He quickly will his way of writing alter;
And every play shall send you blushing home,
For, though you rail, yet then we’re sure you’ll come.
And it is further intimated,—
A naughty play was never counted dull—
Nor modest comedy e’er pleased you much.
“I remember,” says Colley Cibber in his “Apology,” looking back to these times, “I remember the ladies were then observed to be decently afraid of venturing bare-faced to a new comedy, till they had been assured they might do it without the risk of an insult to their modesty; or if their curiosity were too strong for their patience, they took care at least to save appearances, and rarely came upon the first days of acting but in masks (then daily worn, and admitted in the pit, the side boxes, and gallery), which custom, however, had so many ill consequences attending it, that it has been abolished these many years.” According to the Spectator, ladies began now to desert the theatre when comedies were brought out, except those who “never miss the first day of a new play, lest it should prove too luscious to admit of their going with any countenance to the second.”
In the midst of this abuse, there suddenly appeared a book which created at the time a great sensation. The comedies of the latter half of the seventeenth century were not only indecent, but they were filled with profane language, and contained scenes in which religion itself was treated with contempt. At that time there lived a divine of the Church of England, celebrated for his Jacobitism—for I am now speaking of the reign of king William—for his talents as a controversial writer, and for his zeal in any cause which he undertook. This was Jeremy Collier, the author of several books of some merit, which are seldom read now, and who suffered for his zeal in the cause of king James, and for his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to king William. In the year 1698 Collier published his “Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English stage,” in which he boldly attacked the licentiousness of the English comedy. Perhaps Collier’s zeal carried him a little too far; but he had offended the wits, and especially the dramatic poets, on all sides, and he was exposed to attacks from all quarters, in which Dryden himself took an active part. Collier showed himself fully capable of dealing with his opponents, and the controversy had the effect of calling attention to the immoralities of the stage, and certainly contributed much towards reforming them. They were become much less frequent and less gross at the opening of the eighteenth century.
Towards the end of the reign of king Charles II., the stage was more largely employed as a political agent, and under his successor, James II., the Puritans and the Whigs were constantly held up to scorn. After the Revolution, the tables were turned, and the satire of the stage was often aimed at Tories and Non-jurors. “The Non-juror,” by Colley Cibber, which appeared in 1717, at a very opportune moment, gained for its author a pension and the office of poet-laureate. It was founded upon the “Tartuffe” of Molière, for the English comedy writers borrowed much from the foreign stage. A disguised priest, who passes under the name of Dr. Wolf, and who had been engaged in the rebellion of 1715, has insinuated himself into the household of a gentleman of fortune, of not very strong judgment, Sir John Woodvil, whom, under the title of a Non-juror, he has not only induced to become an abettor of rebels, but he has persuaded him to disinherit his son, and he labours to seduce his wife and to deceive his daughter. His baseness is exposed only just soon enough to defeat his designs. Such a production as this could not fail to give great offence to all the Jacobite party, of whatever shade, who were then rather numerous in London, and Cibber assures us that his reward was a considerable amount of adverse criticism in every quarter where the Tory influence reached. His comedies were inferior in brilliance of dialogue to those of the previous age, but the plots were well imagined and conducted, and they are generally good acting plays.
To Samuel Foote, born in 1722, we owe the last change in the form and character of English comedy. A man of infinite wit and humour, and possessed of extraordinary talent as a mimic, Foote made mimicry the principal instrument of his success on the stage. His plays are above all light and amusing; he reduced the old comedy of five acts to three acts, and his plots were usually simple, the dialogue full of wit and humour; but their peculiar characteristic was their open boldness of personal satire. It is entirely a comedy of his own. He sought to direct his wit against all the vices of society, but this he did by holding up to ridicule and scorn the individuals who had in some way or other made themselves notorious by the practice of them. All his principal characters were real characters, who were more or less known to the public, and who were so perfectly mimicked on the stage in their dress, gait, and speech, that it was impossible to mistake them. Thus, in “The Devil upon Two Sticks,” which is a general satire on the low condition to which the practice of medicine had then fallen, the personages introduced in it all represented quacks well known about the town. “The Maid of Bath” dragged upon the stage scandals which were then the talk of Bath society. The nabob of the comedy which bears that title, had also his model in real life. “The Bankrupt” may be considered as a general satire on the baseness of the newspaper press of that day, which was made the means of propagating private scandals and libellous accusations in order to extort money, yet the characters introduced are said to have been all portraits from the life; and the same statement is made with regard to the comedy of “The Author.”