It is a gleam of heavenly light
blinding
us out of the gloom.
Thomas Otway
To call them _comedies_ would be to insult
the shades of Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, Congreve, and Sheridan.
On the whole, then, while there is less inexhaustible prodigality, and
force of unfettered genius in the Restoration than in the Elizabethan
drama, we have still left dramatic energy of high enduring quality,
which became, however, nearly extinct in the reigns immediately
succeeding. Under Charles, what was good in the romantic movement was
still retained; the shifting, many-coloured sheen of vigorous life is
yet there, the sun-and-shadow chequer of grave and gay; but classic
exemplars have moderated, and moulded the work to finer, more regular
form. There is less of exceptional extravagance in the story, less of
inconceivable and sudden metamorphosis or distortion in the characters,
the unpleasant and bewildering effect in earlier plays being almost
as when an acrobat proceeds to walk with long, lithe, serpentine body
round his own head; less also of the over-elaborated, misplaced,
unveracious ingenuity of so-called poetic diction. One may generously
attribute all this to the extravagance of national and literary youth,
but the drama of Spain and Italy ought possibly to bear some of the
responsibility. At any rate, these are grave defects.
I will illustrate what I mean. It is surely with a shudder of
incredulous aversion that we find an apparently kind and cordial
king, in Fletcher's _Maid's Tragedy_, insisting upon a pure-hearted,
generous, young courtier, Amintor, who adored him with superstitious
reverence, breaking off his engagement to Aspatia, a noble maiden, and
marrying the king's mistress, Evadne, in order the better to conceal,
and carry on with more security his own guilty intrigue with her,
and father his own bastards upon this loyal friend. Our incredulous
aversion is, if possible, intensified when Amintor assents to his own
dishonour, because it is the king who has compassed it. Not all the
poetry put into the mouth of "lost Aspatia," nor all the knowledge of
human nature displayed by the poet in the seeming inconsistency of
this evil woman's mongrel repentance at the bidding of her brother,
and conversion from cruel looseness to equally cruel respectability,
and base desire to vindicate her own damaged reputation even by the
treacherous murder of her royal lover, can condone for this initial,
radical vice of unnatural motive. No lovely tropes and phrases, nor
harmonies of verbal measure may condone this. It is with equally
incredulous aversion that we find Massinger's _Duke of Milan_ bidding
his creature Francisco kill the Duchess, who is devoted to him, and to
whom he is devoted, should she happen to survive him--which, as Hazlitt
says, seems a start of frenzy rather than a dictate of passion--then
veering idiotically from love to murderous hatred upon the mere
assertion of this same creature, Francisco, that his long proved and
virtuous wife has solicited him, Francisco, dishonourably, he in fact
having solicited her unsuccessfully. With some difficulty we accept
the mercurial and hotheaded gullibility of Othello, played upon by so
cunning a devil as Iago; but we revolt from so poor and pinchbeck a
copy as this.
The early drama, in its poetic beauty of individual passages, and
frequent verisimilitude in the working out of given motives, now and
again reminds me of the character attributed to madmen, that they are
persons who reason logically, but on absurd or mistaken premises.
And surely Hazlitt, not Lamb, is right about that celebrated scene
in Ford's _Broken Heart_, where Calantha dances on, apparently
indifferent, while messengers come successively to tell her of
misfortune upon misfortune, death upon death; then, when the revel is
over, dies suddenly from pent-up emotion. "This appears to me to be
tragedy in masquerade, the true false gallop of sentiment; anything
more artificial or mechanical I cannot conceive. " That a woman should
thus silence the voice of humanity, not from necessity, or for some
great purpose, but out of regard to mere outward decorum of behaviour,
for the mere effect and _éclat_ of the thing, is not fortitude but
affectation. It often seems as if the Elizabethan and Caroline poets
wrote their plays for the sake of working up to some striking and
effective situation, and as if it were of little consequence to them
how difficult or impossible the way that led thither might be, so
long as they could hew their path there. Even the splendid scenes in
Cyril Tourneur's _Revenger's Tragedy_, where the brothers assume a
disguise in order to tempt their sister to unchastity, and procure
their mother's consent to it, then threaten to kill their mother for
consenting, appear to be open to the same objection. [2]
But I wish to emphasize the fact that the drama of Otway, whatever its
shortcomings, is, in this respect of sobriety and truth to nature,
superior on the whole to that of his illustrious forerunners. And
surely a good deal of cant is now uttered about the academic insipidity
and coldness of Corneille and Racine, who influenced our later drama,
and who powerfully moved the men of their own day. What can be nobler
than _Athalie_, _Britannicus_, or _The Cid_? Academic coldness is
hardly the phrase that rises to one's lips when one is watching Sarah
Bernhardt in _Phèdre_; while no comedy is superior to Molière's. If
these men moved in golden fetters, they were strong enough to wear them
as ornaments, rather than sink under them as impediments. Under the kid
glove you feel the iron thews.
None of this incredulous aversion of which I spoke do we feel in
reading Otway's _Venice Preserved_. Dryden averred that he could not
move the feelings as could Otway, who, while inferior in reflection,
poetic expression, and versification, was a greater master of pathos
and passion. On the latter acts of _Venice Preserved_ we are hurried
breathlessly, as by the impetus of a mighty wave, shaken to the very
depths--yet not, I think, unendurably, as by the hideous and gratuitous
cruelty of Ferdinand exercised upon a little-offending sister in
Webster's _Duchess of Malfi_, where horror upon horror is accumulated
upon her head, to thrill and harrow us; and so powerful is the poet
that only those can experience the pleasure which art should extract
from pain, who enjoy the sight of an execution, or sniff gladly in a
torture-chamber the fumes of spilt blood. We begin to breathe freely
only when the monster, having filled up the measure of his unnatural
malice, utters the fine line that first shows a faint relenting toward
humanity:
Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young.
The Elizabethans were superior to their successors in isolated
passages, and for the most part incomparably so in their lyrics.
Therefore, they are well represented in the "Dramatic specimens" of
Charles Lamb. Otway could not be so represented; his excellence lies
in the noble organic harmony and sanity of his whole creation, as in
its emotional intensity, from which little can be detached that shall
be admirable out of its own vital relation. I do not say that Dryden
and Otway never attempt to enlist interest illegitimately in their
tragedies by relying upon strained situations, and abnormal traits
of character; but I believe they do so less than their predecessors.
And I hardly think Mr. Symonds' excuse for the Elizabethans a valid
one, when he urges that the men and women of that time were really as
inconsistent as the playwrights represent them. I do not know that we
have any historical instance of just that queer kind of inconsistency
which we find in their pages, though I admit that not only history,
but our own experience also, furnishes very strange examples of
self-contradiction. Yet one can only say that the examples of it in
the older drama are not, for the most part, rendered credible and
probable to us. And, so far, therefore, this is not a drama which can
be always and universally interesting, except in the supreme examples.
In the same way Otway's and Wycherley's indecencies would hardly (one
supposes) interest a Victorian audience. The intellectual, or ethical,
atmosphere must not be too unfamiliar and alien.
We are not incredulous when Jaffier, the weak, affectionate, impulsive
hero of _Venice Preserved_, maddened by the persecution of his adored
bride, Belvidera, on the part of her implacable father, who is also
a senator, suddenly, and without counting the cost, from motives
of revenge and hope of better fortune, consents to take part in a
conspiracy against the State, persuaded by his dearest friend, Pierre,
a man of sterner and more homogeneous fibre. Nor are we incredulous
when, realising with his tender heart what hideous consequences
are likely to ensue in the disturbance of domestic peace, and the
slaughter of so many innocent people, he allows himself, however
reluctantly, to be over-persuaded by Belvidera, who comprehends that
the murder of her father, with all the other senators, is intended;
or when, thus over-persuaded, he renounces his purpose, and betrays
his fellow-conspirators, including even his well-beloved friend, to
the Doge and Senate. We are not incredulous when we see Jaffier, on
his way to the Senate, walking as in a dream under spell of his adored
Belvidera's more powerful will, and hear him say in some of the most
beautiful lines the poet wrote:
Come, lead me forward now, like a tame lamb,
To sacrifice: thus in his fatal garlands
Decked fine, and pleased the wanton skips and plays,
Trots by the enticing flattering priestess' side,
And much transported with his little pride,
Forgets his dear companions of the plain;
Till by her bound he's on the altar lain;
Yet then he hardly bleats, such pleasure's in the pain.
The catastrophe we feel inevitably to follow from the given elements in
their fusion and entanglement, the cruel injustice of the father, the
weak and foolish impulsiveness of the hero, together with his ardent
affection both to bride and friend, and the co-existent corruption
in the State, which made that sinister intrigue against the Republic
possible.
I cannot agree with Dr. Garnett that the interest of Otway's plays
arises from the situation only, not from the characters. It appears to
me that the humanity of the characters is strongly realised, and that
we are made to sympathise with them profoundly. As to Addison's remark
that the characters are mostly wicked, I hardly know what to say. The
heroines are ideally good, and the others are neither better nor worse
than average men and women. If Shakespeare has given us types--though
these are also individuals--of ambition, jealousy, revengeful avarice,
unpractical genius, showing us the natural issues and eventuations of
these, Otway has given us one type, equally individual, of weak, but
absorbing, and passionate affection, showing us the natural issues of
this. As Johnson says, he "consulted nature in his own breast. "
Having then revealed the intended treason, after extorting an oath from
the Senate to spare the lives of his coadjutors, Jaffier is confronted
with Pierre and the rest. Then follows a tremendous scene, in which
Jaffier almost abjectly implores Pierre for pardon, and the latter
spurns him as one proved unworthy the friendship of an honest man,
finally striking and hurling Jaffier from him. The words he uses to
his former friend are worse even than the blow; their venom can never
cease to rankle. The blunt, open and magnanimous, though reckless
and desperate character of Pierre is finely contrasted with that of
Jaffier, luxuriously feminine in its sensibility. Jaffier urges that
he has at least saved Pierre's life, to which his old friend makes the
terrible reply:
I scorn it more because preserved by thee.
When Belvidera was delivered by Jaffier, in pledge of his own good
faith, into the hands of the conspirators, he gave them a dagger,
charging them to despatch her, should he prove traitor, The Senate,
false to their oath, condemned the rebels to death with torture; indeed
the latter had refused to accept their lives with bondage at the hands
of the Republic. Belvidera tells Jaffier this, and then he feels
tempted to slay with that dagger her who has incited him to compass the
ruin of his beloved friend. This is another tremendous scene. Prevented
by the returning and overwhelming tide of love from executing his
purpose, Jaffier bids her go to her father, and from him as senator
beg the life of Pierre. She does so, and the old man, relenting at the
sight of his yet beloved child kneeling in agony before him, grants
her prayer. This part also is very beautiful. But his attempt to save
Pierre comes too late. In their final most moving interview Jaffier
tells Belvidera that he will not survive his friend. He commends his
beloved to Heaven, calling down every blessing upon her. But when she
understands that they are to part for ever she exclaims:
Oh! call back
Your cruel blessing; stay with me and curse me!
* * * Leave thy dagger with me.
Bequeath me something--Not one kiss at parting? * * *
Another, sure another,
For that poor little one you've taken care of;
I'll give it him truly.
Then her mind gives way, and in the fearful soliloquy that follows,
Otway reminds us of the power shown by Shakespeare in dealing with
minds unhinged. Jaffier being allowed to take leave of Pierre on the
scaffold, Pierre forgives him, but requests, as a last favour, that his
friend will save him from the dishonour of public torture by killing
him at the last moment. Jaffier promises, and does so, stabbing himself
immediately after. In the last scene, Belvidera enters distracted:
Come, come, come, come, nay come to bed,
Pr'ythee my love! The winds! Hark how they whistle,
And the rain beats; oh! how the weather shrinks me!
You're angry now; who cares? * * * [JAFFIER'S _ghost rises_.
Are you returned? See, father, here he's come again!
Am I to blame to love him? Oh, the dear one! [_Ghost sinks. _
Why do you fly me? Are you angry still then?
Father, where art thou? Father, why do you do thus?
Stand off. Don't hide him from me. He's here somewhere.
The apparitions of Jaffier and Pierre rise again bleeding. When they
sink, she vows passionately that she will dig for them till she find
them; and, imagining that they are drawing her downward, she dies.
Though nearly all authorities have objected vehemently to the gross
quasi-comic scenes with which Otway has lightened the intense gloom of
his tragedy, I am not sure that the illustrious French critic, Taine,
is not right in his approval of them. However ghastly, they give some
relief. Though coarse and disgusting, they do stand out distinctly
in the memory. The conspirators met at the house of one Aquilina, a
Greek courtesan, who had private motives for favouring their cause.
The old senator, Antonio (intended for a caricature of the debauched
Shaftesbury), had robbed Pierre of this mistress, which was one of
his main incentives to plotting against the State. Taine's comment on
the picture is striking: "Comme l'homme est prompt à s'avilir, quand,
échappé de son rôle, il revient à lui-même! " He thinks that Otway alone
in that epoch reproduced the tragedy of Shakespeare: "Il ne lui manque
que de naître cent ans plus tôt. " Perhaps; only his form might then
have suffered.
And now as to Otway's diction. There is nothing convulsive about it;
in him, to borrow a simile from Lowell, "every word does not seem to
be underlined, like those of a school girl's letter. " In the eyes of
those to whom expression is good in proportion as it foregoes its
function of expressing, in favour of a bedizenment, as of some window
so prettily daubed that it lets in no light, the diction of Dryden,
Otway, Goldsmith, Byron may appear poor. Otway speaks the language of
nature and passion. Still, I admit that Otway's diction often does want
distinction, and his metre rhythmical quality. He has not always the
right word ready. But his language has certainly the merit of doing
more justice to his subject than that of his euphuistic predecessors.
Take, for instance, an example from that portion of the fine play,
entitled _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, on good grounds attributed to
Shakespeare. A queen, the body of whose slain lord remains unburied by
order of a cruel king, implores redress from one able to grant it in
these terms:
Oh, my petition was
Set down in ice, which by hot grief uncandied
Melts into drops * * * he that will fish
For my least minnow, let him lead his line
To catch one at my heart.
Another queen, making a similar request, assures Theseus that they are--
Rinsing our holy begging in our eyes
To make petition clear.
Can these ladies, whose sorrow must have been much mitigated by their
successful invention of such "precious" hyperboles, stand in need of
much commiseration from us? Otway's expression at its best is simple,
germane to the situation, vigorous, pregnant with the speaker's
emotion, and therefore well calculated to impregnate us with it.
In the swift impetuous parts of a play such a diction is certainly
best. Only Heywood, so far as I know, among the older dramatists,
is equally pure. But I admit that where the action pauses, where it
demands reflective soliloquy, Otway and Lee are inferior to their great
predecessors. In _Venice Preserved_, and _The Orphan_, the pace is so
tremendous, however, that we have hardly leisure to perceive their
poverty in that respect. But there are occasions, in _Don Carlos_
especially, where we do feel this inferiority, although the play is one
of Otway's finest. Thus, at the beginning of the fifth act, when the
king soliloquises on his misery in having lost the love of his bride,
there was scope and verge for poetry of reflection, which Beaumont and
Fletcher would have given, as well as Shakespeare. Dryden also would
have given it, though perhaps of a somewhat coarser grain. This passage
in Otway is poor, unworthy the occasion. His versification, moreover,
though very good sometimes, is inferior on the whole to that of Dryden.
Yet there are some passages of true reflective poetry in Otway, though
certainly few and far between. In Southerne they are almost entirely
wanting.
In _Don Carlos_ we note the same want of political and historic sense
which we had also to note in _Venice Preserved_, especially when we
compare both plays with the narratives of Saint-Réal, from which they
are taken, and which have high merit; or when we compare Otway's with
Schiller's _Don Carlos_, and even with Alfieri's tragedy, _Filippo_,
though the extraordinary concentration of the latter admits of little
historic detail. Still Alfieri's Philip is as life-like and graphic
a study of individuality as that of Saint-Réal, or Schiller; whereas
the Philip of Otway makes no pretence to being other than a mere
conventional stage-tyrant, violent, and ever in extremes; yet is he
a man capable of much tenderness also; for he actually loves the
Queen and his son, feelings of which the real Philip was incapable.
Philip's jealousy in real life, as in the other two plays, only
arises from a fierce sensual greed of personal possession, and from
wounded pride. In Otway the king repents, although too late, and
becomes reconciled to his wife and son, when he discovers that his
jealousy has made him a blind tool in the hands of the enemies of
Carlos and the Queen, and that they have not sinned in act. But the
real Philip could not have repented. He did not believe them guilty
in act. Otway's range is limited, his types are few. He could not
draw a cold deliberate villain. As for his politics, they are simply
those of an ordinary country clergyman's son. But he died very young,
with little experience. The Philip of Schiller and Alfieri is a cold,
cruel, ambitious bigot, only capable of simulating natural affection.
But in each of the three tragedies the Queen and Don Carlos are
powerfully presented. The German play has all the Elizabethan lack
of unity. Schiller's own intense and catholic sympathy with human
progress and popular aspirations dominates throughout; and while unity
of motive--for instance, in the important place given to Posa, friend
of Carlos, a magnificent humane ideal--is somewhat lacking, there is
more human verisimilitude in his play than in that of Otway, because
men and women are usually swayed by complex and manifold impulses. The
political part taken by the Queen and Prince in favour of the Flemish
rebels had indeed a great deal to do with the King's anger against
them. The splendid interview of Posa with the tyrant, and also the
Grand Inquisitor's are quite beyond Otway. Philip had wickedly married
Elisabeth, who was originally betrothed to his son Carlos, and the
conflict of conjugal duty with love is admirably rendered in all the
tragedies, although the passion and pathos are perhaps warmest in
Otway. This is the sole motive in the English and Italian plays. In
Schiller there is a whole era, "the very form and pressure" of a time.
We get as little philosophy or theology, as political and historic
sympathy from Otway. In this respect he is inferior not only to
Shakespeare, but to Dryden, who is able to afford more food for the
intellect, if less for the heart. The terse and nervous expression
of ripe and mellow life-wisdom in Dryden's _Spanish Friar_, for
instance, is very remarkable. The greater poets indeed are usually men
of great general intellectual power. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser,
Goethe, Dante, Milton, Byron, Coleridge, Browning, occur at once to
memory. Otway is perhaps exceptional in this respect. Possibly the
free-thinking sentiments so fiercely hurled in the teeth of the priest
by Pierre on the scaffold afford a clue to Otway's own attitude toward
religion. In _The Orphan_ we find the same ardour of friendship and
attachment between the sexes, the same raging despair and revolted
denial, when those fierce affections are disappointed--no faith.
Castalio's last words are--
Patience! preach it to the winds,
To roaring seas, or raging fires; the knaves
That teach it laugh at ye when ye believe them. * * *
Now all I beg is, lay me in one grave,
Thus with my love! Farewell, I now am--nothing.
And Chamfort's, the last in the play:
'Tis thus that Heaven its empire does maintain;
It may afflict, but man must not complain.
The scenes in _Don Carlos_, where Carlos and the Queen meet, are
admirably right in their abrupt, interrupted utterance, and must have
been most effective on the stage. On the whole, no better opportunity
exists for comparing the classical and romantic manners than in the
examples afforded by these three plays on the reign of Philip. Don
John's soliloquy about bastardy and free love is exceptionally good as
a purple patch of poetry in Otway, though not without a reminiscence of
Shakespeare's Edmund. There are likewise two splendid lines uttered by
the King when Gomez is tempting him to suspect his son and queen. Gomez
says:
'Tis true they gazed, but 'twas not very long.
_King. _ Lie still, my heart. Not long was't that you said?
_Gomez. _ No longer than they in your presence stayed.
_King. No longer? Why a soul in less time flies_
_To Heaven, and they have changed theirs at their eyes. _
_The Orphan_ I do not myself like so much as _Don Carlos_, but it
is full of Otway's peculiar power, and has a greater reputation.
The plot is repulsive, with a flavour of Elizabethan unsoundness.
All the mischief and misery arise from a want of moral courage
shown by Castalio, the passionate, but weak and irresolute hero,
in concealing--partly from a kind of dastardly, rakish, bravado,
and partly from fear of his father's disapproval, as well as a
certain misplaced deference to fraternal affection--his own ardent
and honourable affection for the orphan girl to whom he is secretly
married. The character of Castalio is similar to that of Jaffier,
Carlos, and of Otway himself, judging from what we know of his
relations with Mrs. Barry. Monimia is another Belvidera, though less
powerfully conceived. They are exquisite types of womanhood, own
sisters to Cordelia, Imogen, Desdemona. There is no local colour in
the play, but we miss that in _Don Carlos_ and _Venice Preserved_ more
particularly. Otway's scenes might be in abstract space. The poetry of
the period of Charles II. , William, and Anne, was singularly blind to
the face of external nature, a very serious defect; not even Greek or
Latin poetry was thus blind.
I have drawn a distinction between two kinds of poetry in drama--that
of movement or crisis, and that of repose or contemplation. The
poetry appropriate to the one condition must necessarily be different
from that appropriate to the other, and he is so far a bad poet
who confounds the species. It will be the second kind that can be
transplanted to books of beautiful extracts, and lends itself to
quotation, because that is more germane to many similar circumstances;
whereas the former belongs especially to the particular event or
crisis. In the former species I have allowed that Otway is not rich.
We look in vain for the poetry of Hamlet, of brooding, irresolute,
melancholy; for the poetry of Lorenzo, that of music; or Portia, which
is that of mercy; for any lovely words like those of Perdita, the
very breath and symphony of flowers; for any accents like those of
heart-stricken Aspatia, in her swan-song of desertion; or visionary
anthem of Helen's ideal beauty, as in Marlowe. No Claudio out of
Shakespeare has uttered a final word concerning physical death equal
to this: "To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot"; no Cæsar has fixed
for us the visible tokens of a born conspirator; no Jaques summed for
us the seasons of human life. Nor are these mere "purple patches"; far
from it, they are of the seamless garment's very warp and woof.
But, if we consider, we shall find that much of the poetry we love
best in that earlier drama is the poetry of movement or supreme event;
and this we do find in Otway, as the passages which I have already
quoted, or mentioned, are sufficient to prove. We do find in him poetry
parallel to that of mad Lear's heart-quaking utterance in presence of
Cordelia, which commences--
Pray do not mock me;
I am a very foolish fond old man,
and ends--
Do not laugh at me;
For as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
or to her answer--
And so I am, I am!
She has some cause to be angry with him, but her sisters none, he
says; and she answers "No cause! no cause! " That, which is, perhaps,
the finest passage in all literature, has not one metaphor, one trope,
one "precious" phrase; but any old injured madman might speak just so.
When poor, laughable, dissolute old Falstaff, dying, "babbles o' green
fields"; when Lear at the last apostrophises his dead Cordelia--
Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never! * * *
Pray you, undo this button. Thank you, sir! * * *
Do you see this? Look on her--look--her lips--
we can hardly bear to hear them. It is so much finer, because so much
truer to nature than when those ingeniously poetical ladies, entreating
the sepulture of their best beloved, urge that they are "rinsing their
holy begging in their eyes. " But Tourneur's Castiza takes our breath
away when she adjures the trusted and reverenced mother, who has
suffered her own better nature to be warped and darkened, and invites
her daughter to suffer moral degradation, in the words--
Mother, come from that poisonous woman there!
It is a gleam of heavenly light blinding us out of the gloom. And when
the Duchess of Malfi in her last struggle entreats--
I pray thee look thou givest my little boy
Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl
Say her prayers ere she sleep. Now what you please
we are reminded of the equally touching words of Belvidera about her
child, and the last words of dying Monimia:
When I am laid low in the grave, and quite forgotten,
May'st thou be happy in a fairer bride!
But none can ever love thee like Monimia. * * *
I'm here; who calls me? Methought I heard a voice
Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains
When all his little flock's at feed before him * * *
How my head swims. 'Tis very dark. Good night.
It is true that the poet, since he takes the liberty to translate into
verse men's ordinary language, may also interpret and mould his story,
together with the speech it may involve, artistically, according to his
own genius. But then the turn of thought, of feeling and of phraseology
must have verisimilitude, that is to say, must seem related, not only
to the event as it might appear to the poet personally, but as it
ought to appear to him when he has imagined himself into the character
and circumstances represented. Thus the strange figure made use of by
Jaffier in addressing Pierre, who is about to be tortured on the rack,
is felt to be absolutely fitting. For anger, despair, remorse, will
sometimes burst forth in hyperbole. Wisdom is justified of her children.
And now perhaps we may hardly be surprised to hear the consenting voice
of great authorities place Otway very high among the masters of English
tragedy. Dryden, though, when "fearing a rival near the throne," he had
called Otway "a barren illiterate man," said afterwards: "The motions
which are studied are never so natural as those which break out in the
height of a real passion. Mr. Otway possessed this part as thoroughly
as any of the ancients or moderns. " And again:
Charming his face and charming was his verse.
Addison says: "Otway has followed nature in the language of his
tragedy, and therefore shines in the passionate parts more than any of
our English poets. " Goldsmith again: "The English language owes very
little to Otway, though next to Shakespeare the greatest genius England
has ever produced in tragedy. " Then let us remember the beautiful lines
of Collins:
But wherefore need I wander wide
To old Ilissus' distant side,
Deserted stream and mute!
Wild Arun too has heard thy strains,
And echo 'midst my native plains
Been soothed by Pity's lute.
There first the wren thy myrtles shed
On gentlest Otway's infant head,
To him thy cell was shown,
And while he sung the female heart,
With youth's soft notes unspoiled by art,
Thy turtles mixed their own.
And Coleridge, musing upon "mighty poets in their misery dead," in his
"Monody on the death of Chatterton" sang:
Is this the land of song-ennobled line?
Is this the land where genius ne'er in vain
Poured forth his lofty strain?
Ah me, yet Spenser, gentlest bard divine,
Beneath chill disappointment's shade
His weary limbs in lonely anguish laid,
And o'er her darling dead,
Pity, hopeless, hung her head;
While 'mid the pelting of that merciless storm
Sunk to the cold earth Otway's famished form.
Respecting Otway's scenes of passionate affection, Sir Walter Scott
says that they "rival and sometimes excel those of Shakespeare; more
tears have been shed probably for the sorrows of Belvidera and Monimia
than for those of Juliet and Desdemona. "
Thomas Otway[3] was born March 3rd, 1651, at Trotton near Midhurst
in Sussex, and was the only son of the Rev. Humphrey Otway, Rector
of Wolbeding in the same county. He was educated at Wickeham School,
Winchester, and at eighteen was entered a commoner of Christ Church
College, Oxford, early in 1669. He does not display much learning, and
probably did not study very hard, but preferred amusing himself with
his friends, among whom was young Lord Falkland. He had been intended
for the Church; but the death of his father, who, as he tells us, "left
him no other patrimony than his faith and loyalty," probably obliged
him to leave Oxford without taking a degree. In 1671 he went to London
to seek his fortune there. At the theatre in Dorset Garden, Salisbury
Court, all Otway's plays, except the last, were performed by the Duke
of York's company; and here Otway himself made his first and only
appearance as an actor, taking the part of the King in Mrs. Behn's
_Forced Marriage_. This attempt was eminently unsuccessful. He seems
now to have cultivated the society of men of rank and fashion, who
tolerated him as a boon companion for the sake of his agreeable social
qualities, but who, while they helped him to get rid of his money in
many foolish ways, left him in the lurch when he needed them most.
The young Earl of Plymouth, however, a natural son of the king, and a
college friend, did befriend him. His premature death at Tangier, aged
twenty-two, was a serious loss to Otway.
The dramatist's earliest play was _Alcibiades_, first printed in
1675. It is a poor production, though there are scenes in it of
distinct promise. _Don Carlos_ appeared in the year after, and won
extraordinary favour, partly owing to the patronage of Rochester, who
dropped an author as soon as he acquired, by merit or popularity, some
independent standing, fancying that his own literary dictatorship might
be thereby imperilled. Thus he had dropped Dryden, taken up Elkanah
Settle, the "City poet," dropped him, and elevated Crowne. But Crowne's
_Calisto_ becoming too popular for the malignant wit, he transferred
his patronage to Otway. In 1677 Otway produced two translations from
the French, _Titus and Berenice_, from Racine, and _The Cheats of_
_Scapin_, from Molière. All these were rhyming, so-called "heroic"
plays, our playwrights herein following the French example. But Dryden,
in the Prologue to _Aurungzebe_, having announced that he would
henceforth abandon the use of rhyme in tragedy, other writers soon
followed his lead. The success of _Don Carlos_ was the occasion of a
coolness between Otway and Dryden, who, with the proverbial amiability
of literary rivals, said some sharp things about one another; but we
have seen how generously Dryden afterwards gave Otway his due meed of
praise. To this period, says Thornton, we may probably assign a duel
between Otway and Settle ("Doeg"), in which Settle is said to have
misbehaved.
With the fine actress, Mrs. Barry, a daughter of Colonel Barry, who
had sacrificed his fortune in the service of Charles I. , Otway fell
desperately in love. She had taken a part in his _Alcibiades_, and
became famous by her representations of Belvidera and Monimia. To
this affection, with all the depth of his character, Otway remained
constant; but Mrs. Barry did not return it; at any rate, she deemed
the attractions of Lord Rochester superior. Possibly Mr. Gosse may be
right in thinking that she was a cold and calculating woman, who would
reject a penniless lover, yet keep him dangling attendance upon her if
he wrote parts that suited her as an actress. In this case, however,
it seems odd that such parts should have suited her; and it would be
touching to note how Otway must have idealized his lady in writing
them for her. But she may honestly have preferred the witty and 5 peer
to the tragic and penniless poet--though Otway was a goodlooking man
with very fine eyes, and Rochester, according to Otway (a prejudiced
witness), looked like an owl. Yet, judging by Rochester's portraits,
he was distinguished, though rather feminine in appearance. However,
Rochester was as sincerely attached to Mrs. Barry as such a rake could
be, and she really owed him much, for he personally educated her in
the duties of her profession. Otway loved "not wisely, but too well,"
as we know from the remarkable love letters, reprinted in the appendix
to the present volume. With characteristic hotheadedness and weakness
combined he could not resolve to renounce her, even though he knew she
was Rochester's mistress. Hence the insolent bitterness of Rochester's
attack upon him in his "Session of the Poets," in which he alludes to
Otway's pitiable condition on his return from Flanders. [4] For even
Otway's human nature had to yield at last, and he could no longer bear
to hang about the Duke's Theatre, as had been his wont, in order to get
a glimpse of his lady. He therefore obtained from the Earl of Plymouth
a cornet's commission in a new regiment of horse, which was sent out
at this time (1678) to join the army under Monmouth in Flanders--not,
surely, as Mr. Gosse says, in the service of France, but, on the
contrary, to relieve Mons in the Dutch interest. Very shortly after,
however, the troops were disbanded and recalled, while the money voted
by the Commons for their payment was shamefully misappropriated, they
being paid only by debentures, the credit of which was so low that they
were hardly saleable. This is why the poet came home in so miserable a
plight, and not on account of any want of courage.
It was like Rochester to reproach him on this score--the man who showed
the white feather to Lord Mulgrave, and made lackeys cudgel Dryden
in Rose Alley. But Otway gave him as good as he got in the "Poet's
Complaint. " The matter is explained in the Epilogue to _Caius Marius_,
which he produced in 1680, having written most of it in camp abroad. It
is a barefaced, and indeed avowed plagiarism from _Romeo and Juliet_,
though one or two scenes are his own, and have some merit. Marius, at
all events, was a rather more dignified representative of Shaftesbury
than old Antonio in _Venice Preserved_. This play occupied the place
of _Romeo and Juliet_ on our stage for seventy years. With a more
avowed party motive he likewise published in the same year "The Poet's
Complaint of his Muse. " When we think of "Absalom and Achitophel,"
the contrast is woeful indeed. All Otway's poems are bad, except the
Epistle to Duke, his friend. The blunted insipidity of his conventional
diction is worthy of Pope's followers. Before leaving England he had
written his first comedy, _Friendship in Fashion_, which appeared in
1678.
In the year 1680 Otway's second great play, _The Orphan_, appeared.
Voltaire attacked it furiously, and will allow no merit to _le tendre_
_Otway_. Tenderness anywhere was not likely to find favour with the
_tigre-singe_, whose fascinating wit was of an icy brilliance. But
Jeremy Collier also attacked the play on other grounds, in his "Short
View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. " Mrs.
Barry has recorded that in the character of Monimia she could never
pronounce the words "Poor Castalio! " without tears. May she not have
been thinking of another Castalio? Let us believe it! Ah! if only Mrs.
Barry had been the Belvidera of her poet's dream, she might have saved
him from his evil genius, from his selfish patrons, and from himself.
In 1681 Otway produced _The Soldier's Fortune_, a comedy which contains
allusions to his own adventures abroad, and is the only contemporary
play not dedicated to a person of quality, being dedicated to Bentley,
the publisher. Depressed by his hopeless passion, "alternately elevated
with promises and dejected by scorn and neglect, caressed for his wit,
despised for his poverty, and exposed to all those attendant ills,
which a generous spirit feels more acutely than actual privation,
neglect, wrongs real and imaginary, the altered eye of friends," we
can hardly wonder at the gloomy tone which he assumed in the Epilogue
to this play. Can we not picture him with those large, limpid, wistful
eyes looking for the face he most wanted among the crowds, preoccupied
or listless, that passed in the gathering twilight of that afternoon,
which he mentions in the last of those letters to Mrs. Barry, lingering
among strange faces of promenaders under the trees of the gay Mall,
looking long for her who never came, never fulfilled her promise to
meet him? This seems to have been the turning point in Otway's career.
Failing in this last attempt to win his lady's love, and sinking under
accumulated debt, he, like how many others, surrendered himself to
those habits of inebriety, which insidiously promised him consolation.
And yet his creative powers were maturing daily, for his greatest work,
_Venice Preserved_, was brought upon the stage in 1682.
Since Otway's plays were well received, it may seem strange that
he should have remained so poor. But, in the first place, he was
evidently one of those generous, reckless good fellows like "Goldy,"
and Sheridan, who spend all they have, and more too. And, in the
second place, the profits of the playhouse were very small. Theatrical
amusements were not the general resort of the people--a serious
disadvantage, as Scott observes, to the art, as well as to the purse,
of the playwright. Religious scruples still withheld many, as in
Commonwealth days; and others were kept away by the indecency then
in vogue. The most popular play did not remain long on the boards.
In Otway's time, moreover, an author had only one benefit from the
representation, which was on the third night. Southerne was the first
to have two benefits, and it was not until 1729 that the profits of
three representations became the right of the author. Gildon says that
Otway got a hundred pounds a piece for _The Orphan_ and _Venice
Preserved_, while old Jacob Tonson bought the copyright of _Venice
Preserved_ for fifteen pounds. The poet was sometimes in such straits
that he had to pawn his third day for fifty pounds. He could not have
made much by his few prologues and occasional poems.
Otway's last play was a comedy called _The Atheist_, a continuation
of _The Soldier's Fortune_, represented in 1683, or the following year,
at the Theatre Royal by the united companies, who had amalgamated in
1682, and removed to Drury Lane. Charles II. died in February, 1685,
and Otway thereupon published a poem called "Windsor Castle," in which
he praised the late king, and exulted over the accession of James.
His praises of Charles were probably not much more sincere than those
which he, and other writers of the day, lavished upon people of rank
in their dedications for the sake of a few guineas. More guineas are
to be had now-a-days by flattering the whims and tastes of that
"many-headed" monarch, under whose reign we have the honour to live.
In the so-called Augustan age, literary merit was systematically
neglected. Witness Butler and Cowley. Yet Otway was the son of a
loyalist, and ever faithful to the Court. Nor was Charles incapable
of appreciating talent. But Otway, to use his own words, only got the
"pension of a prince's praise"; and a gracious command to lampoon the
greatest statesman of the time, which he did accordingly. Praise of one
who cannot be a rival is an inexpensive form of present. It appears,
however, that two of the royal mistresses were more generous--Nell
Gwynne and the Duchess of Portsmouth, whose bounty, "extended to him in
his last extremity," he extols in the dedication of _Venice Preserved_.
Otway had withdrawn from the importunate clamour of creditors to an
obscure public-house, the sign of the Bull, on Tower Hill; and here,
on the 14th of April, 1685, at the premature age of thirty-four, he
died. His body was conveyed thence to the Church of St. Clement Danes,
and there deposited in a vault. About the circumstances of his death
there is a conflict of evidence. The story that has gained currency is
probably not the true one; only one early biographer is our authority
for it. He states that, having long been insufficiently fed, Otway
one day sallied forth in a starving state, and begged a shilling from
a gentleman in a coffee house, saying, "I am the poet Otway. " This
person, surprised and distressed, gave him a guinea. With it he bought
a roll of bread, and began to devour it with the rage of hunger; but,
incapable of swallowing from long abstinence, he was choked with
the first mouthful. Other writers make no mention of this incident,
and Wood is not only silent on the subject, but states that in his
"sickness" (implying gradual decay) he composed a congratulatory poem
on the inauguration of James II. Spence, moreover, who had the anecdote
from Dennis the critic, tells quite a different story. He relates that
Otway had an intimate friend named Blakiston, who was murdered in the
street, and that, to revenge the deed, Otway pursued the assassin on
foot as far as Dover, where he was seized with a fever, occasioned by
fatigue, privation, and excitement. On his return to London, being
heated, he drank water, which was the immediate occasion of his death.
Yet undoubtedly insufficient nourishment must have accelerated his end.
It is quite possible, therefore, that the anecdote about the guinea and
the roll may be substantially true, although this circumstance may not
have been the actual cause of death.
The ardour and constancy of Otway's personal attachments are very
notable all through his career--witness his friendship with Shadwell
(though Mr. Gosse strangely calls Shadwell his enemy), with an unknown
person whom he names _Senander_, and especially with Duke, whose
expressions of fondness for him were very warm. And it now appears that
he fell a victim to this devoted comradeship, which he has so forcibly
delineated in his tragedy. "Whom the gods love die young. " Otway is
with Shelley, Keats and Byron, with Marlowe and with Chatterton.
RODEN NOEL.
* * * * *
[***] OTWAY made some translations from Ovid and Horace. He
also wrote prologues to Lee's _Constantine_ and Mrs. Behn's
_City Heiress_, with an epistle to Creech on his translation
of Lucretius, besides a few miscellaneous poems, prologues,
and epilogues. A translation from the French, the _History
of Triumvirates_, was published a year after his decease.
Moreover, it was reported that he had been engaged on an
original tragedy at the time of his death; Betterton, the
actor and manager, advertised for this play, but it was never
found. All authorities, except Mr. Gosse, agree in rejecting
as a forgery the play named _Heroic Friendship_, which a
bookseller long afterwards (in 1719) attempted to palm off upon
the public as the lost tragedy of Otway. While destitute of
all external evidence for genuineness, it is usually regarded
as a contemptible production, equally destitute of internal
evidence. Mr. Gosse indeed urges a similarity in the principal
character to the heroes of Otway. But of course to produce such
a similarity would be the obvious resort of any forger. It was
printed, though never acted. Gildon relates that Otway was very
fond of punch, and that the last thing he wrote was a song in
praise of it.
William Oldys, in his famous annotated copy of Langbaine's
_Dramatic Poets_, in the British Museum, thus writes of Otway:
"There is an excellent and beautiful picture of Mr. Otway,
who was a fine, portly, graceful man, now among the poetical
collection of Lord Chesterfield (I think it was painted by
John Ryley), in a full bottom wig, and nothing like that
quakerish figure which Knapton has impost upon the world. "
Interlined is the following: "He was of middle size, about
5 ft. 7 in. , inclinable to corpulency, had thoughtful, yet
lively, and, as it were, speaking eyes. "
I am indebted to Dr. Grosart for the foregoing quotation, and
have to express my thanks to Mr. S. W. Orson for numerous
textual suggestions and emendations.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In Mr. Saintsbury's admirable monograph on Dryden (_English Men
of Letters_) we have, for the first time, the truth told about the
origins of the so-called "heroic" drama in England--a semi-operatic
creation of Sir W. Davenant under the Protectorate. But though the
rhyme may have come from France, it seems to me that for the rant our
Restoration playwrights need not have looked so far as the Scudéry
romance, or the Spanish poetry; they had examples nearer home, which
is equally true of the "conceits. " Dryden is the father of modern
prose, and the father of didactic verse, even, one may say, of modern
satire also. Now, if a man achieve a reputation for eminence in one
department, his eminence in another, however indisputable, is sure to
be disputed. It has seemed evident to critics (and consequently to
bookmakers) that since he was a critic he could not be a poet. Yet he
was certainly both. He is more than what Matthew Arnold names him, a
"classic of our prose. "
[2] Shall we find such things in the modern creations of Scott, George
Sand, Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë (possibly we may in Emily Brontë),
Thomas Hardy, or Tolstoi?
[3] Respecting Otway's life, my chief authority is Thornton, who has
prefixed the best sketch I know of to the best edition of the poet's
works; but I have also consulted other authorities, and read Mr.
Gosse's interesting essay in his "Seventeenth Century Studies," &c.
Thornton's text has been usually followed in the present volume; with,
however, numerous emendations, the result of collation with the early
editions.
[4]
Tom Otway came next, Tom Shadwell's dear Zany,
And swears for heroics he writes best of any;
_Don Carlos_ his pockets so amply had filled
That his mange was quite cured and his lice were all killed;
But Apollo had seen his face on the stage,
And prudently did not think fit to engage
The scum of a playhouse for the prop of an age.
Wood mentions that it was reported the poet came back from Flanders
"mangy, and covered with vermin. "
_DON CARLOS, PRINCE OF SPAIN. _
Principibus placuisse viris non ultima laus est. --
HOR. , Ep. 17, Lib. I. [5]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Besides the writers mentioned in my Introduction, Campistron, a pupil
of Racine, founded a play called _Andronic_ on this same history of
_Don Carlos_. Some Spanish historians, in the interest of Philip,
have tried to blacken the character of his son. But the Abbé de San
Real (who has been called the French Sallust) seems to have estimated
him rightly, while the dramatists have, on the whole, adopted the
Frenchman's conception, which was apparently derived from reliable
Spanish sources. The motto prefixed from Horace is in allusion to
the fact that this play received the approbation of the King and the
Duke of York. It had a long success at the theatre, and we may agree
with those who called it, as Otway tells us in the preface, the best
"heroic" play of the time--containing, as it does, far less of rant and
confusion, but more of nature and passion, than the "heroic" plays of
Dryden--though _Aurungzebe_ may not be far behind it. Booth, the actor,
was informed by Betterton that _Don Carlos_ continued for several years
to attract larger audiences than _The Orphan_ or _Venice Preserved_. It
was first represented at the Duke's Theatre in the year 1676, and was
published in the same year.
Philip II. , son of the Emperor Charles V. , became King of Naples and
Sicily in 1554 on his father's abdication, and King Consort of England
by his marriage with Mary two years after he ascended the Spanish
throne. In 1557 he gained the victory of St. Quentin, which might have
made him master of France, but he did not follow it up, being, it
is said, so elated and yet terrified that he vowed: first, never to
engage in another fight, and secondly, to found a monastery in honour
of St. Lawrence at Escorial. Later came the great rebellion of the Low
Countries, which, in spite of Alva's ability, sanguinary cruelty, and
persecutions, resulted in the independence of "the United Provinces,"
and the triumph of the reformed faith.
the shades of Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, Congreve, and Sheridan.
On the whole, then, while there is less inexhaustible prodigality, and
force of unfettered genius in the Restoration than in the Elizabethan
drama, we have still left dramatic energy of high enduring quality,
which became, however, nearly extinct in the reigns immediately
succeeding. Under Charles, what was good in the romantic movement was
still retained; the shifting, many-coloured sheen of vigorous life is
yet there, the sun-and-shadow chequer of grave and gay; but classic
exemplars have moderated, and moulded the work to finer, more regular
form. There is less of exceptional extravagance in the story, less of
inconceivable and sudden metamorphosis or distortion in the characters,
the unpleasant and bewildering effect in earlier plays being almost
as when an acrobat proceeds to walk with long, lithe, serpentine body
round his own head; less also of the over-elaborated, misplaced,
unveracious ingenuity of so-called poetic diction. One may generously
attribute all this to the extravagance of national and literary youth,
but the drama of Spain and Italy ought possibly to bear some of the
responsibility. At any rate, these are grave defects.
I will illustrate what I mean. It is surely with a shudder of
incredulous aversion that we find an apparently kind and cordial
king, in Fletcher's _Maid's Tragedy_, insisting upon a pure-hearted,
generous, young courtier, Amintor, who adored him with superstitious
reverence, breaking off his engagement to Aspatia, a noble maiden, and
marrying the king's mistress, Evadne, in order the better to conceal,
and carry on with more security his own guilty intrigue with her,
and father his own bastards upon this loyal friend. Our incredulous
aversion is, if possible, intensified when Amintor assents to his own
dishonour, because it is the king who has compassed it. Not all the
poetry put into the mouth of "lost Aspatia," nor all the knowledge of
human nature displayed by the poet in the seeming inconsistency of
this evil woman's mongrel repentance at the bidding of her brother,
and conversion from cruel looseness to equally cruel respectability,
and base desire to vindicate her own damaged reputation even by the
treacherous murder of her royal lover, can condone for this initial,
radical vice of unnatural motive. No lovely tropes and phrases, nor
harmonies of verbal measure may condone this. It is with equally
incredulous aversion that we find Massinger's _Duke of Milan_ bidding
his creature Francisco kill the Duchess, who is devoted to him, and to
whom he is devoted, should she happen to survive him--which, as Hazlitt
says, seems a start of frenzy rather than a dictate of passion--then
veering idiotically from love to murderous hatred upon the mere
assertion of this same creature, Francisco, that his long proved and
virtuous wife has solicited him, Francisco, dishonourably, he in fact
having solicited her unsuccessfully. With some difficulty we accept
the mercurial and hotheaded gullibility of Othello, played upon by so
cunning a devil as Iago; but we revolt from so poor and pinchbeck a
copy as this.
The early drama, in its poetic beauty of individual passages, and
frequent verisimilitude in the working out of given motives, now and
again reminds me of the character attributed to madmen, that they are
persons who reason logically, but on absurd or mistaken premises.
And surely Hazlitt, not Lamb, is right about that celebrated scene
in Ford's _Broken Heart_, where Calantha dances on, apparently
indifferent, while messengers come successively to tell her of
misfortune upon misfortune, death upon death; then, when the revel is
over, dies suddenly from pent-up emotion. "This appears to me to be
tragedy in masquerade, the true false gallop of sentiment; anything
more artificial or mechanical I cannot conceive. " That a woman should
thus silence the voice of humanity, not from necessity, or for some
great purpose, but out of regard to mere outward decorum of behaviour,
for the mere effect and _éclat_ of the thing, is not fortitude but
affectation. It often seems as if the Elizabethan and Caroline poets
wrote their plays for the sake of working up to some striking and
effective situation, and as if it were of little consequence to them
how difficult or impossible the way that led thither might be, so
long as they could hew their path there. Even the splendid scenes in
Cyril Tourneur's _Revenger's Tragedy_, where the brothers assume a
disguise in order to tempt their sister to unchastity, and procure
their mother's consent to it, then threaten to kill their mother for
consenting, appear to be open to the same objection. [2]
But I wish to emphasize the fact that the drama of Otway, whatever its
shortcomings, is, in this respect of sobriety and truth to nature,
superior on the whole to that of his illustrious forerunners. And
surely a good deal of cant is now uttered about the academic insipidity
and coldness of Corneille and Racine, who influenced our later drama,
and who powerfully moved the men of their own day. What can be nobler
than _Athalie_, _Britannicus_, or _The Cid_? Academic coldness is
hardly the phrase that rises to one's lips when one is watching Sarah
Bernhardt in _Phèdre_; while no comedy is superior to Molière's. If
these men moved in golden fetters, they were strong enough to wear them
as ornaments, rather than sink under them as impediments. Under the kid
glove you feel the iron thews.
None of this incredulous aversion of which I spoke do we feel in
reading Otway's _Venice Preserved_. Dryden averred that he could not
move the feelings as could Otway, who, while inferior in reflection,
poetic expression, and versification, was a greater master of pathos
and passion. On the latter acts of _Venice Preserved_ we are hurried
breathlessly, as by the impetus of a mighty wave, shaken to the very
depths--yet not, I think, unendurably, as by the hideous and gratuitous
cruelty of Ferdinand exercised upon a little-offending sister in
Webster's _Duchess of Malfi_, where horror upon horror is accumulated
upon her head, to thrill and harrow us; and so powerful is the poet
that only those can experience the pleasure which art should extract
from pain, who enjoy the sight of an execution, or sniff gladly in a
torture-chamber the fumes of spilt blood. We begin to breathe freely
only when the monster, having filled up the measure of his unnatural
malice, utters the fine line that first shows a faint relenting toward
humanity:
Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young.
The Elizabethans were superior to their successors in isolated
passages, and for the most part incomparably so in their lyrics.
Therefore, they are well represented in the "Dramatic specimens" of
Charles Lamb. Otway could not be so represented; his excellence lies
in the noble organic harmony and sanity of his whole creation, as in
its emotional intensity, from which little can be detached that shall
be admirable out of its own vital relation. I do not say that Dryden
and Otway never attempt to enlist interest illegitimately in their
tragedies by relying upon strained situations, and abnormal traits
of character; but I believe they do so less than their predecessors.
And I hardly think Mr. Symonds' excuse for the Elizabethans a valid
one, when he urges that the men and women of that time were really as
inconsistent as the playwrights represent them. I do not know that we
have any historical instance of just that queer kind of inconsistency
which we find in their pages, though I admit that not only history,
but our own experience also, furnishes very strange examples of
self-contradiction. Yet one can only say that the examples of it in
the older drama are not, for the most part, rendered credible and
probable to us. And, so far, therefore, this is not a drama which can
be always and universally interesting, except in the supreme examples.
In the same way Otway's and Wycherley's indecencies would hardly (one
supposes) interest a Victorian audience. The intellectual, or ethical,
atmosphere must not be too unfamiliar and alien.
We are not incredulous when Jaffier, the weak, affectionate, impulsive
hero of _Venice Preserved_, maddened by the persecution of his adored
bride, Belvidera, on the part of her implacable father, who is also
a senator, suddenly, and without counting the cost, from motives
of revenge and hope of better fortune, consents to take part in a
conspiracy against the State, persuaded by his dearest friend, Pierre,
a man of sterner and more homogeneous fibre. Nor are we incredulous
when, realising with his tender heart what hideous consequences
are likely to ensue in the disturbance of domestic peace, and the
slaughter of so many innocent people, he allows himself, however
reluctantly, to be over-persuaded by Belvidera, who comprehends that
the murder of her father, with all the other senators, is intended;
or when, thus over-persuaded, he renounces his purpose, and betrays
his fellow-conspirators, including even his well-beloved friend, to
the Doge and Senate. We are not incredulous when we see Jaffier, on
his way to the Senate, walking as in a dream under spell of his adored
Belvidera's more powerful will, and hear him say in some of the most
beautiful lines the poet wrote:
Come, lead me forward now, like a tame lamb,
To sacrifice: thus in his fatal garlands
Decked fine, and pleased the wanton skips and plays,
Trots by the enticing flattering priestess' side,
And much transported with his little pride,
Forgets his dear companions of the plain;
Till by her bound he's on the altar lain;
Yet then he hardly bleats, such pleasure's in the pain.
The catastrophe we feel inevitably to follow from the given elements in
their fusion and entanglement, the cruel injustice of the father, the
weak and foolish impulsiveness of the hero, together with his ardent
affection both to bride and friend, and the co-existent corruption
in the State, which made that sinister intrigue against the Republic
possible.
I cannot agree with Dr. Garnett that the interest of Otway's plays
arises from the situation only, not from the characters. It appears to
me that the humanity of the characters is strongly realised, and that
we are made to sympathise with them profoundly. As to Addison's remark
that the characters are mostly wicked, I hardly know what to say. The
heroines are ideally good, and the others are neither better nor worse
than average men and women. If Shakespeare has given us types--though
these are also individuals--of ambition, jealousy, revengeful avarice,
unpractical genius, showing us the natural issues and eventuations of
these, Otway has given us one type, equally individual, of weak, but
absorbing, and passionate affection, showing us the natural issues of
this. As Johnson says, he "consulted nature in his own breast. "
Having then revealed the intended treason, after extorting an oath from
the Senate to spare the lives of his coadjutors, Jaffier is confronted
with Pierre and the rest. Then follows a tremendous scene, in which
Jaffier almost abjectly implores Pierre for pardon, and the latter
spurns him as one proved unworthy the friendship of an honest man,
finally striking and hurling Jaffier from him. The words he uses to
his former friend are worse even than the blow; their venom can never
cease to rankle. The blunt, open and magnanimous, though reckless
and desperate character of Pierre is finely contrasted with that of
Jaffier, luxuriously feminine in its sensibility. Jaffier urges that
he has at least saved Pierre's life, to which his old friend makes the
terrible reply:
I scorn it more because preserved by thee.
When Belvidera was delivered by Jaffier, in pledge of his own good
faith, into the hands of the conspirators, he gave them a dagger,
charging them to despatch her, should he prove traitor, The Senate,
false to their oath, condemned the rebels to death with torture; indeed
the latter had refused to accept their lives with bondage at the hands
of the Republic. Belvidera tells Jaffier this, and then he feels
tempted to slay with that dagger her who has incited him to compass the
ruin of his beloved friend. This is another tremendous scene. Prevented
by the returning and overwhelming tide of love from executing his
purpose, Jaffier bids her go to her father, and from him as senator
beg the life of Pierre. She does so, and the old man, relenting at the
sight of his yet beloved child kneeling in agony before him, grants
her prayer. This part also is very beautiful. But his attempt to save
Pierre comes too late. In their final most moving interview Jaffier
tells Belvidera that he will not survive his friend. He commends his
beloved to Heaven, calling down every blessing upon her. But when she
understands that they are to part for ever she exclaims:
Oh! call back
Your cruel blessing; stay with me and curse me!
* * * Leave thy dagger with me.
Bequeath me something--Not one kiss at parting? * * *
Another, sure another,
For that poor little one you've taken care of;
I'll give it him truly.
Then her mind gives way, and in the fearful soliloquy that follows,
Otway reminds us of the power shown by Shakespeare in dealing with
minds unhinged. Jaffier being allowed to take leave of Pierre on the
scaffold, Pierre forgives him, but requests, as a last favour, that his
friend will save him from the dishonour of public torture by killing
him at the last moment. Jaffier promises, and does so, stabbing himself
immediately after. In the last scene, Belvidera enters distracted:
Come, come, come, come, nay come to bed,
Pr'ythee my love! The winds! Hark how they whistle,
And the rain beats; oh! how the weather shrinks me!
You're angry now; who cares? * * * [JAFFIER'S _ghost rises_.
Are you returned? See, father, here he's come again!
Am I to blame to love him? Oh, the dear one! [_Ghost sinks. _
Why do you fly me? Are you angry still then?
Father, where art thou? Father, why do you do thus?
Stand off. Don't hide him from me. He's here somewhere.
The apparitions of Jaffier and Pierre rise again bleeding. When they
sink, she vows passionately that she will dig for them till she find
them; and, imagining that they are drawing her downward, she dies.
Though nearly all authorities have objected vehemently to the gross
quasi-comic scenes with which Otway has lightened the intense gloom of
his tragedy, I am not sure that the illustrious French critic, Taine,
is not right in his approval of them. However ghastly, they give some
relief. Though coarse and disgusting, they do stand out distinctly
in the memory. The conspirators met at the house of one Aquilina, a
Greek courtesan, who had private motives for favouring their cause.
The old senator, Antonio (intended for a caricature of the debauched
Shaftesbury), had robbed Pierre of this mistress, which was one of
his main incentives to plotting against the State. Taine's comment on
the picture is striking: "Comme l'homme est prompt à s'avilir, quand,
échappé de son rôle, il revient à lui-même! " He thinks that Otway alone
in that epoch reproduced the tragedy of Shakespeare: "Il ne lui manque
que de naître cent ans plus tôt. " Perhaps; only his form might then
have suffered.
And now as to Otway's diction. There is nothing convulsive about it;
in him, to borrow a simile from Lowell, "every word does not seem to
be underlined, like those of a school girl's letter. " In the eyes of
those to whom expression is good in proportion as it foregoes its
function of expressing, in favour of a bedizenment, as of some window
so prettily daubed that it lets in no light, the diction of Dryden,
Otway, Goldsmith, Byron may appear poor. Otway speaks the language of
nature and passion. Still, I admit that Otway's diction often does want
distinction, and his metre rhythmical quality. He has not always the
right word ready. But his language has certainly the merit of doing
more justice to his subject than that of his euphuistic predecessors.
Take, for instance, an example from that portion of the fine play,
entitled _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, on good grounds attributed to
Shakespeare. A queen, the body of whose slain lord remains unburied by
order of a cruel king, implores redress from one able to grant it in
these terms:
Oh, my petition was
Set down in ice, which by hot grief uncandied
Melts into drops * * * he that will fish
For my least minnow, let him lead his line
To catch one at my heart.
Another queen, making a similar request, assures Theseus that they are--
Rinsing our holy begging in our eyes
To make petition clear.
Can these ladies, whose sorrow must have been much mitigated by their
successful invention of such "precious" hyperboles, stand in need of
much commiseration from us? Otway's expression at its best is simple,
germane to the situation, vigorous, pregnant with the speaker's
emotion, and therefore well calculated to impregnate us with it.
In the swift impetuous parts of a play such a diction is certainly
best. Only Heywood, so far as I know, among the older dramatists,
is equally pure. But I admit that where the action pauses, where it
demands reflective soliloquy, Otway and Lee are inferior to their great
predecessors. In _Venice Preserved_, and _The Orphan_, the pace is so
tremendous, however, that we have hardly leisure to perceive their
poverty in that respect. But there are occasions, in _Don Carlos_
especially, where we do feel this inferiority, although the play is one
of Otway's finest. Thus, at the beginning of the fifth act, when the
king soliloquises on his misery in having lost the love of his bride,
there was scope and verge for poetry of reflection, which Beaumont and
Fletcher would have given, as well as Shakespeare. Dryden also would
have given it, though perhaps of a somewhat coarser grain. This passage
in Otway is poor, unworthy the occasion. His versification, moreover,
though very good sometimes, is inferior on the whole to that of Dryden.
Yet there are some passages of true reflective poetry in Otway, though
certainly few and far between. In Southerne they are almost entirely
wanting.
In _Don Carlos_ we note the same want of political and historic sense
which we had also to note in _Venice Preserved_, especially when we
compare both plays with the narratives of Saint-Réal, from which they
are taken, and which have high merit; or when we compare Otway's with
Schiller's _Don Carlos_, and even with Alfieri's tragedy, _Filippo_,
though the extraordinary concentration of the latter admits of little
historic detail. Still Alfieri's Philip is as life-like and graphic
a study of individuality as that of Saint-Réal, or Schiller; whereas
the Philip of Otway makes no pretence to being other than a mere
conventional stage-tyrant, violent, and ever in extremes; yet is he
a man capable of much tenderness also; for he actually loves the
Queen and his son, feelings of which the real Philip was incapable.
Philip's jealousy in real life, as in the other two plays, only
arises from a fierce sensual greed of personal possession, and from
wounded pride. In Otway the king repents, although too late, and
becomes reconciled to his wife and son, when he discovers that his
jealousy has made him a blind tool in the hands of the enemies of
Carlos and the Queen, and that they have not sinned in act. But the
real Philip could not have repented. He did not believe them guilty
in act. Otway's range is limited, his types are few. He could not
draw a cold deliberate villain. As for his politics, they are simply
those of an ordinary country clergyman's son. But he died very young,
with little experience. The Philip of Schiller and Alfieri is a cold,
cruel, ambitious bigot, only capable of simulating natural affection.
But in each of the three tragedies the Queen and Don Carlos are
powerfully presented. The German play has all the Elizabethan lack
of unity. Schiller's own intense and catholic sympathy with human
progress and popular aspirations dominates throughout; and while unity
of motive--for instance, in the important place given to Posa, friend
of Carlos, a magnificent humane ideal--is somewhat lacking, there is
more human verisimilitude in his play than in that of Otway, because
men and women are usually swayed by complex and manifold impulses. The
political part taken by the Queen and Prince in favour of the Flemish
rebels had indeed a great deal to do with the King's anger against
them. The splendid interview of Posa with the tyrant, and also the
Grand Inquisitor's are quite beyond Otway. Philip had wickedly married
Elisabeth, who was originally betrothed to his son Carlos, and the
conflict of conjugal duty with love is admirably rendered in all the
tragedies, although the passion and pathos are perhaps warmest in
Otway. This is the sole motive in the English and Italian plays. In
Schiller there is a whole era, "the very form and pressure" of a time.
We get as little philosophy or theology, as political and historic
sympathy from Otway. In this respect he is inferior not only to
Shakespeare, but to Dryden, who is able to afford more food for the
intellect, if less for the heart. The terse and nervous expression
of ripe and mellow life-wisdom in Dryden's _Spanish Friar_, for
instance, is very remarkable. The greater poets indeed are usually men
of great general intellectual power. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser,
Goethe, Dante, Milton, Byron, Coleridge, Browning, occur at once to
memory. Otway is perhaps exceptional in this respect. Possibly the
free-thinking sentiments so fiercely hurled in the teeth of the priest
by Pierre on the scaffold afford a clue to Otway's own attitude toward
religion. In _The Orphan_ we find the same ardour of friendship and
attachment between the sexes, the same raging despair and revolted
denial, when those fierce affections are disappointed--no faith.
Castalio's last words are--
Patience! preach it to the winds,
To roaring seas, or raging fires; the knaves
That teach it laugh at ye when ye believe them. * * *
Now all I beg is, lay me in one grave,
Thus with my love! Farewell, I now am--nothing.
And Chamfort's, the last in the play:
'Tis thus that Heaven its empire does maintain;
It may afflict, but man must not complain.
The scenes in _Don Carlos_, where Carlos and the Queen meet, are
admirably right in their abrupt, interrupted utterance, and must have
been most effective on the stage. On the whole, no better opportunity
exists for comparing the classical and romantic manners than in the
examples afforded by these three plays on the reign of Philip. Don
John's soliloquy about bastardy and free love is exceptionally good as
a purple patch of poetry in Otway, though not without a reminiscence of
Shakespeare's Edmund. There are likewise two splendid lines uttered by
the King when Gomez is tempting him to suspect his son and queen. Gomez
says:
'Tis true they gazed, but 'twas not very long.
_King. _ Lie still, my heart. Not long was't that you said?
_Gomez. _ No longer than they in your presence stayed.
_King. No longer? Why a soul in less time flies_
_To Heaven, and they have changed theirs at their eyes. _
_The Orphan_ I do not myself like so much as _Don Carlos_, but it
is full of Otway's peculiar power, and has a greater reputation.
The plot is repulsive, with a flavour of Elizabethan unsoundness.
All the mischief and misery arise from a want of moral courage
shown by Castalio, the passionate, but weak and irresolute hero,
in concealing--partly from a kind of dastardly, rakish, bravado,
and partly from fear of his father's disapproval, as well as a
certain misplaced deference to fraternal affection--his own ardent
and honourable affection for the orphan girl to whom he is secretly
married. The character of Castalio is similar to that of Jaffier,
Carlos, and of Otway himself, judging from what we know of his
relations with Mrs. Barry. Monimia is another Belvidera, though less
powerfully conceived. They are exquisite types of womanhood, own
sisters to Cordelia, Imogen, Desdemona. There is no local colour in
the play, but we miss that in _Don Carlos_ and _Venice Preserved_ more
particularly. Otway's scenes might be in abstract space. The poetry of
the period of Charles II. , William, and Anne, was singularly blind to
the face of external nature, a very serious defect; not even Greek or
Latin poetry was thus blind.
I have drawn a distinction between two kinds of poetry in drama--that
of movement or crisis, and that of repose or contemplation. The
poetry appropriate to the one condition must necessarily be different
from that appropriate to the other, and he is so far a bad poet
who confounds the species. It will be the second kind that can be
transplanted to books of beautiful extracts, and lends itself to
quotation, because that is more germane to many similar circumstances;
whereas the former belongs especially to the particular event or
crisis. In the former species I have allowed that Otway is not rich.
We look in vain for the poetry of Hamlet, of brooding, irresolute,
melancholy; for the poetry of Lorenzo, that of music; or Portia, which
is that of mercy; for any lovely words like those of Perdita, the
very breath and symphony of flowers; for any accents like those of
heart-stricken Aspatia, in her swan-song of desertion; or visionary
anthem of Helen's ideal beauty, as in Marlowe. No Claudio out of
Shakespeare has uttered a final word concerning physical death equal
to this: "To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot"; no Cæsar has fixed
for us the visible tokens of a born conspirator; no Jaques summed for
us the seasons of human life. Nor are these mere "purple patches"; far
from it, they are of the seamless garment's very warp and woof.
But, if we consider, we shall find that much of the poetry we love
best in that earlier drama is the poetry of movement or supreme event;
and this we do find in Otway, as the passages which I have already
quoted, or mentioned, are sufficient to prove. We do find in him poetry
parallel to that of mad Lear's heart-quaking utterance in presence of
Cordelia, which commences--
Pray do not mock me;
I am a very foolish fond old man,
and ends--
Do not laugh at me;
For as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
or to her answer--
And so I am, I am!
She has some cause to be angry with him, but her sisters none, he
says; and she answers "No cause! no cause! " That, which is, perhaps,
the finest passage in all literature, has not one metaphor, one trope,
one "precious" phrase; but any old injured madman might speak just so.
When poor, laughable, dissolute old Falstaff, dying, "babbles o' green
fields"; when Lear at the last apostrophises his dead Cordelia--
Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never! * * *
Pray you, undo this button. Thank you, sir! * * *
Do you see this? Look on her--look--her lips--
we can hardly bear to hear them. It is so much finer, because so much
truer to nature than when those ingeniously poetical ladies, entreating
the sepulture of their best beloved, urge that they are "rinsing their
holy begging in their eyes. " But Tourneur's Castiza takes our breath
away when she adjures the trusted and reverenced mother, who has
suffered her own better nature to be warped and darkened, and invites
her daughter to suffer moral degradation, in the words--
Mother, come from that poisonous woman there!
It is a gleam of heavenly light blinding us out of the gloom. And when
the Duchess of Malfi in her last struggle entreats--
I pray thee look thou givest my little boy
Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl
Say her prayers ere she sleep. Now what you please
we are reminded of the equally touching words of Belvidera about her
child, and the last words of dying Monimia:
When I am laid low in the grave, and quite forgotten,
May'st thou be happy in a fairer bride!
But none can ever love thee like Monimia. * * *
I'm here; who calls me? Methought I heard a voice
Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains
When all his little flock's at feed before him * * *
How my head swims. 'Tis very dark. Good night.
It is true that the poet, since he takes the liberty to translate into
verse men's ordinary language, may also interpret and mould his story,
together with the speech it may involve, artistically, according to his
own genius. But then the turn of thought, of feeling and of phraseology
must have verisimilitude, that is to say, must seem related, not only
to the event as it might appear to the poet personally, but as it
ought to appear to him when he has imagined himself into the character
and circumstances represented. Thus the strange figure made use of by
Jaffier in addressing Pierre, who is about to be tortured on the rack,
is felt to be absolutely fitting. For anger, despair, remorse, will
sometimes burst forth in hyperbole. Wisdom is justified of her children.
And now perhaps we may hardly be surprised to hear the consenting voice
of great authorities place Otway very high among the masters of English
tragedy. Dryden, though, when "fearing a rival near the throne," he had
called Otway "a barren illiterate man," said afterwards: "The motions
which are studied are never so natural as those which break out in the
height of a real passion. Mr. Otway possessed this part as thoroughly
as any of the ancients or moderns. " And again:
Charming his face and charming was his verse.
Addison says: "Otway has followed nature in the language of his
tragedy, and therefore shines in the passionate parts more than any of
our English poets. " Goldsmith again: "The English language owes very
little to Otway, though next to Shakespeare the greatest genius England
has ever produced in tragedy. " Then let us remember the beautiful lines
of Collins:
But wherefore need I wander wide
To old Ilissus' distant side,
Deserted stream and mute!
Wild Arun too has heard thy strains,
And echo 'midst my native plains
Been soothed by Pity's lute.
There first the wren thy myrtles shed
On gentlest Otway's infant head,
To him thy cell was shown,
And while he sung the female heart,
With youth's soft notes unspoiled by art,
Thy turtles mixed their own.
And Coleridge, musing upon "mighty poets in their misery dead," in his
"Monody on the death of Chatterton" sang:
Is this the land of song-ennobled line?
Is this the land where genius ne'er in vain
Poured forth his lofty strain?
Ah me, yet Spenser, gentlest bard divine,
Beneath chill disappointment's shade
His weary limbs in lonely anguish laid,
And o'er her darling dead,
Pity, hopeless, hung her head;
While 'mid the pelting of that merciless storm
Sunk to the cold earth Otway's famished form.
Respecting Otway's scenes of passionate affection, Sir Walter Scott
says that they "rival and sometimes excel those of Shakespeare; more
tears have been shed probably for the sorrows of Belvidera and Monimia
than for those of Juliet and Desdemona. "
Thomas Otway[3] was born March 3rd, 1651, at Trotton near Midhurst
in Sussex, and was the only son of the Rev. Humphrey Otway, Rector
of Wolbeding in the same county. He was educated at Wickeham School,
Winchester, and at eighteen was entered a commoner of Christ Church
College, Oxford, early in 1669. He does not display much learning, and
probably did not study very hard, but preferred amusing himself with
his friends, among whom was young Lord Falkland. He had been intended
for the Church; but the death of his father, who, as he tells us, "left
him no other patrimony than his faith and loyalty," probably obliged
him to leave Oxford without taking a degree. In 1671 he went to London
to seek his fortune there. At the theatre in Dorset Garden, Salisbury
Court, all Otway's plays, except the last, were performed by the Duke
of York's company; and here Otway himself made his first and only
appearance as an actor, taking the part of the King in Mrs. Behn's
_Forced Marriage_. This attempt was eminently unsuccessful. He seems
now to have cultivated the society of men of rank and fashion, who
tolerated him as a boon companion for the sake of his agreeable social
qualities, but who, while they helped him to get rid of his money in
many foolish ways, left him in the lurch when he needed them most.
The young Earl of Plymouth, however, a natural son of the king, and a
college friend, did befriend him. His premature death at Tangier, aged
twenty-two, was a serious loss to Otway.
The dramatist's earliest play was _Alcibiades_, first printed in
1675. It is a poor production, though there are scenes in it of
distinct promise. _Don Carlos_ appeared in the year after, and won
extraordinary favour, partly owing to the patronage of Rochester, who
dropped an author as soon as he acquired, by merit or popularity, some
independent standing, fancying that his own literary dictatorship might
be thereby imperilled. Thus he had dropped Dryden, taken up Elkanah
Settle, the "City poet," dropped him, and elevated Crowne. But Crowne's
_Calisto_ becoming too popular for the malignant wit, he transferred
his patronage to Otway. In 1677 Otway produced two translations from
the French, _Titus and Berenice_, from Racine, and _The Cheats of_
_Scapin_, from Molière. All these were rhyming, so-called "heroic"
plays, our playwrights herein following the French example. But Dryden,
in the Prologue to _Aurungzebe_, having announced that he would
henceforth abandon the use of rhyme in tragedy, other writers soon
followed his lead. The success of _Don Carlos_ was the occasion of a
coolness between Otway and Dryden, who, with the proverbial amiability
of literary rivals, said some sharp things about one another; but we
have seen how generously Dryden afterwards gave Otway his due meed of
praise. To this period, says Thornton, we may probably assign a duel
between Otway and Settle ("Doeg"), in which Settle is said to have
misbehaved.
With the fine actress, Mrs. Barry, a daughter of Colonel Barry, who
had sacrificed his fortune in the service of Charles I. , Otway fell
desperately in love. She had taken a part in his _Alcibiades_, and
became famous by her representations of Belvidera and Monimia. To
this affection, with all the depth of his character, Otway remained
constant; but Mrs. Barry did not return it; at any rate, she deemed
the attractions of Lord Rochester superior. Possibly Mr. Gosse may be
right in thinking that she was a cold and calculating woman, who would
reject a penniless lover, yet keep him dangling attendance upon her if
he wrote parts that suited her as an actress. In this case, however,
it seems odd that such parts should have suited her; and it would be
touching to note how Otway must have idealized his lady in writing
them for her. But she may honestly have preferred the witty and 5 peer
to the tragic and penniless poet--though Otway was a goodlooking man
with very fine eyes, and Rochester, according to Otway (a prejudiced
witness), looked like an owl. Yet, judging by Rochester's portraits,
he was distinguished, though rather feminine in appearance. However,
Rochester was as sincerely attached to Mrs. Barry as such a rake could
be, and she really owed him much, for he personally educated her in
the duties of her profession. Otway loved "not wisely, but too well,"
as we know from the remarkable love letters, reprinted in the appendix
to the present volume. With characteristic hotheadedness and weakness
combined he could not resolve to renounce her, even though he knew she
was Rochester's mistress. Hence the insolent bitterness of Rochester's
attack upon him in his "Session of the Poets," in which he alludes to
Otway's pitiable condition on his return from Flanders. [4] For even
Otway's human nature had to yield at last, and he could no longer bear
to hang about the Duke's Theatre, as had been his wont, in order to get
a glimpse of his lady. He therefore obtained from the Earl of Plymouth
a cornet's commission in a new regiment of horse, which was sent out
at this time (1678) to join the army under Monmouth in Flanders--not,
surely, as Mr. Gosse says, in the service of France, but, on the
contrary, to relieve Mons in the Dutch interest. Very shortly after,
however, the troops were disbanded and recalled, while the money voted
by the Commons for their payment was shamefully misappropriated, they
being paid only by debentures, the credit of which was so low that they
were hardly saleable. This is why the poet came home in so miserable a
plight, and not on account of any want of courage.
It was like Rochester to reproach him on this score--the man who showed
the white feather to Lord Mulgrave, and made lackeys cudgel Dryden
in Rose Alley. But Otway gave him as good as he got in the "Poet's
Complaint. " The matter is explained in the Epilogue to _Caius Marius_,
which he produced in 1680, having written most of it in camp abroad. It
is a barefaced, and indeed avowed plagiarism from _Romeo and Juliet_,
though one or two scenes are his own, and have some merit. Marius, at
all events, was a rather more dignified representative of Shaftesbury
than old Antonio in _Venice Preserved_. This play occupied the place
of _Romeo and Juliet_ on our stage for seventy years. With a more
avowed party motive he likewise published in the same year "The Poet's
Complaint of his Muse. " When we think of "Absalom and Achitophel,"
the contrast is woeful indeed. All Otway's poems are bad, except the
Epistle to Duke, his friend. The blunted insipidity of his conventional
diction is worthy of Pope's followers. Before leaving England he had
written his first comedy, _Friendship in Fashion_, which appeared in
1678.
In the year 1680 Otway's second great play, _The Orphan_, appeared.
Voltaire attacked it furiously, and will allow no merit to _le tendre_
_Otway_. Tenderness anywhere was not likely to find favour with the
_tigre-singe_, whose fascinating wit was of an icy brilliance. But
Jeremy Collier also attacked the play on other grounds, in his "Short
View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. " Mrs.
Barry has recorded that in the character of Monimia she could never
pronounce the words "Poor Castalio! " without tears. May she not have
been thinking of another Castalio? Let us believe it! Ah! if only Mrs.
Barry had been the Belvidera of her poet's dream, she might have saved
him from his evil genius, from his selfish patrons, and from himself.
In 1681 Otway produced _The Soldier's Fortune_, a comedy which contains
allusions to his own adventures abroad, and is the only contemporary
play not dedicated to a person of quality, being dedicated to Bentley,
the publisher. Depressed by his hopeless passion, "alternately elevated
with promises and dejected by scorn and neglect, caressed for his wit,
despised for his poverty, and exposed to all those attendant ills,
which a generous spirit feels more acutely than actual privation,
neglect, wrongs real and imaginary, the altered eye of friends," we
can hardly wonder at the gloomy tone which he assumed in the Epilogue
to this play. Can we not picture him with those large, limpid, wistful
eyes looking for the face he most wanted among the crowds, preoccupied
or listless, that passed in the gathering twilight of that afternoon,
which he mentions in the last of those letters to Mrs. Barry, lingering
among strange faces of promenaders under the trees of the gay Mall,
looking long for her who never came, never fulfilled her promise to
meet him? This seems to have been the turning point in Otway's career.
Failing in this last attempt to win his lady's love, and sinking under
accumulated debt, he, like how many others, surrendered himself to
those habits of inebriety, which insidiously promised him consolation.
And yet his creative powers were maturing daily, for his greatest work,
_Venice Preserved_, was brought upon the stage in 1682.
Since Otway's plays were well received, it may seem strange that
he should have remained so poor. But, in the first place, he was
evidently one of those generous, reckless good fellows like "Goldy,"
and Sheridan, who spend all they have, and more too. And, in the
second place, the profits of the playhouse were very small. Theatrical
amusements were not the general resort of the people--a serious
disadvantage, as Scott observes, to the art, as well as to the purse,
of the playwright. Religious scruples still withheld many, as in
Commonwealth days; and others were kept away by the indecency then
in vogue. The most popular play did not remain long on the boards.
In Otway's time, moreover, an author had only one benefit from the
representation, which was on the third night. Southerne was the first
to have two benefits, and it was not until 1729 that the profits of
three representations became the right of the author. Gildon says that
Otway got a hundred pounds a piece for _The Orphan_ and _Venice
Preserved_, while old Jacob Tonson bought the copyright of _Venice
Preserved_ for fifteen pounds. The poet was sometimes in such straits
that he had to pawn his third day for fifty pounds. He could not have
made much by his few prologues and occasional poems.
Otway's last play was a comedy called _The Atheist_, a continuation
of _The Soldier's Fortune_, represented in 1683, or the following year,
at the Theatre Royal by the united companies, who had amalgamated in
1682, and removed to Drury Lane. Charles II. died in February, 1685,
and Otway thereupon published a poem called "Windsor Castle," in which
he praised the late king, and exulted over the accession of James.
His praises of Charles were probably not much more sincere than those
which he, and other writers of the day, lavished upon people of rank
in their dedications for the sake of a few guineas. More guineas are
to be had now-a-days by flattering the whims and tastes of that
"many-headed" monarch, under whose reign we have the honour to live.
In the so-called Augustan age, literary merit was systematically
neglected. Witness Butler and Cowley. Yet Otway was the son of a
loyalist, and ever faithful to the Court. Nor was Charles incapable
of appreciating talent. But Otway, to use his own words, only got the
"pension of a prince's praise"; and a gracious command to lampoon the
greatest statesman of the time, which he did accordingly. Praise of one
who cannot be a rival is an inexpensive form of present. It appears,
however, that two of the royal mistresses were more generous--Nell
Gwynne and the Duchess of Portsmouth, whose bounty, "extended to him in
his last extremity," he extols in the dedication of _Venice Preserved_.
Otway had withdrawn from the importunate clamour of creditors to an
obscure public-house, the sign of the Bull, on Tower Hill; and here,
on the 14th of April, 1685, at the premature age of thirty-four, he
died. His body was conveyed thence to the Church of St. Clement Danes,
and there deposited in a vault. About the circumstances of his death
there is a conflict of evidence. The story that has gained currency is
probably not the true one; only one early biographer is our authority
for it. He states that, having long been insufficiently fed, Otway
one day sallied forth in a starving state, and begged a shilling from
a gentleman in a coffee house, saying, "I am the poet Otway. " This
person, surprised and distressed, gave him a guinea. With it he bought
a roll of bread, and began to devour it with the rage of hunger; but,
incapable of swallowing from long abstinence, he was choked with
the first mouthful. Other writers make no mention of this incident,
and Wood is not only silent on the subject, but states that in his
"sickness" (implying gradual decay) he composed a congratulatory poem
on the inauguration of James II. Spence, moreover, who had the anecdote
from Dennis the critic, tells quite a different story. He relates that
Otway had an intimate friend named Blakiston, who was murdered in the
street, and that, to revenge the deed, Otway pursued the assassin on
foot as far as Dover, where he was seized with a fever, occasioned by
fatigue, privation, and excitement. On his return to London, being
heated, he drank water, which was the immediate occasion of his death.
Yet undoubtedly insufficient nourishment must have accelerated his end.
It is quite possible, therefore, that the anecdote about the guinea and
the roll may be substantially true, although this circumstance may not
have been the actual cause of death.
The ardour and constancy of Otway's personal attachments are very
notable all through his career--witness his friendship with Shadwell
(though Mr. Gosse strangely calls Shadwell his enemy), with an unknown
person whom he names _Senander_, and especially with Duke, whose
expressions of fondness for him were very warm. And it now appears that
he fell a victim to this devoted comradeship, which he has so forcibly
delineated in his tragedy. "Whom the gods love die young. " Otway is
with Shelley, Keats and Byron, with Marlowe and with Chatterton.
RODEN NOEL.
* * * * *
[***] OTWAY made some translations from Ovid and Horace. He
also wrote prologues to Lee's _Constantine_ and Mrs. Behn's
_City Heiress_, with an epistle to Creech on his translation
of Lucretius, besides a few miscellaneous poems, prologues,
and epilogues. A translation from the French, the _History
of Triumvirates_, was published a year after his decease.
Moreover, it was reported that he had been engaged on an
original tragedy at the time of his death; Betterton, the
actor and manager, advertised for this play, but it was never
found. All authorities, except Mr. Gosse, agree in rejecting
as a forgery the play named _Heroic Friendship_, which a
bookseller long afterwards (in 1719) attempted to palm off upon
the public as the lost tragedy of Otway. While destitute of
all external evidence for genuineness, it is usually regarded
as a contemptible production, equally destitute of internal
evidence. Mr. Gosse indeed urges a similarity in the principal
character to the heroes of Otway. But of course to produce such
a similarity would be the obvious resort of any forger. It was
printed, though never acted. Gildon relates that Otway was very
fond of punch, and that the last thing he wrote was a song in
praise of it.
William Oldys, in his famous annotated copy of Langbaine's
_Dramatic Poets_, in the British Museum, thus writes of Otway:
"There is an excellent and beautiful picture of Mr. Otway,
who was a fine, portly, graceful man, now among the poetical
collection of Lord Chesterfield (I think it was painted by
John Ryley), in a full bottom wig, and nothing like that
quakerish figure which Knapton has impost upon the world. "
Interlined is the following: "He was of middle size, about
5 ft. 7 in. , inclinable to corpulency, had thoughtful, yet
lively, and, as it were, speaking eyes. "
I am indebted to Dr. Grosart for the foregoing quotation, and
have to express my thanks to Mr. S. W. Orson for numerous
textual suggestions and emendations.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In Mr. Saintsbury's admirable monograph on Dryden (_English Men
of Letters_) we have, for the first time, the truth told about the
origins of the so-called "heroic" drama in England--a semi-operatic
creation of Sir W. Davenant under the Protectorate. But though the
rhyme may have come from France, it seems to me that for the rant our
Restoration playwrights need not have looked so far as the Scudéry
romance, or the Spanish poetry; they had examples nearer home, which
is equally true of the "conceits. " Dryden is the father of modern
prose, and the father of didactic verse, even, one may say, of modern
satire also. Now, if a man achieve a reputation for eminence in one
department, his eminence in another, however indisputable, is sure to
be disputed. It has seemed evident to critics (and consequently to
bookmakers) that since he was a critic he could not be a poet. Yet he
was certainly both. He is more than what Matthew Arnold names him, a
"classic of our prose. "
[2] Shall we find such things in the modern creations of Scott, George
Sand, Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë (possibly we may in Emily Brontë),
Thomas Hardy, or Tolstoi?
[3] Respecting Otway's life, my chief authority is Thornton, who has
prefixed the best sketch I know of to the best edition of the poet's
works; but I have also consulted other authorities, and read Mr.
Gosse's interesting essay in his "Seventeenth Century Studies," &c.
Thornton's text has been usually followed in the present volume; with,
however, numerous emendations, the result of collation with the early
editions.
[4]
Tom Otway came next, Tom Shadwell's dear Zany,
And swears for heroics he writes best of any;
_Don Carlos_ his pockets so amply had filled
That his mange was quite cured and his lice were all killed;
But Apollo had seen his face on the stage,
And prudently did not think fit to engage
The scum of a playhouse for the prop of an age.
Wood mentions that it was reported the poet came back from Flanders
"mangy, and covered with vermin. "
_DON CARLOS, PRINCE OF SPAIN. _
Principibus placuisse viris non ultima laus est. --
HOR. , Ep. 17, Lib. I. [5]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Besides the writers mentioned in my Introduction, Campistron, a pupil
of Racine, founded a play called _Andronic_ on this same history of
_Don Carlos_. Some Spanish historians, in the interest of Philip,
have tried to blacken the character of his son. But the Abbé de San
Real (who has been called the French Sallust) seems to have estimated
him rightly, while the dramatists have, on the whole, adopted the
Frenchman's conception, which was apparently derived from reliable
Spanish sources. The motto prefixed from Horace is in allusion to
the fact that this play received the approbation of the King and the
Duke of York. It had a long success at the theatre, and we may agree
with those who called it, as Otway tells us in the preface, the best
"heroic" play of the time--containing, as it does, far less of rant and
confusion, but more of nature and passion, than the "heroic" plays of
Dryden--though _Aurungzebe_ may not be far behind it. Booth, the actor,
was informed by Betterton that _Don Carlos_ continued for several years
to attract larger audiences than _The Orphan_ or _Venice Preserved_. It
was first represented at the Duke's Theatre in the year 1676, and was
published in the same year.
Philip II. , son of the Emperor Charles V. , became King of Naples and
Sicily in 1554 on his father's abdication, and King Consort of England
by his marriage with Mary two years after he ascended the Spanish
throne. In 1557 he gained the victory of St. Quentin, which might have
made him master of France, but he did not follow it up, being, it
is said, so elated and yet terrified that he vowed: first, never to
engage in another fight, and secondly, to found a monastery in honour
of St. Lawrence at Escorial. Later came the great rebellion of the Low
Countries, which, in spite of Alva's ability, sanguinary cruelty, and
persecutions, resulted in the independence of "the United Provinces,"
and the triumph of the reformed faith.
