CIBBER AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SENTIMENTAL COMEDY
1. Cibber, not Steele, the Important Figure in its Early Development.
The fully developed form of sentimental comedy may be said to begin with Steele’s Conscious Lovers (1772) and to end with the attack upon it made by Goldsmith, Foote, and their followers. Goldsmith was “strongly prepossessed in favour of the poets of the last age and strove to imitate them,”[57] and by his reintroduction of humor into comedy he exerted a strong influence toward the downfall of the sentimental type. The end of this vogue is generally well understood, but the beginning of it has not been investigated with the same thoroughness. Steele is generally given the credit of being the innovator who reformed the stage,[58] although Ward and others give some credit to the work of Cibber. The importance of Cibber in the development of this form and in the moral reformation of comedy, the effect of social conditions, and the gradual change from the Restoration type, have not been fully studied. Colley Cibber was the most important writer of comedy in preparing the way for the new form, and practically every element of the later sentimental comedy is found in his work. But Cibber was not a reformer calling on his age to repent; he was rather answering a general demand of his time.
Three stages may be discerned in the development of sentimental comedy: first, that in which the morals of comedy were purified and the new sentimental material was intermixed with the old humorous material, represented by the work of Cibber; second, that in which the sentimental theme is presented with very little comic entertainment, represented by The Conscious Lovers; and third, that in which the comedy of this second stage degenerates and in which the work becomes artificial and lifeless, represented by the plays of Holcroft and his school.
Sentimental comedy as seen in its second phase may be briefly described as comedy of manners in which the main action tends to inculcate a moral lesson, in which the incidents no longer deal with illicit intrigues, and in which the action is complicated by distressingly pathetic situations. The chief characters are generally serious and supersensitive in regard to such matters as filial duty, honor, and the like; and while these persons are in no need of being reformed, their exaggerated conceptions of honor have caused them to act so that they are placed in an equivocal position and they appear to the other characters as vicious. The language is chaste, there is constant introduction of extremely stilted moralizing, and there is a notable absence of humor.
Cibber’s work in other lines was conventional and commonplace. It is true that his Apology is lively and interesting, and his pamphlets in reply to Pope’s attacks are keen and humorous though vulgar, but the rest of his prose is extremely conventional. His poetry, except a few songs, is inexpressibly poor. Aside from one opera in which he takes the same stand in regard to virtue that he does in his comedies, his operas are merely the commonplace following of a vogue. His tragedies are generally imitative; with two exceptions they are adaptations of Corneille or Shakspere. His farces are about equal in merit to his poetry, and are devoid of originality.
Nor does Cibber’s life indicate the qualities that appear in his sentimental comedies. The moral standard he displays in his pamphlets in reply to Pope is far from high, and from the testimony of his contemporaries concerning his personal character it would seem that he was far from being the sort of man who would set about reforming anything. And in all probability he would not have done so if there had not been a general public movement in that direction.
2. Sentimental Comedy a Product of Various Forces.
But sentimental comedy did not spring full grown from the brain of a single man. Nor was it the result of a single revolutionary force. Sentimental comedy resulted from gradual modifications of the drama of the time, developing from the prevalent type little by little until it finally appeared as an independent form. The reform of the stage was not an isolated phenomenon, nor was it directly the result of the attacks made by Collier and others. Rather are all these the result of a changed public conscience, which was manifested not merely in literature and on the stage, but in the Revolution of 1688 and a subsequent social reformation as well.
Immediately after the Restoration there may be discovered two elements in the life of the nation which had an influence both on the form and on the content of literature. On the one side was the court, whose standards affected both the form and content in the direction of foreign models. Through the long period of exile on the continent, Charles and his followers had become foreign in their literary taste and they had great influence in the direction of a French type as regards form; and because of the low and vicious standards of living prevalent at court their influence stimulated the sympathetic handling of low and vicious subjects.