Pope's contemptuous prologue, written many years later and apparently for a benefit performance of one of D'Urfey's plays, is sufficient evidence that the playwright was not highly regarded; but he was reputed to be a good natured man and, by the standards of the time, his twitting of Collier--whom he accused of having a better nose for smut than a clergyman should have--is not conspicuously vituperative. Even his attack on the political character of the notorious Non-Juror is bitter without being really scurrilous. But like his betters Congreve and Vanbrugh, D'Urfey both missed the opportunity to grapple with the real issues of the controversy and misjudged the temper of the public. Had that public been, as all the playwrights seem to have assumed, ready to side with them against Collier, there might have been some justification in resting content as he and Congreve did with the scoring of a few debater's points. But the public, even "the town", was less interested in mere sally and rejoinder than it was in the serious question of the relation of comedy to morality, and hence Collier was allowed to win the victory almost by default.

Collier's own argument was either confused or deliberately disingenuous, since he shifts his ground several times. On occasion he argues merely in the role of a moderate man who is shocked by the extravagances of the playwrights, and on other occasions as an ascetic to whom all worldly diversion, however innocent of any obvious offence, is wicked. At one time, moreover, he accuses the playwrights of recommending the vices which they should satirize and at other times denies that even the most sincere satiric intention can justify the lively representation of wickedness. But none of his opponents actually seized the opportunity to completely clarify the issues. Vanbrugh, it is true, makes some real points in his "A Short Vindication of The Relapse and The Provok'd Wife", and John Dennis, in his heavy handed way, showed some realization of what the issues were both in "The Usefulness of the Stage to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government and to Religion" (1698) and, much later, In "The Stage Defended" (1726). But, Vanbrugh is casual, Dennis is slow witted, and it is only by comparison with the triviality of D'Urfey or the contemptuous disingenuity of Congreve's "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations" (1698) that they seem effective.

At least forty books and pamphlets published between 1698 and 1725 are definitely part of the Collier controversy, but the fact that none of them really discusses adequately fundamental premises concerning the nature, method, and function of comedy had serious consequences for the English stage. The situation was further complicated by the rise of sentimental comedy and the fact that the theories supposed to justify it were expounded with all the completeness and clarity which were so conspicuously lacking in the case of those who undertook halfheartedly to defend what we call "high" or "pure", as opposed to both sentimental and satiric comedy. Steele's epilogue to "The Lying Lover", which versified Hobbes' comments on laughter and then rejected laughter itself as unworthy of a refined human being, is a triumphant epitaph inscribed over the grave of the comic spirit.

The second item included in the present reprint, namely the anonymous preface to a translation of Bossuet's "Maxims and Reflections Upon Plays", belongs to a different phase of the Collier controversy. It serves as an illustration of the fact that Collier was soon joined by men who were, somewhat more frankly than he had himself admitted he was, open enemies of the stage as such. He had begun with arguments supported by citations from literary critics and he called in the support of ascetic religious writers after his discourse was well under way. But the direct approach by way of religion was soon taken up by others, of whom Arthur Bedford was probably the most redoubtable as he was certainly the most long winded, since his "Evil and Danger of Stage Plays" (1706) crowds into its two hundred and twenty-seven pages some two thousand instances of alleged profaneness and immorality with specific references to the texts of scripture which condemn each one. But Bedford had not been the first to treat the issue as one to be decoded by theologians rather than playwrights or critics. Somewhat unwisely, perhaps, Motteux had printed before his comedy "Beauty in Distress" a discourse "Of the Lawfulness and Unlawfulness of Plays" (1698), written by the Italian monk Father Caffaro, who was professor of divinity at the Sorbonne. Unfortunately Caffaro had, some years before this English translation appeared, already retracted his mild opinion that stage plays were not, per se, unlawful, and it was possible not only to cite his retraction but also to offer the opinions of the Bishop of Meux, who was better known to English readers than Father Caffaro. The anonymous author of the preface to "Maxims and Reflections" grants that dramatic poetry might, under certain circumstances, be theoretically permissible, but rather more frankly than Collier he makes it clear that his real intention is to urge the outlawing of the theater itself, since all efforts to reform it are foredoomed to failure. "But if", he writes, "the Reformation of the Stage be no longer practicable, reason good that the incurable Evil should be cut off". That lets the cat out of the bag.

Both pieces reprinted here are from copies owned by the University of Michigan.

Joseph Wood Krutch

Columbia University

The Campaigners:
OR, THE
Pleasant Adventures at Brussels.
A
COMEDY
As it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal.
WITH A
FAMILIAR PREFACE
UPON
A Late Reformer of the STAGE.
Ending with a Satyrical Fable
OF
the DOG and the OTTOR.