[Illustration: SIR RICHARD STEELE
By Sir GODFREY KNELLER]
In the twinkling of an eye Steele became the spoiled darling of the day. The comedy, which was produced at Drury Lane in 1702, was the talk of the enthusiastic town, and the playwright arose from his beer-mugs, his wine-flagons, and his contemplation of ideal Christianity, to find himself famous. He had opened a new vein of satire, and a vein moreover which upheld virtue and laughed to scorn hypocrisy and vice. That was a moral which the dramatists of his epoch seldom taught.[A] And so the people crowded to the theatre, applauded the sentiment of the play, guffawed at the keen wit of the dialogue, and swore that this young rascal Steele was the prince of bright fellows. Then they went home—and revelled, as before, in the funerals of their friends.
[Footnote A: The "Funeral" is the merriest and most perfect of Steele's comedies. The characters are strongly marked, the wit genial, and not indecent. Steele was among the first who set about reforming the licentiousness of the old comedy. His satire in the "Funeral" is not against virtue, but vice and silliness.—DR. DORAN.]
What of this remarkable comedy? Its story turned upon the marriage of the elderly Lord Brumpton to a designing young minx who estranges the nobleman from his son, Lord Hardy, the gentlemanly, poverty-stricken leading man of the piece. When Brumpton has a cataleptic fit, and is apparently dead as a doornail, the spouse confides his body to the undertaker with feelings of serene pleasure. But let the lines of the play, or a portion thereof, unfold the situation.
The scene is at Lord Brumpton's house; the nobleman has just been pronounced defunct, and Sable, the undertaker, has arrived. The latter, who is being bantered by two of the characters, Mr. Campley and Cabinet, is evidently a bit of a philosopher, albeit an uncanny one, for he says:
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"There are very few in the whole world that live to themselves, but sacrifice their bosom-bliss to enjoy a vain show and appearance of prosperity in the eyes of others; and there is often nothing more inwardly distressed than a young bride in her glittering retinue, or deeply joyful than a young widow in her weeds and black train; of both which the lady of this house may be an instance, for she has been the one, and is, I'll be sworn, the other.
"CABINET. You talk, Mr. Sable, most learnedly.
"SABLE. I have the deepest learning, sir, experience; remember your widow cousin, that married last month.