With Goldsmith and Sheridan gayety came back to the English stage. In their prefaces and prologues both of them complain that the comic muse is dying and is being succeeded by “a mawkish drab of spurious breed who deals in sentimentals,” genteel comedy, to wit, who comes from France where comedy has now become so very elevated and sentimental that it has not only banished humor and Molière from the stage, but it has banished all spectators too. Goldsmith laments the disgusting solemnity that had lately infected literature and sneers at the moralizing comedies that deal with the virtues and distresses of private life instead of ridiculing its faults. Joseph Surface in “The School for Scandal” is Sheridan’s portrait of the sentimental, moralizing hypocrite, whose catchword is “the man of sentiment”; and whose habit of uttering lofty moralities is so ingrained that he vents them even when no one is present who can be deceived by them.
Surface: “The man who does not share in the distresses of a brother—even though merited by his own misconduct—deserves—”
“O Lud,” interrupts Lady Sneerwell, “you are going to be moral, and forget that you are among friends.”
“Egad, that’s true,” rejoins Joseph, “I’ll keep that sentiment till I see Sir Peter.”
“The Critic” has a slap or two at sentimental comedy. A manuscript play has been submitted to Mr. Dangle, who reads this stage direction, “Bursts into tears and exit,” and naturally asks, “What is this, a tragedy?” “No,” explains Mr. Sneer, “that’s a genteel comedy, not a translation—only taken from the French: it is written in a style which they have lately tried to run down; the true sentimental and nothing ridiculous in it from the beginning to the end. . . . The theatre, in proper hands, might certainly be made the school of morality; but now, I am sorry to say it, people seem to go there principally for their entertainment.” Another of these moral comedies is entitled “ ‘The Reformed Housebreaker’ where, by the mere force of humour, housebreaking is put in so ridiculous a light, that if the piece has its proper run . . . bolts and bars will be entirely useless by the end of the season.”
Sheridan has often been called the English Beaumarchais. The comedies of Beaumarchais, “The Barber of Seville” and “The Marriage of Figaro” were precisely contemporaneous with Sheridan’s, and, like the latter, they were a reaction against sentimentalism, against the so-called comédie larmoyante or tearful comedies of La Chaussée and other French dramatists. With Beaumarchais laughter and mirth returned once more to the French stage. He goes back for a model to Molière, as Sheridan goes back to English Restoration comedy, and particularly to Congreve, whom he resembles in the wit of his dialogue and the vivacity of his character painting, but whom he greatly excels in the invention of plot and situation. Congreve’s plots are intricate and hard to follow, highly improbable and destitute of climaxes. On the other hand, Sheridan is a master of plot. The duel scene in “The Rivals,” the auction scene and the famous screen scene in “The School for Scandal” are three of the most skilfully managed situations in English comedy. Congreve’s best play, “The Way of the World” (1700), was a failure on the stage. But whatever Sheridan’s shortcomings, a want of practical effectiveness, of acting quality, was never one of them. Sheridan revived society drama, what Lamb called the artificial comedy of the seventeenth century. Lydia Languish, with her romantic notions, and Mrs. Malaprop with her “nice derangement of epitaphs” are artificial characters. Bob Acres is for the most part delightfully natural, but his system of referential or sentimental swearing—“Odds blushes and blooms” and the like—is an artificial touch. The weakest feature of “The Rivals” is the underplot, the love affairs of Faulkland and Julia. Faulkland’s particular variety of jealousy is a “humor” of the Ben Jonsonian sort, a sentimental alloy, as Charles Lamb pronounced it, and anyway infinitely tiresome. In modern acting versions this business is usually abridged. As Jefferson played it, Julia’s part was cut out altogether, and Faulkland makes only one appearance (Act II, Scene I), where his presence is necessary for the going on of the main action.
There is one particular in which Congreve and Sheridan sin alike. They make all the characters witty. “Tell me if Congreve’s fools are fools indeed,” wrote Pope. And Sheridan can never resist the temptation of putting clever sayings into the mouths of simpletons. The romantic Miss Languish is nearly as witty as the very unromantic Lady Teazle. I need not quote the good things that Fag and Lucy say, but Thomas the coachman, and the stupid old family servant David say things equally good. It is David, e.g., who, when his master remarks that if he is killed in the duel his honor will follow him to the grave, rejoins, “Now that’s just the place where I could make shift to do without it.” Sir Anthony is witty, Bob Acres himself is witty, and even Mrs. Malaprop—foolish old woman—delivers repartees. Mrs. Malaprop’s verbal blunders, by the way, are a good instance of that artificial high polish so characteristic of Sheridan’s art. There are people in earlier comedies who make ludicrous misapplications of words—Shakespeare’s Dogberry, e.g., or Dame Quickly, but they do it naturally and occasionally. Sheridan reduces these accidents to a system—a science. No one in real life was ever so perseveringly and so brilliantly wrong as Mrs. Malaprop.
Dramatically this is out of character and is, therefore, a fault, though a fault easy to forgive since it results in so much clever talk. It is a fault, as I have said, which Congreve shares with Sheridan, his heir and continuator. Perhaps the lines of character are not cut quite so deep in Sheridan as in Congreve nor has his dialogue the elder dramatist’s condensed, epigrammatic solidity. But on the whole, “The Rivals” and “The School for Scandal” are better plays than Congreve ever wrote.
THE POETRY OF THE CAVALIERS
THE spirit of the seventeenth century Cavaliers has been made familiar to us by historians and romancers, but it did not find very adequate expression in contemporary verse. There are two perfect songs by Lovelace, “To Althea from Prison” and “To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars.” But if we look into collections like Charles Mackay’s “Songs of the Cavaliers,” we are disappointed. These consist mainly of political campaign songs little removed from doggerel, satires by Butler and Cleveland, and rollicking ballad choruses by Alexander Brome, Sir Roger L’Estrange, Sir Richard Fanshawe, who was Prince Rupert’s secretary; or haply by that gallant royalist gentleman, Arthur Lord Capel, executed, though a prisoner of war, after the surrender of Colchester. You may remember Milton’s sonnet “To the Lord General Fairfax at the Siege of Colchester.” These were the marks of a Cavalier ballad: to abuse the Roundheads, to be convivial and profane, to profess a reckless daring in fight, devotion to the ladies, and loyalty to church and king. The gay courage of the Cavalier contrasted itself with the grim and stubborn valor of the Roundhead. The bitterest drop in the cup of the defeated kingsmen was that they were beaten by their social inferiors, by muckers and religious fanatics who cropped their hair, wore narrow bands instead of lace collars, and droned long prayers through their noses; people like the butcher Harrison and the leather-seller, Praise-God Barebones, and the brewers, cobblers, grocers and like mechanical trades who figured as the preachers in Cromwell’s New Model army. The usual commonplaces of anti-Puritan satire, the alleged greed and hypocrisy of the despised but victorious faction, their ridiculous solemnity, their illiteracy, contentiousness, superstition, and hatred of all liberal arts, are duly set forth in such pieces as “The Anarchie,” “The Geneva Ballad,” and “Hey then, up go we.” The most popular of all these was the famous song, “When the King enjoys his own again,” which Ritson indeed calls—but surely with much exaggeration—the most famous song of any time or country.