What Pleasures a Coffee-House daily bestows!
To read and hear how the World merrily goes;
To laugh, sing and prattle of This, That, and T' other;
And be flatter'd and ogl'd and kiss'd too, like Mother.
Here the Rake, after Roving and Tipling all Night,
For his Groat in the Morning may set his Head right.
And the Beau, who ne'er fouls his White fingers with Brass,
May have his Sixpen' worth of—Stare in the Glass.
The Doctor, who'd always be ready to kill,
May ev'ry Day here take his Stand, if he will;
And the soldier, who'd bluster and challenge secure,
May draw boldly here, for—we'll hold him he's sure.
The Lawyer, who's always in quest of his Prey,
May find fools here to feed upon every Day;
And the sage Politician, in Coffee-Grounds known,
May point out the Fate of each Crown but—his own.
Then, Gallants, since ev'rything here you may find
That pleasures the Fancy or profits the Mind,
Come all, and take each a full Dish of Delight,
And crowd up our Coffee-House every night.
Song from "The Coffee House"
John Timbs tells us this play "met with great opposition on its representation, owing to its being stated that the characters were intended for a particular family (that of Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter) who kept Dick's, the coffee-house which the artist had inadvertently selected as the frontispiece. It appears," Timbs continues, "that the landlady and her daughter were the reigning toast of the Templars, who then frequented Dick's; and took the matter up so strongly that they united to condemn the farce on the night of its production; they succeeded, and even extended their resentment to everything suspected to be this author's (the Rev. James Miller) for a considerable time after."
Carlo Goldoni, who has been called the Molière of Italy, wrote La Bottega di Caffè, (The Coffee House), a naturalistic comedy of bourgeois Venice, satirizing scandal and gambling, in 1750. The scene is a Venetian coffee house (probably Florian's), where several actions take place simultaneously. Among several remarkable studies is one of a prattling slanderer, Don Marzio, which ranks as one of the finest bits of original character drawing the stage has ever seen. The play was produced in English by the Chicago Theatre Society in 1912. Chatfield-Taylor[353] thinks Voltaire probably imitated La Bottega di Caffè in his Le Café, ou l'Ecossaise. Goldoni was a lover of coffee, a regular frequenter of the coffee houses of his time, from which he drew much in the way of inspiration. Pietro Longhi, called the Venetian Hogarth, in one of his pictures presenting life and manners in Venice during the years of her decadence, shows Goldoni as a visitor in a café of the period, with a female mendicant soliciting alms. It is in the collection of Professor Italico Brass.
Goldoni, in the comedy The Persian Wife, gives us a glimpse of coffee making in the middle of the eighteenth century. He puts these words into the mouth of Curcuma, the slave:
Here is the coffee, ladies, coffee native of Arabia,
And carried by the caravans into Ispahan.
The coffee of Arabia is certainly always the best.
While putting forth its leaves on one side, upon the other the flowers appear;
Born of a rich soil, it wishes shade, or but little sun.
Planted every three years is this little tree in the surface of the soil.
The fruit, though truly very small,
Should yet grow large enough to become somewhat green.
Later, when used, it should be freshly ground.
Kept in a warm and dry place and jealously guarded.
***
But a small quantity is needed to prepare it.
Put in the desired quantity and do not spill it over the fire;
Heat it till the foam rises, then let it subside again away from the fire;
Do this seven times at least, and coffee is made in a moment.
In 1760 there appeared in France Le Café, ou l'Ecossaise, comédie, which purported to have been written by a Mr. Hume, an Englishman, and to have been translated into French. It was in reality the work of Voltaire, who had brought out another play, Socrates, in the same manner a short time before. Le Café, was translated into English the same year under the title The Coffee House, or Fair Fugitive. The title page says the play is written by "Mr. Voltaire" and translated from the French. It is a comedy in five acts. The principal characters are: Fabrice, a good-natured man and the keeper of the coffee house; Constantia, the fair fugitive; Sir William Woodville, a gentleman of distinction under misfortune; Belmont, in love with Constantia, a man of fortune and interest; Freeport, a merchant and an epitome of English manners; Scandal, a sharper; and Lady Alton, in love with Belmont.
Il Caffè di Campagna, a play with music by Galuppi, appeared in Italy in 1762.