Kynaston, etc. See vol. I. notes to pp. 156-7.
161. His Careless Husband. 1704.
His Double Gallant. 1707. The play was revived in 1817 and noticed by Hazlitt. See ante, pp. 359-362.
‘In hidden mazes,’ etc. Misquoted from L’Allegro, 141-2.
162. His Nonjuror. 1717. Isaac Bickerstaff’s The Hypocrite was produced in 1768.
Love’s Last Shift. Colley Cibber’s first play, produced in 1694. For Southerne’s remark to Cibber, see An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, p. 173.
l. 34. In the third edition a great part of Hazlitt’s article on The Hypocrite (see A View of the English Stage, ante, p. 245) is inserted here. The passage is also in Oxberry’s New English Drama, vol. I.
Love in a Riddle. 1729.
163. The Suspicious Husband, 1747, The Jealous Wife, 1761, The Clandestine Marriage, 1766.
l. 15. In the third edition the following passage on The Jealous Wife, taken from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. I.) is here inserted:—
‘Colman, the elder, was the translator of Terence: and the “Jealous Wife” is a classical play. The plot is regular, the characters well supported, and the moral the best in the world. The dialogue has more sense than wit. The ludicrous arises from the skilful development of the characters, and the absurdities they commit in their own persons, rather than from the smart reflections which are made upon them by others. Thus nothing can be more ridiculous or more instructive than the scenes of which Mrs. Oakly is the heroine, yet they are all serious and unconscious: she exposes herself to our contempt and ridicule by the part she acts, by the airs she gives herself, and the fantastic behaviour in the situations in which she is placed. In other words, the character is pure comedy, not satire. Congreve’s comedies for the most part are satires, in which, from an exuberance of wit, the different speakers play off the sharp-pointed raillery on one another’s foibles, real or supposed. The best and most genuine kind of comedy, because the most dramatic, is that of character or humour, in which the persons introduced upon the stage are left to betray their own folly by their words and actions. The progressive winding up of the story of the present comedy is excellently managed. The jealousy and hysteric violence of Mrs. Oakly increase every moment, as the pretext for them becomes more and more frivolous. The attention is kept alive by our doubts about Oakly’s wavering (but in the end triumphant) firmness; and the arch insinuations and well-concerted home-thrusts of the Major heighten the comic interest of the scene. There is only one circumstance on which this veteran bachelor’s freedom of speech might have thrown a little more light, namely, that the married lady’s jealousy is in truth only a pretence for the exercise of her domineering spirit in general; so that we are left at last in some uncertainty as to the turn which this humour may take, and as to the future repose of her husband, though the affair of Miss Russet is satisfactorily cleared up. The under-plot of the two lovers is very ingeniously fitted into the principal one, and is not without interest in itself. Charles Oakly is a spirited, well-meaning, thoughtless young fellow, and Harriet Russet is an amiable romantic girl, in that very common, but always romantic situation—in love. Her persecution from the addresses of Lord Trinket and Sir Harry Beagle fans the gentle flame which had been kindled just a year before in her breast, produces the adventures and cross-purposes of the plot, and at last reconciles her to, and throws her into the arms of her lover, in spite of her resentment for his misconduct and apparent want of delicacy. The figure which Lord Trinket and Lady Freelove make in the piece is as odious and contemptible as it is possible for people in that class of life (and for no others) to make. The insolence, the meanness, the affectation, the hollowness, the want of humanity, sincerity, principle, and delicacy, are such as can only be found where artificial rank and station in society supersede not merely a regard to propriety of conduct, but the necessity even of an attention to appearances. The morality of the stage has (we are ready to hope) told in that direction as well as others, has, in some measure suppressed the suffocating pretensions and flaunting affectation of vice and folly in “persons of honour,” and, as it were, humanised rank and file. The pictures drawn of the finished depravity of such characters in high life, in the old comedies and novels, can hardly have been thrown away upon the persons themselves, any more than upon the world at large. Little Terence O’Cutler, the delicious protégé of Lord Trinket and Lady Freelove, is a fit instrument for them to use, and follows in the train of such principals as naturally and assuredly as their shadow. Sir Harry Beagle is a coarse, but striking character of a thorough-bred fox-hunting country squire. He has but one idea in his head, but one sentiment in his heart—and that is his stud. This idea haunts his imagination, tinges or imbues every other object, and accounts for his whole phraseology, appearance, costume, and conduct. Sir Harry’s ruling passion is varied very ingeniously, and often turned to a very ludicrous account. There is a necessary monotony in the humour, which arises from a want of more than one idea, but the obviousness of the jest almost makes up for the recurrence of it; if the means of exciting mirth are mechanical, the effect is sure; and to say that a hearty laugh is cheaply purchased, is not a serious objection against it. When an author is terribly conscious of plagiarism, he seldom confesses it; when the obligation does not press his conscience, he sometimes does. Colman, in the advertisement to the first edition of the “Jealous Wife,” apologises for the freedom which he has used in borrowing from “Tom Jones.” In reading this modest excuse, though we have seen the play several times, we could not imagine what part of the plot was taken from Fielding. We did not suspect that Miss Russet was Sophia Western, and that old Russet and Sir Harry Beagle between them somehow represented Squire Western and young Blifil. But so it is! The outline of the plot and some of the characters are certainly the same, but the filling up destroys the likeness. There is all in the novel that there is in the play, but there is so much in the novel that is not in the play, that the total impression is quite different, and loses even an appearance of resemblance. In the same manner, though a profile or a shade of a face is exactly the same as the original, we with difficulty recognise it from the absence of so many other particulars. Colman might have kept his own secret, and no one would have been the wiser for it.’
163. The elder Colman’s translation of Terence. Published in 1765.
Bickerstaff’s plays. Love in a Village, 1763, The Maid of the Mill, 1765, and The Hypocrite are the best known.
Mrs. Cowley’s comedy, etc. Hannah Cowley’s (1743?-1809) The Belle’s Stratagem appeared in 1780, Who’s the Dupe? in 1779.
164. Goldsmith’s Good-natured Man, 1768; She Stoops to Conquer, 1773.
In the third edition the following account of She Stoops to Conquer from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. IV.) is here inserted:—
‘It, however, bears the stamp of the author’s genius, which was an indefinable mixture of the original and imitative. His plot, characters, and incidents are all apparently new; and yet, when you come to look into them, they are all old, with little variation or disguise: that is, the author sedulously avoided the beaten, vulgar path, and sought for singularity, but found it rather in the unhackneyed and eccentric inventions of those who had gone before him, than in his own stores. The “Vicar of Wakefield,” which abounds more than any of his works in delightful and original traits, is still very much borrowed, in its general tone and outline, from Fielding’s “Joseph Andrews.” Again, the characters and adventures of Tony Lumpkin, and the ridiculous conduct of his mother, in the present comedy, are a counterpart (even to the incident of the theft of the jewels) of those of the Widow Blackacre and her booby son in Wycherley’s “Plain Dealer.”
‘This sort of plagiarism, which gives us a repetition of new and striking pictures of human life, is much to be preferred to the dull routine of trite, vapid, every-day common-places; but it is more dangerous, as the stealing of pictures or family plate, where the property can be immediately identified, is more liable to detection than the stealing of bank-notes, or the current coin of the realm. Dr. Johnson’s sarcasm against some writer, that his “singularity was not his excellence,” cannot be applied to Goldsmith’s writings in general; but we are not sure whether it might not in severity be applied to “She Stoops to Conquer.” The incidents and characters are many of them exceedingly amusing; but they are so, a little at the expense of probability and bienseance. Tony Lumpkin is a very essential and unquestionably comic personage; but certainly his absurdities or his humours fail of none of their effect for want of being carried far enough. He is in his own sex what a hoyden is in the other. He is that vulgar nickname, a hobbety-hoy, dramatised; forward and sheepish, mischievous and idle, cunning and stupid, with the vices of the man and the follies of the boy; fond of low company, and giving himself all the airs of consequence of the young squire. His vacant delight in playing at cup and ball, and his impenetrable confusion and obstinate gravity in spelling the letter, drew fresh beauties from Mr. Liston’s face. Young Marlow’s bashfulness in the scenes with his mistress is, when well acted, irresistibly ludicrous; but still nothing can quite overcome our incredulity as to the existence of such a character in the present day, and in the rank of life, and with the education which Marlow is supposed to have had. It is a highly amusing caricature, a ridiculous fancy, but no more. One of the finest and most delicate touches of character is in the transition from the modest gentleman’s manner with his mistress, to the easy and agreeable tone of familiarity with the supposed chambermaid, which was not total and abrupt, but exactly such in kind and degree as such a character of natural reserve and constitutional timidity would undergo from the change of circumstances. Of the other characters in the piece, the most amusing are Tony Lumpkin’s associates at the Three Pigeons; and of these we profess the greatest partiality for the important showman who declares that “his bear dances to none but the genteelest of tunes, ‘Water parted from the Sea,’ or the minuet in ‘Ariadne’!”[50] This is certainly the “high-fantastical”[51] of low comedy.’
164. Murphy’s plays, etc. Arthur Murphy’s (1730-1805) All in the Wrong, 1761, and Know Your Own Mind, 1778.
Both his principal pieces, etc. There seems to be some inaccuracy here. Colman’s Jealous Wife was produced in February 1761, Murphy’s All in the Wrong in June of the same year. The School for Scandal, however, appeared a month later than Murphy’s Know Your Own Mind, viz., in May 1777.
The School for Scandal, 1777, The Rivals, 1775, The Duenna, 1775, and The Critic, 1779.
Cumberland. Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), the dramatist, whose West Indian (1771) and The Wheel of Fortune (1795) are referred to below, p. 166.
‘Dragged the struggling,’ etc. Goldsmith, The Traveller, l. 190.
165. Miss Farren. Elizabeth Farren (1759?-1829), Countess of Derby. She played Lady Teazle on the occasion of her last appearance, April 8, 1797.
Matthew Bramble and his sister. In Humphry Clinker.
‘He had damnable iteration in him.’ Henry IV., Part I., Act I. Sc. 2.
165, l. 36. In the third edition Hazlitt’s description of The Rivals, from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. I.) is inserted here:—
‘The “Rivals” is one of the most agreeable comedies we have. In the elegance and brilliancy of the dialogue, in a certain animation of moral sentiment, and in the masterly dénouement of the fable, the “School for Scandal” is superior; but the “Rivals” has more life and action in it, and abounds in a greater number of whimsical characters, unexpected incidents, and absurd contrasts of situation. The effect of the “School for Scandal” is something like reading a collection of epigrams, that of the “Rivals” is more like reading a novel. In the first you are always at the toilette or in the drawing-room; in the last you pass into the open air, and take a turn in King’s Mead. The interest is kept alive in the one play by smart repartees, in the other by startling rencontres: in the one we laugh at the satirical descriptions of the speakers, in the other the situation of their persons on the stage is irresistibly ludicrous. Thus the interviews between Lucy and Sir Lucius O’Trigger, between Acres and his friend Jack, who is at once his confidant and his rival; between Mrs. Malaprop and the lover of her niece as Captain Absolute, and between the young lady and the same person as the pretended Ensign Beverley, tell from the mere double entendre of the scene, and from the ignorance of the parties of one another’s persons and designs. There is no source of dramatic effect more complete than this species of practical satire (in which our author seems to have been an adept), where one character in the piece is made a fool of and turned into ridicule to his face, by the very person whom he is trying to over-reach.
‘There is scarcely a more delightful play than the “Rivals” when it is well acted, or one that goes off more indifferently when it is not. The humour is of so broad and farcical a kind, that if not thoroughly entered into and carried off by the tone and manner of the performers, it fails of effect from its obtrusiveness, and becomes flat from eccentricity. The absurdities brought forward are of that artificial, affected, and preposterous description, that we in some measure require to have the evidence of our senses to see the persons themselves “jetting under the advance plumes of their folly,”[52] before we can entirely believe in their existence, or derive pleasure from their exposure. If the extravagance of the poet’s conception is not supported by the downright reality of the representation, our credulity is staggered and falls to the ground.
‘For instance, Acres should be as odd a compound in external appearance as he is of the author’s brain. He must look like a very notable mixture of the lively coxcomb and the blundering blockhead, to reconcile us to his continued impertinence and senseless flippancy. Acres is a mere conventional character, a gay, fluttering automaton, constructed upon mechanical principles, and pushed, as it were, by the logic of wit and a strict keeping in the pursuit of the ridiculous, into follies and fopperies which his natural thoughtlessness would never have dreamt of. Acres does not say or do what such a half-witted young gentleman would say or do of his own head, but what he might be led to do or say with such a prompter as Sheridan at his elbow to tutor him in absurdity—to make a butt of him first, and laugh at him afterwards. Thus his presence of mind in persisting in his allegorical swearing, “Odds triggers and flints,”[53] in the duel scene, when he is trembling all over with cowardice, is quite out of character, but it keeps up the preconcerted jest. In proportion, therefore, as the author has overdone the part, it calls for a greater effort of animal spirits, and a peculiar aptitude of genius in the actor to go through with it, to humour the extravagance, and to seem to take a real and cordial delight in caricaturing himself. Dodd[54] was the only actor we remember who realised this ideal combination of volatility and phlegm, of slowness of understanding with levity of purpose, of vacancy of thought and vivacity of gesture. Acres’ affected phrases and apish manners used to sit upon this inimitable actor with the same sort of bumpkin grace and conscious self-complacency as the new cut of his clothes. In general, this character is made little of on the stage; and when left to shift for itself, seems as vapid as it is forced.
‘Mrs. Malaprop is another portrait of the same overcharged description. The chief drollery of this extraordinary personage consists of her unaccountable and systematic misapplication of hard words. How she should know the words, and not their meaning, is a little odd. In reading the play we are amused with such a series of ridiculous blunders, just as we are with a series of puns or cross-readings. But to keep up the farce upon the stage, besides “a nice derangement of epitaphs,”[55] the imagination must have the assistance of a stately array of grave pretensions, and a most formidable establishment of countenance, with all the vulgar self-sufficiency of pride and ignorance, before it can give full credit to this learned tissue of technical absurdity.
‘As to Miss Lydia Languish, she is not easily done to the life. She is a delightful compound of extravagance and naïveté. She is fond and froward, practical and chimerical, hot and cold in a breath. She is that kind of fruit which drops into the mouth before it is ripe. She must have a husband, but she will not have one without an elopement. This young lady is at an age and of a disposition to throw herself into the arms of the first handsome young fellow she meets; but she repents and grows sullen, like a spoiled child, when she finds that nobody hinders her. She should have all the physiognomical marks of a true boarding-school, novel-reading Miss about her, and some others into the bargain. Sir Anthony’s description hardly comes up to the truth. She should have large, rolling eyes; pouting, disdainful lips; a pale, clear complexion; an oval chin, an arching neck, and a profusion of dark ringlets falling down upon it, or she will never answer to our ideas of the charming sentimental hoyden, who is the heroine of the play.