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CHAPTER XIII

THE POETICAL DRAMA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

THOMAS SOUTHERNE; WILLIAM CONGREVE; EDMUND SMITH; AMBROSE PHILIPS; JOSEPH ADDISON; NICHOLAS ROWE; EDWARD YOUNG; ELIJAH FENTON; JOHN GAY; HENRY BROOKE.

IN respect of the productiveness of the poetical drama the eighteenth century in England is a barren time; and those who have followed the course of this History will have little difficulty in understanding why a stage which, for two centuries, presented more various and representative features than any other in Europe should, at this period, have sunk into such deep decline. The drama was no longer an instrument capable of giving expression to the spiritual life and activity of the nation. I have shown how, in the early part of the sixteenth century, the Moralities became the vehicle for representing English ideas about religious liberty and national manners; and how, when this form of art failed to expand itself sufficiently for all the needs of the popular imagination, it gave place, on the one hand, to the romantic drama of Marlowe and Shakespeare, and, on the other, to the more classical form of drama constructed by Ben Jonson; how, during the years preceding the Civil War, the dramatic taste of the Court, formed, more or less, upon Spanish models, supplanted on the stage the taste of the people; and how the mounting tide of Puritanism at last caused the closing of the theatres by order of the Long Parliament.

After the Restoration the riot and debauch of the

Royalist reaction gave a certain character to the plays encouraged by the Court; but the compromise of Constitutional Liberty in 1688 was not favourable, either to the old extravagance of romantic action, or to the unrestrained exhibition of licentious manners. It is interesting to watch the stages of degeneracy through which the moribund poetic drama passed; its occasional flashes of vivacity, caused by gusts of party spirit, help to illumine the political history of England up to the fall of Walpole, after which event the poetry of the stage may be said to be completely extinct. But these things call for only brief notice, and I shall therefore content myself with recording such characteristic features in the plays and playwrights of the first half of the eighteenth century as seem to illustrate the general movement of imagination. The phases through which the decadence may be said to have passed are (1) the dwindling of the various motives of representation that inspired the Caroline drama, noticeable in the plays of Southerne and The Mourning Bride of Congreve; (2) the acclimatisation of the style of the French drama, illustrated by such tragedies as Smith's Phædra and Hippolytus, Ambrose Philips' Distrest Mother, and Addison's Cato; (3) The attempted revival of the style of the old English drama, as in Rowe's Fair Penitent and Jane Shore, Young's Revenge and Fenton's Mariamne; (4) The combination of Opera and Comedy exemplified by The What d'ye Call It and The Beggars' Opera of Gay; (5) The expiring fire of political allegory, visible in the suppressed Gustavus Vasa of Henry Brooke.

(1) It is a mistake to suppose that the Revolution of 1688 at once accomplished, not only a great change in the political government of the country, but also a reformation in its morals and manners. How very differently things actually happened is shown by the fact that all Congreve's comedies, and many of Vanbrugh's and Farquhar's, were produced on the stage during the reign of William III. No doubt the sobriety of William's Court, joined to the personal influence of Queen Mary, did something towards the edification of a new public opinion, but

it was not till 1698, when Collier published his Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, that the change in the temper of theatrical audiences was finally revealed. Fashionable society was completely permeated by the habits and ideas of the Caroline era, and the stricter morals of the middle classes, coloured with the doctrines of Puritanism, had not yet had time to assert their influence in the new social equilibrium. Nevertheless, on examining the various tragedies of Southerne and the single one of Congreve, we find that the dramatic temperature has fallen considerably since the heyday of Dryden and Mrs. Afra Behn.

Thomas Southerne was born at Oxmantown, near Dublin, in 1660. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered in 1676, but he did not take his M.A. degree till 1696. In 1678 he entered the Middle Temple; and his first play, The Loyal Brother, was acted at Drury Lane as early as 1682. Most of his dramas, however, were produced after the Revolution of 1688, and amongst these the most successful were The Fatal Marriage (1694); Oroonoko (1699); and The Spartan Dame (1704). In his time he seems to have been almost the most popular of post-Revolution playwrights, but in 1726 he had outlived his reputation, and his Money the Mistress, acted at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln's Inn Fields, was as hopelessly damned as Ben Jonson's New Inn had been just a hundred years before. Southerne took his disappointment more meekly than his eminent predecessor, and continued to live on amiable terms with all his contemporaries. In 1742 he was entertained at a dinner given by Lord Orrery, in honour of his eighty-first birthday, which was graced with some verses by Pope, who spoke of him as

Tom, by Heaven brought down to raise
The price of prologues and of plays.

The allusion is to a prologue by Dryden, written for Southerne's Loyal Brother, for which when the dramatist was about to pay the usual fee of five guineas Dryden

demanded ten. "Not," he added, “that I mean any disrespect to you, young man; but I understand that the price of plays has risen." Southerne had in fact secured better terms for playwrights, by demanding and obtaining the profits of the second and third night's performance, and for some of his dramas he is said to have received as much as £600. He died on the 22nd of May 1746. Gray, who speaks of him as a most agreeable old man, in spite of his loss of memory,1 was an admirer of his two best plays, The Fatal Marriage and Oroonoko.

These tragedies are constructed on the lines introduced by Dryden, that is to say, with a tragic plot for the main action, and a comic underplot (not necessarily connected after Shakespeare's manner with the main plot) suited to the bad taste of a portion of the audience. The Fatal Marriage in its main plot has something of the pathos of Otway's Orphan, the action being domestic, and founded on a novel by Afra Behn, called The Fair Vow Breaker. The heroine, Isabella, whose husband is supposed to have been killed in the wars, being refused any support by her stern father-in-law, who has disapproved of his son's marriage, is rescued by a former devoted suitor, whom she reluctantly agrees to marry. After the marriage has been completed her first husband returns. The language of the play is very simple and pathetic, as the two following passages will show in the one, Isabella expresses her despair at her helpless position: in the other, Biron, her returned husband, has just discovered the fact of her second marriage

:

ISABELLA. 'Tis very well

So; poverty at home and debts abroad!

My present fortune bad; my hopes yet worse!
What will become of me!-

This ring is all I've left of value now :
'Twas given me by my husband; his first gift
Upon our marriage: I have always kept it,
With my best care, the treasure next my life;
Which only can be dearer.
Take it, nurse,
'Twill stop the cries of hunger for a time;

1 Letter to Horace Walpole of September 1737.

And
BIRON.

Provide us bread and bring a short reprieve,

To put off the bad day of beggary,
That will come on too soon.

Take care of it:

Manage it as the last remaining friend,

That would relieve us. [Exit nurse.] Heaven can only tell
Where we shall find another-My dear boy!
The labour of his birth was lighter to me,
Than of my fondness now; my fears for him
Are more, than in that hour of hovering death,
They could be for myself.--He minds me not.
His little sports have taken up his thoughts :
O may they never feel the pangs of mine!
Thinking will make me mad: why must I think,
When no thought brings me comfort ? 1

I know enough; the important question
Of life or death, fearful to be resolved,
Is clear to me: I see where it must end;

And need enquire no more--pray let me have

Pen, ink, and paper; I must write awhile,

And then I'll try to rest-to rest! for ever. [Exit nurse.]
Poor Isabella! now I know the cause,

The cause of thy distress, and cannot wonder

That it has turned thy brain.

If I look back

Upon thy loss it will distract me too.

O! any curse but this might be removed!
But 'twas the rancorous malignity

Of all ill stars combined, of heaven, and fate,
To put it quite out of their mercies' reach,
To speak peace to us: if they could repent,
They cannot help us now. Alas! I rave:
Why do I tax the stars, or heaven, or fate?
They are all innocent of driving us
Into despair; they have not urged my doom;
My father and my brother are my fates,
That drive me to my ruin. They knew well
I was alive; too well they knew how dear

My Isabella-O, my wife no more!
How dear her love was to me-yet they stood
With a malicious silent joy, stood by,
And saw her give up all my happiness,
The treasure of her beauty, to another;

Stood by, and saw her married to another.

O cruel father! and unnatural brother!

Shall I not tell you that you have undone me?
I have but to accuse you of my wrongs,

1 The Fatal Marriage, Act ii. Sc. ii.

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