PAGE can refuse to fall in love with her name? What volumes of sighs, what a world of love, is breathed in the very sound alone-the letters that form the charming name of Isabinda.' 157. The one cries Mum, etc. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5. Sc. 2. Note. See first edition (1714), pp. 35-6. 158. Some soul of goodness,' etc. Henry V., Act iv. Sc. 1. His Funeral. Produced in 1701. All the milk of human kindness.' Macbeth, Act 1. Sc. 5. The Conscious Lovers. 1722. Hazlitt refers to Act . Sc. I. Parson Adams against me. See Joseph Andrews, Book 111. chap. 11. Addison's Drummer. 1715. 'An Hour after Marriage. Three Hours after Marriage (1717), the joint production of Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot. 'An alligator stuff 'd. Romeo and Juliet, Act v. Sc. 1. Gay's What-dye-call-it. 1715. Polly. Published in 1728. The representation was forbidden by the Court. 159. The Mock Doctor. 1732. Tom Thumb. Afterwards called The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Lord Grizzle. In Tom Thumb. Like those hanging locks,' etc. Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, Act 1. Sc. 2. "Hey for Doctor's Commons. Tragedy of Tragedies, etc., Act 11. Sc. 5. Lubin Log. In James Kenney's farce, Love, Law, and Physic, produced 1812. The Widow's Choice. Allingham's Who Wins, or The Widow's Choice, 1808. 'Is high fantastical. Twelfth Night, Act 1. Sc. 1. 160. The hero of the Dunciad. Cibber was substituted for Theobald as the King of Dulness in consequence of his famous letter to Pope, published in 1742. 'By merit raised,' etc. Paradise Lost, 11. 5-6. His Apology for his own Life. vol. 1. pp. 156-7. His account of his waiting, etc. Mr. Burke's celebrated apostrophe. Published in 1740. Cf. The Round Table, An Apology, etc., 2nd ed. 1740, chap. III. pp. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Kynaston, etc. See vol. 1. notes to pp. 156-7. 161. His Careless Husband. 1704. His Double Gallant. 1707. The play was revived in 1817 and noticed by '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 P. 173. 1. 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. 1. Love in a Riddle. 1729. PAGE 163. The Suspicious Husband, 1747, The Jealous Wife, 1761, The Clandestine Marriage, 1766. 1. 15. In the third edition the following passage on The Jealous Wife, taken from Oxberry's The New English Drama (Vol. 1.) 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 PAGE 165, 1. 36. In the third edition Hazlitt's description of The Rivals, from Oxberry's The New English Drama (Vol. 1.) 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,' ," 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,"2 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 over1 Cf. Twelfth Night, Act 11. Sc. 5. 2 The Rivals, Act v. Sc. 3. PAGE He "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. 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'!" This is certainly the "high-fantastical" 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. The School for Scandal, 1777, The Rivals, 1775, The Duenna, 1775, and The Cumberland. Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), the dramatist, whose West 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.' 1 She Stoops to Conquer, Act 1. Henry IV., Part I., Act 1. Sc. 2. 2 Twelfth Night, Act 1. Sc. I. |