Of the three earls, all of whose pieces were produced previous to 1680, there is not much to be said in praise. The eccentric, clever, brave, inconsistent, contradictory George Digby, Earl of Bristol, he who turned Romanist at the instigation of Don John of Austria, and aiming at office himself, conspired against Clarendon, was the author of one acted piece, "Elvira," one of the two out of which Mrs. Centlivre built up her own clever bit of mosaic, the "Wonder." Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in whom all the vices of Buckingham were exaggerated; to whom virtue and honour seemed disgusting, and even the affectation of them, or of ordinary decency, an egregious folly, found leisure in the least feverish hour of some five years' drunkenness, to give to the stage an adaptation of "Valentinian," by Beaumont and Fletcher, in which he assigned a part to Mrs. Barry—the very last that any other lover would have thought of for his mistress. The noble poet, little more than thirty years old, lay in a dishonoured grave when his piece was represented, in 1680;[51] but the young actress just named, gaily alluded, in a prologue, to the demure nymphs in the house who had succumbed, nothing loath, to the irresistible blandishments of this very prince of blackguards.
The Earl of Caryll was a man of another spirit. He was the head of the family to which Pope's Carylls belonged, and being a faithful servant of James II., in adversity as well as in prosperity, the King made him an earl, at that former period, when the law of England did not recognise the creation. Caryll was of the party who talked of the unpopularity of Shakspeare, and who for the poet's gold offered poor tinsel of their own. His rhymed drama of the "English Princess, or the death of Richard the Third," owed its brief favour to the acting of Betterton, who could render even nonsense imposing. His comedy of "Sir Solomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb," was "taken from the French." The chief scenes were mere translations of Molière's "Ecole des Femmes;" but life, and fun, and wit were given to them again by Betterton, who in the comic old Sir Solomon shook the sides of the "house," as easily as he could, in other characters, move them to wonder, or melt them to tears.
In 1664, another "lance was broken with Shakspeare" by Lord Orrery, the Lord Broghill of earlier days. There was something dramatic in this lord's life. He was a marvellous boy, younger son of a marvellous father, the "great Earl of Cork." Before he was fifteen, Dublin University was proud of him. At that age he went on the "grand tour," at twenty married the Earl of Suffolk's daughter, and landed in Ireland, to keep his wedding, on the very day of the outbreak of the Rebellion of 1641. The young bridegroom fought bravely for homestead and king, and went into exile when that king was slain; but he heeded the lure of Cromwell, won for him the victory of Macroom, rescued him from defeat at Clonmel, and crushed Muskerry and his numerous Papal host. From Richard Cromwell, Broghill kept aloof, and helped forward the Restoration, for which service Charles made him a peer—Earl of Orrery. The earl showed his gratitude by deifying kings, and inculcating submissiveness, teaching the impeccability of monarchs, and the extreme naughtiness of their people. Pepys comically bewails the fact, that on going to see a new piece by Orrery, he sees only an old one under a new name, such wearying sameness is there in the rhymed phrases of them all.
Orrery's tilt against Shakspeare is comprised in his attempt to suppress that poet's "Henry V.," by giving one of his own, in which Henry and Owen Tudor are simultaneously in love with Katherine of France. The love is carried on in a style of stilted burlesque; and yet the dignity and wit of this piece enraptured Pepys—but then he saw it at Court in December 1666, Lord Bellasis having taken him to Whitehall, after seeing "Macbeth" at the Duke's House,—"and there," he says, "after all staying above an hour for the players, the King and all waiting, which was absurd, saw 'Henry V.' well done by the Duke's people, and in most excellent habits, all new vests, being put on but this night. But I sat so high, and so far off, that I missed most of the words, and sat with a wind coming into my back and neck, which did much trouble me. The play continued till twelve at night, and then up, and a most horrid cold night it was, and frosty, and moonshine;" and it might have been worse.
In Orrery's "Mustapha" and "Tryphon," the theme is all love and honour, without variation. Orrery's "Mr. Anthony" is a five-act farce, in ridicule of the manners and morals of the Puritans. Therein the noble author rolls in the mire for the gratification of the pure-minded cavaliers. Over Orrery's "Black Prince," even vigilant Mr. Pepys himself fell asleep, in spite of the stately dances. Perhaps he was confused by the author's illustration of genealogical history; for in this play, Joan, the wife of the Black Prince, is described as the widow of Edmund, Earl of Kent—her father! But what mattered it to the writer whose only teaching to the audience was, that if they did not fear God, they must take care to honour the King? Orrery's "Altemira" was not produced till long after his death. It is a roar of passion, love (or what passed for it), jealousy, despair, and murder. In the concluding scene the slaughter is terrific. It all takes place in presence of an unobtrusive individual, who carries the doctrine of non-intervention to its extreme limit. When the persons of the drama have made an end of one another, the quietly delighted gentleman steps forward, and blandly remarks, that there was so much virtue, love, and honour in it all, that he could not find it in his heart to interfere, though his own son was one of the victims!
A contemporary of Orrery, young Henry Carey, Viscount Falkland, son of the immortal soldier who fell at Newbury, wrote one piece, the "Marriage Night," of which I know nothing, save that it was played in the Lent of 1664; but I do know that the author had wit, for when some one remarked, as Carey took his seat in the House of Commons for the first time, that he looked as if he had not sown his wild oats, he replied, that he had come to the place where there were geese enough to pick them up!
The last of the dramatic lords of this century was that Lord Lansdowne whom Pope called "Granville the polite," and absurdly compared with Surrey, by awkwardly calling the latter the "Granville of a former age." Granville was a statesman, a Tory, a stiff-backed gentleman in a stiff-backed period, and a sufferer for his opinions. Driven into leisure, he addressed himself to literature, in connection with which he committed a crime against the majesty of Shakspeare, which was unpardonable. He reconstructed the "Merchant of Venice," called it the "Jew of Venice," and assigned Shylock to Dogget. Lord Lansdowne's "She Gallants" is a vile comedy for its "morals," but a vivacious one for its manner. Old Downes, the prompter, sneers at the offence taken at it by some ladies, who, he thinks, affected rather than possessed virtue themselves. But ladies, in 1696, were offended at such outrages on decency as this play contains. They were not the first who had made similar protest. Even in this lord's tragedy of "Heroic Love," Achilles and Briseis are only a little more decent than Ravenscroft's loose rakes and facile nymphs. The only consolation one has in reading the "Jew of Venice" (produced in 1701) is, that there are some passages the marrer could not spoil. As for Shylock, Rowe expressed the opinion of the public when, in spite of the success of the comic edition of the character, he said, modestly enough, "I cannot but think the character was tragically designed by the author." Dryden, Pope, and Johnson have in their turn eulogised Granville; but, as a dramatic poet, he reflects no honour either on the century in which he was born, or on that in which he died. Indeed, of the dramatist peers of the seventeenth century, there is not a play that has survived to our times.
And now, coming to a dozen of baronets, knights, and honourables, let us point to two,—Sir Samuel Tuke and Sir William Killigrew, who may claim precedence for their comparative purity, if not for decided dramatic talent. To the former, an old colonel of the cavalier times, Charles II. recommended a comedy of Calderon's, which Sir Samuel produced at the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre, in 1663, under the title of the "Adventures of Five Hours." The public generally, and Pepys especially, were unusually delighted with this well-constructed comedy. When it was played at Whitehall, Mrs. Pepys saw it from Lady Fox's "pew;" and, making an odd comparison, the diarist thought "Othello" a "mean thing," when weighed against the "Adventures;" but his chief praise is, that it is "without one word of ribaldry;" and Echard has added thereto his special commendation as a critic.
Sir Robert Stapylton says of William Killigrew what could not be said of his brother Tom (whose plays were written before the Restoration), that in him were found—
"—— plots well laid,