When we consider the ridicule which was continually thrown upon them in this earlier period of the English comedy, we can easily understand the bitterness with which the Puritans regarded the stage and the drama. When they obtained power, the stage, as might be expected, was suppressed, and for some years England was without a theatre. At the Restoration, however, the theatres were opened again, and with greater freedom than ever. At first the old comedies of the days of James I. and Charles I. were revived, and many of them, modified and adapted to the new circumstances, were again brought upon the stage. The original comedies which appeared immediately after the Restoration, were often marked with a political tinge; as the stage saw its natural protectors in the court, and in the court party, it embraced their politics; and Puritans, Roundheads, Whigs, all whose principles were supposed to be contrary to royalty and arbitrary power, fell under its satire. Such was the character of the comedy of “The Cheats,” by a play-writer of some repute named Wilson, which was brought out in 1662. The object of this play appears to have been, in the first place, to satirise the Nonconformists or Puritanical clergy—with whom were classed the astrologers and conjurers, who had increased in number during the Commonwealth time, and infested society more than ever—and the city magistrates, who were not looked upon as being generally over-loyal. The three cheats who are the heroes of this comedy, are Scruple, the Nonconformist, Mopus, a pretender to physic and astrology, and alderman Whitebroth. Direct personal attacks had been introduced into the comedy of the Restoration, and it is probable that somebody of influence was satirised under the name of Scruple, for the play was suppressed by authority, and at a later period, when it was revived, the prologue announces this fact in the following words:—
Sad news, my masters; and too true, I fear,
For us—Scruple’s a silenc’d minister.
Would ye the cause? The brethren snivel, and say,
’Tis scandalous that any cheat but they.
Many of the dramatists of the Restoration were men of good and aristocratic families, witty and profligate cavaliers, who had returned from exile with their king. The family of the earl of Berkshire produced no less than four writers of comedy, all brothers, Edward Howard, colonel Henry Howard, sir Robert Howard, and James Howard, while their sister, the lady Elizabeth Howard, was married to the poet Dryden. Edward Howard’s first dramatic piece was a tragi-comedy entitled “The Usurper,” which came out in 1668, and was intended as a satire upon Cromwell. His best known comedies were “The Man of Newmarket,” and “Woman’s Conquest.” Colonel Henry Howard composed a comedy entitled “United Kingdoms,” which appears not to have been printed. To James Howard, the youngest of the brothers, the play-going public, even then rather a large one, owed “The English Mounsieur,” and “All Mistaken, or the Mad Couple.” Sir Robert Howard was the best writer of the four, and wrote both tragedies and comedies, which were afterwards published collectively. The best of his comedies is “The Committee,” which was first brought on the stage in 1665, and through some chance, certainly not by its merit, continued to be an acting play during the whole of the last century.
“The Committee” is by far the best of the dramatic writings of the Howards. Its design was to turn to ridicule the Commonwealth men and the Puritans. Colonel Blunt and colonel Careless are two royalists, whose estates are in the hands of the committee of sequestrations, and who repair to London for the purpose of compounding for them. The chairman of the committee is a Mr. Day, a worldly-minded and sufficiently selfish Puritan, but who is ruled by his more crafty and still less scrupulous wife, a designing and very talkative woman. Both are of low origin, for Mrs. Day had been a kitchen-woman, and both are very proud and very tyrannical. Among the other principal characters are Abel Day, their son, Obadiah, the clerk to the committee, a man in the interest of the Days, and an Irish servant named Teague, who had been the servant of Careless’s dear friend, a royalist officer killed in battle, and whom the colonel finds in great distress, and takes into his own service out of charity. The character of Teague is a very poor caricature upon an Irishman, and his blunders and bulls are of a very spiritless description. Here is an example. Teague has overheard the two colonels state that they should be obliged to take the Covenant, and express their reluctance to do it, and in his inconsiderate zeal, he hurries away to try if he cannot take the covenant for them, and thus save them a disagreeable operation. In the street he meets a wandering bookseller—a class of pedlars who were then common—and a scene takes place which is best given in the words of the original:—
Bookseller.—New books, new books! A Desperate Plot and Engagement of the Bloody Cavaliers! Mr. Saltmarshe’s Alarum to the Nation, after having been three days dead! Mercurius Britannicus—
Teague.—How’s that? They cannot live in Ireland after they are dead three days!
Book.—Mercurius Britannicus, or the Weekly Post, or the Solemn League and Covenant!