_After our showing Play of mighty Pains,
We here present you humble Nymphs and Swains.
Our rustick Sports sometimes may Princes please,
And Courts do oft divert in Cottages,
And prize the Joys with some young rural Maid,
On Beds of Grass beneath a lovely Shade,
’.ove all the Pride of City-Jilts, whose Arts
Are more to gain your Purses than your Hearts;
Whose chiefest Beauty lies in being fine;
And Coyness is not Virtue, but Design.
We use no Colours to adorn the Face,
No artful Looks, nor no affected Grace,
The neighbouring Stream serves for a Looking-glass.
Ambition is not known within our Groves;
Here’s no Dispute for Empire, but for Loves;
The humble Swain his Birth-right here enjoys,
And fears no Danger from the publick Voice;
No Wrong nor Insolence from busy Powers,
No Rivals here for Crowns, but those of Flowers,
His Country and his Flocks enjoy with ease,
Ranges his native Fields and Groves in Peace;
Nor forc’d by Arbitrary Votes to fly
To foreign Shores for his Security.
Our humble Tributes uncompell’d we pay,
And cheerful Homage to the Lord of May;
No Emulation breaks his soft Repose,
Nor do his Wreaths or Virtues gain him Foes:
No publick Mischiefs can disturb his Reign,
And Malice would be busy here in vain.
Fathers and Sons just Love and Duty pay;
This knows to be indulgent, that t’obey.
Here’s no Sedition hatcht, no other Plots,
But to entrap the Wolf that steals our Flocks.
Who then wou’d be a King, gay Crowns to wear,
Restless his Nights, thoughtful his Days with Care;
Whose Greatness, or whose Goodness cant secure
From Outrages which Knaves and Fools procure?

Greatness, be gone, we banish you from hence,
The noblest State is lowly Innocence.
Here honest Wit in Mirth and Triumph reigns,
Musick and Love shall ever bless our Swains,
And keep the Golden Age within our Woods and Plains_.

THE CITY HEIRESS; OR, SIR TIMOTHY TREAT-ALL.

ARGUMENT.

The scene is London. Sir Timothy Treat-all, an old seditious knight, that keeps open house for Commonwealthsmen and true Blue Protestants, has disinherited his nephew, Tom Wilding, a town gallant and a Tory. Wilding is pursuing an intrigue with Lady Galliard, a wealthy widow, and also with Chariot, heiress to the rich Sir Nicholas Get-all, recently deceased. Lady Galliard is further hotly wooed by Sir Charles Meriwill, a young Tory, but she favours Wilding. Sir Charles is encouraged in his suit by his roystering uncle, Sir Anthony. Wilding introduces his mistress Diana to Sir Timothy as the heiress Charlot; and at an entertainment given by Sir Timothy, Charlot herself appears, disguised as a Northern lass, to watch the progress of Tom’s intrigue with the widow, who eventually yields to him. Sir Charles, none the less, backed by Sir Anthony, still persists, and after various passionate scenes forces her to consent to become his bride. Meanwhile Sir Timothy has arranged a marriage with Diana, whom he firmly believes to be Charlot. During the progress of the entertainment he is visited by a strange nobleman and his retinue, who offer him the crown of Poland and great honours. That night, however, his house is rifled by thieves and his money and papers stolen. He himself is pinioned hand and foot, the foreign lord bound fast in his own room, and all his followers secured. Sir Timothy having married Diana discovers that she is none other than his nephew’s mistress, and, moreover, the Polish ambassador was Tom in masquerade, the attendants and burglars his friends, who by obtaining his treasonable correspondence are able effectually to silence the old knight. Wilding is united to Charlot, whilst Lady Galliard weds Charles Meriwill.

SOURCE.

The City Heiress is most manifestly borrowed from two main sources. Sir Anthony Meriwill and Charles are Durazzo and Caldoro from Massinger’s The Guardian (licensed 31 October, 1633, 8vo, 1655). Mrs. Behn has transferred to her play even small details and touches. The burglary, that most wonderful of all burglaries, is taken and improved from Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters (4to, 1608), Act ii, where Sir Bounteous Progress is robbed by Dick Folly-Wit, his grandson, in precisely the same way as Sir Timothy is choused by Tom. On 4 February, 1715, Charles Johnson produced at Drury Lane his The Country Lasses; or, The Custom of the Manor, a rifacimento of Fletcher’s The Custom of the Country and The City Heiress. It is a well-written, lively enough comedy, but very weak and anaemic withal when compared to Mrs. Behn. B. G. Stephenson, in his vivacious libretto to Cellier’s tuneful opera, Dorothy, produced at the Gaiety Theatre, 25 September, 1886, has made great use of Johnson’s play, especially Act i, where the gallants meet the two ladies disguised as country girls; the duel scenes of Act v; and the pseudo-burglary of Act iii. He even gives his comic sheriff’s officer the name of Lurcher, who in Johnson is the rackety nephew that tricks his hospitable old uncle, Sir John English. The Biographia Dramatica states that Mrs. Behn ‘introduced into this play (The City Heiress) a great part of the Inner Temple Masque by Middleton.’ This charge is absolutely unfounded, and it would not be uninteresting to know how so complete an error arose. The two have nothing in common. It must be allowed that Mrs. Behn has displayed such wit and humour as amply to justify her plagiarisms. Sir Timothy Treat-all himself is, of course, Shaftesbury almost without disguise. There are a thousand telling hits at the President of the Council and his vices. He was also bitterly satirized in many other plays. In Nevil Payne’s The Siege of Constantinople (1675) he appears as The Chancellor; 1680 in Otway’s Shakespearean cento cum bastard classicism Caius Marius some very plain traits can be recognized in the grim Marius senior; in Southerne’s The Loyal Brother (1682) Ismael, a villainous favourite; in Venice Preserved (1682) the lecherous Antonio; in the same year Banks caricatured him as a quite unhistorical Cardinal Wolsey, Virtue Betray’d; or, Anna Bullen; in Crowne’s mordant City Politics (1683) the Podesta of a most un-Italian Naples; the following year Arius the heresiarch in Lee’s Constantine the Great; in the operatic Albion and Albanius (1685), Dryden does not spare even physical infirmities and disease with the crudest yet cruellest exhibition, and five years later he attacked his old enemy once more as Benducar in that great tragedy Don Sebastian.

THEATRICAL HISTORY.

The City Heiress; or, Sir Timothy Treat-all was produced at the Duke’s House, Dorset Garden, in 1682. Downes specially mentions it as having been ‘well acted’, and it was indeed an ‘all star’ cast. It had a tremendous ovation but in spite of its great merit did not become a stock play, probably owing to the intensely political nature of much of its satirical wit, a feature necessarily ephemeral. It seems, however, to have been presented from time to time, and there was a notable revival on 10 July, 1707, at the Haymarket, for the benefit of Husband and Pack. Sir Timothy was played by Cross; Tom Wilding, Mills; Sir Anthony, Bullock; Foppington, Pack; Lady Galliard, Mrs. Bradshaw; Charlot, Mrs. Bicknall; Clacket, Mrs. Powell. It met with a very favourable reception.

To the Right Honourable Henry Earl of Arundel, and Lord Mowbray.