mena. VIII. I pass over several writers: Crowne, author of Sir Courtly Nice; Shadwell, an imitator of Ben Jonson; Mrs. Aphra Behn, who calls herself Astræa, a spy and a courtesan, paid by government and the public. Etherege is the first to set the example of imitative comedy in his Man of Fashion, and to depict only the manners of his age; for the rest he is an open roisterer, and frankly "Touched No detail is omitted: Jupiter | then in the end, as Pope tells us, ab speaks his whole mind to her, and be-jured again. Robbed of their Protes fore the maids; and next morning, tant ballast, these shallow brains ran when he is going away, she outdoes from dogma to dogma, from supersti him: she hangs on to him, and indulges tion to incredulity or indifference, to in the most familiar details. All the end in a state of fear. He had learnt noble externals of high gallantry are at M. de Montausier's residence the torn off like a troublesome garment; it art of wearing gloves and a peruke, is a cynical recklessness in place of which sufficed in those days to make a aristocratic decency; the scene is writ- gentleman. This merit, and the success ten after the example of Charles II. of a filthy piece, Love in a Wood, drew And Castlemaine, not of Louis XIV. upon him the eyes of the Duchess of and Mme. de Montespan. Cleveland, mistress of the king and of anybody. This woman, who used to have amours with a rope-dancer, picked him up one day in the very midst of the Ring. She put her head to him before all, Sir, you are a rascal, out of her carriage-window, and cried a villain, the son of a by this compliment, he accepted her those of the king. He lost them, marfavors, and in consequence obtained ried the Countess of Drogheda, a womained seven years in prison, passed man of bad temper, ruined himself, rethe remainder of his life in pecuniary difficulties, regretting his youth, losing his memory, scribbling bad verses, which he got Pope to correct, amidst many twitches of wounded self-esteem, stringing together dull obscenities, dragging his worn-out body and enervated brain through the stages of misanthropy and libertinage, playing the miserable part of a toothless roisterer and a white-haired blackguard. Eleven days before his death he married a young girl, who turned out to be a strumpet. He ended as he had begun, by stupidity and misconduct, having succeeded neither in becoming happy nor honest, having used his vigorous intelligence and real talent only to his own injury and the injury of others. describes his habits: ... "From hunting whores, and haunting play, And minding nothing all the day, And all the night too, you will say." Such were his pursuits in London; and further on, in a letter from Ratisbon to Lord Middleton, "He makes grave legs in formal fetters, Converses with fools and writes dull letters;" and gets small consolation out of the German ladies. In this grave mood Etherege undertook the duties of an ambassador. One day, having dined too freely, he fell from the top of a staircase, and broke his neck; a death of no great importance. But the hero of this society was William Wycherley, the coarsest writer who ever polluted the stage. Being sent to France during the Revolution, he there became a Roman Catholic; then on his return abjured; * As Jupiter is departing, on the plea of daylight, Alcmena says to him: " But you and I will draw our curtains close, Extinguish daylight, and put out the sun. Come back, my lord. ... You have not yet laid long enough in bed To warm your widowed side."-Act ii. 2. Compare Plautus' Roman matron and Molière's honest Frenchwoman with this expansive female. [Louis XIV. and Made. de Montespan were not very decent either. See Memoires de Saint Simon.-TR. The reason was, that Wycherley was not an epicurean born. His nature, genuinely English, that is to say, ener getic and sombre, rebelled against the easy and amiable carelessness which enables one to take life as a pleasure party. His style is labored, and trou blesome to read. His tone is virulent and bitter. He frequently forces hig *Himself a Huguenot, who had become Roman Catholic, and the husband of Julis d'Angennes, for whom the French poets com posed the celebrated Guirlande.-TR. 16 cause it contributes almost equally to explain the anatomy of the heart. It is quite necessary to expose moral diseases, especially when this is done to add to science, coldly, accurately, and in the fashion of a dissection. Such a books by its nature abstruse; it must be read in the study, by lamp-light But transport it to the stage, exagger ate the bed-room liberties, give them additional life by a few disreputable scenes, bestow bodily vigor upon them by the energetic action and word; of the actresses; let the eyes and the senses be filled with them, not the eyes of an individual spectator, but of a thousand men and women mingled to comedy in order to get, at spiteful satire. Effort and animosity mark all that he says or puts into the mouths of others. It is Hobbes, not meditative and calm, but active and angry, who sees in man nothing but vice, yet feels himself man to the very core. The only fault he rejects is hypocrisy; the only virtue he preaches is frankness. He wants others to confess their vice, and he begins by confessing his own. Though I cannot lie like them (the poets), I am as vain as they; I cannot but publicly give your Grace my humble acknowledgments. . . . This is the poet's gratitude, which in plain English is only pride and ambition."* We find in him no poetry of expres-gether in the pit, excited by the insion, no glimpse of the ideal, no set- terest of the story, by the correctness tled morality which could console, of the literal imitation, by the glitter raise, or purify men. He shuts them of the lights, by the noise of applause, up in their perversity and uncleanness, by the contagion of impressions which and installs himself among them. He run like a shudder through fiery and shows them the filth of the lowest longing minds. That was the spectadepths in which he confines them; he cle which Wycherley furnished, and expects them to breathe this atmos- which the court appreciated. Is it phere; he plunges them into it, not to possible that a public, and a select disgust them with it as by an acci- public, could come and listen to such dental fall, but to accustom them scenes? In Love in a Wood, amidst to it as if it were their natural ele- the complications of nocturnal rendezment. He tears down the partitions vous, and violations effected or begun, and decorations by which they en- we meet with a witling, named Dapdeavor to conceal their state, or reg-perwit, who desires to sell his mistress ulate their disorder. He takes pleasure in making them fight, he delights in the hubbub of their unfettered instincts; he loves the violent changes of the human mass, the confusion of their wicked deeds, the rawness of their bruises. He strips their lusts, sets them forth at full length, and of course feels them himself; and whilst he condemns them as nauseous, he enjoys them. People take what pleasure they can get the drunkards in the suburbs, if asked how they can relish their miserable liquor, will tell you it makes them drunk as soon as better stuff, and that is the only pleasure they have. I can understand that an author may dare much in a novel. It is a psychological study, akin to criticism or history, having almost equal license, be The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, ed. Leigh Hunt, 1840. Dedication of Love in a Wood to her Grace the Duchess of Cleveland. Lucy to a fine gentleman of that age, Ranger. With what minuteness he bepraises her! He knocks at her door; the intended purchaser meantime, growing impatient, is treating him like a slave. The mother comes in, but wishing to sell Lucy herself and for her own advantage, scolds them and packs them off. Next appears an old puritanical usurer and hypocrite, named Gripe, who at first will not bar gain:-- "Mrs. Joyner. You must send for some half-a-crown. Mrs. J. A treat only will not serve my turn She goes away at last, having extorted all, and Lucy plays the innocent, seems to think that Gripe is a dancing-master, and asks for a lesson. What scenes, what double meanings ! At last she calls out, her mother, Mrs. Crossbite, breaks open the door, and enters with men placed there beforehand; Gripe is caught in the trap: they threaten to call in the constable, they swindle him out of five hundred pounds. But the special and most extraor dinary sign of the times is, that amid all these provocatives, no repellent circumstance is omitted, and that the narrator seems to aim as much at disgusting as at depraving us.* Every moment the fine gentlemen, even the ladies, introduce into their conversation the ways and means by which, since the sixteenth century, love has endeavored to adorn itself. Dapperwit, when making an offer of Lucy, says, in order to account for the delay; "Pish! give her but leave to put on. the long patch under the left eye; awaken the roses on her cheeks with some Spanish wool, and warrant her breath with some lemon peel." Lady Flippant, alone in the park, cries out: "Unfortunate lady that I am! I have left the herd or purpose to be chased, and have wan dered this hour here; but the park affords not so much as a satyr for me; and no Burgundy man or drunken scourer will reel my way. The ragwomen and cinder-women have better luck than I." ‡ Judge by these quotations, which are the best, of the remainder! Wycherley makes it his business to revolt even the senses; the nose, the eyes, every thing suffers in his plays; the audience must have had the stomach of a sailor. And from this abyss English literature has ascended to the strict morality, the Need I recount the plot of the Country Wife? It is useless to wish to skim the subject only: we sink deeper and deeper. Horner, a gentleman returned from France, spreads the report that he is no longer able to trouble the peace of husbands. You may imagine what becomes of such a subject in Wycherley's hands, and he draws from it all that it contains. Women converse about Horner's condition, even before him; they suffer themselves to be undeceived, and boast of it. Three of them come to him and feast, drink, sing-such songs! The excess of orgie triumphs, adjudges it self the crown, displays itself in max-excessive decency which it now pos ims. "Our virtue," says one of them, "is like the statesman's religion, the quaker's word, the gamester's oath, and the great man's honor; but to cheat those that trust us."t In the last scene, the suspicions which had been arousel, are set at rest by a new declaration of Horner. All the marriages are polluted, and the carnival ends by a dance of deceived husbands. To crown all, Horner recommends his example to the public, and the actress who comes on to recite the epilogue, completes the shamefulness of the piece, by warning gallants that they must look what they are doing; for that if they can deceive men, women-there's no cozening us." 66 we * Act iii. 3. ↑ The Country Wife, v. 4. * Read the epilogue, and see what words and 1etails authors dared then to put in the mouths of actresses. sesses! The stage is a declared wai against beauty and delicacy of every kind. If Wycherley borrows a char acter anywhere, it is only to do vio lence, or degrade it to the level of his own characters. If he imitates the Agnes of Molière, § as he does in the "That spark, who has his fruitless designs upon the bed-ridden rich widow, down to the sucking heiress in her . . . clout."-Love in a Wood, i. 2. Mrs. Flippant: "Though I had married the fool, I thought to have reserved the wit as w!! as other ladies."-Ibid. Dapper wit: "I will contest with no rival, not with my old rival your coachman."-Ibid. "She has a complexion like a holland cheese, and no more teeth left, than such as give a haut goût to her breath."-Ibid. ii. : + Ibid. iii. 2. Ibid. v. 2 § The letter of Agnes, in Molière's l'Econ des Femmes, ui. 4, begins thus: "Je veux vous écrire, et je suis bien en peine par où je m'y prendrai. J'ai des pensées que je désirer Country Wife, he marries her in order to profane marriage, deprives her of honor, still more of modesty, still more of grace, and changes her artless tenderness into shameless instincts and scandalous confessions. If he takes Shakspeare's Viola, as in the Plain Dealer, it is to drag her through the vileness of infamy, amidst brutalities and surprises. If he translates the part of Molière's Célimène, he wipes out at one stroke the manners of a great lady, the woman's delicacy, the tact of the lady of the house, the politeness, the refined air, the superiority of wit and knowledge of the world, in order to substitute for them the impudence and deceit of a foul-mouthed courtesan. If he invents an almost innocent girl, Hippolita,* he begins by putting into her mouth words that will not bear transcribing. Whatever he does or says, whether he copies or originates, blames or praises, his stage is a defamation of mankind, which repels even when it attracts, and which sickens a man while it corrupts. 327 not of se: purpose, as the realists of our day, but naturally. In a violent manner he lays on his plaster over the grinning and pimpled faces of his ras cals, in order to bring before our very eyes the stern mask to which the li ing imprint of their ugliness has stuck o the way. He crams his plays with in cident, he multiplies action, he pushes comedy to the verge of dramatic effect: he hustles his characters amidst sur prises and violence, and all but stultifies them in order to exaggerate his satire. Observe in Olivia, a copy of Célimène the fury of the passion? which he depicts. She describes her friends as does Célimène, but with what insults! Novel, a coxcomb, says 66 all the ceremony and kindness imaginable at my lady Autumn's. But the nauseous old woman at the upper end of the table' Madam, I have been treated to-day with of serving in a death's head with their banquets. not endure the portrait Olivia draws of Manly, her lover; he hears her unawares; she forthwith stands before him, laughs at him to his face, declares herself to be married; tells him she means to keep the diamonds which he has given her, and defies him. Fidelia says to her: A certain gift hovers over all namely, vigor-which is never absent The scene is borrowed from Moin England, and gives a peculiar char-lière's Misanthrope and the Critique de acter to their virtues as well as to 'Ecole des Femmes; but how trans. their vices. When we have removed formed! Our modern nerves would the oratorical and heavily constructed phrases imitated from the French, we get at the genuine English talent -a deep sympathy with nature and life. Wycherley possessed that lucid and vigorous perspicacity which in any particular situation seizes upon gesture, physical expression, evident detail, which pierces, to the depth of the crude and base, which hits off, not men in general, and passion as it ought to be, but an individual man, and passion as it is. He is a realist, ais que vous sussiez; mais je ne sais comment faire pour vous les dire, et je me défie de mes paroles," etc. Observe how Wycherley translates it: 66 Dear, sweet Mr. Horner, my husband would have me send you a base, rude, unmannerly letter; but I won't-and would have me forbid you loving me; but I won't--and would have me say to you, I hate you, poor Mr. Horner; but I won't tell a lie for him-for I'm sure if you and I were in the country at cards together, I could not help treading on your toe under the table, or rubbing knees with you, and staring in your face, till you saw me, and then looking down, and blushing for an hour together," etc.-Country Wife, iv. 2. In the Gentleman Dancing-Master. "But, madam, what could make you di semble love to him, when 'twas so hard a thing for you; and flatter his love to you?" Olivia. "That which makes all the world flatter and dissemble, 'twas his money: I had a real passion for that.... As soon as I had his money, I hastened his departure like a wife, husband's breath, pulls away his pillow." ↑ who when she has made the most of a dying The last phrase is rather that of a mo rose satirist than of an accurate observer. The woman's impudence is like a professed courtesan's. In love at first sight with Fidelia, whom she takes for a young man, she hangs upon her neck, "stuffs her with kisses," gropes about in the dark, crying, "Where are thy lips?" "here is a *The Plain Dealer, ii. 1. ↑ Ibid. iv. 2. kind of animal ferocity in her love. "Eliza. Well, cousin, this, I confess, was reasonable hypocrisy; you were the better for 't. Olivia. What hypocrisy? E. Why, this last deceit of your husband was lawful, since in your own defence. O. What deceit? I'd have you know I never deceived my husband. E. You do not understand me, sure; I say, this was an honest come-off, and a good one. But 'twas a sign your gallant had had enough of your conversation, since he could so dexterously cheat your husband in passing for a woman. O. What d'ye mean, once more, with my gallant, and passing for a woman? There is a character who shows in a concise manner Wycherley's talent and his morality, wholly formed of energy and indelicacy, Manly, the coun. plain dealer," so manifestly the author's favorite, that his contemporaries gave him the name of his hero for a surname. Manly is copied after Alceste, and the great difference between the two heroes shows the difference between the two societies and the two tries.* Manly is not a courtier, but a ship-captain, with the bearing of a sai?or of the time, his cloak stained with tar, and smelling of brandy, t ready with blows or foul oaths, calling those he came across dogs and slaves, and when they displeased him, kicking them down stairs. And he speaks in this fashion to a lord with a voice like a mastiff. Then, when the poor noble. Iman tries to whisper something in his ear, "My lord, all that you have made me know by your whispering which I knew not before, is that you have a stinking breath; there's a secret for your secret." When he is in Olivia's E. What do you mean? you see your hus-drawing-room, with "these fluttering band took him for a woman! O. Whom? E. O admirable confidence! ... O. Confidence, to me! to me such language! nay, then I'll never see your face again. Lettice, where are you? Let us begone from this censorious ill woman. E. One word first, pray, madam; can you swear that whom your husband found you with... O. Swear! ay, that whosoever 'twas that sole up, unknown, into my room, when 'twas dark, I know not, whether man or woman, by heavens, by all that's good; or, may I never more nave joys here, or in the other world! Nay, may I eternally E. Be damned. So, so, you are damned enough already by your oaths.... Yet take this advice with you, in this plain-dealing age, to leave off forswearing yourself. 0.0 hideous, hideous advice! let us go out of the hearing of it. She will spoil us, Letcice." t Here is animation; and if I dared to relate the boldness and the asseveration in the night scene, it would easily appear that Mme. Marneffe ‡ had a sister, and Balzac a predecessor. * The Plain Dealer, iv. 2. + Ibid. v. 1. ↑ See note, ante, page 35. 66 parrots of the town, these apes, these echoes of men," he bawls out as if he were on his quarter-deck, Peace, you Bartholomew fair buffoons!" He seizes them by the collar, and says: "Why, you impudent, pitiful wretches, you are in all things so like women, that you may think it in me a kind of cowardice to beat you. Begone, I say.. No chattering, baboons; instantly begone, or Then he turns them out of the room. These are the manners of a plain-dealing man. He has been ruined by Olivia, whom he loves, and who dismisses him. Poor Fidelia, disguised as a man,and whom he Compare with the sayings of Alceste, in Molière's Misanthrope, such tirades as this "Such as you, like common whores and pick pockets, are only dangerous to those you em brace." And with the character of Philinte, is the same French play, such phrases as these: 66 But, faith, could you think I was a friend to When their backs were turned, did not I tell those I hugged, kissed, flattered, bowed to? you they were rogues, villains, rascals, whom I despised and hated? + Olivia says: "Then shall I have again my alcove smell like a cabin, my chamber perfumed with his tarpaulin Brandenburgh; and hear vollies of brandy-sighs, enough to make a for in one's room."-The Plain Dealer, ii. 1. |