IX.
As early as 1720 Steele spoke in the Theatre of "a friend of mine" who was lately preparing a comedy according to the just laws of the stage, and had introduced a scene in which the first character bore unprovoked wrong, denied a duel, and still appeared a man of honour and courage. This was clearly an allusion to the play eventually to be published as The Conscious Lovers. And in a paragraph in Mist's Weekly Journal for November 18, 1721, printed a year before the play appeared, readers were informed that "Sir Richard Steele proposes to represent a character upon the stage this season that was never seen there yet: His Gentleman has been two years a dressing, and we wish he may make a good appearance at last." In June, 1722, Vanbrugh, in a letter to Tonson, lamented the absence of new plays of any value. "Steele, however," he said, "has one to come on at winter, which they much commend." On September 22 the British Journal stated that a considerable number of new plays were promised at Drury Lane that season, and that Steele's new comedy would be set up immediately after Mrs. Centlivre's The Artifice. In October the newspapers announced that Steele's play would be called The Unfashionable Lovers, or as others said, The Fine Gentleman. When the play was produced, on November 7th, the title chosen was The Conscious Lovers.
Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Younger, Booth, Wilks, and Cibber took the principal parts in what was, in many respects, Steele's best play, and Benjamin Victor says that the author, with whom he sat at the first performance, was charmed with all the actors except Griffin, who represented Cimberton, a very ungrateful part. The play ran for eighteen nights, which at that time meant a great success, and there were eight further performances during the season. It was published in December,[8] with a dedication to the King, for which Steele appears to have received five hundred guineas.
In the Preface the success of the play was attributed to the excellent manner in which every part was acted; for a play is meant to be seen, not read. "The chief design of this was to be an innocent performance, and the audience have abundantly showed how ready they are to support what is visibly intended that way; nor do I make any difficulty to acknowledge that the whole was writ for the sake of the scene of the fourth act, wherein Mr Bevil evades the quarrel with his friend; and hope it may have some effect upon the Goths and Vandals that frequent the theatres, or a more polite audience may supply their absence." The general idea of the play was taken from Terence's Andria, but after the first two acts Steele's indebtedness to Terence is very slight. Cibber, however, rendered valuable assistance. "Mr. Cibber's zeal for the work," wrote Steele, "his care and application in instructing the actors, and altering the dispositions of the scenes, when I was, through sickness, unable to cultivate such things myself, has been a very obliging favour and friendship to me." Theophilus Cibber, who had a part in the original cast, says that when Steele finished the comedy, the parts of Tom and Phillis were not in it, and that Colley Cibber, when he heard it read, said he liked it upon the whole, but that it was rather too grave for an English audience, who think the end of a comedy is to make them laugh. Steele thereupon agreed to the introduction of some comic characters, and at his request the play received many additions by Cibber. The piece was, as Victor says, "the last blaze of Sir Richard's glory"; and it is probable that Cibber deserves all the thanks Steele gave him for preparing for the stage the manuscript which had for so long been in preparation, and which, without assistance, might never have been completed. It is difficult, however, to accept Theophilus Cibber's account in its entirety, because the germ of the delightful scene in which Tom, the gentleman's gentleman, describes how he fell in love with Phillis, is to be found in No. 87 of the Guardian, where Steele says he had in mind a scene which he had recently observed while passing a house. This is the form which the story ultimately took:—
Tom. Ah! Too well I remember when, and how, and on what occasion I was first surprised. It was on the first of April, one thousand seven hundred and fifteen, I came into Mr. Sealand's service; I was then a hobbledehoy, and you a pretty little tight girl, a favourite handmaid of the housekeeper. At that time we neither of us knew what was in us: I remember I was ordered to get out of the window, one pair of stairs, to rub the sashes clean; the person employed on the inner side was your charming self, whom I had never seen before.
Phillis. I think I remember the silly accident: What made ye, you oaf, ready to fall down into the street?
Tom. You know not, I warrant you—You could not guess what surprised me. You took no delight, when you immediately grew wanton, in your conquest, and put your lips close, and breathed upon the glass, and when my lips approached, a dirty cloth you rubbed against my face, and hid your beauteous form; when I again drew near, you spit, and rubbed, and smiled at my undoing.
Phillis. What silly thoughts you men have!
Tom. ... Oh, Phillis! Phillis! shorten my torment and declare you pity me.
Phillis. I believe it's very sufferable; the pain is not so exquisite but that you may bear it a little longer.
"If I were rich," said Phillis in another place, "I could twire and loll as well as the best of them. Oh, Tom! Tom! Is it not a pity that you should be so great a coxcomb, and I so great a coquette, and yet be such poor devils as we are?"
The names of some of the characters recall earlier writings, for Lucinda and her father, Mr. Sealand, Mr. Charles Myrtle, and Humphrey, the servant, had all appeared in the Theatre, while there was another Myrtle in the Lover. There are, too, passages which at once remind us of the style of the earlier periodicals; thus Bevil, after escorting a music-master to the door, says to Indiana, "You smile, madam, to see me so complaisant to one whom I pay for his visit: Now, I own, I think it is not enough barely to pay those whose talents are superior to our own (I mean such talents as would become our condition, if we had them). Methinks we ought to do something more than barely gratify them for what they do at our command, only because their fortune is below us"; to which Indiana replies, "You said, I smile; I assure you it was a smile of approbation; for, indeed, I cannot but think it the distinguishing part of a gentleman to make his superiority of fortune as easy to his inferiors as he can." Or, to take another passage in the conversation of these same "conscious lovers," Bevil remarks, "If pleasure be worth purchasing, how great a pleasure is it to him, who has a true taste of life, to ease an aching heart, to see the human countenance lighted up with smiles of joy on receipt of a bit of ore which is superfluous and otherwise useless in a man's own pocket." He even remembers to praise Addison: "The moral writers practise virtue after death: This charming Vision of Mirza! Such an author consulted in a morning sets the spirit for the vicissitudes of the day better than the glass does a man's person." And when Sir John Bevil observes that, "What might injure a citizen's credit may be no strain to a gentleman's honour," Mr. Sealand says, "Sir John, the honour of a gentleman is liable to be tainted by as small a matter as the credit of a trader." Much the same lesson is taught, less sententiously, when Phillis exclaims, "Oh, Tom! Tom! thou art as false and as base as the best gentleman of them all."
Parson Adams said that he thought The Conscious Lovers the only play fit for a Christian to see; "indeed," he added, "it contains some things almost solemn enough for a sermon." In this kindly satire Fielding indicated the weakness of the play. The chief interest of the piece is sentimental, and the hero is not always free from priggishness. Yet the duelling scene, for which, as Steele says, the whole was written, has much dramatic interest, and the protest against false ideas of honour—"decisions a tyrant custom has introduced, to the breach of all laws both divine and human"—was at that time courageous, and much needed. If some of the things expressed in this play are more suited for a paper in the Spectator, there is nothing in true comedy which makes it incongruous to convey, in a manner suited to that form of art, a serious lesson of life. If, again, as some say, there is more pathos than is allowable in the scene in which Sealand recovers his long-lost daughter and sister, the end is that of true comedy; the "pedantic coxcomb" Cimberton no longer wants Sealand's daughter when he finds that, by the discovery of Indiana, Lucinda's fortune will be halved; Bevil is able, in marrying Indiana, the lady he loves, to comply with his father's wish that he should be united to Sealand's daughter; and Bevil's friend, Myrtle, the true lover whose affection is not lessened by change in the lady's dowry, is rewarded with the hand of Lucinda. The friends, formerly supposed by one of them to be rivals, thus become brothers.
Steele alluded to current criticism when he said, in his Preface, that the incident of the threatened duel and the case of the father and daughter were thought by some to be no subjects of comedy; "but I cannot," he continued, "be of their mind, for anything that has its foundation in happiness and success must be allowed to be the object of comedy." His object, as Welsted said in the Prologue, was to
"please by wit that scorns the aid of vice;
The praise he seeks, from worthier motives springs,
Such praise, as praise to those that give, it brings."
It was for the audience
"To chasten wit, and moralise the stage."
If success is to be measured by the amount of discussion caused by a work, The Conscious Lovers was, indeed, fortunate. Dennis began the attack in a pamphlet before the play was publicly acted, and afterwards returned to the charge. Much of what he said was personal abuse, but some of his remarks are interesting, and show what were then held to be the weak points in the piece. He complained that Bevil was given the qualities of an old man, and maintained that the characters were not just images of their contemporaries, that patterns for imitation were set up instead of follies and vices being made ridiculous, and that the subject of the comedy was not by its constitution comical. Bevil's filial piety, he said, was carried too far, and his behaviour to Indiana was still more unaccountable, for though he had in one sense concealed his passion, there was no retreat with honour for him, because by his generosity and constant visits he had raised a passion for him in Indiana, and had compromised her. The catastrophe, he confessed, was very moving, but it might have been more surprising, if handled differently. The action in Terence's play was natural, as, for example, the conduct of Glycerium at the funeral of Chrysis; but the scene at the masquerade between Bevil and Indiana was an absurd imitation, for Indiana did not know that her affection was returned. As for Bevil, "this man of conscience and of religion is as arrant an hypocrite as a certain author," and was constantly dissimulating. Dennis concluded by saying that the sentiments were often frivolous, false, and absurd; the dialogue awkward, clumsy, and spiritless; the diction affected, barbarous, and too often Hibernian.
There were other pamphlets for and against the play, and the newspapers contained many articles on the subject. One writer remarked that a great part of Squire Cimberton's conversation, "some of which has since been omitted," could not be reconciled with rules often laid down by Steele. "He [Steele] must always be agreeable, till he ceases to be at all; and yet it has been always fashionable to use him ill: Blockheads of quality, who are scarce capable of reading his works, have affected a sort of ill-bred merit in despising 'em; and they who have no taste for his writings, have pretended to a displeasure at his conduct."