In The State of the Case Restated[72] it is contended that the royal patent to the Drury Lane Theatre was given to Sir Richard Steele for the purpose of correcting the abuses of the theatre, but that Sir Richard had not done this; in fact that
“The same lewd plays were acted and reviewed without any material alteration, which gave occasion for that universal complaint against the English stage, of lewdness and debauchery, from all the sober and religious part of the nation; the whole business of comedy continuing all this time to be the criminal intrigues of fornication and adultery, ridiculing of marriage, virtue, and integrity, and giving a favorable turn to vicious characters, and instructing loose people how to carry on their lewd designs with plausibility and success: thus among other plays they have revived The Country Wife, Sir Fopling Flutter, The Rover, The Libertine Destroyer, and several others, and it is remarkable, that the knight, or coadjutors, had condemned Sir Fopling Flutter, as one of the most execrable and vicious plays that ever was performed in public.”
The change that was occurring may be fairly illustrated by quotations from plays by Etherege and Steele, which are characteristic of the alterations not only as to morals but as to moralizing. In speaking of marriage Etherege says, “your nephew ought to conceal it [his marriage] for a time, madam, since marriage has lost its good name; prudent men seldom expose their own reputations, till ’tis convenient to justify their wives;”[73] while Steele’s sentiment is that “wedlock is hell if at least one side does not love, as it would be Heaven if both did.”[74]
7. Cibber’s Comedies.
Cibber at the very outset of his career as a dramatist, in Love’s Last Shift (1696), deliberately attempted to reform the stage, and that the audience was ready for the innovation is shown by the way it was received, for we are told that “never were spectators more happy in easing their minds by uncommon and repeated plaudits. The honest tears, shed by the audience, conveyed a strong reproach to our licentious poets, and was to Cibber the highest mark of honor.”[75] Davies further gives Cibber the credit of being the first in reforming the English stage, and of founding English sentimental comedy. “The first comedy, acted since the Restoration, in which were preserved purity of manners and decency of language, with a due respect to the honor of the marriage-bed, was Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift, or The Fool in Fashion.”[76] Cibber himself makes no claim to decency of language, nor is it found to any greater extent in this play than in the other plays of the period. Certainly there can be nothing bolder than the first act, or the epilogue, which reads as follows:
“Now, gallants, for the author. First, to you
Kind city gentlemen o’ th’ middle row;
He hopes you nothing to his charge can lay,
There’s not a cuckold made in all his play.
Nay, you must own, if you believe your eyes,