RESTORATION COMEDY
In comedy alone Dryden showed a certain incapacity; his mind seemed to be too rugged and unresilient to catch the sharper moods of the current wit. Fortunately this weakness of his was atoned for by the activities of a brilliant group of dramatists who made Restoration comedy a thing apart in English literature.
The new comedy, of a slower growth than the new heroic play, owed much of its inspiration to French comedy. It marked a new stage in the civilization of England. The plays of the Shakespearian era were beginning to be thought out of date. In his diary Evelyn notes that “the old plays begin to disgust this refined age.” Though the age was no doubt refined in certain respects, it was also decadent, and this decadent spirit is reflected in its comedy.
The novel features of the type are:
(a) The theme is mainly of courtiers and their class, their vices and affectations, their love-intrigues and money-grabbing. The characters are still to a great extent those of the “humorsome” quality so common in the time of Jonson. Their names reveal their dispositions: Sir Fopling Flutter; Scrub (a servant); Colonel Bully; Sir John Brute; Squire Sullen; Gibbet (a highwayman); Lady Bountiful. Such characters as these are involved in plots of great and unnatural complication, with much bustle and unlimited love-intrigue. In rare cases, as in some of the plays of Shadwell, the characters are much more human and the conditions more natural; and then we obtain deeply interesting glimpses of the habits of the time. But in general the whole atmosphere of the comedies is artificial and unreal.
(b) The prevailing love-theme is treated in a characteristic fashion which is fortunately rare in English. It is not handled coarsely; indeed, the age shows a ridiculous squeamishness at the grosser forms of vice; but it is handled with a cool licentiousness and a vicious pleasure that are often exceedingly clever, but always repulsive. It is art, but art of a perverted kind.
(c) The style of the comedy suits the treatment. It is prose of a neat and brilliant kind: deft and forcible, clean-cut and precise. The style of Congreve, a specimen of which is given below, is a model of its kind.
William Congreve (1670–1729). Though Congreve is not the first in time, he is probably the first in merit among the comedy-writers. He had a long life, but a glance at the table at the head of the chapter will show that only a short period of his life was productive of literary work. His plays were produced between 1693 and 1700. The last play was not successful, and repeated attacks were forthcoming upon his defects, so he wrote no more.
His first comedy was The Old Bachelor (1693); then came The Double Dealer (1693 or 1694), Love for Love (1695), and The Way of the World (1700). In 1697 he produced one tragedy, The Mourning Bride, which had no success. The earlier plays have a slight touch of seriousness, which is rarer still in the later comedies.
All are marked by the same features. The characters are numerous, brilliant, and sharply defined. In each case, however, they are too one-sided to be real; but they fulfill their purpose in the plays. The plots are full of scandalous notions delicately adumbrated; and the style is as keen and deadly as a sharp sword.
The following is a passage from The Way of the World. Two gentleman are backbiting an acquaintance.
Fainall. He comes to town in order to equip himself for travel.
Mirabell. For travel! Why the man that I mean is above forty.
Fainall. No matter for that; ’tis for the honour of England, that all Europe should know that we have blockheads of all ages.
Mirabell. I wonder there is not an act of parliament to save the credit of the nation, and prohibit the exportation of fools.
Fainall. By no means, ’tis better as ’tis; ’tis better to trade with a little loss, than to be quite eaten up with being overstocked.
Mirabell. Pray, are the follies of this knight-errant, and those of the squire his brother, anything related?
Fainall. Not at all; Witwoud grows by the knight, like a medlar grafted on a crab. One will melt in your mouth, and t’other set your teeth on edge; one is all pulp, and the other all core.
Mirabell. So one will be rotten before he be ripe, and the other will be rotten without ever being ripe at all.