William Congreve

Front matter

Lyin hLBERY

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THE MERMAID SERIES r. _ Epitep sy Havetocxk ELLIs.

Preface

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Gi N the history of English literature uaz there is no period when license in thought and action is more open and unrestrained than that which immediately followed upon the Restoration of Charles IT. to the throne. It was inevitable that the intolerant severity of Puritanism, when the influences that created it ceased to exist, should be succeeded by a reaction which erred in the other extreme. When it was a sin to read plays, to act plays, or after any fashion to patronise the theatre, it became only a question of time and opportunity for suppressed and irritated human nature to give vent to its feelings with a freedom all the more uncontrolled from the injustice that had so long repressed it. Had it not been for the immoral bondage of Puritanism the immoral emancipation of the Restoration would never have been ushered in.

- Action and ré-action are influences as domi-

<p ml PREFACE.

nant in the study of literature as they are in politics. The more violent is the swing of the pendulum to one side from any unnatural cause which disturbs the centre of gravity, the greater will be its sweep to the other, until equilibrium is restored. The intrigues of the gallant, the unblushing frailties of the women, the looseness permitted to polite conversation, the systematic vice upon which the plot of the story turns, all of which is so scandalously apparent in the works of the dramatists of the Restoration, are but the logical result of cause and effect. Unjustifiable rigour is always succeeded by unbridled laxity. The plays which immediately followed upon the restitution of the rights of the Stuarts are, as might be expected, among the most licentious and unveiled in our dramatic literature. Yet as soon as the baneful effects of Puritan prohibitions ceased to excite the national memory a healthier state of things began toprevail. With the removal of restrictions upon honest enjoyment, with the restoration of innocent pleasures, and with the banishment of that gloom and cant which throughout the days of the Commonwealth had so depressed and embittered the spirit of the people, genius once more drew its rays from a purer light and ceased to be illumined by the iridescence of putrefaction.

The muse of Congreve appeared during this period of transition. His comedies are happily

PREFACE, ix lacking in the gross indecency of Etherege and Wycherley, yet compared with those of his successors in the earlier half of the eighteenth century their lax and dissolute character is plainly visible. Still they occupy, and deservedly occupy, a prominent place on the shelves of English literature, and their author rightly fills his niche in the temple of fame. His wit, \ apparent in every line of his dialogue, is brilliant and trenchant in the extreme; indeed he is the most polished and mordant master of dialogue in our language. Dialogue is so woven into the texture of his plays that if we try to separate it for the sake of better understanding the story, the whole falls to pieces. Plot, probability, the progress of events, the interest attached to the motives and movements of individuals are all secondary, sometimes even sacrificed, to the setting of the conversation. In the construction of plot Congreve is either careless or so elaborate as to weary us with unnecessary details; | but it is evident that, provided his characters Ny talk their very best, he is indifferent tothe causes / which bring them into action. Hence it is that,

with the exception of Love for Love, his comedies | are better to read than to act. He is more the || dramatist of the library than of the stage. As a painter of contemporary life and manners, studied from the vantage point of fashion, he has

Q no equal.

The whole of Congreve’s plays are included x PREPA CE.

in the present volume, and for the first time they have been annotated.

Macaulay’s brilliant account of Congreve’s career is well known; it would, however, be difficult to improve upon it, and, with some additional notes, it has been used as an introduction to this edition.

The portrait of Congreve which forms the frontispiece to the volume is from the wellknown picture by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

Hse GR iy

WILLIAM CONGREVE.

salILLIAM CONGREVE was born

"| in 1670, at Bardsey, in the neighbourhood of Leeds. His father, a younger son of a very ancient Staffordshire family, had distinguished himself among the cavaliers in the Civil War, was set down after the Restoration for the Order of the Royal Oak, and subsequently settled in Ireland, under the patronage of the Earl of Burlington.

Congreve passed his childhood and youth in Ireland. He was sent to school at Kilkenny, and thence went to the University of Dublin. His learning does great honour to his instructors. From his writings it appears not only that he was well acquainted with Latin literature, but that his knowledge of the Greek poets was such as was not, in his time, common even in a college.

When he had completed his academical studies, he was sent to London to study the law, and was

- 1 From Macaulay’s Essay on Zhe Comic Dra matists of the Restoration.

xil WILLIAM CONGREVE.

entered of the Middle Temple. He troubled himself, however, very little about pleading or conveyancing, and gave himself up to literature and society. Two kinds of ambition early took possession of his mind, and often pulled it in opposite directions. He was conscious of great fertility of thought and power of ingenious combination. His lively conversation, his polished manners, and his highly respectable connections had obtained for him ready access to the best company. He longed to bea great writer; he longed to be a man of fashion. Either object was within his reach. -But could he secure both? Was there not something ‘vulgar in letters—something inconsistent with the easy, apathetic graces of a man ofthe mode? Was it aristocratical to be confounded with creatures who lived in the cocklofts of Grub Street, to bargain with publishers, to hurry printers’ devils, to squabble with managers, to be applauded or hissed by pit, boxes, and galleries? Could he forego the renown of being the first wit of his age? Could he attain that renown without sullying, what he valued quite - as much, his character for gentility? The history of his life is the history of a conflict between these two impulses. In his youth, the desire of literary fame had the mastery; but soon the meaner ambition overpowered the higher, and obtained supreme dominion over his mind. His first work, a novel of no great value, he

WILLIAM CONGREVE. Xiil published under the assumed name of Cleophil. His second was The Old Bachelor, acted in 1693, a play inferior indeed to his other comedies, but, in its own line, inferior to them alone.‘ The plot is equally destitute of interest and of probability. The characters are either not distinguishable, or are distinguished only by peculiarities of the most glaring kind. But the dialogue is resplendent with wit and eloquence—which indeed are so abundant that the fool comes in for an ample share—and yet preserves a certain colloquial air, a certain indescribable ease, of which Wycherley had given no example and which Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate. The author, divided between pride and shame—pride at having written a good play and shame at having done an ungentlemanlike thing—pretended that he had merely scribbled a few scenes for his own amusement,! and affected to yield unwillingly to the importunities of those who pressed him to try his fortune on the stage. The Old Bachelor was seen in manuscript by Dryden, one of whose best qualities was a hearty and generous admiration for the talents of others. He declared that he had never seen such a first play, and lent his services to bring it into a form fit for representation. Nothing was wanted to the success of the piece. It was

1 «There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance. Zhe Old Bachelor was written for amusement in the languor of convalescence. Yet itis apparently composed with great elaborateness of dialogue and incessant ambition of wit.’’—Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. ED, erenaemmmenn

Xiv WILLIAM CONGREVE.

so cast as to bring into play all the comic talent, and to exhibit on the boards in one view all the beauty which Drury Lane Theatre, then the only theatre in London, could assemble. The result was a complete triumph; and the author was gratified with rewards more substantial than the applauses of the pit. Montagu, then a lord of the Treasury, immediately gave him a place, and, ina short time, added the reversion of another place of much greater value, which, however, did not become vacant till many years had elapsed.’

In 1694, Congreve brought out Zhe Double- Dealer, a comedy in which all the powers which had produced Zhe Old Bachelor showed themselves matured by time and improved by exercise. But the audience was shocked by the characters of Maskwell and Lady Touchwood. And, indeed, there is something strangely revolting in the way in which a group that seems to belong to the house of Laius or of Pelops is introduced into the midst of the Brisks, Froths, Carelesses, and Plyants. The play was unfavourably received. Yet if the praise of distinguished men could compensate an author for the disapprobation of the multitude, Congreve had no reason to repine. Dryden, in one of the most ingenious, magnificent, and pathetic pieces that he ever wrote, extolled the author of Zhe

* A commissioner for licensing hackney coaches ; a commissioner for wine licences; a place in the Pipe Office ; a post in the Custom House ; secretary of Jamaica—these were the appointments, held at one time or another, by the fortunate poet. Ep;

WILLIAM CONGREVE, XV

Double-Dealer in terms which now appear. extravagantly hyperbolical. Till Congreve came forth—so ran this exquisite flattery—the superiority of the poets who preceded the civil wars was acknowledged.

‘‘ Theirs was the giant race before the flood.”

Since the return of the royal house, much art and ability had been exerted, but the old masters had been still unrivalled.

“ Our builders were with want of genius curst, The second temple was not like the first.”

At length a writer had arisen who, just emerging from boyhood, had surpassed the authors of The Kntght of the Burning Pestle and of The Szlent Woman, and who had only one rival left to contend with.

“ Heaven, that but once was prodigal before, To Shakspeare gave as much, he could not give him more.”

Some lines near the end of the poem are singularly graceful and touching, and sank deep into the heart of Congreve.

“ Already am I wern with cares and age, And just abandoning the ungrateful stage ; Bat you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn, Whom If foresee to better fortune born, Be kind to my remains ; and, oh, defend Against your judgment your departed friend. Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue, But guard those laurels which descend to you.”

The crowd, as usual, gradually came over to the opinion of the men of note; and Zhe Double-

1 The Knight of the Burning Pestle was written by Beaumont and Fletcher ; the Sent Woman by Ben Jonson. Ep. ;

xvi WILLIAM CONGREVE.

Dealer was before long quite as much admired, though perhaps never so much liked, as Zhe Old Bachelor.

In 1695 appeared Love for Love, superior both in wit and in scenic effect to either of the preceding plays. It was performed at a new theatre which Betterton and some other actors, disgusted by the treatment which they had received in Drury Lane, had just opened in a tennis-court near Lincoln’s Inn. Scarcely any comedy within the memory of the oldest man had been equally: successful. The actors were so elated that they gave Congreve a share in their theatre, and he promised in return to furnish them with a play every year, if his health would permit. Two years passed, however, before he produced The Mourning Bride, a play which, paltry as it is when compared, we do not say, with Lear or

' Macbeth, but with the best dramas of Massinger and Ford, stands very high among the tragedies of the age in which it was written. To find anything so good we must go twelve years back to Venice Preserved, or six years forward to Zhe Fair Penttent.. The noble passage, which Johnson, both in writing and in conversation, extolled above any other in the English drama, has suffered greatly in the public estimation from the extravagance of his praise. Had he contented himself with saying that it was finer than any-

“1 Venice Preserved was written by Thomas Otway; Zhe Fair Penitent, by Nicholas Rowe. ED. ¢ .

WILLIAM CONGREVE. xvii thing in the tragedies of Dryden, Otway, Lee, Rowe, Southern, Hughes, and Addison, than anything, in short, that had been written for the stage since the days of Charles I., he would not have been in the wrong.

The success of Zhe Mourning Bride was even greater than that of Love for Love. Congreve was now allowed to be the first tragic as well as the first comic dramatist of his time: and all this at twenty-seven. We believe that no English writer except Lord Byron has, at so early an age, stood so high in the estimation of his contemporaries.

At this time took place an event which deserves, in our opinion, a very different sort of notice from that which has been bestowed on it by Mr. Leigh Hunt.’ The nation had now nearly recovered from the demoralising effect of the Puritan austerity. The gloomy follies of the reign of the Saints were but faintly remembered. The evils produced by profaneness and debauchery were recent and glaring. The Court, since the Revolution, had ceased to patronise licentiousness. Mary was strictly pious, and the vices of the cold, stern, and silent William were not obtruded on the public eye. Discountenanced by the government and falling in the favour of the people, the profligacy of the Restoration still maintained its ground in some parts of society. Its strongholds were the places

1 Tn his introductory notice to The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar.

xviii * WILLIAM CONGREVE.

where men of wit and fashion congregated, and, above all, the theatres. At this conjuncture arose a great reformer, whom, widely as we differ from him in many important points, we can never mention without respect.

Jeremy Collier was a clergyman of the Church of England, bred at Cambridge. His talents and attainments were such as might have been expected to raise him to the highest honours of his profession. He had an extensive knowledge of books, and yet he had mingled much with polite society, and is said not to have wanted either grace or vivacity in conversation. There were few branches. of literature to which he had not paid some attention; but ecclesiastical antiquity was his favourite study. In religious opinions, he belonged to that section of the Church of England which lies furthest from Geneva and nearest to Rome. His notions touching Episcopal government, holy orders, the efficacy of the sacraments, the authority of the Fathers, the guilt of schism, the importance of vestments, ceremonies, and solemn days, differed little from those which are now held by Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman. Towards the close of his life, indeed, Collier took some steps which brought him still nearer to Popery — mixed water with the wine in the Eucharist, made the sign of the cross in confirmation, employed oil in the visitation of the sick, and offered up prayers for the dead. His politics were of a

WILLIAM CONGREVE * xix piece with his divinity. He was a Tory of the highest sort, such as in the cant of his age was called a Tantivy. Not even the tyranny of James, not even the persecution of the bishops and the spoliation of the universities, could shake his steady loyalty. While the Convention was sitting, Collier wrote with vehemence in defence of the fugitive king, and was in consequence arrested. But his dauntless spirit was not to be so tamed. He refused to take the oaths, renounced all his preferments, and, in a succession of pamphlets written with much violence and with some ability, attempted to excite the nation against its new masters. In 1692, he was again arrested on suspicion of having been concerned in a treasonable plot. So unbending were his principles that his friends could hardly persuade him to let them bail him; and he afterwards expressed his remorse for having been induced thus to acknowledge, by implication, the authority of an usurping government. He was soon in trouble again. Sir John Friend and Sir William Parkins were tried and convicted of high treason for planning the murder of King William. Collier administered spiritual consolation to them, attended them to Tyburn, and, just before the execution, laid his hands on their heads, and, by the authority which he derived from Christ, solemnly absolved them. This scene gave indescribable scandal.

Tories joined with Whigs in blaming the conc

‘duct of the daring priest. There are some acts, it was said, which fall under the definition of treason, into which a good man may, in troubled times, be led even by his virtues. It may be necessary for the protection of society to punish such a man. But even in punishing him we consider him as legally rather than morally guilty, and hope that his honest error, though it cannot be pardoned here, will not be counted to him for sin hereafter. But such was not the case of Collier’s penitents. They were concerned in a plot for waylaying and butchering, in an hour of security, one who, whether he were or were not their king, was at all events their fellow-creature. Whether the Jacobite theory about the rights of governments and the duties of subjects were or were not well founded, assassination must always be considered as a great crime. It is condemned even by the maxims of worldly honour and morality. Much more must it be an object of abhorrence to the pure Spouse of Christ. The Church cannot surely, without the saddest and most mournful forebodings, see one of her children, who has been guilty of this great wickedness, pass into eternity without any sign of repentance... That these traitors had given any sign of repentance was not alleged. It might be that they had privately declared their contrition; and if so, the minister of religion might be justified in privately assuring them of the Divine forgiveness. But a public remission

WILLIAM CONGREVE. xxi ought to have been preceded by a public atonement. The regret of these men, if expressed at all, had been expressed in secret. The hands of Collier had been laid on them in the presence of thousands. The inference which his enemies drew from his conduct was that he did not consider the conspiracy against the life of William as sinful. But this inference he very vehemently and, we doubt not, very sincerely, denied.

The storm raged. The bishops put forth a solemn censure of the absolution. The Attorney- General brought the matter before the Court of King’s Bench. Collier had now made up his mind not to give bail for his appearance before any court which derived its authority from the. usurper. He accordingly absconded and was outlawed. He survived these events about thirty years. The prosecution was not pressed, and he was soon suffered to resume his literary pursuits in quiet. At a later period, many attempts were made to shake his perverse integrity by offers of wealth and dignity, but in vain. When he died, towards the end of the reign of George L., he was still under the ban of the law.

We shall not be suspected of regarding either the politics or the theology of Collier with partiality; but we believe him to have been as honest and courageous a man as ever lived. We will go further, and say that, though passionate and often wrongheaded, he was a singularly fair controversialist—candid, generous, too

Xxil WILLIAM CONGREVE.

high-spirited to take mean advantages even in the most exciting disputes, and pure from all taint of personal malevolence. It must also be admitted that his opinions on ecclesiastical and political affairs, though in themselves absurd and pernicious, eminently qualified him to be the reformer of our lighter literature. The libertinism of the press and of the stage was, as we have said, the effect of a reaction against the Puritan strictness. Profligacy was, like the oakleaf of the 29th of May, the badge of a cavalier and a high churchman. Decency was associated with conventicles and calves’ heads. Grave prelates were too much disposed to wink at the excesses of a body of zealous and able allies who covered Roundheads and Presbyterians with ridicule. If a Whig raised his voice against the impiety and licentiousness of the fashionable writers, his mouth was instantly stopped by the retort, You are one of those who groan at a light quotation from Scripture and raise estates out of the plunder of the Church— who shudder at a double entendre and chop off the heads of kings. A Baxter, a Burnet, even a Tillotson, would have done little to purify our literature. But when a man, fanatical in the cause of episcopacy and actually under outlawry for his attachment to hereditary right, came forward as the champion of decency, the battle was already half won.

In 1698, Collier published his Short View of the

WILLIAM CONGREVE, XXili

Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, a book which threw the whole literary world | into commotion, but which is now much less read than it deserves. The faults of the work, indeed, are neither few nor small. The dissertations on the Greek and Latin drama do not at all help the argument, and, whatever may have been thought of them by the generation which fancied that Christ Church had refuted Bentley,! are such as, in the present day, a scholar of very humble pretensions may venture to pronounce boyish, or, rather, babyish. The censures are not sufficiently discriminating. The authors ‘whom Collier accused had been guilty of such gross sins against decency that he was certain to weaken instead of strengthening his case by introducing into his charge against them any matter about which there could be the smallest dispute. He was, however, so injudicious as to place among the outrageous offences which he justly arraigned, some things which are really quite innocent, and some slight instances of levity which, though not strictly correct, could easily be paralleled from the works of writers who had rendered great services to morality and religion. Thus he blames Congreve, the number and gravity of whose real transgressions made it quite unnecessary to tax him with any that

1 In the dispute as to the authenticity of the Letters of Phalaris, Christ Church in opposition to Bentley asserted that the epistles were not forgeries. It will be remembered that Bentley obtained ap easy triumph, Ep,

—

XXIV WILLIAM CONGREVE, were not real, for using the words “martyr”- ~ and “inspiration” in a light sense; as if an archbishop might not say that a speech was inspired by claret, or that an alderman was a martyr to the gout. Sometimes, again, Collier does not sufficiently distinguish between the dramatist and the persons of the drama. Thus he blames Vanbrugh for putting into Lord Foppington’s mouth some contemptuous expression respecting the Church service; though it is obvious that Vanbrugh could not better express reverence than by making Lord Foppington ex-~- press contempt. There is also throughout the Short View too strong a display of professional” feeling. Collier is not content with claiming for his order an immunity from indiscriminate scurrility ; he will not allow that, in any case, any word or act of a divine can be a proper subject for ridicule. Nor does he confine this benefit of clergy to the ministers of the Established Church. He extends the privilege to Catholic priests and, what in him is more surprising, to Dissenting preachers. This, however, is a mere trifle. Imaums, Brahmins, priests of Jupiter, priests of Baal are all held to be sacred. Dryden is blamed for making the Mufti in Don Sebastian talk nonsense. Lee is called to a severe account for his incivility to Tiresias. But the most curious passage is that in which Collier resents some uncivil reflections thrown by Cassandra, in Cleomenes, on the calf Apis and his hiero-

WILLIAM CONGREVE. XXV phants. The words “ grass-eating, foddered god,” words which really are much in the style of several passages in the Old Testament, give as much offence to this Christian divine as they could have given to the priests of Memphis. But, when all deductions have been made, great merit must be allowed to this work. There is hardly any book of that time from which it would be possible to select specimens of writing so excellent and so various. To compare Collier with Pascal would indeed be absurd. Yet we hardly know where, except in Zhe Provincial Letters, we can find mirth so harmoniously and becomingly blended with solemnity as in the Short View. In truth, all the modes of ridicule, from broad fun to polished and antithetical sarcasm, were at Collier's command. On the other hand, he was complete master of the rhetoric of honest indignation. We scarcely know any volume which contains so many bursts of that peculiar eloquence which comes from the heart and goes to the heart. Indeed, the spirit of the book is truly heroic. In order fairly to appreciate it, we must remember the situation in which the writer stood. He was under the frown of power. His name was already a mark for the invectives of one half of the writers of the age when, in the cause of good taste, good sense, and good morals, he gave battle to the other half. Strong as his political prejudices were, he seems on this occasion to have entirely laid them

XXVI1 WILLIAM CONGREVE. | aside. He has forgotten that he is a Jacobite, and remembers only that he is acitizen anda Christian. Some of his sharpest censures are directed against poetry which had been hailed with delight by the Tory party, and had inflicted a deep wound on the Whigs. It is really inspiriting to see how gallantly the solitary outlaw advances to attack enemies, formidable separately, and, it might have been thought, irresistible when combined—distributes his swashing blows right and left among Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh—treads the wretched D’Urfey down in the dirt beneath his feet—and strikes with all his strength full at the towering crest of Dryden.

The effect produced by the Short View was immense. The nation was on the side of Collier. But it could not be doubted that, in the great host which he had defied, some champion would be found to lift the gauntlet. The general belief was that Dryden would take the field; and all wits anticipated a sharp contest between two well-paired combatants. The great poet had been singled out in the most marked manner, It was well known that he was deeply hurt, that much smaller provocations had formerly roused him to violent resentment, and that there was no literary weapon, offensive or defensive, of which he was not master. But his conscience smote him; he stood abashed, like the fallen archangel at the rebuke of Zephon=

WILLIAM CONGREVE. XXVil

“ And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

Virtue in her shape how lovely ; saw and pined

His loss.”

At a later period he mentioned the Short View in the preface to his /ad/es. He complained, with some asperity, of the harshness with which he had been treated, and urged some matters in mitigation, But, on the whole, he frankly acknowledged that he had been justly reproved. “Tf” said he, “Mr. Collier be my enemy, let him triumph. If he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.”

It would have been wise in Congreve to follow his master’s example. He was precisely in that situation in which it is madness to attempt a vindication ; for his guilt was so clear that no address or eloquence could obtain an acquittal. On the other hand, there were in his case many extenuating circumstances which, if he had acknowledged his error and promised amendment, would have procured his pardon. The most rigid censor could not but make great allowances for the faults into which so young a man had been seduced by evil example, by the luxuriance of a vigorous fancy, and by the inebriating effect of popular applause. The esteem, as well as the admiration, of the public was still within his reach. He might easily have effaced all memory of his transgressions, and have shared with Addison the glory of showing that

XXViii WILLIAM CONGREVE.

the most brilliant wit may be the ally of virtue. But, in any case, prudence should have restrained him from encountering Collier. The non-juror was a man thoroughly fitted by nature, education, and habit for polemical dispute. Congreve’s mind, though one of no common fertility and vigour, was of a different class. No man understood so well the art of polishing epigrams and repartees into the clearest effulgence, and setting them neatly in easy and familiar dialogue. In this sort of jewellery he attained to a mastery unprecedented and inimitable. But he was altogether rude in the art of controversy; and he had a cause to defend which scarcely any art could have rendered victorious.