These passages, in which the plot stands still, while the spectators are entertained with flippant dialogue and repartee, are ridiculed in the scene betwixt Prince Prettyman and Tom Thimble in the Rehearsal; the facetious Mr Bibber being the original of the latter personage. The character of Trice, at least his whimsical humour of drinking, playing at dice by himself, and quarrelling as if engaged with a successful gamester, is imitated from the character of Carlo, in Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," who drinks with a supposed companion, quarrels about the pledge, and tosses about the cups and flasks in the imaginary brawl. We have heard similar frolics related of a bon-vivant of the last generation, inventor of a game called solitaire, who used to complain of the hardship of drinking by himself, because the toast came too often about.
The whole piece seems to have been intended as a sacrifice to popular taste; and, perhaps, our poet only met a deserved fate, when he stooped to sooth the depraved appetite, which his talents enabled him to have corrected and purified. Something like this feeling may be interred from the last lines of the second epilogue:
Would you but change, for serious plot and verse,
This motley garniture of fool and farce;
Nor scorn a mode, because 'tis taught at home,
Which dues, like vests,[A] our gravity become;
Our poet yields you should this play refuse,
As tradesmen by the change of fashions lose,
With some content, their fripperies of France,
In hope it may their staple trade advance.
[Footnote A: This seems to allude to the Polish dress, which, upon his restoration, Charles wished to introduce into Britain. It was not altered for the French, till his intimacy with that court was cemented by pecuniary dependence.]
In the prologue, the author indulges himself in a display of the terms of astrology, of which vain science he was a believer and a student.
PREFACE.
It would be a great impudence in me to say much of a comedy, which has had but indifferent success in the action. I made the town my judges, and the greater part condemned it: after which, I do not think it my concernment to defend it with the ordinary zeal of a poet for his decried poem. Though Corneille is more resolute in his preface before his Pertharite[A], which was condemned more universally than this; for he avows boldly, that, in spite of censure, his play was well and regularly written; which is more than I dare say for mine. Yet it was received at court; and was more than once the divertisement of his Majesty, by his own command; but I have more modesty than to ascribe that to my merit, which was his particular act of grace. It was the first attempt I made in dramatic poetry; and, I find since, a very bold one, to begin with comedy, which is the most difficult part of it. The plot was not originally my own; but so altered by me, (whether for the better or worse I know not) that whoever the author was, he could not have challenged a scene of it. I doubt not but you will see in it the uncorrectness of a young writer; which is yet but a small excuse for him, who is so little amended since. The best apology I can make for it, and the truest, is only this, that you have, since that time, received with applause, as bad, and as uncorrect plays from other men.
[Footnote A: "Le succés de cette tragédie à été si malheureux, que pour m'epargner le chagrin de m'en souvenir, je n'en dirai presque rien.—J'ajoute ici malgré sa disgrace, que les sentimens en sont assez vifs et nobles, les vers assez bien tournes, et que la façon dont le sujet s'explique dans la première scène ne manque pas d'artifice."
Examen de Pertharite.]