ETHEREGE'S COMEDIES. 66 71 Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub," " She Would if She Could," and the "Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter." Sedley wrote the Mulberry Garden;""Antony and Cleopatra," wherein a single incident in Shakspeare's play is spun out into five acts; “Bellamira,” in which comedy, partly founded on the "Eunuchus" of Terence, he exhibited the frailty of Lady Castlemaine, and the audacity of Churchill, a translated drama from the French, called the "Grumbler," and a tragedy, entitled the "Tyrant King of Crete." Of all Sedley's pieces, the best is the " Mulberry Garden," for portions of which the author is indebted to Molière's "Ecole des Maris," and on which Pepys's criticism is not to be gainsayed:-" Here and there a pretty saying, and that not very many either." "Bellamira" is remembered only as the play, during the first representation of which the roof of the Theatre Royal fell in, with such just discrimination as to injure no one but the author. Sir Fleetwood Shepherd said that "the wit of the latter had blown the roof off the building." Not so," rejoined Sedley, "the heaviness of the play has broke down the house, and buried the author in its ruins!" Etherege's comedies were the dear delight of the majority of playgoers. "Love in a Tub" brought £1,000 profit to Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, in a single month of 1664, and was acted before enraptured gallants and appreciating nymphs, at Whitehall. It gave Etherege a name and a position; and when his next comedy appeared," She Would if She Could," a thousand anxious people, with leisure enough of an afternoon to see plays (it was only at Court that they were acted at night), were turned away from the doors. And yet it was, on the first night," barbarously treated," according to Dennis, and Pepys found "nothing in the world good in it, and few people pleased with it." The actors, however, were not perfect on the first night. Dennis praised the truth of character, the purity, freedom, and grace of the dialogue; and Shadwell declared that it was the best comedy since the Restoration. Etherege's third comedy, the "Man of Mode," has been described as "perhaps the most elegant comedy, and containing more of the real manners of high life, than any one the English stage was ever adorned with." In the latter respect alone is this description true; but the piece could have afforded pleasure, as the Spectator remarks, only to the impure. People, no doubt, were delighted to recognise Rochester in Dorimant, Etherege himself in Bellair, and the stupendous ass, Beau Hewitt, in Sir Fopling; but it must have been a weary delight; so debased is the nature of these people, however truly they represent the manners, bearing, and language of the higher classes. How they dressed, talked, and thought; what they did, and how they did it; what they hoped for, and how they pursued it: all this, and many other exemplifications of life as it was then understood, may be found especially in the plays of Etherege, in which there is a bustle and a succession of incidents, from the rise to the fall of the curtain. But the fine gentlemen are such unmitigated rascals, and the women, girls and matrons, are such unlovely hussies, in rascality and unseemliness quite a match for the men, that one escapes from their wretched society, and a knowledge of their one object, and the confidences of the abominable creatures engaged therein, with a feeling of a strong want of purification, and of that ounce of civet which sweetens the imagination. Of the remaining amateur writers there is not much to be said. Rhodes's one comedy," Flora's Vagaries" (1667), gave a capital part to Nelly, and a reputation to the doctor, which he failed to sustain. Corye, in the same year, produced his "Generous Enemies," and that piece was a plagiarism. Ned Revet also exhausted himself in one comedy, "The Town Shifts," which the town found insipid. Arrowsmith was in like plight, and his sole comedy, "The Reformation," was obliged to give way to Shakspeare's "Macbeth," converted into an opera. Nevil Payne was the author of three pieces, in one of which, the "Siege of Constantinople," Shaftesbury and his vices were mercilessly satirized. Tom Rawlins wrote three poor plays, and had as great a contempt for the character of author as Congreve himself. Then there was Leanard, who stole not more audaciously than he was stolen from, when he chose to be original,-Colley Cibber having taken many a point from the " Counterfeits," to enrich She Would and She Would Not." Pordage was a dull writer. Shipman enjoys the fame of having been highly esteemed by Cowley; and Bancroft, the surgeon, wrote unsuccessfully for the stage. Whitaker's one play, "The Conspiracy," is remarkable for the sensation incident of a ghost appearing, leading Death by the hand! Maidwell's comedy of "The Loving Enemies" (the author was an old schoolmaster), was noticeable for being "designedly dull, lest by satirising folly the author might bring upon his skull the bludgeon of fools." Saunders, and his "Tamerlane the Great," are now forgotten; but Dryden spoke of the author, in an indecent epilogue, as "the first boy-poet of our age;" who, however, though he blossomed as early as Cowley, did not flourish as long. Wilson 66 AMATEUR DRAMATISTS. 73 was another professional writer, bnt less successful on the stage than in his recordership of Londonderry. Of his four plays, the Cheats excited the greatest sensation. It was first read to the King, who, after hearing thirty lines of it, remarked, "If there be nothing worse in it, you may act it." There was coarse matter in it against Puritan ministers, and the play was prohibited till Denham and Waller had read and reported on it. The managers were told not to bring on the stage anything profane, scandalous, or scurrilous, or they would be no longer protected. A lawyer, Higden, introduced so many drinking scenes into his play, "The Wary Widow," that the players, who tippled their real punch freely, were all drunk by the end of the third act; and the piece was then, there, and thereby brought to an end! Then humble votaries of the muses appeared in Duffet, the Exchange milliner; and in Robert Gould (a servant in the household of Dorset), who was, however a schoolmaster, when his "Rival Sisters," (in which, other means of slaughter being exhausted, a thunder-bolt is employed for the killing a lady) was coldly received. Gould was not a plagiarist, like Scott, the Duke of Roxburgh's secretary, nor so licentious. The public was scandalized by incidents in Scott's "Unhappy Kindness," in 1697. Dr. Drake was another plagiarist, who revenged himself in the lastnamed year, for the condemnation of his Sham Lawyers," by stating on the title-page that it had been "damnably acted." That year was fatal, too. to Dr. Filmer, the champion of the stage against Collier. Even Betterton and Mrs. Barry failed to give life to the old gentleman's "Unnatural Brother." The most prolific of the amateur writers was Peter Motteux, a Huguenot, whom the revocation of the edict of Nantes brought to England, where he carried on the vocations of a trader in Leadenhall Street, clerk to the foreign department of the Post Office, translator, original writer, dramatist, and "fast man," till the too zealous pursuit of the latter calling found Peter dead, in very bad company, in St. Clements Danes, in the year 1718. Of his seventeen comedies, farces, and musical interludes, there is nothing to be said, save that one called "Novelty," presents a distinct play in each act,―or five different pieces in all. By different men, Peter has been diversely rated. Dryden asserted, that Corneille might envy the "alliance of his tripled unity," and yet Dryden wondered "that he should overmatch the most and match the best!" 66 Motteux projected an opera, to be called "The Loves of Europe," in which were to be represented the methods employed in various nations, whereby ladies' hearts are triumphantly won. It was an odd idea; but Peter Motteux was odd in everything. And it is even oddly said of him, "that he met with his fate in trying a very odd experiment, highly disgraceful to his memory!" Hard-drinking, and gallantry, killed Charles Hopkins, son of the Bishop of Londonderry. He has the merit, however, of not being indecent, a fact which the epilogue to his "Boadicea," furnished by a friend and spoken by a lady, deplores. In indecent language, it regrets that uncleanness of jest is no longer acceptable to the town! Walker merits notice, less for his two pieces, "Victorious Love," and "Marry or do Worse," than for the fact that this young Barbadian was the first actor whom Eton school gave to the stage. He appeared, when only eighteen, in the first-named piece, but quickly passed away to the study of the law and the exercise of the latter in his native island. Boyer, a refugee Huguenot, like Motteux, adapted Racine's "Iphigenia in Aulis," for representation. Oldmixon, an old, unscrupulous, party-writer; and Crauford, historiographer for Scotland to Queen Anne, have left no name of note among dramatic writers. It was to the worst of the above-named, and of those yet remaining to be named, that Dryden applied the lines: 68 this our age such authors doth afford, And what's their plunder their possession call." CHAPTER IX. PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS. THE men who took up dramatic authorship as a vocation, during the last half of the seventeenth century, amount to something more than two dozen. I include in these Sir John Vanbrugh, because he preferred fame as an author to fame as an architect; and Congreve, despite the reflection that the ghost of that writer would protest against it if he could. When Voltaire called upon him, in London, the Frenchman intimated that his visit was to the "author." "I am a gentleman," said Congreve. "Nay," rejoined the former, "had you been only a gentleman, you would never have received a visit from me at all." All of these professional authors were sons of "gentlemen,” save three, Davenant, Cowley, and Dennis, whose sires were, respectively, a vintner, a hatter, and a saddler. The sons, however, received a collegiate education. Cowley distinguished himself at Cambridge, but Davenant left Oxford without a degree, and from the former University Dennis was expelled, in March, 1680, "for assaulting and wounding Sir Glenham with a sword." Cambridge yielded Dryden, Lee, and Rymer. From Oxford came Settle, degreeless as Davenant, with Wycherley, Otway, Southerne, and Dilke. Dublin University yielded Tate, Brady, Southerne, Congreve, (who went to Ireland at an early age,) and Farquhar. Douay gave us Gildon, and we are not proud of the gift. Lee, Otway, and Tate were sons of clergymen. Little Crowne's father was an Independent minister in Nova Scotia, and Crowne himself laid claim, fruitlessly, to a vast portion of the territory there. Cibber was an artist, on the side of his father the statuary, and a "gentleman" by his mother. Idleness and love of pleasure made dramatic poets of most of these gentlemen. Shadwell, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Durfey, Bankes, Southerne, Congreve, |