Host. Breast! Don't you love the neck, Sir?
Hyp. Ha' ye nothing in the house but the neck?
Host. Really, Sir, we don't use to be so unprovided, but at present we have nothing else left.
Trap. Faith, Sir, I don't know but a Nothing else may be very good meat, when Anything else is not to be had.
Sometimes there is a little smartness in the dialogue, and in the "Careless Husband," Lord Foppington uses such strange expletives as "Sun burn me," "Stop my breath," "Set my blood." But the greater part of any amusement that there is, depends, as in the Roman Comedy, upon the tricks of low-minded mercenary servants.
Although neither of the two last-named writers was English by descent, they were both so by adoption, and the same may be said of the next author, Farquhar, who was born at Londonderry in 1678, but whose Irish characters want the charm of the pure national comicality. He was the son of a clergyman who sent him to the University, but his taste being averse to the prescribed course of study, he left it, and became an actor. Want of voice soon excluded him from the stage, and he entered the army—a profession which we might conclude, from the experiences of Wycherley and Vanbrugh, was somewhat favourable for the cultivation of dramatic talent. The constant companionship of men of wild and fanciful dispositions, the leisure for observing their talents and peculiarities, and the perpetual demand for the exercise of light repartee, would all tend to furnish effective materials for the stage. Farquhar soon married, and his poverty, with an increasing family, led to his producing a play nearly every year from 1703 to 1707. Finally he sold out, and was in deep distress. Speaking of his condition with his accustomed gaiety, he says:—
"I have very little estate, but what is under the circumference of my hat, and should I by perchance come to lose my head, I should not be worth a groat."
He thus sketches his mental peculiarities:—
"As to my mind, which in most men wears as many changes as their body, so in me 'tis generally drest like my person, in black. Melancholy is its every-day apparel; and it has hitherto found few holidays to make it change its clothes. In short, my constitution is very splenetic and yet very amorous, both which I endeavour to hide lest the former should offend others, and that the latter might incommode myself; and my reason is so vigilant in restraining these two failings, that I am taken for an easy-natured man with my own sex, and an ill-natured clown by yours."
Farquhar was very fond of jesting about his own misfortunes, and perhaps the following from "Love in a Bottle," exhibits a scene in which he had been himself an actor in real life.