Playwrights on playmaking

by Brander Matthews

II

The Old Comedies, so called, were a selected group of successful plays which had been produced in the eighteenth century, most of them (altho a few first saw the light of the lamps in the first half of the nineteenth century) and which had survived on the stage, being acted at irregular intervals at the Haymarket Theater in London, at Wallack’s and later at Daly’s Theater in New York, and at the Boston Museum. Curiously enough, no one of Shakspere’s humorous pieces, lovely comedies and lively farces, was included in the catalog of the Old Comedies, altho they were a century older than the youngest of these Old Comedies; and no one of the comic plays of Shakspere’s contemporaries, no comedy-of-humors by Ben Jonson, no dramatic-romance by Beaumont and Fletcher, was regularly enrolled in this special repertory. And, what is even more curious, no one of the comedies of the Restoration, no brilliant and brutal satire by Congreve or Wycherly, no ingenious intrigue by Vanbrugh or Farquhar, had been able to keep the stage and to demand inclusion in this rigorous selection from out the comic masterpieces of the English drama. It may be noted, in a parenthesis, that Daly did revive two of Farquhar’s amusing plays, the ‘Recruiting Officer’ and the ‘Inconstant’; but these revivals were due to Daly’s own taste and neither of these bold and brisk pieces could claim admission to the recognized group of Old Comedies.

Now, if this group did not include any of the humorous pieces of the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration dramatists, what plays did it contain? And no two students of stage-history would agree on the answer to this question. No council was ever empowered to regulate the canon and to prepare a final list of the comic dramas demanding inclusion. The repertory of the Haymarket was not exactly the same as that of Wallack’s, which in its turn did not coincide absolutely with that of the Boston Museum. Yet it is safe to say that every student of stage-history would be likely to put on his list most of the plays which I now venture to include in mine. I find fifteen pieces produced in the eighteenth century which I feel compelled to catalog as truly Old Comedies:

Cibber’s ‘She Would and She Would Not’ (1703).
Mrs. Centlivre’s ‘Busybody’ (1709).
Mrs. Centlivre’s ‘Wonder’ (1717).
Garrick’s ‘High Life Below Stairs’ (1759).
Colman’s ‘Jealous Wife’ (1761).
Foote’s ‘Liar’ (1762).
Garrick and Colman’s ‘Clandestine Marriage’ (1766).
Goldsmith’s ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ (1773).
Sheridan’s ‘Rivals’ (1775).
Sheridan’s ‘School for Scandal’ (1777).
Sheridan’s ‘Critic’ (1779).
Mrs. Cowley’s ‘Belle’s Stratagem’ (1780).
Holcroft’s ‘Road to Ruin’ (1792).
O’Keefe’s ‘Wild Oats’ (1794).
Colman the Younger’s ‘Heir at Law’ (1797).

This list calls for two immediate comments. First, only two of these plays have been acted in any New York theater in the past score of years, that is to say, in the twentieth century; and therefore playgoers under forty have not had the opportunity of seeing any of the others performed by a professional company. Second, every one of these plays was acted in New York during the final forty years of the nineteenth century, some of them being produced at different times by different companies in different theaters. For example, I have had the pleasure in the course of a half-century of playgoing of attending performances of the ‘School for Scandal’ at Wallack’s, at Niblo’s, at the Union Square and at three different Daly’s theaters.

Perhaps a third comment is warranted, to the effect that my catalog of Old Comedies includes specimens of almost every subdivision of the comic drama. The ‘School for Scandal’ is the foremost example in English of what has been called high-comedy, the humorous play in which character is more important than story and of which the plot is caused by the clash of character on character. ‘She Would and She Would Not’ is a vivacious comedy-of-intrigue; and so is the ‘Belle’s Stratagem.’ The ‘Jealous Wife’ in some of its situations, and the ‘Road to Ruin’ also, are almost too serious to be classed as comic dramas. The ‘Critic’ and ‘High Life Below Stairs’ are frankly farces, bustling with business and charged with high spirits. Even the ‘Rivals’ and ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ reveal themselves as closely akin to farce, in so far as their respective actions are not caused spontaneously by the volition of the characters but are arbitrarily brought about by the author himself, visibly pulling the wires which control the movements of his puppets. Probably it was the excessive laudation bestowed on these two more or less farcical pieces of Sheridan and Goldsmith which led Sir Arthur Pinero to formulate his satiric definition: “A comedy is a farce by a deceased author.”

Possibly a fourth comment may be appended altho it must be apologized for as a doubtful digression. In my list the ‘Liar’ is credited to Samuel Foote, because it could not very well be credited to any other author. But when it was last acted in New York, the text used was a revision by Lester Wallack of an earlier condensation by Charles James Mathews. Moreover Foote’s own play was an adaptation of Corneille’s ‘Menteur,’—an adaptation more or less influenced by an earlier version of the French piece, Steele’s ‘Lying Lover.’ To go still further back, Corneille had taken his story from a Spanish original, the ‘Verdad Sospiciosa’ of Alarcon. And we may bring to an end this summary record of the strange adventures of a plot by setting down the fact that Alarcon, altho a Spaniard, had been born in Mexico. So we can, if we so choose, claim the ‘Liar’ in all its many transformations as the earliest play to be written by a native American.

To these fifteen comedies originally produced in the eighteenth century, we may add seven plays produced in the first three score years of the nineteenth century:

Tobin’s ‘Honeymoon’ (1805).
Knowles’ ‘Hunchback’ (1832).
Knowles’ ‘Love Chase’ (1837).
Bulwer-Lytton’s ‘Money’ (1840).
Boucicault’s ‘London Assurance’ (1841).
Boucicault’s ‘Old Heads and Young Hearts’ (1844).
Reade and Taylor’s ‘Masks and Faces’ (often called ‘Peg Woffington’)
(1852).

To the best of my recollection no one of these nineteenth century pieces has been seen on the New York stage since the twentieth century began.

I have no right to assume that any other theater-goer of fifty years of experience would select exactly these twenty-two plays as being the Old Comedies; but I make bold to believe that my selection includes all the pieces which demand to be so grouped together.