Samuel Pepys, 1637-1703. This famous diarist was the son of a London tailor. He received a collegiate education, and became a connoisseur in literature and art. Of a prying disposition, he saw all that he could of the varied political, literary, and social life of England; and has recorded what he saw in a diary so quaint, simple, and amusing, that it has retained its popularity to the present day, and has greatly aided the historian both in facts and philosophy. He held an official position as secretary in the admiralty, the duties of which he discharged with great system and skill. In addition to this Diary, we have also his Correspondence, published after his death, which is historically of great importance. In both diary and correspondence he has the charm of great naïveté,—as of a curious and gossiping observer, who never dreamed that his writings would be made public. Men and women of social station are painted in pre-Raphaelite style, and figure before us with great truth and vividness.
Elias Ashmole, 1617-1693. This antiquarian and virtuoso is principally known as the founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. He studied law, chemistry, and natural philosophy. Besides an edition of the manuscript works of certain English chemists, he wrote Bennevennu,—the description of a Roman road mentioned in the Itinerary of Antoninus,—and a History of the Order of the Garter. His Diary was published nearly a century after his death, but is by no means equal in value to those of Evelyn and Pepys.
John Aubrey, 1627-1697: a man of curious mind, Aubrey investigated the supernatural topics of the day, and presented them to the world in his Miscellanies. Among these subjects it is interesting to notice "blows invisible," and "knockings," which have been resuscitated in the present day. He was a "perambulator," and, in the words of one of his critics, "picked up information on the highway, and scattered it everywhere as authentic." His most valuable contribution to history is found in his Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the 17th and 18th Centuries, with Lives of Eminent Men. The searcher for authentic material must carefully scrutinize Aubrey's facts; but, with much that is doubtful, valuable information may be obtained from his pages.
Chapter XXIII.
The Drama of the Restoration.
[The License of the Age]. [Dryden]. [Wycherley]. [Congreve]. [Vanbrugh]. [Farquhar]. [Etherege]. [Tragedy]. [Otway]. [Rowe]. [Lee]. [Southern].
The License of the Age.
There is no portion of the literature of this period which so fully represents and explains the social history of the age as the drama. With the restoration of Charles it returned to England, after a time in which the chief faults had been too great rigor in morals. The theatres had been closed, all amusements checked, and even poetry and the fine arts placed under a ban. In the reign of Charles I., Prynne had written his Histrio Mastix, or Scourge of the Stage, in which he not only denounced all stage plays, but music and dancing; and also declaimed against hunting, festival days, the celebration of Christmas, and Maypoles. For this he was indicted in the Star Chamber for libel, and was sentenced to stand in the pillory, to lose his ears, to pay the king a fine of £5000, and to be imprisoned for life. For his attack there was much excuse in the license of the former period; but when puritanism, in its turn, was brought under the three spears, the drama was to come back tenfold more injurious and more immoral than before.
From the stern and gloomy morals of the Commonwealth we now turn to the debaucheries of the court,—from cropped heads and dark cloaks to plumes and velvet, gold lace and embroidery,—to the varied fashions of every kind for which Paris has always been renowned, and which Charles brought back with him from his exile;—from prudish morals to indiscriminate debauchery; from the exercisings of brewers' clerks, the expounding of tailors, the catechizing of watermen, to the stage, which was now loudly petitioned to supply amusement and novelty. Macaulay justly says: "The restraints of that gloomy time were such as would have been impatiently borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be saints; these restraints became altogether insupportable when they were known to be kept up for the profit of hypocrites! It is quite certain that if the royal family had never returned, there would have been a great relaxation of manners." It is equally certain, let us add, that morals would not have been correspondingly relaxed. The revulsion was terrible. In no period of English history was society ever so grossly immoral; and the drama, which we now come to consider, displays this immorality and license with a perfect delineation.
The English people had always been fond of the drama in all its forms, and were ready to receive it even contaminated as it was by the licentious spirit of the time. An illiterate and ignorant people cannot think for themselves; they act upon the precepts and example of those above them in knowledge and social station: thus it is that a dissolute monarch and a subservient aristocracy corrupt the masses.