order to pay M's Barry £25 for “Circe” acted by command. Nov. 7, 1690. (L.C. 5/150, p. 170.) [An order had been given on Oct. 18 to get the Theatre ready for a play on Nov. 4, the King’s birthday (#d. p. 156); on this occasion a new orange colour curtain was provided (id. p. 164) and eight cane stools (¢d. p. 164).] 15. Order to pay William ‘‘Monfort” {10 for “Edward ye Third acted before Her Mat®.” Oct. 10, 1691. (L.C. 5/150, p. 306.) 16. Order to pay M's Barry £25 for “‘y® Orphan or ye Unhappy Marriage.” Mar. 3, 1691/2. (L.C. 5/151, p. 30.) 17. Order to pay M'* Barry {25 for Caius Marius. June 10, 1693. (L.C. 5/151, p. 242.) 18. Order to pay Mr Barry {£25 for “ye old Batchelor.” April 16, 1694. (L.C. 5/151, p. 352.) 19. Documents relating to the Court Masque of Calisto. (a) Order to deliver to Henry Harris, Yeoman of the Revels, “Two Habitts or dresses for two Shepheardes: Eight Habitts or dresses for Eight Satyrs: Eight habitts or dresses to represent y® Winds: Six habitts for Six Soldiers,” the masque to be given at Christmas. Sept. 27, 1674. (L.C. 5/141, p. 74.) (6) Order to give Phillipp Kinnersley, Yeoman of the Wardrobe, “‘a Curtaine of Blew Red & White in Breadthes of Stuffe of what kind you thinke fitt to fall downe before the Stage in y® Theatre in Whitehall.” Nov. 3, 1674. (Id. p. 77.) (c) Order to set lights in the Theatre, and to heat the tiring rooms and pit for rehearsals on Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday nights. Nov. 28, 1674. (Id. p. 74.) (d) Order to provide to same “Eight Dozen of Wall Tynn Sconces for His Mates Service in y® Theatre in Whitehall And also that you cause Lattices to looke through to be made in y® Curtaine that is to fall downe before the Stage there.” Dec. 7, 1674. (Id. p. 77.) (e) Order for fire shovels for masque. Dec. 15, 1674. (Id. . 82.) 5 (f) Order to deliver to Henry Harris “ Habitts to represent the foure parts of the world, habitts for foure Aeriall spiritts habitts for foure glorious spiritts habitts to represent the Thames, peace, and plenty one habitt for the Genius of the Countrey, one habit for Mrs Blake habitts for fiue Shepheards habitts for Eight Bacchusses habitts for Eight Affricans habitts for Two Shepheards and two Shepheardesses for the Chorus, ffiue habitts for fhue 320 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF Baskes habitts for fiue Sea Gods, a habitt for one shepheardesse that sings, Six sleight habitts for boyes in the Clouds, habitts for foure Cupids Twelue habitts more for Countrey workemen to fitt twelue dancing Misters.” Dec. 15, 1674. (Id. p. 83.) (g) Warrant for ribbons to hang on the curtain. Jan. 15, 1674/5. (Id. p. 102.) (z) Order to provide for the masque “A coppy of the play for the Queene, a coppy for the Lady Mary, A coppy for the Lady Mary and the Lady Anne, A coppy to correct vpon all occasions, a coppy of the prologue, and all the songs for Mt Staggins, and also...soe many printed bookes of the Maske and bound after such manner as Mt Crowne who is the Auther shall giue you an account shalbe necessary.”’ These to be delivered to Crowne and distributed by him. Feb. 13, 1674/5. (Id. p. 127; and p. 556, where the words ‘‘for the Lady Mary” are deleted.) (¢) Ladyes in the Maske. 1674 (Attendants Lady Mary 4 [The names of the atten- dants are given in the MS. but it was thought neces- sary to give only the numbers of them here.] Lady Anne Pages of y® Backstairs Lady Pembrooke Lady Henrietta Wentworth Lady Mary Mordant Lady Derby Lady Dacy Lady Herbert Mrs Blake M’: ffrasier Ms Jenings WNNHNNWR DN DB Lords and Gentlemen Duke of Monmouth 2 and a “Barber” and “two footemen”’ Lord Denncourt I Lord Donblayne I Mr Orpe M:? Lane M! Trevor M? Leonard M! ffranshaw HH Re N N THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 321 Singers M"? Davies I M" Knight M’s Butler I M’ Blunt M* Masters M! Price M? Hart Maxfield Tanner Preston Richardson Letelier (4) boyes Marsh Bopins fford Bury Robert — Degrang — Shepheard a 2 Harpiscalls 2 Theorboes 3 Base Violls 4 Recorders 4 Gittars 4 Trumpetterrs 33 Violins cal Dancers St Andre Motley Isaack Berto Delisle Letang Herriette Muraile Dyer Le Roy Smyth Le Duke (L.C. 5/141, p. 546.) (j) Orders giving places for people of “good quality,” those of “lesser quality” to go to the gallery (7d. p. 549). (Rk) For the order regarding the stage and scenery (id. p. 551),. see supra, p. 43. (2) Various orders: for ‘‘twenty garlands” and 20 habits for 20 violins “like Indian gownes” but not so full (Jan. 26, 1674/5; id. p. 553); for two presses for clothes (Jan. 28; zd. p. 553); for 37 cases of flannel to wrap up “the rich habitts” (Feb. 9; id. P- 554); for 10 brasiers to warm the actors (Feb. 9; zd. p. 554); for habitts for some of the musicians (Feb. 12; id. p. 555); for custody of clothes (Feb. 15; zd. p. 555); for bread and wine during rehearsals (Jan. 28; id. p. 555); for 60 yards of cherry- coloured ‘‘ Avinion,” 30 yards of white, 130 yards of ‘‘ Auraina,” 30 yards of Green, 1 yard of sky-coloured, 84 yards of “‘silver Gawes,” 6 yards of “‘gold gawes” and 4 pieces of “'Tinsey Ribon” (Jan. 19; zd. p. 556); for a shepherd’s costume for Mr Richardson (April 13; 7d. p. 556). NRD al 322 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF (m) Accounts for Calisto “‘Pro diversis necessarijs pro usu et servitio.,..Regis in Le Maske apud Whitehall” are preserved in L.C. 9/112. IV. RoyaL ORDERS RELATING TO THE GOVERNING OF THE THEATRES. 1. Entrance to Playhouses. (a) ‘‘Whereas Wee are informed that diverse persons doe rudely presse and with evill Language and Blows force theire wayes into the two Theatres at the times of theire publique Representations, and Acting wttout paying the prizes established, to the greate disturbance of Our Servants lycenced by Our Au- thority....Our Will and pleasure therefore is...that no person of what Quality soever presume rudely or by force to come into either of the two Theatres till the Playes are quite finished... notwithstanding theire pretended previledge by custome of forceing theire Entrance at the fourth or fifth Acts without Pay- ment.” Dec. 7, 1663. (L.C. 7/1; and L.C. 5/138, last page.) (6) A printed order regarding entrance, dated Feb. 2 in the 26th year of Charles II, is contained in L.C. 7/3. This reiterates the order regarding payment, and commands “‘(to avoid future Fraud) That none hereafter shall enter the Pit, First, or Upper Gallery, without delivering to the respective Door-keeper the Ticket or Tickets which they received for their Money paid at the first Door.”’ No person shall be allowed to sit on the stage or come “‘ within the scenes.” (c) “Itis His Maes Pleasure that no person whatsoever presume to come betweene the Scenes at the Royall Theatre dureing the time of Actinge....And that in no case whatsoever any person do presume to sitt upon the Stage or stand there dureing the time of Actinge.” Jan. 18, 1686/7. (L.C. 7/1.) 2. General Orders relating to Actors, etc. (a) ‘‘Itis His Maes pleasure according to a Clause in His Maes Letters patents for erecting the two Companies for the two Theatres That no person whatsoever that are hired or anywaies entertained by any Bargaine or Agreement or hath acted or practiced either in His Ma*s Theatre or His Royal Highnesses Theatre shall depart from either the said Theatres without giving three Moneths warninge And that neither of the said Theatres do entertaine hire or desire to act or practice any person that hath beene soe entertained in any waies as aforesaid at the other Theatre.” May 16, 1674. (L.C. 7/1 and L.C. 5/15, p. 2.) THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 323 (5) For the later orders of 1695, see supra, Appendix A, Pp. 300-4. 3. Particular Orders relating to the Conduct of Actors. (a) A complaint made to the House of Lords that an affront had been offered to a peer in the playhouse; consequent suspension of players until the pleasure of the House of Lords be known. Dec. 16, 1691. (L.C. 5/150, p. 340.) Order for re-commencement of acting. Dec. 19, 1691. (Jd. P- 345-) (For other orders regarding suspension of actors see Appendix A.) (6) Order to Betterton and patentees: ‘“‘Severall persons of Quality having made Complaint to me that the Musick belonging to yo Theatre behave themselves disrespectfully towards them, by wearing their Hats on both in the Playhouse and upon the Stage; These are therefore to Require you, to give orders that for y°® future they take care to be uncovered.” Feb. 20, 1698/9. (L.C. 5/152, p. 163.) 4. Licences to various Companies. (a) For Rhodes’ licence (L.C. 5/138, p. 387) see supra, Appendix A, p. 278; and for Bedford’s (L.C. 5/12, p. 185) see supra, Appendix A, p. 279. (6) “On Sealed paper of forty shillings Charles Earle of Dorsett and Midds Lord Chamberlaine of His Mates Houshold one of His Mates most hono!® Privy Councill & Knight of y® most Noble Order of the Garter &c. In pursuance of His Maes Pleasure & Comand giuen vnto mee herein, I doe hereby give and grant full Power Lycence and Authority vnto Thomas. Betterton, Elizabeth Barry, Anne Bracegirdle, John Bowman, Joseph Williams, Cave Vnderhill Thomas Doggett, W™ Bowen, Susan Verbruggen, Eilanor Leigh, George Bright, His Ma*s Sworne Servants & Comoedians, in Ordinary, and the Major part of them, their Agents, & Servant, from time to time, in any convenient place or Places, to Act and represent, all and all manner of Comedyes, & Tragedyes, Playes Enterludes, & Opera’s, and to performe all other Theatricall & Musicall Enterteynments, of what kind soever, But so as to bee allwayes vnder my government & Regulation, from time to times as hath been Exercised by my ptdecessors.” Mar. 25, 1695. (L.C. 7/1; also in 7/3.) Order relating to the government of L.I.F. This recites the granting of the Licence to the actors mentioned above and pro- ceeds “And Whereas y® said Thomas Betterton Eliz: Barry Anne 21-2 324 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF Bracegirdle John Verbrugen John Bowman Caue Underhill George Bright and Elizabeth Leigh haue taken y® Tennis Court in Little Lincolns Inne Feilds and paid a greate fine and doe pay a Great rent for ye same and at an Extraordt Charge & Expence haue converted y® same into a Theatre or Playhouse where they now act Comedies Tragedies &c And further the said parties being necessited to provide every thing anew for the Carrying on soe Great an undertakeing as all variety of Cloath’s Forreigne-habitts Scoenes properties &c which must be paid out of the publique Receipts by the Persons aboue named proportionable to the severall Shares & proportions each of them haue in y® proffitts of the said playhouse It is therefore resolued and agreed by the Concent of y® whole Company that the Shares doe never exceed the number of Tenn It is further Resolued and agreed that every whole sharer dyeing or quitting the Company fairely shall after ye Expiration of fiue yeares from the Establishmt of the Company haue the summe of One hundred payd him or his Executor after his Death by the rest of the Sharers at Two Equall payments within the space of Three month’s after his Death or Quitting the Company as Theire interest and due for theire Shares in Cloaths Scenes Properties &c ‘That is to say the summe of Twenty pounds to a whole sharer for the first yeare, Twenty pounds more for y® second Yeare and soe on to One hundred pound’s at y® fiue Yeares End And soe to all other parts of shares in proportion to a whole share But in Consideration of the great Expences y® first three yeares being more then reasonable can be supposed for the like Terme to come It is agreed that any whole Sharer dyeing at or after the Expiration of Three Yeares shall haue the summe of One hundred pounds payd His Executor as well & fully as if the whole Terme of Fiue yeares was Expired so in proportion to every under Sharer That is to say this payment to be made upon no other account but the Death of the party If any sharer be made incapable of His Business in the Company by sickness or any other accident every whole sharer so disabled shall haue forty shillings p week allowed him every Week the Company shall Act And every Person under the degree of a whole sharer shall haue an allowance in proportion to his part of a Share he then enjoyed when he was so disabled. If any Sharer shall hereafter be receiued into any proportion of Share he shall be obliged to signe the said Articles... If any sharer be adjudged incapable of acting he shall not be obliged to acquitt his share and take the Salary provided in that THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 325 Case above mentioned before a T'welue Month be Expired in which space [written over “place”] of a Twelue month if he recover so as to attend his Business as formerly he shall then enjoy his share as formerly If any hyred Servant whose Salary Exceeds Twenty Shillings the Week be made incapable of his Business by sickness or any other accident on the Stage he shall haue such a Weekly allowance proportionable to his Salary as the Majority of the Sharers shall Settle upon him. If any Actor in Share or Sallary shall Quitt this Company and afterwards shall by Acting or otherwise assist any other Company he shall be incapable of receiueing any Benefitt of these Articles And alsoe every Actor Quitting the said Company shall be obliged to giue sufficient Security for his performing the Conditions of this Article before he shall receiue his proportion of Cloaths &c It is further agreed by the Concent of y® whole Company that as the number of Sharers are not to Exceed Tenn so no person shall haue any proportion of aboue one share in consideration of Acting.” Signed by Betterton, Verbruggen, Bowman, Underhill, Bright, Mrs Barry, Mrs Bracegirdle, Mrs Leigh. (L.C, 9/1; and 7/3.) V. WARRANTS FOR GRANTING Livery TO ACTORS. (The substance of the following is given in Appendix A.) 1. “‘A Warrant to the Master of the Greate Wardrobe to pro- vide and deliver unto His Maes Players whose names follow (vizt) Nicholas Burt Charles Hart Michaell Mohun Robert Shatterell, John Lacy, William Wintershall Walter Clunn William Cart- wright Edward Shotterell Eduard Kynnaston Richard Baxter Thomas Loveday, Thomas Batterton and Marmaduke Watson to each of them foure yards of Bastard Scarlett for a Cloake and to each of them a quarter of a yard of Crimson Velvett for the Cape of itt being the usuall Allowance of every second yeare to commence at October last past.” July 29, 1661. (L.C. 7/1; and L.C. 5/137; p- 31-) 2. Warrant for liveries to Clun, Cartwright, Wintersell, Mohun, Robert Shatterell, Hart, Baxter, Blagden, Loveday, Kinaston, Burt, and Bird, as Queen’s actors. Feb. 5, 1661 (probably 1661/2). (L.C. 5/137, p. 43-) 3. Warrant as above for liveries to Hart, Mohun, Lacy, Bird, Birt, Robert Shatterell, Clunn, Wintersell, Cartwright, Kinas- ton, Blagden, Watson, Hancock, Baxter, Edward Shatterell, 326 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF Gradwell as His Majesty’s players. May 30, 1662. (L.C. 5/138, ATS. ane same as Queen’s players. Dec. 29, 1663. (Jd. p. 10.) 4. Warrant for liveries to Hart, Mohun, Lacy, Birt, Burt, Robert Shatterell, Clunne, Wintersell, Cartwright, Kinaston, Blagden, Watson, Hancock, Baxter, Edward Shatterell and Thomas Tanner, as Queen’s actors. Nov. 4, 1662. (L.C. 5/137, ERS) i The same as His Majesty’s players, same date. (Id. p. 173.) 5. Warrant for liveries to Hart, Mohun, Lacy, Bird, Birt, Robert Shatterell, Clunn, Wintersell, Cartwright, Kinnaston, Blagden, Watson, Hancock, Baxter, Edward Shatterell and Gradwell, as His Majesty’s players. Feb. 25, 1665/6. (L.C. The same as the Queen’s actors, same date. (Id. p. 65.) 6. Warrant for liveries for Hart, Loueday, Mohun, Lacy, Batiman [Bird, deleted, Loveday and Batiman insertions], Birt, Robert Shatterell [Clunn deleted], Wintersell, Cartwright, Kinnaston [Blagden deleted], Watson, Hancock, [Baxter and Edward Shatterell deleted], Gradewell. Feb. 8, 1667 (probably 1667/8; the month is written over “May July 18” deleted). (L.C. 5/138, p. 271.) 7. Warrant for liveries to Hart, Mohun, Wintersell, Cart- wright, Kinnaston, Robert Shatterell, Lacey, Bird, Bell, Hughes, Harris, Haynes, Wattson, Shirley, Liddall, Graydon, as Queen’s actors. Oct. 2, 1669. (L.C. 5/119.) The same as His Majesty’s players, same date. (Id.) 8 (a) Warrant for liveries to 16 actors as His Majesty’s players, and to the same as Queen’s players. Oct. 23, 1673. (L.C. 5/140, - 353-) (6) The same as King’s and Queen’s players. Mar. 29, 1675, (L.C. 5/141, p. 147.) (c) The same as King’s and Queen’s players. April 30, 1678. (L.C. 5/143, p. 72.) g. ‘‘A warrant to prouide and deliuer to Mt# Weauer, Mrs Mar- shall Mrs Rutter Mrs Yates Mts Nepp M's Dalton Ellen Gwyn Eliz: Hall ffransis Dauenport and Anne Child Weomen Comoe- dians in his Mattes Theatre Royall vnto each of them foure yards of bastard scarlet cloath and one quarter of a yard of veluett for their liveries.” June 30, 1666. (L.C. 5/138, p. 71.) 10. Warrant for liveries to [Mrs Weaver deleted] Mrs Marshall Mrs Rutter [Mrs Yates deleted] Mrs Nep [Mrs Dalton deleted] a THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 327 Ellen Gwyn [Elizabeth Hall deleted] ffrancis Davenport [in margin, Elizabeth and Jane; Anne Child deleted]. Feb. 8, 1667 (probably 1667/8; the date is written over ‘‘July 22t®”). (L.C. 5/138, p. 271.) 11. Warrant for liveries to Mrs Marshall, Mrs Cory, Ellin Gwynn, Mrs Kneepe, Mrs Rutter, Mrs Hues, Mrs Davenport, and Mrs Yackley. Oct. 2, 1669. (L.C. 5/119.) 12. (a) Warrant for liveries to 11 ‘‘'Weomen Comoedians.” Oct. 23, 1673. (L.C. 5/140, p. 353.) (6) The same to 11 women comedians. Mar. 29, 1675. (L.C. 5/141, Pp. 147.) (c) The same to 11 women comedians. April 30, 1678. (L.C. 5/143, P- 72.) 13. “It is His Maes pleasure that Mt Mohun Mr Hart, and Mr Kynnaston bee continually furnished at the charge of the Master and Company of His Ma®* Comoedians with the perticulers fol- lowing unto each of them in such proportion as they are here sett downe (vizt) Two perruques to begin with for the first yeare One perruque yearely afterwards to begin a yeare hence Two Cravatts yearely One Lace or point Band in two yeares the first band to be now provided. Three paire of Silke Stockins yearely Four paire of Shooes yearely Three Hatts yearely Two plumes of feathers yearely Three Shirts with Cuffs to them yearely.” Mar. 6, 1671/2. (L.C. 7/1; and L.C. 5/140, p. 5.) VI. DocuMENTS RELATING TO THE ARTICLES OF UNION. Most of the entries relating to this are given in Appendix A. The following Petition of Mohun is the only interesting one omitted. “Mr Mohun To the Kings most Excellent Mate pet. The humble petition of Michaell Mohun, One of yot Mates Actors at the Theatre Royall Sheweth That yor pet™ hath faithfully served yot Mate & Father (of ever Blessed Memory) 48 yeares in y® quality of an Actor, and in all ye Warrs in England & Ireland & at y® Seege of Dublin was 328 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF desperately wounded & 13 monethes a Prisoner, and after that yor pet? served yor Mate in y® Regmt of Dixmea‘ in Flaunders & came over with yot Mate into England where yor Sacred Pleasure was that he should Act againe, as he hath ever since vpon all Occasions continued That it being yot Mates Pleasure to reduce the two companyes into one yor pet? is deprived of his share and quarter in y® Scenes Clothes & playes (that cost about 4000!! by Mr Charles Killegrew who has rented them to Mt Davenant for a share (as yor pet? is informed) and tells him if yo™ pet™ hath any right theirto he must gett it by law. And instead of a share & quarter we yor pet? had formerly in yor Mates Company for Acting he is now only proffered 20% a day when they haue occasion to vse him, soe that they haueing not studyed Our Playes nor yot pet? therein he cannot conceaue the same will amount to aboue 2041 p an° Wherefore yot pet™ most humbly prayes That yo Mate will be graciously pleased to Order the p™sent Company to allow him the same Conditions as Mt Hart and Mr? Kinaston haue, (whos Shares were all equall before) whereby he may be enabled to support himselfe & 5 children And yor pet? shall as in duty bond pray &c. M' Mohun It is His Mates pleasure & Comand, That ye Order Persons concerned in Mannageing the concernes & proffitts of the playes at ye Royall Theatre & His Royall High- nesse ‘Theatre (being now Vnited into one Company) Doe give and allow vnto Mt Michell Mohun, the same Conditions which they allow vnto Mr Hart & Mr Kinniston (theire shares haueing beene equall formerly Arlington Whitehall November 23. 1682 M" Mohun Vpon the former Petition of Mt Mich: Mohun Order it was againe thus Ordered. It is His Mates pleasure That theire Mates Comoedians doe giue an allowance to Mt Michaell Mohun the same allowance for his Weekely Pension, and for his Acting, as is allowed & giuen vnto Mr Charles Hart the same to Comence from the three & twentieth day of November last & to be imployed p'sently, & to haue his owne parts to Act: This Order to be without Consequence to any others Given vnder my hand this 5 day of December 1682 in the 34'» yeare of His Mates Reigne.” (L.C. 5/191.) THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 329 VII. DocuMENTs RELATING TO PARTICULAR ACTORS. (For the warrants creating several actors and actresses His Majesty’s Servants, see Appendix A, pp. 293-8.) 1. Order for warrant granting the place of Yeoman of the Revels to Henry Harris, payment to commence on June 24, 1663. Feb. 20, 1663/4. (L.C. 5/138, p. 388; there seems to have been some doubt as to his actual appointment as in L.C. 5/138, p. 280, is an order for a warrant for the same post, dated Mar. 3, 1667. On April 4, 1667, an order was issued stopping payment to him until further notice (L.C. 5/138, p. 369). In L.C. 7/1 appears a list of officers of the Revels; in which appears ‘“‘Henry Harris Yeoman in Mt Caryes place sworne Aug: 6: 1663:) 2. Certificate that Haynes and Mrs Elizabeth Roch are His Majesty’s servants. Apr. 14, 1679. (L.C. 5/143, p. 305.) (A similar certificate was issued on July 10, 1682; L.C. 5/16, P- 97-) 3. Letter to Betterton: “May: 72: 1681 M? Betterton I did yesterday signify unto you that M'* Norris should bee received into yot Company againe And this is to explaine that order That it is His Mates Pleasure that shee reconcile her selfe unto her adversary, and submitt herselfe to the rules and Governement of the Company and upon this condition shee is to bee admitted as formerly.” (L.C. 7/1; and 5/16, p. 28.) 4. “The Case of Philip Cademan Gent.” (c. 1696): Recites the fact that Sir William D’Avenant was granted a patent “At w™ time St W™ stood indebted to M' Cademan in a Bond of roo" and in Consideration that M* Cademan woud acquit St W™ of y* s‘ debt and Act as a Player S' W™ promised to settle upon him 30% p Week to be paid out of y® proffitts arising from y® playhouse W M* Cademan did accordingly and re- ceived 308 p Week during S' W™* Life and several years after his Death. And in y® year 1673 as he was Acting his Part upon y® Stage, he received a Wound from the late Mr Harris y® player w' a foyle under his right Eye, w™ touch’d his Brain by means whereof he lost his memory his speech and the use of his right side, w% made him incapable of acting any more Notwithstanding w" his Salary was continu’d until M? Rich had ye management of y® playhouse (as indeed all persons had it for their Lives that were disabled from acting by Sickness or other Misfortunes...) 330 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF and then M? Rich thought it reasonable that M? Cademan shoud do something for his Salary, and orderd him to sit and deliver out Tickets w’ he did until he was disabled by Sickness in y® . year 1695 But after he was restord to his health he offerd to serve in y® same Capacity he did before But M’ Rich refusd to suffer him and has ever since denyd to pay him his Salary.” (L.C. 7/3-) 5. Whereas John Powell of Dorset Garden was lately com- mitted prisoner in the Gatehouse by warrant of the Right Hon. Mr Secretary Vernon for breach of peace and “‘for his Insolence in Affronting and drawing his Sword upon Collonell Stanhop and Mr? Davenant,” and whereas the patentees have admitted him _ again, a warrant is issued to suspend them from acting. May 3, 1698. (L.C. 5/152, p. 80.) VIII. 1. Petition of the Players, c. Dec. 1694. (L.C. 7/3.) **Sheweth That your Petts whose names are here subscribed being noe longer able to suffer & Support themselves under the unjust oppressions & Violations of almost all the By lawes Customes & usage that has been established among us from y? beginning & which remained unviolated till after D' Davenant sold his patent & shares to his Brother Alexander under whome and by whome severall Titles have been claimed by diverse persons And sometimes a Trust in him onely pretended whereby many have been defrauded, with other pretences & Combinatons whereby severall persons have been Lett in who seek after their owne Interest to recover their Debts.”’ (The petition proceeds to remark that ail things in the playhouse have been changed and beg the Lord Chamberlain to appoint a day for hearing their complaints. The document is signed by Betterton, Underhill, Kenniston (z.e. Kynaston), Bowen, Williams, Doggett, Bright, Sandford, Mrs Barry, Mrs Bracegirdle, Mrs Verbruggen, Mrs Bowman, Mrs Betterton, Mrs Ellen Leigh and John Bowman. Inclosed with it are the articles of grievance, as below.) (1) Dr D’Avenant sold his share in the patent ‘‘as he thought” to his brother Alexander for £2300. Sir Thomas Skipwith and Rich, since Alexander D’Avenant’s flight, have produced deeds to prove that Alexander D’Avenant’s name was but made use of: the payment for the share came from them. According to these, Alexander D’Avenant farmed the profits for them at £6 a week for five years, during which time Skipwith and Rich never re- vealed the secret of their ownership of the patent. This gave THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 331 Alexander D’Avenant credit among the actors, and by means of the cheat he was advanced by Mrs Barry some £600 to £800, and deceived others of the company in a like manner. (2) When Dr D’Avenant came of age he made a promise that in consideration of the share in the costumes and scenery in the theatre each whole sharer who left off playing or was disabled should be paid the sum of £100. This, according to the petitioners, was actually given to Smith. It had been confirmed since, but the payment was not forthcoming to the whole sharers who now intended to leave. (3) The actors have been persuaded to part with their interest in the after-money “which is the money recéd for the 4? & 5" Acts which brings in 400 or 500!5 p ann which they were to have | for 16 Yeares for the payment of 1000!’ Debt & now they have ingrossed soe Considerable a part of the profitts they would force us into Shares againe—threatning some they will shutt up the doores if they will not Consent to it.” (4) The profit money arising from ‘‘mulcts” and fines is now claimed by the patentees. (5) The present patentees forbid continuous acting. (6) Many good actors have been turned away and “ignorant insufficient fellowes putt in their places.” The players under the new management are treated as slaves. (7) Mrs Barry made an agreement with Dr D’Avenant, Killi- grew, Smith and Betterton for 50s. a week and one benefit every year. Later she made an agreement with Thomas Betterton that if, after the expenses had been met, her profits from the benefit did not come to £70, that amount should be made up to her. This agreement was carried out for many years, but now the patentees not only refuse to make up the £70 but claim third profits in the benefit. (8) When Betterton left his share, a quarter and half a quarter, he agreed with Killigrew and Alexander D’Avenant to act for £5 a week and an annual present of 50 guineas. Now that the patentees have “‘ingrossed” the after money they want to drag him into share again and “lessen him a quarter & halfe a quarter tho’ he ptsumes he is not lessen’d in his Acting.” Betterton like- wise is not supplied with a ‘‘ Perruck” as he ought to be. (9) At the Union of the Stages it was agreed that 5s. per acting day should be paid to Lady D’Avenant for fruit money: this was to be given by Killigrew who had received {50 from D’Avenant, Smith and Betterton. Lady D’Avenant had sold her right to 332 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF this 5s. and Rich had not paid it to them: these are now threatening Betterton. (10) Rich refuses to pay £20 for an organ in St Bride’s Church which had been subscribed by order of Killigrew and ‘Thomas D’Avenant. (11) Williams had an agreement for £4 a week from Killigrew and Thomas D’Avenant. The patentees had offered him {10 to sign a certain paper: he refused and they took £1 off his salary. (12) Mrs Bracegirdle demands one annual benefit, the charges to be paid by the patentees. (13) Mrs Verbruggen demands an extra 5s. weekly. (14) Killigrew, about six months before the lodging of this petition, had promised to raise Doggett’s salary to equal that of any under Betterton: this was revoked by the patentees who merely offered him an extra ros. (15) Bright had studied many of Leigh’s parts, and for this, and for dancing, he demands 5s. a week extra. 2. The Reply of the Patentees, Dec. 10, 1694. (L.C. 7/3.) “to Dec****g4 S? Tho’ Skipwiths et al Answ’ to the... aligacons—before Lord Dorset. p Seci: Darwell. Betterton et al Skipwith Bar! et al. To attend Lord Dorset at S? Rob! Howards at Westm? Munday 17 Dec" 94. betweene to & 11 a Clock. The Answere to y® Peticon & Articles of P'tended Greivances Prsented to the right Honorable The Earle of Dorsett Lord Chamberlayn of their Maties Houshold by M! Thomas Better- ton & others by name of their Maties Servants & Comedians. The p'sent Patentees of the Theatres saving their Right &c—say’ (Here follows an analysis of their right to speak as patentees of the theatres. They mention the patent given to D’Avenant by Charles II, giving him full power “to gather together Enterteyn Governe Priviledge & keep such & so many Players & psons to Act Plays as he or they from time to time should think meete.” They emphasise the fact that he was given authority to “make such allowances to the Actors and other Persons Imployed in Acting as he or they should think fitt.” On April 25 of the same year Charles granted to Killigrew the patent in a theatre to be the King’s and Queen’s company, “‘both w Patents were by Ind Dated y* 4" of May 1692 made between Charles Killigrew Esq! of y° one pte And Dt Davenant Thomas Betterton & William THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 333 Smith of y* other pte United. And all ye benefitts Priviledges Powers & Authoritys before mencond are covenanted & Agreed to be as one from thenceforth for ever Subject to y® Provisoes condicons & Agreem" therein conteyned. And that all Plays then after to be Acted should be acted by the Company then Employed or after to be Employed at the Dukes Theatre & by such other pson & psons as M? Killigrew & D! Davenant their heirs & Assigns should from time to time direct & appoint **** And by y°® sd Ind? Mr’ Killigrew was & is to have 3 shares in Twenty of y°® Cleere Pffitts & to disperse & dissolve ye Kings Company of Players forthw‘® as by y® sd Ind? amongst divers covenants & Agreem‘S therein conteyned may more at large appear.” The patentees then proceed “‘to give your Lordp an Acco! how matters stand in a Cause in Chancery now depending before y® Right Honoble S' John Sommers Kn‘ Lord Keeper of y* Great Seale of England Wherein M! Killigrew is Plf: And D? Davenant M* Betterton & others are y® Defts And then wee shall pceed to Answere y® Articles wf M! Betterton & his Mutinous Com- panions (as y® Patent is pleased to term them) have p'sented unto Your Lordp, The End of M! Killigrews Bill is to have a true Account of all y® Receipts of ye Theatres from May 1682 And alsoe of all Paym'® and disbursem‘s & to have his pporcon thereof being 3 shares in 20 of y® Cleere Pffitts And alsoe an Equall Power in y® Governm' & Managem! And touching Paym! to sharing Actors Ground Rent of ye Dukes Theatre now called y® Queens Theatre Taxes Reparacons, y® 2 ffront houses there, fforfeit Mony, ffruite Mony, & 3°-44 a day, pd to M'’® Lacy & other matters. ie To which Bill D™ Davenant Mr’ Betterton & sev'! other Defts did putt in their Answers which are very long & have submitted to [“‘have” deleted] an account & have referred themselves to y® Judgemt of y* Co" Whereupon divers Witnesses were Examined on both sides And upon hearing y® Cause the 7‘" of Decemb! 1691 It was referred to St Robert Legard One of y® Masters in Chancery to take & state y® said Account And therein [written over ‘“‘also”’] to certyfie y® State of ye Governm'—S! Robert Legard after further Depositions taken before him made his Report And therein reported sev! things Specially to y® Co’ & in pticular ye Government & Managem! of y® Theatres & how he found it to stand on y® Deeds & pffes taken in ye Cause—To which report both sides have filed Excepcons w‘ are not yett argued. Having stated this matter of ffact as tis truely Lyeing before my Lord Keeper & by him (un)Determined Wee shall now pceed 334 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF to Answ! y° Articles by M! Betterton Exhited before your Lordp.” (Here the patentees proceed to discuss point by point the allega- tions of Betterton and his companions.) “And ffirst [‘‘may it please yo? Lordp” written and deleted after ‘‘ffirst”] as to M* Bettertons alledging y* S? ‘Thomas Skip- with & Mr’ Rich by letting y° World beleive y* Right of y® Patent & Shares was in Alexand’ Davenant gave him Creditt & Authority to lay y® ffoundacon ffor all y® Cheats and fforgeries y* Alex: Davenant was found Guilty of by Couzening M* Barry of 6 or 800!8 & others of sev! Thousands. Answere May it please yo? Lordp M’ Alexand* Davenant fled in Octob' 1693 And it has not appeared to us y‘ any Cheats or fforgeries have been p'tended to be done by him till ab! 4 a Year before he fled whereas y* D' Daven! (by reason y’ M? Bolesworth one of his Wives Trustees had not Executed y® Conveyances of y® Patent & Shares as well as M! Betterton y® other Trustee had done) did in July 1690 enter into a Bond of 3000'S penalty to Mt Rich y* M? Bolesworth should Execute y* same w'?tin 3 Moneths then next (tho he hath not yett done it) And tis Well known y* S? Thomas Skipw'? & M! Rich when the rent [the last three words added| was behind spoke of this concerne to divers psons in so much y* M? Davenant compleined of y® unkindness in soe doeing And M? Betterton may Remember y* y® Writings tho’ [‘‘tho’” written above the line] drawn & Ingrossed at M’ fiolkes Chamber y® same were sealed at M! Serj! Pembertons Chamber (who was of Counsell for S? Thomas Skipwith) And M? Rich pd M? Better- ton 2000!8 of ye Purchase Mony by a Note on S! ffrancis Child when all y® Writings were putt into M! Riches Custody (& never were out of his Custody) And M’ Davenant never had them one Minute whereby to Cheate or Countenance a cheat Nor doth M? Betterton or M's Barry or any other pson that we have heard of p'tend to have any Mortage or Grant of y¢ sd Patent or those Shares or any pte of them but she hath declared yt she lent Mt Davenant 400}s [written originally 4000 but deleted] in Aprill 1693 upon a share granted or supposed to be granted by S? William Davenant to one Cheston & 20018 more in May 1693 of some Rent Issueing out of y° Dukes Theatre yt M! Ashburnham gave to M! Thomas Davenant And y* as for y® other 20018 yt she hath y® Do™ Bond for it as well as his Brothers. Tis true yt M? Alexand? Davenant farmed ye sd Patent & 2 Shares as he farmed y® Shares of divers other psons p'tended yt he best Understood wth ye Assistance of M? Betterton to Manage y°® Affairs of ye Theatres to y* Best Advantage & yt S' Thomas THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 335 Skipwith & Mr’ Rich were Obliged to sell ye same Patent & Shares for 2400! to M? Alexand*" Davenant as they Cost but M' Davenant was not [“‘not” added] Obleiged to repurchase y® same The 6'5 p Weeke was often pd at y® office at y® Playhouse and it was well known to diverse psons: but M? Rich lent more Monys to M! Alexand! Davenant then he recéd for his pte of the Rent insomuch yt M! Davenant when he went off owed M! Rich on Bonds & a Note above 600!8 And to S? Thomas Skipwith & his late ffather to whom he is sole Executor by Bonds & other securitys above 700!8 w*! is still oweing & S’ Thomas Skipwith & Mr! Rich have declared themselves Willing to sell ye sd Patent & 2 shares to D: Davenant or any other for ye sd principall sums of 2400!*— 600!s & 700!8 w'? Interest for y® same respectively at 618 p Cent p Ann & their Charges & [“that” deleted] they [deletion] will discount what M? Alex: Davenant pd upon ye ffarm aforesd or otherwise eversince [the last word added]. And S! Tho: Skipwith ever since 1687 hath sent Notes for psons to see plays Gratis w*? tis beleived M! Betterton could not be Ignorant off now May it please yo! Lordp for M! Betterton to charge S? Thomas Skipwith & M Rich in such a Scandalous manner to have layd the ffounda- ton of M? Alexand! Davenants Cheats & fforgeries & for M' Bet- terton to gett divers other psons as he has done to signe to [last word added] ye same when sev! of them hath since declared that [last word added] they neither read nor heard read y® Paper annexed to y® sd Petition wherein those scandalous words are mencond shews wt sort of a Man M! Betterton is.” (The patentees here have a long preamble in which they express the hope that Betterton will be ordered to make some kind of satisfaction. They state that they do not wish to brand Betterton “for a Cheat or Couzener tho’ he did really conceal from y® World y® Mortgageing of his Rent of 6'' p Weeke in the Queens Theatre for many years.” Betterton and D’Avenant, say the Patentees, declare that £6 a weeke for five years must have given Skipwith considerable profit: as a matter of fact he received only one per cent. for the last two years and Betterton has forgotten the {600-{£700 taken by Alexander D’Avenant and Betterton’s own 20 per cent. per annum on moneys laid out for the building of Dorset Garden playhouse.) Article 2. This concerns the alleged promise of Dr D’Avenant to give {100 to every wholesharing actor leaving the company for his share in “‘Cloaths Scenes Bookes & ppertyes.”” The patentees reply that they have not any knowledge of this promise. {100 was certainly given to Smith but that “was upon an other con- 336 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF sideracon well known to Mr! Betterton who can tell whether M?’ Tho: Sheppy Robert Nokes James Nokes Thomas Lovell John Mosely Henry Turner & Thomas Lilleston who were formerly sharing Actors who had any such sums pd them upon y® Account aforesd but wee are Informed if a sharer went off or dyed S! William Davenant putt another in his Roome & such new Sharer was to give 500!5 security for his good behaviour...& when Mr! Betterton went out of share in January 1692 he did not desire any such thing nor did Mf? Betterton M! Mountfort Mi Leigh or Mt Bowman when they settled y® priviledges of sharing Actors & came into share on 26 September 1692 make any such Demand And if Mt Thomas Davenant deputy Mannager appointed by Word of Mouth onely hath p'tended to grant any such thing he might as well w‘* submission to your Lordp grant away other _ psons shares of Rent or pfiitts.” Following this is an interesting statement that Sir William D’Avenant had sold most of his shares in his lifetime ‘‘before he could carry on ye Management of y® Playhouse And y* D? hath since sold y® patent & some of y® Shares.” Article 3. Aftermoney. The patentees express their surprise that Betterton should raise this point now after he has acted with Alexander D’Avenant for nearly a year. They affirm that Betterton and the others asked the patentees to take the aftermoney for £1000 to pay a debt of that amount on the theatres. They offer Betterton that if he will forfeit salaries and gratuities since he parted with his sharing rights, they will take him in once more as a sharer. Article 4. Forfeits. This, the patentees say, is merely a trick of Betterton’s to curry favour with his companions. ‘‘ Mr! Better- ton knows yt by y® Decree in y® Cot of Chancery it is & hath been brought into y® Receipt & divided as other Monys are.”’ This very fact, they say, was decided on 26 September, 1692, after the long discussions on the part of Betterton, Mountfort and Leigh concerning the rights of the sharing actors. Article 5. “‘As to Acting so many Days a Week & takeing ye bad wt ye good &c.” The patentees ailirm that the company acted the previous year more frequently than they did when Betterton was in control. They suggest that Betterton is here inspired by mean spite ‘‘ffor he was greatly displeased to think y® Young People Acted ye last vacaton near 30 Days without M! Betterton M! Williams M? Bright M? Kinaston M? Sandford or M’S Betterton.” The young actors by this means got enough to keep them over the vacation. However, as Rich has to pay 3 every acting day at the Theatre Royal and £7 every acting day ee nae THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 337 at the Queen’s Theatre, he cannot afford to keep the doors always open, the receipts often being under £20 per diem, whereas the full expenses come to £30. There follows a hint that Betterton went on salary in 1692 because theatrical conditions were bad. Article 6. The taking away of sharers’ rights. Betterton and Bowman, it is affirmed, ‘‘soon after ye Death of M! Mountfort & M’ Leigh to witt on y® 16" of Jan’ 1692 requested to be in Sallary untill y° beginning of y® then next vacacon onely but they have kept in Sallary ever since altho M! Betterton hath often pmised y* he would be Willing at any time to come into share again.” Alexander D’Avenant, say the patentees, would not do anything without Betterton: from 1687 till he “went off in 1693 all things were done as M! Betterton would have it & he gave out w! Plays he would during y* time as well as y® last Year by w® means very little could be Divided or thrown off to pay Debts out of y® Receipts & on y® 14" of July last above 189!8 was runne in Debt.” They suggest that Alexander D’Avenant started his underhand methods in 1687 by (a) adding a quarter and half a quarter to Betterton’s share, (b) giving him a vacation present of 50 guineas, (c) “‘allowing him to brow beate and discountenance young Actors as M! Giloe Carlisle Mountfort & others.” “‘ Wee allow,” declare the patentees, “‘sallarys to y® psons yt now com- playn beyond w? was over formerly pd to any Man or Woman belonging to ye Kings Theatre & M! Betterton for his & his Wives Acting have for y® 2 last years received out of ye Playhouse after y® rate of 10!’ p Weeke (besides 61° p Weeke) for Rent” whereas. Rich and Skipwith who expended fully £3600 on the patent did not get clear {30 last year. Article 7. Concerning Mrs Barry. ‘‘ May it please your Lordp That M! Betterton himselfe took notice y'‘ M'* Barry made so great Advantage of a Play given her one day in y® Year that ye same w'5 her Sallary was more then his 5!* p Weeke And wee Observing yt although y® receipts of late had been lesse then Usuall yett y® Constant & Incident Charges are higher & consequently needfull to be Retrencht & M™ Barry having declared yt M* Tho: Davenant had released her of her bargain And yt she would not be Obleiged to Play unless she came to a new Agreem! w'? us Itt was ppossed yt she would continue at her Usuall Sallary of 50° p Weeke & remitt one 39 of y® pffitts of ye Days Play to M*® Bracegirdle w we beleived would by ye Addicon of M" Bracegirdles ffriends so Increase y® Receipts as y' M'* Barry would not be a great looser.” Article 8. Concerning Betterton’s quitting his share, quarter NRD 22 338 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF and half a quarter for £5 a week and a vacation present of 50 guineas, and being taken back on one share only. Betterton, say the patentees, “‘never had upon Account of his Acting when he was at ye best any more then one Actors share till D’ Daven! sold his Patent for from May 1682 to 1687 by pffe in Chancery it appears y* he had but one share & 4 a q? & this 4 q" was in pte of satisfacon for his care in ye Managem! And Mr" Smith had ye like when he was an Actor & Joint Manager w'? M? Betterton but when M! Smith went out of y® house And M! Tho: Davenant in 1687 came into ye Managemt & had 3}8-108 for his trouble then M? Betterton had a q™ & 4 a q' of a share Added to him by Alex: Davenant for wt private Consideracon is unknown to us w was continued to M! Betterton till ab! ffeb'Y 1689 then M Betterton was in Sallary in Sep’ 1691 at 518 p Weeke & a Vacon pisent of 50°Y Guineas for his generall care then he came into share again & had but one Acto’’ share till ab’ Sept? 1692 when y® Agreem! ab! ye After Mony & y® Acting sharers priviledges were settled he came into one share and a q! but M! Mountfort & M: Leigh dyeing in Decemb? followeing Mf! Betterton on y® 162 January 1692 came into Sallary again at 51° p Weeke & 5o'¥ Guineas for his generall Care by name of a Vacacon p! sent but M? Betterton well knows why he was then pmitted to leave his share & qi & go into Sallary onely for yt Year w wee shall not now discover unless he pleases It is true M! Betterton doth not think himselfe lessen’d in his Acting but y® Patentees & Ad- venturers to their sad Experience find yt a Man at 60 is not able to doe That w? he could at 30 or 40 he hath put himselfe into all great pts in most of y® Considerable plays Especially in y® ‘Tragedys & yett w? he Acts a great pte we must be forced to Act an Ordinary Play one or 2 days after as Scapin Mons? Rogou & such like to ease him & soe loose wi wee gott on y® day he played ‘Whereas there are Act’® enough in y® House to Act good plays Allways & Mf Betterton himselfe could formerly have Acted a great pte 4 or 5 dayes in a Weeke w? he was a Sharer & before he became so Aged.” They then declare that Betterton should be the last to complain. He had received £50 for his care in attending rehearsals etc “ And alsoe he has had 50's for his care & trouble to gett up y® Indian Queen tho he hath not yett done itt w w% summs & w! he & his Wife hath received for Acting & his Rent of 1} p diem amounts to above 16 p Weeke for every Weeke y® Company Acted y® last Year.” His complaints are the more un- expected and strange “‘because ye last Year when M! Doggett Bowen & others Mutinied M? Betterton declared they ought to be Ejected ye House & by his pswasions they were denyed to THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 339 be received till they Quitted ye Combinaton & each Man treated onely for himselfe.” As regards the perruck “M! Betterton was told that as for ye Perruck something should be considered to be given him in Leiw thereof tho’ this of a Perruck is an Innovacon & may pve of great Inconvenience by reason all others will graft upon it to have y® like Allowance.” Betterton did not carry out his duties carefully. ‘‘ Wee very often attended ourselvs & treated w'? y® Poets.” Later it is stated that ‘“‘M° Betterton for y® Care he tooke as Principall Actor in y® Nature of a Monitor in a Schole to looke after rehearsalls...had a Gratificacton of 50 Guineas besides y® Complim! of his Wifes 508 a Week.” Article 9. Concerning 5s. a day for fruit money. Sir William D’Avenant, it is affirmed, ‘Immediately after ye King granted him his Patent not knowing otherwise how to carry on y® Charge of Acting w'tout great summis of Money to buy Apparell Habitts & ppertys Machins & other decoracons sold out to ye Honoble Mr Ashburnham late Cofferer of his Matie Houshould ye Hounoble John Harvey Esq! y® Lord Lonnolly & sev! other psons diverse [the last word added] pts & shares in y® pffitts thereof all w‘® Interested psons or y® psons Clayming und? them ought to have been made ptys to y® Granting of y® sd 5! p diem & to have some consideracon as well as y® Lady Davenant D* Daven! M! Killigrew M’ Betterton tis true M? Killigrew acknow- ledges yt he had 50!5 w™ he is ready to bring into Cash & my Lady Davenant we hear had 400!8 wee would faine [the last word added] know wt D! Daven! & M! Betterton had.” Article 10. Concerning Rich’s refusal to pay {50 “for ye Organs in S! Brides & alsoe M! Atterbury y® Lecturer w? has been allowed to his p'decessors.”’ Betterton also ought to pay his share. ‘‘ M’ Betterton lives in one of y® ffront Houses & has done for many Years & has not yett pd any Rent for it.” He, therefore, ought to pay the parish duties, and the patentees hope that he will pay rent for his house before he is forced by law. Articie 11. Williams’ claim for £4 a week salary. The patentees reply that when Mountfort and Leigh were alive Williams never had more than £3 a week or ? of a share. “Ab! August 1692 M! Williams left y® house for ab? 4 a year but M? Mountfort & Mr Leigh both dyeing in Decemb! 1692 M! Williams was asked to act again & he being pretty sensible of our necessity of him at y‘ time Imposed upon us & would not come in to Act unless he had 4° p Weeke for y* Year w? M! Thomas Daven! agreed to give him for yt Year.” After the year was over they offered him 3 of a share and {10 in consideration of some clothes: he refused 22-2 340 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF and accordingly they reduced him to £3 per week. This, say the patentees, is all he deserves “‘ for he knows yt y® last year Mf Powell & M! Verbruggen did Act his pts above 30 times.” Article 12. “‘As to M's Bracegirdle pposicon of having pts of y® Cleere pffitts of an Old Play.” The patentees answer that before she asked for it they offered her third part of the profits of a benefit, and they trust that Dorset will leave this matter for them to arrange. Article 13. Concerning Mrs Verbruggen’s salary. The patentees consider that 50s. is quite enough for her: her demand of 5s. extra was simply due to their proposal to Mrs Bracegirdle. Article 14. Doggett’s demand. Doggett, say the patentees, was taken into the playhouse in 1690 at 10s. a week “‘from being a Stroler & in ffeb"’ 1692 he entered into Articles und! hand & seale to serve y® Playhous at 40% p Weeke & to give 9 Acting Months notice und! hand & seale when he should have a Mind to leave. y® Company.” At the request of Betterton and Mrs Barry the patentees had since allowed him ros. a week more: but about three weeks ago he had written demanding for himself £3 a week for a year. Article 15. ‘“‘Mr Brights studing up many pts of Mr Leigs & what he saveth ye Company by dancing desires an Addicon of 58 a Weeke to his Sallary.” Bright, declare the patentees, signed on for 40s. a week, but already he had been promised this extra 5S. The patentees then point out that regarding the other signatories to the petition—Bowman, Underhill, Kynaston, Sandford, Bowen, Mrs Betterton, Mrs Leigh and Mrs Bowman—no complaint has been stated, and proceed to summarise their treatment of these actors and actresses. ‘Three weeks previously Bowman had signed on for £3 per week or ? share “‘w*? was w! he had when he last went out of share in Jan’ 1693.” Before that date he never had more than £3 weekly salary. Underhill received a weekly salary of £3 although he acted but seldom. Kynaston received the same, but likewise acted only infrequently. Sandford got £2. 10s. per week but “by reason of his Indisposition & his Voice often failing he is able to Act but seldom.”’ Bowen signed on for 40s. weekly, but was advanced tos. a week the previous year. This Betterton himself declared was more than he deserved. Although this actor is easily drawn to mutiny ‘“‘yett he studys his pts very quickly & Acts w'' vigour.” Mrs Betterton was in receipt of 50s. a week “constantly pd her in Complem! to M? Betterton She not appears in any pts to y® satisfaction of ye Audience.” Mrs Leigh since the THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 341 death of her husband had been raised tos., so that her salary was now 30s. This, say the patentees, is all that the popular Mrs Cory received. Mrs Bowman’s salary had been raised 5s. a week since 18 October last (1694). She was now getting 30s. though she had signed on for 25s. “She being a Child-bearing Woman some other must learn some of her pts or else those Playes she is in cannot be acted.” She certainly, in the opinion of the patentees, had no cause to complain. Finally, the patentees draw the atten- tion of the Lord Chamberlain to the fact that there were still a number of actors who did not sign Betterton’s petition: namely: Powell, Verbruggen, Trefuse, Lee, Horden, Harland, Cibber, Harris, Pinkethman, ‘‘ Young Kent,” Mrs Aylyffe, Mrs Hodgson, Mrs Knyght, Mrs Rogers, Mrs Perryn, Mrs Lawson, Mrs Kent, Mrs Lucas, and Mrs Temple. TX. MiIsceLLaNeous. 1. Documents relating to the Theatre in Whitehall, etc. (a) Warrant to deliver to George Johnson, Keeper of the Royal Cockpit in St James’s Park “‘such a quantitie of Greene Bayes as will couer the Stage...and to hange ouer ouer (sic) the doores there.” Nov. 13, 1662. (L.C. 5/137, p. 175.) (That this was for the performance of a play seems proved by a later warrant, dated Nov. 15, 1689 (L.C. 5/149, p. 318) for “*Greene bayes”’ to cover the stage for a play to be acted there ‘‘on Friday next.”) (6) Warrant to deliver 110 yards of green baize for the upper tyring rooms, which in their present state are unfit for rich clothes, 27 ‘‘Glasses for Weomen,” 20 chairs and stools and 3 tables. Dec. 10, 1662. (L.C. 5/119.) (c) Warrant “to make vp Habitts of seuerall coloured Silkes for foure and Twenty violins twelue of them being for his Ma‘?* service in the Theatre Royall and the other twelue Habitts for His Ma‘** service in His Highnesse the Duke of Yorkes Theatre and also foure and Twenty Garlands of seuerall coloured flowers” ; all these to be delivered to Killigrew, Mar. 20, 1664/5. (L.C. 5/138, p. 45; the same warrant, with minor deviations, is repeated in L.C. 5/119.) (d) Warrant “to make vp Habitts of seuerall coloured rich Taffataes for fower and Twenty violins like Indian Gownes but not soe full with short sleeues to the Elbow and trymmed with Tinsell about the neck and bottome and at the sleeves after the fashion as St Henry Herbert...shall informe yo" Lopp and to 342 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF bee deliuered to St Henry Herbert for his Mats extraordinary service and also fowr and twenty Garlands of seuerall coloured floures to each of them.” Mar. 18, 1664/5. (Jd. p. 46.) (e) Warrant to deliver for use in the Theatre “One large long Cushion of Gold Coloured Damaske trymed with silke fringe and Tassells and a table Carpett of the like Damaske four foote long and two foot three Inches broad trymed suteable to the Cushion And one Pewter Standish.” April 10, 1665. (Jd. p. 49.) (f) Warrant to deliver “three large trunks bound with Iron to keepe clothes for his Mates Service in the Theatre at Whitehall.” April 17, 1665. (Id. p. 49.) (g) (Cancelled order.) Warrant to deliver for use in the Cockpit **Six Turky worke chayres for y® Stage two Spanish Tables Six tynne Candle sticks Six Little tynne Candlesticks...one greate Chayre to bee vsed vpon y® stage.” Dec. 31, 1666. (Jd. p. 261; repeated with date Feb. 3, 1667, probably 1667/8, in L.C. 5/139, . g. Here two “Turkey worke carpetts” and green baize are ordered as well.) (h) Order “‘to cause y® Stage in ye Theatre in Whitehall to be altered and made in such fashion as it was for Scaramouch’s Acting And his Mattes Seate to be placed & made as then it was. And that ye doore be opened as the Actors then went in at” and to prepare “such boxes & partitions as the ffrench Comoedians shall desire you for theire Accomodation.” Feb. 5, 1676/7. (L.C. 5/141, p. 528.) (A further order for altering the stage for the French comedians, dated Dec. 4, 1677, appears in L.C. 5/142, p. 160.) (¢) Warrant to provide ‘‘vnto Mons* Cabin fiue Habitts to be made of such fashion & of such particulers as he shall giue you informacon,” to be ready for Friday, Feb. 5, 1677/8. (L.C. 5/143, P- 32.) (j) Warrant “‘to require you to rayle in two benches betweene y® Lord Stewards box and y® Scenes in y® Theatre for ye Am- bassadors.” Oct. 14, 1685. (L.C. 5/17, p. 20; and L.C. 5/146, P- 27.) (k) “These are to pray and require you to cause the Seates in the Theatre, in the Pitt, only to bee new matted, they being soe dirty, and vnfitt to place any Person of Quality on for whome they are appoynted.” Oct. 27, 1685; Lord Chamberlain to Sir Christopher Wren. (L.C. 5/147, p. 1.) THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 343 2. Agreements of Actors and Playwrights. (For the petitions of several scene-painters, see supra, p. 42.) (a) “Articles of Agreement Indented, and made y* 29t" Day of October 1696, By, and between Colley Cibber Gent. on the One Parte, and Christopher Rich Esq., one of the Patentees of the Theatres on the other Parte as followeth Impri? The said Colley Cibber in consideration of one Shilling to him now Paid, and for the farther Considerations herein after mentioned doth Bargain, and sell unto y® said Christopher Rich his Heires and Assignes A Certain New Play written by the s¢ C: Cibber, and stiled Woman’s Witt or y® Devill to Dealt with to bee Acted only by the Company of Actors under the Goverment of the s? Chi: Rich his Heires, or Assignes within a Month after the Parts of the said Play shall bee Distributed to the said Com- pany of Actors Item: In Consideration whereof it is Agreed that Mr Cibber shall have all the Mony Receiv’d on the Third day of acting such Play Paying out of the same all the Charges of the House Constant and Incident: But if the Receipts on the fourth Day shall amount to 55" or upwards then the said Charges of such Third Day shall bee returned to Mt Cibber And in case the Receipts on such fourth Day shall Amount to 40" or upwards, then the said Play shall bee acted the next Day Following: And if the fift days Receipts shall amount to 40! or upwards, then the said Play shall bee acted again the next day, and the said Mr Cibber shall have all the Receipts of such sixt Day Paying out [of] the same all the Charges of the House Con- stant, and Incident. And if the Receipts on such sixt Day shall not amount to the Full Charges of the House Constant, and Incident then Mr? Cibber is to make it up at his own Costs, and Charges: And if the Receipts on such sixt Day shall amount to 40! then the said Play shall bee acted on the next day following. And if the Receipts on such seaventh Day shall amount to 50! or Upwards, then the said Charges of such sixt Day shall bee return’d to Mt Cibber And the said Mr Cibber is to have the sole Benefitt of Printing such Play: But he is not to suffer it to bee Printed till a month next after it shall bee first acted Item it is agreed between the Parties to these Presents, that the said Colley Cibber shall bargain and sell unto the said M* Rich his Heires, or Assignes all such other Play, and Plays as the said Mr Cibber shall hereafter write to bee acted only by the Company under the Goverment of the said Mr Rich his Heires, or Assignes, upon the like Termes, and Considerations aforesaid during the 344 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF said Mr Cibbers being an Actor in this Company aforesaid, and that the said Mr? Cibber shall not During his being an Actor in such Company write any Play, or other thing whatsoever for any other Company: In wittness whereof the said Parties to thes Articles of Agreement have thereunto Interchangeably sett their hands, and seales the Day, and Year first above written. Sign’d Seal’d, and Deliver’d Colley Cibber [seal] by y® said C Cibber a six- Penny stamp then Appearing on this Paper.” (L.C. 7/3; witnessed by G. Perrill and J. Shore.) (6) Contract with Robinson for scenes: “Whereas Mr Robert Robinson has this day Undertaken to paint, or Cause to be painted well, & in Workmanlike manner y® Severall Sets of scenes, & Machines, for a New Opera Written by Mr? Settle, & to Be forthwith, & w*® all ye Expedition that may be, perform’d At y® Theatre Royall, w‘? sayd Scenes, & Machines are to be The whole paintings that are to belong to y® sayd Opera according To Such Measures as y® sayd Robert Robinson, hath agreed & Concerted wt» ye sayd Mr Settle. Now therefore we whose names are Underwritten Doe hereby agree, & promise to pay, or Cause to be payd, from y® Office of y® say’d Theatre Royall Unto ye sayd M’ Robinson or his order y® full Summ of one hundred & thirty Pounds Sterling in full Sattis- faction of, & for y® sayd Paintings, in manner following Vizt: Ten Pounds pt Week Dureing [ye deleted] such time as he shall be working, & Painting of ye sayd Scenes, & Machines, & y® Remainder on y® first, Second, & fourth days of y? Acting y? sayd Opera, or w'tin fourteen days after y® sayd Paintings shall be finish’d. Wittness our hands ye 18" day of March. 1699 Fra: M: Knight Geo: Powell Jane Rogers Rob! Wilks John Mills Will: Pinkethman Mem! ‘That M? Robinson on his part doth agree, & promise to finish the Scenes & Work within [deletion] Mention’d, win Seauen Weeks of y® date hereof. Wittness my hand Robt Robinson.” (L.C. 7/3.) (c) Articles of Agreement between Verbruggen and Skipwith, April 10, 1695. THE HISTORY OF THE STAGE 345 1. For three years Verbruggen will “with his best care & skill Sing Dance Act Rehearse and Rep'sent.” 2. Skipwith will give him £4 out of every £20 to be divided among the adventurers; all debts contracted since Oct. 17, 1694, to be paid out of the general receipts. 3. Skipwith gives a bond of £300. 4. Verbruggen does likewise. Witnessed by Philipp Griffin and Hild. Horden. A note is appended ‘That because a Share produced nothing, St Thomas Skipwith advanced 4! a weeke to Mt Verbruggen.” (L.C. 7/3.) (d) Articles of Agreement between John and Susanna Ver- bruggen and Skipwith, April 10, 1695: 1. John Verbruggen agrees that, for a payment of £75, his wife will act in the theatre, 2. Susanna Verbruggen to have £4 out of £20 (as above); if this does not amount to {105 per year (i.e. £3 a week for 35 acting weeks) this sum shall be made up to her. At the end of every 6 acting days (except when the young actors play for their own benefit) she shall have £3 till the whole £105 is completed. If, on the other hand, her share comes to more than {105 she shall be allowed to keep it. (L.C. 7/3.) (e) Articles of Agreement between Doggett and Skipwith, April 3, 1696: 1. Doggett to start acting on Oct. 10, and to perform nowhere else. 2. Skipwith to give him {4 for every six acting days “‘or else share up to the heighth as shall be paid to Mt George Powell or Mr? John Verbruggen.” 3. Doggett to get the benefit of one old play to be acted on a Wednesday or Friday in Lent after Christmas, he to pay the charges of the house. 4. Doggett and Skipwith give bonds of £500. (L.C. 7/3.) Another document of date April 3, 1696, refers to the fact that Skipwith has given Doggett £50, with a promise of another {50 on Oct. 12. Should Doggett die or should ‘‘not before that time leave off acting with the Company of Actors in Lincolns Inn ffieilds” the whole £100 would be forfeited. Skipwith is to bear all charges save 1os. of a benefit play, but this must not be an opera or a recently revived drama. If Doggett leaves off acting at L.I.F. by July 20 “‘ & shall from that time travell in the Vacation to Improve himselfe in Acting” and learns five parts, Skipwith shall pay him {10. If Doggett gives notice within 3 weeks and travels ‘‘to Improve himselfe in Acting & makeing Observacons 346 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF for y® benefitt of this Company” Skipwith shall give him £20. (f) Articles of Agreement between “William Bullock of St Giles Cripplegate” and Skipwith, April 15, 1695: 1. Bullock to act only with the D.L. company. 2. Skipwith to give Bullock 20s. a week; the contract being terminable only on g months’ notice. Signatures of Bullock, Verbruggen and Griffin (copy; L.C. 7/3). (g) Articles of Agreement between Sorin, a dancing master, and Betterton, July 25, 1696: Sorin to receive 30s. a week with augmentation, if necessary. Witnessed by John Baptist Draghi. (L.C. 7/3.) (h) Letter of notice, June 17, 1699; Erasmus Evans and Susanna Evans, his daughter, give notice that the latter will dance at L.I.F. for only one month longer. (L.C. 7/3.) ({) Warrant for discharge, Dec. 10, 1680. ‘‘Whereas John Dowson was Entertained Dancing Master in his Mates Theatre Royall but Entered not into Articles for his Continuance there And the said John Dowson desireing to be discharged from y® said Theatre I doe hereby discharge him.” (L.C. 5/144, p. 22; Lord Chamberlain’s warrant.) 3. Various Documents relating to Theatres, and Actors’ Petitions. (a) Petition of Verbruggen (c. 1697/8 or later). Summary: Smith, one of the chief actors and sharers of L.I.F., died in Michaelmas, 1696, and the company was in distress to find a substitute. Verbruggen thereupon withdrew “ by the Ld Chamber- lains Leave” from the D.L. company and entered L.I.F. as a sharing actor and manager. By articles of Oct. 27, 1696, between Betterton, Mrs Barry, Mrs Bracegirdle, Mrs Bowman, Underhill, Bright, Mrs Leigh on the one part and Verbruggen on the other, Verbruggen was to get one share. Betterton at that time had 14 shares, but quitted a } share in favour of the Petitioner. Ver- bruggen was also to have 20s. a week. He was informed then that the debts were not above £200, and was surprised at the smallness of his income from the share. The other parties to the agreement declared that Betterton, Mrs Barry and Mrs Bracegirdle, who would not let the books be seen, were making huge profits. About Michaelmas last Verbruggen was told that the debts were about £800; after an attendance before the Lord Chamberlain it was agreed that there should be no benefits and that all spare money should go to pay off these debts. During this winter the receipts have been specially large “especially ever since the Italian Woman THE HISTORY OF THE-STAGE 347 hath sung.” Yet Betterton and the others pretended the debts were not yet settled, even although they had stopped Verbruggen’s 20s. a week. Betterton has ordered bills, announcing Othello to be acted on Friday next with singing by the Italian woman, for his own benefit. Verbruggen hears she is to sing also at benefits of Mrs Barry and Mrs Bracegirdle, and then to leave off per- forming. (L.C. 7/3.) (b) Letter from Richard Coling to Mr Knight, Mar. 8, 1689/90; “My Lord Chamberlayne would haue you to sumon Mt Downs prompter at theire Mates Theatre to appeare on Munday morning next by Nyne of the Clock It being the tyme His Lordpp hath appoynted to heare the difference betweene Mr Killigrew & Mrs Currer.” (L.C. 5/150, p. 366.) (c) Order to Sir Christopher Wren to inspect the Duke’s Theatre in Salisbury Court as the King has heard that there is a wall defective. Nov. 29, 1671. (L.C. 5/14, p. 73.) APPENDIX C Hand-list of Restoration Plays [1660-1700] [The following list is arranged alphabetically according to the names of the authors, but the plays of each individual dramatist are tabulated in the order of performance. The place of pro- duction and the year of production, where known, appear in brackets after the title of the play: the dates following are those of separate editions. No attempt has been made to differentiate various issues (as distinct from editions). These will be indicated in detail in a larger Bibliography of Restoration Drama which I have at present in preparation and from which this list is largely condensed. I have here used, as in the body of this book, T.R. as a contraction for the Theatre Royal in Vere Street or in Bridges Street, D.L. for the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, and L.L.F. for the Duke’s Theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and D.G. for the Duke’s Theatre in Dorset Garden. I have further employed the contractions C. for comedy, T. for tragedy, T.C. for tragi-comedy, O. for opera, F. for farce, D.O. denotes a dramatic opera after Purcell’s model and P. a political pamphlet written in the form of a play but evidently not intended to be acted.] UNKNOWN AUTHORS. P. A Phanatique Play. The First Part, As it was Presented before and by the Lord Fleetwood, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Sir Henry Vane, the Lord Lambert, and others, last night, with Master Iester and Master Pudding (unacted) 1660. (Another issue reads, A Phanatick Play.) P, The Tragical Actors or the Martyrdome of the late King Charles - wherein Oliver’s late falsehood, with the rest of his gang are described in their several actions and stations (unacted). No date on title-page, but the colophon gives, Printed for Sir Arthur, 1660. P. Cromwell’s Conspiracy. A Tragy-Comedy, Relating to our latter Times. Beginning at the Death of King Charles the First, And ending with the happy Restauration of King Charles the Second. Written by a Person of Quality (unacted) 1660. a HAND-LIST OF RESTORATION PLAYS 349 Hells Higher Court of Justice; or the Triall of the Three Politick Ghosts, Viz. Oliver: Cromwell, King of Sweden, and Cardinal Mazarine (unacted) 1661. - Hewson Reduc’d: or, the Shoomaker return’d to his Trade BR se y Cc (unacted) 1661. Andronicus: a Tragedy, Impieties Long Successe, or Heavens Late Revenge (unacted) 1661. . The Unfortunate Usurper (unacted) 1663. . Knavery in all Trades: or, the Coffee-House. A Comedy. As it was Acted in the Christmas Holidays by several Apprentices. 1664. T. The Ungrateful Favourite (unacted) 1664. [Possibly by Thomas HO HO Southland.] . The Feign’d Astrologer (acting uncertain) 1668. . The Imperial Tragedy. Taken out of a Latin Play. And very much Altered folio 1669. [Possibly by Sir William Killigrew.] . Pluto Furens & Vinctus; or, The Raging Devil Bound. A Modern Farse. Per Philocomicum (unacted). Amstelodami, 1669. . The Religious-Rebell, or the Pilgrim-Prince (unacted) 1671. . The Amorous Old-vvoman: or, ’Tis VVell if it Take. A Comedy....By a Person of Honour (D.L. c. March, 1674), 1674; reissued as The Fond Lady, 1684. [Sometimes attri- buted to Duffett.] . The Mall: or the Modish Lovers (D.L. c. Jan. 1674) 1674. [Sometimes attributed to Dryden.] . The Mistaken Husband (D.L. c. September 1675) 1675. [Attributed sometimes to Dryden; he was certainly responsible for one scene.] . The Woman turn’d Bully (D.G. c. July 1675) 1675. . Piso’s Conspiracy (D.G. c. Dec. 1675) 1676. [An alteration of the Nero of 1624.] C. The Counterfeit Bridegroom: or the Defeated Widow (D.G. ce. September, 1677) 1677. [Sometimes attributed to Betterton ; an adaptation of Middleton’s No Wit like a Woman’s.] Moral Interlude. The Traitor to Himself, or Mans Heart his greatest Enemy. A Moral Interlude in Heroic Verse....As it was Acted by the Boys of a Publick School...1678. Ent. The Huntingdon Divertisement, or, an Enterlude For the Generall Entertainment of the County-Feast, Held at Mer- chant-Taylors Hall, June 20, 1678. 1678. 350 HAND-LIST OF Past. The Constant Nymph: or, the Rambling Shepheard. A Pastoral...vvritten by a Person of Quality (D.G. c. July 1677) 1678. Play. The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, with The Restauration of the Protestant Religion: or, The Downfal of the Pope. Being a most Excellent Play (Bartholomew and Southwark Fairs, 1680) 1680. F. The Muse of New-Market: or, Mirth and Drollery Being Three Farces Acted before the King and Court at New- Market; Viz. The Merry Milkmaid of Islington, or the Rambling Gallants defeated. Love lost in the Dark, or the Drunken Couple. The Politick Whore or the Conceited Cuckhold. 1680. [The second play is a “droll” made from Massinger’s The Guardian, and the third is condensed from Davenport’s The City Night-Cap.] P. Rome’s Follies: or, The Amorous Fryars....As it was lately Acted at a Person of Qualities House (unacted) 1681. C. Mr Turbulent: or, The Melanchollicks (D.G. c. January 1682) 1682; reissued as The Factious Citizen, or, The Melan- choly Visioner. 1685. T. Romulus and Hersilia: or, The Sabine War (D.G. c. August, 1682) 1683. F. The Rampant Alderman, or News from the Exchange, A Farce (probably unacted) 1685. (Largely an adaptation of Marmion’s Fine Companion.) C. The Mistaken Beauty, or the Lyar (D.L. c. September, 1684) 1685. [Contemporary chroniclers note an earlier edition as The Lyar in 1661; this Pepys had seen on Nov. 28, 1667.] P. The Abdicated Prince: or, The Adventures of Four Years. A Tragi-Comedy (unacted) 1690. [A second edition is mentioned in an advertisement to The Bloody Duke, but this probably was never issued.] P. The Bloody Duke: or, The Adventures for a Crown. A Tragi- Comedy....Written by the Author of the Abdicated Prince (unacted) 1690. P. The Royal Voyage, or the Irish Expedition: A Tragi-comedy (unacted) 1690. P. The Late Revolution: or, The Happy Change. A Tragi- Comedy (unacted) 1690. P. The Banish’d Duke: or, The Tragedy of Infortunatus (D.L. c. September 1690) 1690. RESTORATION PLAYS 351 . The Royal Flight: or, The Conquest of Ireland. A New Farce (unacted) 1690. . The Folly of Priest-Craft. A Comedy (unacted) 1690. (Halliwell-Phillipps notes a variant title, The Converts.) . The Bragadocio; or, The Bawd turn’d Puritan: A New Comedy. By a Person of Quality (unacted) 1691. . The Siege and Surrender of Mons. A Tragi-Comedy (un- acted) 1691. Sat. Wit for Money: or, Poet Stutter. A Dialogue between Smith, Johnson, and Poet Stutter. Containing Reflections on some late Plays; and particularly, on Love for Money, or, The Boarding School (unacted) 1691. Sat. The New Athenian Comedy, containing The Politicks, (£conomicks, Tacticks, Crypticks, Apocalypticks, Stypticks, Scepticks, Pneumaticks, Theologicks, Poeticks, Mathematicks, Sophisticks, Pragmaticks, Dogmaticks, &c. Of that most Learned Society (unacted) 1693. P. The Royal Cuckold: or, Great Bastard....A Tragy-Comedy (unacted) 1693. C. She Ventures, and He Wins. A Comedy (L.I.F. c. 1695-6) 1696. [The dedication is signed Ariadne.] T.C. Timoleon: or, The Revolution. A Tragi-Comedy (probably unacted) 1697. (A MS. note in the Bodleian copy attributes this to Southby.) T.C. The Triumphs of Virtue. A Tragi-Comedy (D.L. c. 1696/7) 1697. yu The Unnatural Mother....Written by a Young Lady (L.I.F. c. August, 1697) 1698. T. The Fatal Discovery; or, Love in Ruines. A Tragedy (D.L. c. March 1697/8) 1698. C. Feign’d Friendship: or The Mad Reformer (L.LF. c. 1698) [1698]. ARROWSMITH, — ; C. The Reformation (D.G. c. September 1673) 1673. [Attri- buted to Arrowsmith by Langbaine.] BAILEY, ABRAHAM. C. The Spightful Sister. A New Comedy (unacted), 1667. BANCROFT, JOHN. T. The Tragedy of Sertorius (D.L. c. March 1678/9) 1679. Play. King Edward the Third, with the Fall of Mortimer Earl of March. An Historicall Play (D.L. c. December 1690) 1691. [Attributed to Bancroft by Coxeter.] rs) "Sa ee 352 Tks HAND-LIST OF Henry the Second, King of England; with the Death of Rosamond (D.L. Nov. 1692) 1693. [Attributed to Bancroft by Gildon.] BANKS, JOHN. Ws =f Syl 4 The Rival Kings: or The Loves of Oroondates and Statira (D.L. c. June 1677) 1677. The Destruction of Troy (D.G. c. November 1678) 1679. The Unhappy Favourite: or the Earl of Essex (D.L. c. September 1681) 1682; 1685; 1693; [1699]; 1702; 1712. Vertue Betray’d: or, Anna Bullen (D.G. c. April 1682) 1682; 1692; 1715. The Island Queens: Or, The Death of Mary, Queen of Scotland....Publish’d only in Defence of the Author and the Play, against some mistaken Censures, occasion’d by its being prohibited the Stage (unacted) 1684. The Innocent Usurper; or, The Death of the Lady Jane Gray (unacted, banned by censor) 1694. Cyrus the Great: or, The Tragedy of Love (L.I.F. c. April 1695) 1696. The Albion Queens: or the Death of Mary Queen of Scotland (D.L. 1704) 1704. [This is a new edition of The Island Queens with alterations.] BEDLOE, WILLIAM. i The Excommunicated Prince: or, The False Relique. A Tragedy. As it was Acted by His Holiness’s Servants. Being the Popish Plot in a Play (unacted) 1679. [This play has been attributed to Thomas Walker of Jesus Coll., Oxford. For the title see Langbaine, pp. 15—-16.] BEHN, Mrs APHRA or ASTRAEA. T.C. The Forc’d Marriage, or the Jealous Bridegroom (L.I.F. C. C fh C. Cc December 1670) 1671; 1688?; 1690. The Amorous Prince, or, The Curious Husband (L.LF. c. May 1671) 1671. The Dutch Lover (D.G. February 1672/3) 1673. Abdelazer, or the Moor’s Revenge (D.G. c. April 1676) 1677; 1693. The Town-Fopp: or Sir Timothy Tawdrey (D.G. c. Sep- tember 1676) 1677; 1699. The Debauchee: or, The Credulous Cuckold (D.G. c. February 1676/7) 1677. [Ascribed to Mrs Behn by Langbaine.] RESTORATION PLAYS 353 The Rover: Or, The Banish’t Cavaliers (D.G. March 1676/7) 1677; ? 16973 1709. Sir Patient Fancy (D.G. January 1677/8) 1678; ?168r. The Feign’d Curtizans, or, A Nights Intrigue (D.G. c. March 1678/9) 1679. T.C. The Young King: or, The Mistake (D.G. c. June 1679) Cc. Mim OP F. 1683; 16098. The Second Part of the Rover (D.G. February or April 1680) 1681. The Roundheads or, The Good Old Cause (D.G. c. December 1681) 1682; 1698. The City-Heiress: or, Sir Timothy Treat-all (D.G. c. March 1681/2) 1682; 1698. The False Count, or, A New Way to play an Old Game (D.G. c. September 1682) 1682; 1697 (a reissue). The Luckey Chance, or An Alderman’s Bargain (D.L. c. April 1686) 1687. The Emperor of the Moon (D.G. c. March 1686/7) 1687; 1688. T.C. The Widdow Ranter or, The History of Bacon in Vir- C. ginia (D.L. c. November 1689) 1690. The Younger Brother: or, The Amorous Jilt (D.L. c. December 1696) 1696. BELON, PETER. C. The Mock-Duellist, or, The French Vallet (D.L. c. May 1675) 1675. [Attributed to Belon by Lang- baine.] BETTERTON, THOMAS. Je C. Appius and Virginia, Acted...under the name of The Roman Virgin or Unjust Judge. (L.I.F. May 1669) 1679. [This adaptation of Webster is attributed to Betterton; chroniclers mention an edition of 1670, but this I have been unable to discover.) The Amorous Widow; or, the Wanton Wife (L.IF. c. 1670) 1706; 1710 (in The Life of Mr Thomas Betterton); and several times thereafter. The Revenge: or, A Match in Newgate (D.G. c. August 1680) 1680. [Attributed to Betterton; an alteration of Marston’s Dutch Courtesan.] D.O. The Prophetess: or, the History of Dioclesian (D.G. June 1690) 1690. [Attributed to Betterton by Gildon and others; an alteration from Beaumont and Fletcher.]} NRD 23 354 HAND-LIST OF T.C. K. Henry IV with the Humours of Sir John Falstaff (L.LF. c. Dec. 1699) 1700. The Sequel of Henry the Fourth: With the Humours of Sir John Falstaffe, and Justice Shallow (D.L.) [1719]. BOOTHBY, Mrs F. T.C. Marcelia: or the Treacherous Friend (T.R. c. August 1669) 1670. BOURNE, REUBEN. C. The Contented Cuckold, cr the Womans Advocate (unacted) 1692. BOYLE, ROGER, Earl of ORRERY. T. The History of Henry the Fifth. And the Tragedy of Mustapha, Son of Solyman the Magnificent ((1) L.I.F. August 1664, (2) L.LF. April 1665) Folio 1668; 1669; 1677; 1690. T. Two New Tragedies: The Black Prince, and Tryphon ((1) T.R. October 1667, (2) L.I.F. December 1668) Folio 1669; 1672. Mr. Anthony. A Comedy (D.G. c. 1671) 1690. C. Guzman (L.LF. April 1669) 1693. T. Herod the Great (unacted) 1694. [The Szx Plays of 1694 consists simply of separate editions of these plays issued with a new title page.] T. Altemira (altered form of The General, L.I.F. Sept. 1664) 1702. BRADY, Dr. T. The Rape: or, The Innocent Impostors (D.L. February 1691/2) 1692. BULTEEL, f. C. Amorous Orontus: or the Love in Fashion, 1665; a later edition was published as The Amorous Gallant: or, Love in Fashion. A Comedie, in Heroick Verse, As it was Acted. 1675. CARLELL, LODOWICK. T. Heraclius Emperour Of the East (unacted) 1664. [For Carlell’s pre-Restoration plays see Dr W. W. Greg’s List of English Plays.| CARLISLE, JAMES. C. The Fortune-Hunters: or, Two Fools well met (D.L. c. March 1688/9) 1689. RESTORATION PLAYS 355 CARTWRIGHT, GEORGE. ii nee Heroick-Lover, or, ‘The Infanta of Spain (unacted) ° 1661. CARY, HENRY, Viscount FALKLAND. C. The Mariage Night (L.I.F. ? 1664) 1664. CARYL, JOHN. T. The English Princess, or, The Death of Ricard the III (L.L.F. March 1666/7) 1667; 1673. C. Sir Salomon; or, The Cautious Coxcomb (L.I.F. c. 1669) 1671; 1691. CAVENDISH, MARY, Duchess of NEWCASTLE. Playes written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princess, The Lady Marchioness of Newcastle. Folio 1662. [This volume contains the following plays, all unacted: Loves Adventures (2 parts); Several Wits: The wise Wit, the wild Wit, the cholerick Wit, the humble Wit; Youths Glory and Deaths Banquet (2 parts); The Lady Con- templation (2 parts); Wits Cabal (2 parts); The Unnatural Tragedie; The Publick VVooing; The Matrimonial Trouble (2 parts); Natures Three Daughters, Beauty, Love, and Wit (2 parts); The Religious; The Comical Hash; Bell in Campo (2 parts); The Apocriphal Ladies; The Female Academy.] Plays, Never before Printed. Folio, 1668. [Contains the following plays, all unacted: The Sociable Companions; or, The Female VVits; The Presence; The Bridals; The Convent of a Pleasure; and “A Piece of a Play.”’] CAVENDISH, WILLIAM, Duke of NEWCASTLE. C. The Humorous Lovers (L.I.F. March 1667) 1677. C. The Triumphant VVidow, or The Medley of Humours (D.G. November 1674) 1677. [For Cavendish’s other pre- Restoration plays see Dr W. W. Greg, op. cit.] CHAMBERLAYNE, Dr WILLIAM. T.C. Wits Led by the Nose: or, A Poet’s Revenge (D.L. c. September 1677) 1678. [An alteration of the same author’s Love’s Victory 1658.] CIBBER, COLLEY. C. Love’s Last Shift; or, The Fool in Fashion (D.L. January 1695/6) 1696; 1702. 23-2 356 HAND-LIST OF C. Womans Wit: or, The Lady in Fashion (D.L. c. December 1696) 1697. T. The Tragical History of King Richard III (D.L. c. December 1699) [1700]. [Cibber’s later eighteenth century productions are here omitted; they will be found enumerated in A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama, pp. 306-14.] COCKAIN, Sir ASTON. C. The Obstinate Lady: A New Comedy (unacted) 1657. Poems. With the Obstinate Lady, and Trapolin A supposed Prince... Whereunto is now Added The Tragedy of Ovid Intended to be Acted shortly (unacted) 8° 1662; 1669. CODRINGTON, ROBERT. C. Ignoramus (Court, November 1662) 1662. [I have not been able to see a copy of this play.] CONGREVE, WILLIAM. C. The Old Batchelour (D.L. January 1692/3) 1693 (several issues); 1694; 1697; 1707; 1710. The Double Dealer (D.L. October 1693) 1694; 1706; 1711. Love for Love (L.I.F. April 1695) 1695 (b7s); 1697; 1704; r7tt. The Mourning Bride (L.I.F. 1697) 1697 (b1s); 1703. The Way of the World (L.I.F. March 1699/1700) 1700 (dis); 1706. [For his post-Restoration productions see A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama, p. 315.] COOKE, EDWARD. T. Love’s Triumph, or, The Royal Union (unacted) 1678. CORYE, ¥OHN. C. The Generous Enemies or the Ridiculous Lovers (T.R. c, August 1671) 1672. COTTON, CHARLES. T. Horace, A French Tragedy of Monsieur Corneille. Englished by Charles Cotton, Esq. (unacted) 1671. COWLEY, ABRAHAM. C. Cutter of Coleman-Street (L.I.F. December 1661) 1663; 1693. [An alteration of the same author’s The Guardian. For Cowley’s pre-Restoration works see Dr W. W. Greg, op. cit. The Guardian was acted at D.G. in January 1674/5.] Ome ee RESTORATION PLAYS 357 CROWNE, JOHN. ye oe Juliana or The Princess of Poland (L.I.F. c. August 1671) 1671. The History of Charles the Eighth of France, or the Invasion of Naples by the French (D.G. c. December 1671) 1672; 1680 (reissue with variants). T. Andromache (D.G. c. August 1674) 1675, Masque. Calisto: or, The Chaste Nimph (Court, early in ee ri Se? 4 $b Q8 Of 2OH 1675) 1675. The Countrey Wit (D.G. January 1675/6) 1675; 1693. The Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus Vespasian. In Two Parts (D.L. January 1676/7) 1677; 1693; 1703. The Ambitious Statesman, or the Loyal Favourite (D.L. c. March 1678/9) 1679; ?1681. The Misery of Civil-War (D.G. c. March 1679/80) 1680; reissued in 1681 as Henry the Sixth, The Second Part. Or the Misery of Civil War. Henry the Sixth, The First Part. With the Murder of Humphrey Duke of Glocester (D.G. c. September 1681) 1681. Thyestes (D.L. c. March 1680/1) 1681. City Politiques (D.L. January 1682/3) 1683; 1688. Sir Courtly Nice: or, It Cannot Be (D.L. May 1685) 1685; 1693; 1703. Darius King of Persia (D.L. May 1688) 1688. The English Frier: or, The Town Sparks (D.L. c. March 1689/90) 1690. Regulus (D.L. c. June 1692) 1694. The Married Beau: or, The Curious Impertinent (D.L. c. Jan. 1694) 1694. Caligula (D.L. c. March 1697/8) 1698. DANCER, or DAUNCY, FOHN. Past. Aminta: The Famous Pastoral (unacted) 1660. T.C. Nicomede (acted at T.R. Dublin) 1671. T.C. Agrippa King of Alba: or, The False Tiberinus (T.R. Dublin) 1675. D’AVENANT, Sir WILLIAM. Ent. The first days Entertainment at Rutland House (Rutland cr House, 1656) 1657. The Siege of Rhodes Made a Representation by the Art of Prospective in Scenes, And the Story sung in Recitative Musick (Rutland House, September 1656) 1656; 1659. 358 HAND-LIST OF O. The Siege of Rhodes: The First and Second Part (L.I.F. June 1661) 1663; 1670. [The second part was given at the Cockpit probably in 1658.] O. The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru. Exprest by In- strumentall and Vocall Musick, and by Art of Perspective in Scenes, &c. (Cockpit, c. June 1658) 1658. The History of St Francis Drake (Cockpit, c. June 1658) 1659. The Rivals (L.I.F. before September 1664) 1668. The Man’s the Master (L.I.F. March 1667/8) 1669. The Tempest, or, The Enchanted Island (L.I.F. Novem- ber 1667) 1670. [Written with Dryden: see later Shadwell’s opera.| D.O. Macbeth....With all the Alterations, Amendments, Additions, and New Songs (D.G. February 1672/3) 1674 (bis); 1687; 1695; 1697; 1710. [An earlier version of Macbeth had appeared in 1673; this, while preserving features of the adaptation of 1674, is nearer to the Shake- speare original.] [For D’Avenant’s pre-Restoration works see Dr W. W. Greg, op. cit. The Law against Lovers (L.I.F. February 1661/2) and The Play-House to be Lett (L.1.F.c. Aug. 1663) first appeared in The Works of S" William D’avenant Kt. Fol. 1673.] D’AVENANT, Dr CHARLES. D.O. Circe (D.G. May 1676/7) 1677; 1685; 1703. DENHAM, Sir JOHN. [For his part in Horace, see under Mrs Phillips.] DENNIS, JOHN. C. A Plot, and No Plot (D.L. May 1697) [1697]. T. Rinaldo and Armida (L.I.F. ?1698) 1699. T. Iphigenia (L.I.F. 1699) 1700. DIGBY, GEORGE, Earl of BRISTOL. C. Elvira: or, The worst not always true (L.I.F. c. 1663) 1667; 1685. DILKE, THOMAS. C. The Lover’s Luck (L.I.F. c. December 1695) 1696. C. The City Lady: or, Folly Reclaim’d (L.I.F. c. Jan. 1696/7) 1697. C. The Pretenders: or, The Town Unmaskt (L.I.F. c. May 1698) 1698. a losee RESTORATION PLAYS 359 DOGGETT, THOMAS. Cc. The Country-Wake (L..I.F.c. May 1696) 1696; [?1697]. DOVER, JOHN. as The Roman Generalls: or the Distressed Ladies (unacted) 1667. DRAKE, Dr ¥AMES. C. The Sham Lawyer: or the Lucky Extravagant (D.L. c. Sept. 1696) 1697. DRYDEN, JOHN. C. The Wild Gallant (T.R. February 1662/3) 1669; 1684; 1686; 1694. T.C. The Rival Ladies (T.R. c. June 1664) 1664; 1669; 1675; 1693. T. The Indian Emperour, or, The Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. Being the Sequel of the Indian Queen (T.R. ¢. April 1665) 1667; 1668; 1670; 1681; 1686; 1692; 1694; 1696; 1703. T.C. Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen (T.R. March 1666/7) Cc. Cc i d} 1668 ; 1669; 1679; 1691; 1608. St Martin Mar-all, or the Feign’d Innocence (L.I.F. August 1667) 1668 (d7s); 1678; 1691; 1697. An Evening’s Love, or the Mock Astrologer (T.R. June 1668) 1671 (dis); 1675; 1691. Tyrannick Love, or the Royal Martyr (T.R. c. April 1669) 1670; 1672; 1677; 1686; 1694; 1695; 1702. The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards: In Two Parts (T.R. Part I c. December 1670; Part II January 1670/1) 1672; 1673; 1678; ?1681; 1687; 1695; 1704. [The head title reads Almanzor and Almahide, Or, the Conquest of Granada.] Marriage A-la~Mode (L.I.F. c. May 1672) 1673; 1684; 1691; 1698. The Assignation: or, Love in a Nunnery (L.I.F.c. Novem- ber 1672) 1673; 1678; 1692; ?1694. Amboyna (L.I.F. c. June 1673) 1673; 1691. [The head title reads Amboyna, or the Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants.] Aureng-Zebe (D.L. November 1675) 1676; 1685; 1692; 1694; 1699; 1704. The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man (unacted) 1677; 1678; 1684; 1690; 1692; 1695. 360 HAND-LIST OF All for Love or, The World well Lost (D.L. December 1677) 1678; 1692; 1696; 1703; 1709. C. The Kind Keeper; or, Mr Limberham (D.G. March 1677/8) 1680; 1690; 1701. Oedipus (D.G. c. January 1678/9) 1679; 1682; 1687; 1692; [1694?]; 1701; 1711. [Written in collaboration with ee. T.C. Troilus and Cressida, or, Truth Found too Late (D.G. c. April 1679) 1679; 1695; ?1697. C. The Spanish Fryar or, The Double Discovery (D.G. March 1679/80) 1681; 1686; 1690; 1695; 1704; 1717. T. The Duke of Guise (D.L. prepared for July 1682, but banned until November following) 1683; 1687; 1699. D.O, Albion and Albanius (D.G. June 1685) Folio 1685; 4° 1691. T. Don Sebastian, King of Portugal (D.L. December 1689) 1690; 1692. C. Amphitryon; or, The Two Socia’s (D.L. April 1690) 1690; reissue 1691; 1694; 1706. D.O. King Arthur: or, The British Worthy (D.G. c. May 1691) 1691; reissued with prologue and epilogue same year; 1695. T. Cleomenes, the Spartan Heroe (D.L. April 1692) 1692. T.C. Love Triumphant; or, Nature will Prevail (D.L. c. Dec. 1693) 1694. DRYDEN, JOHN fFnr. C. The Husband his Own Cuckold (L.I.F. 1695) 1696. DUFFETT, THOMAS. C. The Spanish Rogue (L.I.F. c. June 1673) 1674. Burlesque. The Empress of Morocco. A Farce (D.L. c. Dec. 1673) 1674. Burlesque. The Mock-Tempest: or The Enchanted Castle (D.L. November 1674) 1675. Burlesque. Psyche Debauch’d (D.L. c. May 1675) 1678. Masque. Beauties Triumph; A Masque. Presented by the Scholars of Mr Jeffery Banister, and Mr James Hart.... At Chelsey. 1676. D’URFEY, THOMAS. T. The Siege of Memphis, or The Ambitious Queen (D.L. c. September 1676) 1676. C. Madam Fickle: or the Witty False One (D.G. November 1676) 1677; 1682; 1691. if Aa age as RESTORATION PLAYS 361 igi Fool Turn’d Critick (D.L. November, 1676) 1678. A Fond Husband: or, The Plotting Sisters (D.G. May 1676) 1677; 1685; 1711. Trick for Trick: or, The Debauch’d Hypocrite (D.L. ce. March 1677/8) 1678. Squire Oldsapp: or, The Night-Adventurers (D.G. c. June 1678) 1679. The Virtuous Wife; or, Good Luck at last (D.G. c. Sep- tember 1679) 1680. Sir Barnaby Whigg: or, No Wit like a Womans (D.L. c. September 1681) 1681. The Royalist (D.G. January 1681/2) 1682. T.C. The Injured Princess, or The Fatal VVager (D.L. c. March 1681/2) 1682. Play. A Common-Wealth of Women. A Play (D.L. c. Sep- tember 1685) 1686. Play. The Banditti, or, A Ladies Distress. A Play (D.L. c. C. ARO Ff A February 1685/6) 1686. A Fool’s Preferment, or, The Three Dukes of Dunstable (D.G. c. April 1688) 1688. Bussy D’Ambois, or the Husbands Revenge (D.L. c. March 1690/1) 1691. Love for Money: or, the Boarding School (D.L. ¢. Dec. 1689) 1691; reissued with new title page same year; 1691; 1696. The Marriage-Hater Match’d (D.L. January 1691/2) 1692; 1693. The Richmond Heiress: or, A Woman Once in the Right (D.L. c. February 1692/3) 1693. The Comical History of Don Quixote (D.G. c. May 1694) 1694 (ds). The Comical History of Don Quixote....Part the Second (D.G. c. May 1694) 1694. The Comical History of Don Quixote. The Third Part. With the Marriage of Mary the Buxome (D.G. ?c. Nov. 1695) 1696. The Intrigues at Versailles: or, A Jilt in all Humours (L.L.F. c. February 1696/7) 1697 (42s). D.O. A New Opera, call’d Cinthia and Endimion: or, The Cc. Loves of the Deities (D.L. c. September 1697) 1697. The Campaigners: or, The Pleasant Adventures at Brussels (D.L. ce. Nov. 1698) 1698. 362 HAND-LIST OF T. The Famous History of the Rise and Fall of Massaniello. C. C. In Two Parts (D.L. c. May 1699) 1700. [The second part has the title: The Famous History and Fall of Mas- sainello: or, A Fisherman a Prince. The Second Part... 1699. The sti or, The Western Lass (D.L. 1701) 1701. [Whincop avers this was produced in 1697.] The Old Mode & the New, or, Country Miss with her Furbeloe (D.L. February 1703) [1704]. C.O. Wonders in the Sun: or, The Kingdom of the Birds C; (Haymarket, 1706) 1706. The Modern Prophets: or, New Wit for a Husband (D.L. 1709) [1709]. D.O. New Opera’s, with Comical Stories. 1721. [Containing: The Grecian Heroine: or, The Fate of Tyranny ; The Two Queens of Brentford: or, Bayes no Poetaster; Ariadne: or, The Triumph of Bacchus.] Scenario. The English Stage Italianiz’d, In a New Dramatic Entertainment, called Dido and Aeneas: or, Harlequin, A Butler, a Pimp, a Minister of State, Generalissimo, and Lord High Admiral, dead and alive again, and at last crown’d King of Carthage, by Dido. A Tragi-Comedy, after the Italian Manner: by way of Essay, or first step towards the farther Improvement of the English Stage. 1727. [Possibly spurious.] ECCLESTONE, EDWARD. D.O. Noah’s Flood, or, The Destruction of the World (unacted) 1679; reissued as The Deluge: or, The Destruc- tion of the World 1690. [Another issue as The Cataclysm seems to have appeared in 1685.] ECHARD, LAWRENCE. Amphitryon, Epidicus and Rudens made English, with Critical Remarks. 1694. Terence’s Comedies, made English. 1694. [Of these only The Eunuch was acted, D.L. 1717.] ETHEREGE, Sir GEORGE. C. C. C. The Comical Revenge; or, Love in a Tub (L.I.F. March 1664) 1664 (bis); 1667; 1669, 1689; 1690; 1697. She wou’d if she cou’d (L.I.F. February 1667/8) 1668; 16713; 1693. The Man of Mode, or, St Fopling Flutter (D.G. March 1675/6) 1676; 1684; 1693. RESTORATION PLAYS 363 FANE, Sir FRANCIS. C. Love in the Dark, or The Man of Bus’ness (D.L. May 1675) 1675. T. The Sacrifice (unacted) 1686; 1687; the latter reissued as the third edition the same year. [For Fane’s Masque for Rochester’s Valentinian see 'Tate’s Poems by Several Hands, 1685.] FANSHAWE, Sir RICHARD. Fiestas de Aranjuez: Festivals represented at Aranvvhez before the King and Queen of Spain. 1670; reissued as Querer Por Solo Querer: To Love only for Love Sake, 1671. [In 1648 Fanshawe published J] Pastor Fido; reprinted 1664 and 1676.] FARQUHAR, GEORGE. C. Love and a Bottle (D.L. 1699) 1699. C. The Constant Couple or a Trip to the Jubilee (D.L. Nov. 1699) 1699; 1700; 1704. [For his post-Restoration works see A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama, PP. 321-3.] FILMER, Dr EDWARD. T. The Unnatural Brother (L.I.F. c. March 1696/7) 1697. FLECKNOE, RICHARD. T.C. Love’s Dominion, a Dramatique Piece, Full of Excellent Moralitie; Written as a Pattern for the Reformed Stage (unacted) 1654; altered and reprinted as Love’s Kingdom. A Pastoral Trage-Comedy. Not as it was Acted at the Theatre near Lincolns-Inn, but as it was written, and since corrected by Richard Flecknoe, 1664; reissued 1674 (acted at L.I.F. probably in 1664). T.C. Erminia. Or, The fair and vertuous Lady (unacted) 1661. C. The Damoiselles ala Mode (T.R. September 1668) 1667. FORDE, THOMAS. Virtus Rediviva. A Panegyrick....1661. [Contains Loves Labyrinth: A Tragi-Comedy, with as a sub-title, or, The Royal Shepherdess. This was evidently unacted.] FOUNTAIN, JOHN. C. The Revvards of Vertue (unacted) 1661. GILDON, CHARLES. T. The Roman Bride’s Revenge (D.L. 1697) 1697. T. Phaeton: or, The Fatal Divorce (D.L. 1698) 1698. 364 HAND-LIST OF C. Measure for Measure, or Beauty the Best Advocate (L.I.F. c. 1699) 1700. T. Love’s Victim: or, The Queen of Wales (L.I.F. 1701) 1701. T. The Patriot: or, The Italian Conspiracy (D.L. 1703) 1703; reissued the same year as The Italian Patriot. GOULD, ROBERT. T. The Rival Sisters: or, The Violence of Love (D.L. e. Oct. 1695) 1696. GRANVILLE, GEORGE, Lord LANSDOWNE. The She-Gallants (L.I.F. c. December 1695) 1696. Heroick Love (L.I.F. c. December 1697) 1698. The Jew of Venice (L.1.F. 1701) 1701. The British Enchanters: or, No Magick like Love (Hay- market, February 1706) 1706. [The first three dramas were reprinted as Three Plays in 1713; and the last was included in Poems upon Several Occasions, 1712, with a separate title page dated 1710. All four appear in Four Plays, 1732 and in The Genuine Works of the same year and of 1736.] GREEN, ALEXANDER. C. The Politician Cheated. A New Comedy (unacted) 1663. HARRIS, JOSEPH. T.C. The Mistakes, or, The False Report (D.L. c. December 1690) 1691. C. The City Bride: or, The Merry Cuckold (L.LF. c. Jan. 1696) 1696. _ C. Love’s a Lottery, and a Woman the Prize. With a New Masque, call’d Love and Riches Reconcil’d (L.LF. c. March 1698/9) 1699. HAYNES, JOE. T. A Fatal Mistake: or, The Plot Spoil’d. 1692. [It is highly questionable if this play was ever acted; it was probably intended as a burlesque.] HIGDEN, HENRY. C. The Wary Widdow: or, Sir Noisy Parrat (D.L. February 1692/3) 1693. HOPKINS, CHARLES. T. Pyrrhus, King of Epirus (L.1.F. c. August 1695) 1695. Play. The Neglected Virtue: or, The Unhappy Conquerour (D.L. 1696) 1696. sielsio RESTORATION PLAYS 365 T. Boadicea Queen of Britain (L.I.F. 1697) 1697. T. Friendship Improv’d; or, The Female Warriour (L.LF. November 1699) 1700. HOWARD, Hon. EDWARD. T. The Usurper (T.R. January 1663/4) 1668. T.C. The Womens Conquest (L.I.F. c. November 1670) 1671. C. The Six days Adventure, or the New Utopia (L.LF. c. March 1670/1) 1671. C. The Man of Newmarket (D.L. c. April 1678) 1678. HOWARD, Hon. JAMES. C. The English Mounsieur (T.R. December 1666) 1674. C. All Mistaken, or the Mad Couple (T.R. September 1667) 1672. HOWARD, Sir ROBERT. Poems. 1660. [Contains The Blind Lady. A Comedy; unacted.] Four New Plays, Viz: The Surprisal, Committee, comedies. The Indian-Queen, Vestal-Virgin, Tragedies. Folio 1665. [(z) T.R. Nov. 1662; (2) T.R. before November 1662; (3) T.R. January 1663/4; (4) T.R. c. 1664.] T. The Great Favourite, Or, the Duke of Lerma (T.R. February 1667/8) 1668. [All four were reprinted in Five New Plays, 1692, reissued 1700.] JEVON, THOMAS. C. The Devil of a Wife, or A Comical Transformation (D.G. March 1685/6) 1686; 1693; 1695 (ds). JORDAN, THOMAS. [For his early works see Dr W. W. Greg, of. cit.] Ent. Bacchus Festival: or, A New Medley: being a Musical Representation at the Entertainment of his Excellency the Lord General Monk at Vintners Hail, 12 April 1660. 1660. F. A new droll: or The Counter Scuffle. The Second Part. 1663. Cc. Money is an Asse (place of acting not known) 1668. Pageants: London’s Resurrection to Joy and Triumph. 1671. London Triumphant: or, The City in Jollity and Splendour. 1672. aie in its Splendor. 1673. The Goldsmiths Jubile: or, London’s Triumphs. 1674. The Triumphs of London. 1675. 366 HAND-LIST OF London’s Triumphs. 1676. Londons Triumphs. 1677. The Triumphs of London. 1678. London in Luster. 1679. London’s Glory. 1680. London’s Joy. 1681. The Lord Mayor’s Show. 1682. The Triumphs of London. 1683. London’s Royal Triumph. 1684. JOYNER, WILLIAM. T. The Roman Empress (T.R. c. August 1670) 1671. KILLIGREW, THOMAS. [For his pre-Restoration plays see Dr W. W. Greg, op. cit.] Comedies, and Tragedies. Folio 1664. [Contains, besides The Prisoners and Claracilla, both issued in 1641: The Princess: Or, Love at first Sight (unacted?); The Parson’s Wedding (T.R. October 1664); The Pilgrim (unacted?); Cicilia and Clorinda, Or, Love in Arms (two parts: unacted?); Thomaso, Or, The Wanderer (two parts: unacted?); Bellamira her Dream: Or, The Love of Shadows (unacted?).] KILLIGREW, Sir WILLIAM. Three Playes. Folio 1664; 1674. [Contains: Selindra (T.R. March 1661/2); Pandora (or, The Converts) (T.R. c. 1662); Ormasdes (or, Love and Friendship) (unacted?).] Four New Playes. Folio 1666. [Contains, besides the above three: The Seege of Urbin (unacted?).] KIRKMAN, FRANCIS. P. The Presbyterian Lash. Or, Noctroff’s Maid Whipt (un- acted) 1661. [Has been attributed to Kirkman, perhaps erroneously. | The Wits, or, Sport upon Sport. 1662. [Contains a number of drolls.] The Wits; or, Sport upon Sport. In Selected Pieces of Drollery. 1672. [Reprint of above with ten new examples.] The Wits. Or, Sport upon Sport. 1673. [Reprint of drolls in above.] LACY, JOHN. F.C. The Old Troop: or, Monsieur Raggou (T.R. c. 1665) 1672; 1698. RESTORATION PLAYS 367 C. Sauny the Scott: or, The Taming of the Shrew (T.R. April 1667) 1698; 1708; 1714. F.C. The Dumb Lady, or, The Farrier Made Physician (T.R. 1669) 1672. C. Sir Hercules Buffoon, or, The Poetical Squire (D.G. c. September 1684) 1684. LEANERD, JOHN. C. The Country Innocence: or, The Chamber-Maid turn’d Quaker (D.L. c. April 1677) 1677. C. The Rambling Justice, or the Jealous Husbands (D.L. c. March 1677/8) 1678; 1694. C. The Counterfeits (D.G. May 1678) 1679. LEE, NATHANIEL. T. The Tragedy of Nero, Emperour of Rome (D.L. May 1674) 1675; 1692; 1696. T. Sophonisba, or Hannibal’s Overthrow (D.L. April 1675) 1676; 1681; 1685; 1691; 1693; 1697; 1704; 1709; 1712. T. Gloriana, or the Court of Augustus Caesar (D.L. January 1675/6) 1676; 1699. T. The Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great (D.L. March 1676/7) 1677; 1684; 1690; 1694; 1699; 1702; 1704. Mithridates, King of Pontus (D.L. c. March 1677/8) 1678; 1685; 1693; 1697; 1702; I7II. Caesar Borgia: the Son of Pope Alexander the Sixth (D.G. c. September 1679) 1680; 1696; 1711. Theodosius; or, The Force of Love (D.G. c. September 1680) 1680; 1684; 1692; 1697; 1708. Lucius Junius Brutus, Father of his Country (D.G. December 1680) 1681; 1708. The Princess of Cleve (D.G. 1681) 1689; 1697. Constantine the Great (D.L. c. December 1683) 1684. T. The Massacre of Paris (D.L. October 1689) 1690. MAIDWELL, LAURENCE. C. The Loving Enemies (D.G. c. October 1679) 1680. MANLEY, Mrs. C. The Lost Lover; or the Jealous Husband (D.L. c. April 1696) 1696. T. The Royal Mischief (L.I.F. c. April 1696) 1696. T. Almyna: or, the Arabian Vow (Haymarket, December 1706) 1707. cite hae laa Bi a 368 HAND-LIST OF T. Lucius, the First Christian King of Britain (D.L. May E77 2717; 1720. MEDBOURNE, MATTHEW. C. ‘Tartuffe; or, The French Puritan (T.R. c. April 1670) 1670; 1707. MOTTEUX, PETER ANTHONY. C. Love’s a Jest (L.LF. c. September 1696) 1696. Play. Loves of Mars and Venus (L.I.F. c. March 1697) 1697. C. The Novelty. Every Act a Play (L.LF. c. June 1697) 1697. Interlude. Europe’s Revels (L.I.F. 1697) 1697. T. Beauty in Distress (L.I.F. c. April 1698) 1698. O. The Island Princess, or the Generous Portuguese (D.L. c. Dec. 1698) 1699; 1701. [For Motteux’ other works see A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama, pp. 345-6.] MOUNTFORT, WILLIAM. F. The Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. Made into a Farce....With the Humours of Harlequin and Scara- mouche (D.G. c. 1686) 1697. T. The Injur’d Lovers: or, The Ambitious Father (D.L. c. March 1687/8) 1688. T.C. The Successfull Straingers (D.L. c. December 1689) 1690; 1696. C. Greenwich Park (D.L. c. June 1691) 1691. T. Zelmane, or, The Corinthian Queen (L.I.F. 1705) 1705. NORTON, — T. Pausanias, the Betrayer of his Country (D.L. 1696) 1696. OLDMIXON, JOHN. Past. Amintas (D.L. 1698) 1698. O. The Grove. Or, Love’s Paradice (D.L. 1700) 1700, T. The Governour of Cyprus (L.I.F. 1703) 1703. OTWAY, THOMAS. T. Alcibiades (D.G. September 1675) 1675; 1687. T. Don Carlos, Prince of Spain (D.G. June 1676) 1676; 1679; 1686; 1695; 1704. T.and F. Titus and Berenice....With a Farce call’d the Cheats of Scapin (D.G. c. December 1676) 1677; 1701. C. Friendship in Fashion (D.G. April 1678) 1678. T. The History and Fall of Caius Marius (D.G. c. September 1679) 1680; 1692; 1694; 1696; 1703. T, The Orphan: or, the Unhappy Marriage (D.G. c. March 1680) 1680; 1685; 1691; 1696; 1703; 1705; 1711. RESTORATION PLAYS 369 C. The Souldiers Fortune (D.G. March 1679/80) 1681; 1683; 1687; 1695. Venice Preserv’d; or, A Plot Discover’d (D.G. February 1681/2) 1682; 1696; 1704. C. The Atheist. Or, the Second Part of the Souldiers Fortune (D.G. c. September 1683) 1684. PAYNE, NEVIL. T. The Fatal Jealousie (D.G. August 1672) 1673. C. The Morning Ramble, or, The Town-Humours (D.G. November 1672) 1673. T. The Siege of Constantinople (D.G. November 1674) 1675. PERRIN, P. O. Ariadne, or, The Marriage of Bacchus. [French text; Ariane, ou le Mariage de Bacchus....Compose par le sieur P. P. 1673. Acted at D.L. March 1673/4.] PHILIPS, Mrs CATHERINE. T. Pompey (Dublin, Feb. 1662/3). Dublin 1663; London 1663; 1667 (in Poems by the most deservedly Admired The Matchless Orinda); 1669; 1678; 1710. [In the col- lection of Poems appears also Horace of which a part is by Sir John Denham; probably acted at court, February 1667/8.] PHILIPS, WILLIAM. T. The Revengeful Queen (D.L. 1698) 1698. PIX, Mrs MARY. F.C. The Spanish Wives (D.L. c. September 1696) 1696. T. Ibrahim the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks (D.L. 1696) 1696. The Innocent Mistress (L.I.F. c. September 1697) 1697. The Deceiver Deceived (L.I.F. c. December 1697) 1698. Queen Catharine or, the Ruines of Love (L.I.F. c. Sep- tember 1698) 1698. The False Friend: or, The Fate of Disobedience (L.I.F. 1699) 1699. [On the other post-Restoration works see A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama, pp. 349-50.] PORDAGE, SAMUEL. Poems upon Several Occasions. 1660. [Contains Troades, never acted.] T. Herod and Mariamne (L.I.F. October 1673) 1673; 1674. T. The Siege of Babylon (D.G. c. September 1677) 1678. NRD 24 4 Hag 37° HAND-LIST OF PORTER, THOMAS. i T.C <<. Cc. The Villain (L.I.F. October 1662) 1663; 1670; 1694. . A Witty Combat: or, the Female Victor (L.I.F. April 1664) 1663. [The date of acting is correct only if this play be accepted as The German Princess mentioned by Pepys on April 15, 1664.] The Carnival (T.R. c. 1663) 1664. The French Conjurer (D.G. c. July 1677) 1678. POWELL, GEORGE. ly Ty The Treacherous Brothers (D.L. ce. December 1689) 1690; 1696; 1699. Alphonso King of Naples (D.L. c. December 1690) 1691. C. A Very Good Wife (D.L. March 1692/3) 1693; 1703. D.O. Bonduca; or, The British Heroine (D.L. c. Sept. 1695) 1696. D.O. A New Opera: called, Brutus of Alba: or, Augusta’s C. C. Triumph (D.G. c. October 1696) 1697. The Cornish Comedy (D.G. 1696) 1696. The Imposture Defeated: or, A Trick to Cheat the Devil (D.L. c. September 1697) 1698. RAVENSCROFT, EDWARD. EERO NS 2G: oC gee oot oO Ho The Citizen turn’d Gentleman (D.G. July 1672) 1672; reissued as Mamamouchi 1675. The Careless Lovers (D.G. March 1672/3) 1673. The Wrangling Lovers: or, The Invisible Mistress (D.G. c. September 1676) 1677. Scaramouch a Philosopher, Harlequin A School-Boy, Bravo, Merchant, and Magician. A Comedy After the Italian Manner (D.L. May 1677) 1677. . King Edgar and Alfreda (D.L. c. December 1677) 1677. The English Lawyer (D.L. c. December 1677) 1678. The London Cuckolds (D.G. November 1681) 1682; 1688; 1697. Dame Dobson: or, The Cunning Woman (D.G. c. Sep- tember 1683) 1684. Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia (D.L. c. April 1686) 1687. The Canterbury Guests; or, A Bargain Broken (D.L. September 1694) 1695. The Anatomist: or, the Sham Doctor (L.1.F. c. March 1697) 1697. The Italian Husband (L.I.F. 1697) 1698. RESTORATION PLAYS 371 RAWLINS, THOMAS. C. Tom Essence: or, The Modish Wife (D.G. c. September 1676) 1677. C. Tunbridge-Wells: or, A Day’s Courtship (D.G. ¢. March 1677/8) 1678. REVET, EDWARD. C. The Town-Shifts, or, the Suburb-Justice (L.I.F. c. April 1671) 1671. RHODES, RICHARD. C. Flora’s Vagaries (T.R. November 1663) 1670; 1677. LA ROCHE-GUILHEN, Madame. C. Rare en Tout (Court, May 1677) 1677. RYMER, THOMAS. T. Edgar, or the English Monarch; an Heroick Tragedy (unacted) 1678; 1691 (as The English Monarch); 1693. SADLER, ANTHONY. P. The Subject’s Joy for the King’s Restoration (unacted) 1660. ST SERFE, Sir THOMAS. C. Tarugo’s Wiles, or, the Coffee-House (L.I.F. October 1667) 1668. SAUNDERS, CHARLES. T. Tamerlane The Great (D.L. c. March 1681) 1681. SCOTT, THOMAS. C. The Mock-Marriage (D.G. c. Oct. 1695) 1696. T. The Unhappy Kindness: or, A Fruitless Revenge (D.L. 1697) 1697. SEDLEY, Sir CHARLES. C. The Mulberry-Garden (T.R. May 1668) 1668; 1675; 1688. T. Antony and Cleopatra (D.G. February 1676/7) 1677; 1690; 1696. C. Bellamira, or the Mistress (D.L. May 1687) 1687. [Some later plays will be found in the eighteenth century editions of Sedley’s Works.] SETTLE, ELKANAH. T. Cambyses King of Persia (L.I.F. c. Jan. 1670/1) 1671 ; 1672; 1675; 1692. T. The Empress of Morocco (D.G. July 1673; probably produced at Court in 1671) 1673 (two issues); 1687; 1698. 24-2 372 HAND-LIST OF T. Love and Revenge (D.G. November 1674) 1675. T. The Conquest of China, By the Tartars (D.G. May 1675) 1676. T Tieahiin The Illustrious Bassa (D.G. c. June 1676) 1677; 1694. Past. Panot Fido: or, The Faithful Shepherd (D.G. c. Decem- ber 1676) 1677; 1689; 1694. Fatal Love: or, The Forc’d Inconstancy (D.L. c. Sep- tember 1680) 1680. The Female Prelate: Being The History of the Life and Death of Pope Joan (D.L. c. September 1679) 1680; 1689. The Heir of Morocco, with the Death of Gayland (D.L. c. March 1682) 1682. Distress’d Innocence: or, The Princess of Persia (D.L. c. October 1690) 1691. The Fairy-Queen (D.G. April 1692) 1692; 1693. The New Athenian Comedy (unacted) 1693. The Ambitious Slave: or, a Generous Revenge (D.L. February 1693/4) 1694. T.C. Philaster, or Love lies a-bleeding (D.L. c. December 1695) 1695. D.O. The World in the Moon (D.G. May 1697) 1697 (ds). D.O. The Virgin Prophetess: or, The Fate of Troy (D.L. 1701) 1701; 1702 (as Cassandra, or, The Virgin Prophetesse). D.O. The Siege of Troy (unacted) 1707. D.O. The City-Ramble: or, A Play-House Wedding (D.L. August 1711) [179]. D.O. The Lady’s Triumph (L.I.F. 1718) 1718. SHADWELL, THOMAS. C. The Sullen Lovers: Or, the Impertinents (L.I.F. May 1668) 1668; 1670; 1693. T.C. The Royal Shepherdess (L.I.F. February 1668/9) 1669; 1691. C. The Humorists (L.1.F. c. December 1670) 1671. C. The Miser (T.R. January 1671/2) 1672; 1691. C. Epsom Wells (D.G. December 1672) 1673; 1676; 1693; 1704. D.O. The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island (D.G. April 1674) 1674; 1676 (bis); 1690; 1695; 1701. D.O. Psyche (D.G. February 1674/5) 1675; 1690. C. The Libertine (D.G. June 1675) 1676; 1697; 1704; T708. C. The Virtuoso (D.G. May 1676) 1676; 1691; 1704. pe ee a tae RESTORATION PLAYS 373 The History of Timon of Athens, The Man-Hater.... Made into a Play (D.G. c. January 1677/8) 1678; 1680?; 1688; 1696; 1703. A True Widow (D.G. ¢c. March 1677/8) 1679; 1689. The Woman-Captain (D.G. c. September 1679) 1680. The Lancashire VVitches, And Tegue o Divelly The Irish Priest (D.G. c. September 1681) 1682; 1691. The Squire of Alsatia (D.L. May, 1688) 1688; 1692; 1693; 1699. Bury Fair (D.L. c. April 1689) 1689. The Amorous Bigotte: with the Second Part of Tegue O Divelly (D.L. c. March 1689/90) 1690; 1691. The Scowrers (D.L. c. December 1690) 1691. The Volunteers: or The Stock Jobbers (D.L. Nov. 1692) 1693. SHIPMAN, THOMAS. T. Henry the Third of France, Stabbed by a Fryer. With the Fall of the Guise (D.L. c. July 1678) 1678. SMITH, HENRY. T. The Princess of Parma (L.I.F. c. Jan. 1699) 1699. SMITH, JOHN. C. Cytherea: or The Enamouring Girdle. A New Comedy (unacted) 1677. SMYTH, JOHN. C. Win her and Take her, or, Old Fools Will be Medling (D.L. 1691) 1691. [Attributed: it is possible that the play is by Underhill, who published it.] SOUTHERNE, THOMAS. T. The Loyal Brother: or, The Persian Prince (D.L. c. March 1681/2) 1682. Play. The Disappointment: or, The Mother in Fashion (D.L. c. April 1684) 1684. C. Sir Anthony Love: or, The Rambling Lady (D.L. c. De- cember 1690) 1691; 1698. C. The Wives Excuse: or, Cuckolds make themselves (D.L. December 1691) 1692. C. The Maid’s Last Prayer: or, Any, rather than Fail (D.L. January 1692/3) 1693. Play. The Fatal Marriage: or, The Innocent Adultery (D.L. February 1693/4) 1694. T. Oroonoko (D.L. c. Nov. 1695) 1696; 1699 (ds). 4 aA pn fe Af 374 HAND-LIST OF T. The Fate of Capua (L.I.F. 1700) 1700. T. The Spartan Dame (D.L. December 1719) 1719. T. Money the Mistress (L.I.F. February 1726) 1726. SOUTHLAND, THOMAS. C. Love a la Mode (acted at Middlesex-House) 1663. [Initials T.S. only are given in the play; but it is almost certain that the play was by T. Southland, brother-in-law of Sir Robert Colbrand bart., who married Mary, daughter of Thomas Southland, of Lee, co. Kent.] STAPYLTON, Sir ROBERT. C. The Slighted Maid (L.I.F. February 1662/3) 1663. T.C. The Step-mother (L.I.F. c. November 1663) 1664. T. The Tragedie of Hero and Leander (unacted) 1669. TALBOT, f. T. Troas (unacted) 1686. TATE, NAHUM. T. Brutus of Alba: or, The Enchanted Lovers (D.G. c. July 1678) 1678. The Loyal General (D.G. c. December 1679) 1680. The History of King Richard the Second (D.L. c. Decem- ber 1680) 1681; 1691 (as The Sicilian Usurper). The History of King Lear (D.G. c. March 1681) 1681; 1689; 1703; 1712. The Ingratitude of a Common-Wealth: Or, the Fall of Caius Martius Coriolanus (D.L.c. December 1681) 1682. A Duke and No Duke (D.L. November 1684) 1685; 1693 (with an additional preface). F. Cuckolds-Haven: or, an Alderman No Conjurer. A Farce (D.G. c. May 1685) 1685. T.C. The Island-Princess (D.L. April 1687) 1687. T. Injur’d Love: or, The Cruel Husband...design’d to be Acted at the Theatre Royal. 1707. ? TATHAM, JOHN. [For his pre-Restoration works see Dr W. W. Greg, op. cit.) C. The Rump: or The Mirrour of The late Times, A New Comedy (Dorset Court, June 1660) 1660; 1661. Pageants: London’s Glory 1660. London’s Tryumphs 1661. Aqua Triumphalis 1662. RESTORATION PLAYS 375 London’s Triumph 1662. Londinium Triumphans 1663. London’s Triumphs 1664. THOMSON, THOMAS. C. The Life of Mother Shipton. A New Comedy. As it was Acted Nineteen dayes together with great Applause.... Written by T. T. N.D. [1660?]. C. The English Rogue...As it was acted before several Persons of Honour with Great Applause. Written by T. T. 1668. TROTTER, Mrs CATHERINE. T. Agnes de Castro (D.L. c. December 1695) 1696. T. Fatal Friendship (L.I.F. 1698) 1698. C. Love at a Loss: or, Most Votes carry it (D.L. ? 1701) 1701. T. The Unhappy Penitent (D.L. 1701) 1701. T. The Revolution of Sweden (L.I.F. February 1706) 1706. TUKE, RICHARD. The Divine Comedian: or, The Right Use of Plays, Improved, in a sacred Tragy-Comedy (unacted) 1672. TUKE, Sir SAMUEL. T.C, The Adventures of Five Hours (L.I.F. January 1662/3; rehearsal December 1662) 1663; 1664; 1671; 1704; 1712. VANBRUGH, Sir JOHN. C. The Relapse: or, Virtue in Danger (D.L. December 1696) 1697. C. The Provok’d Wife (L.I.F. May 1697) 1697; 1698; 1709. C. Aesop (D.L. Part Ic. December 1696; Part IIc. March 1696/7) 1697; 1702. C. The Pilgrim (D.L. c. April 1700) 1700. [See A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama, pp. 361-2.] VILLIERS, GEORGE, Duke of BUCKINGHAM. C. The Rehearsal (T.R. December 1671) 1672; 1673; 1675; 1683; 1687; 1692; 1701; 1709 (‘‘with a Key’”’). [See also his Works, 1704, 1715, 1754, 1775.] C. The Chances (T.R. Feb. 1666/7) 1682; 1692; 1705. WALKER, WILLIAM. T. Victorious Love (D.L. 1698) 1608. C. Marry, or, Do Worse (L.I.F. November 1703) 1704. WALLER, WILLIAM. T. Pompey the Great....Translated out of French by Certain Persons of Honour (L.I.F. 1663/4) 1664. [Along with Buckhurst, Sedley and perhaps some others; for Waller’s alteration of The Maid’s Tragedy see his Poems.] 376 HAND-LIST OF RESTORATION PLAYS WESTON, JOHN. T.C. The Amazon Queen; or, The Amours of Thalestris to Alexander the Great (unacted) 1667. WHITAKER, WILLIAM. T. The Conspiracy or the Change of Government (D.G. c. March 1680) 1680. WILD, Dr ROBERT. C. The Benefice (unacted) 1689. WILMOT, JOAN, Earl of ROCHESTER. T. Valentinian (D.L. February 1683/4) 1685; 1696. [A MS. of this play in the B.M. has a list of actors dating several years before 1684.] WILSON, JOHN. C. The Cheats (T.R. March 1662/3) 1664; 1671; 1684; 1693. [On the text and its relations to the MS. in Worcester College, Oxford, see Dr Boas, Shakespeare and the Univer- sities.] T. Andronicus Comnenius (unacted) 1664. C. The Projectors (probably unacted) 1665. T.C. Belphegor: or The Marriage of the Devil (D.G. c. June 1690) 1691. WRIGHT, JOHN. T. and Burlesque. Thyestes.... Translated out of Seneca. To which is Added Mock-Thyestes in Burlesque (unacted) 1674. WRIGHT, THOMAS. C. The Female Vertuoso’s (D.G. April 1693) 1693. [A second edition was issued by Curll to show its resemblance to The Refusal, 1721.] WYCHERLEY, WILLIAM. C. Love in a Wood, or, St James’s Park (T.R. c. April 1671) 1672; 1693; 1694; I71I. C. The Gentleman Dancing-Master (D.G. c. Jan. 1672) 1673; 16933; 1702. C. The Country-Wife (D.L. January 1674/5) 1675; 1683; 1688; 1695. C. The Plain-Dealer (D.L. December 1676) 1677 (three editions); 1678; 1681; 1686; 1691; 1694; 1700; 1709. APPENDIX D Additional Notes to Second Edition During the past four years a considerable amount of both general and detailed work has been devoted to the subject of Restoration drama. The American contribution in particular has been noted for its appreciative tone and for its accuracy. In issuing a second edition of this work, therefore, I have considered it advisable not only to make a number of corrections in the text but to add a series of notes on individual points. These in- corporate additional researches of my own and summaries of the more important studies of others, besides supplying a number of illustrative or qualificatory comments on the original text. The notes I have arranged according to the pages of the volume. P. 7. To the early references regarding the presence of citizens in the house may be added Sedley’s epilogue to Shadwell’s Epsom Wells (D.G. 1672), which is addressed to the “ Citts.” During the last de- cade of the century there are a few allusions to the presence of citizens in the upper gallery. Thus Powell in the prologue to A Very Good Wife (D.L. 1693) sneers at “our City Friends, who hither come, By three a clock, to make sure Elbow-room.” It seems probable that these later references indicate the slow return of the middle-classes to the playhouse. P. 14, n. 3. Masks, of course, were commonly worn in Elizabethan times, but the fashion became more general during the reign of Charles II. Pp. 29-63. On the question of the staging of Restoration plays unquestion- ably the most important book is Lily B. Campbell’s Scenes and Machines on the English Stage during the Renaissance, which appeared a few weeks before the issue of the first edition of this volume. Her survey includes a study of the growth of scenic adornment from the sixteenth century to 1700, and she discusses the plans included by H. Bell in his Contributions to the History of the English Playhouse (Architectural Record, 1913) and by W. G. Keith in The Designs for the First Movable Scenery on the English Stage (Burlington Magazine, 1914). Since the appearance of her work W. G. Keith has reproduced some further designs in John Webb and the Court Theatre of Charles HI (Architectural Review, 1925). Two plans and a sketch by Webb were reproduced independently by the present writer in British Drama (1925). The subject is also dealt with, and pictorial illustration is given, in The Development of the Theatre (1927). An unpublished thesis in the University of London, by Dr F. W. Payne, discusses Staging in the Restoration mainly from the evidence preserved in stage- directions of the period. 378 ADDITIONAL NOTES P. 40. It seems to me now that the Aviane design cannot be interpreted too literally. The artist has evidently shown the actual side-wings as an apparent “‘box-set,”’ but the setting of lateral scenes was in all probability unknown till the eighteenth century. P. 41. While the use of the word “relieve” in Webb’s sketches seems to substantiate the interpretation given in the text, it may be observed that the commoner significance was that of “‘scenes in relief” or moulded scenes. Mr W. J. Lawrence draws my attention to the figures and clouds “‘of relievo” in Jonson’s Masque of Hymen, to the “ornaments of relievo” in Daniel’s Tethys’ Festival and to a passage in Campion’s The Lords’ Masque: “there appeared a wood in perspective, the innermost part being of relief, or whole round, the rest painted.” Pp. 49-51. A general survey of stage costuming from 1660 to 1824 has been contributed by Lily B. Campbell to the University of Wisconsin Studies (1918, ii). Pp. 54-5. Subsequent reading of Restoration plays has revealed refer- ences to the use of the curtain not noted in the text of this volume. The curtain-rising at the beginning of Act I is mentioned in Howard and Dryden’s The Indian Queen (T.L. 1664), Settle’s Cambyses (L.I.F. 1671), Ravenscroft’s The Citizen turn’d Gentleman (D.G. 1672), Rochester’s Valentinian (D.L. 1684) and Dryden’s Love Triumphant (D.L. 1693). The fact remains, however, that only in a minute proportion of Restoration dramas is reference made to this initial raising of the curtain. There are also a few additional notices regarding the curtain-fall at the end of Act V: Behn’s The Amorous Prince (L.1.F. 1671), Payne’s The Fatal Fealousie (D.G. 1672), Pordage’s The Siege of Babylon (D.G. 1677) and Banks’ Cyrus the Great (L.1.F. 1695). Dr F. W. Payne in his unpublished thesis has drawn attention to a very important note by Perrault in his translation of Vitruvius (1673) which shows that in France the lowering of a curtain to mask a scene change was regarded as an exceedingly clumsy device. It was possibly this theory rather than lack of inventiveness that prevented the greater use of the curtain. P. 63. There is an interesting reference to the weakness of first-night acting in Motteux’ Beauty in Distress (L.1.F. 1698). Bowen, the actor, enters and turns to the Prompter: “‘Prompter, take th’ Epilogue, and prompt me right; We’re always damn’d imperfect the first night.” P. 81. The play which Pepys heard that Buckingham and Howard were writing was styled The Country Gentleman. Mr E. De Bear kindly directed my attention to some British Museum newsletters which give its title and suggest that the play was written by Howard with the Coventry character inserted by Buckingham. P. 82. For a full treatment of the various revivals and adaptations of _ Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays see the important study of Dr Arthur Colby Sprague, Beaumont and Fletcher on the Restoration Stage (1926). The notices of performances there indicate well the immense popu- larity of the earlier plays in the later period. P. 93. On The Siege of Rhodes see A. Thaler’s interesting study, Thomas Heywood, D’ Avenant and The Siege of Rhodes in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America xxxix. 1924. ADDITIONAL NOTES 379 Pp. 94-5. A considerable amount of research has been devoted lately to the work of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, principally by Dr F. W. Payne in England and by Mr W. S. Clark in America. Dr Payne in The Review of English Studies (April 1925) presented a series of argu- ments in defence of a thesis that The Black Prince was performed in 1663. This is combated by Mr Clark (id. April 1926), who criticises these arguments, postulating The General as Orrery’s first play. This receives definite proof from the same writer (éd. October 1926) in the form of a reference in a newsletter dated September 15, 1664, stating definitely that The General, “formerly acted in Ireland by the name of Altamira,” was performed at Court on September 14th (cf. also B. M. Wagner in The Times Literary Supplement, Sept. 2, 1926). This shows that the later title of the play was but a reversion to the earlier name. Ina subsequent article entitled The Early Stage History of the First Heroic Play (Modern Language Notes, xlii. 6, June 1927) Mr Clark cites an entry in Mercurius Publicus for October 21, 1662, which informs us that “On the 18. at evening the Lord Lieutenant and most of the persons of Honor in these parts [Dublin] were entertained by the Earle of Orery at Thomas Court where his Lordship treated them with a noble Banquet and a Play of his own making.” Mr Clark thinks that the actors were those of the new Smock Alley Theatre and that the play was publicly produced there the same winter. One matter, however, remains to be dealt with. Mr Clark states that “any definite connection between The General and the Irish stage had remained unsuspected” until the publication of the newsletter of September 1664, but this is hardly a fair statement. He completely ignores the important prologue written by Shirley for an Irish pro- duction of a play called The General and published in that author’s poems of 1646. It was probably this prologue of which Mr Montague Summers was thinking when, in 1921, he wrote that The General was “originally produced in Dublin” (Modern Language Notes, xii.). There is, of course, no certainty that the play cited by Shirley was Orrery’s drama—indeed the use of the title, The General, instead of Altamira seems to militate against this supposition—but there is undoubtedly a possibility that the two plays were one and the same. If the identification is correct then The General must have seen its premiére, not in 1662, but before 1642. Orrery in that year was twenty-one years of age. Mr Clark (Review of English Studies, July 1926) has also an interest- ing paper on the unacted plays of this dramatic author. In this he shows that Herod the Great was completed by 1672, thus helping to explain its particular form, which, in 1694, the date of publication, was undoubtedly peculiar. P. 100. On Dryden P. J. Dobell has some valuable notes in his Fohn Dryden: Bibliographical Memoranda (1922). P. J. Pendlebery essays to deal with Dryden’s Heroic Plays: A Study of the Origins (1923). P. 114. An important bibliography of John Crowne has been prepared by G. P. Winship (1922). A. F. White has a study of the same writer’s life and works (1922). ‘ P. 121. On the question of Eastern scenes see Louis Wann’s The Oriental in Restoration Drama (University of Wisconsin Studies, No. 2, 1918). 380 ADDITIONAL NOTES P, 124. The problem of the adaptations of The Tempest has been once more reopened. Mr G. 'Thorn-Drury in The Review of English Studies (July 1925) endeavoured to prove that Dryden, not Shadwell, was the perpetrator of the operatic Tempest. This view is combated by Mr D. M. Walmsley (id. October 1926) who once more reviews the evi- dence and lays stress upon the fact that the 1670 version is that which appears in the 1701 Works of Dryden. In the same journal for April 1927 Mr Thorn-Drury once more takes up the attack against the Shadwell-authorship theory, suggesting, not one revision, but several, and dismissing the argument based on the text of 1701. While one may agree that The Tempest, as a popular play, may have been tam- pered with in successive years, it seems to me that the attribution of the 1674 opera to Shadwell still has the weight of evidence on its side. It also appears to me that the utilisation of a long out of print text (the 1670 quarto) for the authoritative 1701 edition of Dryden’s Works cannot be easily dismissed. P. 150. While it is impossible to remove The Fairy Queen from the list of Settle’s works on p. 372, I feel it incumbent upon me to remark that further study of this play has led me seriously to question the pro- priety of assigning it to Settle. It may be his, but the evidence that is forthcoming does not seem to warrant any definite statement of fact. P. 152. Important biographical research on Thomas Otway has been undertaken by J. C. Ghosh (Notes and Queries, December 13, 20 and 27, 1924) and by R. J. Ham (¢d. September 9, 1925). A well-edited and authoritative Collected Works, edited by Montague Summers, was issued in 1926. P. 168. Restoration comedy has been analysed very fully during the past few years. Bonamy Dobrée, in Restoration Comedy, 1660-1720 (1924), brings forward interesting pre-Commonwealth premonitions of the manners style and endeavours to interpret that style by reference to the social life of the period. J. W. Krutch’s Comedy and Conscience after the Restoration (1924) has a fully documented survey of the reaction to Restoration licence and of the Collier controversy. An examination of motives and methods is presented in H. T. E. Perry’s The Comic Spirit in Restoration Drama: Studies in the Comedy of Etherege, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar (1925). Dobrée’s tentative work in tracing earlier parallels is consolidated in K. M. Lynch’s The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy (1926). P. 190. New facts concerning Shadwell’s life are presented by D. M. Walmsley in The Times Literary Supplement for April 16, 1925. Mr Walmsley has an unprinted thesis in the University of London on this author’s life and works. P. 207. An important edition of the two texts (original and revised) of The Adventures of Five Hours, together with the text of Coello’s Los Empefios de Seis Horas, has been prepared by Professor A. E. H. Swaen (1927). P. 208. It appears highly probable that, in spite of seeming identity, A Witty Combat and The German Princess were not, as Genest thought, one play. P. 214. In connection with Dryden’s style in comedy an article by K. M. Lynch, D’ Urfé’s L’ Astrée and the ‘Proviso’ Scenes in Dryden’s Comedy (Philological Quarterly, October 1925), provides many interesting suggestions. ADDITIONAL NOTES 381 P. 225. A valuable and suggestive study of the work of Wycherley has been written by Charles Perromat (William Wycherley. Sa Vie—son Quvre, 1921). Montague Summers has edited his Complete Works (1924), while G. B. Churchill has published carefully prepared texts of The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer. Both Mr Summers and Mr Churchill discuss the dating of Wycherley’s plays; a review of their results is given in The Year’s Work in English Studies for 1924. It seems that we now must take as definite the following: Love in a Wood, c. April, 1671, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, c. Jan. 1671/2, The Country-Wife, Jan. 1674/5 and The Plain-Dealer, Dec. 1676. P. 239. In The King’s Musick (1909), edited by Henry Cart de Lafontaine, there is a document of July 1675 quoted from the P.R.O. in which mention is made of songs “that were played at Scaramoucha”— evidently a reference to the visit of the Italian players. P. 241. As Porter’s The French Conjurer was licensed on August 2, 1677, that author must be referring to another company of French comedians who seem to have been in England during the early months of that year. P. 270. Fresh interpretation of the evidence concerning the stage history of 1660-1667 has been provided by J. Leslie Hotson in his article on George Folly, Actor-Manager (Studies in Philology, xx. 4, October 1923) and by Hazelton Spencer in The Blackfriars Mystery (Modern Philology, xxiv. 2, November 1926). I am convinced that Professor Spencer is right in regarding Pepys’ reference to the “‘ Blackfriars” theatre (see p. 279) as a slip for ‘“‘ Whitefriars”’ or Salisbury Court. This theory effectually disposes of one difficulty in the contemporary records. Professor Hotson’s study, besides its very entertaining nar- rative of Jolly’s activities during the Commonwealth, presents some important records of Restoration date. These may be briefly sum- marised. (1) An agreement dated December 30, 1662, between Jolly on the one side and D’Avenant and Killigrew on the other. By this Jolly agreed to surrender his patent in consideration of £4 a week to be paid by the major managers. (2) An account by George Jolly, made some- time after April 16731, complaining that Killigrew had, by misrepre- sentation to the King, succeeded in cheating him of the rights to his patent. While these throw entirely new light on the fortunes of the theatrical companies, part of Professor Hotson’s narrative cannot be accepted because he assumes that in 1662 there was only one licensed company in London, Jolly’s players. In view of this fresh evidence, a brief chronological summary of events may be made here. Page references are made to the text of this volume. By May 12, 1659, the ‘‘Old Players” had occupied the Red Bull (p. 265); by Feb. 4, 1659/60, Rhodes’ men were performing in the Cockpit (p. 269); by the summer of 1660 William Beeston was managing a company at Salisbury Court (p. 270). On July 9 and 19 warrants were issued in favour of Killigrew and D’Avenant and the patents were delivered on August 21 (p. 270). On August 11, accord- ing to Herbert’s later testimony, Killigrew’s men (the Old Players), 1 It is possible that this document may be of a date nearer 1668 than 1673. The latter year is suggested by Professor Hotson because Killigrew is mentioned as Master of the Revels. It would seem, however, that he was acting in that capacity before Herbert’s death. 382 ADDITIONAL NOTES Beeston’s men and Rhodes’ men were giving performances (p. 273). An order of suppression was issued on August 20 (p. 273), and on the 30th Humphrey Mosely refers to “the gentlemen actors of the Red Bull,” “ Mr Rhodes of the Cockpitt” and “‘the Whitefryers playhouse and players” (p. 273). Following the records we discover that on October 8 Rhodes had moved to the Cockpit (p. 273) and I should suggest that it was during this month that the Old Players went to the Red Bull, although Herbert starts his list of performances there only on November 5. Then comes the puzzling record of October 13 addressed “To Mr Michael Mohun, and the rest of the actors of the Cockpitt playhouse in Drury Lane” (pp. 273-4). We have not the original of this order; still further Malone himself seems to have seen only a copy. There is always, therefore, the possibility of an error, and I should assume for this month the following arrangement: Red Bull (Old Players), Cockpit (Rhodes’ men), Salisbury Court (Beeston). The next record we have is the agreement between D’Avenant and the young players who had been with Rhodes (p. 272). Malone states that they commenced playing at Salisbury Court on November 15, although, as Professor Spencer has pointed out, there appears to be no certain authority for the mention of this date’. In November, therefore, the position had changed, the King’s men (the Old Players) being at Vere-street and D’Avenant at Salisbury Court. Rhodes at this time must have gathered a new body of players and no doubt continued at the Cockpit. Beeston was owner of Salisbury Court and was possibly content with a daily rent paid by D’Avenant. The Red Bull was untenanted. On December 24, however, George Jolly was granted a special licence (p. 176). Professor Hotson assumes that he then “‘hired the Cockpit from Beeston,”’ but (1) there is no indica- tion that Beeston was ever at the Cockpit and (2) his house was Salisbury Court, which he had let to D’Avenant. In June 1661 D’Avenant moved his men to the new Duke’s theatre in L.I.F. and it was probably about this date that Jolly began his performances. On November 13 he was apparently at the Cockpit (p. 277). Either “Cockpit” is a mistake or we must assume that he had moved his company to this house after a quarrel with Beeston, for on November 26 he had obviously been using Salisbury Court. I prefer to believe that he had been at the latter house from the beginning of the season 1661-2 and that it was his company that Pepys saw acting ’Tis Pity on September 9. Throughout the latter part of 1661 and part of 1662, therefore, I assume that acting was pursued in London at Vere-street (King’s men), L.I.F. (Duke’s men), Salisbury Court (Jolly’s men) and the Cockpit and Red Bull (Rhodes’ men). The entry in Dr Edward Browne’s diary cited by Professor Hotson may quite well refer to Rhodes, and, as he shows, the Cockpit on occasion may have been utilised by Killigrew’s players?. In December 1662 comes the agreement between the Patentees and Jolly; on January 1, 1662/3, I cannot accept Professor Spencer’s suggestion that the Old Players left the Cockpit to act for 3 days only (November 5 to 7) at the Red Bull. As I have stated above, I assume that they moved to the Red Bull in October and gave performances there until on November 8 they took possession of the Theatre Royal in Vere-street. 2 On October 31, 1662, a performance of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay was given at the Cockpit. This reference I owe to Miss Ethel Seaton. ADDITIONAL NOTES 383 a country licence is prepared for the latter, and this he receives on January 27th. Professor Hotson has shown that on July 23, 1663, Killigrew succeeded in persuading the King that Jolly had forfeited his London patent. On March 30, 1664, a patent for a nursery, under the name of Legg, was issued. It is known that the Cockpit was used in 1665, but it is not necessary to assume that Jolly was per- forming there. From various documents (p. 277) we are aware that Beeston was acting on August 29, 1663, and September 7, 1664, and that Rhodes had a company at Court on November 1, 1662. Either of these might have been tenants of the Cockpit (although Beeston would more probably have a company at Salisbury Court), or this house may have been used as a Nursery. Sometime in 1667 Jolly was appointed manager of the Nursery but was soon cheated of his rights. Professor Hotson’s long complaint agrees with the orders of arrest given on p. 278. . 279. The “touring company” mentioned as at Oxford in 1677 was a band of Dublin players who had come over to the English University town for the vacation. It is hardly correct to associate it with the other companies of purely “‘strolling’’ actors. P. 279. On Pepy’s reference to Blackfriars see Professor Spencer’s article cited above in the note to p. 270. P. 281. It is not only possible, but certain, that the old Theatre Royal in Vere-street was used as a Nursery. The following is entered in Pepys’ Diary under April 23, 1669: “‘ Going to rise, without saying anything, my wife stopped me; and, after a little angry talk, did tell me how she spent ali day yesterday with M. Batelier and her sweetheart, and seeing a play at the New Nursery, which is set up at the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which was formerly the King’s house.” . 282. Mr D. M. Walmsley (in an unpublished thesis in the University of London and in The Times Literary Supplement, April 16, 1925) has shown that the Anne Gibbs who was engaged by D’Avenant was possibly not the Anne Gibbs who married Shadwell. The proofs lie (x) in the inclusion of both Anne Gibbs and Mrs Shadwell in Otway’s Don Carlos and Shadwell’s Timon of Athens and (2) in the fact that Musgrave’s Obituary (Harleian Society Publications, xLv1. 26) records Anne Gibbs’ death in 1686 while Mrs Shadwell was certainly living in 1709 when she laid a petition before Queen Anne. . 285. It may be remarked that most of the documents given in Fitz- gerald are preserved in two British Museum manuscripts. Add. 20,726 contains seventeenth century copies and original petitions; Add. 12,201 preserves eighteenth century replicas of these, some in the hand of J. P. Kemble. The principal documents in these collections are as follows: x. An assignment by Dr D’Avenant, Betterton and Smith of a lease of the Theatre Royal dated June 17, 1683, to Alexander D’Ave- nant. This is dated August 30, 1687. 2. The grant to Killigrew dated April 25, 1662. 3. The lease, dated December 20, 1661, between the Earl of Bed- ford and Sir Robert Howard, Thomas Killigrew and others (see p. 281). 4. An agreement dated January 28, 1661/2, between the players and William Hewytt and Robert Clayton (see p. 282). 5. An agreement between Howard and Killigrew of the one part and the actors of the other, by which the players promised to perform 384 ADDITIONAL NOTES at the new Theatre Royal and agreed that £3. 10s. per diem should go to those who had advanced money for the building. This is also dated January 28, 1661/2. 6. Aseries of documents concerning Thomas and Henry Killigrew, Thomas Porter, and Sir John Sayer and his wife. 'The first agreement asserts that the profits of the theatre had been divided into 12? parts, of which Thomas Killigrew received 2. Out of these 2 he had to pay Henry Killigrew £40. Meanwhile Henry sold his right to Porter who in turn received £600 for it from Sayer. This document is dated December 31, 1661. Apparently the Sayer business dragged on, as the later agreements testify. They furnish one additional proof of the financial troubles with which the theatres were encumbered. P. 300, n. 1. The document of chief importance in this section is No, 912, which runs as follows: “Ralph Davenant Gent maketh Oath y* he was att the last meete- ing with M* Alexander Davenant M? Charles Killigrewe & others att the Castle Taverne in fleet street when the proposall of Leaseing the Money for a Terme of yeares which should be reced by the last two Acts of a play wherein is five Acts, And the Money which should be reced by the last Act of a play wherein is three Acts for the Raise- ing of one Thousand pounds Eight hundred pounds of which was to: pay the debts Incurred by Acting which are very burthensome And the other two hundred pounds to be a bank to buy Goods with ready Money the Compa: being very much Imposed on when they take goods vpon Trust.” P. 304. In his Comedy and Conscience after the Restoration (1924), Dr J. W. Krutch presents in full some of the Lord Chamberlain’s docu- ments from L.C. 7/1, 7/3, 5/152, 5/153 and 5/154. These include (1) the order of January 24, 1695/6, (2) that of January 4, 1697 and (3) that of February 18, 1698/9. In addition Dr Krutch has provided interesting documentary material regarding the public trials of actors and regarding playhouse reform. ‘T'ate’s proposals as given on pp. 177-8 of his volume should especially be noted. P. 305. The list of plays performed at the Inner Temple provides an interesting parallel to the lists of plays seen by the King. These are given in A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, vol. 111 (1901), edited by Mr F. A. Inderwick. The dates and plays are as follows: 1663. November 2. The Brothers. King’s men. 1663/4. February 2. Epicoene. King’s men. 1664. November 1. The Night Walker. King’s men. 1664/5. February 2. Changes. King’s men. 1667/8. February 2. The Comical Revenge. Duke’s men. 1668/9. Secret Love. King’s men. 1668/9. The Little French Lawyer. King’s men. 1670. November 1. Sir Martin Mar-all. Duke’s men. 1670/1. February 2. The Committee. King’s men. 1671. November 1. Philaster. King’s men. 1675/6. February 2. The Spanish Curate. King’s men. 1675. November 1. The Scornful Lady. King’s men. 1681/2. February 2. The London Cuckolds. Duke’s men. 1682. November 1. Rule a Wife. 1683. November 1. The Plain Dealer. - ADDITIONAL NOTES 385 1684. November 1. A Fond Husband. 1685. November 4. The Souldier’s Fortune. 1685/6. February 2. ~The Committee. 1686. November 1. The Spanish Curate. 1686/7. February 2. The Spanish Friar. 1687. November1. The Cheats of Scapin. 1689. November 1. The Squire of Alsatia. 1690. November 1. Amphitryon. 1697. November 1. Love for Love. 1697/8. February 2. The Spanish Friar. Pp. 314-5. In The Rights of Beeston and D’ Avenant in Elizabethan Plays (Review of English Studies, 1. 1, January 1925) the present writer has attempted to explain the seizing by D’Avenant of certain Blackfriars plays by the suggestion that prompt-copies of these may have been in his possession. This theory is combated by Professor Hazleton Spencer in a subsequent article in the same journal (1. 3, October 1925). P. 316. The original of the warrant cited under II. 1 is preserved in the Public Record Office—A.O. 3/130. P. 346. Smith actually died in December 1695. P. 348. The hand-list of plays does not contain, as do those in my later volumes, acted but unpublished plays of this period. It is a fact worthy of notice that very few plays of this time seem to have remained unprinted. The following are among the more important exceptions: The Lyar. This was acted at the Theatre Royal certainly before the Great Fire, and some play lists chronicle an edition of 1661. See in the Handlist under The Mistaken Beauty (D.L. c. September 1684). The Exposure. Herbert records this at the T.R. in B.St. about November 1663. *Tis Better than it was and Worse and Worse, by George Digby, Earl of Bristol, are mentioned by Downes. The latter was performed by the Duke’s men on November 26, 1666 (see p. 308). Heraclius. This was performed at L.I.F. on Tuesday, March 8, 1663, according to Pepys (see p. 50). The German Princess. While Genest identifies this with Porter’s A Witty Combat, it was probably a separate play. See Pepys, Friday, April 15, 1664. All Plot, or, The Disguises, by Stroud, is cited by Downes as having been acted at L.I.F. between 1662 and 1671. The Change of Crowns, by Edward Howard, performed at the T'.R. on April 15, 1667 (see Pepys, and supra p. 287). This, together with another unprinted play by the same author, The London Gentleman, was entered in the Stationers’ Register on August 7, 1667 (Roxburghe edn. 11. 380). The Heiress, acted at D.L. apparently on January 29, 1668/9. See Pepys’ Diary under February 1, 1668/9. The Country Gentleman, by Sir Robert Howard and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, mentioned by Pepys on March 4, 1669. There is a reference to this play in B.M. MS. Add. 36,916. The Woman made a Fustice, attributed to Thomas Betterton, and acted at L.I.F. c. May, 1670. The Armenian Queen, for which Duffett has a prologue and epi- logue in New Poems (1676). NRD 25 386 ADDITIONAL NOTES ro te The Polititian or Sir Popular Wisdom, acted at D.G. on November 17, 1677 (see p. 311). Justice Busy, or the Gentleman Quack, by John Crowne, acted at L.LF. ¢. 1700. . 349. To the anonymous plays should be added: The Converted Twins 1667 [signed by M.M., perhaps Matthew Medbourne; the running title is St. Cecelie or the Converted Twins]. . 351. The satiric comedy, The Female Wits: or, The Triumvirate of Poets at Rehearsal, first printed in 1704, seems to have been acted at D.L. in 1697. . 351. John Aubrey has a fragment of a play called The Country Revels which is printed in Clark’s edition of the Brief Lives. . 354. Dr Blow’s Venus and Adonis, acted privately between 1680 and 1687, is preserved in B.M. MS. Add. 22,100. It was printed by G, E. P, Arkwright in 1902. 354. Add: Abel Boyer’s Achilles (D.L. c. Dec. 1699) 1700. 354. Roger Boyle’s unprinted and unacted Zoroastres is preserved in the British Museum. . 356. Under Colley Cibber, add: Xerxes (D.L. c. Jan. 1698/9) 1699. . 357. In spite of the fact that Evelyn states that he saw Calisto in December 1674 it seems certain that the chief production of that masque was not given until the early months of 1675. The order of January 25, 1674/5, partly quoted on p. 43 distinctly states that the alterations to the Whitehall theatre were to be made “for the rep'sentacon of a Maske.” . 358. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar...alter’'d by Sir William Davenant and Fohn Dryden is included in A Collection of Plays by Eminent Hands, 1719, vol. 1. This is probably an erroneous attribution. - 359. Malone in his Life of Dryden (The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden, 1800, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 106-7) thinks that the mention of “cutting Morecraft”’ in the prologue to Marriage A-la- Mode has reference to Ravenscroft’s The Citizen turn’d Gentleman, and that the allusion to the fleet indicates May, 1672, as the date of production for Dryden’s play. As the King saw The Citizen turn’d Gentleman on July 4, 8 and 17, 1672, it seems likely that that comedy was produced at the beginning of July. It is possible, however, ac- cording to our interpretation of the two references given above, to argue that Marriage A-la-Mode may have been presented first at the end of July or that Ravenscroft’s play may have appeared originally in April. . 365. Miss Ethel Seaton has discovered a foreign diary which apparently registers a performance of James Howard’s The English Mounsieur in June 1663. I have retained the usual dating in the list. . 365. James Howard’s All Mistaken was given a special performance at Cambridge on Friday, October 6, 1671 (see A. W. Thibaudeau’s The Collection of Autograph Letters...formed by Alfred Morrison, 2nd series, the Bulstrode Papers, vol. 1. 1899, p. 206). P. 365. The Indian Queen, altered as an “‘opera,” is preserved in B.M. M.S. Add. 31,445. P. 371. Although Downes indicates as the date of production for Cam- byses the year 1667, it seems highly improbable that Settle, who was born in 1648, had written the play then. Against Downes’ dating the ADDITIONAL NOTES 387 following facts may be taken as evidence: (1) Settle’s youth; (2) the time between his first and his second play (at least six years) ; (3) the publication of Cambyses in 1671 and 1672; and (4) its performance at Oxford on July 7, 1671. My attention was called to this question by Mr W. J. Lawrence (see note on p. 107). P. 372. In an altered form, as The Siege of Troy, A Dramatick Perform- ance, Settle’s The Virgin Prophetess was printed in 1716. OUR MOVs ta eee MS pe Bes e512 i GOP 1 jefe seaaptneas sed 1 at eat A era Clb et INDEX Abbé, L’, French dancer, 65” Abdicated Prince, The, 11 Achébar, 88 Acting, suppression of, in 1642 and 1647, 268; in 1661, 271", 277; in 1665, 286; in 1666, 287; in 1669 and 1671, 288; in 1676, 292; in r68r, 296"; in 1691, 300, 323; surreptitious in Commonwealth times, 268 Actors and actresses, influence of, 63— 70; plight. of in Commonwealth times, 268-9; performances by at Court, 280, 305-14; ordered not to leave their companies, 290, 303, 322 Actors Remonstrance, The, 2682 Actresses, 23; early references to, 274 Adams, actor at L.I.F., order for ar- rest of, 282; his parts, 2822 Adams, J. Q., 162 Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Her- bert, 269", 271", 272, 273, 274, 275 Shakespearean Playhouses, 270" Addison, Joseph, 184, 186; Cato, 131, 134 Aftermoney, defined and complaint regarding, 331 Aggas, or Angus, painter, 41 Alarcon, influence on Restoration drama, 180 Allen, Anne, petition against Under- hill, 2852 Ammann, E., Analysis of Thomas Shadwell’s Lancashire Witches, 196” Amorous Old Woman, The, 17 Angel, Edward, an original member of the Cockpit company, 270; recites prologue to The Women’s Con- quest, 129" Anne, Queen, characteristics of her age, 58, 59, 229, 250, 266 Ariane, 31, 39, 40, 43, 47, 60, 85, 123; frontispiece of, 290 Arlequin Empereur dans le monde de la lune, 250 Arrowsmith, The Reformation, 76, 236 Ashburn, summoned by the Lord Chamberlain, 2992 Ashton, Robert, Battle of Aughriin, The, 902 Robert, scene- Assevedo, Jean, petition against Shat- terall, 285” Aston, Tony, 652, 662 Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, 200 Audience, characteristics of the Re- storation, 5-7; paucity of, 6-7, 287; indifference to plays dis- played by, 15; bad judges of plays, 224, 231 Aylytie, Mrs, does not sign petition, 341 Baden, Robert, petitions against Killi- grew, 293° Baker, Francis, made His Majesty’s Servant, 298 Bancroft, John Edward III, 314, 319 Henry II, 158, 314 Sertorius, 133 Banks, John, 34, 146; pathos in, 155-6 Albion Queens, The, 52-3, 1562, 157 Cyrus, 10, 66, 86, 146, 155, 1562, 158 Destruction of Troy, The, 54, 66, 67, II5, 155 Innocent Usurper, The, banned, 10; IIQ, 120, 156, 157 Island Queens, The, 52, 156 Rival Kings, The, 87, 109 Unhappy Favourite, The, 155, 156, 158, 260 Vertue Betray’d, 156, 159, 260 Bannister, John, 62"; composes reci- tative music for The Slighted Maid, 85; associated with music for The Tempest, 123 Barante, Baron A. G. Brugiére de la, translator of Venice Preserv’d, 154 Barker, Bartholomew, petitions against Shatterall, 285" Barr, John, made His Majesty’s Ser- vant, 298 Barry, Mrs Elizabeth, 53, 64, 72; in- fluence on Otway, 72; acts in The Orphan, 153"; acts in The Old Batchelor, 229; receives money for acting, 299, 318; joins the L.I.F. company, 301; signs peti- tion, 330; her salary and benefits, 331, 337 Barton, Hannah, petitions against Haynes, 284" Bateman, joins T.R. company, 283 390 Baxter, Richard, an originalmember of the T.R. company, 269; made His ° Majesty’s Servant, 274; deleted from actor list, 283; receives livery, 283" Baxter, Richard, Reliquiae Baxteri- anae, 289 Beaumont, Francis, and Fletcher, John, their romantic plays, 79, 80; revivals of their plays, 82; influence of on heroic drama, 84, 86, 88, 126, 161; influence of on comedy, 170-1, 181, 183, 206, 213 Beggars Bush, The, 307, 313, 315 Bonduca, 315 Captaine, The, 308, 315 Chances, The, 67, 315 Coxcombe, The, 306, 315 Custome of the Countrey, The, 6", 315 Cupid’s Revenge, 315 Double Marriage, The, 313, 315 Elder Brother, The, 316 Faive Maide of the Inne, The, 315 Faithfull Shepheardesse, The, 6%, 853; 315, 316 False One, The, 315 Honest Man’s Fortune, The, 315 Humorous Lieutenant, The, 305, 311, 312, 313, 315 Island Princesse, The, 40%, 306, 307, 315 King and no King, The, 82%, 306, 307, 312, 313, 316 Knight of Malta, The, 315 Laws of Candy, 315 Little French Lawyer, The, 315 Lovers’ Progress, The, 315 Love’s Cure, 316, 317 Love’s Pilgrimage, 316 Loyal Subject, The, 68, 82", 83, 315 Mad Lover, The, 168%, 315 Maid in the Mill, The, 168%, 315 Maides Tragedy, The, 10, 82", 287, 306, 313, 316 Monsieur Thomas, 261 Nice Valour, The, 316 Night Walker, The, 168" Noble Gentleman, The, 263, 316 Philaster, 82%, 306, 308, 316 Pilgrim, The, 316 Prophetesse, The, 316 Queene of Corinth, The, 316 Rollo, 6", 27, 82”, 307, 312, 313, 316 Rule a Wife and have a Wife, 168%, 305, 312, 315, 316, 318 Scorneful Ladie, The, 6®, 305, 306, 311, 312, 316 Sea Voyage, The, 27, 306, 316 Spanish Curate, The, 168%, 314, 316 INDEX Beaumont and Fletcher (continued) Thierry and Theodoret, 316 Valentinian, 166, 306, 316 Wife for a Month, A, 83, 160, 168%, 316 Wild-Goose Chase, The, 168, 176, 184, 316 Wit at Several Weapons, 315 Wit without Money, 289 Women Hater, The, 315 Womans Prize, The, 71, 168", 306, 307, 315 Women Pleas’d, 7%, 168", 315 Bedford, Edward, head of Duke of Monmouth’s players, 279; asso- ciated with Jolly and Perin, 279; builds a ‘“‘nursery,” 281; peti- tions against Blagden, 283” Beeston, George, joins T.R. company, 279 Beeston, William, his pre-Restoration company, 269"; his company at Salisbury Court, 270; continues acting, 276; at Salisbury Court in 1661, 277; quarrel with Jolly, 277%; warrant for arrest of, 277" Behn, Mrs Aphra, 11, 25, 50, 158, 204, 207, 213, 227, 228, 232, 234, 247, 252, 254, 259, 260, 262, 263; arrested, 2962; her novels used by Southerne, 145; verses in Six Days Adventure, 202; her plays, 207-12, 217; influenced by Dry- den, 219 Abdelazer, 91™ Amorous Prince, The, 130, 254 City Heiress, The, 212 Debauchee, The, 210 Dutch Lover, The, 24, 39, 130, 2092, 210, 211, 309 Emperour of the Moon, The, 250, 299", 318 False Count, The, 173", 249 Feign’d Curtizans, The, 142, 23%, 211, 237, 312 Force’d Marriage, The, 55, 91®, 130, 255-6 History of the Nun, The, 144” Luckey Chance, The, 183, 255-6 Oroonoko, 512 Roundheads, The, 212 Rover, The, 57", 69, 210, 240, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314 Sir Patient Fancy, 23", 33, 176) 209", 211, 311 Town-Fopp, The, 432, 255-6 Widdow Ranter, The, 38", 255-6 Younger Brother, The, 257 Young King, The, 39, 55, 255 INDEX 391 Beljame, A., Le public et les hommes de letires, 1 Bell, Richard, actor at T.R., loses his life in fire, 286"; receives livery, 326 Belon, Peter, 652 Berkeley, Sir William, The Lost Lady, 316 Bernbaum, Ernest, The Drama of Sensibility, 251-2 Berteau, French dancer, 60"; in Ca- listo, 321 Betterton, Thomas, rg, 28, 31, 43, 453, 48, 72, 273", 275, 297; his parts, 64, 66; career of, 65-7; acts in Caesar Borgia,136; in The Orphan, 153"; and in The Old Batchelour, 229; goes to France, 241; an original member of the Cockpit company, 270; agreement of with D’Avenant, 272"; made His Majesty’s servant, 274; sued by Herbert, 276; popularity of, 283; advances money for building D.G., 289, 335; signs articles of Union, 296; made comedian in ordinary to James II, 298; sum- moned by the Lord Chamberlain, 299"; goes on salary, 300; in Court of Chancery, 300; settles rights of sharing actors, 300; enters into share, 300; petitions the Lord Chamberlain, 300, 339; leaves for L.I.F., 300-2, 323; made sole manager of theatre, 303; petitions against tumblers, 304; his salary, 331, 337-8 Amorous Widow, The, 17, 173, 247, 309, 312 Counterfeit Bridegroom, The, as- cribed to Betterton, 247 Prophetess, The, 49, 55, 314 Revenge, The, 65 Woman made a Justice, The, non- extant, 247 Betterton, William, an original mem- ber of the Cockpit company, 270 Biographia Dramatica, 200, 213, 259, 262" Bird, Robert, petitions against Harris, 2843 Bird, Theophilus, 9"; paid for court performances, 280; one of lessees of T.R., 281; in T.R. company, 283; deleted from actor list, 283; receives livery, 283" Blagden, joins T.R. company, 283; deleted from actor list, 283; pe- titioned against by Bedford, 283"; receives livery, 283"; sued for debt, 284 Blake, Mrs, acts in Calisto, 320 Bloody Duke, The, xx Blunt, Mrs, sings in Calisto, 321 Boas, F. S., Shakespeare and the Uni- versilies, 200 Boothby, Mrs, Marcelia, 130° Bopins, sings in Calisto, 321 Boutell, Mrs, actress at T.R., 281 Bowen, William, mutinies, 300; joins L.I.F. company, 301; signs peti- tion, 330; salary of, 340 Bowman, John, made His Majesty’s. servant, 298; settles rights of sharing actors, 300; joins L.I.F. company, 301, 323; signs peti- tion, 330; salary of, 340 Bowman, Mrs, salary of, 340-1 Bowtell, Henry, made His Majesty’s servant, 298 Boyle, Roger, Baron Broghill and Earl of Orrery, 9, 20, 84, 86, 121, 152; influence of French romance on, 87; founder of heroic drama, 90, 96; influence of French rimed tragedy on, 91; characteristics of his heroic dramas, 98-9, 100, or, 143; influence of on Dryden, 102; on Caryl, 106; on Crowne, I14 Altemira (see The General) Black Prince, The, 55, 97, 98, 306 General, The, 76, 90, 97, 98, 100 Guzman, 39, 245 Herod the Great, 55, 97, 142 History of Henry the Fifth, The, 9, 66, 96, 97, 98, 308 Parthenissa, 86 Tryphon, 38, 39, 55, 97, 99 Zoroastres, 62", 97 Bracegirdle, Mrs Anne, 18, 19, 723 influence on Congreve’s types, 73; acts in The Orphan, 153%, and in The Old Batchelour, 229; made His Majesty’s servant, 298; joins the L.I.F. company, 301, 323; signs petition, 330; demands a benefit, 332, 340 Brady, Dr Psalms, 244 Rape, The, 60 Bragadocio, The, 204 Bray, a dancing master, 299” Brewer, Anthony, The Couniry Girl, 257 Bright, George, made His Majesty’s servant, 298, 299; joins L.I.F. company, 301, 323; signs peti- tion, 330; acts Leigh’s parts and * dances, 332, 340 39% Brockwell, Henry, violinist, 62" Brome, Richard Antipodes, The, 169 City Wit, The, 249 Court Beggar, The, 249” Jovial Crew, A, 169, 314 Mad Couple well Matched, The, 210 Northern Lass, The, 315 Novella, The, 315 Sparagus Garden, The, 168 Brown, Thomas, 7" © Browne, F. C., Elkanah Setile, 151® Bullock, William, agreement with Skipwith, 346 } Bulteel, J., Amorous Orontus, 918, 176 Burbage, Richard, 30, 67 Burry, Thomas, petitions Coysh and Powell, 2852 Burt, Nicholas, an original member of the Red Bull company, 269; made His Majesty’s servant, 274; agrees with Herbert, 276"; one of lessees of the T.R., 281; receives livery, 2832, 325-6; advances money to the actors, 289; order of Lord Chamberlain for, 290"; petitions against Killigrew, 2992 Bury, sings in Calisto, 321 Butler, Lady, agreement of with Killigrew, 275 Butler, Mrs, sings in Calisto, 321 Butler, Samuel, 236 against Cademan, Philip, indebtedness of D’Avenant to, 275; his petition, 329-30 Calderon de la Barca, influence of on Restoration drama, 180, 207-10 Astrologo fingido, El, 176, 216 Dama Duende, 180 Maestro de danzar, El, 180 Mejor esta que estaba, 180 No siempre lo peor es cierto, 180 Peor esta que estaba, 180 Calprenéde, La Cassandre, 87, 109 Cléopaire, 86 Pharamond, 87 Cambert, Robert, 88, 123 Campbell, Lily B., Scenes and Ma- chines, 29® Card, Andrew, one of governors of theatre, 299 Carey, Sir Henry, 1272 Carey, Henry, Viscount Falkland, The Marriage Night, 126 Carlell, Lodowick, 89, 962 Ayviragus and Philicia, 316 Deserving Favourite, The, 316 INDEX Carlell, Lodowick (continued) Heraclius, 96” Osmond, 315 Spartan Ladies, The, non-extant, 316 Carlisle, a young actor, 337 Carlisle, Captain James, The Fortune Hunters, 206, 267 Cartwright, George, Lover, 94, 97, 99” Cartwright, William Lady Errant, The, 88 Royal Slave, The, 316 Cartwright, William, an original mem- ber of the Red Bull company, 269; made His Majesty’s servant, 274; agreement of with Herbert, 276%; one of lessees of T.R., 281; shares of in T.R., 282; receives livery, 233"; in T.R. agreement, 289"; in agreement for regulating the stage, 291; one of four mana- gers of T.R., 292; petitions against Killigrew, 298 Caryl, John English Princess, The, 55%, 106, 308 Sir Salomon, 174, 257, 309 Cavalieri, Emilio del, 61 Cavendish, William, Duke of New- castle, his dramas, 203; collabo- rates with Dryden, 216 Country Captain, The, 6, 26, 27, 169, 306, 316 Humorous Lovers, The, 203, 308 Triumphant Widow, The, 77%, 203, 310 Variety, The, 316 Censorship, 10 Centlivre, Mrs Susannah Marpiot, 39 Wonder, The, 242 Cervantes, Miguel, 260; Don Quixote, 265 Chambre a quatre portes, 41 Chamouveau, Jean, 123, 240 Channell, dancer, 59 Chapman, George All Fools, 315 Alphonsus, 316 Bussy @ Ambois, 82, 315, 316 Byron’s Conspiracy, 315 Chabot, 315 Revenge for Honour, 315 Widow's Tears, The, 315 Chapoton, The Descent of Orpheus into Hell, 123, 240 Chappuzeau, L’ Europe vivante, 34, 622 Charlanne, L., L’infiuence francaise en Angleterre au 17° siécle, 42%, 80, 862, 1725 The Heroick- INDEX Charles II, influence of on drama, 8, 9, 26, 180, 207, 259; censorship of, 10; his court, 75, 83, 184, 186, 228; restoration of, 269; his reign symbolised in Albion and Al- banius, 148; death of, 183, 298 Charleton, joins T.R. company, 279 Chase, L. N., The English Heroic Play, go® Child, Mrs Anne, receives livery, 283; deleted from actor list, 284 Child, C. G., The Rise of the English Heroic Play, 92" Chock, Miss Denny, 254 Cibber, Colley, 51, 64, 65, 667, 68, 69, 225, 253, 266; influence of on sentimental drama, 184, 228; acts in The Relapse, 232; does not sign petition, 341; agreement of with Rich for Woman’s Wit, 343 Love’s Last Shift, 251, 266 She Wouw'd and She Wou'd Not, 257 Woman’s Wit, The, 267 Citizens, absence of in theatres, 7°; treatment of by dramatists, 7-8 Clark, composes music for The World tn the Moon, 151 Clark, actor, goes to Scotland, 297 Clarke, Sir William, petitions against Blagden, 2842 Clayton, Robert, one of lessees of TL Raf 28k Clayton, Thomas, violinist, 62 Cleveland, Duchess of, 17, 80 Clun, Walter, an original member of the Red Bull company, 269; made His Majesty’s servant, 274; agreement of with Herbert, 276%; paid for court performances, 280; one of lessees of T.R., 281; shares of in T.R., 282; receives livery, 283"; murdered, 283"; debts of, 285 Cockpit, Royal, in Whitehall, 8, 43"; properties for, 341-2 Codrington, Robert, translator of Ignoramus, 243” Coello, Los empenos de seis horas, 180 Coffey, C. Boarding-School, The, 263" Devil to Pay, The, 247° Colbrand, Sir Robert, 221 Collier, Jeremy, 184, 185, 216, 225, 253, 265, 304 Collier, J. P., History of English Dra- matic Poetry, 268" Colman, Mrs, 70 393 Comedy of Humours, 182, 189-206, 208 — of Intrigue, 207-14 — of Manners, 25, 184-5; immorality of, 185-9; characteristics of, 222—- a0 Commedia dell’ arte, 171, 180, 181, 198, 237, 248, 250-1 Commedia erudita, 180 Congreve, William, 19, 25, 28, 75, 77, 193; writes for Mrs Brace- girdle, 73; influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on, 170; influence of Moliére on, 172, 178; com- pared with Spanish dramatists, 180; his comedies of manners, 182-9, 223, 225, 229-31; com- pared with Shadwell, 194, 196; with Dryden, 214, 217, 219; on Wycherley, 227; his spirit spoilt by sentimentalism, 235; writes prologue for A Very Good Wife, 249; and Crowne, 260; D’Urfey, 260; criticism of Cibber, 266 Double Dealer, The, 68, 174, 176, 184, 230, 314 Love for Love, 64, 69, 73, 183, 228, 230, 231 Mourning Bride, The, 69, 73, 133 Old Batchelour, The, 183, 187, 229, 231, 319 Way of the World, The, 73, 183, 224, 230, 231 Constant Nymph, The, 912, 128 Cooke, Edward, Love’s Triumph, 87, II5 Cooke, John, Tu Quoque, 6", 1682, 309 Cooke, Sarah, made His Majesty’s servant, 298 Corey, Mrs, actress at Vere-street, 281; petitions Lord Chamberlain, 299 Corneille, Pierre, 87, 912, 93, 98, 121, 134, 213 Héraclius, 89 Menteur, Le, 177 Nicoméde, 89 Pompée, 89 Corneille, Thomas, 176-7 Amour ala Mode, L’, 176 Don Bertran de Cigarral, 176 Feint Astrologue, Le, 176, 216 (with de Visé) Devineresse, La, 177 Corye, John, The Generous Enemies, 89, 177, 213 Costume in the Restoration theatres, 49-51 Coventry, Sir William, 812 “Coveras, de las,”” Don Fenise, 210 394 INDEX Cowley, Abraham, 200 Cutter of Coleman Street, 38, 68, 199, 201 Guardian, The, 27%, 168, 199, 309, 310, 316 Coysh, debts of, 285 Cox, Robert, Gnone, 239 Coxeter, Thomas, 158”, 2482 Craig, Gordon, 154” Creed, William, sues D’Avenant, 275 Creek, Thomas, actor at L.I.F., ar- rested, 282 Cromwell’s Conspiracy, 112 Cross, Miss, 20, 254, 265 Crow, William, sues D’Avenant, 275 Crowne, John, 56, 77, 104; influence of Seneca on, 85; influence of Racine on, 89; style of his heroic dramas, 114; pensioned by D.G. company, 295; paid by James for plays, 299, 318; sentimentalism in, 258-60; his masque of Calisto, 320 Ambitious Statesman, The, 56", 140 Andromache, 89, 114 Caligula, 114, 141, 142 Calisto, 319-22 City Politiques, The, banned, 102, 259%; 237, 24, 56, 58, 259, 312 Countrey Wit, The, 175, 189, 258, 310 Darius, 147, 114, 141, 299, 318 Destruction of Jerusalem, The, 40%, II4, I41, 294%, 308, 312 English Frier, The, 10", 174, 259 Henry the Sixth, 10, 163 History of Charles the Eighth of France, The, 56%, 64, 114, 309 Juliana, 56", 114, 141 Married Beau, The, 173", 259 Regulus, 565, 114, 141 Sir Courtly Nice, 9, 142, 562, 180, 259, 299, 312, 313, 314, 318, 319 Thyestes, 24, 562, 85, 114, I4I Curll, Edmund, 153 Currer, Mrs Elizabeth, petitions against Killigrew and D’Avenant, 2992; summoned before the Lord Chamberlain, 347 Curtains, use of in theatres, 54-5 Daborn, Robert, Poor Man’s Comfort, The, 278 Dalton, Mrs, actress at the T.R., re- ceives livery, 283; deleted from actor-list, 283-4 Dancer, or Dauncy, John Agrippa, 87 Nicomede, 87 Dancers, in theatres, 59-60 Darby, Aaron, made His Majesty’s servant, 298, 299 D’Avenant, Alexander, probably the same as Thomas, sells share to Rich, 299; summoned by the Lord Chamberlain, 299"; petition against by Mrs Currer, 299%; cheats the actors, 300, 330, 3343 his share in the theatre, 330; absconds, 334; alleged cheats of on Rich and Skipwith, 334-5 D’Avenant, Dr Charles, left rights in Duke’s theatre, 288; statement of, 289; agrees with Hart and Smith,, 296; signs articles of Union, 296; sells his share, 330 Circe, 40°, 125-6, I5I, 310, 319 D’Avenant, Sir William, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37, 45, 61, 65, 71, 129, 2753 takings of from theatre, 162, 275; pre-Restoration patent of, 29; in- fluence of Beaumont and Fletcher on, 84; influence of Italian opera on, 85; influence of French ro- mance on, 87; criticism of French plays, 88; importance of, as founder of heroic drama, 90, 92, 93-4; his adaptations of Shake- speare, 162; satirised in The Re- hearsal, 236; his performances at Rutland House, 268; warrant for, 270, 273; quarrel with Herbert, 271; goes to France, 272; agree- ment of with actors, 272"; in- debted to Cademan, 275; sued, 275"; petitions the king, 276; payments to for Court perform- ances, 280; his actors, 282; opens his “opera,” 283; patent of rati- fied, 285; death of, 288 Albovine, 160 Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, The, 29, 60, 236, 276 History of Sir Francis Drake, The, 29, 54, 236 Love and Honour, 30, 38, 93 Macbeth, 37, 51, 123, 124, 166, 309, 312 Man’s the Master, The, 118, 13, 26, 33, 177, 235, 309 Play-House to be Lett, The, 174, 236, 237, 308, 310 Rivals, The, 167, 168, 309 Siege of Rhodes, The, 29, 30%, 35, . 37, 42", 54, 70, 85, 93, 94, 122, 235, 236 Tempest, The (see Dryden) Unfortunate Lovers, The, 83, 168 Witts, The, 30, 38, 168, 308, 309 INDEX D’Avenant, Lady, left rights in Duke’s theatre, 288; her fruit money, 331, 339 Davenport, Mrs, actress at L.I.F., 282; Frances Davenport receives livery, 283; Elizabeth and Jane Davenport receive livery, 284; eldest Davenport leavesstage, 288 Davies, Thomas, Dramatic Miscella- nies, 50", 67, 68 Davies, Mrs Katharine, made His Majesty’s servant, 298 Davies, Mrs Moll, dancer, 59, 72; joins L.I.F. company, 282; taken by King, 288 Davies, Mrs, sings in Calisto, 321 Day, John, Humour out of Breath, 315 Degrang, sings in Calisto, 321 Dekker, Thomas, The Gul’s Hornbook, 12 Delandine, A. F., 1482 De Lisle, French dancer, 60°; in Calisto, 321 Delepine, Margarita, Frenchsinger, 652 Denham, Sir John, 90; The Sophy, 314 Dennis, John, 17, 1072, 259" Plot and No Plot, A, 32, 58-9 Original Letters, 266" Desclozeaux, adaptor of The Orphan, 1537 Description of the Great Machines, The, 41, 44, 240 Dicket, Edward, petitions against the T.R. company, 285" Diderot, 252 Digby, George, Earl of Bristol, 180; Worse and Worse, 308 Dilke, Thomas City Lady, The, 54, 56", 206 Lover's Luck, The, 32, 205, 254 Pretenders, The, 206 Divoto, Antonio, a shower of puppets and probably master of acompany of Italian comedians, 238 Dixon, an original member of the Cockpit company, 270 D’muraile, French dancer, 60; in Calisto, 321 Dobson, Henry, petitions against Mrs Weaver, 284 Doggett, Thomas, 64, 248; acts in The Old Batchelour, 229; mutinies, 300; joins L.I.F. company, 301, 323; leaves his company, 302; heads petition, 303; agreement of, 3033, 345; signs petition, 330; salary of, 332, 340 Country Wake, The, 249 395 Délinger, J., Fables regarding the Popes, 138 Donne, John, 20 Doors on stage, 51-3 Downes, John, made His Majesty’s servant, 298; summoned before the Lord Chamberlain, 347 Roscius Anglicanus, 8", 9%, 26, 27, 38, 65, 67, 682, 1079, 122, 126, 127, 147, 148%, 1517, 180, 223, 237, 250°, 269, 270, 286, 2972 Dowson, John, dancer, discharged, 346 Draghi, Giovan Battista, 123, 125 Drake, Dr James, The Sham Lawyer, 56%, 63” Drake, Sir Francis, 78, 79 Dryden, John, 11, 20, 59, 63, 72, 77, 80, 83, 113, 127, 132, 133", 138, I50, I51I, 152, 155, 181; influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on, 84; influence of Seneca on, 85; in- fluence of French romance on, 86-7; critical of French fashion, 88; on rime, 90, 91; criticism of D’Avenant, 93-4; characteristics of his heroic dramas, 96, 100-5, II5, 117, 118, 120-1, 289; in- fluence ot in tragedy, 107-9, 114, 143; in opera, 124; attacked by Powell, 160"; his adaptations of Shakespeare, 162-5; influence of Jonson on, 169, 170, 183; his comedies, 172, 185, 210, 213; critical of Spanish drama, 179; love of Shakespeare, 189; critical of Shadwell, 190; and criticised by Shadwell, 191, 192; compared with Shadwell, 194, 195, 196, 198; his comic plays, 214-9, 223; compared with Congreve and Etherege, 214, 231; plays attri- buted to, 220-1; influence of, 222; on Wycherley, 225%, 2262; writes verses for Wives’ Excuse, 228; Satirised in Rehearsal, 236; refers to Italian comedians, 239; in- fluence of on Ravenscroft, 242; collaborates with Tate, 244; in the T.R. agreement, 289"; en- gaged by the T.R., 294 Absalom and Achitophel, 244 Albion and Albanius, 40°, 43, 44-8, 65, 125, 131, 148, 149 All for Love, 16, 110, 126, 167, 312 Amphiiryon, 171, 175, 219, 314 Assignation, The, 173, 218, 236 Aureng-Zebe, 24, 68, 918, 105, 307, 308 Cleomenes, 135, 141” 396 INDEX Dryden, John (continued) D’Urfey, Thomas, 11, 20, 59, 63, 73, Conquest of Granada, The, 5, 42°, 86, 92, 100, 104, 134, 222, 236, 308 Discourse concerning. ..Satireé, 340 Don Sebastian, 24, 68, 134, 135, 139, 314 Duke of Guise, The, 10", 57, 119%, 135, 136, 310 Essay of Dramatick Poesie, 83” Essay of Heroick Playes, 92, 104 Evening’s Love, An, 55, 56, 67, £73, 176, 216, 306, 312, 313 Indian Emperour, The, 26, 36, 101, 102, I16, 222, 236, 279, 305, 306, 307 Indian Queen, The, 35, 36, 49, 50-1, 62", 94, 97, 100, II5, IOI, 316, 341 Kind Keeper, The, 81, 175, 211, 218, 294, 311 King Arthur, 47, 149, 150, 264, 314 Love Triumphant, 135, 176 MacFlecknoe, 194, 2812 Marriage a la Mode, 130, 217, 262, 307 Gidipus, 19%, 24, 69, 85, 134, 294 Prologues. for Carlell’s Arvivagus, 2415 for LIF. 128933, for the University of Oxford, 298" Rival Ladies, The, 56", 97, 130, 182, 215 Secret Love, 22, 27, 86, 130, 210, 215, 217, 219, 305, 306, 308, 313 Si Martin Mar-all, 6", 7, 22", 59, 67, 68, 69, 172, 173, 203, 216, 221, 294, 308, 309, 310, 313 Spanish Fryar, The, 10, 17, 18, 174, 175, 218, 311, 314, 318 State of Innocence, The, 22, 225” Tempest, The, 22, 26, 37, 124, 165, 294, 308, 309 Troilus and Cressida, 159, 163, 164, 166, 167, 246 Tyrannick Love, 108, 236, 308 Vindication, The, 135 Wild Gallant, The, 182, 215, 2109, 236, 237 Dryden, John, junior, The Husband his own Cuckold, 28, 250 Duffett, Thomas, 76, 107; prologue and epilogue for The Indian Em- peror, 279 Empress of Morocco, The, 76, 124, 237 Mock Tempest, The, 237, 307 New Songs, 6, 279 Psyche Debauch'd, 125, 237 Spanish Rogue, The, 24, 37, 91, 237 D’Urté, Honoré, Astrée, 86 977, 151, 185, 232, 259: sentiment- alism in, 158, 252, 260-5; im- morality of, 209 Banditti, The, 210, 262 Bath, The, 14 Campaigners, The, 23%, 264-5 Cinthia and Endimion, 48, 159 Comical History of Don Quixote, The, 20, 253, 264-5 Commonwealth of Women, A, 37, 39 Fool's Preferment, A, 203 Fool turn’d Critick, The, 16", 17, 43, 261, 308 Fond Husband, A, 26", 261-2, 311, 313 Injurd Princess, The, 60, 163 Intrigues at Versailles, The, 265 Love for Money, 263, 264 Madam Fickle, 24, 437, 261, 310 Marriage-Hater Match’d, The, 12, 264 Masaniello, 55 Richmond Heiress, The, 264 Royalist, The, 262, 311 Siege of Memphis, The, 15, 54, 108 Sir Barnaby Whig, 262 Squire Oldsapp, 33", 392, 261 Trick for Trick, 261 Virtuous Wife, The, 53, 262 Wonders in the Sun, 1942 Du Ryer, Alemédon, 87 Dyers, dancer, 60; in Calisto, 321 Eastland, Mrs, actress at Vere Street, 281 Eaton, Henry, gives recognisances for an actor, 269 Ecclestone, Edward, Noah’s Flood, QI Elizabethan drama, revivals of, 82-3, 168-9; influence of, 84-5, 126-8, 152-61, 169-70 — stage, 29 — traditions in Restoration theatres, 57, 58 Entrance to the theatres, 12-13; orders concerning, 322 Etherege, Sir George, 19, 25, 75, 77, I71I, 172,178,180, 181, 182, 190-1, 222, 226, 266; founder of comedy of manners, 184, 188, 217, 2343 praised by Shadwell, 192; in- fluences Mrs Pix, 212; character- istics of his plays, 223-5, 231, 232; song by, 245; compared with Dryden, 214 Comical Revenge, The, 38, 66, 67, 68, 91°, 173, 223, 224, 308, 309 INDEX Etherege, Sir George (continued) Man of Mode, The, 5, 45, 60, 173°, 186, 224, 225, 310, 312 She Wou'd if she Cow’d, 14%, 15, 43, 63", I92, 223, 224, 309, 310, 312 Eunuchs employed as singers, 62 Euripides, influence on Restoration drama, 148 Evelyn, John, 36, 382, 85, 123; sees Committee, 202"; condemns An Evening’s Love, 216; sees Italian players, 239; sees French players, 240; goes to Court theatre after Great Fire, 287 Fane, Sir Francis Love in the Dark, 37, 177, 246, 307 Sacrifice, The, 91™ Fanshawe, Sir Richard, translator of Pastor Fido, 128 Farce, development of, 235-6, 245-51; burlesque and, 237; influence of the Commedia dell’ arte on, 238— 41; Shadwell and, 197; Behn and, 208 Farquhar, George, his comedy of “Manners, 172, 178, 181, 232-4, 267 Constant Couple, The, 12", 13, 177, 234 Inconstant, The, 170 Love and a Bottle, 6", 23, 62, 233 Essay on Comedy, 168 Fashion, Joseph, violinist, 62” Fatal Discovery, The, 24, 66%, 160 Fayette, Madame de la, La Princesse de Cléves, 86 Female Wits, The, 238 Ferchlandt, H., Moliére’s Misanthrop und seine englische Nachahmun- gen, 174” Ferrier, T.. The Prince of Angola, 1453 Fideli, Sigismondo, French performer, 62 Field, Nathaniel Woman is a Weather- cock, 168 Fielding, Henry, Thumb, 156 Filmer, Dr Edward, The Unnatural Brother, 132-3, 251 Finance, playhouse, 275 Fiorilli, Tiberio, an Italian player, 238-9, 243 Fitz, Theophilus, violinist, 622 Fitzgerald, Percy, A New History of the English Stage, 270", 2713, 281", 285", 286%, 289, 290%, 2967 266, 267; Tom 397 Flecknoe, Richard, 42, 49 Damoiselles ala Mode, The, 27, 35%, 40, 49", 173, 306 Euterpe Reviv’d, 22", 59", 67 Love’s Dominion, 34, 122, 252 Love’s Kingdom, 128 Floid, an original member of the Cock- pit company, 270 Flower, Edmond, violinist, 622 Fop-alley, 1x Ford, sings in Calisto, 321 Ford, John, 20, 84, 111, 120; horror tragedy of. 134, 137, I41, 144, 160 Broken Heart, The, 315 Lady’s Trial, The, 168 Love's Melancholy, 315 Tis Pity, 279 Forde, Thomas, Love’s Labyrinth, 128 Forsythe, R. S., A Study of the Plays of Thomas D’Urfey, 260%, 264%, 265" Fountain, John. The Rewards of Vir- tue, 128 Fowell, F. and Palmer, R., Censorship in England, 108 Fracastoro, translated by Tate, 244 Franshaw, performs in Calisto, 320 Fraser, Mrs, performs in Calis 0, 320 Freeman, John, made His Majesty’s servant, 298, 299 French dancers and singers,59—60, 65" — influence on Restoration tragedy, 20, 86-9; on Restoration opera, 122-4; on Restoration comedy, 172-9 — players in England, 240-1, 342 Fuller, Isaac, scene-painter, 42 Fyfe, Alexander, The Royal Martyr, go” Gallia, Maria, singer, 65” Galsworthy, John, Justice, 73 Garrick, David, 12 50; alters The Faal Marriage, 144"; acts in Venice Preserv’d, 1548; stops The London Cuckolds, 244 Garth, Sir Samuel, The Dispensary, 1612 Gavile, Edward, petitions against Wintersell, 2852 Genest, Rev. J., Some Account of the English Stage, 76, 106, 113, 192", 200, 204, 208, 211, 242", 245%, 247%, 262, 2652 Gentileschi, Giulio, 238 Gentleman, Francis, his alteration of Oroonoko, 1452 German Princess, The, 208 398 Gibbs, Mrs Ann, wife of Shadwell, actress at L.I.F., 282 Gildon, Charles, 2642, 296; his con- tinuation of Langbaine, 151%, 1582 Comparison between the Two Stages, Ai I2", 247" Phaeton, 37", 89, 148 Roman Bride’s Revenge, The, 148 Gillet, J. E., Moliéve en Angleterre, 172, 173", 174” Gillow, a young actor, 337 Glapthorne, Henry Argalus and Parthenia, 82 Wit in a Constable, 168 Glover, Richard, keeper of the Royal Cockpit theatre, 82 Goldsmith, Oliver, 267 Goodman, Cardell, joins the T.R. company, 279; debts of, 285; order for arrest of, 2882; goes to Scotland, 297 Gosse, Edmunu, on The Mall, 221; Life of Congreve, 265” Gould, Robert, The Riva! Sisters, 143 Grabut, 60, 123; collaborates with Southerne and Dryden, 124; com- poses music for Albion and Al- banius, 149; gets scenes for a French opera, 316-7; his dancers, 317 Gradwell, Thomas, joins the T.R. company, 283; receives livery 2832 Granville, George, Lord Lansdowne, his pseudo-classic and operatic tendencies, 131; his dramas, 131, 147-8 British Enchanters, The, 131 Herotck Love, 84, 131, 147 She-Gallants, The, 43, 234 Gray, actor, goes to Scotland, 297 Gray, C. H., Lodowick Carliell, 962 Green, Peter, possibly an actor, war- rant for arrest of, 2782 Griffin, Philip, joins the T.R. com- pany, 270; made His Majesty’s servant, 298; signs agreement of Bullock, 346 Grim, the Collier of Croydon, 250 Guarini, Pastor Fido, 128 Gwyn, Mrs Nell, 92, 19, 80, 172; joins the T.R. company, 281; receives livery, 283; leaves the T.R., 288; influence on Dryden, 214, 216 Habington, William, The Queen of Arragon, 29, 83, 315 Hailes, Henry, sued by Johnson, 2942 INDEX Halfpenny, Thomas, petitions against Harris, 2842 Hall, Jacob, sued by Herbert, 279 Hall, Mrs, receives livery, 283; de- leted from actor-list, 284 Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., 972; A Col- lection of Ancient Documents, 2727 Hame, Mrs Anne, petitions against Mrs Weaver, 2842 Hancock, joins T.R. company, 283; receives livery, 2832 Hamnibal, possibly Nabbes’ Hannibal and Scipio, 309 Harriette, French dancer, 602; in Calisto, 321 Harland, does not sign actors’ peti- tion, 341 Harris, Henry, 9", 65; his parts, 67; agreement with D’Avenant, 2723; sued for debt, 284; arranges with French dancers, 317; made Yeo- man of the Revels, 329 Harris, Joseph, made His Majesty’s servant, 299"; does not sign peti- tion, 341 City Bride, The, 54 Mistakes, The,.37, 213 Harris, Mathew, petitions against Loveday, 2852 Hart, Charles, his parts, 67; his in- fluence on Dryden, 214, 216; an original member of the Red Bull company, 269; made His Ma- jesty’s servant, 274; agreement with Herbert, 276"; paid for court performances, 280; one of lessees of T.R., 281; his shares in T.R., 283; receives livery, 283, 325-6; Lord Chamberlain’s order to, 288; lover of Nell Gwyn, 288; in the T.R. agreement, 289; fur- nished with clothes by the com- pany, 290; manager of the T.R., 292; agrees with D’Avenant, 296 Hart, musician, sings in The Tempest, 318; and in Calisto, 321 Hartmann, K., Einfluss Moliére’s auf Dryden’s Komisch - Dramatische Dichtungen, 173” Harvey-Jellie, W., Les sources du thédtre anglais, 1718, 1752 Hawkesworth, John, alteration of Oroonoko, 145 Haynes, Joseph, 6"; arrested, 812; goes to France, 241; acts in Mr Anthony, 245; sued for debt, 284; silenced, 292; arrested, 294; quarrels with Mountfort, 299” INDEX Hayward, Edward, letter to Herbert, 276 Hazlitt, W. C., The English Drama and Stage, 268 Heiress, The, 81, 306 Heraclius, 50 Herbert, Sir Henry, Master of the Revels, 10, 16%, 262, 71, 270, 274, 2784; list of the Red Bull plays by, 269; complains of D’Avenant, 271; issues writs to actors, 273, 275; brings an action against Mohun, 275; and against Better- ton, 275; claims against D’Ave- nant, 276; brings action against Perin, Hall and Turner, 279; pe- titions against Harris, 284" Heroic Drama, 19; satirised, 76-7, 236-7; characteristics of, go—-121; influence of, 134-48 Hewett, George, petitions against Shatterell, 2852 Hewytt, William, one of lessees of the ER, 282 Heywood, Thomas English Traveller, The, 78 If You Know not Me, 306 Love’s Mistress, 83, 169 Higden, Henry, The Wary Widdow, 13, 16, 18, 272, 206 Hippesley, John, Flora, 249° History of the English Stage, The, 247% Hodgson, John, made His Majesty’s servant, 299° Hodgson, Mrs, does not sign actors’ petition, 341 Holden, Mrs, an actress at L.I.F., 282 Hopkins, Charles Boadicea, 32", 40, 142 Pyrrhus, 142 Horden, 21; does not sign actors’ petition, 341 Howard, Hon. Edward, ridicules heroic plays, 76; alters Romeo, 127; Satirised in The Sullen Lovers, 191 Change of Crowns, The, 10, 287, 305 Man of Newmarket, The, 52, 202 Six Days Adventure, 35%, 60, 202 Usurper, The, 24, 76, 128, 306 Women’s Conquest, The, 128 Howard, Hon. James, influenced by Dryden, 219; abused by Lacy, 287 All Mistaken, 189, 219 English Mounsieur, The, 220, 306 Howard, Sir Robert, 20, 137, 201, 300; satirised in The Sulien Lovers, 81, 190; in The Rehearsal, 236; pro- 399 poses writing a satirical play, 81; activity as writer of heroic tragedy, 90; associated in leasing of land for T.R., 281; his shares in the T.R., 282 Blind Lady, The, 202 Commitiee, The, 11, 26, 27, 69, 202, 222, 305, 306, 307, 312, 313 Great Favourite, The, 127, 306 Indian Queen, The (see Dryden) Surprisal, The, 6", 27, 55, 202 Vestal Virgin, The, 40%, 116, 117, 127 Howard, Miss, 254 Hudson, violinist, 62" Hughes, actor, receives livery, 326 Hughes, Mrs, actress, joins the T.R. company, 281 Humbert, C. H., Moltére in England, 2725 Humphreys, Pelham, associated with music to The Tempest, 1238 Hunt, attacks Dryden, 135 Immorality in the Restoration drama, I-2, 20-5, 184-5, 253; orders re- garding, 304 Inglesby, Mary, petition against Har- tis, 284" Isaacs, dancer, 60"; in Calisto, 321 Italian Commedia dell’ arte, influence of, 180-1, 237-40 — opera, 62; influence of, 85 — players in England, 237-40 — singers in England, 85-6 James I, drama during reign of, 103, 159 James II, censorship of, 10; drama during reign of, 75; his patronage of the drama, 298-9 James, Mrs, actress at the T.R., 281 Jennings, Thomas, petitions against Haynes, 2842 Jennings, Mrs, actress at L.I.F., 282; acts in Calisto, 320 Jevon, Thomas, made His Majesty’s servant, 298: The Devil of a Wife, 27", 247 Johnson, George, keeper of the T.R. in Whitehall, 341 Johnson, Dr Samuel, Ivene, 132 Johnson, Thomas, one of the owners of the T.R., 294 Jolly, George, his company, 270, 273"; continues acting, his licence, 276; at Salisbury Court, 277; licence for provinces, 277; acts with Killigrew, 277; quarrels with 400 Beeston, 277"; warrant for arrest of, 278"; probably connected with Duke of Monmouth’s players, 279; possibly acts in ’Tis Pity, 279 Jolly, Thomas, sues Killigrew for pro- perties supplied, 293” Jonson, Benjamin, 20, 25, 59; shows weakening of early seventeenth century drama, 79; his influence on Restoration comedy, 80, 163, 169, 181-91, 195, 198-208, 215, 216, 242, 261; his neo-classic dramas, 83, 93; introduced in prologue to Women’s Conquest, 129” Alchemist, The, 169, 306, 307, 315 Bartholomew Fair, 169, 305, 306, 307, 315 Catiline, 9, 82%, 306, 307, 315 Cynthia’s Revels, 315 Devill is an Asse, The, 169, 245, 250, 315 Eastward Hoe, 245 Epicoene, 27, 169, 305, 312, 315 Every Man in His Humour, 5, 169, 315 Every Man out of his Humour, 6, 169, 315 Magnetick Lady, The, 315 New Inne, The, 315 Poetaster, The, 315 Sejanus, 82, 315 Staple of Newes, The, 315 Tale of a Tubb, The, 315 Volpone, 67, 169, 306, 308, 315 Jordan, Thomas A Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie, 17, 7i, 2782 London Triumphant, 40 INDEX lain, 299"; petitioned against by Burt, 299", and by Mrs Currer, 299” Killigrew, Henry, sent to Tower, 18 Killigrew, Thomas, Master of the Revels, 10, 30, 60, 274; interest of in music, 61, 85; warrants to, 62%, 71; warrant of monopoly for, 270, 273; starts a company, 271; his takings from the theatre, 275; agrees with Lady Butler, 275"; agrees with Herbert, 276"; paid for court performances, 280; intends building nursery in Moor- fields, 281; acts at Vere Street, 281; his players, 281; absolute power of, 281, 332-3; one of lessees of land for T.R., 281; his shares, 282; his patent ratified, 286; in T.R. agreement, 289; complaint of against actors, 290; in agreement for regulating stage, 291; warrants for, 316, 341 Cicilia and Clorinda, 171" Claracilla, 6%, 171% Parson's Wedding, The, 23, 171, 180 Pilgrim, The,.171® Princess, The, 171” Prisoners, The, 1718 Killigrew, Sir William, 129 Imperial Tragedy, The, ascribed to, 127 Love and Friendship, 129, 236 Seege of Urbin, The, 129 King’s company, personnel of, 269, 281; their mortgage of ground, 289; troubles of, 291-4; go to Oxford, 295 Kirkman, Francis, The Wits, 239 Kneppe, Mrs, actress at Vere Street, Keene, William, petitions against 281; receives livery, 283; and Harris, 2842 Pepys, 287; arrested, 287 Kemble, alters Fatal Marriage, 1448, | Knight, Mrs Francis Maria, actress in and Ovoonoko, 1542 T.R. company, 281; made His Kent, debts of, 285; does not sign Majesty’s servant, 298; does not petition, 341 sign petition, 341; signs agree- Kent, Mrs, does not sign petition, 341 ment with Robinson, 344 Kerby, Robert, petitions against Mrs Knight, Mrs, sings in Calisto, 321 Weaver, 2842 Kozelski, I., Russian translator of Killigrew, Charles, 62"; praises Vil- Venice Preserv’d, 1542 lain, 126; statement of, 289; Kynaston, Edward, his parts, 68; acts made manager of T.R. and Master of the Revels, 292-3; ordered not to remove properties, 293; signs articles of Union, 296; ordered to pay Goodman, 297%; petitioned against, 298; order to, 298; sum- moned by the Lord Chamber- girls’ parts, 70; beaten for sa- tirical speeches, 81"; an original member of the Cockpit company, 270; made His Majesty’s servant, 274, 298; joins the T.R. company, 274; receives livery, 2832; in T.R. agreement, 289; furnished INDEX with clothes by the Company, 290; in agreement for regulating the stage, 291; one of the four Managers of the theatre, 292; salary of, 340 Lacy, John, 9"; his parts, 69; adapts Moliére, 172; acts in Committee, 202; an original member of the Red Bull company, 269; made His Majesty’s servant, 274; one of lessees of the T.R., 281; shares of, 282; receives livery, 283%; sued for debt, 284; arrested, 287; in T.R. agreement, 289" Dumb Lady, The, 40°, 57, 175, 200 Old Troop, The, 200, 306 Sauny the Scot, 69, 162, 200, 2018 Sw Hercules Buffoon, 13, 201 Lacy, Mrs, sues for money, 298 La Fosse, Manlius Capitolinus, 154” Lamb,Charles,on Restoration comedy, 187; on Cowley, 199 Lane, acts in Calisto, 320 Langbaine, Gerard, 17, 69", 126%, I5r3, 153, 172, 204, 2065; sees Revenge for Honour, 281"; thinks Lacy improves on Moliére, 175; criticism of Shadwell, 196, of Wilson, 200, of Kind Keeper, 218, of Duffett, 237, of Ravenscroft, 242, of D’Urfey, 260 La Roche-Guilhen, Madame, order to, 317; Rare en Tout, 123, 315 Laun, van, Les plagiaires de Moliére en Angleterre, 172® Laureate, The, 16" Lawrence, W. J., 517, 562, 852, 1232 Elizabethan Playhouse, 29", 1242 A Forgotien Restoration Playhouse, 347, 2782 Lawson, Mrs, does not sign petition, 341 Leanerd, John Counterfeits, The, 252, 257, 311 Country Innocence, The, 252, 257 Rambling Justice, The, 23", 43, 573, 257 Lee, or Leigh, Elinor, actress, 302, 323, 324, 330, 346 Lee, or Leigh, Michael, actor, 249 Lee, Nathaniel, 111-4, 121, 132, 134, 135-8, 145, 292, 294 Caesar Borgia, 120, 136 Gloriana, 67, 86, 113, 116, 138 Lucius Junius Brutus, 55, 86, 137 Mithridates, 67 Nero, III, 120, 307 NRD 401 Lee, Nathaniel (continued) Princess of Cleve, The, 86, 137, 260 Rival Queens, The, 64, 87, 110, 308, 313 Sophonisba, 67, 112, 115, 118, 119, 307 Theodosius, 87, 136 Legg, William, master of the Nursery, 280 Leigh, Anthony, actor, 298, 300, 310 Levett, sues Harris, 284 Lewright, Robert, cited in playhouse agreement, 289 Lillieston, Thomas, actor, 269, 272 Lisle, actor, 288 Loveday, Thomas, actor, 269, 271, 274, 282, 283, 285, 325 Lovel, Thomas, actor, 270, 272 Lowe, R. W., 513, 305 Lower, Sir William, The Noble In- gratitude, 89 Lulli, 88 Lyddol, actor, 279 Maidwell, Laurence, The Loving Enemies, 205, 367 Manley, Mrs, 367-8, The Royal Mis- chief, 555, 147 Marshall, Rebecca, 281, 285, 326 Mayne, Jasper, 261; The City Match, 306 Medbourne, Matthew, order for arrest of, 288"; Tartuffe, 174, 246-7 Meggs, Mary, fruitwoman at T.R., petitions against Clun, 285%; order for arrest of, 285"; petitions against Killigrew, 2967 Menestrier, 87 Merry Devil of Edmonton, The, 82, 169, 316 Middlemore, Richard, one of governors of theatre, 299 Middleton, Thomas, 82 Changeling, The, 83, 168 Mayor of Quinborough, The, 315 More Dissemblers besides Women, 257, 315 No Wit, no Help, 247, 249" Widow, The, 82, 315 Miles, D. H., Influence of Moliére on Restoration Comedy, 172", 173%, 175%, 2612 Mills, John, signs agreement witb Robinson, 344 Milton, John, 61 Mistaken Beauty, The, 177 Mistaken Husband, The, 171, 220 Mr Turbulent, 205 26 402 INDEX Mohun, Major Michael, 8; his parts, 67; acts in Dryden’s plays, 216; chief of Red Bull actors, 269; agrees with Killigrew, 271; said to be at Cockpit, 273; made His Majesty’s servant, 274; agree- ment of with Herbert, 276; paid for court performances, 280; one of lessees of the T.R., 282; re- ceives livery, 283"; temporary cessation of acting, 288; in T.R. agreement, 289; furnished with clothes by company, 290; in agreement for regulating the stage, 291; apparently one of managers, 292; leaves the stage, 297; petition of at Union, 327-8 Moliére, influence of on Restoration comedy, 172-9, 180, 181, 184, 198, 242 Amour médecin, L’, 173, 175, 201 Amphitryon, 175, 219 Avare, L’, 175, 192, 193, 200 Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le, 174%, 175, 176, 242 Critique de Vécole des femmes, La, 174 Dépit amoureux, Le, 173 Ecole des Femmes, L’, 174 Ecole des maris, L’, 174 Etourdi, L’, 172, 216 Fdcheux, Les, 174, 191 Femmes savantes, Les, 176, 248 Festin de Pierre, Le, 175 Fourberies de Scapin, Les, 1745, 176, 243 George Dandin, 173, 204, 247 Malade imaginaire, La, 176 Mariage forcé, Le, 174, 243 Médecin malgré lui, Le, 172,175, 201 Misanthrope, Le, 174, 227 Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 175, 176, 242 Précieuses Ridicules, Les, 173 Sganarelle, 173 Sicilien, Le, 175, 258 Tartuffe, 174, 243, 247 Molina, influence of on Restoration comedy, 180 Monconys, 342 Monk, General, 269 Monmouth, Duke of, his players, 279 Moore, Edward, 276 Moreto, Augustin, No puede ser, 180, 259 Morris, Edward, The Secret, 2642 Moseley, H., letter to Herbert, 273 Mosely, John, an original member of the Cockpit company, 270; his agreement with D’ Avenant, 2723; sharing actor, 336 Motteux, Pierre Antoine, 12"; his plays, 250; sentimentalism in, 253, 267 Beauty in Distress 192, 160 Don Quixote, 250 Island Princess, The, 55® Love’s a Jest, 12", 251 Novelty, The, 133", 240, 251 Mottley, dancer, 60"; in Calisto, 321 Mountfort, William, 250; his parts, 69; publishes Edward III and Henry II, 158"; made His Ma- jesty’s servant, 298; quarrels with Haynes, 299"; settles rights of sharing actors, 300; death of, 300, 339; paid for plays, 319 Greenwich Park, 38", 69, 267 Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, The, 240, 248, 310 Successfull Straingers, The, 213 Mountfort, Mrs, acts in Old Batche- lour, 229 Mulert, A., Pierre Corneille auf der englischen Biihne, 89” Muralt, Letives sur les Anglois, 50° Muse of Newmarket, The, 139 Music in Restoration theatres, 59-60; order regarding, 323 Muyser, G., translator of Venice Pre- serv’d, 1542 Neo-classic drama, comparative un- popularity of, 131-3 Nicoll, Allardyce An Introduction to Dramatic Theory, 116 Dryden as an Adapter of Shake- speareé, 124", 164 Noise in the theatres, 63 Nokes, or Noke, James, his parts, 68; speaks prologue to Women’s Con- quest, 129; influence of on Dry- den, 216; an original member of Cockpit company, 270; his agree- ment with D’Avenant, 2723; made His Majesty’s servant, 298; sharing actor, 336 Nokes, Robert, an original member of Cockpit company, 270; his agree- ment with D’Avenant, 272"; sharing actor, 336 Norris, Mrs, actress at L.I.F., 282; quarrels with company, 329 Norton, Pausanias attributed to, 1612 INDEX Norton, Mrs, actress at T.R., order for arrest of, 288" Nurseries for actors, in Golden Lane, Barbican, 280-1; in Hatton Gar- dens, 281 Odell, G. C. D., Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving, 38, 45, 513, 52", 55", 629, 164" Ogilby, John, master of Lacy, 200 Ohnsorg, R., 175” Oldmixon, John, Thyrsis, 251 Opera, 59, 61, 63; influenced by Italian, 85 ; early dramatic operas, 122-6; later dramatic operas, 148-51; comic, 151 Orange, Prince of, his players, 241 Orchestra, in Restoration theatres, 61-2 Ormond, Duke of, his players, 279 Orpe, acts in Calisto, 320 Osborne, Dorothy, enthusiasm for French romances, 86 Osborne, Margaret, made His Ma- jesty’s servant, 298 Ott, P., 173 Otway, Thomas, writes parts for Mrs Barry, 72; Elizabethan influence on, 110; characteristics of his dramas, III, 152-3, influence of, 145; criticism of by Ward, 155; his pathos, 158; sentimentalism in, 228 Alcibiades, 39, 40", I10, 155, 310 Atheist, The, 246 Cheats of Scapin, The, 176, 246 Don Carlos, 110, 310 Friendship in Fashion, 246, 311 History and Fall of Caius Marius, The, 68, 152, 319 Orphan, The, 20, 24, 64, 152, 153, 260, 313, 314, 319 Souldier’s Fortune, The, 68, 174, 177, 246, 250, 256", 311 Titus and Berenice, 89 Venice Preserv’d, 58, 64, 138, 152, 153, 311 Paisible, associated with La Roche- Guilhen in performance of Rare en Tout, 317 Palmer, John, The Comedy of Man- mers, 225" Pantomime, 151 Parker, Robert, actor, licence to, 279" Pastoral element in Restoration drama, 128-31 Pausanias, 161" 403 Pavy, Francis, made His Majesty’s servant, 298, 299 Payne, F. W., 972 Payne, Nevil Fatal Jealousie, The, 69, 126, 309 Morning Ramble, The, 204, 309 Siege of Constantinople, The, 54, 310 Pecurr, French dancer, 60 Pepys, Samuel, 76", 81", 126%, 283; notes on smallness of audiences, 62; observes citizens in the theatre, 7"; opening of L.I.F., 8; at the Court theatre, 9"; notes that Sir Philip Cartaret runs on the score for plays, 12; sees two plays for nothing, 13; sees Sedley talking to women in theatre, 15, 23; notes noise in theatre, 17, 18"; on the significance of “Lady,” 21-2; plays seen by, 26-7, 38, 278; goes to the “Opera,” 30; hears of The Indian Queen, 35; notes a fire-scene in The Island Princess, 40°; notes the Roman garments in Hera- chius, 50; his love of music, 61; hears a eunuch sing, 62; declares the actors at fault, 63; sees Ky- naston, 68; hears Lacy is dying, 69; sees actresses, 70; hears that Draghi intends to have an opera, 85; story regarding long letter in Orrery’s play, 98; listens to Sed- ley’s satire of The General, 100; notes success of Indian Queen, 102; his strictures on Shake- speare, 161, 169; sees Wild Goose Chase, 170; sees Sullen Lovers, 190-1; criticism of The English Princess, 106; on opening of the T.R., 272% sees “Tis P24, 279; visits nursery, 281"; on opening of. the T.R., 286"; notes re- building of T.R., 287; goes to T.R., 287; hears of Nell Gwyn and Buckhurst, 288; sees Com- mittee, 202"; praises Adventures of Five Hours, 207; sees The Ger- man Princess, 208; condemnation of Evening’s Love, 216; sees Ladies a la Mode, 221; sees She Wow’d if she Cou’d, 224"; at a French comedy, 240; condemns Guzman, 245 Perin, John, associated with Bedford, 279; his parts, 279; sued by Her- bert, 279" 26-2 404 Perrill, G., witnesses agreement of Cibber and Rich, 344. Perrin, 83, 123 Perryn, Mrs, does not sign petition, 341 Phelps, acts in Venice Preserv’d, 154® Phillips, Mrs Catherine, 89 Horace, 306 Pompey, 96, 309 Phillips, William, petitions against Shatterell, 2852 Phillips, William, Queen, 160, 254. Pinkethman, William, does not sign actors’ petition, 341; signs agree- ment with Robinson, 344 Pix, Mrs Deceiver Deceiv’d, The, 213, 254 Innocent Mistress, The, 12", 212 Spanish Wives, The, 212 Place, de la, translator of Venice Preserv’d, 154® Plautus, influence on Restoration comedy, 171-2, 219 Aulularia, 171 Stichus, 171 Players’ Petition to Parliament, The, 2682 Poems on Affairs of State, 24 Poetesse, The (probably The Poetaster), 306 Politics in the theatre, ro-11 Polititian, The, 311 Pomone, 123 Poor-Whores Petition, The, 22 Pope, Alexander, 229 Pordage, Samuel, 85 Herod and Mariamne, 50, 109, 289, 310 Siege of Babylon, The, 40, 109 Porter, Thomas Carnival, The, 207-8, 252 French Conjurer, The, 241 Villain, The, 78, 38, 62", 69, 126, 236, 308, 313 Witty Combat, A, 208 Portsmouth, Duchess of, her players, 279 Powell, George, 302; drunk in theatre, 18; attacks Betterton, 66"; pub- lishes Fatal Discovery, 160; acts in Old Batchelour, 229; made His Majesty’s servant, 298, 299; summoned by Lord Chamberlain, 299"; insults Colonel Stanhop, 330; does not sign petition, 341; signs agreement with Robinson, 344 The Revengeful INDEX Powell, George (continued) Alphonso, 52, 147 Bonduca, 254 Brutus of Alba, 39, 408, 150 Cornish Comedy, The, 54, 249, 254 Imposture Defeated, 249 Treacherous Brothers, The, 27%, 39, 120", 146 Very Good Wife, A, 249 Powell, Martin, petitions against Haynes, 284"; debts of, 285; made His Majesty’s servant, 298 Preston, sings in Calisto, 321 Price, Alice, petitions against Good- man, 285" Price, Mrs, sings in Calisto, 321 Priest, dances in Siy Martin Mar-all and Macbeth, 59, in Fairy Queen, 151, in King Arthur, 149 Purcell, Daniel, composes music for Phaeton, 148"; for Brutus of Alba, 1508 Purcell, Henry, composes dramatic music, 123; for Fairy Queen, 1512; for King Arthur, 149; for Fool's Preferment, 263; Dido and ZEneas, 85" Quin, as Coriolanus, 502 Quinault, P., influence of on Restora- tion drama, 89, 148, 213 Agrippe, 89 Amant tndiscret, L’, 173 Généreuse Ingratitude, La, 89, 176 Phaéton, 1485 Quyn, Mrs Anne, actress at T.R., quarrels with managers, 287-8 Racine, Jean, influence of.on Restora- tion drama, 89, 121 Alexandre, 87, 1218 Andromaque, 89, 114 Bérénice, 89 Thébaide, La, 87 Ralegh, Sir Walter, 78 Ralph, adapts Unhappy Favourite, 1562 Rampant Alderman, The, 204 Rampony, French singer, 62 Randolph, Thomas, 213; The Jealous Lovers, 16, 315 Ravenscroft, Edward, satirises heroic drama, 77; his dramas, 181, 217, 241-4, 250; verses to Six Days’ Adventure, 202; influenced by Dryden, 219; sentimentalism in, 252 Anatomist, The, 63, 244 INDEX Ravenscroft, Edward (continued) Canterbury Guests, The, 174, 175, 244 Careless Lovers, The, 77", 1733, 175, 219, 242, 244, 309 Citizen turn’d Gentleman, The, 175, 309, 310 Dame Dobson, 243, 252, 260 Edgar and Alfreda, 54, 91, 132, 243 English Lawyer, The, 243 Italian Husband, The, 159 London Cuckolds, The, 174, 243, 311 Scaramouch, 174, 176, 239, 240, 243, 308 Titus Andronicus, 127, 163, 243 Wrangling Lovers, The, 242 Rawlins, Thomas, his plays, 203-4 Rebellion, The, 240° Tom Essence, 23", 174, 203-4 Tunbridge-Wells, 204, 222 Rectory, The (probably The Reforma- tion), 310 Reggio, Pietro, 123" Revet, Edward, Town-Shifts, The, 204, 257 Rhodes, John, gathers a company of actors, 270, 275; challenged by Herbert, 273; continues acting, 276; acts at court, 278, 316; his licence for provinces, 278; probably connected with Duchess of Portsmouth’s servants, 279 Rhodes, Richard, engages Betterton, 65; Flora’s Vagaries, 6", 246, 305 Riccoboni, Luigi, An Historical and Critical Account of the Theatres of Europe, 173 Rich, Christopher, patentee of T.R., 151, 289; replies to Betterton’s petition, 300; treatment of Cade- man, 330; refuses to pay money for organ at St Bride’s, 331, 3393 his agreement with Cibber for a play, 343 Richards, John, leaves his company, g Richardson, sings in Calisto, 321 Robert, sings in Calisto, 321 Robinson, Robert, scene painter, 42, 42"; his agreement for painting scenery, 344 Rogers, John, his case referred to Herbert, 273 Rogers, Mrs Jane, 19; does not sign petition, 341; signs agreement with Robinson, 344 Rollins, H. E., 268" Romulus and Hersilia, 57", 91", 146 405 Rosimond, Le Nouveau Festin de Pierre, 175 Rousseau, J. J., 255 Rowe, N., The Fair Penitent, 73; in- fluence on pathetic drama, 145, 155, 158 Rowley, S., 261 All’s Lost by Lust, 82, 278 A Shoemaker a Gentleman, 308 Royal Voyage, The, 11 Ruggles, George, Ignoramus, 2785, 316 Russell, John (actor?), warrant for arrest of, 278" Russian dancers, 60 Rutter, Mrs, actress at T.R., 281; receives livery, 283 Rutter, Joseph, The Cid, 87 Ryemes, Paul (actor?), warrant for arrest of, 2782 Rymer, Thomas, his pseudo-classi- cism, 134; Tragedies of the Last Age, 67 243, Sackville, Charles, Lord Buckhurst, collaborates in Pompey (see Waller), 89, 96; takes Nell Gwyn from T.R., 288 Saint André, dances in Psyche, 125; in Calisto, 321 Saint Evrémond, 1218 Saintsbury, Professor George, John Dryden, 928; on The Indian Queen, 101"; edition of Dryden, 135"; on Shadwell, 198"; on Dryden’s love disputes, 215; on Marriage a la Mode, 217; on The Kind Keeper, 218; on The Mis- taken Husband, 219; on The Mall, 220 Saint Serfe, Sir Thomas, Tarugo’s Wiles, 180, 208, 238, 259, 308 Sandford, Samuel, plays the villain, 65; his parts, 69; order for arrest of, 288"; made His Majesty’s servant, 298; signs petition, 330; salary of, 340 Sandmann, P., 174" Satire in Restoration drama, 80-1; of Shadwell, 196; of Cowley, 199; of Tatham, 199; of Wilson, 200 Saunders, Charles, Tamerlane, 54, 73, 842, 146 Saunderson, Mrs, wife of Betterton, 72; actress at L.I.F., signs peti- tion, 330; salary of, 340-1 Scarron, Paul, influence of on Re- storation drama, 177 406 Scarron, Paul (continued) L’Ecolier de Salamanque, 215 L Héritier ridicule, 177, 235 Jodelet, 177, 235 Le Roman Comique, 177 Scene-drawings, 55-7 Scenery in Restoration theatres, 29-49 Schelling, Felix, rr0, 127, 184 Scheurer, C. M., An Early Sentimental Comedy, 2582 Schréder, translator of The Fatal Marriage, 144 Scott, Thomas Mock Marriage, The, 39° Unhappy Kindness, The, 12%, 160 Scott, Sir Walter, 219; on The Indian Queen, 1008; on The Mall, 220; Fortunes of Nigel, 196 Scudéry, George de, 10 Iilustve Bassa, L’, 98 Le Trompeur Puni, 87 Scudéry, Madeleine de, 88, 93, 108 Clélie, 86 Le Grand Cyrus, 86, 146, 215 Sedley, Sir Charles, 10, 15, 21, 76, 81, 89, 96, 100, I7I, 253 Antony and Cleopaira, 110, 310 Bellamira, 171, 222, 223, 313 Mulberry-Garden, The, 27, 202", 222, 306 Seneca, Troades, 85; influences Dry- den, 134 Sentimentalism, 228; in Southerne, 144, 228; in Banks, 155; origin of, 251, 253; development and characteristics of, 253-67; in Behn, 212; mars some of Con- greve’s work, 230; in Ravens- croft, 244 Serle, petition against Lacy, 2842 Settle, Elkanah, 11, 20, 77, 91, 108, 1358, 137, 1512; his heroic plays, I3I, 132, 140; his operas, 151-23 arranges with Robinson for paint- ing scenery for an opera, 344 Ambitious Slave, The, 91, 139 Cambyses, 40, 55, 66, 106, 1208 Conquest of China, The, 39, 108, 118, 120, 310 Distress’d Innocence, 918, 140 Empress of Morocco, The, 33, 37, 40, 49, 50, 62", 118, 120, 139, 290 Fairy Queen, The, 12, 38", 125, 150, I5I, 162, 314 Fatal Love, 37, 139 Female Prelate, The, 115, 37, 40%, 120, 138 Heir of Morocco, The, 91", 139 174, INDEX Settle, Elkanah (continued) Ibrahim, 77, 86, 1072, 108, 119 Love and Revenge, 40%, 190, 193, 310 Pastor Fido, 918, 108, 128 Philaster, 150 World in the Moon, The, 42", 48, 125, 151 Shadwell, Thomas, 11, 20, 25, 34, 63, 76, 81, 181, 205, 206, 226, 227, 231, 232, 249; his wife, 282; adapts Shakespeare, 124; his comedies, 189-98; immorality of, 209; sentimentalism in, 253 Amorous Bigotte, The, 195 Bury Fair, 69, 173", 174, 176, 186, 197, 203, 260 : Epsom Wells, 66, 67, 175, 193, 309, 310, 312 History of Timon of Athens, The, 76", 163 Humorists, The, 248, 63", 192, 224” Lancashire Witches, The, 8, 10, 81, 122, 195 Libertine, The, 39", 175, 193, 310 Miser, The, 76, 175, 192, 193 Psyche, 37, 40%, 123, 125, 151, 176, 310 Royal Shepherdess, The, 6", 128, 192, 252 Scowrers, The, 197, 206, 260 Squire of Alsatia, The, 69, 75, 171, 174, 175, 176, 186, 188 Sullen Lovers, The, 6%, 26, 68, 76, 81, 174, 183, 186, 190, 192, 223, 309, 311 Tempest, The, 44, 49, 62, 123, 124, 193, 310, 311, 318 True Widow, A, 12, 23", 183, 195 Virtuoso, The, 16, 76, 194, 310 Volunteers, The, 23", 197, 198, 255 Woman Captain, The, 14", 195 Shakespeare, William, 30, 111, 178, 189; women characters of, 71, 72; the spirit of his plays, 79; adaptations of, 80, 134, 161-7; tragedies of, 84; stress in, 93; influence of, 131, 132, 133, 138, 145, 152, 154", 158", 203", 204, 210, 264; his comedy of romance, 182 Alls Well that Ends Well, 162, 316 Antony and Cleopatra, 110, 162, 316 As You Like It, 5, 78, 162, 316 Comedy of Errors, The, 162, 316 Coriolanus, 163, 316 Cymbeline, 163, 316 Hamlet, 5, 35, 64, 69, 83, 161, 163, 164, 310, 313, 314 INDEX Shakespeare, William (continued) Henry IV, 13, 27, 64, 275, 316 Henry V, 64 Henry VI, 163, 315 Henry MEIT; 26, 35, 64, 83-4, Z52%, 163, 309, 314 Julius Caesar, 64, 82", 1417, 163, 308, 316 King John, 315 King Lear, 64, 83, 162, 167 Love’s Labour's Lost, 162, 316 Macbeth, 83, 84, 146, 162, 264, 308, 314 Measure for Measure, 162, 314 Merchant of Venice, The, 162, 164, 316 Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 26, 162, 307, 316 Much Ado about Nothing, 162, 314 Othello, 64, 71, 78, 82, 84, 163, 164, 207%, 307, 308, 311, 312, 313, 316 Pericles, 64, 83, 163, 315 Richard II, 163, 315 Richard III, 316 Romeo and Juliet, 64, 67, 83, 152, 161, 162, 167, 314 Taming of the Shrew, The, 162, 200, 315 Tempest, The, 162, 168, 314 Timon of Athens, 64, 127, 163, 315 Titus Andronicus, 64, 82", 84, 120, 162, 316 Troilus and Cressida, 64, 163-6, 167, 315 Twelfth Night, 30, 64, 162, 168, 169, 314 Two Gentlemen of Verona, The, 162, 166, 315 Winter's Tale, The, 162 Shatterall, Edward, 269; made His Majesty’s servant, 274; receives livery, 283" Shatterall, Robert, an original mem- ber of the Red Bull Company, 269; made His Majesty’s servant, 274; agrees with Herbert, 276%; one of lessees of the T.R., 281; his shares in T.R., 282; deleted from actor list, 283; debts of, 285; in T.R. agreement, 289"; in agreement for regulating stage, 291 . Shaw, Bernard, 229 Man and Superman, 73 Misalliance, 221 Shedlock, J. S., edits music of Pur- cell, 1512 Shenan, French dancer, 60” 407 Shepherd, performs in Calisto, 321 Sheppey, Thomas, an original member of Cockpit company, 270; his agreement with D’Avenant, 272"; debts of, 285; sued by Johnson, 294; made His Majesty’s servant, 2098; sharing actor, 336 Sheridan, R. B., 236, 267 Sherley, joins T.R. company, 279 She Ventures and He Wins, 1618 Shipman, Thomas, Henry the Third of France, 106 Shirley, James, 82, 97; horror school in tragedy, 160 Bird in a Cage, The, 315 Brothers, The, 316 Cardinal, The, 27, 82", 316 Changes, The, 169, 307 Doubtful Heir, The, 316 Example, The, 82", 169 Grateful Servant, The, 168 Hyde Park, 249", 306 Imposture, The, 316 Maid’s Revenge, The, 143 Opportunity, The, 169 School of Compliment, The, 13, 163, 308 Sisters, The, 316 Traitor, The, 82", 307 Witty Fair One, The, 168-9 Shore, J., witnesses agreement of Cibber and Rich, 344 Singleton, violinist, 62" Sir Popular Wisdom (see The Politi- tian) Skipwith, Sir Thomas, takes shares in theatre, 299, 302", 303; answers actors’ petition, 332-40 Slade, Mrs, 81; suspended, 292 Slingsby, Lady, arrested, 296” Smith, Cecily, petitions against Shat- terall, 285" Smith, G. C. Moore, College Plays, I n Smith, John, Cytherea, 248" Smith, William, 18; signs articles of Union, 296, 331; created His Majesty’s servant, 298 Smyth, dancer, 60°; in Calisto, 321 Smyth, John, Win Her and Take Her, 248 Snow, Richard, petitions against Har- ris, 2842 Some Reflections upon the Pretended Parallel, 135” Song in Restoration drama, 59-63 Sophocles, influence of on Dryden, 134 Sorbiéres, Relation dun voyage, 11, 34% 408 Sorin, French dancer, agrees with Betterton, 346 Southerne, Thomas, 124, 143-5; pathos in, 156, 158; brings Pau- sanias on stage, 160; his trage- dies, 143-5; his comedies, 228-9; sentimentalism in, 252; recom- mends Love's Last Shift for acting, 266 Disappointment, The, 143, 228, 252, 312 Fatal Marriage, The, 144, 145, 228 Loyal Brother, The, 91", 119, 143 Mand’s Last Prayer, The, 229 4 Oroonoko, 144, 145 Sir Anthony Love, 228 4 Wive’s Excuse, The, 57%, 228, 229, 238 Southland, Thomas, possibly author of Mistaken Husband, 221; Love ala Mode, 173, 176, 221 Southly, Timoleon, attributed to, 1617 Spanish drama, influence of, 179-80, 216; on Ravenscroft, 242; on Orrery, 245 Spectators on stage, 11-12; order re- garding, 322 Spenser, Edmund, 78 Squire, Barclay, 123” Stage, 28 f.; apron on, 31, 51-2 Staggins, violinist, 62" Stanhop, Colonel, insulted by ‘‘ John” Powell, 330 Stapylton, Sir Robert Hero and Leander, 91™ Slighted Maid, The, 35, 38, 85, 125, 236, 252 Siepmother, The, 38, 252 Steele, Sir Richard, populariser of sentimental comedy, 184; criti- cism of Etherege, 224; The Lying Lover, 251 Sterne, Laurence, Tristram Shandy, 265 Stevenson, scene-painter, 42, 125 Streeter, scene-painter, 42 Strong, violinist, 62" Sublini, Madam, singer, 65” Suckling, Sir John Aglaura, 29, 305, 307, 316 Brenoralt, 26, 82, 316 Goblins, The, 306, 316 | Summers, Montague, on Southerne, 144”; his edition of The Rehearsal, 1372; edition of Mrs Behn, 241” Restoration Comedies, 180 Shakespeare Adaptations, 124™, 1642 Swift, Jonathan, 194” INDEX Swinburne, A. C., on The Mistaken Husband, 220 Sympson, Thomas, made His Ma- jesty’s servant, 298 Tanner, sings in Calisto, 321 Tanner, Thomas, joins T.R. Company, 283 Tanton, Samuel, actor, licence for, 279" Tate, Nahum, his heroic plays, 131-2, 181; adapts Shakespeare, 162-3; his epilogue to Successfull Strangers, 213; his comedies, 244-5 Brutus of Alba, 42, 54 Cuckold’s Haven, 245 Duke and No Duke, A, 240, 245, 311 History of King Lear, The, 162%, 167, 313 History of King Richard II, The, Io®, 163 Ingratitude of a Commonwealth, The, 163 Island Princess, The, 313 Loyal General, The, 162" Psalms, 245 Syphilis, 244 Tatham, John, 200 Distracted State, The, 199 Rump, The, 11, 199, 212, 270 Scots Figgaries, The, 199 Temple, Mrs, does not sign petition, 341 Terence, influence of on Restoration comedy, 171-2 Adoelphi, 171 Eunuchus, 171, 223 Term Catalogues, The, 3 Texte, Joseph, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 50” Thaler, E., Shakespeare to Sheridan, 16", 35” Thédire anglais, Le, 144” Theatre Royal, in Bridges Street, lease of, 281; ground measurements of, 282; opened, 286; burned, 2862; in Vere Street, used by fencers, 268 Timoleon, 28, 161 Tinder, petitions against Haynes, 2842 Tobyas, Thomas, Life of Haynes, 2812 Tomkis, Thomas, Albumazar, 309 Toplady, Robert, petitions against Blagden, 2842 Tourneur, Cyril, The Revenger's Tra- gedy, 126 Towers, Samuel, scene-painter, 42 INDEX Traitor to Himself, The, 919 Trefusis, Joseph, made His Majesty's servant, 299; summoned by the Lord Chamberlain, 299"; does not sign petition, 341 Trevor, performs in Calisto, 320 Trotter, Mrs Catherine Agnes de Castro, 57" Love at a Loss, 57 True History of the Duke of Guise, The, 1353 Tuke, Sir Samuel, The Adventures of Five Hours, 9, 26, 33, 35%, 38, 66, 69, 913, 117, 161, 180, 185, 207-8, 252, 308, 309, 310 Tummins, John, petitions against Haynes, 284" Tunman, Thomas, petitions against Shatterall, 285" Turner, sings in The Tempest, 318 Turner, Anthony, arrested, 269 Turner, Henry, sharing actor, 336 Turner, Robert, an original member of Cockpit company, 270; agree- ment of with D’Avenant, 272"; sued by Herbert, 279" Underhill, Cave, his parts, 68-9; speaks prologue to Women’s Con- quest, 1298; acts in Anatomist, 244; publishes Win Her and Take Her, 248; an original member of Cockpit company, 270; agree- ment of with D’Avenant, 2723; debts of, 285; made His Ma- jesty’s servant, 298; joins L.I.F., 301, 323 Ungrateful Favourite, The, possibly by Southland, 221 Union of the Companies (1682-95), 66, 296-7, 322-3; effect on drama, 27; break of, 300-2 Unnatural Mother, The, 28, 161 Upham, The French Influence on English Literature, 86" Uphill, Mrs, actress at Vere Street, 281 Vanbrugh, Sir John, characteristics of his comedies, 171, 181, 182, 183, 232-3, 267 ZEsop, 232 Confederacy, The, 32 Provok’d Wife, The, 232-3 Relapse, The, 18, 23, 232 Verbruggen, John, 302; publishes Brutus of Alba, 150; made His Majesty’s servant, 298; agree- ment of with T.R. company, 301, 409 344; leaves company, 302; as- saults Boyle, 303"; does not sign petition, 341; petition of, 346 Verbruggen, Mrs, 72; joins L.I.F., 301; her salary, 332, 340; joins T.R., 345 Verjuice, Mrs, actress at T.R., 281 Villiers, George, Duke of Bucking- ham, 18 Chances, The, 61, 311, 312 Rehearsal, The, 32, 76, 236, 307, 313 Vincent, rewrites Gul’s Hornbook, 12 Vizard-masks, 14-15 Walker, William, Victorious Love, 147 Waller, Edmund, 118; influence on heroic couplet, 90; Pompey, 89, 96 Ward, Sir A. W., 962, 107", 110, 112, II3, 146, 153, 155%, 156, 190, 193, 203, 210, 213", 223, 245, 251, 252, 259, 2612 Ward, Richard, 163 Watson, joins T.R. company, 283; receives livery, 2832 Weaver, Mrs, actress at Vere Street, 281; receives livery, 283; deleted from actor list, 283-4; debts of, 284 Webb, scene-painter, 35, 41 Webster, John, influence of on Re- storation drama, 84, III, 120, 134, 138, 144, 150, 152 Duchess of Malfi, 312, 314 Vittoria Corombona, 82 Wernicke, A., 175 Weston, Jo., The Amazon Queen, 91® Wheatley, H. B., on post-Restoration quartos of Shakespeare, 164” Whibley, Charles, on Restoration drama, 158, 189, 190; on Mrs Behn, 209; on D’Urfey, 261" Whincop, Thomas, list of plays in Scanderbeg, 18, 151™ Whitaker, William, The’ Conspiracy, 39", 146 Whitelock, Sir Bulstrode, Memorials, 2682 Wilkins, George, The Miseries of En- forced Marriage, 255 Wilks, Robert, acts in Constant Couple, 234; signs agreement with Robin- son, 344 William and Mary, orders of regarding stage, 12, 75; their patronage of drama, 299 Williams, Joseph, acts in Old Batche- lour, 229; made His Majesty’s servant, 298; leaves his company, 410 300; returns, 300; joins L,I.F., 301, 323; Signs petition, 330; salary of, 332, 339 Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester, 9, 20, 21, 79, 166, 187, 196, 253; on Wycherley, 226" Sodom, 24 Valentinian, 24, 311, 313, 318 Wilson, John, 50, 199-200 Andronicus Comnenius, 50 Belphegor, 250 Cheats, The, 200 Projectors, The, 171, 200 Windham, Sir Edward, 817, 2923 Windows on stage, 53 Wintershall, William, gives recogni- sances for appearance of Turner, 269; made His Majesty’s servant, 274; agreement of with Herbert, 276"; one of lessees of T.R., 281; his shares, 282; receives livery, 2832; debts of, 285; in T.R. agreement, 289"; in agreement for regulating stage, 291 Wit for Money, 262", 2642 Woman turn’d Bully, The, 204 Women in the Restoration period, 25 INDEX Wood, Anthony a, 107", 248"; peti- tions against Blagden, 284" Wordsworth, William, 182 Wren, Sir Christopher, 31, 32", 51", 53; designs of for theatres, 290; ordered to re-mat seats in Royal Cockpit, 342; ordered to inspect D.G. theatre, 347 Wright, James, Historia Histrionica, 72, 48, 268", 2868 Wright, John, Thyestes, 85 Wright, Thomas, 44; The Female Ver- twoso’s, 12, 13, 176, 248 Wycherley, William, 17, 222, 223; characteristics of his dramas, 172, 178, 181, 188, 225-9, 231 Country-Wife, The, 13", 174, 189, 226, 307, 308 ; Gentleman Dancing Master, The, 132, 180, 226 Love in a Wood, 68, 225 Plain Dealer, The, 13", 14", 68, 174, 177, 188, 225, 226, 227,.308, 312 Yates, Mrs, receives livery, deleted from actor-list, 283 Young, violinist, 622 283; CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY W. 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