The development of George Farquhar as a comic dramatist 9783111391588, 9783111029085

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STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE Volume LVI

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GEORGE FARQUHAR AS A COMIC DRAMATIST

by

EUGENE NELSON JAMES

1972

MOUTON THE H A G U E · PARIS

© Copyright 1972 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 76-173784

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I should like to express my thanks to the staffs of the libraries of the State University of Iowa, Northern Illinois University, Newberry Library, Library of Congress, Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University and the University of Michigan. Also, I should like hereby to thank two persons without whom this book never could have been written: my wife and the late Professor Charles B. Woods, my adviser, teacher, and friend.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

5

I. Introduction-The Traditions in Farquhar Criticism and the Need for a New Critical Study of Farquhar's Plays

11

II. Love and a Bottle as a Burlesque of Restoration Comedy

69

III. Lurewell and the Jilting Women of Restoration Comedy

101

IV. Sir Harry Wildair - The 'Poor Sequel' to The Trip to the Jubilee V. The Originality of The Inconstant

132 .

.

.

.

160

VI. The Twin-Rivals and its Importance to Farquhar's Development and to English Comedy . VII. "The Mystery of 'The Stage Coach' " .

.

. .

. .

184 .

209

VIII. The Recruiting Officer as a Climactic Play in the Career of George Farquhar IX. The Beaux' Stratagem - Fulfillment of a Promise .

218 258

ListX.ofConclusions Works Cited

295 309

Index

314

TABLE OF FIGURES

1. Diagram to show the close relationship of the love plots of Love and a Bottle and the loose relationship of the love plots with the Mockmode-Boarding House plot

96

2. Diagram to show relation of subplots to main plots of Farquhar's The Constant Couple

130

3. Diagram to show how Farquhar regularizes the plot of Sir Harry Wildair by making subplot integral part of main plot

158

4. Diagram to show how Farquhar regularizes plot of The Inconstant by minimizing subplot . . . .

166

5. Diagram to show how Farquhar unifies The Twin Rivals by making the two plots parallel . .

187

6. Diagram to show the close interweaving of three plot strands in The Recruiting Officer

226

7. Diagram to show how three plot strands in The Beaux' Stratagem are handled by means of two settings . .

278

I

INTRODUCTION - T H E TRADITIONS IN F A R Q U H A R CRITICISM A N D T H E N E E D FOR A NEW CRITICAL S T U D Y OF FARQUHAR'S PLAYS

With audiences across the centuries George Farquhar seems always to have been the most popular of the Restoration dramatists. Of Farquhar's popularity in Johnson's time, James J. Lynch in his book Box, Pit, and Gallery said: The most frequently revived author was Vanbrugh, whose The Mistake, The Confederacy, The False Friend, Aesop, The Provok'd Wife, and The Relapse were acted, the last two being among the most popular plays of the period. Five of Farquhar's comedies were revived - The Constant Couple, The Recruiting Officer, The Beaux' Stratagem, The Twin Rivals, and The Inconstant - and for a greater number of performances than even those of Vanbrugh. Indeed, so frequently acted were the plays of these two writers that 15 per cent of the evenings devoted to comedy were given over to one or another of these eleven plays, and together they account for almost onetwelfth of the entire theatrical repertory. 1 Again, Leigh Hunt, in his introduction to his edition of the plays of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, compared the relative popularity of the four in 1840: He [Farquhar] has far surpassed them all, we believe, in the number of editions; and is certainly ten times acted to their once. The "Confederacy" upon the strength of Brass and Dick Aimwell and his mother, is the only play of Vanbrugh's that can compete, unaltered, with the quadruple duration of the "Constant Couple", the "Inconstant", the "Recruiting Officer", and the "Beaux Stratagem". 2 1

James J. Lynch, Box, Pit, and Gallery: Stage and Society in Johnson's London (Berkeley, 1953), p. 41. 2 Leigh Hunt, ed., The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar (London, 1840), pp. lxxviii-lxxix.

12

INTRODUCTION

Finally, in the Preface to Young George Farquhar, Willard Connely, commenting on the revivals of The Beaux' Stratagem, The Recruiting Officer, and The Constant Couple in the 1940's, again compared the relative popularity of the Restoration dramatists: "Thus, for four consecutive years [1943-1947] audiences in England have seen Farquhar played. Of no other Restoration dramatist can this be said in the present century."3 With the critics the story has been somewhat different. In the first place, they have neglected him; H. A. Huntington, for instance, writing in the Atlantic Monthly in 1882, summarized the history of Farquhar criticism in this manner: This comparatively recent revival of The Beaux' Stratagem after a death-like trance of twenty-three years, calls for some remarks upon the life and work of its author, whom periodical literature has never honored with an article all to himself. Excluded for want of space from Macaulay's famous essay on The Comic Dramatists, and denied mention in Thackeray's Lectures on the Humorists, he became fairly the prey of humbler pens. This neglect of Farquhar by the writers best fitted to deal with his period is by no means due to the inferiority of his place in dramatic literature. Dr. Johnson, whose critical faculties, however they may be regarded, were fearlessly exercised, thought his writing had considerable merit. In Goldsmith's opinion he was more lively, and perhaps more entertaining, than either Wycherley, Congreve, or Vanbrugh. That he improved in each play we have the testimony of Oldisworth, whose obscurity lends an air of mystery to his approval. Macaulay pronounced him a man not hastily to be dismissed. All his critics have not been equally kind. Lockier, Dean of Peterborough, esteemed him a mean poet, placed by some in a higher rank than he deserved. Pope called him a farce writer, and somewhere exclaims. "What pert, low dialogue has Farquhar writ." Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt date the decline of English comedy from the death of Farquhar.4 Huntington's statement concerning the neglect of Farquhar by the critics is to some extent true even today. Farquhar has not been utterly neglected in the years since ' Willard Connely, Young George Farquhar: The Restoration Drama at Twilight (London, 1949), p. 9. 4 H. A. Huntington, "Captain Farquhar", Atlantic Monthly, XLIX (1882), 399-400.

13

INTRODUCTION

1882, however; in fact, in 1880, two years before Huntington was writing his criticism of Farquhar, Otto Hallbauer had written a thirty-three page inaugural thesis Life and Works of George Farquhar at the University of Erlangen, and in 1904 another German scholar, David Schmid, was to write a 372 page thesis entitled George Farquhar; sein Leben und seine Original-Dramen at the University of Vienna. Still, as far as I know, there have been no full length critical studies by English or American scholars on George Farquhar. Willard Connely's biography contained criticisms of the plays, but the approach was biographical, as Connely tried to find George Farquhar in some character in every one of the plays. Shorter studies were made by Farquhar's modern editors. A. C. Ewald, William Archer, Louis A. Strauss, H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon, Bonamy Dobrée, Charles Stonehill, and Tucker Brooke all wrote such studies as prefaces to their editions. These prefaces suffer as criticism, it seems to me, from two standpoints: the editor's interest in each case seems equally divided between biography and criticism, and the critical comments are too brief at times to do Farquhar real justice. Other criticism came in even briefer accounts in the histories of 17th and 18th century English literature by Edmund Gosse and R. Garnett, histories of the English drama by Adolphus Ward and Allardyce Nicoli, and the books about the Restoration and 18th century drama by John Palmer, Ernest Bernbaum, Henry Ten Eyck Perry, Bonamy Dobrée, and George H. Nettleton. But no less harmful than the brevity of the criticisms are the traditions that bind the criticism. Charles Stonehill in an introductory note to his edition of The Complete Works mentioned the "Farquhar tradition",5 and although he was most likely talking about the tradition of Farquhar biography, which contains some very romantic legends, still the term might be applied to Farquhar criticism. William Archer, in the Mermaid edition, also recognized the traditions when he said of Pope's comment on Far5

Charles Stonehill, ed., The Complete (Bloomsbury, 1930), I, ix.

Works

of George

Farquhar

14

INTRODUCTION

quhar's dialogue: "This casual remark has struck the keynote of criticism for more than a century and a half."® And Malcolm Elwin, in The Playgoer's Handbook to Restoration Drama (1928), spoke out sharply against the tradition that linked Farquhar with Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh: The Inconstant is altogether as near to the spirit of Shakespeare's comedy as Lee and Otway are to that of Tragedy, for it is completely romantic in tone, and the reason for the refusal to recognize the fact must be traced to the lack of critical insight which associates Farquhar consistently with the comedy of manners. Leigh Hunt was the innocent instance of this misunderstanding, since he chanced to include the works of Farquhar in an edition embracing the plays of Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh, and subsequent critics, with the singular lack of individuality and discernment, have been unable to mention the one without the others or the others without the one.7 Although Elwin, I believe, dates the beginning of this tradition too late, as will be shown later, still he had some justification in his charges against the critics for a lack of individuality and discernment. This shortcoming can be seen in an examination of a tradition passed along by Farquhar's biographers in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

A. "THE GENERAL CHARACTER" TRADITION

The 1728 edition of The Works of the Late Ingenious Mr. George Farquhar contained some memoirs of the author, as told by Robert Wilks to W. R. Chetwood, in which the following assessment was made of Farquhar's work: "The general character that has been given of these comedies, is that, 'the success of most of them far exceeded the author's expectations; that he was particularly happy in the choice of his subjects, which he took care to adorn with a variety of characters and inci• William Archer, ed., George Farquhar, Mermaid ser. (London, 1906),

p. 16. 7

Malcolm Elwin, The Playgoer's Handbook (London, 1928), pp. 189-190.

to Restoration

Drama

INTRODUCTION

15

dents; his style is pure and unaffected; his wit, natural and flowing; and his plots, generally well contrived. He lashed the vices of the age, tho' with a merciful hand; for his Muse was good-natured, not abounding over-much with gall, tho' he has been blamed for it by the critics: It has been objected to him, that he was too hasty in his productions; but I believe, by such only, who are chiefly admirers of stiff and elaborate performances; since with a person of a sprightly fancy, those things are often best, which are struck off in a heat."' 8 Although, on the title page of the 1742 edition of The Works of the Late Ingenious Mr. George Farquhar Containing all His Poems, Letters, Essays, and Comedies, "some memoirs of the author, never before Publish'd" were announced, still this judgment was given word for word. 9 W. R. Chetwood, in A General History of the Stage (1749), used a part of this judgment: "He was peculiarly happy in the choice of his Subjects, which he took care to adorn with Variety of Characters and Incidents. He lash'd the Vices of the Age, tho' with a merciful Hand." 1 0 Biographia Britannica (1750) quoted this general character of the comedies from the 1728 edition, and the writer scrupulously acknowledged his source.11 In 1753, Theophilus Cibber in The Lives of the Poets quoted this "character" and gave as his source the "Memoirs of Mr. Farguhar [sic], before his Works". 12 D. E. Baker (1764), in The Companion to the Play-House, quite obviously was following Cibber, for he not only copied the "character" but the following two paragraphs of Cibber, without

8

As quoted in Biographia Britannica: or, The Lives of the Most Eminent Persons Who Have Flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, from the Earliest Ages down to the Present Times... (London, 1747-66), III, 1895. 9 George Farquhar, The Works of the Late Ingenious Mr. George Farquhar ... 8th ed. ... To Which Are Added some Memoirs of the Author, Never Before Published (London, 1742), I, 7. 19 William Rufus Chetwood, A General History of the Stage ... with the Memoirs of Most of the Principal Performers ... for These Last Fifty Years ... (London, 1749), p. 150. 11 Biographia Britannica, III, 1895. 12 Theophilus Cibber, The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the Time of Dean Swift (London, 1753), III, 136.

16

INTRODUCTION

acknowledging his source.11 These paragraphs appeared in the enlarged later edition of The Companion to the Play-House, Biographia Dramatica (1812).14 R. Cumberland (1817) in The British Drama copied the account from Biographia Dramatica, and so the "character" plus Cibber's two paragraphs plus Baker's final paragraph on The Twin Rivals appeared without acknowledgment in Cumberland's "Life of George Farquhar".15 The "character" by its repetition implied a unanimity of opinion of critics in the 18th century concerning Farquhar's plays, and the content indicated that the plays were highly regarded. The author was commended for his subjects, his style, his wit, and his plots. However, one received the idea that the author was more a writer by fortune than design: his success came unexpectedly; the choice of subjects was lucky; and his wit and style were natural. The only places where he exercised art were in plotting and in inventing characters and incidents. Furthermore, according to the critics, his satire was weak, and he was hasty in his writing. But the editor felt that this latter objection might have been made because Farquhar did not follow the rules. This complimentary 'character', however, was hardly an accurate indication of widespread opinion of Farquhar's work in the 18th century. For example, not nearly so complimentary in its phrasing was another 'general' character of Farquhar before 1728 that was written in The Muses Mercury in May 1707, which has been attributed to John Oldmixon, editor of the paper: ls

David Erskine Baker, The Companion to the Playhouse: or An Historical Account of all the Dramatic Writers (and all their Works) that Have Appeared in Great Britain and Ireland from the Commencement of Our Theatrical Exhibitions, down to the Present Year 1764 (London, 1764), II, sig. M4r-M4v. 14 David Erskine Baker, Biographia Dramatica; or, A Companion to the Play-house ... Originally compiled to the Year 1764, by D. E. Baker, continued thence to 1782 by Isaac Reed, and Brought down to the End of Nov., 1811 ...by Stephen Jones (London, 1812), Vol. I, Part I, sig Q4 r -Q4 v . 18 R. Cumberland, Esq., ed., The British Drama, A Collection of the Most Esteemed Dramatic Productions with Biography of the Respective Authors; and a Critique on Each Play, by R. Cumberland, Esq. (London, 1817), IV, sig Br-Bv.

INTRODUCTION

17

"All that love comedy, will be sorry to hear of the death of Mr. Farquhar, whose two last plays, had something in them that was truly humorous and diverting. 'Tis true, the critics will not allow any part of them to be regular; but Mr. Farquhar had a genius for Comedy, of which one may say, that it was above rules than below them. His Conduct, tho' not artful, was surprizing: his Characters, tho' not great, were just: his Humour, tho' low, diverting: his Dialogue, tho' loose and incorrect, gay and agreeable: and his Wit, tho' not superabundant, pleasant: in a word, his plays have, in the tout ensemble, as the Painters phrase it, a certain air of novelty and mirth, which pleased the audience, every time they were represented; and such as love to laugh at the Theatre will probably miss him more than they now imagine."16

The balanced praise of this 'general character' seemed less enthusiastic than the praise of the 1728 'character'. Also, the praise was reserved for the last two plays in this 1707 character. For the most part, the two critics seemed to be treating of different phases of Farquhar's work; however, there were some points of agreement. Both agreed as to the success of Farquhar in the theatre, and both agreed to his offending the critics because of his failure to follow the unities, although both excused this fault in him. However, on other points, the two men differed: in plotting, where the 1728 editor found Farquhar contrived well, Oldmixon found him "not artful", but "surprizing"; in regard to characters, where the 1728 editor commends Farquhar for their "variety", Oldmixon found them "not great", but "just"; in regard to style, where the 1728 editor found it "pure and unaffected", Oldmixon found it "tho' loose and incorrect, gay and agreeable"; and in regard to wit, where the 1728 editor found it "natural and flowing", Oldmixon found it "tho' not superabundant, pleasant". Therefore, this 'general character' of Oldmixon did not agree with the widely circulated 'general character' of 1728, for Oldmixon reserved his praise for the last two plays, balanced his praise against the defects in Farquhar's plays, and made Farquhar even more "the poet of nature" - the poet with "a certain air of novelty and mirth" and less the artist. 1β

As quoted in Biographia Britannica, ΙΠ, 1898.

18

INTRODUCTION

Another 'general character' of Farquhar's plays occurred in Theophilus Cibber's Lives of the Poets alongside the 1728 'general character', and the whole thing was repeated, as we have said before, in The Companion to the Play-House, Biographia Dramatica, and The British Drama: He seems to have been a man of genius rather sprightly than great, rather flow'ry than solid; his comedies are diverting, because his characters are natural, and such as we frequently meet with; but he has used no art in drawing them, nor does there appear any force of thinking in his performances, or any deep penetration into nature; but rather a superficial view, pleasant enough to the eye, though capable of leaving no great impression on the mind. He drew his observations chiefly from those he conversed with, and has seldom given any additional heightening, or indelible marks to his characters; which was the peculiar excellence of Shakespeare, Johnson, and Congreve. Had he lived to have gained a more general knowledge of life, or had his circumstances not been straitened, and so prevented his mingling with persons of rank, we might have seen his plays embellished with more finish'd characters, and with a more polish'd dialogue. He had certainly a lively imagination, but then it was capable of no great compass; he had wit, but it was of so peculiar a sort, as not to gain ground upon consideration; and it is certainly true, that his comedies in general owe their success full as much to the player as to anything excellent in themselves.17

This 'general character' is even further removed from the praise of the 1728 editor than was Oldmixon's, and it is a little surprising to find them side by side in the account of Cibber and in the accounts of his followers. Farquhar's "sprightly fancy" (in the 1728 'character') and his "genius for comedy" (in Oldmixon's 'character') became in Cibber's 'character' "a genius rather sprightly than great, rather flow'ry than solid". Farquhar's characters, that the 1728 editor had commended for their "variety" and that John Oldmixon had termed "tho' not great, just", became in Cibber "natural", not artful, not heightened, not "fin»

Cibber, III, 136-137.

INTRODUCTION

19

ished", and owing "their success full as much to the player, as to anything excellent in themselves". Farquhar's wit, that the 1728 editor had found "natural and flowing" and Oldmixon had found "tho' not superabundant, pleasant", became in Cibber "of so peculiar a sort, as not to gain ground upon consideration". And the dialogue, that the 1728 editor had found "natural and flowing" and Oldmixon had found "tho' loose and incorrect, gay and agreeable", became in Cibber "unpolished". Cibber's explanation for Farquhar's faults was the low circumstances of Farquhar's life and Farquhar's untimely death. This explanation in itself became a kind of tradition, expressed notably by Oliver Goldsmith a few years after Cibber and by William Archer in the 20th century. Although of the three 'general characters' Cibber's was least complimentary to Farquhar, it probably came the closest to expressing how critics felt about Farquhar in the 18th century. For instance, his ideas were not unlike those expressed by Steele. In The Tatler, Number 19, May 24, 1709, Steele wrote of The Constant Couple: To-morrow will be acted a play, called, "The Trip to the Jubilee". This performance is the greatest instance that we can have of the irresistible force of proper action. The dialogue in itself has something too low to bear a criticism upon it: but Mr. Wilks enters into the part with so much skill, that the gallantry, the youth, and gaiety of a young man of plentiful fortune, is looked upon with as much indulgence on the stage, as in real life, without any of those intermixtures of wit and humour, which usually prepossesses us in favour of such characters in other plays.18

Here as in Cibber was the low dialogue, the absence of real wit, and the characters that depended more on the actor than on the author. These criticisms were old, however, even by Steele's time. For instance, the charge that Sir Harry Wildair owed more to the player than to the author had evidently been leveled dining the first performances of the play, for Farquhar remarked in the Preface to The Constant Couple: 18

The Tatler, ed. George A. Aitken (London, 1898), I, 136-7.

20

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Wilks's performance has set him so far above competition in the part of Wildair, that none can pretend to envy the Praise due to his merit. That he made the Part, will appear f r o m hence, that whenever the Stage has the misfortune to lose him, Sir Harry Wildair may go to the Jubilee. 19

And again, in his Preface to The Inconstant Farquhar generously acknowledged his debt to Wilks for Wilks's performance as Mirabel.20 Steele once again criticized Farquhar on the same grounds in The Tatler, Number 20, May 26, 1709: This evening was acted, "The Recruiting Officer", in which Mr. Estcourt's proper sense and observation is what supports the play. There is not the humour hit in Sergeant Kite; but is is admirably supplied by his action. If I have skill to judge, that man is an excellent actor; 21

As to the charge that Farquhar lacked wit, this, too, was an old charge, made early in Farquhar's career. Because John Oldmixon thought the success of The Constant Couple had led to the failure of one of his plays, he wrote an attack on Farquhar in a prologue, evidently charging Farquhar with want of wit, for Farquhar wrote A New Prologue to The Constant Couple - an answer to Oldmixon: To Starve by's Wit, is still the Poet's due; But, here are men, whose Wit, is Match'd by few; Their Wit both Starves Themselves, and others too. Our PLAYS are Farce, because our House is Cram'd; Their PLAYS all good: For what? - because theyr Damn'd Because we Pleasure you, you call us Tools: And 'cause you please your selves, they call you Fools. By their Good Nature, they are Wits, True Blew; And, Men of Breeding, by their Respects to you. 22

The idea that Farquhar was a writer of farce was several times expressed during the 18th century. This n a m e - s o scornful an »

20 21 22

Stonehill, I, 86. Stonehill, I, 222. Tatler, I, 169. Stonehill, II, 89.

INTRODUCTION

21

epithet at the time - was leveled against him by John Corye, another disgruntled playwright who had lost out because of the success of The Constant Couple, which he termed '"poor George's Jubilee farce'". 23 And the Critic in the satirical pamphlet A Comparison between the Two Stages (1702), now attributed to Charles Gildon, also branded it farce: "[I laughed] With Scorn, Contempt and derision; I would ha' done the same at the merry Tricks of a Monkey, or the Wit of a Jack-pudding, and think it the more entertaining Farce of the two."24 And Mr. Pope's opinion of Farquhar, as recorded by Spence, was that Farquhar was "a farce writer".25 Mr. Pope's more famous remark about Farquhar's "pert low Dialogue" appeared in 1737 in his Imitation of "The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace". However, Pope was not saying anything original here. Criticism of Farquhar's dialogue had been made already, as we have seen, by Steele in 1709 ("too low to bear a criticism upon it") and by Oldmixon in 1707 ("tho' loose and incorrect, gay and agreeable"). This criticism had been leveled even earlier, in 1704, in a verse satire The Trial of Skill: or A New Session of the Poets; Calculated for the Meridian of Parnassus, etc.: "Is it so then, said Farquhar? My matters are safe, By Saint Patrick, my business is done; For 'tis known, I have made Pit and Gallery laugh, Without anyone's help but my own. "My Jubilee Dicky, and airy Sir Harry Will vindicate what I have said; And none, but myself, has a title to carry The laurels away on my head. "By your leave, Brother Teague, reply'd Mac Flecknoe's ghost Our countrymen are better known; 23

As quoted in Connely, p. 100. A Comparison between the Two Stages: A Late Restoration Book of the Theatre, ed. Staring B. Wells, Princeton Univ. Studies in English, X X V I (Princeton, 1942), p. 32. 25 Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations, and Character of Books and Men ... arranged with notes by the late Edmund Malone (London, 1820), p. 51. 24

22

INTRODUCTION

The Beauties are borrow'd, Of which you thus boast, But the Faults, I dare swear, are your own. "Tho', the town may allow, what you'd have 'em all take For granted, with no one you joyn; Since none, but a man of your judgment, could make Such language, to such a design. "And I can't but applaud the resolve you have taken In the present employ which you chuse; For it's nobler in red, to make a campaign, Than to butcher an innocent Muse."2· In the third stanza quoted above can be seen another charge several times leveled at Farquhar and one of the nastiest charges that could be leveled against a writer at that time-that of plagiary. This charge was leveled at Farquhar in 1700, by Daniel Kendrick in a verse satire A New Session of the Poets, Occasion'd by the Death of Dryden: "Next Farquhar came, well hoping that the God Would, what was favour'd by the town, applaud. Then vainly reach'd him o'er that Jubilee, Which only in the title-page we see. Apollo told him, with a bended brow, That Dorimant was Wildair long ago. That it would much disgrace the throne of wit If there an Irish deputy should sit; And wonder'd why he'd longer here remain, Who in his native bogs might justly reign."27 The charge of plagiarism was not only made against The Constant Couple but also against The Inconstant as Sullen, one of the speakers in the dialogue in The Comparison between the Two Stages, commented on it: "I have not heard the name, but am told it's entirely Fletcher's."28 And in 1703, in a verse satire Religio Poetae: or a Satire on the Poets, he was again charged with plagiary in The Twin-Rivals: 26 27 28

As quoted in Biographia Britannica, III, 1844. As quoted in Connely, pp. 126-127. Comparison

between

the Two Stages, p. 92.

INTRODUCTION

23

"His fame he built on mighty D'Avenant's wit, And lately own'd a Play, that he ne'er writ."29

This discussion is perhaps enough to convince the reader that although the laudatory 'general character' of the 1728 edition was repeated at least eight times from 1728 to 1817, it was 'general' only in that it related to all of Farquhar's plays and not because it was generally held. But more important for our understanding of the present day criticism is our ability to see how this opinion was passed along apparently without much reflection by the biographers, for these biographers are to some extent responsible for preserving two traditions that have fairly well shackled Farquhar criticism to this day. The first of these is -

B. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL TRADITION (FARQUHAR IS THE HERO OF HIS PLAYS)

This tradition probably started with Farquhar himself, for in Act IV, Scene II, of Love and, a Bottle, he had Lyrick, the poet, say: " . . . So the Hero in Comedy is always the Poet's character." And to Lovewell's question "What's that?" he replied, "A compound of practical Rake, and speculative gentleman".30 However, in the dedication of The Inconstant to Richard Tighe, Farquhar gave as other sources for his portrait of the heroeshis talent and his observation of others: From the Part of Mirabel in this Play, and another Character in one of my former, people are willing to compliment my performance in drawing a gay, splendid young gentleman. My genius, I must confess, has a bent to that kind of description; and my Veneration for you, Sir, may pass for unquestionable, since in all these happy Accomplishments, you come so near to my darling Character, abating his Inconstancy.31

20

S1

As quoted in Biographia Stonehill, I, 51. Stonehill, I, 219.

Britannica,

III, 1896.

24

INTRODUCTION

Furthermore, as has been pointed out earlier, Farquhar twice acknowledged his debt to Wilks in the creation of the parts. Another bit of evidence in Farquhar's writings that later critics had to regard in this matter was the somewhat antithetical "Picture" that Farquhar drew of himself in Love and Business, which was also accepted by critics working in this tradition as fact: "I am often Melancholy."32 Working from the clew in Love and. a Bottle, a writer started in Farquhar's lifetime to link him with his heroes. In 1704 in Memoirs relating to Mr. Thomas Browne, this author wrote: . . And certainly Mr. Farquhar knew how necessary lewdness was to establish his reputation, when he exposed Roebuck in the first play he writ, for his own character.'" M This idea that Farquhar was his own hero in his plays was repeated by E. Curii in Life and Character of Mr. Farquhar, prefixed to The Stage Coach, 1718, iii: "His chief Characters are generally no more than Copies of himself in various Scenes of Life, and his Recruiting Officer sufficiently shews the Soldier and the Poet."34 In 1719, in Jacob's The Poetical Register: or, the Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets with an account of their Writings, the idea takes this shape: "His chief Characters are generally copies of himself, and his Humour, which is truly natural, makes all his Plays very entertaining.",5 According to Connely, this same idea was found once again in Sir James Ware, Works, edited by Walter Harris, 1746, III, 263.»· This idea was repeated in 1750 in Biographia Britannica, and the author scrupulously acknowledged Giles Jacob as the source for his information.87 In 1753, Theophilus Cibber, in The Lives of the Poets, perpetuated this idea, thus: "'It is thought that in all his heroes, he 32

Stonehill, Π, 316. As quoted in Biographia Britannica, III, p. 1895. 34 George Farquhar, The Stage Coach (London, 1718), iii. 35 Giles Jacob, The Poetical Register: or, the Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets with an Account of Their Writings (London, 1719), I, 98. 39 Connely, p. 321. 37 Biographia Britannica, III, 1895. 93

25

INTRODUCTION

generally sketched out his own character, of a young, gay, rakish spark, blessed with parts and abilities.'"88 Cibber quoted this remark but did not acknowledge the source. This same idea was repeated in 1764 in The Companion to the Playhouse (and in Biographia Dramatica in 1812): "As it has been generally imagined that in all his Heroes, he has intended to sketch out his own Character, it is reasonable to conjecture that his own Character must have born a strong resemblance to that of those Heroes; who are in general a Set of young, gay, rakish Sparks, guilty of some Wildnesses and Follies, but at the same Time blessed with Parts and Abilities, and adorned with Courage and Honour." 39 This statement certainly presented interesting reasoning. Since the heroes resembled the author's character, the author's character could be learned from his heroes. In 1800, the idea was again repeated in Charles Dibdin's A Complete History of the Stage: "Wilks, however, who knew his talents, advised him to write for the stage, and in return FARQUHAR made his friend the hero of his pieces, which, however, he is said to have drawn as portraits of himself, having got a commission in the army, and being a young man greatly esteemed by the gay world; young, volatile, and wild, but polished, sensible, and honourable."40 The idea was given its most important utterance by William Hazlitt in 1819 in Lectures on the English Comic Writers: He somewhere prides himself in having introduced on the stage the class of comic heroes here spoken of, which has since become a standard character, and which represents the warm-hearted, rattlebrained, thoughtless, high-spirited young fellow, who floats on the back of his misfortunes without repining, who forfeits appearances, but saves his honour; and he gives us to understand that it is his own, for it pervades his works generally, and is the moving spirit

38

Cibber, HI, 136.

39

Baker, Companion, II, sig M3r.

40

Charles Dibdin, A Complete

1800), IV, 281.

History

of the English

Stage

(London,

26

INTRODUCTION

that informs them. His comedies have on this account probably a greater appearance of truth and nature than almost any others.41 Hazlitt went back to the original source -Love and a Bottlefor his proof and did not depend on the hearsay information as the others had done. John Gait, in Lives of the Players (1831), recognized this matter as tradition but was inclined to accept it because of an early biographer: "Tradition has preserved an opinion, that Farquhar has, in his young, gay, and gallant characters, sketched himself; and it is not improbable he did so, for the same chronicler reports that he was wild, witty, and humoursome, blest with talent, and adorned with the highest feelings of honour and courage."42 Leigh Hunt seems to have been the first to question this tradition. He felt that Plume "could only have been the imaginary Farquhar", for Farquhar was really "an anxious married man" at the time of his writing The Recruiting Officer.*3 In 1882, H. A. Huntington felt that those heroes "far from being repetitions of himself, were the product of intellectual sympathy with traits which he did not possess".44 R. Garnett, in The Age of Dry den, in 1897, believed that although Farquhar seemed "to identify himself with his favorite character", yet "the inevitable conception of Farquhar... may be doubted".45 In 1898, H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon, editor of The Temple Dramatists edition of The Beaux' Stratagem, attacked the whole tradition: "Although Farquhar, like Goldsmith, undoubtedly drew his incidents and personages from his own daily associations, there is probably no more truth in these surmises than in the associations (repeatedly made, though denied in his preface to The Inconstant) that Farquhar depicts himself in his rollicking 41

William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Comic Writers (London, 1899), p. 112. 42 John Gait, Lives of the Players (London, 1886), I, 104. 45 Hunt, p. lxxiv. 44 Huntington, p. 407. 45 Richard Garnett, The Age of Dryden (London, 1897), p. 130.

INTRODUCTION

27

'men about town', Roebuck, Mirabel, Wildair, Plume, Archer." 4 · Like Hunt, in 1924, Bonamy Dobrée in Restoration Comedy pictured Farquhar as the opposite of his gay heroes-"as an original who projected his disappointments in l i f e - o r 'expectorated his grief', to use a phrase from his single ode - onto the stage in the form of light-hearted comedy".47 Although there were these few who flew in the face of this tradition, still many since Hunt's time accepted it, some cautiously and others uncautiously. Charles Cowden Clarke, writing "On the Comic Writers of England" for the Gentleman's Magazine in 1872, carefully expressed the belief that "the better characters in his plays have been reflexes of his own nature".48 Not so cautiously, Otto Hallbauer in 1880 believed Farquhar's heroes were improved Farquhars: The poet is most careful in picturing his lightminded heroes; Roebuck, Wildair, Plume, are part of his own self, in them he lives his reckless life over again. He endows them, therefore, with every taking quality; Good hearted fellows at the bottom, they are wanton sensualists, but without cynical self-complacency; they would on no account, wrong a person, and relish no enjoyment by great exertions.49

And equally uncautious, William Winter in Old Shrines and Ivy (1892) saw this matter of Farquhar as his own hero not as tradition but fact: "It was the habit of this author to sketch himself in his wild - gallant characters." 50 In 1910, the author of the unsigned article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on Farquhar seemed to believe that Farquhar was his own hero, even though this idea contradicted the "Picture": 46

H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon, ed., The Beaux' Stratagem, by George Farquhar, Temple Dramatists ed. (London, 1914), p. lx. 47 Bonamy Dobrée, Restoration Comedy, 1660-1720 (Oxford, 1924), pp. 162-163. 48 Charles Cowden Clarke, "On the Comic Writers of England", Gentleman's Magazine, N . S. VIII (1872), 59. 49 Otto Hallbauer, The Life and Works of George Farquhar (Holzminden, 1880), p. 16. 50 William Winter, Old Shrines and Ivy (New York, 1892), p. 253.

28

INTRODUCTION

The spontaneity and verve with which his adventurous heroes are drawn have suggested that in his favorite type he was drawing himself. His own disposition seems to have been most lovable, and he was apparently a much gayer person than the reader might be led to suppose from the "Portrait of Himself' quoted by Leigh Hunt.51 To Charles Whibley, in the Cambridge History (1912), Farquhar was, as Willard Connely was to call him in 1949, "a diarist of the drama": A man in whom there was no disguise, he unpacked his heart upon paper. Whatever he knew and saw, all the manifold experiments of his life, he put unrestrainedly into his comedies. Ireland, the recruiting officer, the disbanded soldier, love, the bottle, and the road, these he handles with freedom and joyousness of one who knew them well.52 In 1925, Henry Ten Eyck Perry in The Comic Spirit in Restorration Drama confided: "Incidentally they [Farquhar's heroes] are about all modelled on the temperamental young Irishman who created them."53 Malcolm Elwin, on the other hand, recognized this matter as tradition and accepted it very cautiously: . . . enthusiastic historians have discovered Farquhar's portrait of himself also in Sir Harry Wildair, in young Mirabel, and in Captain Plume. It is fair to say that he imported autobiographical addenda to his characters as much as most writers, and more, perhaps, than many, but it is safer to suppose that such material is widely diffused through his work, as is the case of Henry Seton Merriman, who always wrote with a personal knowledge of his subjects but can scarely be said to have ever sketched a definite picture of himself.54 Stonehill m 1930 seemed to accept completely the whole idea of Farquhar as his own hero. In commenting on the key passage Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. "Farquhar, George". Charles Whibley, "The Restoration Drama II", Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1912), VIII, 192. 5 ' Henry Ten Eyck Perry, The Comic Spirit in Restoration Drama; 61

52

Encyclopedia

Studies

in the Comedy

of Etherege,

Wycherley,

Farquhar (New Haven, 1925), pp. 138-9. 54 Elwin, p. 186.

Congreve,

Vanbrugh,

and

INTRODUCTION

29

in Love and a Bottle, he wrote: "This is doubtless true to a large extent of Roebuck in Love and. a Bottle, and of Sir Harry Wildair in The Constant Couple. Farquhar was indeed a compound of these characters and of the picture of himself which he gives in his correspondence."5® Further evidence of Stonehill's complete acceptance of the tradition is found earlier in his Preface, when he remarks: Critics agree that Roebuck to some extent portrays Farquhar's own conception of himself; they also agree that Farquhar was not followed from Ireland by any woman. I am not so sure on this question. The theme of Trudge is too well known to require comment and may well be fictitious, but the same motif occurs in The Adventures of Covent Garden, which tale I am inclined to believe not entirely so.56 However, it was for Connely in 1949 to follows this tradition out to the very end. In the Preface to his biography he discussed this tradition: In attempting a biography of so durable a contributor to English dramatic literature, I have tried not to press too far the received opinion that Farquhar above all his contemporaries of the theatre was an autobiographical author. But there is no disputing that into at least one character in each of his plays he put the character of himself, "the warm-hearted, rattle-brained, thoughtless, high-spirited young fellow". Hazlitt goes on, "There is internal evidence that this sort of character is his own, for it pervades his works generally, and is the moving spirit that informs them". Upon this point critics both before and after Hazlitt are agreed.57 On this rather flimsy evidence, as seen by our survey, Connely threw caution to the wind and proceeded to discover Farquhar in Roebuck and Lyrick in Love and a Bottle, in Sir Harry Wildair in The Constant Couple and Sir Harry Wildair, in Mirabel in The Inconstant, in Trueman in The Twin-Rivals, in Captain Basil in The Stage Coach, in Captain Plume in The Recruiting Officer, and in Aimwell and Archer in The Beaux' Stratagem. Certainly Connely left no room for a future writer pursuing this 53 511

«

Stonehill, I, xvi. Stonehill, I, xiv. Connely, pp. 9-10.

30

INTRODUCTION

tradition. Nevertheless, in 1953, Frederick S. Boas, in An Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Drama 1700-1780, followed Connely in this tradition and found Farquhar in Roebuck in Love and a Bottle ("The chief character, George Roebuck, 'an Irish gentleman, of a wild roving temper', modelled on Farquhar himself ..."), in Lyrick in Love and a Bottle ( " . . . Lyrick, the poet, in whom Farquhar personifies another aspect of himself."),68 and Captain Plume in The Recruiting Officer ( " . . . Captain Plume, modelled on Farquhar himself.. .").6i

C. THE COMPARISON TRADITION

But while some hunted for Farquhar in his plays, others (and also some of those hunting for Farquhar) were busy comparing Farquhar with the Restoration playwrights. This comparison has taken various forms, the earliest of which was: 1. The Moral Comparison (Farquhar's plays are more moral than those of other Restoration playwrights.) This tradition probably started, as the autobiographical tradition, with Farquhar himself. The play Love and a Bottle perhaps offended some of the audience, particularly the ladies, for Farquhar on December 20 (?), 1698, sent a copy of the play to Mrs. Cockburn with a note which read in part: " . . . As an argument of its innocence, I send it to stand its tryal before one of the fairest of her sex and the best judge."60 The tradition really got into full swing, however, with the Preface to Farquhar's second play The Constant Couple in which he said: "I have not displeas'd the Ladies, nor offended the Clergy; both which are now pleas'd to say, that a comedy

58

Frederick S. Boas, An Introduction 1700-1780 (Oxford, 1953), p. 33. 59 Boas, p. 51. Stonehill, II, 221.

to Eighteenth-Century

Drama

INTRODUCTION

31

may be diverting without Smut and Profaneness."61 The author of the Prologue, "a Friend", reiterated this idea: The ladies safe may smile: for here's no Slander, No Smut, no lewd-tongue'd Beau, no double Entendre. 'Tis true he has a Spark just come from France, But then so far from Beau - Why he talks Sense! Like Coin oft carry'd out, but seldom brought from thence.·2 These sentiments were repeated by Mrs. Centlivre in a poetic epistle, "Epistle XL. To Mr. Farquhar upon his Comedy Call'd A Trip to the Jubilee", published in 1701 in Letters of Wit, Politics, and Morality, by Cardinal Bentivoglio: Sir, Amongst the many friends your Wit has made, Permit my humble Tribute may be paid; My Female Genius is too weakly fraught With learn'd Expressions to adorn my Thought. My Muse too blush'd, when she this task began, To think that she must Compliment a Man. She paus'd a while - At last she bid me say, She lik'd the Man, and I admir'd the Play. For since the learned Collier first essay'd To teach Religion to the Rhiming Trade, The Comick Muse in Tragick posture sat, And seem'd to mourn the Downfall of her State; Her eldest Sons she often did implore That they her ancient Credit would restore. Strait they essay'd, but quickly to their cost: They found that all their industry was lost. For since the Double Entendre was forbid, They could not get a Clap for what they did. At last Thalia call'd her youngest Son, The graceful and the best beloved one: My Son, said she, I have observ'd Thee well, Thou doest already all my Sons excell; Thy Spring does promise a large harvest crop, And Thou alone must keep my Glory up. Go, something Write, my Son, that may atone Thy Brother's Faults, and make thy virtues known. I'll teach Thee Language in a pleasant stile: 81

•2

Stonehill, I, 86. Stonehill, I, 87.

32

INTRODUCTION

Which, without Smut, can make an audience smile. Let fall no words that may offend the Fair; Observe Decorums, dress they Thoughts with Air; Go - lay the Plot, which Virtue shall adorn; Thus spoke the Muse; and thus dids't Thou perform Thy Constant Couple does our Fame return, And shews our Sex can love when yours esteem, And Wild-Air's Character does plainly shew, A man of sense may dress and be a Beau. In Vizor many may their picture find; A pious Out-side, but a poisonous Mind. Religious Hypocrites thou'st open laid, Those holy Cheats by which our Isle is sway'd. Oh! mayst thou Uve! And Dryden's Place supply, So long till thy best Friends shall bid thee die; Could I from bounteous Heav'n one wish obtain, I'd make thy person lasting as thy Fame. 88 This lavish praise, plainly prejudiced by friendship, was the only favorable criticism of Farquhar's work published during his lifetime that we have as far as I can discover. Although the ladies, if Mrs. Centlivre was indicative, were pleased with the cleanness of Farquhar's plays, the Collierists were not. In 1704, in A Representation of the Impurity and Immorality of the English Stage, With Reasons for putting a Stop thereto: and some Questions Addresst to Those who frequent the Play-Houses, four instances of profanity from The Inconstant were cited.«4 And in 1706, in a pamphlet entitled The Evil and Danger of Stage Plays: Shewing Their Natural Tendency to Destroy Religion and introduce a General Corruption of Manners in Almost Two Thousand Instances taken from the Plays of the two last years, against all the Methods lately used for their Reformation, Arthur Bedford, "Μ. Α., Chaplain to his Grace Wriothesly Duke of Bedford; and the Vicar of Temple in the City of Bristol", criticized The Stage Coach and The Recruiting Officer, which had appeared in the "two last years". The Stage Coach was instanced in the notes a number of times for «

Stonehill, II, 261-2. Sister Mary Rose Anthony, The Jeremy Collier Stage Controversy, 1698-1726 (Milwaukee, 1937), pp. 194-196. M

INTRODUCTION

33

swearing and blasphemy, for cursing, for burlesquing the Scriptures, for encouraging vice, and for ridiculing reformation.·5 The Recruiting Officer, which was published too late for the good chaplain to go through to find cases of profaneness and immorality and cite them in the notes earlier in the book, came in for extended attack later in the body of the book because it abused superiors. This harangue read in part: The French being beaten at Hockstead and Ramellies, the Siege of Barcelona being raised in Spain, and our Generals gaining the Love of that Nation, by a more prudent Behaviour in a second Expedition, there was no Way to oblige the Common Enemy, and prevent our farther Success, except by hindering the Raising of Recruits for the Army. Accordingly, there was lately published a Comedy call'd The Recruiting Officer, to render this Employment as odious as possible. This was acted in London by some who stile themselves Her Majesties Servants, and also in Bristol, whilst others were beating up for Volunteers. Here one Captain is represented as a notorious Lyar, another as a Drunkard, one intreagues with Women, another is scandalously guilty of debauching them; and tho' the Serjeant was married to five Women before, yet the Captain persuades him to marry another, as a Cloak for such Roguery, to make his five Wives half a Dozen, and to cheat the Queen, by entering a child born the Day before into the Muster-Roll, and after all he stiles these Debaucheries an Air of Freedom, which People mistake for Lewdness, as they mistake Formality in others for Religion, and then proceeds in commending his own Practice, and exposing the other. In this Play the Officers are represented as quarrelsome, but cowards. The Sergeant makes the Mob drunk to list them, gives two of these two Broad Pieces of Gold, for Pictures, and finding the Money upon them, pretends that they are listed: at another time he is ready to swear any thing for the good of the Service; and also persuades Men to list in the Disguise of a Conjurer, with most profane Language in Commendation of the Devil; and all this to make good the saying of Virgil inserted in the Title Page, Captiq; dolis, donisq; coacti. In this Play the officers confess, that they greatly abuse the new listed Soldiers; Debauchery of the Country Wenches is represented as a main Part of the Service; all the private centinels are guilty of stealing Horses, Sheep and Fowls, and the Captain desires, that he may have but one honest man in the company for the Novelty's 65

Arthur Bedford, Evil & Danger of Stage Plays, Shewing Their Natural Tendency to Destroy Religion & Introduce a General Corruption of Manners... (Bristol, 1706), pp. 36,41, 45, 60, 66, 69, 81, 90, 133, 185.

34

INTRODUCTION

sake. After this the Justices of the Peace are made the Jest of the Stage, for discharging their Duty in listing of Soldiers, and the constable hath a Lash into the Bargain, that no one serves his country on this Occasion, may escape the Play-house censure.86 And so the diatribe went on and on, and Bedford added one more class to the list begun by Jeremy Collier of people who could not be treated satirically in the drama. But more important to this discussion, neither of these two Collierists found Farquhar's plays morally superior to those of his contemporaries; however, at the midcentury the idea that Farquhar was morally superior was again given utterance. In 1750, in the Biographia Britannica, the author, in commenting on the passage in Memoirs relating to the late Mr. Thomas Browne concerning the immorality of Roebuck, said: And yet his writings are not so disagreeable in this respect, or curruptingly loose as several of some other poets here mentioned; his genteel gallants and flighty rakes have such an airy volatile manner of carrying off any liberties in their ludicrous or jocular discourse, that they are not so deeply affecting, nor leave such a pernicious impression upon the imagination, as other figures of the like kind, more strongly stampt, by the more indelicate and heavier hands, have an untoward faculty of doing.67 In 1753, Theophilus Cibber, quoted from an unknown source the same idea in almost similar words: "'His works are loose, tho' not so grossly libertine, as some other wits of his time, and leave not so pernicious impressions on the imagination as the other figures of the like kind more strongly stampt by indelicate and heavier hands.'"* 8 As we have said before, this remark also appeared in a Companion to the Playhouse (1764), Biographia Dramatica (1812), and The British Drama (1817). When in 1808, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, delivered his Course of Lectures in Dramatic Art and Literature in Vienna, he compared the relative purity of the Restoration and Queen Anne playwrights with the following results: «« 87

«8

Bedford, pp. 149-152. Biographia Britannica, Cibber, III, 136.

III, 1895.

INTRODUCTION

35

Under Queen Anne manners became again more decorous: and this lïiay easily be traced in the comedies: in the series of English comic poets, Wycherley, Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, Steele, Cibber, etc., we may perceive something like a gradation from the most unblushing indecency to a tolerable degree of modesty. However, the example of the predecessors had more than a due influence on the successors.88 A little later Schlegel said by way of comparison on other grounds: "Farquhar's plots seem to me to be the most ingenious of all."" In 1823, Charles Lamb in his essay "On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century" pointed out the fact that his age found Farquhar, the Restoration dramatist, too immoral: The artificial comedy, or Comedy of Manners, is quite extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquhar show their heads once in seven years only, to be exploded and put down instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is it for a few wild speeches, an occasional license of dialogue? I think not altogether. The business of their dramatic characters will not stand the moral test. We screw everything up to that.71 Many writers of the 19th century were to apply the moral test to Farquhar only to explode him and put him down as Lamb predicted.74 However, for many this moral comparison took a M

August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Lectures of Dramatic Art and Literature, trans. John Black, 2d ed. rev. A. J. W. Morrison (London, 1894), p. 483. 70 Schlegel, p. 484. 71 Charles Lamb, "On Artifical Comedy of the Last Century", The Essays of Elia (New York, 1896), pp. 192-193. 78 In 1808, Mrs. Inchbald, in her collection of plays British Theatre, looked back from the vantage point of her moral age and found Farquhar's plays very indecent. For example, she wrote: "Farquhar, abashed in exhibiting his person upon the stage, sent boldly thither his most indecorous thoughts, and was rewarded for his audacity" (Mrs. Elizabeth (Simpson) Inchbald ed., British Theatre; or, A Collection of Plays, Which Are Acted at the Theatres Royal Drury Lane, Covent Garden, & Haymarket; Printed under the Authority of Managers from the Prompt Books with Biographical and Critical Remarks by Mrs. Inchbald (London, 1808), VIII, 3-4). And in 1817, that other collector of old plays, R. Cumberland, Esquire,

36

INTRODUCTION

different pattern after 1840 because of its being merged with another tradition - another kind of comparison of Farquhar with the Restoration Dramatists started by Oliver Goldsmith in 1758: 2. The Aesthetic Comparison (Wycherley: satire; Congreve: wit; Vanbrugh: humor; Farquhar:

nature)

In the Literary Magazine for January 1758, Goldsmith drew up a Poetical Scale by which he judged some twenty-nine authors from Chaucer through Thomson in the following categories"Genius", "Judgment", "Learning", and "Versification" on the basis of twenty points. He defined these terms thus:

stepped out from behind Baker's back to reveal his true feelings about Farquhar's purity: "Farquhar, though he had the power, had probably little inclination to rise superior to the prevailing taste of his time and his works are tainted with profaneness and impurities which convey as base an idea of the audience that could tolerate, as of the author that could produce them. This is his most flagrant error, compared to which all others are venial" (Cumberland, XIV, vi). John Gait, in 1831, on the other hand, felt Farquhar a man of genius, but he saw no moral improvement in his works over those of the others of his age: "He was one of those men of genius, who deserve the epithet of bright, rather than splendid. In the choice of his subjects, the sprightliness of his dialogue, and the life of his characters, his contemporaries appeared, by their reception of his works, to have thought him highly estimable, but posterity objects to this licentiousness of some of his scenes, a fault he inherited from the tastes of his age; still the reader that considers his youth, talents, and misfortunes, will sigh over the memory of one who has extended the scope of jocond pleasures" (Galt, I, 106). Hugh Blair in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres in 1760 found aesthetic difference between Farquhar's work and Congreve's, but morally he found no difference: "Farquhar is a light and gay writer; less correct and less sparkling than Congreve; but he has more ease; and perhaps fully as great a share of the vis comica. The two best, and least exceptionable of his plays, are The Recruiting Officer' and 'The Beaux' Stratagem'. I say, the least exceptionable; for, in general, the tendency of both Congreve and Farquhar's plays is immoral. Throughout them all, the rake, the loose intrigue, and the life of licentiousness, are the objects continually held up to view; as if the assemblies of a great and polished nation could be amused with none but vicious objects. The indelicacy of these writers, in the female characters which they introduce, is particularly remarkable. Nothing can be more awkward than their representations of a woman of virtue and honour. Indeed, there are hardly any female char-

INTRODUCTION

37

By Genius is meant those excellencies that no study or art can communicate - such as elevation, expression, description, wit, humour, passion, etc. Judgment implies a preserving that probalility in conducting or disposing a composition that reconciles it to credibility and the appearance of truth, and such as is best suited to effect thé purpose aimed at. By learning is not meant learning in an academical or scholastic sense, but that species of it which can best qualify a poet to excel in the subject he attempts. Versification is not only that harmony of numbers which renders a composition, whether in rhyme or blank verse, agreeable to the ear, but a just connection between the expression and the sentiment, resulting entirely from the energy of the latter, and so happily adapted that they seem created for that very purpose, and not to be altered but for the worse.73

acters in their plays except two: women of loose principles; or, when virtuous character is attempted to be drawn, women of affected manners" (Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres (Philadelphia, 1852), p. 542). However, in 1859, S. Austin Allibone in Allibone's Dictionary of Authors saw Farquhar as the corrupter of his age: "His friend Wilks, the famous actor, persuaded him to turn author; and unfortunately for the world, a lieutenant's commission, conferred upon him by Lord Orrery, enabled him to corrupt the age by his licentious plays, instead of being obliged to get his living by some honest employment" (Samuel Austin Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature & American Authors: Living & Deceased from the Earliest Accounts to the Latter Half of the 19th Century (Philadelphia, 1874-99), I, 580). And in 1863-4, Taine in his Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise could note no difference in morals between Farquhar and Congreve and Vanbrugh: "Four principal writers established this comedy - Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar; the first gross, and in the first irruption of vice; the others more sedate, possessing more a taste for urbanity than debauchery; yet all men of the world, and priding themselves on their good breeding; on passing their days at court or in fine company, on having the tastes and bearing of gentlemen" (Hippolyte A. Taine, History of English Literature, trans. U. van Laun (London, 1899) I, 504). William Winter found Farquhar's plays too licentious for 1892 theater audiences: "That piece The Inconstant, like all his works, has to be cut and altered a little, in order that it may be represented, for he did not scruple sometimes to write in a licentious vein and to use expressions which in these days would offend the audience" (Winter, p. 255). 73 Oliver Goldsmith, The Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. J. M. W. Gibbs (London, 1902), IV, 418-419.

38

INTRODUCTION

He rated Congreve, Vanbrugh, Steele, and Farquhar thus.74 Congreve Vanbrugh Steele Farquhar

Genius 15 14 10 15

Judgment 16 15 15 16

Learning 14 14 13 10

Versification 14 10 10 10

In the "Sequel to the Poetical Balance, Being Miscellaneous thoughts on English Poets" in the Literary Magazine for February 1758, he compared Farquhar with the other three: Farquhar had a much truer comic genius than any of his contemporaries, but it was confined by his situation in life. With the same advantages that Vanbrugh, Congreve, and Steele had, he could have written better than any of them; and there is an originality in his Sir Harry Wildair that none of his contemporaries have come up to in comedy.75 In the History of England (1764) he again made the comparison of the works of Congreve and Vanbrugh and Farquhar: William Congreve deserves also particular notice: his comedies, some of which were but cooly received upon their first appearance, seemed to mend upon repetition; and he is, at present, justly allowed the foremost in that species of dramatic poesy: his wit is ever just and brilliant; his sentiments new and lively; and his elegance equal to his regularity. Next him Vanbrugh is placed, whose humour seems more natural, and characters more new; but he owes too many obligations to the French entirely to pass for an original; and his total disregard of decency, in a great measure, impairs his merit. Farquhar is still more lively, and, perhaps, more entertaining than either: his pieces continue the favourite performances of the stage, and bear frequent repetition without satiety; but he often mistakes pertness for wit, and seldom strikes his characters with proper force or originality. However, he died very young; and it is very remarkable, that he continued to improve as he grew older; his last play entitled "The Beaux' Stratagem", being the best of his productions.76 While perhaps starting a new tradition of Farquhar criticism, Goldsmith seemed to be carrying on three old ones also: Farquhar's wit was pert (best expressed by Pope in 1737); his char74 75 75

Goldsmith, IV, 418. Goldsmith, IV, 428. Goldsmith, V, 345.

INTRODUCTION

39

acters did not strike with proper force (best expressed by Steele in 1709); and he died young and might have improved with age (Theophilus Cibber in 1755). Charles Dibdin, in A Complete History of the Stage (1800), in a chapter on Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar is inevitably drawn into a comparison of the three: "CONGREVE went for wit, VANBRUGH for humor, and FARQUHAR for nature, not that there was an exclusiveness of nature from either of the others, but CONGREVE'S nature was fine, elegant, distant, and self important, you admired but had no inclination to approach; VANBRUGH'S nature, which was gay, thoughtless, extravagant, and unworthy, you laughed at but could not approve; but the nature of FARQUHAR, which you saw every day in life, and which rationally made up the most laudable of your relaxations, you naturally felt and cherished."77 That Congreve stood for "wit" and that Vanbrugh stood for "humour" Dibdin and Goldsmith were agreed upon. The opinion that Farquhar represented "nature", although not before expressed quite in this way, seems to me to be in accord with 18th century thought about Farquhar. He was, as we have seen, thought not to be an artist, but a man of talents who depicted himself in his plays or drew his characters from nature: Dibdin also agreed with Goldsmith in regard to Farquhar's untimely death and unfortunate circumstances: "Thus his comedies always give rational pleasure, but seldom excite strong admiration; and there can be no doubt that if he had lived as independently as CONGREVE and VANBRUGH, and had not been cut off prematurely, he would have given more original proofs of his talents as a complete dramatic writer than either of those authors; since in what he has left the management is more judicious, the nature more faithful, and the faults more venial."78 The next comparison, and the most famous one, was that of Hazlitt (1819) in Lectures on the English Comic Writers: "Of the four writers here classed together, we should perhaps have courted Congreve's acquaintance most, for his wit and the ele" 78

Dibdin, IV, 282. Dibdin, IV, 287-8.

40

INTRODUCTION

gance of his manners; Wycherley's, for his sense and observation on human nature; Vanbrugh's, for his power of farcial description and telling a story; Farquhar's, for the pleasure of his society, and the love of good fellowship."79 Again from the comparison, and from the rest of the essay, Farquhar emerged as the poet of nature. However, more important for this tradition of comparison, was this passage that came a little later in the essay: We may date the decline of English comedy from the time of Farquhar. For this several causes might be assigned in the political and moral changes of the times; but among other minor ones, Jeremy Collier, in his view of the English Stage, frightened the poets, and did all he could to spoil the stage, by pretending to reform it: that is, by making it an echo of the pulpit, instead of a reflection of the manners of the world.80

It was this passage that was to be taken up by Schmid and Palmer and others and to become the basis for much discussion of Farquhar's place in English comedy. In 1832, John Genest in Some Account of the English Stage made a comparison, a little different from the traditional one, and therefore interesting, but also interesting because of Genest's experiences: "Farquhar wrote 7 plays and one Farce-he may be fairly considered as our best writer of Comedy, next to Shakespeare and Congreve - all his plays are good - the Beaux' Stratagem, Recruiting Officer and Inconstant are excellent - his death is the more to be regretted as his last play is the best." 81 In 1840, Leigh Hunt made the comparison of the four comic writers whose works he had edited: "Of the four dramatists of whom we have thus endeavoured to give some account, it appears to us that Wycherley was the most reflective for reflection's sake, the most terse with simplicity in his style, the most original in departing from the comedy in vogue, and adding morals to manners, and least so with regard to plot and character: that n M 81

Hazlitt, p. 112. Hazlitt, p. 118. John Genest, Some Account

of the English

tion in 1660-1830 ... (Bath, 1832), II, 366.

Stage from

the

Restora-

INTRODUCTION

41

Congreve was the wittiest, most scholarly, most highly bred, the most elaborate in his plots and language, and the most pungent but least natural in his characters, and that he had the least heart: that Vanbrugh was the readiest and the most straightforward, the least superfluous, the least self-reverential, mistrusting, or morbid, and therefore, with more pardon, the least scrupulous, - caring for nothing but truth (as far as he saw it) and a strong effect: and that Farquhar had the highest animal spirits, with fits of the deepest sympathy, the greatest wish to please rather than to strike, the most agreeable diversity of character, the best instinct in avoiding revolting extravagance of the time, and the happiest invention in plot and situation; and, therefore, is to be pronounced, upon the whole, the truest dramatic genius, and the most likely to be of lasting popularity; as indeed he has hitherto been."82 Hunt's analysis was a little more detailed, and yet he seemed to be drawing conclusions that were in the tradition. Farquhar's "nature", his mercy, his decency, his skill in providing characters, plot, and situation, his popularity all of these were in the tradition of Farquhar criticism. However, the new touch was Farquhar's "deepest sympathy", and this merged the aesthetic comparison with the moral comparison. But before taking up this 'new' tradition, let us look at one more purely aesthetic comparison. The anonymous reviewer of Leigh Hunt's edition in The Athenaeum for January 2, 1841, also felt called upon to make his own comparison: "Here we have the proverbial 'satire and strength' of Manly Wycherley, the ceaseless pleasantry and exuberance of Congreve, Vanbrugh's never-failing stock of wit, with Farquhar's native humour and pert low dialogue."83 The word "proverbial" suggested how stock these comparisons of the four playwrights were getting to be; however, surely the reviewer in his own exuberance mixed up Vanbrugh and Congreve in the formula. The reviewer further along in his article stated his preference for Farquhar: 82

Hunt, pp. lxxviii-lxxix. "The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, ed. Leigh Hunt" (anon, rev.), The Athenaeum (January 2, 1841), p. 7.

85

42

INTRODUCTION

Of the four authors here bound together, Farquhar is Mr. Hunt's favorite, and we agree with him, though we love Vanbrugh in his double capacity of author and architect. There is more genuine vivacity about Farquhar, more the result of genius, than the wick and oil that saturates the writing of the others, — Congreve especially. One is unwilling to try him by any standard, or to assign the why we like him: it is enough to love, for where the heart is, there will the mind be also. His life, too, is interesting; so unlike the wild career of Wycherley, or the affected gentility of Congreve; their deaths too so different.84

This candid confession of the reviewer pointed out a fallacy with this method; if one preferred Farquhar to the other three (as many 19th century critics did), he would rationalize on Farquhar's virtues and shortcomings to the detriment of the other three, and if he preferred Congreve, as many 20th century critics do, he would rationalize on Congreve's virtues and shortcomings to the detriment of the other three. 3. The Moral-Aesthetic a.

Comparison

The followers of Hunt (or those who believe Farquhar is superior to Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh morally and aesthetically)

As has been seen, Leigh Hunt in 1840 could not find Farquhar simon pure in his moral outlook, and yet when compared with Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh, Farquhar had "fits of deepest human sympathy". Hunt derived his idea of Farquhar's humaneness from the way in which Farquhar depicted his rakes and the best of his ladies. For instance, Sylvia and Mrs. Sullen, "by the force of their sympathy with whatsoever is kind and just", were linked with Shakespeare's heroines, Desdemona and Imogen.85 But it was in the picture of his rakes that Farquhar was most typically humane: Farquhar's as well as Congreve's rakes, sometimes talk cruelly; but it is either toward imposture and trickery, or in the mere sting of the gusto of the will. They mean it to the letter as little as anybody; 84 85

Athenaeum, p. 8. Hunt, pp. lxxx-lxxxi.

INTRODUCTION

43

and we have seen that Farquhar himself died of anxiety for his family. There may have been a vanity in it, in his first productions; and very painful and startling it always sounds: but the very love of pleasure, in a heart like his, ended in making him humane, giving him a strong sense of the right of pleasure in others; and it was doubtless out of a sense of the desire and feasibility of this for all the world, and a suspicion of the world's paining itself overmuch and not wisely, that he talked on some subjects as coarsely as he did, and not out of any indifference to the happiness and real virtues of mankind. Read him, and his still freer spoken brethren, in the liberal spirit of that understanding, and you are safe in proportion to the goodness and cheerfulness of your own heart.86

This statement is one of the most important in Farquhar criticism for writers ever since have kept finding new evidence of Farquhar's humaneness. Thackeray and Edward Fitzgerald evidently saw something far different in Farquhar, for Thackeray wrote Fitzgerald in October, 1841: "I'm quite of your opinion about Farquhar; he's the only fellow amongst them. He is something more than a mere comic tradesman: and has a grand drunken diabolical fire in him!" 87 This brief comment raises a number of unanswerable questions. What was Fitzgerald's opinion of Farquhar? Whom was he comparing with Farquhar? Perhaps he could have been comparing Farquhar with Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh because of the then newly published Hunt edition. Then what was the "grand drunken diabolical fire" that Thackeray and Fitzgerald discovered in Farquhar? No one before or after them seems to have discovered such a trait in him. Herman Hettner in his Geschichte der englischen Literatur, first published in 1855, found in Farquhar a change in morals: "Es ist lehrreich, zu sehen, wie unablässig in Farquhar die Regungen der beginnende Sittenverbesserung mit den hergebrachten Schlüpfrigkeiten ringen: doch gewinnt auch in ihm noch das

8e

Hunt, pp. lxxix-lxxx. William Makepeace Thackeray, The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray (Cambridge, Mass; 1945), II, 38.

87

44

INTRODUCTION

Schlechte die Oberhand."88 But Farquhar was not strong enough to make a stand against the immorality of his time: "Farquhar war nicht stark genug, auf die blendenden Reize augenblicklichen Erfolgs zu verzichten. So wahr ist es, dass ein Volk erst selbst besser werden muss, when es eine bessere Dichtung haben will."8» In 1872, Charles Cowden Clarke summed up his feelings concerning the difference in moral tone of Farquhar from that of other Restoration playwrights thus: "In short, he was a delightful writer, and one to whom I should sooner recur for relaxation and entertainment - and without aftercloying and disgust-than any of the school of which he may be said to be the last."90 Like Hunt, Clarke viewed Farquhar as the last of a school. Like Hunt, Clarke saw the moral difference in Farquhar reflected in the humaneness of Farquhar's rakes and of Farquhar himself: I have spoken of the improvement with regard to the tone of gallantry in this play [The Beaux' Stratagem]·, I mean, in the parties having some consideration for others at the time they are making their own arrangements. This, the only panacea for keeping society really moral and healthy, was Farquhar's recipe for his own rule of conduct. In a candid portrait of himself, which he sent to a lady, he concludes: "The greatest proof of my affection that a lady may expect, is this: I would run any hazard to make us both happy; but would not, for any transitory pleasure, make either of us miserable."91

In 1880 Otto Hallbauer viewed Farquhar as a transitional playwright whose plays continued the immorality of the old age coupled with the morality of the new age: The plays of Vanbrugh and Farquhar fill up the interval between the first appearance of Cibber (1695) and that of Steele (1702), and bear the character of a transition time. Both poets cling with their inmost souls to the wanton licentiousness of the decaying era, but the dawn of a new epoch already breaks in upon the last wild evolutions of the riotous spirit. Blackmore's admonitions remodelled by 89

Hermann Hettner, Geschichte (Braunschweig, 1913), I, 115. 89 Hettner, I, 116. 90 Clarke, p. 60. 81 Clarke, p. 58.

der englischen

Literatur

1660-1770

INTRODUCTION

45

Collier into an invective pamphlet, rouse the public from their intoxication; a society for the reformation of manners sets up, even informers are placed in the pit to note down the words spoken, and both, the ladies and clergy, "are now pleased to say a comedy may be diverting without smut and profaneness". This change in the public mind is admirably evinced in Farquhar's comedies which present an odd medley of the representatives of two eras.92

Later in the essay, Hallbauer again brought out this conflict of moral principles that he saw in Farquhar's plays: "F's plays are like a battlefield in which the strife of two opposite principles raged on without a decisive victory of either party, for vice adorned with the most attractive qualities attains the goal, but virtue finally charms it into submission. " M As can be seen by this last statement, Hallbauer did not see a new humaneness in the rakes as Hunt had, but he did see the ending of the plays in which the virtuous heroine charmed the hero into submission as a concession to morality. Hallbauer saw still greater evidences of morality in Farquhar's second leads: "To these free and easy Epicureans our poet has opposed the representatives of a new era, honest gentlemen (Standard, Duretete, Trueman, Worthy) who, imbued with a strong sense of honour and morality, hate cunning tricks: they are bluff and plain-dealing, think every body as honest and upright as themselves, and are, therefore, easily ensnared by wily stratagems; they win our esteem, but not our affection."»4 Like Hunt, Hallbauer detected the new morality in Farquhar's female characters: I pretend that, on the contrary, there is not one female character in Farquhar's plays whose moral standard does not rank higher than that of any lady brought before us by his immediate predecessors. The women in Congreve's and Wycherley's plays are lewd and coquettish trulls, endowed with great reasoning powers, but bare of the soft sentiments peculiar to womankind. The young girls we meet in Farquhar are virtuous women, who cloistered up in their homes, are properly no match for the coarse and boisterous society 92 83

"

Hallbauer, p. 1. Hallbauer, p. 15. Hallbauer, p. 16.

46

INTRODUCTION

of men (Angelica, Dorinda, Constance); the only thing they are to blame for is their violent love for a rake.95 And finally, Hallbauer, in surveying Farquhar's overall development, agreed with Hunt that the plays show moral growth: . . . his first plays were only the ebullitions of his sprightly, humour: wanton sentiments, lewd phrases, and amorous pursuits, constitute these pieces, but the warm stream of life runs through them and wraps them up in the show of reality. When care and sorrow began to disturb his ease, it was in the airy regions of fancy that he sought a refuge from the dreary fantoms which haunted his oppressed mind; his conceptions, however, have lost nothing of their lively vigour, the rich stock of humorous conceits which he no more expends in the society of jovial fellows lies hoarded up in his comedies. The groundwork of his activity is henceforth built on a more solid basis, and there rings through the loud peals of joyful merriment a note of deeper heartiness and purer feeling. These sounds blend into an harmonious concord in his last play, which must be acknowledged to be his masterpiece.96 In 1881, Alexandre Beljame, in Men of Letters and the English Public in the Eighteenth Century 1660-1744, Dry den, Addison, Pope, also saw Farquhar as a transitional playwright, not because of an improvement of moral tone, but because of his humour: The later comedies of Farquhar and Vanbrugh mark a gradual transition. These plays were still daring enough, but their natural high spirits and fresh merriment carried off anything that was a trifle too audacious. Little by little the English drama sobered down, mended its ways and grew calmer, til we ultimately sail into the quiet waters of Addison's Cato, of Rowe's monotonous and sentimental tragedies and of Steele's moral comedies.97 H. A. Huntington, in 1882, also saw the moral improvement of Farquhar's plays over those of Wycherley and Congreve and Vanbrugh, but he thought Farquhar was no "sublime genius". »5 Hallbauer, pp. 15-16. M Hallbauer, pp. 13-14. 97 Alexandre Beljame, Men Eighteenth

Century

1660-1744,

of Letters and the English Public in Dry den, Addison, Pope, ed. Bonamy

brée, trans. E. O. Lorimer (London, 1948), p. 243.

the

Do-

47

INTRODUCTION

Even on the score of morality it may be said for Farquhar that he is a vast improvement on the three authors whose names are invariably linked with his. Far less coarse and with a lighter and airier touch than either Vanbrugh or Wycherley, he has none of the devil's wit of Congreve. With the latter writer, however, he had something in common. He was not an imitator . . . . Farquhar was not a sublime genius, he was at best a surface realist, a painter of swiftly perishing manners, who found his inspiration in the garish dissipations of the town and the rude jollities of the camp; but he was himself. Less picturesque in effect, it is better, after all, that one's Pegasus should be a real donkey than a wooden horse.98 Edmund C. B. Gosse, in 1889 in A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, like Alexandre Beljame, held the view that Farquhar's morals were no better than those of his contemporaries; however, his humour made up in part for his immorality: In a discourse upon comedy which he printed in his miscellany called Love and Business (1702), Farquhar hit off the happy definition. "Comedy", he said, "is no more at present than a well-framed tale handsomely told as an agreeable vehicle for counsel or reproof". He meant, no doubt, that of his own dramas the motto should be Castigai redendo mores, but his natural cheerfulness would break out. His flighty beaux and swaggering cavalry officers too frequently forget to counsel or reprove, but Farquhar succeeded in being always wholesome, even when he cannot persuade himself to be decent. His scenes breathe of the open air, while Congreve's have a heated atmosphere of musk. There is something hopeful and encouraging in finding the crowded and unsatisfactory drama of the Restoration closing, not in inanity and corruption, but in this gay world of Farquhar's, this market-place of life, bright with scarlet tunics and white aprons, loud with drum and bugle, and ringing with peals of laughter and impudent snatches of ballad-music. It is Sergeant Kite, one of Farquhar's heroes, to whom we owe the song of "Over the hills and far away". Farquhar was the last writer who dared to bring the animal riot of the senses face to face with a decent audience, and the best we can say of his morals is that it is more wholesome to laugh with Ariosto in the sunshine than to snigger with Aretine in the shadow. Better than either is to walk in the light of Moliere or of Goldsmith.9® 98

Huntington, p. 406. »· Edmund C. B. Gosse, A History (1660-1780) (New York, 1927), p. 72.

of Eighteenth

Century

Literature

48

INTRODUCTION

Leslie Stephen provided a more or less standard comparison of Farquhar with the other Restoration playwrights for the Dictionary of National Biography (1889): As he appears in his work he is most attractive, as he is the last of the school generally associated with Congreve: full of real gaiety, and a gentleman in spite of recklessness and a affectation of the fashionable tone of morals. Without the keen wit or the sardonic force of his rivals, he has more genuine high spirits and good nature. The military scenes in the "Recruiting Officer" are all interesting sketches from life.100 A. C. Ewald, in his Preface to his edition of The Dramatic Works of George Farquhar in 1892, made a comparison similar to those made by Leigh Hunt and Otto Hallbauer: In face of the plays given to us by Farquhar, it is absurd to place him upon a pedestal of purity from which the most superficial of his works must at once depose him. All that can be said of him and the admission is no slight compliment - is that living at the time he did, when the atmosphere of the Restoration was still heavy upon both the stage and the dramatist, his comedies compare most favourably with those of his contemporaries. He occupies a middle position between the vicious writers of the close of the seventeenth century and the comparatively purer writers of the beginning of the eighteenth century. He deals with vicious subject, and seldom goes outside their circle for the mechanism of his plots; but he does not, as did Wycherley, prefer vice to virtue, and render the latter always dull and despicable. His dames of fashion are as lax and faithless as women not wholly lost to all social restrictions can well be. Yet on the same canvas he can depict a modest, graceful, and attractive maiden. If he represents a gallant as ever bent on intrigue and a scoffer at all the regularities of life, he is no less able to portray manhood in its nobler and more honest aspect. In the comedies of Farquhar, as is so often the case with the other dramatists of the Restoration, wit is not always allied with profanity, humour with indecency, modesty with stupidity, and rectitude with timidity or lack of opportunity. The shady scenes, it is true, predominate in his page; but the author is not so completely enamoured of darkness as to refuse to admit the light.101 100

Leslie Stephen in DNB s.v. "Farquhar, George". Alexander Charles Ewald, The Dramatic Works of George (London, 1892), I, xiii-xv. 101

Farquhar

49

INTRODUCTION

Although Louise Imogen Guiney, in 1894, in her biography of Farquhar in A Little English Gallery could see a marked moral improvement in his plays over those of his contemporaries, she, like Huntington, could not see in Farquhar a "sublime genius": "It is fortunate for Farquhar that he could not emulate the exquisitely civilized depravities of Congreve's urban Muse. But his dialogue is not "low" to modern tastes: it has, in general, a simple natural zest, infinitely preferable to the Persian apparatus of the early eighteenth century. Even he, however, can rant and deviate into rhetoric as soon as his lovers drop upon one knee. More plainly in Farquhar's work than in that of any contemporary we mark the glamour of the Caroline literature fading, and the breath of life blowing i n . . . . His mind was a Medea's kettle, out of which everything issued cleaner and more w h o l e s o m e . . . . Though Farquhar did not live, like Vanbrugh and the magnanimous Dryden, to admit the abuse of a gift, and to deplore it, he alone, of the minor dramatists, seems all along to have had a negative sort of conscience better than none. His instincts continually get the better not only of his environment, but of his practice. Some uneasiness, some misgiving, are at the bottom of his homely materialism. He thinks it best, on the whole, to forswear the temptation to be sublime, and to keep to his cakes and ale; and for cake and ale he had an eminent and inborn talent." 102 Although R. Garnett could not see any difference between Farquhar and the Restoration dramatists either aesthetically or morally, like Hunt, Garnett detected humaneness - "real feeling" - in Farquhar: Although there are undoubtedly considerable distinctions between the works of these four dramatists, a fundamental unity nevertheless prevails among them that they may be advantageously considered together. They may be compared to a jewel with four facets, each, casting a separate ray, but with little diversity in their cold brilliant glitter. Wit, gaiety, heartlessness, and profligacy are the common notes of them all, save that Congreve has tragic power, and, as well as Farquhar, real feeling.108

102

As quoted in The Library

of the Literary

Criticism

of English

and

American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton (Buffalo, 1901), II, 559-560. 108 Garnett, p. 130.

50

INTRODUCTION

In 1898, H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon, like Gosse and Guiney, discovered Farquhar's "wholesomeness": Unlike Goldsmith, unhappily, Farquhar's moral tone is not high; sensuality is confounded with love, ribaldry mistaken for wit. The best that can be said of him is that he contrasts favourably with his contemporary dramatists: Virtue is not always uninteresting in his pages. He is free from their heartlessness, malignity, and cruelty. The plot of The Beaux Stratagem is comparatively inoffensive, and the moral of the whole is healthy. Although a wit rather than a thinker, Farquhar in this play shows himself capable of serious feelings.104

In 1899, Sir Adolphus William Ward, in A History of English Dramatic Literature, in his aesthetic-moral comparison ranked Farquhar low on both scores. However, the most important aspect of Ward's comparison was that he found Farquhar coarser than his contemporaries (a kind of foreshadowing of the criticism of Farquhar that John Palmer was to make later): Were it not, perhaps, for one of his plays, GEORGE FARQUHAR (1678-1707) would hardly deserve to be ranked by the side - not of Congreve and Wycherley, but even of Vanbrugh. Farquhar, an Irishman by birth and early in life an actor on the Dublin stage (he afterwards served in the army), seems to have bestowed some attention upon the theory as well as the practice of the comic drama, and to have had a keen eye towards finding new expedients with which to supplement the familiar methods of gratifying the public palate. He is happy in the description of a wider range of manners than that commanded by Vanbrugh; but his dialogue is in general less gay and sparkling, and while his morality is no better than that of the most reckless of his contemporaries, he has a coarseness of fibre which renders him more offensive to a refined ear. The vivacity of his dramatic invention is however indisputable; and the freshness of mind which enabled him to widen the range of popular comedy in his last two plays entitles him to mention among the more distinguished authors of our later comic drama.105

104

Fitzgibbon, p. viii. Adolphus William Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne, new and rev. ed. (London, 1899), III, 481-2. 105

INTRODUCTION

51

Dr. D. Schmid's final estimate of Farquhar's work, in George Farquhar, Sein Leben und Seine Original-Dramen (1904), presented the perfect wedding of the two comparison traditions in Farquhar criticism. Schmid, along with Goldsmith and Hazlitt, both of whom he quoted, saw Farquhar as "nature" as opposed to the "wit" of Congreve and the "satire" of Wycherley and the "humour" of Vanbrugh. Schmid, along with Fitzgibbon and Guiney, both of whom he quoted, saw that Farquhar was "free from their heartlessness, malignity, and cruelty". Schmid, combining the two, felt that Farquhar in his last two comedies in particular intentionally steered a middle course between the immoral Restoration comedy on the one hand and the prudish, hypocritical sentimental comedy, to a new comedy true to life and nature: Noch einmal riss er durch seinen Recruiting Officer das Publikum von dem Abgrunde weg, dem man is zuführte, und als man bei der Aufführung von The Beaux' Stratagem staunend erkannte, wie harmonisch sich die Gegensätze im Wesen des Dichters ausgeglichen hatten, welch seitere, lebensfrohe Ruhe an Stelle des früher allzurasch hastenden Lebens getreten war, da hätte man der frohen Zuversicht leben dürfen, dass Farquhar berufen sei, das englische Lustspiel aus der raffiniertin Unmoralität des Restaurations-und Orange-Zeitalters zur Lebens-und Naturwahreit zurück-zuführen und es davor zu bewahren, dass es aus einem Extrem ins andere gerate, dass an Stelle der Unsittlichkeit zimperliche Prüderie, hohle Moralisterei und weinselige Sentimentalität treten. Doch während das Theatrepublikum vom. 8. März 1707 durch lauten Jubel dem Dichter für sein Wirken dankte und seinen Intentionen freudig zustimmte, wand sich dieser im Todeskampfe. "We may date the decline of English comedy from the time of Farquhar", hätte er richtiger sagen können. Gerade in dem Zeitpunkte, da es seiner gereiften Kraft nicht entbehren konnte, ist er dem englischen Lustspiele gestorben, und wenn einzelne Kritiker Goldsmiths She Stoops to Conquer mit dem Schwanengesange unseres Dichters in Verbindung bringen, so leitet sei das richtige Gefühl, dass Goldsmith an Farquhar anknüpfen musste, wollte er dass englische Lustspiel zu neuem, kräftigem, Leben erwecken.106

ιοβ David Schmid, George Farquhar, Sein Leben und Seine OriginalDramen, Wiener Beitrage zur englischen Philologie . . . Bd. 18 (Vienna,

1904), 371-2.

52

INTRODUCTION

William Archer, in 1906, felt that one of the great misfortunes to befall the unfortunate English drama was the death of Farquhar in his thirtieth year.107 He organized his critical remarks around what he considered the unjust charges of Ward: I submit, first, that Farquhar was much less nauseous in his coarseness than Wycherley, Congreve, or Vanbrugh; second, that he showed clear traces of an advance in moral sensibility, nowhere discernible in the other three; third, that the alleged lack of "sparkle" in his dialogue in reality means a return to nature, an instinctive revolt against the sterilizing convention of "wit". "Gaiety" Professor Ward must surely have denied him by inadvertence. His severest critics have contested the merit of his gaiety, but not the fact.108 Archer then proceeded to prove these points, and so successful was he in showing Farquhar less coarse and more moral than the Restoration playwright that he landed Farquhar in the sentimental comedy camp: That Farquhar's nature was humane seems to me beyond question; but he also moved with a general current setting towards humanity. To say that he was "reformed" by Jeremy Collier would be inexact, for the famous Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage appeared many months before Farquhar made his first essay as a dramatist. Collier's attack was nearly two years old when Farquhar scored his greatest success with the The Constant Couple, on which "the parson" had certainly no influence whatever. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that Farquhar felt and welcomed the reaction in favour of decency, if not of speech, at any rate of feeling. One would like to think that he headed the reaction, but here the dates are unaccommodating. That distinction belongs to Steele. The Funeral, produced towards the end of 1701 (it is misdated in Genest), marked a long step on a path which Farquhar did not clearly begin to follow until a year later in The Twin-Rivals. Had he been minded to relapse into the old rut, the failure of that play would have afforded him an excuse. But he was not weary in better-doing, and may fairly share with Steele the credit of having set earnestly about the ventilation of English comedy.101'

107 108 109

Archer, p. 15. Archer, p. 16. Archer, p. 22.

INTRODUCTION

53

However, when Archer came to compare the dialogue of Farquhar with that of Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Congreve, he felt, like Schmid two years before, that Farquhar represented a "return to nature": As the modern dramatist speaks of "our little parish of St. James's", so Congreve might have called the whole province of his genius "our little parish of Covent Garden". In his plays especially, but also in those of Wycherley and Vanbrugh, we have a constant sense of frequenting a small coterie of exceedingly disagreeable people. Their talk is essentially coterie-talk, keyed up to the pitch of a particular and narrow set. It is Farquhar's great merit to have released comedy from this circle of malign enchantment. Even in The Constant Couple and Sir Harry Wildair his characters have not quite the coterie stamp. We feel, at any rate, that they are studied from an outside point of view, by one who does not mistake the conventions of the coterie for laws of nature. In The Twin-Rivals the coterie tone is scarely heard at all. With the return to a recognition (rathei too formal) to be artistic of the difference between right and wrong, we have something like a return to nature in the tone of conversation. In the excellent little scene (Act I. Sc. I) between Benjamin Wouldbe and the innkeeper Balderdash, there is nothing that can be called wit, but a great deal of humour; while Mrs. Mandrake is a realistic life-study of extraordinary power. Finally, in The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux Stratagem, Farquhar broke away altogether from the purlieus of Covent Garden, and took comedy out into the highways and the byways.110 A little later in his essay Archer was to compare Farquhar with Fielding, a comparison that was pregnant with suggestions for future critics: We might have had in him a Fielding of the theatre. Even as it was, in his brief literary life of eight or nine years, cut short before he can be supposed to have reached full maturity, he contrived to do work which makes him, far more than any other of his group, an influential precursor of Fielding. In humour and humanity the two are distinctly congenial; and, if we allow for difference of scale, Farquhar's power of character-drawing may quite well be measured with that of the "Great Harry".111 110 111

Archer, pp. 23-4. Archer, p. 27.

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In 1907, in an article "Lessing and Farquhar" in the Modern Language Review, J. G. Robertson followed Archer's analysis and saw the improvement in moral tone and the "return to nature" as Farquhar's innovations in comedy. Robertson felt that historians of the drama who followed Hazlitt's famous remark saw only the decay of Restoration tradition in Farquhar and not his innovations, not because of Farquhar but because of his successors: "If the significance of these innovations is so often overlooked in English dramatic history, it is because the dramatists who were able to carry them out worthily, were too few and far removed in time to sustain the honour of the English stage in its subsequent history."112 Further, Robertson saw something modern in the new ideals of Farquhar's comedies: "Farquhar is the spokesman of a new life; of new social and personal ideals - not always less coarse than those depicted by Wycherley and Congreve - but less far removed from modern sympathies; his characters appear to us to-day more modern and refined, because they are inspired by distinctly modern sentiments, which one looks for in vain beneath the wit and brilliancy of Congreve."113 Strong reaction to this line of criticism begun by Hunt that made Farquhar superior to Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh because of his humaneness and his following nature came in 1913 in The Comedy of Manners by John Palmer. However, Hunt's line still continued to persist. For instance, in 1914, George H. Nettleton in English Drama of the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century detected some slight change in the moral tone in Farquhar's plays, but then like Huntington, he saw Farquhar's chief virtue as originality: Whatever Farquhar's lapses in point of morality, he has none of Wycherley's vindictive and brutal cynicism. Most of his characters, with all their faults, are companionable. They are not so clever as Congreve's, but futile brains and facile manners make them attractive despite some heartless traits. While Wycherley adapted Moliere and Vanbrugh followed a variety 118 113

J. G. Robertson, "Lessing and Farquhar", M. L. R., II (1907), 58-9. Robertson, pp. 58-9.

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of models, Farquhar's ready brain was responsible for most of his effectiveness in plot and characters.114 Also, in 1914, Louis A. Strauss, in his edition of A Discourse Upon Comedy, The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux Stratagem, looked on Farquhar as one of the great innovators of the English drama along with Lyly, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Etherege.118 Like Schmid, Strauss saw Farquhar inventing a new comedy, lying somewhere between the comedy of manners and the sentimental comedy - the comedy of life: Accordingly, we may well say that, despite the impress that comedy of manners left upon all his work, Farquhar has in these plays left that form of art far behind him. Exalting both plot and character above dialogue, and humour of situation above wit, escaping largely the conventional and typical manners and humours, he gave the world two comedies of unsurpassed freshness, deriving their interest from no passing fashion of the day but from their deepgrounded perception of human nature, their liveliness from the ingenious inventions of a really creative imagination, and their charm from the playfulness of a buoyant, happy spirit at large in a new, untrodden field. Farquhar is at heart neither Cavalier nor Puritan, neither rake nor ascetic. He entered joyously into the game the former were playing without insight into its meaning or care as to its consequences. Troubled by the obviously just reproaches of the latter, he reacted upon this stimulus with little appreciation of its value. He was neither Cavalier nor Puritan, but a happy-go-lucky Celt who entered the world of warring conventions without prejudice as to forms of discipline, but with a mighty propensity for free living and the enjoyment of life. That is why he, of all the dramatists, could for a brief space bring comedy into the mood of a joyous representation of life, unhampered by the chronic English pretence to moralism or satire. He could not reform comedy, for in him there was nothing of the reformer; but by giving his healthy nature free play he allowed comedy to re-form itself, rid of its tyrant, humours, and its mistress, manners, true to the larger life of the English people for the first time in a century. Evaluating the playful buoyancy of Farquhar's 114

George Henry Nettleton, English Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (New York, 1928), p. 140. 115 Louis A. Strauss, ed., A Discourse upon Comedy, The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux Stratagem, by George Farquhar (Boston, 1914), p. xiii.

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spirits and preserving his balance of the comic elements, two other light-hearted Irishmen, Goldsmith and Sheridan, gave us all we have of distinguished excellence in later English comedy to 1880."· According to this theory Strauss saw Farquhar's plays divided into three periods: those influenced by the Cavaliers, those influenced by the Puritans, and those that were true to life.117 Charles Stonehill, in 1931, as was Archer before him, was reminded of Fielding by Farquhar's innovations in the drama: Bulwer Lytton once said that "Farquhar is the Fielding of the drama" (by which, of course, he meant to refer only to the novels of Fielding). The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux Stratagem do indeed warrant Lytton's epigrams. For in them the drama is taken into the country, far from the conventional drawing-rooms and taverns of towns, and the intrigues of court. But it is in the treatment of character that Farquhar is nearest to Fielding. According to convention, there were but two kinds of women, the good and the bad. The good woman, if single, was a virgin; the bad woman, one had been "betrayed". Let but your paragon of feminine virtue yield to the importunities of a lover, and - Heigh presto! - she's a whore. It was a formula. But Farquhar and Fielding escaped from it. Mrs. Sullen is an example of t h i s . . . . The Squire, himself, is not painted too black . . . . The same comprehension of human nature, coupled with keen observation, created the numerous vivid minor characters - Kite, Bullock, Rose, Smuggler, Vizard, Teague, Mrs. Mandrake, Cherry, Lady Bountiful, and the delightful country woman. The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux Stratagem, these two alone, had their author never written another line, entitle Farquhar to rank as one of the foremost of English dramatists.118 In 1947, Elizabeth Mignon, in Crabbed Age and Youth, like Stonehill and Archer, saw something of the English novelist of the 18th Century in Farquhar: With George Farquhar comes the real break in old age convention established by preceding English comic writers. Admirable old men 116 117 118

Strauss, pp. lv-lvi. Strauss, p. xxxiv. Stonehill, I, xxxii-xxxiii.

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return to the stage, and the hitherto unviolated Restoration code is cast aside. The clearly defined attitude already distinguished in the plays of Etherege, Wycherley, Shadwell, Congreve, and Vanbrugh disappears. The change, however, is not a revolution, nor is it apparent in Farquhar's earliest work. Strong traces of the Restoration outlook are mingled with the writer's individual brand of comedy. The danger of categorizing Farquhar with the sentimentalists is great. There is a careful distinction to be made between his amiable old men and those who will appear in sentimental comedy. Farquhar is never guilty of delineating maudlin or saccharine old age, nor does he introduce the too-good old father who is to be found in Richard Steele's plays. Farquhar stands between two worlds. Though he denies the laws accepted by Congreve, he retains some of his spirit; his shift in treatment is more allied with the work of the eigtheenth century novelists than with that of dramatists of sensibilty.11* In 1949, Willard Connely combined a number of these critical views. As we have seen, his main contention was that Farquhar was the "diarist of the drama". Like Schmid, he saw Farquhar as the poet of nature - "The compeers of Farquhar all understood nature; but Farquhar, many now agreed [at the opening of The Recruiting Officer], was the one who knew best how to handle the mirror."120 Like Archer, Connely saw Farquhar as a beginning of the "Drama of Sensibility": But is was the boldness of the moral in the Stratagem that broadly pleased the town. This play, to the astonishment of everyone bred on Wycherley and Congreve, had made morality actually an engaging theme. Had Jeremy Collier proved victor at last: Young George Farquhar had launched his own rather bawdy early works just in time to escape the whip of the lashing parson. Thus, beginning with The Twin-Rivals, and to an increasing degree as he produced his later comedies, he had almost broken away from the taint of the age of Charles II. 121 Like Hazlitt, Connely felt with Farquhar died English comedy: "Now George Farquhar was dead, and so was English comedy." 121 119

Elizabeth Mignon, Crabbed Age and Youth: The Old Men and Women in the Restoration Comedy of Manners (Durham, 1947), p. 160. 120 Connely, p. 259. 12 ' Connely. p. 299. 121 Connely, p. 303.

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b. The followers of Palmer (or those who believe Farquhar is morally and aesthetically inferior to Congreve, Wycherley, and Vanbrugh) In 1913 in The Comedy of Manners John Palmer transformed Hazlitt's observation dating the decline of English comedy from the time of Farquhar into an accusation against Farquhar: "It was no accident of history that Farquhar had no successors. Farquhar killed the comedy to which he contributed the last brilliant examples."123 The signs of an improvement in moral tone that Archer and others had found in Farquhar - humaneness and a "return to nature" - were signs of immorality to Palmer: When we come to consider his plays in detail we shall find in Farquhar precisely that acceptance of an outgrown convention which mars the comedy of Vanbrugh. Where the critics find in Farquhar humanity and fresh air we shall detect an emotional and romantic treatment of sex stifling the parent stem of a comedy whose appeal depended upon an entirely different system of moral and imaginative values. Farquhar's comedies are the direct result of an author, whose temperament and environment were not much unlike Congreve. The consequent inconsistencies often resulting in serious moral and artistic offence, are more patent than in Vanbrugh's case; for Farquhar was more careless a writer than his predecessor, and never really discovered in his wit a neutral territory where the values he borrowed were reconciled with the values he contributed.124

This same accusation and case were again made against Farquhar by Palmer in Comedy the following year. However, Palmer allowed Farquhar two successors, such as they were: Sheridan spoiled his genius for comedy by carelessly complying with the fashion. He found comedy a tumbled ruin - Farquhar's heirloom. Instead of clearing the ground, and building a house for his needs, he adopted the ruin and spoiled his genius. His plays are a perplexing blend of the dispassionate and the sentimental. He blindly accepted a convention and worked carelessly within it at half presence. This 113 124

John Leslie Palmer, The Comedy of Manners (London, 1913), p. 242. Palmer, pp. 243-244.

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applies less to Goldsmith; but Goldsmith's triumph was strictly personal. He left no model and he did not find a disciple.125 Just as John Palmer was to claim Farquhar as the last writer of the comedy of manners, but attack him for his lack of ethical and literary principles, so Ernest Bernbaum, in 1915 in The Drama of Sensibility, was to claim him as one of the first writers of sentimental comedy and attack him on similar grounds: Though Cibber, Farquhar, and Steele knew that their sentimental comedies represented a revolt against authority, they did not themselves clearly comprehend the fundamental impulse of the revolt. Vanbrugh had seen and attacked it, but they paid no attention to him. They talked vaguely about the morality of their plays; they said nothing about their sentimentality. They indulged this mood, not because they had reflected upon it, not because they thought it the supremest state of the human spirit, but merely by chance or out of caprice. Not one of them confined himself to writing sentimental comedies, or excluded the comic therefrom. At its rise, the drama of sensibility was without the support of clearly conceived ethical and literary principles.126 On the other hand, as if in answer to both Palmer and Bernbaum, Joseph Wood Krutch in 1924, in Comedy and Conscience After the Restoration, discovered in "Discourse upon Comedy" by Farquhar, "the last of the old school", the "moral" principle upon which Restoration comedy was founded: He defines it as a "well-fram'd tale handsomely told, as an agreeable vehicle for counsel and reproof', which seems conciliating enough to Dennis, Steele, and their like; but let us note his application. He finds that Congreve's "Old Bachelor" has an excellent moral. "Fondlewife and his young spouse are no more than the eagle and the cockle; he wanted teeth to break the shell himself, so somebody else run away with the meat - here are precepts, admonitions, and salutary innuendos for ordering of our lives and conversations couch'd in the allegories and allusions". In other words, said Farquhar, the moral's that if an old man marries a young wife he must not be surprised if she is unfaithful to him. Truly this is a moral, but not one which 1M 128

John Leslie Palmer, Comedy (London, 1914), p. 56. Ernest Bernbaum, The Drama of Sensibility (Boston, 1915), p. 95.

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would have pleased Steele, who would have been more anxious to reprove the moral delinquency of the wife. Yet the fable does carry a lesson. It does illustrate forcibly a truth. The best Restoration comedies, such as those of Wycherley and Congreve, do this constantly. They are not moral in the sense of striving much to raise the ethical standard, but like all good art they give information concerning the life which they depict and to that extent are instructive in worldly wisdom.127 In 1925, Allardyce Nicoli, in A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama, as Bernbaum before him, found Farquhar's work contained both comedies of manners and sentimental comedies. He concluded his remarks thus: As a dramatist, Farquhar falls far short of Congreve, nor has he the strange virulence and strength of Wycherley. He is airier, more foppish, more, it may be said, of the newer age of Anne than of the Restoration. He is in a way a link between these two periods, standing between the period of Anne and that of the early Georges.128 Henry Ten Eyck Perry, in 1925, presented a position like that of John Palmer and Ernest Bernbaum and Allardyce Nicoli before him. The term "transitional playwright" that carried such favorable connotations because of its implication of progress toward a better time for Otto Hallbauer, David Schmid, and William Archer came to be regarded as a term of treason by people like Perry, Palmer, and Bernbaum. Perry best explained this difference in feeling: What Farquhar did accomplish was to lift English comedy from the Centre of Indifference in which it had been languishing under Vanbrugh's aegis and, for good or ill, to set it down in the freer aether of eighteenth-century sentiment. He is the connecting link between the older generation of the Restoration and the rising tide of Cibbers and Steeles, Kellys and Cumberlands, Goldsmiths and Sheridans. If to have one foot in each of two camps is a successful compromise, Farquhar is an outstanding success in his chosen field; if not to be 127

Joseph Wood Krutch, Comedy and Conscience after the Restoration (New York, 1924), pp. 237-8. 128 Allardyce Nicoli, A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama 1700-1750 (Cambridge, 1925), p. 150.

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wholeheartedly devoted to some one course is cowardly and craven. Farquhar ignobly falls between two stools. He was an Irishman, and consistency is not to be expected of him, any more than it is to be found in his first important self-portraiture, Roebuck in Love and a Bottle.™ Frederick T. Wood, writing on "The Beginning and Significance of Sentimental Comedy" in Anglia for 1931, followed Palmer in the belief that Farquhar killed the comedy of manners. 130 Paul Mueschke and Jeanette Fleischer, in "A Re-evaluation of Vanbrugh", in Publication of the Modern Language Association for 1934, took issue with John Palmer and his followers in regard to their treatment of Vanbrugh and Farquhar: Vanbrugh's position in the history of drama has never been adequately defined. He and his successor, Farquhar, have suffered more than any other dramatists of their period from the ill effects of biassed criticism, which has viewed their works solely in the light of a particular tradition, the Comedy of Manners; and the resulting deformity, caused by the failure of their work to fit the mould, is condemned by the very critics who have produced it. They have recognized that the work of Vanbrugh is no longer typically of the comedy of manners genre, but they have neglected to analyze the difference in an individual study, and have contented themselves with regarding as inferior any deviations from the accepted comedy of manners norm. These deviations, moreover, have been taken to point towards sentimental comedy, and Vanbrugh, having been dubbed a 'transition' figure, has suffered the penalty of 'not belonging'. 131 They, like Schmid and Archer and Strauss, saw Farquhar as the "exponent of natural comedy" and deplored the fact that his "departure in the direction of a richer comedy of life and laughter developed no tradition which could flourish against the oncoming avalanche of the comedy of tears". 182

129

Perry, p. 108. •so Frederick T. Wood, "The Beginning and Significance of Sentimental Comedy", Anglia, LV (1931), 381-2. 131 Paul Mueschke and Jeanette Fleischer, "A Re-evaluation of Vanbrugh", PMLA, XLIX (1934), 848. 132 Mueschke, p. 889.

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Louis Kronenberger, in The Thread of Laughter: Chapters on English Stage Comedy from Jonson to Maugham (1952), believed with Palmer that Farquhar killed Restoration comedy: It is his humor, not his wit, that distinguishes Farquhar from his predecessors. He is greater in germ, because richer in humanity and sheer creative fancy, than they are. But it is true that, as John Palmer says, he killed Restoration comedy as it had existed. And he killed it without creating anything better or even counter-balancing.138 In his feeling that Farquhar's unique characteristic was gaiety or humor, Kronenberger seemed to resemble Dobrée, whom he had also read. c. The followers of Dobrée (or those who believe that Farquhar is like Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh morally and different from them aesthetically) In 1924, in Restoration Comedy, and again in 1929, in an Introduction to The Beaux' Stratagem, Bonamy Dobrée noted a type of comedy in Farquhar different from that of the Restoration writers and the sentimental comedy writers, but instead of finding in this comedy something new as Schmid and Strauss had done, Dobrée linked it with the Elizabethans: "We may say that the beginning of the eighteenth century comedy split into two courses, on the one hand to the sentimental comedy of Cibber and Steele; on the other, back to the Elizabethans with Vanbrugh and Farquhar."184 The reasoning back of Dobrée's position he explained as follows: It must not be thought, however, that Farquhar vas primarily a moralist; he was first and foremost a dramatist, relishing life in all its vigorous, active forms: there is much of the Elizabethan in him, in his swift movement, his exuberance of word and phrase, his obvious desire for enjoyment. He protested that comedy was no mere "agreeable vehicle for counsel and reproof", and his work bears no relation to those "do-me-good, lack-a-daisical, whining, make-believe comedies" written to conform to the precepts of Jeremy Collier. He 133

Louis Kronenberger,

Stage Comedy 131

The Thread of Laughter: Chapters on English from Jonson to Maugham (New York, 1952), p. 174.

Dobrée, p. 95.

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was a writer born, intensely observant of life, with no little experience of it both in its affairs and in its troubles, who brought a keenly rational mind to aid him in his heart. Above all, apart from his fun, and the gusts of refreshing laughter by which he "expectorated his grief", he is a friendly, a companionable writer; we feel at home with him just because he does not ask too much of us. A fine gentleman he was not; but in every other sense of the word, in honesty, kindliness, forbearance, in a genuine wish for the happiness of others he was the best of human products, a gentleman by nature.135 Like Robertson, Dobrée saw in Farquhar modern sentiments: The most surprising thing about him is his extreme modernity: many passages might have been written yesterday. He was two hundred years ahead of his time, in the Butler-Shaw tradition when he wrote. "The patient's faith goes farther toward the miracle than your prescription"; or "'Tis still my maxim, that there is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty". One of the very few occasions when he is at all heavy he urges that to pay one's tradesmen's bills is more honourable than to pay one's "debts of honour" incurred at the gaming table. But the honour is a prerogative of the wealthy; "Lack-a-day, sir, it shows as ridiculous and haughty for us to imitate our betters in their honour as in their finery; leave honour to the nobility that can support it". But what must appeal to us with peculiar force at the present day are the arguments circling around the question of how much license soldiers may be allowed at home in return for risking their lives abroad in defense of their countrymen. lse Malcolm Elwin (1928) expressed views similar to those held by Dobrée. Elwin contended that Farquhar was no moralist: "Farquhar did not care a blow for Mr. Collier, or the purification of the playhouse, or for anything except pleasing the public with his plays."137 Also, as we have seen, Elwin viewed Farquhar as one of the last of the Elizabethans. Although Elwin protested this whole tradition that compared Farquhar with the Restoration dramatists, he himself was guilty of this crime. He began his 135

Bonamy Dobrée, introd. The Beaux' Stratagem, by George Farquhar (Bristol, 1929), pp. xvi-xvii. 136 Dobrée, Restoration Comedy, p. 162. 137 Elwin, p. 191.

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discussion by describing Farquhar as "one who lacked of Etherege, the power of Wycherley, and the culture greve". 138 Ashley Horace Thorndike, like Bonamy Dobrée and Elwin, in English Comedy (1929), saw in Farquhar not ist, but another Elizabethan:

the ease of ConMalcolm a moral-

I have tried to suggest the delight that these plays still afford to one who comes to them after reading the comedies of the preceding forty years. They maintain some of the conventions of Restoration Comedy, but with what freshness of invention and spirit! They have little of the superior air of Congreve and Addison and nothing of the satire of Wycherley and Swift, and they are scarcely equalled by Steele or Fielding in their more carefree moods. Nothing so generously light-hearted had been seen on the stage since Fletcher, and I do not know that we have any such contagious gaiety since. They disclose the way in which comedy might have advanced to a wider but not less entertaining view of manners, and to a recovery of natural mirth without the loss of wit and raillery.13»

Tucker Brooke, editing The Recruiting Officer in 1936 in Representative English Comedies, wrote a critical essay, which owed something to Louis A . Strauss and which also seemed to be influenced by Archer and Dobrée. Starting with Strauss's analysis of the periods of Farquhar's development, Brooke commented: These three transitional plays [Sir Harry Wildair, The Inconstant, and The Twin-Rivals] are all inferior to The Constant Couple; and in some ways even to Love and a Bottle; but they bear witness to Farquhar's steady persistence at the task which his profession of dramatist imposed upon him - the task of adapting the inherited form of comedy to the real principles of his own nature and the changing standards of his time. The fusion was complete only when, after three years of fallow growth among fresh and lively country scenes, he again essayed drama and achieved the easy naturalness of The Recruiting Officer, and The Beaux' Stratagem. It is essential to observe that however we may please to divide his work into 'periods', Farquhar's fundamental principles remained constant. The purpose 138

Elwin, p. 185. "» Ashley Horace Thorndike, English Comedy (New York, 1924), p. 340.

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of his work was always to present an optimistic, romantic, and ultimately moral interpretation of life by means of scenes gayly mirroring the mercurial and often licentious society of his age.140

Like Strauss, he saw Farquhar consciously experimenting with the drama, but unlike Strauss and more like Archer, he found in the last two plays of Farquhar a combination of nature and moralism. Like Dobrée, he found that Farquhar resembled the Elizabethans: "Farquhar on the other hand, dying as prematurely as Marlowe or as Shelley, left behind him seven comedies, which in the verve, variety, and flexibility of their total impression seem almost Elizabethan rather than Augustan."141 In 1938, John Wilcox, in the Relation of Moliere to Restoration Comedy, also found like Dobrée that Farquhar resembled the English comedy of an earlier time. "Farquhar bears many resemblances to Vanbrugh: he showed even more vitality and animal exuberance, he seemed to be a more positive echo of long-forgotten Jacobean energy of action, and his gaiety was more intense and more dashing."142 In 1945, John Symons, following the lead of Dobrée, in an article in the Kenyon Review entitled "Restoration Comedy (Reconsiderations II)" wrote: What strikes us about Archer and Plume, at second if not at first reading, is how much they are a part of their setting; how finely Archer is complemented by Cherry and Boniface and Gibbet; how much would be taken away from him by any tampering with their lines. The dream of Farquhar is no longer an interplay between characters who possess the power of free-will; it is beginning, merely beginning, to be the determinist, naturalist drama of the last hundred years. Farquhar's characters move upon a sound economic basis; the single abstraction left to them, and that by their creator's courtesy, is honor. From this amiable, dissolute and charming playwright dropped the first seeds of the Naturalist drama, that drama which has governed the English theatre almost up to the present day, 140

Charles Frederick Tucker Brooke, ed., The Recruiting Officer, by George Farquhar, in Representative English Comedies, ed. Charles Mills Gayley and Alwin Thaler (New York, 1936), IV, 676. 141 Brooke, pp. 673-4. 148 John Wilcox, The Relation of Moliere to Restoration Comedy (New York, 1938), p. 177.

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against which the poetic plays of Yeats were a more or less ineffective protest, which Eliot and Auden in various ways opposed. Behind the ingenuous features of the young man who wrote The Beaux' Stratagem may be discerned faintly the Norfolk jacket, the handsome nose and the patriarchal beard of the fine, fantastic monster of English Naturalism, George Bernard Shaw.143 George Sherburn, in A Literary History of England. (1948), like Robertson, blamed the decline of English comedy not on Farquhar but on his successors: But, even if partly just, Pope's line neglects the vivid liveliness, the eager, easy flow of situation, and the true vis comica that sets Farquhar apart from and above his actual contemporaries, Cibber and Steele. If there had been more Farquhars or if this one had lived to write more plays, the acceleration towards decline in English comedy might have been arrested. A great decline in comic wit had already taken place when the audience failed to appreciate The Way of the World.1** Furthermore, Sherburn, like Archer, found Farquhar differed from his predecessors by the substitution of nature for wit and satire: Normally, though somewhat influenced by Collier's protest, he tried to give his audience its favored fare, but with a difference. He does not picture his drawing-room characters merely as such; his gentlemen are more human, have more red corpuscles, and are less mere illustrations of the manners of the day than were the gentlefolk of his wittier predecessors. The fact that many of his characters are less modish than those of his predecessors is perhaps referable to the example of Shadwell: certainly the bawds, the midwives, the constables, citizens, and soldiers that made brief appearances in other plays are here given the considerable scenes and organic roles. The element of story is stressed; only in The Recruiting Officer do we get scenes that approach the satirical episodes of conversations so common in Wycherley and Congreve; and in Farquhar's hands such scenes either verge on farce or aid the plot. Like Shadwell he oc148

Julian Symons, "Restoration Comedy (Reconsiderations II)", Kenyon Review, VII (Spring, 1945), 197. 144 George Sherburn, "The Restoration and Eighteenth Century (16601789)", A Literary History of England, ed. Albert C. Baugh (New York, 1948), pp. 778-9.

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casionally leaves the City, and gives us a breath of country air - that of Shrewsbury in The Recruiting Officer and Lichfield in The Beaux' Stratagem.145

However, unlike Archer, Sherburn did not see Collier as making a difference in the moral tone of Farquhar's plays when they were compared with the plays of his predecessors: "But while sentimental tendencies in comedy led Farquhar to an increased and sincere sympathy with his characters as well as to increased insistence on the story element as compared with social satire, his true and skillful gifts for comedy and his lack of any excessive love for moral instruction kept him most of the time within the Restoration tradition."146 Finally, Boas in 1953 saw Farquhar, as Hallbauer and others had, as a transitional figure in the history of English drama: "As Rowe forms a bridge between Restoration and eighteenth-century tragedy, George Farquhar acts as a similar link in the sphere of comedy."147 Boas, however, saw Farquhar's contribution to the English drama neither in his following nature nor in his following higher moral standards than his predecessors but rather, like Hazlitt, in his bringing "to comedy a fresh spirit of geniality".148 CONCLUSIONS

This survey of opinion concerning the work of Farquhar proves, I believe, the need for a new critical study of his plays. Not only has the criticism been limited in quantity, but also it has been limited in quality by traditions that have bound it since Farquhar's own time. Today biographers and historians still employ the autobiographical tradition and the comparison tradition with results that are unfair to Farquhar. The autobiographical tradition, which makes Farquhar the hero of his plays, tends to overlook all that Farquhar derived from art - particularly from the theater - and to overemphasize what he might have derived from 145 146 147 148

Sherburn, p. 777. Sherburn, p. 778. Boas, p. 32. Boas, p. 64.

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his personal experiences in London, Lichfield, and Shrewsbury, even though the biographer, as in the case of Connely, is driven to conjecture what these experiences might have been from the incidents in the plays themselves. The comparison tradition, by which the writer, particularly the historian, compares the work of Farquhar with that of Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh, also leads to unfairness to Farquhar (and to all of the playwrights involved for that matter). Writers, from Hunt to Connely, who admire Farquhar and find humaneness and nature in the works, really do him a disservice, for they dismiss all the early works that do not illustrate their thesis and concentrate their efforts on The Twin-Rivals, The Recruiting Officer, and The Beaux' Stratagem. Other writers in this comparison tradition, from Palmer to Kronenberger, have pounced on certain plays (The Constant Couple, The TwinRivals, and The Beaux' Stratagem in particular), certain characters, certain scenes, and certain lines to prove their thesis that Farquhar killed the English comedy of manners brought to perfection by Congreve. And still other writers, from Dobrée to Boas, relying on their impressions of the plays, have found a tone of gaiety like that of the Elizabethans with some modern sentiments like those of Shaw. None of this criticism explains Farquhar's work adequately, it seems to me, and Farquhar ought to have full critical treatment if only because of his great popularity in the theater. Therefore, I would like to propose a new critical study that would concentrate on Farquhar as artist and not as autobiographer or as historic landmark in the drama. The method of this study would be to take up each play in order of chronology and to judge it according to the criteria that Farquhar himself set forth in his critical remarks in The Adventures of Covent Garden, Love and a Bottle, Preface to the Reader of The Constant Couple, A New Prologue to The Constant Couple, the Epilogue to The Constant Couple, the Prologue to Sir Harry Wildair, Discourse upon Comedy, and the Preface to The Twin-Rivals. I believe that from such a study may emerge a real appreciation of Farquhar's growth and development as an artist.

II

LOVE

AND

A BOTTLE AS A BURLESQUE OF RESTORATION COMEDY

The few critics who have bothered to read and comment on Farquhar's first play, Love and a Bottle, have mainly found two faults with the play: its coarseness and its lack of originality. The first charge is best seen in the words of William Archer, who tried to defend Farquhar, as we have seen, against the charge of coarseness leveled by Ward, but in the case of Love and a Bottle, Archer just had to give up the matter as a bad job:

If there is any play of Farquhar's which lends colour to the accusation of exceptional grossness, it is his earliest comedy, Love and a Bottle, written when he was about twenty. This is, indeed, an unfortunate effort, in which we see a raw provincial youth, without any real knowledge either of the town or of the world, simply aping the cynical licentiousness of his elders, and thinking himself a mighty fine fellow in so doing. Life, movement, and gaiety do something to redeem the play. It may even be called remarkable that an Irish hobble-dehoy, within the first few months of his stay in London, could produce so spirited an imitation of the current type of comedy. But the character of Roebuck admits of no defense. It is a sheer monstrosity, a boyish fanfarronade of vice. And here, indeed, Farquhar does descend to a grossness almost as vile as that of his contemporaries. Not quite as vile in my judgment - but that, I own, is a matter of opinion. On the other hand, however severely we may condemn this play, it is manifestly unjust to let its sins taint the whole of Farquhar's theatre, and treat as one of his general characteristics an excess into which he fell in his 'prentice work alone. In short, while I cannot admit that even Love and a Bottle bears out the charge of exceptional "coarseness of fibre", I hold it merely just to put aside this crude and boyish effort, and judge Farquhar by the

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LOVE AND A BOTTLE

plays, from The Constant Couple onwards, which display his talents and his character in some approach to maturity. 1 Although Archer could take slight pleasure in the fact that this exceptionally gross play was a remarkable imitation of Restoration Comedy, still this fact has proved a bitter one to others. For example, it is for this lack of originality that Charles Stonehill has condemned the play: It must be admitted that Love and a Bottle is in most respects a bad play. Farquhar has not only made use of stale traditions and a plot confused rather than picaresque, but he has no stable feeling for the characters in the play . . . . For these very reasons Love and a Bottle is the most interesting play from the point of view of Farquhar's development. It is his first piece, constructed only of the most conventional materials, replete with the standardised sentiments of the Restoration Drama. All his stage tools are well-worn. The idea of Leanthe disguised as a page is hackneyed. Shakespeare used it repeatedly; Wycherley adopted it for Fidelia in The Plain Dealer, Aphra Behn in The Younger Brother, and so on. The dancing and fencing scene is distinctly copied from Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Farquhar's later work is free from most of these plagiarisms, particularly in sentiment. 2 And other writers, like Stonehill, have found this a conventional play and have pointed out what it owes to the Restoration comedy in general and what it may owe to other specific comedies from its title to its ending. As to title, Willard Connely surmised: The popular catch-word of the day in the title of a comedy was "love". Not only had both Etherege and Wycherley used it earlier, but more recently, Congreve and Cibber, as well as twenty or thirty lesser dramatists. Farquhar decided to continue the fashion with Love and a Bottle, the two things indeed, which occupied most of his own time, and therefore the things which he knew most about. 3 1 William Archer, ed., George Farquhar, Mermaid ser. (London, 1906), pp. 16-17. 2 Charles Stonehill, ed., The Complete Works of George Farquhar (Bloomsbury, 1930), I, xv. 3 Willard Connely, Young George Farquhar: The Restoration Drama at Twilight (London, 1949), p. 73.

LOVE AND A BOTTLE

71

The characters have especially seemed reminiscent to the commentators. Those who haven't seen George Roebuck as George Farquhar, and even some of those who have, have seen Mrs. Behn in him. For example, Thorndike said of the play: "His first play, 'Love and a Bottle', is very much like one of Mrs. Behn's. The hero Roebuck, 'an Irish gentleman of a wild and roving temper, newly come to London', is of the pattern of her popular Rover."4 Archer, too, saw the play as "a mere imitation, rather of Aphra Behn than of Congreve".5 However, on the other hand, Malcolm Elwin did find some imitation of Congreve in Roebuck: In Roebuck is discernible Farquhar's link with the comedy of Congreve. When accused by Lovewell of unfairness in attempting to undermine the virtue of his sister, he replies, "Methinks 'twas not fair of thy sister, Ned, to tempt me. As she's thy sister I had no design upon her; but as she's a pretty woman, I could scarely forbear her, were she my own". Then, again, when Leanthe, disguised as a boy, complains of nightmares and being "Disturbed by visions of the devil", he remarks, "Who could imagine now, that this young shaver could dream of a woman so soon?"6

The trick of Leanthe disguised as a page again suggested Mrs. Behn, as we have seen, to Stonehill. He also associated the trick with Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Wycherley's Plain Dealer, and these identifications had been made by Schmid before him, who also recalled the page motif in The Royalist by D'Urfey.7 However, to Malcolm Elwin, "the idea of the lovelorn Leanthe following Roebuck to London from Ireland in the guise of a page is a parody of Wycherley's Fidelia and an ominous infusion of the sentiment which was to butter the bread of comedy in Cibber and Steele."8 This motif probably recalled The Plain 4

Ashley Horace Thorndike, English Comedy (New York, 1929), p. 335. William Archer, The Old Drama and the New: An Essay in Re-valuation (Boston, 1923), p. 207. β Malcolm Elwin, The Playgoer's Handbook to Restoration Drama (London, 1928), p. 187. 7 David Schmid, George Farquhar, Sein Leben und Seine OriginalDramen, Wiener Beiträge zur englischen P h i l o l o g i e . . . Bd. 18 (Vienna. 1904), p. 43. 9 Elwin, p. 187. 5

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LOVE AND A BOTTLE

Dealer to Ward's mind also, but he found the two plays unlike in that "the brutality of its principal personage is of a less complex kind".· Mockmode was identified by Schmid as "ein Typus des Restaurationslustspiels: der Landedelmann".10 David Erskine Baker thought "The Part of Mockmode seems to be borrowed from the Bourgeois Gentilhomme of Molière".11 And Stonehill also held this view;12 however, in 1938, John Wilcox, after weighing the evidence, came to the following conclusion: Van Laun called a conventionalized similarity between Farquhar's first play, Love

and a Bottle

(1699) and Le Bourgeois

Gentilhomme

a positive borrowing ("Les Plagiaires de Molière in Angleterre", Le Molièriste, III, 139). On about the same sort of evidence, Miles says Squire Mockmode is copied from M. de Pourceaugnac. The sole resemblance is that both are country gulls. The likeness of Mockmode to Jourdain Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme lies merely in the fact thai both had tutors. Shirley also employed a gull with a tutor; the likenesses are accidents.13

However, as we have seen before, Stonehill found the dancing and fencing scene reminiscent of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Strauss found in "Farquhar's adaptation" of this scene "the happiest stroke of the play".14 Schmid found in this scene "die Burleske nach Molières Bourgeois Gentilhomme".16 Lovewell suggested Vanbrugh to Thorndike: "Lovewell in

' Adolphus William Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne, new and rev. ed. (London, 1899), III, 482. 10 Schmid, p. 51. 11 David Erskine Baker, The Companion to the Playhouse: or An Historical Account of all the Dramatic Writers (and all their Works) that Have Appeared in Great Britain and Ireland from the Commencement of our Theatrical Exhibitions, down to the Present Year 1764 (London, 1764), I, M2. " Stonehill, I, 3. " John Wilcox, The Relation of Moliere to Restoration Comedy (New York, 1938), p. 176. 14 Louis A. Strauss, ed., A Discourse upon Comedy, The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux Stratagem, by George Farquhar (Boston, 1914), p. xxxvi. 15 Schmid, p. 59.

LOVE AND A BOTTLE

73

contrast to Roebuck is a sober and devoted lover, like Vanbrugh's Constant and Worthy. Vanbrugh makes one of his rovers admit, 'To be capable of loving one, doubtless is better than to possess a thousand', and this theme is somewhat developed in Farquhar's contrasted gallants."16 Lovewell's sweetheart, Lucinda, has been named "eine konventionelle Figur" by Schmid17 and "A stock figure" by Connely.18 Lyrick's rewriting of the tragedy of Lee, which Schmid saw as a symbol of the conflict of the classic style and the natural style, recalled to Schmid the literary satire of Molière in Alceste, Précieuses Ridicules, Femmes Savantes and Bourgeois Gentilhomme and in The Rehearsal and Female Wits.™ To Schmid, Trudge was "ein Motiv, das dem Restaurationslustspiele nicht fremd ist: die Hure mit dem Kind, welche dessen Vater nachkommt".20 And Stonehill said, "The theme of Trudge is too well known to require comment."21 Also, Bulfinch, the landlady, was labeled "a stock figure" by Connely.22 And Pindress, the maid, belonged to the class of witty, wanton serving girls, of which "Olinda, in Mrs. Behn's The Dutch Lover, Mademoiselle, in Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife, Prue, in Wycherley's The Gentleman Dancing Master,... Bridget, in Shadwell's The Humorists" were a few, according to John Harold Wilson in The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Restoration Drama 28 As we have seen, Stonehill found Love and a Bottle "replete with the standard sentiments of the day". And Strauss found the dialogue imitative of Congreve: Pope's charge of "pert, low dialogue" against Farquhar finds its chief justification in this first comedy. He strains after wit, and while he achieves an occasional bright effect, the usual result is mere cracking 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Thorndike, p. 335. Schmid, p. 68. Connely, p. 74. Schmid, p. 57. Schmid, p. 64. Stonehill, I, xiv. Connely, p. 74.

John Harold Wilson, The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Restoration Drama (Columbus, 1928), p. 110.

74

LOVE ANL· A BOTTLE

smartness that must have been offensive to ears attuned to the silken subtleties of Congreve. But Mr. Archer is again right in protesting against the unfair comparison of Farquhar with Congreve on the score of wit. After his first play Farquhar rarely went out of his way to be witty, while Congreve lets dialogue run on at the expense of plot, character, incident, and all. We may readily admit that Farquhar could never have attained the high perfection of Congreve in this particular; but as the exponent of a more natural style of comedy this should not be held against him.24

As for the plot, Thorndike found it "a collection of oft-used intrigues".45 But of these oft-used plot incidents, the mock marriage incident at the end of the play has caused the most comment. To Willard Connely the incident suggested Shakespeare: "It was by the well-worn device employed by Shakespeare in All's Well that Leanthe, impersonating someone else, got herself mated to Roebuck."2® However, John Harold Wilson, commenting on the stock situation in Restoration comedy of "cross purpose marriages, in which one or both parties is deceived", named the following comedies as respresenting this type: Farquhar, Love and a Bottle, Congreve, Love for Love, Shadwell, The Humorists, D'Urfey, The Fool Turn'd CriticSchmid commented on this situation in the play thus: "Da sind wir wieder auf bekannten Terrain, auf dem vertrauten Gebiete der Scheintrauungen und falschen Geistlichen, die wir schon aus Congreve kennen (The Old Bachelor und The Double Dealer), für die Farquhar auch z.B. in Mock Marriage von Scott, welches Stück 1696 aufgeführt wurde, ein unmittelbares Vorbild hatte, kommen doch dort in viertln Akte zwei Scheinheiraten vor, vollzogen durch einen falschen Pfarrer." 28 Commenting on the similarities of these two plays, Mock Marriage and Love and a Bottle from a different approach, Geliert Spencer Alleman in Matrimonial Law and the Materials of Restoration Comedy (1942) said: 24 25 28 27 28

Strauss, p. xxxv. Thorndike, p. 335. Connely, p. 80. Wilson, p. 24. Schmid, p. 48.

LOVE AND A BOTTLE

75

When the marriage depends on the substitution of the wrong persons, it is, like similar tricked marriages, invalid. In Thomas Scott's The Mock Marriage, 1696, Fairly marries Clarinda and Wilmot Flavia, in a mocked ceremony in which each wanted the other woman. Legally these marriages are invalid for lack of consent, dramatically because the servant Roger, disguised as a priest, performs both ceremonies. The situation in Love and a Bottle is similar. Legally Mockmode would escape because of the error in person; dramatically he owes his liberty to the fact the laundress served as priest.2»

Farther along in his book in a chart, Alleman listed nineteen plays before Love and a Bottle that contained successful mock marriages.30 However, an earlier comment of Alleman's on the play provokes my interest: Sometimes the most interesting comments on dramatic conventions are those of the playwrights themselves. Thus a conversation between Lovewell and the poet Lyrick, in Farquhar's Love and a Bottle, 1699, IV. ii, is well worth considering because it indicates succinctly the subject of much of the comedy we are about to consider and because it insists that comedy is a transcript, however faulty, of contemporary life. After Lyrick has assailed the artifical tragedy of the time, Lovewell asks him: But what relish have you of comedy? Lyr. No satisfactory one. - My curiosity is forestall'd by a fore knowledge of what shall happen. For as the Hero in Tragedy is either a whining cringing Fool that's always stabbing himself, or a ranting hectoring Bully that's for killing every-body else: so the Hero in Comedy is always the Poet's character. Lov. What's that? Lyr. A compound of practical Rake, and speculative Gentleman, who always bears off the great Fortune in the Play, and Shams the Beau and 'Squire with a Whore or Chambermaid; and as the catastrophe of all Tragedies is Death, so the end of comedies is Marriage. Lov. And some think that the most Tragical conclusion of the two. Lyr. And therefore my eyes are diverted by a better comedy in the audience than upon the Stage - I have often wonder'd why Men shou'd be fond of seeing Fools ill represented, when at the same time 2

" G. S. Alleman, Matrimonial Law and the Materials of Restoration

Comedy (Philadelphia, 1942), p. 77. "» Alleman, pp. 102-104.

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LOVE AND A BOTTLE

and place they may behold the mighty Originals acting their Parts to the Life in the Boxes. Having neatly satirized contemporary comedy Farquhar ends his own play according to Lyrick's formula. One may find similar conclusions in countless comedies of the dramatist's predecessors, contemporaries and successors. Lyrick's formula is, for example, a good description of another brilliant first play - Congreve's The Old Bachelour.S1 Alleman's comment on this scene is certainly provocative. Why did Farquhar, after he had "neatly satirized contemporary comedy", end "his own play according to Lyrick's formula"? The best answer that could be given by Archer and Strauss would be that the crude ending fitted this crude effort by a very young man. For example, Archer said of the ending: It is evident that the astounding and inextricable imbroglio of disguises and surprises in which the comedy ended never happened on this planet, to Farquhar or anyone else. But though the incidents are fantastic and extravagant, the character of Roebuck is only too probably a piece of idealised self-portraiture.82 Strauss was just as disgusted with the ending: "The earlier work ended in an absurdly farcia! tangle of disguises and cross-purposes."33 However, these men were disgusted with the whole play. As we have seen earlier, Archer was shocked by the character of Roebuck - "a sheer monstrosity, a boyish fanfarronade of vice". Another time Archer expressed his disgust for Roebuck thus: "His unbridled licentiousness verges upon insanity; and for the rest he is an accomplished model of the type known in latterday slang as the 'bounder'."34 Strauss summed up these feelings of dislike for the play and Roebuck when he said: Farquhar's first play, Love and a Bottle, is plainly a very young man's effort to out-manner the mannerists. His conception, unfortunately, lays its main stress upon the reckless profligacy of the hero, and 31 32 33 34

Alleman, p. 31. Archer, p. 56. Strauss, p. xxxvii. Archer, p. 6.

LOVE AND A BOTTLE

77

Farquhar's youth and natural redundancy of spirits were not conducive to moderation in the portraiture.83

It seems strange to me that Strauss and Archer and the others never considered seriously the possibility that Farquhar might have been writing a burlesque of Restoration comedy in Love and a Bottle. They commented on his aping his superiors and outmannering the mannerists, on his extravagance in the characterization of his hero and in the final plot incident, and on the parodying of Fidelia and on burlesquing a scene from Moliere. Perhaps, though, most of these men were too shocked to look close enough at the play to see it as burlesque or perhaps they were too much under the tradition of Farquhar as Roebuck to read it as anything else but autobiography. However, I believe that Love and a Bottle is a burlesque of Restoration comedy, and I think the key to the answer to Alleman's implied question of why Farquhar satirizes the conventional ending of Restoration comedy and then ends his comedy conventionally can be found in the earlier part of the scene from which he quoted: SCENE II, the Park Enter Lovewell and Lyrick meeting. Lyrick reading. I'll rack thy Reputation, blast thy Fame, And in strong grinding Satyr Gibbet up thy Name. Lov. What, in a Rapture, Mr. Lyrick? Lyr. A little Poetical fury, that's all. - I'll 'Squire him; I'll draw his Character for the Buffoon of a Farce; he shall be as famous in Ballad as Robin Hood, or Little John; my Muses shall haunt him like Demons; they shall make him more ridiculous than Don Quixote. Lov. Because he encounter'd your Windmill-Pate. - Ha, ha, ha. Come, come, Mr. Lyrick, you must be pacify'd. Lyr. Pacify'd, Sir. Zoons, Sir, he's a Fool, has not a grain of sense. Were he an ingenious Fellow, or a Man of Parts, I cou'd bear a kicking from him: But an abuse from a Blockhead! I can never suffer it. Pert Blockhead, who has purchas'd by the School Just sense enough to make a noted Fool. Strauss, p. xxxiv.

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LOVE AND A BOTTLE

That stings, Mr. Lovewell. Lov. Pray, Sir, let me see it. Lyr. This is imperfect, Sir: But if you please to give your Judgment of this Piece. - [Gives him a Paper.] 'Tis a Piece of Burlesque on some of our late writings. Lov. Ay, you Poets mount first on the Shoulders of your Predecessors, to see farther in making discoveries; and having once got the upper-hand, you spurn them under-foot. I think you shou'd bear a Veneration to their very Ashes. Lyr. Ay, if most of their Writings had been burnt. I declare, Mr. Lovewell, their Fame has only made them the more remarkable faulty: Their great Beauties only illustrate their greatest Errors. Lov. Well, you saw the new Tragedy last night; how did it please ye? Lyr. Very well; it made me laugh heartily. Lov. What, laugh at a Tragedy! Lyr. I laugh to see the Ladies cry. To see so many weep at the Death of the fabulous Hero, who would but laugh if the Poet that made 'em were hang'd? On my Conscience, these Tragedies make the Ladies vent all their Love and Honour at their Eyes, when the same white Hankerchief that blows their Noses, must be a Winding-Sheet to the deceased Hero. Lov. Then there's something in the Handkerchief to embalm him, Mr. Lyrick, Ha, ha, ha. - But what relish have you of Comedy? (I, 50-51)»«

As the scene shows, Mr. Lyrick satirizes both tragedy and comedy. Earlier in the play, Act III, Scene II, he satirized the rant of the tragedies of his day in a burlesque of Nathaniel Lee's Sophonisba: Scene II, Lyrick's Chamber in Widow Bullfinch's house; Papers scatter'd about the Table, himself sitting writing in a Night-Gown and Cap. Lyr. Two as good Lines as ever were written. - [Rising.] I gad I shall maull these topping fellows. Says Mr. Lee, Let there be not one Glimps, one Starry spark, But God's meet Gods, and justle in the Dark. Says little Lyrick, Let all the Lights be burnt out to a Snuff, And Gods meet Gods, and play at Blind-man's buff. 38

Citations of Farquhar in my text are from The Complete Charles Stonehill (Bloomsbury, 1930).

Works, ed.

LOVE AND A BOTTLE

79

Very well! Let Gods meet Gods, and so - fall out and cuff. That's much mended. They're as noble Lines as ever were penn'd. Oh, here comes my damn'd Muse; I'm always in the Humour of writing Elegy after a little of her Inspiration. (I, 39-40)

And a little later in this same scene Lyrick again burlesqued Lee: Lyr. Oh, they are like the Irish Horses, they draw best by the Tail - Have you ever seen any of my Burlesque Mr. Pamphlet? I have a Project of turning three or four of our most topping fellows into Doggrel. As for Example; Conquest with Lawrels has our Arms adorn'd, And Rome in tears of Blood our anger mourn'd. Now, Butchers with Rosemary have our Beef adorn'd. Which has in Gravy Tears our Hunger mourn'd. How d'ye like it, Mr. Pamphlet, ha? - Well Like Gods, we pass'd the rugged Alpine Hills; Melted our way, and drove our hissing Wheels, Thro cloudy Deluges, Eternal Rills. Now observe, Mr. Pamphlet; pray observe. Like Razors keen, our Knives cut passage clean Through Rills of Fat, and Deluges of Lean. Pant. Very well, upon my Soul. Lyr. Hurl'd dreadful Fire and Vinegar infus'd. Pant. Ay, Sir, Vinegar! How patly that comes in for the Beef, Mr. Lyrick! 'Tis all wondrous fine indeed. Lyr. This is the most ingenious fellow of his Trade that I have seen; he understands a good thing - [Aside]. (I, 41-42)

Schmid discussed the character of Lyrick at some length, but I believe that he misunderstood what Lyrick was doing in this particular scene. His comments began: Mr. Lyrick hat das Gefühl, dass der Stil des vielbewunderten Lee gar zu schwulstig sei, aber in seinem Streben nach Naturwahrheit und Einfachheit kommt er, bar jedes Künstlerischen Geschmackes und poetischen Könnens, wiederum auf der entgegengesetzten Seite zur Unnatur, wie er andrerseits in seinen lyrischen „Ergüssen", die der Buchhändler, Mr. Pamphlet nicht einmal umsonst drucken will, der Mode folgt und sich in den verrenktesten Wendungen, in den gekünsteltesten Bildern und Vergleichen gefällt. Mr. Lyrick ist ein Vertreter jener Poseure in der Literatur, an denen es keinem Volke und keinem Zeitalter gefehlt hat, die den Mangel an schöpferischer

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LOVE AND A BOTTLE

Kraft durch viel Theoretisieren und Spintisieren zu verhüllen trachten und in ungemessenem Dünkel Groffes zu vollbringen wähnen, wenn sie eine von ihrer feinen Nase erwitterte Änderung in der Geschmacksrichtung in ihren Werken unbewusst karikieren, während sie als praktische und bequeme Geschäftsleute, wo es das Geschäft erheischt, ohne Bedenken nach der Schablone arbeiten.87

Schmid went on to discuss the theme of the classical style versus the natural style in the plays of Moliere and the English plays, The Rehearsal and Female Wit. His mention of The Rehearsal, it seems to me, was very happy here because Farquhar evidently liked the play very much, for he quoted from it on two occasions (incidentally, mistaking Prince Prettyman for Prince Volscius both times): In Act II, Scene I, of The Recruiting Officer, Silvia refers to herself as Prince Prettyman, torn between Love and Duty (II, 57), and in a letter in Love and Business he wrote, "when, like Prince Prettyman, I have one Boot on and t'other off, Love and Honour have a strong Battel" (II, 303). Here was a play that could have influenced Farquhar in his writing of Lyrick. However, I believe Schmid's interpretation of Lyrick in this scene was wrong. To Schmid, Lyrick here was a "Hanswurst". But was he? No. Lyrick was not like Bayes in The Rehearsal·, Lyrick was George Villiers, the creator of Bayes in The Rehearsal. Lyrick was no literary clown who did not know what he was doing; he was a writer of burlesque, a literary genre that flourished abundantly in the 18th century. In this respect, Lyrick was like his creator George Farquhar, who wrote a burlesque The Adventures of Covent Garden: an Imitation of Scarron's City Romance that was published at about the same time as Love and a Bottle. The significance of The Adventures of Covent Garden as burlesque does not seem to be recognized by either Stonehill or Connely. They both point out that its source, although supposed to be by Paul Scarron, was really by Antoine Furetière. Then Stonehill and Connely go on to find autobiographical parallels in The Adventures of Covent Garden.** However, Archibald Boiling 57 38

Schmid, p. 56. Connely, pp. 65-66; Stonehill, I, xiv; note, II, 441.

LOVE AND A BOTTLE

81

Shepperson in The Novel in Motley points out that Furetière's le Roman bourgeois was a burlesque of the romances by Mlle, de Scudéry and her imitators and describes the satirical qualities of its English imitation: In 1699 there appeared a work by an unknown author, an imitation of Furetière's le Roman bourgeois, called The Adventures of Covent Garden. Like Smollet's novel, it is the story of a picaresque hero named Peregrine and his adored Emilia; it is an anti-romance containing much satirical discussion of the heroic drama of Dryden and others. Farquhar, in The Beaux' Stratagem, 1707, parodies the hero of the French romances in the character of Aimwell, who, when he declares his love, rants and rages like Oroondates.3»

Most writers have identified the 'anonymous author' of this piece with Farquhar since Leigh Hunt's discovery. Thus, Farquhar and Lyrick were both writers of burlesque. Further links between Farquhar and Lyrick can be seen in the theatrical satire that The Adventures and Love contained. The theatrical satire in The Adventures of Covent Garden occurs in a scene at the theatre where Peregrine discusses the Collier controversy with some male friends and the unities and Dryden's Indian Emperour with his female companion. All these topics are presented by Lyrick in Love and a Bottle, but the handling of these topics is so different in the two pieces that a study of the methods of the two is instructive. As in Love and a Bottle, the heroic drama comes in for humorous attack in The Adventures. Selinda, the female intellectual, likes the "fine things" in the Indian Emperour, such as That Love which first took Root will first Decay That of fresher date, will longer stay. (II, 208)

As can be seen here, the humor is less broad in The Adventures of Covent Garden than in Love and a Bottle, and this same difference can be seen in regard to the topic of the unities. The talk about the unities in The Adventures of Covent Garden is fairly » Archibald Boiling Shepperson, The Novel in Motley: A History of the Burlesque Novel in English (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 65-66.

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serious, although there is some humor in the condescending attitude of Peregrine, the critic, who likes regular, instructive plays, toward Selinda, who likes irregular plays that please the audience. The unities and other laws of the drama are handled in a ridiculous manner in Love and a Bottle, as Lyrick and his landlady bandy the terms about in Act III, Scene II: Lyr. There's more trouble in a Play than you imagine, Madam. Bull. There's more trouble with a Lodger than you think, Mr. Lyrick. Lyr. First there's the decorum of Time. Bull. Which you never observe, for you keep the worst hours of any Lodger in Town. Lyr. Then there's the exactness of Characters. Bull. And you have the most scandalous one I ever heard. Lyr. Then there's laying the Drama. Bull. Then you foul my Napkins and Towels. Lyr. Then there are preparations of Incidents, working the Passions, Beauty of Expression, Closeness of Plot, Justness of Place, Turn of Language, Opening the Catastrophe. — Bull. Then you wear out my Sheets, burn my Fire and Candle, dirty my House, eat my Meat, destroy my Drink, wear out my Furniture - I have lent you Money out of my Pocket. (I, 40) The handling of the Collier controversy again is quite different in the two. The discussion of the matter in The Adventures is specific and witty and deals more with means rather than ends: . . . there arose a discourse concerning the Battel between the Church and the Stage, with relation to the Champions that maintained the parties; the result upon the matter was this, that Mr. Collier showed too much Malice and rancour for a Church man, and his Adversaries too little wit for the Character of Poets; that their faults transversed would show much better; Dulness being more familiar with those of Mr. Collier's Function, as Malice and ill nature is more adapted to the Professors of wit. That the best way of answering Mr. Collier, was not to have replyed at all: for there was so much in Fire in his Book, had not his Adversaries thrown in Fuel, it would have fed upon it self, and so have gone out in a Blaze. As to his respondents, that Captain Va wrote too like a Gentleman to be esteemed a good Casuist; that Mr. C 's passion in this business had blinded his reason, which had shone so fair in his other Writings; that Mr. S le wanted the wit of Captain Va as much as he did Mr.

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Settle's gravity; That the two Answers to Mr. C have done his Book too much honour, but themselves too great an Injury: In short, upon the whole matter, that whoever gained the Victory, the Stage must lose by it, being so long the seat of the War; and unless Mr. Dryden, or Mr. Wicherly remove the combustion into the Enemies Country, the Theatre must down. And the end of this War will be attended by cashiering the Poets, as the last Peace was by disbanding the Army. (II, 207)

The discussion of Lyrick and Lovewell about the drama in Act IV, Scene II, finally gets around to the instruction of the drama: Lov. Ha, ha, ha. - But I thought Poetry was instructive. Lyr. Oh Gad forgive me, that's true; To Ladies it is morally beneficial; For you must know they are too nice to read Sermons; such Instructions are too gross for their refin'd apprehensions: but any Precepts that may be instill'd by easie Numbers, such as of Rochester, and others, make great Converts. Then they hate to hear a fellow in Church preach methodical Nonsense, with a Firstly, Secondly, and Thirdly: but they take up with some of our modern Plays in their Closet, where the Morallity must be Devilish Instructive. (I, 52)

Here the discussion is more general than in The Adventures of Covent Garden and the emphasis is on causes rather than means. Neither the parson nor the poet is favored in the discussion. People do not go to the theater for a sermon; on the other hand the morality of the plays is "Devilish Instructive". But why is that moral instruction of the plays so low? The moral tone of the plays reflects the taste of the audience and in turn the moral tone of the nation. The plays are immoral and profane because the audiences demanded smut and atheism in the theater. Lyrick's solution to the immorality of the stage seems to be - Reform the ladies, reform the critics, reform the beaux, reform the ministers and the playwrights and the plays will automatically be reformed. Lyrick then is not a literary clown, but a writer of burlesque like his creator Farquhar and together they share certain views in regard to the drama. Further, Farquhar is cleared of a charge leveled against him by Schmid concerning Lyrick:

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War is auch von allem Anfang an nicht zu verkennen, dass der Dichter der Tendenz Mr. Lyricks eine gewisse Sympathie entgegenbringe, so muss doch diesem Charakter die Einheitlichkeit abgesprochen werden, da er zu sehr zwischen dem literarischen Hanswurst, dem schlauen und vor allem auf seinen materiellen Vorteil bedachten Intriganten und dem ernsten Literaturekritiker, ja Satiriker Schwankt.40 Clown, he is not - earnest literary critic and intrigant he is and it is as both that he is so essential to the burlesque in Love and a Bottle. In Act III, Scene II, as we have seen, Lyrick writes the burlesque of tragedy, and in Act IV, Scene II, he satirizes the comedy -particularly the intrigue of shamming "the Beau and 'Squire with a Whore or Chambermaid". And he proceeds to burlesque comedy by carrying out that very intrigue to end all intrigues. The key to this burlesque comes in Act V, Scene III: Roeb. Well, Sir, [To Lyrick.] how was your Plot carried on? Lyr. Why this 'Squire (will you give me leave to call you so now?) this 'Squire had a mind to personate Lovewell, to catch Lucinda. So I made Trudge to personate Lucinda, and snap him in this very Garden. - Now, Sir, you'ill give me leave to write your Epithalamium? Mock. My Epithalamium! my Epitaph, Screech Owl, for I'm Buried alive. But I hope you'll return my hundred pound I gave you for marrying me. Lyr. No, But for Five hundred more I'll unmarry you. These are hard times, and men of industry must make Money. Mock. Here's the Money, by the Universe, Sir; a Bill of Five Hundred pound Sterling upon Mr. Ditto the Mercer in Cheapside. Bring me a Reprieve, and 'tis yours. Lyr. Lay it in that Gentleman's hands. [Gives Roeb. the Bill.] The Executioner shall cut the Rope. [Goes to the door, and brings in Bullfinch dress'd like a Parson.] Here's Revelation for you! [Pulls open the Gown.] Mock. Oh thou damn'd Whore of Babylon! Lov. What, Pope Joan the second! were you the Priest? Bull. Of the Poet's Ordination. Lyr. Ay, ay, before the time of Christianity the Poets were Priests. Schmid, p. 58.

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Mock. No wonder then that all the World were Heathens. Lyr. How d'ye like the Plot? wou'd it not do well for a Play? (I, 72) Yes, it would do well for a play. In fact, the mock marriage theme had done well for some nineteen plays before, according to Alleman's count, and was to furnish a plot motif for six plays after Love and a Bottle, including Farquhar's own The Recruiting Officer. However, although there had been two mock marriages in earlier plays like D'Urfy's The Fool Turn'd Critick (1678), [Rawlin's] Tunbridge Wells, R. Boyle's Guzman, Scott's Mock Marriage, according to Alleman, Love and a Bottle in exaggerated burlesque fashion had three such mock marriages. However, Lyrick does not win out in his plot. And adding a touch to the burlesque, the comedy ends according to the stock convention Lyrick so abhors with the poet lampooned and the rake carrying away the fortune, as Roebuck steps in and pays off Trudge with the money he received from Mockmode to hold for Lyrick, and Roebuck marries Leanthe. As we have seen, another main criticism of comedy made by Lyrick is directed toward the hero of comedy. He dislikes the hero because he always possesses the character of the author, and that character is always the same, that of the practical rake and speculative gentleman. Maybe he had meant by the statement concerning the hero as possessing the poet's character to comment satirically on the belief of the Collierists that the wickedness in the rakish heroes of comedy represented the wickedness of the poets and not any wickedness that noblemen possessed. Now many writers, as was shown in Chapter I, have interpreted Lyrick's remarks as indicating that Roebuck is Farquhar, who was a practical rake and speculative gentleman, or as Willard Connely put it:

A good start, in fact, was just to put himself on the stage, even with his own Christian name, as George Roebuck, 'an Irish gentleman, of a wild roving temper; newly come to London'. In Roebuck the author was not averse to revealing his own condition; his poverty, his animal

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spirits, his tolerance, his sarcasm, and a certain inclination to turn soldier.41

Connely and others who pursued this line failed to notice one thing: the fact that Lyrick could give such a pat answer to Lovewell's question as to the character of the autobiographical hero - "A compound of practical Rake, and speculative gentleman". However, F. W. Bateson in English Comic Drama 17001750 used Farquhar's definition of the comic hero as the Restoration ideal: "The ideal ceased to be the 'wit', 'a compound', in Farquhar's words, 'of practical Rake' and it became, in a reflection of the honnête homme of the French, the 'man of sense'."42 Thus, if Roebuck is partly Farquhar, he is also partly a literary type - the Restoration comedy rake. The description of Roebuck that Connely took such pains to quote from the Dramatis Personae contains this dichotomy of art and nature. Farquhar was surely "Irish" and "newly come to London"; however the "gentleman, of a wild roving temper" comes straight from Mrs. Behn - from The Rover or, The Banish'd Cavaliers (Part I). Roebuck surely is the son of Willmore and some Irish colleen of the Farquhar clan. Willmore, the Rover, is a Cavalier banished from England during the Commonwealth. He and three other Cavaliers take up residence in sinful Naples during the carnival time. The impoverished Willmore has two vices: love and a bottle. Willmore no sooner gets off the boat than he is trying to make an assignation with a courtesan. Thwarted in this attempt, he soon after gives his attentions to Hellena, an Italian lady masquerading as a gypsy, and makes a date with her. Next he turns his attentions to wooing Angelica, the highest priced courtesan in Naples, in spite of his bankrupt state and in spite of her numerous suitors, and he awakens true love within the hardened heart of this sinful woman. Leaving Angelica, he meets Hellena and picks up this affair. Next Willmore, drunk, keeps a rendezvous with Florinda, mistress of his friend, Belville. Next, he is pursued by the 'ruined' Ange41 48

Connely, p. 73. F. W. Bateson, English Comic Drama, 1700-1750 (Oxford, 1929), p. 3.

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lica, jealous of Hellena, and Heilena in male attire, jealous of Angelica. He then turns his attentions to Valeria, kinswoman of Florinda. In Act V he offers to help his friend Blunt seduce a girl who had sought refuge in Blunt's room, really Florinda in disguise. Then the spurned Angelica threatens him. After escaping this threat, he finally submits to the charms of Hellena and marries her; their happiness is increased by her attaining her fortune from her brother. Now compare Willmore's character and story with Roebuck's. George Roebuck, too, is a banished Cavalier: Roeb. No, 'tis the Flesh, Ned. - That very Woman that drove us all out of Paradise, has sent me a packing out of Ireland. Love. How so? Roeb. Only tasting the forbidden Fruit: that was all. Love. Is simple Fornication become so great a Crime there, as to be punishable by no less than Banishment? Roeb. I gad, mine was double Fornication, Ned. The Jade was so pregnant to bear Twins; the fruit grew in Clusters; and my unconscionable Father, because I was a Rogue in Debauching her, wou'd make me a fool by Wedding her: But I wou'd not marry a Whore, and he would not own a disobedient Son, and so - (I, 15-16)

Already the exaggeration of burlesque sets in; the whore with child was a Restoration motif, but here is a whore with two children. Roebuck, the Irishman, lands in wicked London without a penny. Wicked London, of course, is attractive to this young rake, addicted to love and the bottle. No sooner is he there than he is accosted by a young woman in a mask, who turns out, not unlike Florinda, to be Lucinda, the beloved of his best friend, Lovewell. Her daring gesture, of course, causes him to make advances toward her. Next Roebuck discovers that he has been followed to London by Trudge (corresponding very roughly to Angelica), the mother of his children. Next he wants to pursue a prostitute, but his friend Lovewell sets him in pursuit of his beloved, Lucinda, in order to prove her. On his way to Lucinda's he goes to the Tavern in a coach and six-

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Yes, Sir, six Whores and a Carted Bawd. He pick'd 'em all up in the street, and is gone with this splendid Retinue into the Sun by CoventGarden. I ask'd him what he meant? he told me, That he only wanted to Whet, when the very sight of 'em turn'd my Stomach. (I, 33)

At Lucinda's house he meets Leanthe in the disguise of page (shades of Hellena!). He kisses this sweet young lad three times. The talk turns to his mistresses: "Umh! - 1 gad the Boy has pos'd me. - How many, Child? - Why, let me see. - There was Mrs. Mary, Mrs. Margaret, Mrs. Lucy, Mrs. Susan, Mrs. Judy, and so forth; to the number of five and twenty, or thereabouts" (I, 34). The talk later turns to Leanthe, and he is touched, but no sooner is the page gone to get Lucinda, than he admits I've thrown my cast, and am fairly in for't. But an't I an impudent Dog? Had I as much Gold in my Breeches, as Brass in my Face, I durst attempt a whole Nunnery. This Lady is a reputed Vertue, of Good Fortune and Quality; I am a Rakehelly Rascal not worth a Groat; and without any further Ceremony, am going to Debauch her. - But hold. - She does not know that I'm this Rakehelly Rascal, and I know that she's a Woman, one of eighteen too; Beautiful, Witty, - O, my Conscience upon second thoughts, I am not so very Impudent neither. - Now as to my management, I'll first try the whining Addresses, and see if she'll bleed in so soft a Vein. (I, 36-37)

With that Lucinda enters and Roebuck wooes her violently, much to the distress of Leanthe, who stands by. From Lucinda he goes to the Tavern, where he gets drunk. He next appears in the park, where he addresses one whore unsuccessfully and a second one with better success and runs after a third. Then he keeps a rendezvous with Lucinda, who at first rejects him, but through a misunderstanding, she offers to marry him. He is quite happy with being married to Lucinda; however, as it turns out, he has really been married to Leanthe, and he is equally happy with this arrangement, especially as it entails possession of Lovewell's estate in Ireland. Adding to his happiness, Roebuck is able to buy off Trudge. Thus, Roebuck out-rakes his model, Willmore, which is no mean accomplishment. A further addition to the burlesque in the

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character of Roebuck comes in the opening of the play. The play begins in a way reminiscent of The Man of Mode, in which Farquhar had acted the part of Bellair on the Dublin stage, with the hero speaking poetry: "Thus far our Arms have with Success been Crown'd." But here our Dorimant is an impoverished Irish gentleman and his dressing-room a park bench and his sole attendant a begging crippled veteran. The fact that Roebuck is Irish also probably heightens the burlesque effect. G. C. Duggan listed Roebuck as the first Irish gentleman to be depicted on the Restoration stage.43 To present, in the words of Lucinda, "an Irishman! a meer Wolf-Dog" (I, 14) as the hero of a comedy certainly was the height of the ridiculous. He could be the chief comic character - the Teague - but hardly the leading one. The source for Leanthe could also have been furnished by The Rover. Hellena's feelings toward her rake suggest slightly those of Leanthe for hers. Hellena, on her first entrance in male attire, says: "This must be Angelica. I know it by her mumping Matron here - Ay, ay, 'tis she. My mad Captain's with her too, for all his swearing - how this inconstant Humour makes me love him: pray, good grave Gentlewoman, is not this Angelica?"44 This speech seems to foreshadow the Leanthe speech: Wild as Winds, and unconfin'd as Air. - Yet I may reclaim him. His follies are weakly founded, upon the Principles of Honour, where the very Foundation helps to undermine the Structure. How charming wou'd Vertue look in him, whose behaviour can add a Grace to the unseemliness of Vice! (I, 39)

However, this speech of Leanthe's suggests another of Farquhar's sources, another aspect of Roebuck's character, and still another phase of the burlesque found in Love and. a Bottle. As this speech points out, Roebuck is not only a rake by practice but 43

George C. Duggan, The Stage Irishman: A History of the Irish Play and Stage Characters from the Earliest Times (London, 1937), p. 221. 44 Mrs. Aphra Amis Behn, The Plays, Histories, and Novels of the Ingenious Mrs. Aphra Amis Behn. With Life and Memoirs (London, 1871), I, 60.

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a rake by principle: Roebuck is not only Lyrick's "practical rake" but also Lyrick's "speculative gentleman". This speculative side of Roebuck is illustrated very early in the play in a conversation between Roebuck and Lovewell, which turns from the virtue of Lovewell's sister, Leanthe, to the virtue of women: Love. Now you talk of my Sister, pray how does she? Roeb. Dear Lovewell, a very Miracle of Beauty and Goodness. But I don't like her. Love. Why? Roeb. She's Virtuous; and I think Beauty and Virtue are as ill joyned as Lewdness and Ugliness. Love. But I hope your Arguments could not make a Proselyte to this Profession. Roeb. Faith I endeavour'd it; but that Plaguey Honour - Damn it for a Whim - Were it as honourable for Women to be Whores, as Men to be Whore-Masters, we shou'd have Lewdness as great a Mark of Quality among the Ladies, as 'tis now among the Lords. Love. What! do you hold no innate Principle of Virtue in Women? Roeb. I hold an innate Principle of Love in them: Their Passions are as great as ours, their Reasons weaker. We admire them and consequently they must us. And I tell thee once more, that had women no safe guard but your innate Principle of Virtue, honest George Roebuck wou'd have lain with your Sister, Ned, and shou'd enjoy a Countess before night. (I, 16) Apparently Roebuck here is making a special application of the following passages from John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding on virtue: 6. Virtue generally approved, not because innate, but because profitable. Hence naturally flows the great variety of opinions concerning moral rules which are to be found among men, according to the different sorts of happiness they have a prospect of, or propose to themselves; which could not be if practical principles were innate, and imprinted in our minds immediately by the hand of God. I grant the existence of God is so many ways manifest, and the obedience we owe him so congruous to the light of reason, that a great part of mankind give testimony to the law of nature: but yet I think it must be allowed that several moral rules may receive from mankind a very general approbation, without either knowing or admitting the

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true ground of morality; which can only be the will and law of a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hands rewards and punishments and power enough to call to account the proudest offender. For, God having, by an inseparable connexion, joined virtue and public happiness together, and made the practice thereof necessary to the preservation of society, and visibly beneficial to all with whom the virtuous man has to do; it is no wonder that every one should not only allow, but recommend and magnify those rules to others, from whose observance of them he is sure to reap advantage to himself. He may, out of interest as well as conviction, cry up that for sacred, which, if once trampled on and profaned, he himself cannot be safe nor secure. This, though it takes nothing from the moral and eternal obligation which these rules evidently have, yet it shows that the outward acknowledgment men pay to them in their words proves not that they are innate principles; nay, it proves not so much as that men assent to them inwardly in their own minds, as the inviolable rules of their own practice; since we find that self-interest, and the conveniences of this life, make many men own an outward profession and approbation of them, whose actions sufficiently prove that they very little consider the Lawgiver that prescribed these rules; nor the hell that has ordained for the punishment of those that transgress them.45 and passion: Principles of actions indeed there are lodged in men's appetites; but these are so far from being innate moral principles, that if they were left to their full swing they would carry men to the overturning of all morality. Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments that will overbalance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law.46 As can be seen, when Roebuck applies Locke's argument to the case of women, he agrees with Locke that there is no "innate Principle of Virtue" in them but an "innate Principle of Love". Roebuck further agrees with Locke that people derive their own principles of virtue through experiences; however, these practical principles of virtue that Roebuck describes are the double standard - "Plaguey Honour" - that makes it honourable for women 45

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago, 1952), X X X V , 105. 49 Locke, 108.

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to be virgins and men to be whore-masters. Roebuck implies a criticism of this code, again according to Locke, because the code does not restrain the "innate Principle of Love", for it encourages women to loose thoughts ("We admire them and consequently they us.") and the men to loose actions ('Were it as honourable for Women to be Whores, as Men to be Whoremasters, we shou'd have Lewdness as great a Mark of Quality among the ladies as 'tis now among the Lords."). And certainly Lyrick must be thinking of the double standard - the moral basis of Restoration comedy - when he labels the morality of modern plays as "Devilish Instructive" in Act IV, Scene II. The epithet "Devilish" for the code is also good Locke, for Locke believes that oftentimes the practical moral principles and the will and law of God are the same. However, Farquhar knows that the double standard is rather from the Devil. With this interpretation of Lyrick's criticism of the morality of Restoration plays, we can see once again how Farquhar uses Lyrick's criticism as a basis for his burlesque of Restoration comedy. In the conduct of Roebuck and Lucinda, Farquhar burlesques the moral code of Restoration comedy-the double standard - for Roebuck goes on his whoremastering way according to the "Principle of Honour" and Lucinda remains a virgin in deed (but not in thought) according to the same principle. That Roebuck's amorous excesses are due to his determination to follow the code is shown in two passages already quoted. Roebuck's own statements concerning the code in Act I and Leanthe's speech in Act III, Scene I, both point out that ironically Roebuck only whores to live up to the high moral principles of high society. That Lucinda remains a virgin for the same principle is clearly revealed in her conduct throughout the play. In her conversation in Act I with Pindress, her maid, Lucinda reveals quite frankly that she is considering marrying Lovewell because she is "weary of lying alone". To this, Pindress replies that "lying alone is very dangerous; 'tis apt to breed strange Dreams" (1,12). And, indeed, Lucinda, as Mrs. Sullen later, is subject to lascivious thoughts, although in this particular scene her dream of Mockmode seems

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innocent enough. Further along in the scene when Pindress makes an indecent remark, one wonders how an 'innocent' girl like Lucinda can put up with the indecency of the maid. (This whole question is made more meaningful by Pindress's behavior toward the page.) However, in this scene in Act I we find out from Pindress that Lucinda really enjoys indecency - especially indecency in the theater - even though she takes great pains - tight corsets - t o suppress her enjoyment and appear innocent. Lucinda's character is completely established when she sets out, mask on face and fan in hand, whore-like, to pick up the strange man, Roebuck. And thus Roebuck's remarks about women being real creatures of passion rather than ideal creatures of virtue seems to be true in the case of Lucinda. Roebuck's remarks about women preserving their "virtue" because of "honour" is also borne out in the conduct of Lucinda. In Act V, Scene I, the seduction scene, Lucinda is reading of "Love" and "Honour" and "Virtue", and when Roebuck tries to make love to her, "Love" and "Honour" and "Virtue" are still on her lips. However, when Roebuck presses the issue, "I'll put out the Candle, the Torch of Love shall light us to Bed", her arguments take a turn: To Bed, Sir! Thou has Impudence enough to draw thy Rationality in Question. Whence proceeds it? From a vain thought of thy own graces, or an opinion of my Vertue? - If from the latter, know that I am a Woman, whose modesty dare not doubt my Vertue; yet have so much Pride to support it, that the dying Groans of thy whole Sex at my feet shou'd not extort an immodest thought from me. (I, 63)

And so that "Plaguey Honour", that "Pride", that code that makes it fashionable for women to be virgins, or appear to be, and men to be whoremasters, keeps Lucinda from falling. Deliciously ironic then come Roebuck's reactions to Lucinda's show of 'virtue': "Her superior Vertue awes me into coldness" (I, 63). Although the conventional Lucinda proves Roebuck's case, still the unconventional Leanthe refutes it. Leanthe defies conventions by first coming to the support of her lover's mistress and his bastards and also by donning man's attire and following

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her lover to England. She is driven by passion, but she is good because she wants to be, not because she has to be, or as she herself says toward the end of the play to Lovewell: "I am your Sister, Sir, as such I beg you to pardon the effects of violent passion, which has driven me into some imprudent Actions: But none such as may blot the honour of my Vertue, or Family" (I, 70). At the end of the play Roebuck and Farquhar seem to acknowledge her "superior Virtue" by Roebuck's final speech: Brother, you know I always slighted Gold; But most when offer'd as a sordid Bribe. I scorn to be brib'd even to Vertue: [Embracing Leanthe.] But for bright Vertues sake, I here embrace it. I have espous'd all Goodness with Leanthe, And am divorc'd from all my former Follies. Woman's our Fate. Wild and Unlawful Flames Debauch us first and softer Love reclaims. Thus Paradice was lost by Woman's Fall; But Vertuous Women thus restores it all. (I, 73)

Thus, Farquhar has given us a burlesque of Restoration comedy following the satire of Lyrick in Act IV, Scene II. In Roebuck he has given us the rakehelly rascal to end all rakehelly rascals; in the plot he has given us intrigue to end all intrigues; and in the moral he has given us the strictest adherence to the moral code possible in the examples of Lucinda and Roebuck. And all this burlesque material is presented in a play of the irregular form that Lyrick would have approved, for Lyrick, in a passage already quoted, had a light regard for the rules. Love and a Bottle has three plots: the Roebuck-Leanthe plot, the Lucinda-Lovewell plot, and the boarding-house plot. The two love plots are very closely tied together as can be seen from the summary above. Roebuck and Lovewell are good friends; Lovewell and Leanthe are brother and sister; and Leanthe, in the disguise of the page, serves Lucinda. If it were not for Roebuck, there would be no complication in the Lovewell-Lucinda plot; in fact, they are already to be married when Roebuck enters the scene. With the entrance of Roebuck there are several mis-

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understandings which are not solved until Roebuck is out of the way. If Farquhar is successful in uniting his two love plots, he is not very successful in combining them with his third plot, which concerns life at Mrs. Bullfinch's boarding house. The links between the plots are rather tenuous: Lovewell sends Mrs. Trudge, Roebuck's mistress, to live with Mrs. Bullfinch. The star boarder at Mrs. Bullfinch's is one Mockmode, a would-be rake. Mockmode would like to be a suitor to Lucinda, although he never courts her directly in the play. Still another link in the play is the fact that when Roebuck goes to woo Lucinda for Lovewell, Roebuck, under the advice of Lovewell, takes the name of Mockmode. The boarding house plot concerns the efforts of Mockmode to become the fashionable man about town. As can be seen from Lyrick's description of his intrigue, the love plots function to provide the beginning of the action in the boarding house plot and also to provide the solution. However, the boarding house plot does not function to advance the love plots at all. Therefore, in his first play, Farquhar has been quite successful in interweaving two love plots together, but he has not been quite so successful in working the third strand - the boarding house plot - into the play. (See Figure 1.) However, in destroying the unity of his play by the addition of the boarding house plot, Farquhar was, according to Selinda in The Adventures of Covent Garden, in the illustrious company of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Dryden, whose plays the "Criticks quarrel at as irregular, which nevertheless still continue to please the audience" (II, 208). The emphasis in Love and a Bottle seems to make the audience laugh with all the methods employed in Restoration comedy: wit, humor characters, and situations. Even here Farquhar seems very conscious of what he is doing, and the effect seems to be more the product of a writer of burlesque than of "a raw provincial youth". The critics have noted that Farquhar strains after wit in this play, and indeed he does. Many characters talk wit in the play: Roebuck, Lovewell, Lucinda, Leanthe, Pindress, Club, Mockmode, Brush, Lyrick, Nimblewrist, Rigadoon, and Bullfinch, the

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landlady. The whole first act plus Act II, Scene I; Act III, Scene I; Act III, Scene II; Act IV, Scene II; and Act V, Scene I, rely mainly on wit for their comic point. Besides the satiric remarks on the drama, morality, and the Irish already noted, satire is also directed towards the soldier ("Can't I rob honourably by turning Soldier?"-I, 11), the scholar ("he's newly come to town from the University, where his Education could reach no further than guzzle fat ale, smoke Tobacco, and chop Logick" - 1 , 13), the lawyer ("I hope a Lawyer understands business better than to beget anything non compos." - 1 , 13), and London ("Ladies, and Whores; Colleges and Playhouses; Churches and Towers; fine Houses and Bawdy-Houses . . . Fops, Poets, Toads, and Adders" -1,14). That Farquhar's wit is self conscious by design and not by ignorance might perhaps be shown by a reference in the play. In Act I Lucinda and Pindress have a witty tête-à-tête, which be' comes smutty: Pin. We Masks are the purest Privateers! Madam, how would you like to Cruise about a little? Luc. Well enough, had we no Enemies but our Fops, and Cits: But I dread these blustring Men of War, the Officers, who after a Broadside of Dam'me's and Sinkme's, are for boarding all Masks they meet, as lawful Prize. Pin. In truth Madam, and the most of 'em are lawful Prize, for they generally have French Ware under Hatches. Luc. Oh hidious! O' my Conscience Girl thou'rt quite spoild. An Actress upon the Stage would blush at such expressions. (I, 13)

Pindress's smutty jest becomes a burlesque - an exaggerated imitation of the wit of Restoration comedy, whose subject oftentimes is smut. Further, Mockmode's definition of wit ("All Wit consists most in Jingling." - 1 , 31) seems a criticism of the quantity of wit in Restoration comedy, and the abundance of wit in Love and a Bottle serves to illustrate this criticism. Farquhar's attitude toward his humor characters is likewise self-conscious. Although critics have pointed out how stock the characters like Mockmode, Lyrick, Trudge, and Bullfinch are,

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they have not considered the possibility of Farquhar's choosing them for that very reason and burlesquing them. It seems to me Farquhar draws our attention to this intention when he has Roebuck say of the inhabitants of Mrs. Bullfinch's: "A very pretty Family. A Heathen Philosopher, an English Poet, and an Irish Whore. Had the Landlady but a Highland Piper to joyn with 'em, she might set up for a Collection of Monsters" (I, 22). And Farquhar seems to realize the stock quality of those two big scenes in the boarding-house plot: the scene of Mockmode with his tutors and the scene of Pamphlet and Lyrick's creditors. The Mockmode scene is foreshadowed by the remarks of Lucinda: I had the oddest Dream last night of my Courtier that is to be, 'Squire Mockmode. He appear'd crowded about with a DancingMaster, Pushing-Master, Musick-Master, and all the throng of Beaumakers; and methought he mimick'd Foppery so awk-wardly, that his imitation was down-right burlesquing it. I burst out a laughing so heartily that I waken'd my self. (I, 12-13)

As for the Pamphlet scene, which Lyrick engineers, Lyrick says afterwards: "Ha, ha, ha. Very Poetical Faith; a good Plot for a play, Mr. Mockmode·, a Bookseller bound in Calves-Leather" (1,43). The final touches to this burlesque of Restoration comedy, which satirizes and imitates exaggeratedly its hero, its intrigue, its moral, its form and its wit, humor characters, and comic situations, are the title -Love and a Bottle-one, only a little more decent than Love in a Tub (which Farquhar had acted in Dublin) and the coarse prologue (not by Farquhar) in the Restoration comedy vein, which the drunken actor delivered while nipping at a bottle of wine. Although Farquhar did not write another extended burlesque like Love and a Bottle, still his burlesque attitude toward the heroic drama was to color several of his plays importantly. In the big love scenes in the plays the lovers refer to themselves as characters in heroic drama. For example, in The Constant Couple in Act V, Scene I, the revised version, Wildair goes to make love to Angelica as Alexander:

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Wild, [mimicking] Tal ti dum, ti dum, tall ti didi, didum. A million to one now, but this Girl is just come flush from reading the Rival Queens - I gad, I'll at her in her own cant O my Statyra, O my Angry Dear, turn thy Eyes on me, behold thy Beau in Buskins. (I, 141)

In the sequel, Sir Harry Wildair's burlesquing attitude again stands him in good stead when he unmasks a ghost to find his wife: Wild. Hold, hold, Madam. Don't be angry, my dear; you took me unprovided: Had you but sent me Word of your coming, I had got three or four Speeches out of Oroonoko and the Mourning Bride upon this occasion, that wou'd have charm'd your very Heart. But we'll do as well as we can; I'll have the Musick from both Houses; Pawlet and Locket shall contrive for our Taste; we'll charm our Ears with Abell's Voice; feast our Eyes with one another; and thus, with all our Senses tun'd to Love, we'll hurl off our Cloaths, leap into Bed, and there - Look ye, Madam, if I don't welcome you home with Raptures more natural and more moving than all the Plays in Christendom - I'll say no more. (I, 208)

The Inconstant with its different kind of love scene in Act V still contains its reference to the heroic play in Lamorce's comment to Mirabel: "O now I think on't Mr. Mustapha, you have got the finest Ring there, I cou'd scarcely believe it right, pray let me see it" (I, 267). And in his final play, The Beaux' Stratagem, in Act V, Scene III, Archer sends Aimwell back into the action to win the fair Dorinda with these instructions: "Throw your self at her Feet, speak some Romantick Nonsense or other; - Address her like Alexander in the height of his Victory, confound her Senses, bear down her Reason, and away with her - The Priest is now in the Cellar, and dare not refuse to do the work" (II, 183). In each of these cases the burlesquing of the heroic drama changes the tone of the scene and thus affects the tone of the whole play. Each of these scenes is based on emotion, love or fear as in the case of The Inconstant, and the tendency is for the emotion to carry the situation into the realm of the serious (or

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into the realm of sentimentalism). The burlesque of the heroic drama helps to bring the scene back into comic focus. But why did Farquhar continue to use the conventional materials of Restoration comedy after he satirized them and burlesqued them in his first play? Perhaps the answer to this question might be found in the public acceptance of the play. Suppose Farquhar were greatly surprised at the success of this first play as the 'general character' of 1728 stated. Could it be that he might have been surprised not only with the amount of success the play enjoyed but also with the type of its success? Perhaps he was genuinely surprised to see people interpreting the play as autobiography and a cesspool of wickedness. The burlesque was thus misunderstood, and the public enjoyed the play for the things he sought to ridicule; therefore he kept putting these stock conventions into his plays. In The Twin-Rivals he tried once again to break the mould of comedy, but the public was still not ready.

III

LUREWELL AND THE JILTING WOMEN OF RESTORATION COMEDY

As in Love and. a Bottle, Farquhar in his next comedy, The Constant Couple, is again working with traditional comic material, but this time instead of working with the rake, he is working with the jilt. Although there is no Lyrick in The Constant Couple to burlesque the material, still Farquhar brings originality to the old material. His jilt is gayer than the other jilts before her and her story is more meaningful than those of her predecessors, for it is a vehicle to carry on his attack on the double standard that he began in Love and. a Bottle. Lady Lurewell, Farquhar's jilt, has been a very misunderstood woman by the critics. By Hallbauer, she has been viewed as the villainess of a melodrama: Lady Lurewell is a quaint coquette pestered with an odd whim. Wronged by a faithless lover many years ago, she throws her resentment upon false mankind, and rambles through different countries to make as many fools as she can; she hates those that don't love her, and slights those that do. Destitute of soft sentiments, she is like a demon who sets her mind on making a great havoc among men. Such a strange freak in a blooming girl is a ridiculous folly; it may have been fed by the many coxcombical fools she has met on her way, but it puffs her up with a false dignity which makes her an unpleasant figure. Besides, her morals will not stand the test of being proof against the assiduity of a Wildair, though honour and virtue are familiar words to her.1 By Bernbaum, she has been seen as a sentimental heroine: 1

Otto Hallbauer, The den, 1880), pp. 20-21.

Life and Works of George

Farquhar

(Holzmin-

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In the same play, Lady Lurewell and Colonel Standard, lovers who were separated for many years, find each other again and are joyfully reunited, - a theme of inexhaustible interest to sentimentalists, who interpreted such reunions as a reward for the virtue of characters. That is not, however, Farquhar's conception. Colonel Standard has distinctly attractive qualities, but he does not even pretend that his proposals to Lady Lurewell (before the recognition) are honorable. He and Lady Lurewell are 'constant' to one another's memories only in the somewhat esoteric sense that neither will engage in love-affairs with the intention of matrimony. Lady Lurewell, though she weeps when thinking of the love of her youth, is during most of the play spitefully occupied in entrapping and plaguing all the suitors she can attract. In these instances and many similar ones, Farquhar with some effort saves himself from a surrender to the sentimental mood; but so often he nearly submits to it that these three comedies suffer a lamentable impairment in the unity of tone and in consistency of ethical principle. 2 And by Connely, she has been described in the terms of a late 19th century problem play as a "believable woman with a past". 3 But Lurewell is a comedy heroine by pedigree and by personality. Two literary sources have been discovered for the plot of The Constant Couple, in which Lady Lurewell, a young woman of twenty-seven, makes many men, particularly five in this play, namely: Sir Harry Wildair, the gentleman; Colonel Standard, the soldier; Vizard, the hypocrite; Smuggler, the merchant; and Clincher, the would-be-gentleman, pay for her being seduced at fifteen. The Biographia Dramatica accuses Farquhar of stealing his plot and main characters from The Adventures of Covent Garden: "The early writers of the English drama appear to have made free, without scruple, with any materials for their dramas which fell in their way. TTie present is a remarkable instance. In the preceding year, 1699, was published a small volume, entitled The Adventures of Covent Garden, in Imitation of Scarron's City Romance, 12mo, a piece without the slightest degree of merit; yet from thence our author took the characters of Lady Lurewell and Colonel Standard, and the incidents of Beau Clincher and Tom Errand's change of 2

Ernest Bernbaum, The Drama of Sensibility (Boston, 1915), p. 85. Willard Connely, Young George Farquhar: The Restoration Drama at Twilight (London, 1949), p. 98.

3

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clothes, with other circumstances. The character of Sir Harry Wildair, however, still remains the property of the author, and he is entitled to the credit of the general conduct of the piece. Perhaps his only fault may have been in not acknowledging the writer, contemptible as he is, to whom he had been obliged."4 Although the Biographia Dramatica might have been wrong in charging Farquhar with plagiary, still it is right in pointing out The Adventures as a source for The Constant Couple. The most apparent borrowing is "the incidents of Beau Clincher and Tom Errand's change of clothes". In The Adventures Emilia, the heroine, entertains a captain in her apartment, where Peregrine, the hero, sees them at a window from below. Peregrine rushes in to catch them, but Emilia, who sees Peregrine coming, causes the captain and a porter (whom Peregrine had earlier sent with a challenge to the captain) to exchange clothes by pretending that Peregrine is her husband. The captain in the porter's clothes rushes down the stairs past Peregrine. When Peregrine enters Emilia's apartment, he finds the porter in the captain's clothes and Emilia passes the porter off to the jealous Peregrine as Lord C's footman, who has come with a proposal from Lord C; this fictitious indecent proposal she righteously rejects. Peregrine is completely taken in by Emilia's performance, and on leaving her place, he sees the captain in the porter's clothes, and Peregrine, believing the captain to be the porter, asks him about a reply to the challenge. The dumbfounded captain has no answer, and Peregrine thoroughly beats the captain. Then the captain returns to Emilia's apartment for his clothes, but the porter has already left with the captain's fine clothes by the back door. Angered by the whole affair and fearful of being discovered in the porter's clothes, the captain takes the alleys and back streets home; unfortunately he happens to go through the district where the porter lives. There he is discovered by the porter's wife, who accuses him of murdering her husband and stealing his clothes. She stirs up a mob who chases him into Justice M's house, and in spite of the captain's story, the justice holds him over for trial. 4

As quoted in Charles Stonehill, ed., The Complete Farquhar (Bloomsbury, 1930), I, xvi.

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This material furnishes several lively scenes for The Constant Couple. In Act III, Scene III, the jealous Standard, in the street, sees Lurewell and Clincher Senior, coquetting on the balcony. In Act III, Scene IV, in Lurewell's apartment, Lurewell, who had seen Standard below, gets Clincher to exchange clothes with Tom Errand, the messenger that Standard has hired to deliver a challenge to Sir Harry Wildair, by pretending that Standard is her husband. Then the hypocritically righteous Lurewell passes Errand, in Clincher's clothes, off as Sir Harry's footman to the jealous Standard. Clincher in Tom Errand's clothes comes in, and Standard, mistaking Clincher for Errand, asks him for the answer to the challenge. The dumbfounded Clincher cannot answer Standard's demand, and Standard beats him. After Standard leaves, Clincher asks for his clothes and learns from Lurewell and her maid that Errand has left by the back door with Clincher's clothes. In Act IV, Scene I, Tom Errand's wife and the mob accuse Clincher of murdering her husband and stealing his clothes. The constable enters, and, although inclined to believe Clincher's story, he throws Clincher in jail when he finds Clincher's Jubilee pistols on him. Here the two stories diverge, for there is no court scene in The Constant Couple. The connection between Emilia and Lurewell is not so close as that between the captain and the porter and Beau Clincher and Tom Errand. Emilia, like Lurewell, has an early unhappy experience in love; however, Emilia's experience is a marriage with Richly, forced on her by her parents, although she preferred Peregrine. Like Lurewell, Emilia is a popular girl with the men; she is sought after by the captain, by Lord C and by Peregrine. Like Lurewell, Emilia plays tricks upon her male friends. As we have seen, she tricks Peregrine into believing that the captain has not been with her. Later she tricks Peregrine into writing love letters for her to Lord C.5 She causes the captain much trouble 5

Schmid connects Peregrine's writing love letters for Emilia to Lord C and the situation in which Standard delivers Lurewell's love letters and note to Sir Harry - David Schmid, George Farquhar, Sein Leben und Seine Original-Dramen, Wiener Beiträge zur englischen Philologie, Bd. 18 (Vienna, 1904), p. 100.

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because of the exchange of the clothes. And she tricks Lord C into believing that Peregrine's letters are her own invention and that Peregrine is just a necessary friend. Unlike Lurewell, however, Emilia is a prostitute. Emilia gives herself to the captain and to Lord C, whereas Lurewell remains constant to her lover, the one who has stolen her chastity. Emilia also takes money from Peregrine; Lurewell, a wealthy heiress, is above such an action. Another source for The Constant Couple is suggested by Genest: "Lady Lurewell and the outlines of the two Clinchers are borrowed from Madam Fickle."· Madam Fickle, a comedy by Thomas D'Urfey, was first presented in 1676. Madam Fickle, who is described in the subtitle as "the Witty False One", is like Lurewell in several ways. Like Lurewell, Madam Fickle has several lovers. Her three lovers, Bellamour, Manly, and Harry Jollyman, know one another but do not realize they all love her, for she is Corinna to Bellamour, Celia to Manly, and Cleio to Harry. Their situation all through Madam Fickle is not unlike the situation at the beginning of The Constant Couple. Like Lurewell, Madam Fickle plays tricks on her lovers. In Act II, Scene II, she gets rid of Bellamour by telling him a relative is coming; the relative happens to be Manly, whom she also gets rid of by telling him a relative is coming. Lurewell uses this trick in Act III, Scene IV, with Clincher. In Act III, Scene II, of Madam Fickle, Madam Fickle is confronted with both Bellamour and Manly at once. By use of a mask and by persuading Bellamour that Manly is crazy, she manages to keep both men satisfied and arranges a rendezvous with each. In Act IV, Scene I, Madam Fickle tricks all three of her lovers. She tricks Harry by placing him in the bedroom with her nurse rather than with herself. She tricks Bellamour and his other sweetheart, Arbella, Madam Fickle's cousin, by surprising them as they peek into her bedroom, where Arbella hopes to prove Madam Fickle's fickleness. In the same way she tricks Manly and his other sweetheart, Constantia,

• John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the in 1660-1830 (Bath, 1832), II, 165.

Restoration

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also her cousin, who are there for the same purpose as Arbella and Bellamour. She further receives reassurances from each man that he will return the next morning. In Act V, Scene I, she assumes the disguise of a man and pretends to go off, but in Act V, Scene III, she returns to the home of her uncle, Sir Arthur Oldlove, and her disguise is penetrated by her servant, Dorril, who turns out to be her husband, Friendlove, disguised by a beard. The couple are reunited at the end as are "The Constant Couple". However, the most important likeness between Madam Fickle and Lady Lurewell comes in the motivation of their tricks. Madam Fickle confesses to her maid, Silvia, in Act II, Scene II: Well, in hopes to make thy dilligence the surer, I'll tell thee why. 'Twas my unhappy Fate some three years since to fall in love. To give away my Heart, and throw my self into the arms of One of mean discent - and also slender Fortune: Yet had Destiny So link'd my Soul with him, that each kind glance Shot from his darting Eye, me thought went through me I lov'd, nay and ador'd with so much zeal, I cou'd have dy'd - nay willingly been tortur'd; I thought he could not wrong my Innocence; for then I Swear I was so innocent I knew not what sin was; Yet this deluding Wretch! this base Seducer, although I slighted all for him, laught at my fervent Passion, scorn'd and left me, and when I thought his Heart Was mine forever, 'twas then most treacherous, and farthest From me: Therefore I've made a strict and solemn Vow, on the whole Sex to execute revenge - Flatter, and Wheedle all I can, and ever To practice to ensnare - but to love - never.7

This scene parallels Act III, Scene IV, of The Constant Couple, where Lady Lurewell tells of her reason for revenge - her seduction fifteen years before by the unknown Oxford student. Perhaps an answer to the charge of Strauss that Farquhar's "worst fault is a tendency to break into bastard blank verse disguised as 7

Thomas D'Urfey, Madam

1677), pp. 12-13.

Fickle:

or the Witty

False One

(London,

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prose" 8 might be found in the employment of Madam Fickle as a source with its "bastard blank verse" as witness above. Thus, Madam Fickle and Lady Lurewell have much in common: they both are disappointed in early love affairs. Because of these affairs they both vow revenge on men. They both carry out their revenge by playing tricks on their various lovers. They both are reunited with their lovers in the end, lovers who are around all through the play but who are only recognized at the end. However, it will be noted that Farquhar changes the situation somewhat for his play. Madam Fickle marries her lover, but Lurewell loses her chastity and does not gain the wedding ring. Fickle plots revenge on all men, but Lurewell's revenge only concerns the villains: No, Parly, those Men, whose Pretensions I found just and honourable, I fairly dismist by letting them know my firm Resolutions never to marry. But those Villains that wou'd attempt my Honour, I've seldom fail'd to manage. (I, 127)»

Also, Madam Fickle is not above taking gifts from her suitors. In Act II, Scene II, she receives a necklace from one suitor, and in Act V, Scene II, her husband makes her return all her gifts to her suitors. Lady Lurewell's private income keeps her above such things, although on one important occasion she does take a ring from Sir Harry. Except for the trick of Madam Fickle involving the nurse, her tricks are not so clever as Lurewell's tricks of sending the rendezvous note by Standard, of placing Smuggler in female disguise in a dark bedroom with his nephew Vizard, or of arranging Beau Clincher's change of clothes. The ending of the Lurewell-Standard story is much more plausible than the ending of the Madam Fickle-Dorril story. Mrs. Inchbald's objections to Farquhar's ending could be partly answered by comparing The Constant Couple with its source: "Yet 8 Louis A. Strauss, ed., A Discourse upon Comedy, The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux Stratagem, by George Farquhar (Boston, 1914), p. xxxvii. • Citations from Farquhar in my text are to The Complete Works, ed. Charles Stonehill.

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these two lovers, it would seem, love with all the usual ardour and constancy of gallants and mistresses in plays and novels unfortunately, with the same short memories too!"10 However, Madam Fickle and Dorril have even shorter memories. Dorril leaves Madam Fickle three years before the action of the play starts, and when he returns, he serves her as a servant. His only disguise is a beard! Yet she does not recognize her husband in this disguise until he reveals himself. Lady Lurewell loses her honor to her lover twelve years before the action of the play starts. She has known him for only two days at that time, and she does not know his name, for he was traveling incognito. Certainly through lengthening the time span and providing the mysterious circumstances of the first meeting, Farquhar improves in plausibility upon his source. Perhaps Farquhar also received "the outlines of the two Clinchers" from Zekiel and Toby, sons of the country gentleman, Tilbury, in Madam Fickle. Like Beau Clincher, Zekiel, the older son, has been in the city long enough to adopt city ways. Like Clincher Junior, Toby, the younger brother, has newly arrived in town, and Zekiel, like Beau Clincher, plans to initiate his brother in the ways of city life. However, in Madam Fickle, Zekiel himself actually carries out the initiation, whereas in The Constant Couple Beau Clincher allows his servant Dicky to educate Clincher Junior. Actually the education of the young man motif takes more space in Madam Fickle. In The Constant Couple the Clincher plot becomes complicated with the incarceration of Beau Clincher and with the elder brother problem. The elder brother problem does not appear in Madam Fickle, for old Tilbury in that play is very much alive. Like The Constant Couple, Madam Fickle is a bustling intrigue comedy. However, Madam Fickle is even more complicated as to plot, and the characters of Bellamour, Manly, and Harry 10

Mrs. Elizabeth (Simpson) Inchbald, ed., British Theatre; or A Collection of Plays, Which Are Acted at the Theatres Royal Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and H ay market; Printed under the Authority of Managers from the Prompt Books with Biographical and Critical Remarks by Mrs. Inchbald (London, 1808), VIII, 4-5.

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1 09

Jollyman are not nearly so well developed as Sir Harry Wildair, Colonel Standard, and Beau Clincher. No doubt Farquhar did employ the amusing Madam Fickle as a source; however, he did make many important improvements in his borrowings. Stonehill mentions A Match at Midnight (1633), a comedy by William Rowley, as one of the sources D'Urfey used for writing Madam Fickle.11 An examination of Rowley's play might be in order not because it necessarily served as an immediate source for Farquhar but because examining it might reveal how old the Lurewell plot was in English comedy when Farquhar used it in 1700 and thus partly refute the statement that Bernbaum made concerning the Lurewell plot as a sentimental comedy innovation. Widow Wag, in A Match at Midnight, like Madam Fickle and Lurewell, is the object of the affections of a number of suitors: Blood-hound, a usurer; Alexander Blood-hound, his dissolute son; Ancient Young; Randal, a Welshman; and Jarvis, her servant. Like Fickle and Lurewell, Wag plays tricks upon these men. However, the Widow Wag, unlike Fickle and Lurewell, does not long play the intrigante, for Alexander, who wants to be her husband, and Jarvis, who wants to be his cuckold, take over. They win out over all comers with their intriguing; however, in the end, the widow turns the tables on them: Wid. First then, know you for truth sir, I mean never to marry. Blood. How, woman? Sim. She has dispatch'd you, sir. Wid. And for a truth, sir, know you, I never mean to be your whore. Alex. This is strange. Wid. But true, as she whose chaste immaculate soul Retains the noble stamp of her integrity, With an undefac'd perfection perchance as these. Nay, common fame hath scattered, you conceive me, Because pale jealousy (Cupid's angry fool) Was frequent lodger at that sign of folly, My husband's soon suspicious heart, that I, In a close clouded looseness, shou'd expose him To that desperate distraction of his fortunes, 11

Stonehill, I, 79.

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That sent him to sea, to nourish her With your vain hope, that the fame of frequent suitors Was but a mask of loose scapes; like men at lotteries, You thought to put in for one, sir, but believe me, You have drawn a blank. Rand. Becat hur look fery blank indeed. Wid. Oh my beloved husband, However in thy life, thy jealousy Sent thee so far to find death, I'll be Married to nothing but thy memory. 12

Thus, like Fickle and Lurewell, the Widow confesses, in what I suppose Strauss would call "bastard blank verse", her early disappointment in love and her plan to avenge herself on men. And just as Dorrill and Standard, Jarvis reveals that he is Master Wag, the widow's jealous husband, in disguise, and the play ends happily ever after. Therefore, the Lurewell plot, which seems to Bernbaum to be sentimental, is really a comic formula dating as far back as 1633 at least. If the plot of a young woman, deserted by her lover, vowing revenge on mankind for his perfidy, tricking men, and finally being reunited with her lover, one of the men she has been tricking-if this plot is sentimental, then English sentimental comedy, as DeWitt C. Croissant points out,13 began long before 1700, or before 1696 for that matter. Perhaps the sentimental streak has always been a part of English comedy as Meredith in The Idea of Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit and Palmer in Comedy contended. Did Farquhar use this earlier play A Match at Midnight as well as Madam Fickle for a source? Perhaps, for there are some interesting parallels between The Constant Couple and A Match, not found in Madam Fickle. For example, Bloodhound, a usurer, like Smuggler, is an old, greedy, lecherous hypocrite, who pretends to be a Puritan: 12 William Rowley, A Match at Midnight, in: A Select Collection of Old Plays (London, 1744), VI, 119. 13 DeWitt C. Croissant, "Early Sentimental Comedy", Essays in Dramatic Literature: The Parrott Presentation Volume, ed. Hardin Craig (Princeton, 1935), pp. 47-72.

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Prayer before providence! When did ye know any thrive and swell that uses it? He's a chip o' th' old block; I exercise him in the trade of thrift, by turning him to all the petty pawns. If they come to me, I tell them I have given over brokering, moyling for muck and trash, and I mean to live a life monastic, a praying life; pull out the tail of Cressus from my pocket, and swear 'tis call'd charity's looking-glass, or an exhortation to forsake the world.14 Blood-hound's relationship with his son Alexander is not unlike that of Smuggler with his nephew, Vizard, for both young men would cheat their old relatives out of fortune and love. On the other hand, from Widow Wag's description, Alexander has a character that is not unlike that of Wildair: Yet when I take young Bloodhound to a retired collection of scattered judgment, which often lies disjointed, with the confused distraction of so many; methinks he dwells in my opinion: a right ingenious spirit, veil'd meerly with the vanity of youth and wildness. He looks, methinks, like one that could retract himself from his mad starts, and when he pleased turn tame. His handsome wildness. methinks, becomes him, could he keep it bounded in thrift and temperance.15 The Widow's words foreshadow what is to come, for Alexander, under the benign influence of this good woman, reforms at the end, as does Sir Harry Wildair under the influence of Angelica at the end of The Constant Couple. No, sentimental comedy did not begin with Farquhar! Just as Lurewell's story was old by 1700, so her character had been presented many times on the stage before. In the Dramatis Personae of The Constant Couple Lurewell is described as "A Lady of a jilting Temper proceeding from a resentment of her Wrongs from Men" (I, 91). I believe that Farquhar is here associating Lurewell with a whole class of female characters of Restoration comedy. The words "jilt" (both as a noun and verb) and "jilting" were first used at this time, according to the O.E.D. The O.E.D. gives as the first meaning of "jilt" as noun: "a woman 14 15

R o w l e y , p. 86. R o w l e y , p. 118.

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who has lost her chastity, a harlot or strumpet; a kept mistress". Wycherley is credited with the first use of the word in this sense in 1672 in the Dramatis Personae of Love in a Wood to describe Mrs. Crossbite: "an old cheating Jilt, and Bawd to her daughter". The second meaning of "jilt" as a noun is as follows: "a woman who gives her lover hopes, and deceives him . . . ; one who capriciously casts off a lover after giving him encouragement (the current sense)". From my limited research I know that the word "jilt" was used earlier than the O.E.D. records (Etherege used it in She Would if She Could in 1668) and "jilt" was used in many more instances than the O.E.D. records. These many instances interest me, for I believe that Farquhar was concerning himself in Lurewell with a typical female character of Restoration Comedy as he had concerned himself with the typical hero of Restoration Comedy in Love and a Bottle. Love in a Wood: or St. James's Park (1672) contains three jilts. Mrs. Crossbite and her daughter, Lucy, are of the prostitute variety of jilts, and although Lurewell is not of this type, but of the gay deceiver type, still she has lost her chastity. More important, however, Mrs. Crossbite and Lucy have something of the gay deceivers about them: they, along with their ally, Mrs. Joyner, trick Alderman Gripe, a greedy, old lecher (shades of Smuggler), into coming up to their room. The other jilt in this play is one of the gay deceiver type - Lady Flippant. Like Lurewell, she is an avenger, for she says: "I am the revenger of our sex certainly."16 Like Lurewell, Flippant has a number of lovers, such as Sir Simon Addleplot, Dapperwit, Ranger, and Vincent, whom she tries to trick. At the end she is to be contented with Sir Simon Addleplot, a foolish suitor like Beau Clincher. Wycherley's next comedy The Gentleman Dancing Master (1673) contains three jilts. The two prostitute-jilts, Mrs. Flirt and Mrs. Flounce, trick Mr. Paris, the fool, and Hippolita, the heroine, gaily deceives her father and Mr. Paris by passing Girard, the hero, off as a dancing master. 19

William Wycherley, William ser. (London, 1900), p. 76.

Wycherley,

ed. W. C. Ward, Mermaid

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In Epsom Wells (1672) by Thomas Shadwell, according to the Dramatis Personae, there are three jilts: Mrs. Woodly, Dorothy Fribble, and Mrs. Jilt. Although Mrs. Jilt is a prostitute, still she has something of the trickster in her pretended love affairs with two men in the play - Rains and Clodpate. The other important jilt in the story is Mrs. Woodly. She, like Lurewell, is a vengeful woman. She early declares: "If he be false, I shall soon turn my love into revenge."17 And revenge is her motivation during the last part of the play. The Country Wit (1675) by John Crown, which Stonehill thinks has a "prototype in the Porter" for Tom Errand,18 contains Betty Frisque, a prostitute-jilt. As in The Constant Couple, tricks are played in The Country Wit, and although Betty is not an intrigante like Lurewell, she enters into the spirit of the tricks and profits from them. Betty is pursued by the hero of the story, Ramble, who, something like Sir Harry Wildair, is described in the Dramatis Personae as "a wild young gentleman of the Town" 1 · and in another place as possessing "ayriness and gayetie of... temper".20 Ramble, too, has just returned from Paris. Ramble has another experience in common with Sir Harry, for they are both deceived into thinking the chaste heroine a whore. Like Sir Harry, Ramble is ashamed of his actions when the trick is discovered and even contemplates marriage because of his embarrassment. Wycherley says in the Prologue to The Plain Dealer (1677) that he made "his fine woman a mercenary jilt, and true to no man".21 Like Lurewell, Olivia is a man hater, according to her confession to her cousin, Eliza, and her maid, Lettice: Eliza. Nay, if you are for more solid pleasures, what think you of a rich young husband? Olivia. O horrid! marriage! what a pleasure you have found out! I nauseate it of all things. 17

Thomas Shadwell, The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, Montague Summers (London, 1927), II, 137. 18 Stonehill, I, 79. 19 John Crown, The Country Wit (London, 1675), Sig. A4v. 20 Crown, p. 7. 21 Wycherley, p. 373.

ed.

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Lettice. But what does your ladyship think then of a liberal, handsome, young lover? Olivia. A handsome young fellow, you impudent! Begone, out of my sight. Name a handsome young fellow to me! foh, a hideous, handsome, young fellow I abominate! [Spits.]22

However, Olivia is insincere in this hatred, for basically she is a hypocrite. Olivia, like Lurewell, has a number of suitors: Manly, Vernish, Novel, and My Lord Plausible and Fidelia. Unlike Lurewell, she takes money and presents from her suitors and belongs to the prostitute variety of jilts. Still, Connely thinks that "Olivia, in The Plain Dealer, may have provided a hint for Lady Lurewell."2® However, Olivia's connection with Lurewell is closest in regard to their military suitors. Indeed, Strauss refers to Standard as "a debrutalized Manly".24 Both of these men are at a low ebb in their military careers. Manly's ship has been defeated by the Dutch in a battle, and Manly has scuttled it rather than bring it back so that the courtiers might have it, or as the First Sailor tells it: "On my conscience then, Jack, that's the reason our bully tar sunk our ship: not only that the Dutch might not have her, but that the courtiers, who laugh at wooden legs, might not make her prize."25 Standard's regiment has been disbanded just before the beginning of The Constant Couple, an event which affects Standard very deeply: "This very morning, in Hide Park, my brave Regiment, a thousand Men that look'd like Lions yesterday, were scatter'd, and look'd as poor and simple as the Herd of Deer that gaz'd beside 'em" (I, 94). On their first appearance in their plays, Manly and Standard are pitted against unsympathetic civilians. Lord Plausible, Manly's antagonist, is a scavenger, according to the Second Sailor: "He a captain of a ship! it must be when she's in dock then; for he looks like one of those that get the king's commission for hulls to sell a king's ship, when a brave fellow has fought her almost to a 22 23 24 25

Wycherley, p. 397. Connely, p. 192. Strauss, p. xxxvii. Wycherley, p. 378.

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longboat."28 Smuggler, Standard's antagonist, is a merchant who made money from the war. Their difference of opinion can be seen in the following dialogue: Smug. Tal, al, deral [singing] I'll have a Bonfire this night as high as the Monument. Stand. A Bonfire! thou dry, wither'd, ill nature: had not these brave Fellows Swords defended you, your House had been a Bonfire e're this about your Ears - Did not we venture our Lives, Sir? Smug. And did not we pay you for your Lives, Sir? Venture your lives! I'm sure we ventur'd our Money, and that's Life and Soul to me - Sir, we'll maintain you no longer. (I, 94) And some of Manly's misanthropy may have rubbed off on Standard. In the opening scene of The Plain Dealer, Manly expresses his hatred of his fellowmen thus: Very well; but I, that am an unmannerly sea-fellow, if I ever speak well of people (which is very seldom indeed), it should be sure to be behind their backs; and if I would say or do ill to any, it should be to their faces. I would jostle a proud, strutting, overlooking coxcomb, at the head of his sycophants, rather than put out my tongue at him when he were past me; would frown in the arrogant, big, dull face of an overgrown knave of business, rather than vent my spleen against him when his back were turned; would give fawning slaves the lie whilst they embrace or commend me; cowards whilst they brag; call a rascal by no other title, though his father had left him a duke's; laugh at fools aloud before their mistresses; and must desire people to leave me, when their visits grow at last as troublesome as they were at first impertinent.27 Standard's cynicism comes out near the opening of The Constant Couple in his conversation with Vizard: Viz. O, but you have good Friends, Colonel! Stan. O very good Friends! my Father's a Lord, and my eldest Brother a Beau. Viz. But your Country may perhaps want your Sword agen. Stand. Nay for that matter, let but a single Drum beat up for Volunteers between Ludgate and Charing-Cross, and I shall undoubtedly hear it at the Wells of Buda. » "

Wycherley, p. 378. Wycherley, pp. 376-377.

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Viz. Come, Come, Colonel, there are ways of making your Fortune at home - Make your addresses to the Fair, you're a Man of Honour and Courage. Stand. Ay, my Courage is like to do me wondrous Service with the Fair; This pretty cross cut over my Eye will attract a Duchess I warrant 'twill be a mighty Grace to my Ogling - Had I us'd the Stratagem of a Certain Brother Colonel of mine, I might succeed. Viz. What was it, pray? Stand. Why to save his pretty face for the Women, he always turn'd his back upon the Enemy - He was a Man of Honour for the Ladies. (I. 95)

Still other jilts are to be found in The Rover, Parts I and Π, by Mrs. Behn. Perhaps the significant thing here for our study of Lurewell is the combination of the jilt and the rover. In Chapter II we noted the similarities between Roebuck, Farquhar's first hero, and Willmore, Mrs. Behn's Rover. Thorndike further identifies Sir Harry Wildair, Farquhar's second hero, as "still of the rover type".28 Indeed, there are similarities between Sir Harry and Willmore. In Rover I there is a female character, Lucetta, who is a jilt of the prostitute variety. She and her pimp, Sancho, play a trick upon Blunt, a fool, that ranks with the trick of Beau Clincher changing clothes with Tom Errand. Blunt offers still another link between the plots of Rover I and The Constant Couple, for in Act IV, Scene III, Florinda, pursued by her brother, seeks refuge in Blunt's apartment. Blunt, still chafing over the Lucetta episode, decides to avenge himself by raping Florinda. Florinda gives Blunt a ring to prevent him from dishonoring her. This ring identifies Florinda to Colonel Belville in Act V, Scene I, for it is the one that he gave to her when they exchang'd their vows, just as Lurewell discovers Colonel Standard as her true lover by means of a ring in The Constant Couple. Another lady of easy virtue in this play, Angelica Bianca, furnishes still another link between Rover I and The Constant Couple. Willmore woos two young women, among many, more or less determinedly during the course of the play, Angelica and 29

Ashley Horace Thorndike, English Comedy (New York, 1929), p. 336.

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Hellena, as Sir Harry woos Lady Lurewell and Angelica. As Lurewell does with Sir Harry Wildair, so Angelica happens on the wedding scene at the end of Rover I to threaten Willmore into marriage with her. Still another scene in Rover I that may have anticipated a scene in The Constant Couple is the one in Act III in which the drunken Willmore wanders into Florinda's garden to find Florinda, undressed, awaiting Belville. Willmore takes her for a harlot and tries to make love to her. This situation suggests Act V, Scene I, of The Constant Couple, in which the drunken Sir Harry woos Angelica. LaNuche is the jilt in Rover II (1681), and she, like Lurewell, has a number of suitors: Willmore, Beaumond, Fetherfool, and Don Carlo. A closer link between the experiences of LaNuche and Lurewell regards an episode in Act IV in which Fetherfool is placed in LaNuche's bed by Petronella and Aurelia, the confederates of LaNuche. Then Don Carlo, the old grandee, comes to bed and begins making love to Fetherfool, who he thinks is LaNuche. This scene, of course, is like the Vizard-Smuggler scene in Act IV, Scene II, of The Constant Couple. In the ensuing action, however, Fetherfool's experience resembles that of Beau Clincher, for Fetherfool misplaces his clothes and wanders about town more or less in undress. Another parallel between Rover II and The Constant Couple is the fools. Act I, Scene I, of Rover II, in which Will Blunt attempts to distinguish the whore from the ladies of quality for Nicholas Fetherfool, has its counterpart in Act II, Scene I, of The Constant Couple, in which Dicky provides the same sort of information for Clincher Junior. The Fair Jilt (1688), a novel by Mrs. Behn, contains the adventures of Miranda, like Lurewell, a gay deceiver type of jilt. Mrs. Behn's last play, The Younger Brother (1696), is subtitled The Amorous Jilt in honor of Mirtilla. As we have seen in the last chapter, Schmid and Stonehill link this play with Love and, a Bottle. Mirtilla is of the prostitute variety of jilts. At the beginning of the play, like Lurewell, she has just returned from the continent. Like Lurewell, she has a number of suitors: George

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Marteen, Sir Morgan Blunder, Prince Frederick, Mr. Wellborn, and Olivia, in male disguise. Like Lurewell, Mirtilla does have something of the trickster in her on two occasions. Another parallel between The Younger Brother and The Constant Couple might be the love plot of George Marteen, who woos the virtuous Teresia, guarded by her mother, and the love story of Sir Harry Wildair and Angelica, who is guarded by Lady Darling. This play is also written in "bastard blank verse". Summers links Mrs. Behn's last play with The Plain Dealer and The Intrigues at Versailles (1696) by Thomas D'Urfey because all three plays have base, heartless coquettes for their heroines.29 The Intrigues at Versailles bears the subtitle A Jilt in All Humours for Madam de Vandosme, a prostitute jilt, but a playful one. Like Lurewell, she has many suitors. One of her lovers is Count de Fiesque, who, like Wildair, is "Witty, generous, and good Natur'd, but Amorous to a Fault".30 Two of her lovers adopt female disguises during the course of the play, analogues of the female impersonator, Smuggler. This informal survey of the sources and analogues of The Constant Couple reveals that the material that Farquhar uses has all been used before in literature, particularly in comedy. By 1700 the jilt, the woman who flirted with men until they expected satisfaction only to disappoint them, was a familiar character in dramatic literature. Even Lurewell's story-that of a young woman disappointed in love, who planned vengeance on men because of her disappointment and was finally reunited with her first love had been told a couple of times before. Lady Lurewell's tricks of making one lover the messenger for another lover, of having one lover exchange clothes in order to confuse another lover, and of putting two men lovers in bed together all had been used by previous jilts. Other jilts had been linked with men like Lurewell's lovers: the beau like Sir Harry, the military man like Standard, the greedy, old lecher like Smuggler, the hypocrite like Vizard, 29

Mrs. Aphra Amis Behn, The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Montague Summers (London, 1915), IV, 314-5. 30 Thomas D'Urfey, The Intrigues at Versailles: or A Jilt in All Humours (London, 1697), Sig. A4v.

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and the would-be-beau like Clincher Senior. And the plot of the jilt had been combined before with subplots of the man who mistook a virtuous young woman for a whore (like the Sir HarryAngelica subplot), the older brother plot (like the Clinchers' subplot), and the crabbed age versus youth (like the VizardSmuggler subplot). And yet in regard to sources, I would have to agree with Stonehill, who, after discussing the sources of the play, concluded that "on the whole the play is of considerable originality".»1 However, by 'originality' I do not mean that Farquhar copied his material directly from life as Connely implies here: Farquhar was maturing into a diarist of drama. His impulse was to write down what he apprehended. His scenes were to be shorthand notes on the daily life which spun round him. Already he saw his characters in a thousand lights, whether in St. James's Park or in the dining-room, in Covent Garden or in Newgate, disputing in the street or coquetting on a balcony, meeting in a bachelor's lodgings or in a lady's chamber. He absorbed the metier of his three most kindred contemporaries: Vanbrugh's vivacity he was equally born with, and so could grasp that; Congreve's grace he aspired to, and with his equivalent education could attempt; Wycherley's talent for climax he envied, and could at least strive to approach. Perhaps above all, hither had come the inspiration in the flesh, Bob Wilks, his friend, his patron, and his hope. Farquhar sat down to his task: deeply mindful of the higher qualities of the three dramatists whom he most admired, he began to write a play round a personality whom he admired no less, Wilks, but still, another play about himself, George Farquhar, for Wildair in this play was to be "the character of the author in his politest capacity". On the side of the ladies he was inclined as before to shape his female characters out of his own adventures. Even in his letters to women he was dramatic; in declaring his passion, Farquhar wrote as if concocting a love scene in a play. At this very time he was trying to win a young woman - seemingly Catherine Trotter - who had quite baffled him by her reluctance. "I had a mind to know, Madam", he implored her, "whether you had quarrelled with me t'other night.... I find now that you are angry at something.... I beg your pardon, and shall henceforth do violence to my own reason and contradict mankind to agree with you.... 'Tis a hard fate, that you 31

Stonehill, I, 79.

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can't love and be easy, and I can't desist and love; but I can die to make you happy.... I cannot bear the spleen, the rheumatism, and your displeasure at once. So, Madam, strike now, and forever quit yourself of an unfortunate man who has but one hand, which he thinks sufficient, since he can thereby ever own himself Yours."32

For me, Farquhar's originality was like that of Shakespeare and Chaucer, who took plots and characters from various sources and blended the plots and strengthened them and added depth and breadth to the characters. If I were to attempt to construct the evolution of this play, I would think that Farquhar started out to write a genuinely funny comedy that would appeal to all the elements of the audience that the author of the Prologue enumerated - "Wits, Cits, Beaux, and Women" (I, 87). Like Young Lyrick in Love and. a Bottle, Farquhar went to his predecessors for the solution to his problem and found the jilt, evidently a really comic character to 1700 audiences, and her story, evidently a really comic plot in 1700. To fill out this tried and true comic story, he selected, from the various treatments of jilts, incidents, subplots, and characters that had been tested for their comic value in the theater. All of this he blended into a new comedy, the success of which attested to his skill in selecting comic material and reworking it. In the blending and reworking, the plot became more unified than other jilt stories, the action more believable, the incidents gayer, and the characters more vividly drawn. Sir Harry, Standard, Vizard, Smuggler, Beau Clincher Senior, Beau Clincher Junior, Angelica, and Lurewell, especially Lurewell, though old, were new through Farquhar's skill. Besides providing these humorous characters and situations for the Cits and Beaux, Farquhar took care to provide satire for the Wits and the Women. For example, one object of satire in this 52

Connely, pp. 90-1. Leigh Hunt in 1840 suggested still another source for Lurewell from life, Mary de la Rivière Manley - Leigh Hunt, ed., The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar London, 1840), p. lxv. Schmid (pp. 101-2) and Stonehill (I, xx) both discuss the possibility of Mrs. Manley as a source, and both attach little importance to it. I am inclined to agree with them, for I feel that Farquhar probably received more inspiration from art than life for Lurewell.

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play as it is in Love and a Bottle is a university education. In The Constant Couple Vizard tells us in Act I that one of Sir Harry's charms is an "easy Education, free from the rigidness of Teachers, and pedantry of Schools" (I, 96). Sir Harry himself, in a soliloquy at the end of Act II, speaks out against the scholars who in pursuit of affairs of the mind drive themselves out of their minds: Let Scholars vex their Brains with Mood and Tense, And mad with strength of Reason, Fools Commence Losing their Wits in searching after Sense; Their Summum Bonum they must toil to gain, And seeking Pleasure, spend their Life in Pain. (I, 116)

Again the universities come in for some ridicule when Lurewell recounts the story of her downfall. When Lurewell says that her seducer was one of three university students who came to her father's home to seek shelter, Parley says, "Oh! these strouling Collegians are never abroad, but upon some Mischief" (I, 126). Then Lurewell, as she proceeds, describes the other two university students as having "a heavy, pedantick, University Air, a sort of disagreeable scholastick boorishness in their Behaviour" (I, 126). However, after these random pot shots nothing more is made of the subjects. Another topic treated with some seriousness is the army. As we have seen, The Constant Couple has near the beginning the rather bitter scene between the disbanded colonel and the greedy business man who has profited from the war. Another person unsympathetic to the colonel is Parley, Lurewell's maid, who says, "Faugh, the nauseous Fellow, he stinks of Poverty already" (I, 101). In this same scene Standard speaks against his fellows in a way when he tells Lurewell that she not allow a red coat to recommend a coward to his place in her affections. Sir Harry ridicules the soldier's life in his soliloquy at the end of Act II: Let Soldiers drudg and fight for Pay and Fame, For when they're shot, I think 'tis much the same. (I, 116)

Act I, Scene I and the other brief comments all arouse sympathy for the soldier who is betrayed by cowardly brothers from within

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the ranks and unsympathetic civilians from outside and by the very nature of his work. Satire of the French enters The Constant Couple when Sir Harry Wildair newly arrives from Paris at the beginning of the play and asks Standard and Vizard for the news: Viz. Why, in the city end o' th' Town we're playing the Knave to get Estates. Stand. And in the court end playing the Fool in spending 'em. Wild. Just so in Paris; I'm glad we're grown so modish. Viz. We are all so reform'd, that gallantry is taken for Vice. Stand. And Hypocrisy for Religion. Wild. Alamode de Paris. Agen. (I, 96)

Thus, France is the model for England of modishness, which means knavery, foolishness, viciousness, and hypocrisy. Wildair perhaps best summarizes the Alamode de Paris in this line: "I then went to Paris, where I had half a dozen Intreagues, bought half a dozen new Suits, fought a couple of Duels, and here I am agen in statu quo" (I, 97). The importance of the Parisian education to the Londoners is seen satirically in Vizard's comment: "I was bred in London, and he in Paris - That very Circumstance has murder'd me" (I, 98). And indirect criticism of French morals, it seems to me, is Sir Harry's use of French for his indecent suggestions to Lurewell and to Angelica. Again as with the comments on the university and the soldier the remarks are random. The Constant Couple, furthermore, contains scattered satire on the Catholics. For example, Wildair, in speaking of Lurewell, says that he "would rather kiss her Hand than the Pope's Toe" (I, 97). The Jubilee is described by Dicky as "the same thing with our Lord-Mayors Day in the City; there will be Pageants, and Squibs, and Rary Shows, and all that, Sir" (I, 105). Again the Pope is ridiculed when Dicky explains to Clincher Junior that Clincher Senior goes to Rome, where the Pope lives. Clincher Junior replies to this explanation: "The Devil he does! my Brother go to the Place where the Pope dwells! he's bewitch'd sure" (1,132). Just then Tom Errand appears in Clincher Senior's clothes, and Clincher Junior feels his brother "looks like a Jesuit

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already" (I, 132). The tone here is of ridicule as fools like the two Clinchers and Dicky attempt to fathom the mysteries of Catholicism. The reformers of the times, who had been attacked in passing remarks in both The Adventures of Covent Garden and Love and a Bottle, come in for a more open attack through their representation in the characters of Smuggler and Vizard, who thus become more than just the Puritan and hypocrite of the earlier jilt plays. The pious Vizard becomes a fitting symbol of this new morality of his age with his public reading of The Practice of Piety and his private reading of Hobbes' Leviathan. Thus, the reformers pretend to Uve according to God's law but really live according to their self interest. This analysis of human motivation follows very closely Locke's observations in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which we found played an important part in Roebuck's thinking in Love and a Bottle. As Vizard hides his lustful desires for Lurewell and Angelica and his greed for his uncle's estate under the mask of religion, so Smuggler hides his lust and his greed under the cloak of the reformer. He gives money to the Collierists to attack the sinful theater, and at the same time he tries to seduce Lurewell by promising to return to her the money she has left in his keeping. So important to Farquhar is this satire of the reformer that in the denouement Angelica gives these words of advice to Smuggler: Come, Mr. Alderman, for once let a Woman advise; Wou'd you be thought an Honest Man, banish Covetousness, that worst Gout of Age; Avarice is a poor pilfering quality of the Soul, and will as certainly Cheat, as a Thief wou'd Steal - Wou'd you be thought a Reformer of the Times, be less severe in your Censures, less rigid in your Precepts, and more strict in your Example. (I, 151)

Because Sir Harry Wildair is a gentleman and Lurewell and Angelica are ladies, The Constant Couple does have several witty remarks about the aristocracy and court life. For example, the hypocritical Smuggler makes this remark about the atheism of the court at the beginning of the play: "A Man at his Devotion so near the Court - I'm very glad Boy, that you keep your Sane-

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tity unstained in this infectious place; the very Air of this Park is heathenish, and every Man's Breath I meet scents of Atheism" (I, 94). From here on the aristocracy is criticized in a number of ways for its foolishness in spending money, its viciousness in the name of gallantry, its scandal mongering, its foolishness in traveling abroad, its foolishness hidden under titles, its knavery in statesmanship, the immodesty of its women, its vanity for new clothes, and its drunkenness. One of the most pointed comments comes in Act IV, Scene I, where the Constable enters to restore the peace that has been disturbed by Tom Errand's wife and the mob. Wife. O, Mr. Constable, here's a Rogue that has murder'd my Husband, and robb'd him of his Cloaths. Const. Murder and Robbery! then he must be a Gentleman. Hands off there, he must not be abus'd. - Give an Account of your self: Are you a Gentleman? (I, 130)

This little speech is indicative, I believe, of the kind of remark that is made against the nobility in the play. The nobility are fools, knaves, gossips, lechers, robbers, murderers, and atheists, but the accusations are made in swift, gay remarks, and no concerted effort is made to link this theme up with the more important theme of the battle of the sexes. The Constant Couple, in its serious references to the love of man for woman and in its fable, continues the attack on the double standard begun in Love and. a Bottle. Under this standard love becomes a mere sport for man as can be seen in Sir Harry Wildair's remark to Vizard: "Prithee, Vizard, can't you recommend a Friend to a pretty Mistress by the by, till I can find my own? you cunning poaching Dogs make surer game than we that hunt open and fair. Prithee now, good Vizard" (I, 98-99). This standard that makes love a hunt and the most dishonorable of men dogs and the more honorable ones hunters, makes the position of even the most honorable men false, as can be seen in Sir Harry Wildair's description of such a man: "An honourable Lover is the greatest Slave in Nature: some will say, the greatest Fool" (I, 129). The whole system causes women to play false

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roles. The dishonorable women in love pretend at modesty, as Sir Harry again points out: "Now I find that the strict Pretences which Ladies of Pleasure make to strict Modesty, is the reason why those of Quality are asham'd to wear it" (I, 121). In the story Farquhar seems to be attempting to depict a truly virtuous woman under such conditions. A hint that this might be Farquhar's intention might be found in Sir Harry Wildair's speech in Act IV, Scene I, in which he answers Standard's question as to his choice of the one chaste woman: "Penelope, I think she's call'd; and that's a Poetical Story too. When will you find a Poet in our Age make a Woman so chaste?" (I, 131). Farquhar in his poetical story presents two candidates: Angelica and Lady Lurewell. The more logical candidate, Angelica, questions the double standard: Unhappy State of Woman! whose chief Virtue is but Ceremony, and our much boasted Modesty but slavish Restraint. The strict Confinement on our Words makes our Thoughts ramble more; and what preserves our outward Fame, destroys our inward Quiet.... 'T is hard that Love shou'd be deny'd the privilege of Hatred; that Scandal and Detraction shou'd be so much indulg'd, yet sacred Love and Truth debarr'd our conversation. (I, 119)

Thus, we see Angelica is not, in Roebuck's terms, a woman moved by an innate principle of virtue but by an innate principle of love. She is a passionate woman, and when she is restrained by convention from an open expression of her love, she, like Lucinda before her, is disturbed by thoughts of passion. The crucial scene - the seduction scene - that shows Angelica in her true colors has two different versions. In the first version, The First Quarto, 1699, Angelica, as Milton's Lady meets Comus, summons up all her virtue to overcome his vice: View me well; Consider me with a sober Thought, free from those Fumes of Wine that cast a Mist before your Sight; and you shall find that every glance from my reproaching Eye is arm'd with sharp Resentment, and with repelling Rays that look Dishonour dead.

(I, 361)

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Wildair, as Comus is bested by the superior virtue of the Lady, is bested by the virtue of Angelica: Beauty without Art! Virtue without Pride! and Love without Ceremony! The Day breaks glorious to my O'erclouded Thought, and darts its smiling Beams into my Soul. My Love is heighten'd by a glad Devotion; and Vertue rarifies the Bliss to feast the purer Mind. (I, 363) Thus, in this version Angelica stands for Farquhar's ideal woman - "Beauty without Art! Virtue without Pride! and Love without Ceremony!" In the later version, The Third Quarto, 1701, Angelica does not call upon her virtue to sustain her in the crisis, but she, like Lucinda, cries out conventionally for her pride to protect her: Behold me, Sir, View me with a sober thought, free from those fumes of Wine that throw a mist before your Sight, and you shall find that every glance from my reproaching Eyes is arm'd with sharp Resentment, and with a virtuous Pride that looks Dishonour dead. (I, 141) As Angelica summons up her Pride to her defense, so Sir Harry is not led to marry her because of her virtue but because of the injury he has done to her pride: Wild. Stay, Madam, [to Darling] one Word, is there no other way to redress your Wrongs, but by Fighting. Darl. Only one, Sir; which, if you can think of you may do: you know the business I entertain'd you for. Wild. I understand you, Madam. [Exit Darling] Here am I brought to a very pretty Dilemma; I must commit Murder, or commit Matrimony, which is best now? A license from Doctors Commons, or a Sentence from the Old Bailey? If I Mil my Man, the law hangs me; if I marry my Woman, I shall hang my self; - but, Dam it, - Cowards dare fight, I'll marry, that's the most daring Action of the two, so my dear Cousin Angelica, have at you. (I, 144) Why did Farquhar change this scene so materially? Did he, after assailing the religious reformers in the characters of Vizard and Smuggler, actually try appeasement through writing a con-

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version scene to outrival Colley Cibber's in Love's Last Shift? And did he later revise the play, after it had become successful, to suit his own tastes? Perhaps. And yet maybe he made the revision for more honest reasons than this one. That Farquhar did rethink his plays we know from his preface to The Twin-Rivals. He tells us there that he does not believe for one moment that Richmore reformed as he said he would in the course of the play. Evidently Farquhar did not think Sir Harry capable of such great reform either. Certainly Sir Harry has not undergone such a reformation in Sir Harry Wildair. Not only was Farquhar perhaps embarrassed by this scene in The Constant Couple because of the character of Sir Harry but also because of the character of Angelica. Angelica in this scene is just too good to be true. Just as it seemed to bother him to write of that paragon of male virtue - Elder Wou'dbee - so it bothered him to write of her. True, she represented according to the dialogue Farquhar's ideal female - "Beauty without Art! Virtue without Pride! and Love without Ceremony!" - but not dramatically. Dramatically she is too conventional a figure to represent Farquhar's ideal. She is no Silvia, who through her very defiance of conventions shows her beauty and virtue and love. In rethinking the character of Angelica, Farquhar had her stand on her pride in The Constant Couple and develop a conventional attack of jealousy between The Constant Couple and Sir Harry Wildair. From the standpoint of the plot the change in this scene is better. There is a kind of poetic justice in the fact that the unconventional, unchaste Lurewell stands for virtue and the conventional, chaste Angelica should stand for pride. And then in Sir Harry Wildair there is such an interesting reversal of character as the unconventional Lurewell becomes the conventional society matron and keeps from falling on account of her pride and the conventional Angelica turns unconventional by donning breeches and becomes the example of virtue. In her speech in The Constant Couple, Lurewell twice shows herself to be more virtuous than her more conventional sister, Angelica. Lurewell's cynical remark to Parly in Act I, Scene II, on virtue reveals her awareness of a greater virtue than chastity:

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"You're a Fool, Child; observe this, that tho' a Woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, backbite, be proud, vain, malitious, any thing, if she secures the main Chance, she's still virtuous, That's a Maxim" (I, 101). Even though she thus places chastity as a lesser virtue, still she is very much conscious of its importance as she cries out in anguish in an aside when Sir Harry would seduce her: "O villain! What privilege has man to our destruction, that thus they hunt our ruin?" (I, 134). She actually questions the code that allows men the privilege of being whoremasters. However, it is through the subtle portrayal of her character, rather than through her words, that Farquhar makes his best attack on the code. This portrayal of Lurewell begins with the fact that she is a chaste unchaste woman. She is no 'widow' as Madam Fickle or Widow Wag. She is really a whore according to the view of her times, or as Stonehill explains it: According to convention, there were but two kinds of women, the good and the bad. The good woman, if single, was a virgin; the bad woman, one who had been 'betrayed'. Let but your paragon of feminine virtue yield to the importunities of a lover, and - Heigh presto! she's a whore. It was a formula. But Farquhar and Fielding escape from it.83

And, of course, in the classic model of Restoration Comedy, the whore, Mrs. Loveit, is the villainess of the piece. Here, by a kind of inversion, the whore becomes the heroine. I am sure that such an idea would have tickled the sense of humor of the comic writer who made an Irish beggar with the supernatural sexual appetite his 'man of mode' in his first comedy, Love and a Bottle. Then Farquhar went about making his whore more chaste than the whorish jilts and the jilting whores that were her predecessors. In the first place Lurewell is only fifteen when she loses her chastity. She is under the influence of French romances when she submits to her lover. Furthermore, her lover has been charming enough to take in her father also. After her father's "

Stonehill, I, xxxii.

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death she carries out her elaborate plan of avenging herself on men. In carrying out her plan, she does not have to stoop to taking gifts from men because of her inheritance from her father, nor does she give her body to these men but remains true to her lover. Further, she only punishes those men whose intentions are dishonorable. On these men she plays only practical jokes that end in a beating or in jail. At the end of Act III the idea of the revenge begins to be repugnant to her. Finally she is reunited with Standard, who has been constant to her and has been separated from her by circumstances, and he does the right thing by her. Thus, the inversion of whore from villainess to heroine is complete. And, of course, in doing this, Farquhar's play is moral in a larger sense than the morality advocated by the Collierists. Farquhar, through his fable, defends a girl who has fallen once. She is no depraved woman. Rather lascivious man is to blame for her downfall and is punished, and she is rewarded by being united with her true love. Here dramatically, and what better way for a playwright, is criticism of the morality of the Collierists and the Restoration playwrights, who alike would have cast stones at Lurewell. Thus Farquhar, in adding satire to the humorous situations and characters, has provided something for all the members of the audience, and audiences, of course, immediately acclaimed it. As for the form of the play, Farquhar is still using here the irregular form that Selinda recommends in The Adventures of Covent Garden and that he had used in Love and a Bottle. The Angelica-Harry Wildair plot is only loosely tied in with the Lurewell-Standard affair. The links between the two plots are these: 1) Wildair is a suitor to both Lurewell and Angelica. 2) Vizard is an intriguer in both plots. 3) Another tie is the fact that the Clinchers, cousins of Angelica, figure in both plots. However, the two love plots seems far apart indeed. For one thing, the young ladies, Lurewell and Angelica, seem unknown to one another, and Colonel Standard seems to be unaware of Angelica, too. Then also it seems as though there is a real jarring as we go from one plot to the other. Except for the fact that Wildair's

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marriage to Angelica removes him as a suitor to Lurewell, the plots do not have a causal relationship. Thus, we see in The Constant Couple two love plots traveling along with very loose links. The comic strands, the Clincher plot and the Vizard-Smuggler plot, although they perhaps are out of proportion to their necessity to the main plot (not to their entertainment value), grow out of the main plot-grow out of the character of Lurewell. (See Figure 2.) And so even in its irregular form The Constant Couple represents Farquhar's ideas of what a comedy should be, expressed in The Adventures of Covent Garden and Love and a Bottle. It first of all pleased the audience with humorous characters and situations and satire. Secondly, it did instruct the audience through its attack on the double standard. And finally it presented all of these materials in an irregular form. But Farquhar's critics wanted wit and regularity, and these he tried to provide in his next play - Sir Harry Wildair.

IV

SIR HARRY WILD AIR-THE 'POOR SEQUEL' TO THE TRIP TO THE JUBILEE

Critics have treated in a summary fashion Sir Harry Wildair: Being the Sequel of the Trip to the Jubilee', it has usually been passed off as a sequel with the implication that sequels are never so good as the initial work. Further, the argument runs that Sir Harry Wildair is a poor sequel at that and the success of its first run (nine nights in April, 1701) was due to the popularity of The Constant Couple, for Sir Harry Wildair wasn't revived again until 1737. Only one critic, Malcolm Elwin, has had the temerity to suggest that Sir Harry is in some ways a better play than The Constant Couple: The acting of Wilks as Wildair had much to do with the play's success., which was so great that Farquhar added a sequel bearing as title the name of the hero. Sequels are rarely signally successful, and thifi was no exception to the rule, but they are rarely as satisfactory as their originals. Sir Harry Wildair, however, though spoiled by the in trusión of Angelica and the crude contrivance of her disguise as her C/wn ghost, contains comedy of better calibre than The Constant (Jouple. The dialogue is far lighter, more flexible and vivacious, and the scenes between Wildair, who is here more of the regular Restoration gallant and less of an affected ass, and Lurewell, now the modish wife without sentimental encumbrances, are excellent examples of the artificial manner so dexterously displayed in the best of the Restoration comic writers. Lurewell's scene with her maid at the opening of the second act savours somewhat of Lady Wishfort, but it is the real thing and a happy touch. Clincher, too, is more amusing with political bees in his bonnet than as a 'prentice beau, while Fireball, perhaps owing his birth to Congreve's Ben, is an additional character adding life to the plot and sustaining the dull weight of

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the Colonel, now more 'in his eye-holes' as the deceived and henpecked husband.1 Although I do not agree with Elwin that the comedy in Sir Harry is of "better calibre" than that of The Constant Couple, still I would agree that there is a difference in touch between the two plays. And it is this difference, along with other differences between the highly successful original and the relatively unsuccessful sequel, that will not allow us to pass Sir Harry Wildair off with the mere epithet 'sequel'. A first question that arises in my mind concerning Sir Harry Wildair is Why? Why did Farquhar write this sequel to The Constant Couple? Writers have answered this question variously. One believes that Farquhar was in need of money and so dashed off the sequel;2 another believes Farquhar wanted to remain popular with the audiences;3 and still another believes Farquhar wrote the sequel at the request of the actors.4 Whether for fame, fortune, or friends, I believe that Farquhar was working out for himself certain artistic problems, both in form and in content, in this play. The story that Sir Harry Wildair tells is in a sense not a continuation of the story told in The Constant Couple but a duplication of that story. At the end of The Constant Couple Lurewell, under the influence of her constant lover Standard, forswears her old coquetting ways, and the philandering Sir Harry, under the influence of the virtuous Angelica, promises to mend his behavior, and we assume that the two couples will live happily forever after. The sequel, however, does not begin on this note of marital bliss. Instead we find that Lurewell has relapsed into her former ways, or as Parley tells us: "Besides, Sir, my Lady has got the knack of coquetting it; and once a Woman has got that in her 1

Malcolm Elwin, The Playgoer's Handbook to Restoration Drama (London, 1928), pp. 188-189. 2 Willard Connely, Young George Farquhar: The Restoration Drama at Twilight (London, 1949), p. 169. 3 John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660-1830 ... (Bath, 1832), II, 234. 4 John Gait, Lives of the Players (London, 1886), I, 103.

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Head, she will have a touch on't every where else" (I, 171).5 And as in The Constant Couple, a good deal of the action results from a series of lovers making their way to Lurewell's bedroom; the climax of this action, of course, comes at the end of Act IV, when Colonel Standard comes in his wife's bedroom and discovers one lover drunk on the floor and two lovers hiding in the closet. One of these lovers in the closet is the unreformed Wildair, who, as in The Constant Couple, is in hot pursuit of Lady Lurewell throughout the play. Why did Farquhar choose to duplicate thus the characters and the action of the two plays? He might have been influenced to some extent by two earlier sequels. The hint for Angelica's death and Sir Harry's subsequent action may have been taken from Mrs. Aphra Behn's The Rover II, in which Willmore is depicted as a gay widower. The Rover, Parts I and II, contained, it seems to me, a good many hints for Farquhar for his Love and a Bottle and The Constant Couple. Willmore's sentiments expressed to Beaumond at the beginning of Rover II parallel the experience and feelings of Sir Harry Wildair·. Will. - but I am now for softer Joys, for Woman, for Woman in abundance - dear Hall, inform me where I may safely unlade my Heart. Beau. The same Man still, wild and wanton! Will. And would not change to be the Catholick King. Beau. I perceive Marriage has not tam'd you, nor a Wife, who had all the Charms of her Sex. Will. A y - she was too good for Mortals. [With a sham Sadness] Belv. I think thou hadst her but a Month, prithee how dy'd she? Will. Faith, e'en with a fit of Kindness poor Soul — she would to Sea with me, and in a S t o r m - f a r from Land, she gave up the Ghost - 'twas a Loss, but I must bear it with a christian Fortitude. Beau. Short Happinesses vanish like to Dreams. Will. A y faith, and nothing remains with me but the sad Remembrance - not so much as the least Part of her hundred thousand Crowns; Brussels that inchanted Court has eas'd me of that Grief, where our Heroes act Tantalus better than ever Ovid describ'd 5

Citations from Farquhar in my text are to The Complete Charles Stonehill (Bloomsbury, 1930).

Works, ed.

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him, condemn'd daily to see an Apparition of Meat, Food in Vision only. Faith I had Bowels, was good-natur'd, and lent upon the publick Faith as far as 'twill g o - B u t come, let's leave this mortifying Discourse, and tell me how the price of Pleasure goes. Beau. At the old Rates still; he that gives most is happiest, some few there are for Love! Will. Ah, one of the last, dear Beaumond; and if a Heart or Sword can purchase her, I'll bid as fair as the best. Damn it, I hate a Whore that asks me Mony. Beau. Yet I have known thee venture all thy Stock for a new Woman. Will. Ay, such a Fool I was in my dull Days of Constancy, but I am now for Change, (and should I pay as often, 'twould undo me) for Change, my Dear, of Place, Clothes, Wine, and Women. Variety is the Soul of Pleasure, a Good unknown; and we want Faith to find it.· But an even more important hint for the relapse of Lurewell and Wildair in the sequel to The Constant Couple might have been "The Relapse" of Loveless in the very successful sequel to Love's Last Shift. And certainly if one wanted to write a successful sequel, one couldn't have found a better pattern to follow. Of course, Farquhar himself had certain convictions about the sudden conversions of sinful characters in the plays of his time, as witness a later comment in The Preface to The Twin-Rivals concerning the sudden reform of Richmore, the rake: Some People are apt to say, that the Character of Richmore points at a particular person; tho' I must confess, I see nothing but which is very general in his Character, except his marrying his own Mistress; which, by the way, he never did, for he was no ¡sooner off the Stage, but he chang'd his Mind, and the poor Lady is still in Statu Quo, but upon the whole Matter, 'tis application only makes the Asse; and Characters in Plays, are like Long-Lane Cloaths, not hung out for the Use of any particular People, but to be bought by only that they happen to fit. (I, 287) Probably, the thought of Lurewell as an easy-chair-and-slippers type of wife, as she threatens to be at the end of The Constant » Mrs. Aphra Amis Behn, The Plays, Histories, and Novels of the Ingenious Mrs. Behn with Life and Memoirs (London, 1871), I, 100.

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Couple, was just as hard for Farquhar to imagine as it was for him to imagine a reformed Richmore. However, he does allow Lurewell to marry, and this marriage makes a difference in Sir Harry Wildair. Sir Harry Wildair is no play of a coquette as is The Constant Couple; Sir Harry is a play on the old theme of cuckoldry. In the first three plays of Farquhar, it is as though he were learning the art of writing comedy by deliberately trying out tested themes. In the Preface to The Twin-Rivals, Farquhar remarks: "A Play without a Beau, Cully, Cuckold, or Coquet, is as Poor an Entertainment to some Pallats, as their Sundays Dinner wou'd be without Beef and Pudding" (I, 286). Here in this comment we can see the themes for the first three plays by Farquhar: Love and a Bottle emphasizes the Beau (Roebuck) and the Cully (Mockmode); The Constant Couple emphasizes the Coquette theme in Lurewell; and Sir Harry Wildair emphasizes the Cuckold theme (Standard). This change in emphasis in theme, along with other factors, has resulted in three very different plays: a gay comedy of a Beau and a Cully, that achieves a part of its gaiety from the fact that the author refuses to take the subject matter of the Beau and Cully too seriously; a gay comedy of a Coquette that achieves its gaiety because the author, although recognizing the conventionality of his subject matter, plays his comedy straight and, working out the comic problems, sees the Coquette in a new moral light; a not-so-gay comedy of a Cuckold in which the author tries to be witty but cannot get away from the inherent seriousness of his subject - marriage, especially marriage among the aristocracy. This analysis is not meant to suggest that Love and a Bottle and The Constant Couple do not have their serious moments; as we have seen, they do. Nor does this analysis mean that Sir Harry Wildair does not contain its moments of foolishness; it does, as we shall see. However, there is much less laughter and more serious comment in this play than in the first two plays - in this shortest play of the three. Going from the world of The Constant Couple to the world of Sir Harry Wildair is something like going

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from the gay, good world of Illyria in Twelfth Night to the bitter, wicked world of Vienna in Measure for Measure. The change in tone can be seen best perhaps in the change that has come over the characters from one play to another. In The Constant Couple Lurewell is a wronged innocent, who carries on a justified, light-hearted revenge against the villains among mankind. This is not so with Lurewell of Sir Harry Wildair. She has now fallen into the degrading position of 'a fine lady' - "a Woman of Quality". The degradation of her new position is early felt in the play in Fireball's witty description of "a fine Lady" in Act I: Because she'll run adrift with every Wind that blows: She's all Sail, and no Ballast - Shall I tell you, the Character I have heard of a fine Lady? A fine Lady can laugh at the Death of her Husband, and cry for the loss of a Lap Dog. A fine Lady is angry without a Cause, and pleas'd without a Reason. A fine Lady has the Vapours all the Morning, and the Chollick all the afternoons. The Pride of a fine Lady is above the merit of an understanding Hand; yet her Vanity will stoop to the Adoration of a Peruke. And in fine, a fine Lady goes to Church for fashion's sake, and to the Basset-Table with Devotion; and her passion for gaming exceeds her vanity of being thought Vertuous, or the desire of acting the Contrary. - We Seamen speak plain, Brother. (I, 165-6)

Throughout most of the play Lurewell follows Fireball's definition, and the audience comes to loathe her. In Act Π, Scene I, Sir Harry Wildair, Lurewell is introduced to us not as a gay wife with a roving eye, but as a harridan. Her chambermaids quake before she enters the room. And they have a right to quake, for she is unkind to her servants for the way they make her bed, for their slowness, for not laying the right silverware out, for referring to Standard as her "Husband" and not the "Colonel", for not washing their hands, for being too close to her and breathing on her, and for being too far away and shouting at her. To Lurewell these people are just "Animals" and "English Animals" at that. She would prefer the more elegant French servants and is made to utter these words: "I wish the Persecution wou'd rage a little harder, that we might have more

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of these French Refugees among us" (I, 174). Further, in this scene she scolds the tailor for making clothes to fit her and not to fit the fashion. In this same scene she is no kinder to her husband than she has been to her servants and the tradesman. She scolds her husband for having dirty shoes and tracking up her rug. His request that she entertain his friends, fellow officers, at dinner in honor of his brother, Fireball, who has just returned from sea, she refuses with insults for his friends and his brother. In her next appearance in Act II, Scene II, we find that she is a confirmed gambler and that she is squandering her fortune at the basset table. Because of her addiction she willingly takes money from Sir Harry and listens to his improper suggestions when they are made with an "Air of Modesty". She is almost ready to climb in bed with Sir Harry and cuckold her husband (Act III, Scene II) when she is prevented by Beau Banter. She seems genuinely disappointed by Beau Banter's sudden appearance here: "Pshaw! prevented! by a Stranger too! Had it been my Husband now. Pshaw! - Very familiar, Sir" (I, 190). Her gambling losses also throw her in league with the villainous Möns. Marquis. She and Möns. Marquis plan to cheat Sir Harry out of his money (Act I), but that plan backfires. Möns. Marquis then plans to blackmail Sir Harry by besmirching the character of Sir Harry's late wife, Angelica. It is at this point that the monstrous Lurewell utters these words: Lard bless me! How cunningly some women can play the Rogue! Ah! have I found it out! Now as I hope for mercy I am glad on't. I hate to have any woman more Vertuous than my self. -Here was such a work with my Lady Wildair's Piety! my Lady Wildair's Conduct! and my Lady Wildair's Fidelity forsooth! - N o w dear Monsieur, you have infalliby told me the best News that I heard in my Life. Well, and she was but one of us? heh? (I, 184)

The infamy of her behavior in this whole matter can be seen in Act IV, Scene II, where Lurewell tries to share in the blackmail money that Möns. Marquis has extorted from her friend, Sir Harry Wildair. She makes herself more despicable in our eyes

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when she tries in this same scene to ruin the reputation of the dead Angelica for Sir Harry. This malicious design she is still trying to execute as late as Act V, Scene III, where she is trying to write the malicious story of Möns. Marquis in a letter to Sir Harry when the Ghost interrupts. Lady Lurewell is then no longer the gay coquette of The Constant Couple. Nor are the episodes the gay, light-hearted kind of The Constant Couple. In this regard it is interesting to notice that Lurewell here is no longer the intrigante as she was in the original. She falls into Möns. Marquis' plot in this play, but she is not the intriguer here at all. Her part in this plot therefore renders her less culpable in these affairs that involve cheating, extortion, and defamation of character and helps to make the happy ending of the play slightly more plausible. Her willingness to commit adultery with Wildair is somewhat extenuated by the fact that Wildair drags her into the bedroom. As for Beau Clincher's humiliation, she seems to have played no part in it. Because Lurewell does not engineer these cruel and vicious intrigues, she is somewhat less guilty in our eyes. Her faults are surface ones, stemming from the fact that she is a "Lady of Quality". Therefore, she is capable of reform. Although Lurewell is thus exonerated, still she is less interesting than she was in The Constant Couple because she has lost her ingenuity. And the kinds of intrigues that are carried on by their very nature are less gay are heavier and disagreeable. The same marked change can be seen in the character of Sir Harry Wildair himself. Sir Harry Wildair of The Constant Couple is truly the "airy Sir Harry". He is a sinner, but his sins are sometimes committed in ignorance. His improper attitude toward the proper Angelica is offensive, but the scenes are rendered less offensive by the fact of Vizard's trick. Even those sins and follies that Sir Harry commits with full knowledge (or tries to commit) are done with the light spirit of a young animal rather than with the heaviness of an old monster. In this regard it is interesting to compare the seduction scene of The Constant Couple with that of Sir Harry Wildair. In both scenes the aim and the results are the same, but Sir Harry's method in the two scenes is very dif-

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ferent. In The Constant Couple, Harry's light approach is illustrated: Lure.

And what shall I give you for such a fine thing, [a ring]' [Both sing.] Wild. You'll give me another, you'll give me another fine thing. Lure. Shall I be free with you, Sir Harry. Wild. With all my Heart, Madam, so I may be free with you. Lure. Then plainly, Sir, I shall beg the favour to see you some other time, for at this very Minute I have two Lovers in the House. Wild. Then to be as plain, I must be gone this Minute, for I must see another Mistress within these two Hours. Lure. Frank and free. Wild. As you with m e - M a d a m , your most humble Servant. [Exit.] Lure. Nothing can disturb his Humour. Now for my Merchant and Vizard. [Exit, and takes the Candles with her.] (I, 135) Wildair's heavier approach is seen in Sir Harry: Lur. —Come, Sir Harry, faith we'll run it down. —Love! —Ay, methinks I see the mournful Melpomene with her Handkerchief at her Eye, her Heart full of Fire, her Eyes full of Water, her Head full of Madness, and her Mouth full of Nonsense - Oh! hang it. Wild. Ay, Madam. Then the doleful Ditties, piteous Plaints, the Daggers, the Poysons! Lur. Oh the Vapours! Wild. Then a Man must kneel, and a Man must swear. -There is a Repose, I see, in the next Room. [Aside.] Lur. Unnatural Stuff! Wild. Oh, Madam, the most unnatural thing in the World; as fulsome as a Sack-Posset, [Pulling her towards the Door] ungenteel as a Wedding-Ring, and as impudent as the naked Statue was in the Park. [Pulls her again.] Lur. Ay, Sir Harry; I hate Love that's impudent. These Poets dress it up so in their Tragedies, that no modest Woman can bear it. Your way is much the more tolerable, I must confess. Wild. Ay, ay, Madam; I hate your rude Whining and Sighing; it puts a Lady out of countenance. [Pulling her.] Lur. Truly so it does. - H a n g their Impudence. -But where are we going? Wild. Only to rail at Love, Madam. [Pulls her in.] (I, 189) And throughout Sir Harry Wildair, Sir Harry's brutishness, as a contrast to his lightness in the original, may be seen, and what

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appears light and forgivable in the unmarried man is gross and despicable in the married man. Sir Harry's change of character from the original to the sequel has two explanations in the play Sir Harry Wildair. The first explanation is that Sir Harry is bent on revenge because of the untimely death of his wife, Angelica. This explanation comes out in the scene between Dicky and Parley at the end of Act I, where Dicky explains the way in which Sir Harry took the news of Angelica's death: Dick. Why, in the middle of a Monastery amongst a Hundred and fifty Nuns, playing at Hot-cockles. He was surpriz'd to see honest Dicky, you may be sure. But when I told him the sad Story, he roar'd out a whole Volley of English Oaths upon the spot, and swore that he would set fire on the Pope's Palace for the injury done to his Wife. He then flew away to his Chamber, lock'd himself up for three Days; we thought to have found him dead; but instead of that, he call'd for his best Linnen, fine Wig, gilt Coach; and laughing very heartily swore again he wou'd be reveng'd, and bid them drive to the Nunnery; and he was reveng'd to some purpose. Par. How, how, dear Mr. Dicky? Dick. Why, in the matter of five Days he got six Nuns with Child, and Left 'em to provide for their Heretick Bastards. - A h plague on 'em, they hate a dead Heretick, but they love a piping hot warm Heretick with all their Hearts. - S o away we came; and thus did he jog on, revenging himself at this rate through all the Catholick Countries that we pass'd, till we came home; and now, Mrs. Parley I fancy he has some designs of Revenge too upon your Lady. Par. Who cou'd have thought that a Man of his light airy Temper wou'd have been so revengeful? (I, 173) Parley's question raises a problem in regard to Sir Harry's motivation, the answer to which is implied rather than given directly. Of course, it is easy to see why Sir Harry would avenge himself on the nuns because the French Catholics at Montpellier, where Angelica died, would not allow her body to be buried in their cemetery. But why does he continue in this spirit of revenge and why does he especially direct this revenge toward Lurewell? The cause for Sir Harry's bitterness and vengefulness over the death of Angelica, I believe, must be traced back to the few happy days of their marriage. In those few days they seemed to

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have achieved an ideal relationship founded on a strong physical basis. But here is the way Sir Harry explains it in Act IV, Scene II, to the malicious Lady Lurewell: Wild. Why then, Madam, to give you my true Sentiments of Wedlock: I had a Lady that I marry'd by chance, she was Vertuous by chance, and I lov'd her by great chance. Nature gave her Beauty, Education an Air, and Fortune threw a young Fellow of Five and Twenty in her Lap. - I courted her all Day, lov'd her all Night; she was my Mistress one Day, my Wife another: I found in One the variety of a Thousand, and the very confinement of Marriage gave me the Pleasure of Change. Lur. And she was very Vertuous? Wild. Look ye, Madam, you know she was Beautiful. She had good Nature about her Mouth, the Smile of Beauty in her Cheeks, sparkling Wit in her Forehead, and sprightly Love in her Eyes. Lur. Pshaw! I knew her very well; the Woman was well enough. But you dont answer my Question, Sir. Wild. So, Madam, as I told you before, she was Young and Beautiful, I was Rich and Vigorous; my Estate gave a Lustre to my Love, and a Swing to our Enjoyment; round, like the Ring that made us one, our golden Pleasures circl'd without end. Lur. Golden Pleasures! Golden Fiddlesticks. -What d'ye tell me of your canting Stuff? Was she Vertuous, I say? Wild. Ready to burst with Envy; but I will torment thee a little. [Aside.] So, Madam, I powder'd to please her, she dress'd to engage me; we toy'd away the Morning in amorous Nonsense, loll'd away the Evening in the Park or the Play-house, and all the Night - Hem! Lur. Look ye, Sir, answer my Question, or I shall take it ill. Wild. Then, Madam, there was never such a Pattern of Unity. -Her Wants were still prevented by my Supplies; my own Heart whisper'd me her Desires, 'cause she her self was there; no Contention ever rose, but the dear Strife of who shou'd most oblige; no Noise about Authority; for neither wou'd stoop to Command, 'cause both thought it Glory to Obey. Lur. Stuff! stuff! stuff! - I won't believe a Word on't. Wild. Ha, ha, ha. Then, Madam, we never felt the Yoak of Matrimony, because our Inclinations made us One; a Power superior to the Forms of Wedlock. The Marriage-Torch had lost its weaker Light in the bright Flame of mutual Love that join'd our Hearts before; Then- (I, 195-6) The "then" is pregnant with meaning, but we do not get the reason for the breaking up of this idyllic relationship, because of

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the malice of Lurewell, until later in the play. This big question is finally asked by Standard in Act V, Scene V: Stand. Pshaw! Pray, Sir Harry, tell me, What made you leave your Wife? Wild. Ha, ha, ha. I knew it. -Pray, Colonel, What makes you stay with your Wife? Stand. Nay, but pray answer me directly; I beg it as a favour. Wild. Why then, Colonel, you must know we were a pair of the most happy, toying, foolish people in the World, till she got, I don't know how, a Crotchet of Jealousy in her Head. This made her frumpish; but we had ne're an angry word: She only fell a crying over Night, and I went for Italy next Morning. -But pray no more on't. -Are you hurt, Monsieur? (I, 206)

And thus, it was Angelica's weakness - her jealousy - that drove Sir Harry away, and it was the strength of her love that brought him back, as can be seen in Sir Harry's speech of admiration after Angelica's recital of her plot and the way that she carried it out: "How weak, how squeamish, and how fearful are Women when they want to be humour'd! and how Extravagant, how daring, and how provoking, when they get the impertinent Maggot in their Head!" (I, 208). Thus, we can see why Sir Harry has turned from the gay young man of the first play to the vengeful man of the second. The sensual Sir Harry had married the virtuous Angelica, and much to his surprise, he had found complete satisfaction for his physical desires. From this strong physical union had come the union of two minds and two hearts. It was as though Angelica had shown him that there were planes of love above the physical. Then suddenly Angelica, perhaps remembering his past, grew fearful of losing this ladies' man. Angelica's lack of faith in him was a terrible blow to Sir Harry, for after she showed him a higher type of love, she, through jealousy, reduced love to a physical basis again. Therefore, he left Angelica and went abroad. Evidently he decided to give her cause for jealousy, for as we see in Rome, he dallied with a whole nunnery. However, when he learned that Angelica was dead, his immediate reactions were

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those of anger toward the Catholics for their treatment of his wife's body, but then there followed three days of sorrow in solitude. And I believe, along with Dicky, that these were days of deepest despair for Sir Harry, for he felt this as the final blow to the ideal love affair that he once had shared with Angelica. Out of the feelings of disgust for Angelica's faithlessness, of despair over the irreparable loss of her love, and of hatred for the Catholics, who he felt had mistreated her dead body, came this spirit of vengefulness. And when Sir Harry emerged from his seclusion for his grief, although on the surface he was "the airy Sir Harry", he was now a man filled with hatred for womankind. This hatred he expressed immediately at Rome by going to the nunnery and getting six nuns with child in five days. And on the way back to England he carried on this revenge in all the Catholic countries. His debauching of nuns seems a sort of poetic justice for the treatment of Angelica's body, and yet Dicky's line about the nuns - "Ah plague on 'em, they hate a dead Heretick, but they love a piping hot warm Heretick with all their Hearts" suggests another reason for this revenge. It is only fitting that these feelings of hatred brought on originally by the faithful Angelica's faithlessness should take the form of a revenge to prove the supposedly most faithful of women faithless. His final vengeance, though, is directed toward Lurewell. Why? Lurewell seemingly shares his cynicism toward love. In Act III, Scene II, Sir Harry and Lurewell rail at love, and it is reduced from a sublime and noble passion symbolized by Griselda and the wedding ring to impudence symbolized by a bed and some coins. Thus, Harry's feelings toward love have undergone a cycle. Before his marriage to Angelica, he had looked on love as merely sensual; now Sir Harry seems to be completely disillusioned about love, and love and lust are synonymous. But, try as he might, Sir Harry Wildair cannot reduce love to a bed and a pocket book of coins. The truth is that he is still in love with his wife, and this fact is brought out in Act IV, Scene II, where Lurewell tries to defame Angelica to him. To Lurewell, Wildair replies:

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Buz, Madam. - N o Detraction. -I'll tell you what she was. - S o much an Angel in her Conduct, that tho' I saw another in her Arms, I shou'd have thought the Devil had rais'd the Phantom, and my more conscious Reason had given my Eyes the Lye. (I, 196)

Therefore, in Act V, Scene VI, Wildair is quite ready to take back Angelica, dead or alive. And yet, when he is convinced of her corporality, he takes her back on the same basis that he took her in the first place: Hold, hold, Madam. Don't be angry, my Dear; you took me unprovided: Had you but sent me Word of your coming, I had got three or four Speeches out of Oroonoko and the Mourning Bride upon this occasion, that wou'd have charm'd your very Heart. But we'll do as well as we can; I'll have the Musick from both Houses; Pawlet and Locket shall contrive for our Taste; we'll charm our Ears with Abell's Voice; feast our eyes with one another; and thus, with all our Senses tun'd to Love, we'll hurl off our Cloaths, leap into Bed, and there — Look ye, Madam, if I don't welcome you home with Raptures more natural and more moving than all the Plays in Christendom - I'll say no more. (I, 208)

For Wildair marriage must have a strong physical basis, and his own experience with Angelica only seemed to confirm this opinion for him. Thus, it was the jealousy of Angelica that led to the separation of the couple and the vengefulness of Sir Harry Wildair. Part of the trouble in the Standard household is caused by Standard's jealousy. Evidently Standard does not have a jealous bone in his body until his brother, Fireball, returns to shore and Iago-like begins to work on him. At the beginning of Act I Standard asks his brother to congratulate him on the "Success" of his marriage to Lurewell; toward the end of the act, Fireball has so worked on him that Standard looks on his marriage as a "bad Bargain". And yet the strange thing about this whole matter is that Standard never gets as worked up over Lurewell's conduct as does his brother, Fireball. Standard, more rational and less emotional than Fireball, sets up an object lesson for Lurewell by getting Clincher drunk and then having him deposited in Lurewell's apartment and 'dis-

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covering' him there. The object lesson is carried out at the end of Act IV, and its efficacy is told of at the beginning of Act V: Stand. In short, Brother, a Man may talk till Doomsday of Sin, Hell, and Damnation; but your Rhetorick will ne're convince a Lady that there's any thing of the Devil in a handsome Fellow with a fine Coat. You must shew the Cloven-Foot, expose the Brute, as I have done; and tho' her Vertue sleeps, her Pride will surely take th' Alarm. Fir. Ay, but if you had let me cut off one of the Rogue's Ears before you sent him away. Stand. No, no; the Fool has serv'd my turn, without the Scandal of a publick Resentment; and the effect has shewn that my Design was right; I've touch'd her very heart, and she relents apace. (I, 201) Furthermore, the repentant Lurewell at the end of the play testifies to the efficacy of the treatment in her advice against jealousy: And another Rule, Gentlemen, let me advise you to observe, Never to be Jealous; or if you shou'd, be sure never to let your Wife think you suspect her; for we are more restrain'd by the Scandal of the Lewdness, than by the Wickedness of the Fact; and once a Woman has bom the Shame of a Whore, she'll dispatch you the Sin in a moment. (I, 210) Sir Harry Wildair also acts the way he does because he is a Man of Honour. Early in Act I, as with the Woman of Honour or the Lady of Quality, we get an idea of what the Man of Honour is truly like. Standard pits the Man of Quality against the soldier in a speech important to the plot line of the play. No, no, Brother; that's a contradiction: There's no such thing as Villany at Court. Indeed if the practice of Courts were found in a single Person, he might be stil'd Villain with a vengeance; but Number and Power authorizes every thing, and turns the Villain upon their Accusers. In short, Sir, every Man's Morals, like his Religion now-adays, pleads liberty of Conscience; every Man's Conscience is his convenience, and we know no Convenience but Preferment. -As for instance, Who would be so complaisant as to thank an Officer foi his Courage, when that's the Condition of his Pay? And who can be so ill-natur'd as to blame a Courtier for espousing that which is the very tenure of his Livelyhood? (I, 166-7)

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In the plot Standard himself represents the soldier class, and Sir Harry represents the courtiers. Throughout most of the play Sir Harry plays the part of the courtier, gaming and trying to seduce the wife of his friend. Then revulsion sets in for the part that he is playing. This revulsion begins when Lurewell tries to poison his mind against Angelica in Act IV, Scene I. He takes the Marquis, a pattern for a Man of Quality because of his nationality, to be a Villain and yet does not seem to realize his own villainy completely: Oh my Head! I was never worsted by a Woman before. -But I have heard so much as to know the Marquis to be a Villain. [Knocking.] Nay then, I must run for't. [Runs out and returns.] -The Entry is stopt by a Chair coming in, and something there is in that Chair that I will discover, if I can find a place, to hide my self. [Goes to the Closet-door.] Fast! I have Keys about me for most Locks about St. James's, -Let me see. -[Tries one Key.] - N o , no; this opens my Lady Planthorn's Backdoor. -[Tries another.] -Nor this; this is the Key to my Lady Stakeall's Garden. [Tries a Third.] Ay, ay, this does it Faith. [Goes into the Closet, and peeps out.] (I, 197)

The next step in this development comes at the end of Act IV, where Sir Harry is bested by Colonel Standard. Colonel Standard, the antithesis of the Man of Quality, acts so well in the whole affair concerning Lurewell that Wildair can only assent to Standard's proposal that it is time for the men to desist in their attempts on Lurewell's honor. This whole movement reaches a climax when Sir Harry Wildair has a moment of self revelation in the scene with the Lord in the park: Lo. Come, Sir, this won't pass upon me; I'm a Man of Honour. Wild. Honour! Ha, ha, ha. -'Tis very strange! that some Men, tho' their Education be never so Gallant, will ne'er learn Breeding! -Look ye, my lord, when you and I were under the Tuition of our Governors, and convers'd only with old Cicero, Livy, Virgil, Plutarch, and the like; why then such a Man was a Villain, and such a one was a Man of Honour: But now, that I have known the Court, a little of what they call the Beaumonde, and the Belle-esprit, I find that Honour looks as ridiculous as Roman Buskins upon your Lordship, or my full Peruke upon Scipio Africanus.

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Lo. Why shou'd you think so, Sir? Wild. Because the World's improv'd, my Lord, and we find that this Honour is a very troublesom and impertinent Thing. -Can't we live together like good Neighbours and Christians, as they do in France? I lend you my Coach, I borrow yours; you Dine with me, I Sup with you; I lie with your Wife, and you lie with mine. -Honour! That's such an Impertinence! -Pray, my Lord, hear me. What does your Honour think of murdering your Friend's Reputation? making a Jest of his Misfortunes? cheating him at Cards, debauching his Bed, or the like? Lo. Why, rank Villany. Wild. Pish! pish! Nothing but good Manners, excess of good Manners. Why, you han't been at Court lately. There 'tis the only practice to shew our Wit and Breeding. -As for Instance; your Friend reflects upon you when absent, because 'tis good Manners; raillies you when present, because 'tis Witty; cheats you at Picquet, to shew he has been in France; lies with your Wife, to shew he's a Man of Quality. Lo. Very well, Sir. Wild. In short, my Lord, you have a wrong Notion of Things. Shou'd a Man with a handsom Wife revenge all Affronts done to his Honour, poor White, Chaves, Morris, Locket, Pawlet, and Pontack, were utterly ruin'd. Lo. How so, Sir? Wild. Because, my Lord, you must run all their Customers quite through the Body. Were it not for abusing your Men of Honour, Taverns, and Chocolate-houses cou'd not subsist; and were there but a round Tax laid upon Scandal and false Politicks, we Men of Figure wou'd find it much heavier than Four Shillings in the Pound. -Come, come, my Lord; no more on't, for Shame; your Honour is safe enough; for I have the Key of its back Door in my Pocket. (I, 204-5) Next, near the end of the play, Sir Harry renounces the Man of Quality way represented by the Marquis and turns toward the way of the true Man of Honour represented by the Colonel: Go thy ways for a true Pattern of the Vanity, Impertinence, Subtlety, and Ostentation of thy Country. -Look ye, Captain, give me thy hand; once I was a Friend to France; but henceforth I promise to sacrifice my Fashions, Coaches, Wigs, and Vanity, to Horses, Arms, and Equipage, and serve my King in propia persona, to promote a vigorous War, if there be occasion. (I, 209)

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Just as at the end of the play Lurewell speaks out against jealousy for the benefit of Colonel Standard and Angelica, so Angelica and Wildair speak for a compromise of the ways of the world with the marriage vows, which lesson might apply to Sir Harry as well as Lady Lurewell: Ang. By being good Husbands, Sir; and the great Secret for keeping Matters right in Wedlock, is never to quarrel with your Wives for Trifles; for we are but Babies at best, and must have our Playthings, our Longings, our Vapours, our Frights, our Monkeys, our China, our Fashions, our Washes, our Patches, our Waters, our Tattle, and Impertinence; therefore, I say 'tis better to let a Woman play the Fool, than provoke her to play the Devil.... Wild. We're oblig'd to you, Ladies, for your Advice; and, in return, give me leave to give you the definition of a good Wife, in the Character of my own. The Wit of her Conversation never outstrips the Conduct of her Behaviour: She's affable to all Men, free with no Man, and only kind to me: Often chearful, sometimes gay, and always pleas'd, but when I am angry; then sorry, not sullen: The Park, Play-house, and Cards, she frequents in compliance with Custom; but her Diversions of Inclination are at home: She's more cautious of a remarkable Woman, than of a noted Wit, well knowing that the Infection of her own Sex is more catching than the Temptation of ours: To all this, she is beautiful to a Wonder, scorns all Devices that engage a Gallant, and uses all Arts to please her Husband. So, spite of Satyr 'gainst a marry'd Life, A Man is truly blest with such a Wife. (I, 210) Thus, we see by looking at the characters of Sir Harry Wildair and at the adventures that they inspire that Sir Harry Wildair is more bitter, more satiric, more serious than the original. Furthermore, Sir Harry Wildair is a wittier play than The Constant Couple·, in fact, Sir Harry Wildair seems to be a second answer to the critics who found The Constant Couple lacked wit. Farquhar had answered attack for attack with A New Prologue to The Constant Couple, in which he said The Constant Couple might not be witty but it pleased the public and made money for the players. However, I belie' e that this criticism still rankled within him, and when he began to write Sir Harry Wildair, he resolved to make it a witty play.

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Certainly everyone in Sir Harry Wildair talks wit from Sir Harry and Lady Lurewell down to Dicky and Parley. The play begins with a witty description of war and ends with a witty description of the good wife and in between there are witty remarks on love, religion and morals, the court, the army, the university, the French, and the Catholics, objects for satire in The Constant Couple. Sir Harry Wildair, then, is very wittyalmost too witty for my taste, although not for Malcolm Elwin. The speech of Fireball, quoted earlier, in which he characterizes the fine lady is too studied for the plain talker he claims to be. Also this speech and the speeches of Sir Harry on the fine gentleman are rather too serious in thought and too strong in feeling to lend themselves well to the balanced sentences in which they are expressed. However inartistic the form may seem at times, still the satire of Sir Harry Wildair is far more effective than that of The Constant Couple. This result is achieved through concentration: not only does Sir Harry Wildair satirize most of the topics that The Constant Couple does, but its satire always seems to come back to the one main topic - what a lady and gentleman should be. For example, the satire of the university first enters this play in Act II, Scene I, where Beau Banter tells of his career at Oxford to Fireball and Standard: Ay; There have I been sucking my dear Alma Mater these seven years: yet, in defiance to Legs of Mutton, small Beer, crabbed Books, and sour-fac'd Doctors, I can dance a Minuet, court a Mistriss, play at Picket, or make a Paroli, with any Wildair in Christendome. In short, Sir, in spight of the University, I'm a pretty Gentleman. -Coll. Where's your Wife? Fire. [Mimicking him.] In spight of the University I'm a pretty Gentleman. —Then, Coll. Where's your Wife? -Hark ye, young Plato, Whether wou'd you have, your nose slit, or your Ears cut? (I, 178)

A little later Beau Banter boasts, "I'm privileg'd to be very impertinent, being an Oxonian, and oblig'd to fight no man being a Beau." The satiric comment here is directed to the university and to the students. The university offers unimaginative physical and spiritual fare; however, still greater criticism is made of the

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students. The young Oxonians seek their training in how to be gentlemen outside the university and feel that they have achieved their mark when they dance; gamble; court the ladies, including other men's wives; and are generally impertinent. In Act V, Scene III, Wildair refers to education when he is teaching the Lord what a gentleman is. Here, as Beau Banter before him, Sir Harry vindicates education in this matter of creating the monster - the gentleman. Wildair shows that schoolmasters, through the study of the classics, have pointed out the villainous way of life and the honorable way of life, but high society has made a mockery of honor by passing off the villainous way as the honorable way. And it seems to me the effect of both Beau Banter and Sir Harry Wildair's speeches is that there are absolute values of good and evil and that schools, however dry they may be, and not high society, are the best places to learn to distinguish the good from the evil and to learn the honorable way. Here again as in Love and a Bottle Farquhar may have been reminded of John Locke in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. For instance Farquhar may have been thinking of this passage from Locke when he has Sir Harry appeal to "the old philosophers" instead of to the example of high society for solving moral problems: 5. Instance in keeping compacts. That men should keep their compacts is certainly a great and undeniable rule in morality. But yet, if a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be asked why a man must keep his word, he will give as a reason: -Because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. But if a Hobbist be asked why? he will answer: -Because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not, and if one of the old philosophers had been asked, he would have answered: -Because it was dishonest, below the dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, the highest perfection of human nature to do other wise.7

Although Farquhar seems to have accepted Locke's analysis of the origin of morals as being true for his own time-that men 7

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, XXXV (Chicago, 1952), 105.

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make their moral laws to fit their own self interest - still he does not believe this situation is inevitable. Rather he wants to return to the example of "the old philosophers" and their belief in absolute virtue. At the beginning of Sir Harry Wildair again the irony of war is seen by Fireball, who finds war very much the child's game: "Why yonder are three or four young Boys i' the North, that have got Globes and Scepters to play with: They fell to Loggerheads about their Play-things; the English came in like Robin Goodfellow, cry'd Boh, and made 'em be quiet" (I, 165). Except for this ironic view of war, the two plays, The Constant Couple and Sir Harry Wildair, are different in their outlook on the military. Where The Constant Couple encourages sympathy for the soldier, Sir Harry Wildair encourages admiration. The soldier becomes a foil for the nobleman as we have seen in our discussion of the character of Wildair. Sir Harry Wildair contains several comparisons of the soldier and the courtier by Colonel Standard and Fireball in Act I, by Lady Lurewell in Act II, Scene I, by Standard in Act IV, Scene II, and by Sir Harry Wildair in Act IV, Scene VI. All of these comparisons are to the advantage of the soldier, except Lurewell's, and one is left with the thought at the end of the play that the soldier is the true man of honor. In Sir Harry Wildair the attack on the French is more direct and more stunning than that in The Constant Couple. This concentration comes in the fact that the French Marquis is a leading character in the play. At the first mention of him in the play, Standard says: "Ay, the French Marquis; that's one of your Benefactors, Parley - the Persecution of Basset in Paris furnished us with that Refugee, but the Character of such a Fellow ought not to reflect on those who have been real sufferers for their Religion" (I, 171). The hatred of the Marquis comes here mostly because he is a hypocrite. Again the French are seen as the corrupters of the English nation in Act II, where Lurewell and Wildair speak: Wild. Ay, Madam, these are Charms indeed - Then the pleasure of picking your Husbands Pocket over Night to play at Basset next Day! Then the advantage a fine Gentleman may make of a Lady's

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necessity, by gaining a Favour for fifty Pistols, which a Hundred Years Courtship cou'd never have produc'd. Lur. Nay, nay, Sir Harry, that's foul play. Wild. Nay, nay, Madam, 'tis nothing but the Game, and I have play'd it so in France a Hundred times. Lur. Come, come, Sir, no more on't. I'll tell you in three words, That rather than forego my Cards, I'll foreswear my Visits, Fashions, my Monkey, Friends, and Relations. Wild. There spoke the spirit of True-born English Quality, with a true French Education. (I, 182)

At the beginning of Act III we see the dastardly Frenchman trying to overcome the natural superiority of the Englishman with French "politics". As we have seen, Sir Harry in the park scene with the Lord equates the French way with cheating at cards. Finally in Sir Harry's renunciation of the Man of Honour way, as we have seen, that whole false way is allied with France. And thus once again criticism and satire are brought around to the point of what a gentleman ought to be. He should not follow the French but rather the schoolmaster and the soldier. Religion is satirized through the atheist, Parley, who says, "Never Christen'd! What then? I may be a very good Christian for all that, I suppose. - " And a little later she asks, "Shall I tell you a Christian Lye, or a Pagan Truth?" (1,169). Indeed, it's like servant, like mistress as a little later Lurewell speaks of Angelica as a church-going woman: -She was Charitable forsooth! and she was Devout forsooth! and everybody was twitted i' th' Teeth with my Lady Wildair's Reputation; And why don't you mark her Discretion? She goes to Church twice a day, -Ah! I hate these Congregation-women. There's such a fuss and such a clutter about their Devotion, that it makes more noise than all the Bells in the Parish. - Well, but what advantage can you make now of the Picture? (1,184)

However, although Lurewell tries to scorn the good life, she is twice overcome by what Parley calls "meer Morals": once when her husband teaches her an object lesson and once when Angelica as the Ghost scares her half to death. And one takes it that Angelica's moral-religious way is the right way for the Woman

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of Quality, even though Lurewell's only lesson at the end of the play is one directed against jealousy, as we have seen. The two topics that furnish most of the serious comment in both The Constant Couple and Sir Harry Wildair are love and

the aristocracy. However, I believe that the relative importance given these topics is slightly different in the two plays. The Constant Couple is concerned for the most part with the love of aristocrats whereas Sir Harry Wildair is concerned with aristocrats in love. The distinction, it seems to me, is made very clear by Beau Banter in Act II, Scene I, of the play, when he says to Standard: Why, look ye, Sir; You may have the Honour of being call'd the Lady Lurewell's Husband; but you will never find in any Author, either Ancient or Modern, that She's call'd Mr. Standard's Wife. 'Tis true, you're a handsome young Fellow, she lik'd you; she marry'd you; and tho' the Priest made you both one Flesh, yet there's no small distinction in your Blood. You are still a disbanded Colonel, and she is still a Woman of Quality, I take it. 0, 179-80)

In Sir Harry Wildair Lady Lurewell is a Woman of Quality first and a wife afterwards; in The Constant Couple she is a woman in love. In Sir Harry Wildair, then, the theme of the aristocrat assumes greater importance than the love theme, and the two at the end become inextricably intertwined. The love theme in Sir Harry Wildair, of course, is the theme of married love. The problem becomes here one of how to preserve a marriage. Angelica believes evidently that the best way to do this is by appeal to Heaven, for as the Ghost she reminds Lady Lurewell: Thy Matrimonial Vow is register'd above, And all the Breaches of that Solemn Faith Are register'd below. (I, 168)

To this appeal, Colonel Standard adds one more, the law: "The Gospel drives the Matrimonial Nail, and the Law clinches it so very hard that to draw again wou'd tear the Work to pieces" (I, 168). Although the Gospel and the law are binding on the Colonel, he realizes that they are not binding on his wife, and

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that there is only one safeguard to their marriage as far as she is concerned: "her Pride" (I, 201). Lurewell's "pride" - her fear of the "Scandal of Lewdness" (I, 210) - recalls Roebuck's Lockian discussion of woman's virtue at the beginning of Love and a Bottle. Lurewell is certainly not motivated here by an "innate Principle of Vertue" but by the code of society. And it seems to me that Farquhar sees in the example of the marriage of Sir Harry and Angelica another and most important means of preserving a marriage contract. Returning to the passage quoted from Locke earlier in this chapter, we see how this play provides a special "Instance in keeping compacts". The marriage compact might be kept because of the Gospel (the Christian view), because of the Law (the Hobbist view), or because of pride, the practical principle (the Lockian view). However, in the case of Sir Harry and Angelica, their marriage seems to have been preserved through love, "that violent passion", that Locke seems to abhor: But if any extreme disturbance (as sometimes it happens) possesses our whole mind, as when the pain of the rack, an impetuous uneasiness, as of love, anger, or any other violent passion, running away with us, allows us not the liberty of thought, and we are not masters enough of our own minds to consider thoroughly and examine fairly; —God, who knows our frailty, pities our weakness, and requires of us no more than we are able to do, and sees what was and what was not in our power, will judge as a kind and merciful Father. But the forbearance of a too hasty compliance with our desires, the moderation and restraint of our passions, so that our understanding may be free to examine, and reason unbiassed give its judgment, being that whereon a right direction of our conduct to true happiness depends; it is in this we should employ our chief care and endeavours.8

Certainly the strength of the marriage of Angelica and Sir Harry Wildair lies not in "moderation and restraint" of love but in their opposites. Thus, Farquhar's world in this play, as in Love and. a Bottle and The Constant Couple, is patterned after Locke with people 8

Locke, p. 112.

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acting on practical principles founded on self interest. However, here again Farquhar is not content with such a world and criticizes it. Men of honor and ladies of quality ought to be motivated in their lives by the absolute principles of virtue (found in the works of the old philosophers) and in their loves by passion, even though love may turn to jealousy as in the examples of Angelica and Colonel Standard. Another difference between Sir Harry Wildair and Farquhar's earlier plays is the fact that Sir Harry is more unified as to plot. A rather superficial, yet important, fact to notice is that Sir Harry is about three-fourths the length of The Constant Couple and Love and a Bottle. From what does this economy result? From plotting. Perhaps readers have failed to appreciate Farquhar's attempts at unifying this play because they have taken too literally his Prologue to the play. In this Prologue he attacks the 'rules' and vows his devotion to the only rules of importance - the audience. But even while he protests too much, he is heeding the advice of the critics. As we have seen in Chapter I, Farquhar's contemporaries found him defective in the plotting of his plays. Mrs. Centlivre wrote of The Constant Couple: " Ί believe that Mr. Rich will own that he got more by The Trip to the Jubilee with all its irregularities than by the most uniform piece the stage could boast of ever since.'"® And John Oldmixon wrote in the obituary of Farquhar in The Muses Mercury for May, 1707: " 'Tis true the criticks will not allow any Part of them to be regular.'" 10 Of course no one could deny that Farquhar knew the rules; he was constantly writing against the too rigid adherence to the rules, or as Connely puts it: "He finished off the book Love and Business by coupling his 'Discourse upon Comedy' with a sketch of a scene in Covent Garden, wherein three characters discussed the unities - always a subject which bit Farquhar like a gadfly."11 Although Farquhar objected to a strict adherence to the unities, he did not favor anarchy in the construction of a play. In a 9 10 11

A s quoted by Stonehill, I, 81. A s quoted by Stonehill, I, xxxi. Connely, p. 174.

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"Discourse upon Comedy", which may have been written about the time that he was writing Sir Harry Wildair, he defined a comedy as "a well-fram'd tale handsomely told, as an agreeable Vehicle for Counsel or Reproof" (II, 336). And he further believed that playwrights were defective "if any part of their Plots have been independent of the rest" (II, 343). I believe that Farquhar's first two plays would not measure up to his standard, but I believe that with Sir Harry Wildair Farquhar was consciously striving to make his plots dependent on each other. Furthermore, I believe that with Sir Harry Wildair Farquhar began an experimental period in which he tried to write plays that more or less conformed to the unity of action, plays such as Sir Harry, The Inconstant, The Twin Rivals, and The Stage Coach. To see the truth of these statements, we might first analyze what a Farquhar plot is. A Farquhar plot, after all the intrigue, the scenes in the dark, the masquerades, the misunderstandings, the cases of mistaken identity are taken away, consists of two love affairs, except for the plot of The Stage Coach, which contains only one. Besides these two love stories, in Love and a Bottle and The Constant Couple, and later in The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux' Stratagem, is the added plot complication of a boarding house or a "trip to the Jubilee" or recruitment or an inn. With this analysis in mind, let us now examine the plots of Farquhar's first three plays to see how Farquhar was trying to unify the plot of Sir Harry Wildair. The two early plays, written while he was expressing contempt for the rules, are long, sprawling, and loosely connected. For example, the boarding-house plot of Love and a Bottle is very loosely tied in with the two love plots of the play and several times threatens to run away with the play. And in the second play, The Constant Couple, the secondary love plot of Angelica and Sir Harry Wildair seems to have little bearing on the main plot of the jilting Lurewell, who can provide a unifying factor for the low comedy characters even if she cannot keep them from running away with the play at times as in the instance of Clincher in Tom Errand's clothes.

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