Not only does this moral and sentimental note appear throughout, but in Mr. Sealand, especially in his dialogue with Sir John Bevil in the fourth act, there appears the exaltation of the tradesman class which culminated in the work of Lillo. Bevil Junior is a pattern of propriety and goodness, but his lack of virility and brilliance contrasts him most disadvantageously with the heroes of the preceding period. He is the dull, chaste lover, the hero of the second intrigue of the Restoration and Cibber type of comedy, the Lord Morelove sort, exalted to the first place. Indiana is the patient Griselda type, the Lady Easy sort of person, but in The Conscious Lovers her gentleness and goodness are not used to recall the erring, but are presented merely as desirable qualities for a virtuous young woman to possess. The witty rake has disappeared. The Wildairs, Lovelesses, Millamants, and Lady Betties are no more, and in their places are maudlin, sickly sentimentalists, whose goodness and sufferings are all that commend them. Parson Adams was right, it does contain “some things almost solemn enough for a sermon.”
This sentimental didacticism becomes still more conspicious in the work of Holcroft and his school, whose plays are rendered degenerate and emasculate thereby. If the historians of literature mean that Steele was the originator of this type, whose essential characteristic is the centering of the action around a pathetic situation, they are probably right; but any statement that it was he who introduced the sentimental or pathetic element into English comedy, or that he began the reformation of the drama in the direction of morality, is easily seen to be false by a comparison of his work with the earlier and contemporary work of Cibber.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Cibber’s Works.
Prose.
An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian, and Late Patentee of the Theatre-Royal. With an Historical View of the Stage during his Own Time. Written by Himself. London, 1740. (I have used the fourth edition, London, 1756. Best edition is that of Lowe, London, 1889.)
A Letter from Mr. Cibber, to Mr. Pope, Inquiring into the Motives that might induce him in his Satyrical Works, to be so frequently fond of Mr. Cibber’s Name. London, 1742.
The Egoist: or, Colley upon Cibber. Being his own Picture Retouch’d, to so plain a Likeness, that no One, now, would have the Face to own it, but Himself. London, 1743.