[Footnote A: This is a coy reference to Pyrrhus, who was murdered while his marriage to Hector's widow was being celebrated with royal pomp. As he fell, it will be remembered, the King placed his crown upon the head of Andromache.]
An epilogue leading off with these lines was hardly an appropriate ending to a tragedy, yet are we fastidious enough in these days to sneer at the anomaly? We have banished prologue and afterpiece as something old-fashioned and inartistic, but never turn one solitary eyelash when Hamlet follows up his death by rushing before the curtain and grinning his thanks. Desdemonas who come forward, after the smothering scene, to receive flowers, and Romeos and Juliets who rise from the tomb that they may bow and smirk before an audience—while we have such as these among us, let us not cast stones at the early playgoer.
Addison has left, in the Spectator, a delightful story of dear old Sir Roger de Coverley's experience with the "Distressed Mother." Sir Roger, it appears, confessed that he had not seen a play for twenty years, and was very anxious to know "who this distressed mother was; and upon hearing that she was Hector's widow, he told me that her husband was a brave man, and that when he was a schoolboy he had read his life at the end of the dictionary."[A] So the old gentleman, accompanied by the Spectator, Captain Sentry, and a retinue of servants, set out in state for Drury Lane, and on arriving there went into the pit.
[Footnote A: Spectator, No. 335.]
"As soon as the house was full, and the candles lighted, my old friend stood up, and looked about him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself, at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. I could not but fancy to myself, as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit, that he made a very proper centre to a tragic audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus, the knight told me, that he did not believe the king of France himself had a better strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old friend's remarks, because I looked upon them as a piece of natural criticism, and was well pleased to hear him, at the conclusion of almost every scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the play would end. One while he appeared much concerned for Andromache; and a little while after for Hermione; and was extremely puzzled to think what would become of Pyrrhus.
"When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lovers importunities, he whispered me in the ear, that he was sure she would never have him; to which he added, with a more than ordinary vehemence, 'You can't imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow.' Upon Pyrrhus's threatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook his head, and muttered to himself, 'Ay, do if you can.' This part dwelt so much upon my friend's imagination, that at the close of the third act, as I was thinking of something else, he whispered me in my ear, 'These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray,' says he, 'you that are a critic, is the play according to your dramatic rules, as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do not know the meaning of.'
"The fourth act very luckily began before I had time to give the old gentleman an answer. 'Well,' says the knight, sitting down with great satisfaction, 'I suppose we are now to see Hector's ghost,' He then renewed his attention, and, from time to time, fell a praising the widow. He made, indeed, a little mistake as to one of her pages, whom at his first entering he took for Astyanax; but quickly set himself right in that particular, though, at the same time he owned he should have been very glad to have seen the little boy, who, says he, must needs be a very fine child by the account that is given of him. Upon Hermione's going off with a menace to Pyrrhus, the audience gave a loud clap, to which Sir Roger added, 'On my word, a notable young baggage!'"
We can imagine Sir Roger going, a year later, to see Mrs. Oldfield carry all before her as Jane Shore in Nicholas Rowe's play of that name. The author had once been an ardent admirer of the glacierlike but lovely Bracegirdle, at whose haughty shrine he long worshipped in the hopes that the ice of her reserve might some day melt; and the wits of the coffee-house were wont to say, not without a grain of truth, that when the poet wrote dramas to fit Bracegirdle as the heroine, the lovers therein always pleaded his own passion[A]. Now that the charmer had left the stage, Rowe was forced to entrust the title character of Jane Shore to Nance, who vowed, no doubt, she was thoroughly bored at having to walk once again through a vale of tears. But she made another triumph (the author himself coached her in the part), and helped to give the production all manner of success.
[Footnote A: As Cibber says, Mrs. Bracegirdle "inspired the best authors to write for her, and two of them [Rowe and Congreve] when they gave her a lover in a play, seem'd palpably to plead their own passions, and make their private court to her in fictitious characters.">[
It is a curious fact that the writing of the tragedy was indirectly due to political disappointment. Rowe had set himself assiduously to the study of Spanish with the idea of securing from Lord Halifax a diplomatic position, and his reward for this energy was so intangible that he soon gave up hopes of foreign travel and turned his attention to the tribulations of Jane. In other words, the noble Halifax merely expressed his satisfaction that Mr. Rowe could now read "Don Quixote" in the original.