Table Of ContentGREAT WRITERS STUDENT LIBRARY
RESTORATION
AND
18th-CENTURY
DRAMA
GREAT WRITERS STUDENT LIBRARY
I. The Beginnings to 1558
2. The Renaissance Excluding Drama
3. Renaissance Drama
4. Restoration and 18th-Century Prose and Poetry
Excluding Drama and the Novel
5. Restoration and 18th-Century Drama
6. The Romantic Period Excluding the Novel
7. The Victorian Period Excluding the Novel
8. The Novel to 1900
9. 20th-Century Poetry
I 0. 20th-Century Fiction
II. 20th-Century Drama
12. American Literature to I 900
13. 20th-Century American literature
14. Commonwealth Literature
Editor: James Vinson
Associate Editor: D. L. Kirkpatrick
GREAT WRITERS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
RESTORATION
AND
18th-CENTURY
DRAMA
INTRODUCfiON BY
ARTHUR H. SCOUTEN
M
© by The Macmillan Press Ud., 1980
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1980
AU rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, without permission.
First published 1980 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LIMITED
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York, Dublin
Melbourne, Johannesburg and Madras
ISBN 978-0-333-28341-7 ISBN 978-1-349-16422-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-16422-6
CONTENTS
EDITOR'S NOTE page vii
INTRODUCfiON
RESTORATION AND 18th-CENTURY DRAMA IS
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 149
EDITOR'S NOTE
The entry for each writer consists of a biography, a complete list of his published books, a
selected list of published bibliographies and critical studies on the writer, and a signed critical
essay on his work.
In the biographies, details of education, military service, and marriage(s) are generally
given before the usual chronological summary of the life of the writer; awards and honours
are given last.
The Publications section is meant to include all book publications, though as a rule
broadsheets, single sermons and lectures, minor pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, etc. are
omitted. Under the heading Collections, we have listed the most recent collections of the
complete works and those of individual genres (verse, plays, novels, stories, and letters); only
those collections which have some editorial authority and were issued after the writer's death
are listed; on-going editions are indicated by a dash after the date of publication; often a
general selection from the writer's works or a selection from the works in the individual
genres listed above is included.
Titles are given in modern spelling, though the essayists were allowed to use original
spelling for titles and quotations; often the titles are "short." The date given is that of the first
book publication, which often followed the first periodical or anthology publication by some
time; we have listed the actual year of publication, often different from that given on the title
page. No attempt has been made to indicate which works were published anonymously or
pseudonymously, or which works of fiction were published in more than one volume. We
have listed plays which were produced but not published, but only since I 700; librettos and
musical plays are listed along with the other plays; no attempt has been made to list lost or
unverified plays. Reprints of books (including facsimile editions) and revivals of plays are not
listed unless a revision or change of title is involved. The most recent edited version of
individual works is included if it supersedes the collected edition cited.
In the essays, short references to critical remarks refer to items cited in the Publications
section or in the Reading List. Introductions, memoirs, editorial matter, etc. in works cited in
the Publications section are not repeated in the Reading List.
vii
INTRODUCTION
From 1660 to 1800 there appeared a body of dramatic literature, frequently scorned in the
19th and early 20th centuries, that has found increasing appreciation in modern times. It was
once the dull duty of the literary historian (often a specialist in Elizabethan drama) to
comment on the immorality and licentiousness of the Restoration comedies as he proceeded
to chronicle the decay and downfall of English drama, but a look at recent bibliographies or
publishers' advertisements will show the remarkable increase of editions of these plays and
the general respect being accorded by modern critics. The dramatic works by the authors
during this one hundred and forty year period are so diverse in nature that they prove
recalcitrant to easy categorization. To avoid broad generalisations which would scarcely be
valid for so many writers over such a long period of time, I will break my account into three
sections: the reign of Charles II, 166Q-1685; 1685 until the Stage licensing Act of 1737; and
1737 until 1800, or thereabouts.
As Robert Hume points out in his important study, The Development of English Drama in
the Late Seventeenth Century, literary historians have not yet been able to establish a terminal
date for Restoration drama. Most of them set the period from 1660 to 1700, using the
premiere of The Way oft he World as the culmination of the type of play called the comedy of
manners. Others want to include Farquhar and hence extend the date to 1707, the year of The
Beaux Stratagem, and some push the terminus three more years, to include the retirement of
Thomas Betterton, the great actor-manager who had performed in many of the major
successes of the age. Finally, John Loftis, the editor of the Nebraska Regents series of
reprints, stretched the period to 17 37. This extension led of course to ludicrous difficulties. In
one case, a critic, who shall be nameless here, called Susannah Centlivre 's The Busy Body
(1709) a lively Restoration comedy, but classified Nicholas Rowe's farce The Biter (1704) as
"a tedious eighteenth century play." Hence I will be a strict constructionist and apply the term
"Restoration" to those plays, lively or tedious, which were acted after the restoration of good
King Charles to the English throne.
The year I 7 3 7p rovides a valid dividing point for the second section, as the Stage Licensing
Act ended the theatrical career of Henry Fielding and tne experimental dramatists whose
innovative plays he had been staging. Furthermore, a number of years passed after 17 3 7
before new, full-length plays were produced; thus there is a real, though brief, break in
continuity.
I. The Drama from 1660 to 1685
The major rupture of continuity, of course, was the eighteen-year cessation of acting
during the interregnum. The result of this hiatus was that most of the new Restoration plays
differed so considerably from those of the Elizabethan period that historians have not been
able to agree on the relative importance of the different causes of the change. Some account,
then, should be given of the influence of contemporary French drama, the burden of Italian
and French Neoclassic theories, trends in Caroline drama, the vogue of the Spanish
Romance, and the historical and social background of the literary· scene in the 1660's.
Years ago, when Restoration comedy was in disrepute, its emergence was attributed to the
influence of French drama, thereby removing a stain from the purity of English literature.
From the record of new plays in London during the first decade of the restoration of the
monarchy, we can see that this ascription is fallacious, in so far as comedy is concerned.
Much has been made of English borrowings from Moliere, but the essential form of the new
2 INTRODUCTION
satiric wit-comedy characteristic of Restoration drama had already been established bv the
time of The Misanthrope and Tartujfo in 1666 and 1667.
Royalist exiles waiting in Paris for Oliver Cromwell to die did have the opportunity to see
tragedies by Corneille and admire the emphasis placed on gloire and on loyalty to the
monarch. They also became accustomed to the musical and psychological effects of the
rhymed alexandrine couplet. Furthermore, all persons interested in literature, whether
expatriates or quietly living in England, were becoming conversant with the propositions
concerning dramatic literature propounded by French Neoclassic critics. The goal of
perfecting tragedy by moving it in the direction of the epic (the queen of literary forms) was
most attractive, and even before 1660 we find English writers such as Hobbes and Davenant
speculating on this topic. Besides, Englishmen visiting Paris or the northern Italian cities
were impressed by the spectacle incorporated into the staging of tragedies and operas. Hence
we can see that a potential audience was already being prepared for the heroic play when
English dramatists came to compose them. English devotees of the theatre evinced great
interest in the introduction of rhymed verse for the language of tragedy. The campaign being
carried out in Paris to refine, correct, polish, and preserve the French language could not fail
to impress English observers, who soon realised that this mode provided a route whereby
they could surpass the literary giants of the Elizabethan age, "the race before the flood." All
these points are discussed at length by John Dryden in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy, the best
introduction to Restoration Drama that has ever been written.
The attractiveness of the heroic play was further enhanced by the active support of Charles
II himself. He too had seen the French serious dramas in Paris, certainly not overlooking
their support of the values of a hierarchical society, and he suggested to Roger Boyle, Earl of
Orrery, the composition of such a play. Later, when productions of the heroic drama were
under way, he and his brother, the Duke of York, not only brought the court to attend
performances but also lent royal robes to the actors for costumes. When we add to these
influential forces at work the fact that "love-and-honour" plays had previously been acted for
Queen Henrietta Marie and her court in the time of Charles I and thus had already become
part of the native tradition in serious drama, we should be prepared for an early advent of the
heroic play on the London stage.
The first one, The General, was composed in 1661 by Lord Orrery, and first performed in
Dublin in 1662. However, the first heroic play witnessed by a London audience was The
Indian Queen, a collaboration of Sir Robert Howard and John Dryden, in January 1664. It
was followed immediately by Orrery's The History of Henry the Fifth in August of that year,
and others by Dryden, Orrery, Elkanah Settle, John Caryl, and Samuel Pordage appeared in
the next few years. The wild rant and extravagant action in these plays make them
objectionable, worse yet, even ludicrous to the modern reader. Accordingly, to understand
the admiration which the original audiences had for these plays, we must remember Erich
Auerbach's explanation in Mimesis of the fascination which the courtiers had for works
which presented the crisis of leaders, torn by contrary demands from their private life and
their duties as rulers.
The other major influence on the new dramatists came from Spain. The borrowed
elements are relatively novel and can be easily traced as they appear. One feature was a highly
complicated plot, giving rise, in English hands, to a sub-genre which Allardyce Nicoll termed
"intrigue plays." Of the borrowed character types, the Spanish fathers turn out to be
unusually choleric and bombastic, the young male leads are haughty though idealistic, but it
is the high-spirited heroines who set the tone of the work. These young ladies are both
virtuous and loquacious. They object wittily and vociferously to marriages which their
fathers have arranged, but they are women of high moral fibre and while they talk
audaciously, they never say anything indecent. Their high moral standards do not lead them
to a submissive attitude in the presence of their suitors ; instead, the young ladies engage in a
free, open, and even equal basis, and are ready to out-talk any man who starts an argument.
The initial English use of this material appeared in the first major box-office success of the
Restoration period, The Adventures of Five Hours ( 1663), by Sir Samuel Tuke. Pepys and
INTRODUCTION J
other commentators quickly noticed both the liveliness of the play and the complete lack of
anything bawdy. The playwrights soon employed the Spanish romance to their advantage. In
The Carnival, Thomas Porter presents the young male lead and the heroine as the two main
characters, rather than designating the man as the protagonist, and achieves what John
Harrington Smith was later to call "the gay couple." This achievement of an almost complete
equality of the sexes engaged in a duel of wits came to be the distinguishing sign of
Restoration comedy. Dryden saw that all he needed to add was some racy language to the
women's parts, and he would have perfect material for the theatre - especially when the
actress was Nell Gwyn. The best example of the dramatic possibilities is found in the famous
encounter between Dorimant and Harriet in Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676).
This presentation of foreign elements does not mean that there was no connection between
the new drama and the old. The break with Elizabethan tragedy was complete, but various
aspects of the older comedy continued on in the Restoration plays. Fletcher's comedies were
at the peak of their reputation in the 1660's; they were offered frequently in the theatre and
were imitated by young playwrights. In contrast to the exphasis on action and complicated
plot-turns in the Spanish plays, Fletcher's comedies put the major emphasis on dialogue. The
last Caroline plays before the outbreak of war blossomed again in the Restoration, especially
festive comedies like Brome 's The Jovial Crew. whose cheerful and optimistic tone is
perpetuated in the newly-discovered The Country Gentleman, by Sir Robert Howard and
George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. But the most influential of all the Elizabethan
writers was Ben Jonson. We mistake the true nature of his influence if we seek only for some
Restoration comedies containing "humors" characters. Jonson's use of humors characters
was only a device; the medical metaphor was outmoded in the late seventeenth century
anyhow; and the members of the dramatis personae labelled with a "humor" in some
Restoration plays are actually "social" types (fop, rake, cast-off mistress) rather than humor
characters. Nor is the adulation lavished on the name of Ben Jonson a reliable sign. Almost
everyone, it appears, praised him, but they went to see Shakespeare's plays in the theatres.
The recorded number of performances of Jonson's comedies in the years 166Q-1700 is very
low, and not at all in line with the number of allusions to him in essays, prologues, poems,
and the like.
The true relation between Ben Jonson's comedies and most Restoration comedies is that
both share the same pessimistic view of the nature of man and his hostility toward his fellow
man; both demonstrate an unceasing animosity between the different social classes; and both
sets of comedies modulate toward being open-ended. To illustrate the difference from
Elizabethan or eighteenth-century comedy, we can invoke Shakespeare. At the beginning of
his comedy The Tempest, practically everybody is hostile to some other person or group;
plots and counter-plots abound. But by the end of the play, everyone but Caliban realises that
there is a universal harmony; everyone becomes reconciled and Prospero can break his staff.
Again, what could exceed the hostility shown in The Merchant of Venice? Yet all is resolved
in universal harmony at Belmont. But when we turn to Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, the play
just stops. The cleverest rascal gets off, scotfree, and there is little doubt he will ply his trade
again. So too in Sir Robert Howard's charming comedy The Committee (1662). Here, the
demure heroine Ruth blackmails the greedy, social climbing Puritan Mrs. Day into a
stalemate, without any resolution. The Puritans (in the play) still control England; they hate
the Royalists and seek to humiliate them as well as take their estates; the frustrated Cavaliers
return the hatred. The Country-Wife (1675) ends when Margery Pinchwife is corrupted; the
dance stops with the music, and will resume when the musicians start playing again, but the
hostility between Horner and Pinchwife has not the least abated. The Man of Mode stops
when Dorimant agrees to visit Harriet's country home, but the play presents no resolution.
This open-ended nature of the structure of much Restoration comedy certainly proclaims the
debt to the master satirist Ben Jonson.
As can be seen from the presentation of the Puritans in Howard's The Committee, the
historical and social background had much to do in shaping the nature of early Restoration
drama. To the young people of the 1660's, the recent Civil War was a monstrous stroke of
