The love is mere sensuality. There is tacit acknowledgment that the men will be untrue to their wives and a fear on the part of the husbands that their wives will cuckold them.[68] This fear is not because of any moral scruples, but is merely because of the ridicule that cuckoldom brought on the husband. The treatment is frankly gross, licentious, cynical.
In a sense this treatment is highly realistic; to this extent, that it is a general reflection of the standards and manners of the life of the court. The fashions are contemporary, the manners and morals are those of the upper classes. The playwrights confine themselves to a limited section of but a part of the people. Social and religious institutions are treated so as to make them ridiculous and contemptible.
That any other treatment would have been difficult is seen by considering the relationship existing between the theatre and the court. The theatre had its authority for existence directly from the court, one theatre receiving its license from the King, the other from the Duke of York, while the companies of actors were known as the King’s or the Duke’s servants.[69] These licenses were moreover revocable at the pleasure of those who gave them. Controversies and differences within the theatre were often settled personally by the King or Duke, and Charles is said to have suggested subjects to the dramatists in many instances. With so direct and personal a relation, anything other than compliance with the taste of the court could result in nothing but the downfall of the theatre. The theatre’s very life depended on its selection and presentation of themes that would satisfy and reflect the taste of the most morally degraded court that England has ever had.
The characterization in these plays is conventional and often vague. For example, it may be laid down as an almost invariable rule that a widow is never virtuous. In the embodiment of a single trait there is the continued tendency to exaggeration seen in the “humourous” characterization of Jonson, with the same use of descriptive names—Courtall, Mrs. Frail, Lady Wishfort, Justice Clodpate—to save the labor of characterization. The characters are likewise lacking in complexity and development.
There is the tendency to Jonsonian division of characters into dupes and dupers,[70] but this division is not so clear as in Jonson, nor is the division based on the essential qualities of human nature, but is rather on the basis of wit and power in repartee. The heroes are all witty, usually wealthy, popular, and their life work is the pursuit of women. The women are all witty, beautiful, and all rakes, except the heroine, and even the heroines bid fair to become so in a few months after marriage. The hero or heroine of one play might be the hero or heroine of any other play so far as any distinctive characterization is concerned.
There is the pretended wit, a simpleton who apes the men of wit and fashion, who thinks himself most clever, and who is perfectly unconscious of the fact that he is being made a butt for the wit of the sensible characters. Such are the Dapperwits, the Witwouds, and the Tattles. Somewhat similar is the fop who imitates the French, thinks only of his dress, his appearance, and the figure he makes. He is all ostentation, is entirely self-centered and simple in his mental processes, but is really not such a fool as one imagines at first. Etherege’s Sir Fopling Flutter, and Cibber’s Sir Novelty Fashion—the Lord Foppingtons of The Relapse and The Careless Husband—are two well drawn presentations of this character. An interesting female type is the Miss Hoyden-Prue-Hippolyta young woman, who has been kept in secluded ignorance of the world, but who shows a sudden ingenuity, knowledge of the world, and desire for the sensual joys of life. There are, of course, the elderly cuckolds, dominated and fooled by their wives, and the wives who profess virtue but do not practise it.
That the view here given is not prejudiced by modern standards may be seen by a description of the characters by one of the dramatists themselves. Shadwell in the preface to The Sullen Lovers expresses himself, not without vigor:
“But in the Plays, which have been wrote of late, there is no such thing as perfect Character, but the two chief Persons are commonly a Swearing, Drinking, Whoring, Ruffian for a Lover, and an impudent ill-bred Tomrig for a Mistress, and these are the fine People of the play; and ... almost any thing is proper for them to say; but their chief Subject is Bawdy, and Profaneness, which they call Brisk Writing, when the most dissolute of Men, that relish those things well enough in Private, are shock’d at ’em in Publick.”
The dialogue, which often interrupts the movement of the plot, and often surpasses in interest the more solid quality of representation of life, is usually marked by the most brilliant and biting wit, by keenly satiric repartee, and by epigrammatic polish. The dialogue has often nothing to do with the story, but is merely the exhibition of the author’s ability in the cynical treatment of contemporary manners. The attitude is one of satire and raillery against all established institutions, against marriage, the manners of society, the Puritans, the newly developing sciences, the court, dueling, the country and its inhabitants, the opera, the new songs and novels, the affectation of foreign airs, the adoption of foreign words, poetry and dilettante writing, polite literary conversation, legal abuses, and almost everything that one can conceive.
The locality in which the plays are set is extremely narrow at first, being confined to the town; for most of the plays are set in London, in localities familiar to the audiences. Within the class and localities to which the comedy restricts itself, it is a most interesting social document; but it must always be remembered that it is no sense representative of the whole people. Sometimes we are taken to Spain or Italy, but it is Spain or Italy only in name, the people and the customs are all English. The scene may sometimes be one of the fashionable watering places in England; but it is never in the despised country.