His prophetic soul
forebodes
evil and his
'imagination is fill’d with gashly forms of dreary graves, and
bodies chang'd by death.
'imagination is fill’d with gashly forms of dreary graves, and
bodies chang'd by death.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v10
To a very considerable degree, its
playwrights reflect the influence of French classical drama and
dramatic theory. Racine and Corneille were adapted for the
English stage in a whole series of versions? Addison, whose
critical influence was cast in favour of dramatic rule and regularity,
put classical theory so effectively into practice in Cato (1713) that
Voltaire hailed it as the first tragédie raisonnable in English? .
Stimulated by the successes of Ambrose Philips3 and Addison,
other English playwrights turned to classical models and trans-
lated, though often with considerable freedom, such dramas as
Le Cid, Cinna and Iphigénie.
Though the influence of French classical drama and dramatic
standards upon eighteenth century English drama demands
ample recognition, it should not be overestimated. Not even
under queen Anne was the Elizabethan tradition forgotten.
Shakespeare's tragedies, Jonson’s comedies and Beaumont and
Fletcher's romantic plays continued to hold the stage. Rowe
turned freely to Elizabethan models and sought to imitate Shake-
speare's style. Even Addison, a confirmed classicist, in at least one
memorable passage“, treated Shakespeare's genius as above arti-
ficial restraints. English translators of French tragedy sometimes
abated the rigid classical conventions in their adaptations for the
freer English stage. In reality, English drama, even during the
Augustan period, was often an unconscious compromise between
the restraint of French theory and the inherited freedom of
English dramatic practice. Furthermore, the English element in
queen Anne drama is not confined to the survival of Elizabethan
influences. The note of sentiment struck in contemporary comedy
by Steele is perceptible, not merely in the tragedy of Rowe, but,
perhaps, even in classical English drama itself. The triumphs of
Philips and Addison were founded on the distresses of the heroine
and the moralised sentiments of the hero. Despite, then, the domi-
nance of classical standards, queen Anne drama is not a merely
Gallicised product. It is the resultant of English and continental
forces.
If critical survey of the period be broadened so as to include
1 Cf. ante, vol. VIII, chap. VII, pp. 180–1.
2 Cf. ante, vol. ix, chap. II, pp. 63—4,
3 The Distrest Mother (adapted from Racine's Andromaque) was produced in 1712.
• The Spectator, no. 592.
## p. 70 (#96) ##############################################
70
The Drama and the Stage
1
1
the history of the stage as well as of the drama, the dramatic
currents will appear still more complex. Dorset gardens theatre
had catered more and more to the popular demand for spectacle.
Foreign singers and dancers invaded the boards of the patent
theatres. The successful advent of Italian opera made the judicious
Cibber grieve and Steele demand that Britons should 'from foreign
insult save this English stage? ' But even Colley Cibber, sworn
advocate of regular drama, compromised his convictions and, as a
manager, ‘had not Virtue enough to starve by opposing a Multitude
that would have been too hard for me? ' Meanwhile, the attacks
of Collier and his followers were continued, through almost a
generation, until, in 1726, William Law published his treatise,
The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage Entertainment fully
demonstrated. Thus, beset by foes without and by rivals within
the theatre, regular drama had fallen on evil days.
To the adverse factors which threatened the ascendancy of
formal tragedy and comedy must be added two theatrical develop-
ments of great significance. The second decade of the eighteenth
century marks the introduction of English pantomime; the
third, that of ballad-opera. The elements of pantomime had long
-
been present on the English stage before John Rich fused them
into an extraordinarily popular type of theatrical entertainment.
Dumb-shows,' introduced as early as Gorboduc, scenic and
mechanical elements in masque and the spectacular accessories
of restoration opera anticipate salient features of Rich's pro-
ductions. Yet, even if Cibber's suggestion be accepted that
the 'original hint' for pantomime is to be found in Weaver's
Drury lane production of The Loves of Mars and Venus
(1717), John Rich was the dominant factor in establishing the
popular type. He had none of Cibber's scruples about catering
to 'the vulgar taste. ' A remarkable mimic, but without the
gift of stage speech, Rich cleverly turned his limitation to
advantage. The speaking barlequin, familiar on the Italian stage
and already introduced on the English, now became dumb; but
Rich made actions speak louder than words. To a theme usually
drawn from fabulous history or classical myth, the pantomime
added the comic courtship of harlequin and columbine, heightening
the effect with spectacular transformations, elaborate scenery and
music. The patent theatres vied with each other in producing
pantomimes; for the receipts from them doubled those from
· Epilogue to The Tender Husband (1705).
* Apology, vol. II, p. 182.
Apology, vol. II, pp. 180 ff.
1
1
3
## p. 71 (#97) ##############################################
6
The Beggar's Opera. Transition
71
regular drama. Henceforth, pantomime had to be numbered as
one of the stock attractions of the eighteenth century stage.
Hardly had pantomime firmly established itself in popular
favour, when Rich produced another formidable rival to regular
drama in John Gay’s Beggar's Opera (1728)". This work marked
the triumph of ballad-opera. "The vast Success of that new
Species of Dramatick Poetry' was, to Colley Cibber, further
proof of the 'vulgar taste' which had already welcomed pantomime.
But the influence of Gay's opera is not confined to its intro-
duction of popular lyrics. In satirising not merely the absurdities
of Italian opera but the conscious moralisings of sentimental
drama, and in providing happy issues out of all the afflictions of
its charmingly pathetic' prison scenes, Gay points towards the
dramatic burlesques of Fielding and Carey. Palpable hits at
Sir Robert Walpole and other politicians of the day open the vein
of social and political satire, worked to the full in Fielding's farces.
The Beggar's Opera, accordingly, holds an important place in
English dramatic annals. Like pantomime, ballad-opera, hence-
forth, must be regarded as a stock attraction of the theatre.
During the Garrick era, its popularity was maintained by many
operas like those of Isaac Bickerstaff, and the initial run of
Sheridan's Duenna surpassed that of The Beggar's Opera.
Even this general survey of those earlier aspects of eighteenth
century drama, which form a necessary background to any account
of its later history, must make it clear that English drama is the
resultant of many forces. So complex, indeed, is the interaction
of these various forces that it is idle to seek to resolve actual
dramatic products exactly into their precise component parts.
Still more futile are attempts to warp the actual facts of dramatic
history into conformity with a rigid preconceived theory of dramatic
evolution. The convenient distinction between tragedy and
comedy, if converted into an arbitrary critical formula, becomes a
stumbling-block to the critic of sentimental drama. To attempt
to explain English classical drama simply from the standpoint of
French classical, or pseudo-classical, theory is to ignore English
influences which directly affected the dramatic practice, and even
the theories, of Voltaire himself. To regard the transition from
the immorality of restoration comedy to the sentimentalised
morality of the eighteenth century as a complete moral regenera-
tion is to forget the frank licence of Mrs Centlivre and the imperfect
ethical standards of even professed moralists like Cibber.
1 Cf. ante, vol. 1x, chap. VI, p. 163.
Apology, vol. 1, pp. 243, 245.
2
## p. 72 (#98) ##############################################
72
The Drama and the Stage
2
Broadly viewed, eighteenth century drama shows decided
reaction from the immorality that provoked the attacks of
Sir Richard Blackmore and Jeremy Collier. Yet, despite many
evidences of an awakening sense of moral responsibility in the
attitude of the court, of society and of administrators of the
law, the conversion of drama was neither sudden nor complete.
Farquhar, whose dramatic work is subsequent to Collier's attack,
maintains, essentially, the spirit of restoration comedy. Even The
Careless Husband, despite Cibber's good intentions, presents the
stock characters of restoration comedy purged of their gross
excesses, doubtless, but yet not wholly chastened in spirit. The
tendencies of earlier comedy are maintained in the dramatic work
of Mrs Centlivre. The sins of various dramatists of her sex
seem to have been visited chiefly upon Mrs Aphra Behn'; but,
though Mrs Centlivre has largely escaped the notoriety of the
'chaste Aphra,' the character of her drama is without fear rather
than without reproach. A certain concession to Collier's charge
that 'the Stage-Poets make their Principal Personages Vicious,
and reward them at the End of the Play,' may, perhaps, be detected
in the fifth-act repentance which she allows to sinners whose
consciences have lain comfortably dormant through the earlier acts.
Yet, for the most part, she can be acquitted of any intention 'to
moralise the stage. ' With considerable skill in dramatic structure
and facility in securing comic effect, she was content to achieve
theatrical effectiveness with little hesitation as to methods. An
early attempt at blank-verse tragedy, The Perjur'd Husband, or
The Adventures of Venice (1700), proves that her dramatic aptitude
did not extend either to verse or to tragedy. Her forte lay in
cleverness of comic intrigue and fluency of prose dialogue. Her
characters often have the salient traits which are within the ready
grasp of the actor, while the best of them are more vital comic
creations. Marplot, in The Busy-Body (1709) and its sequel,
lateras Marplot in Lisbon (1710), is much more than a copy from Molière's
L'Étourdi; and Don Felix, in The Wonder! A Woman keeps a
Secret (1714), became one of Garrick's most popular parts. From
Molière and from Spanish sources, Mrs Centlivre drew materials
freely for various plays; but she deserves credit for ability in
adaptation and for the addition of effective original touches. Of
her later plays, A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718) was a successful
comedy, and The Artifice (1722) reflects in some measure the
4
from
1 Cf. , as to Aphra Behn, ante, vol. VIII, chap. v, pp. 140-2.
## p. 73 (#99) ##############################################
Lillo 73
Young
Hughes. Thomson. .
influence of sentimental drama. Mrs Centlivre serves as a
convenient illustration of the fact that comedy had not wholly
responded to the movement for its moral improvement; but it
is fair to recall, at the same time, that the epilogues appended
to some of Young's dramas maintain the restoration practice of
enlivening tragedy with coarsely comic epilogues.
Like the current of moral reform, the current of classical in-
fluence, which was very strong in queen Anne drama, encountered
various obstacles in its course. Some of the early Georgian tragedies
of Edward Young (1683—1765)' have much of the violent action
of Elizabethan drama and the unrestraint, though not the poetic
imagination, of Lee's dramatic utterance. It needed but little
exaggeration for Fielding to turn the heroics of Busiris (1719) to
mockery in his burlesque tragedy, Tom Thumb. The Revenge
(1721), in striving to depict 'the tumults of a Godlike mind,'
recalls the heroic drama of the restoration, though Zanga, the
Moor, is reminiscent of Othello. Thus, these tragedies of Young
seem, in reality, to follow English, rather than strict continental,
models. In The Siege of Damascus (1720), a tragedy far superior
to the mediocre work of Young, John Hughes had turned to an
English source in borrowing from D'Avenant's play, The Siege? .
While the ponderous tragedies of James Thomson, to which
reference is made elsewhere3, lent weight rather than dignity to
the cause of classical drama, the rather uneventful course of
English tragedy during the second quarter of the eighteenth
century was broken by one radical innovation.
In The London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell
(1731), George Lillo introduced prose domestic tragedy. Brought
up, to his father's trade of jeweller in the city of London, Lillo
became the dramatist of domestic life. His first theatrical venture
was an insignificant ballad-opera, Silvia, or The Country Burial
(1730). The production at Drury lane theatre, on 22 June 1731,
of The London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell,
is, however, an important landmark in English dramatic history.
Domestic tragedy, in a sense, was no novelty on the English stage.
Elizabethan dramas such as Arden of Feversham, A Yorkshire
Tragedy and A Woman Killed with Kindness, forego the usual
noble preferences of tragedy. Otway, Southerne and Rowe found
that pathos was not dependent upon rank and title. The pro-
logue to Rowe's Fair Penitent, indeed, deliberately announces
1 Cf. chap. VII, post.
* Ct. ante, vol. VIII, p. 184.
3 Cf. chap. , post.
## p. 74 (#100) #############################################
74
The Drama and the Stage
the creed which Lillo followed. Yet the father of the fair Calista
is a Genoese nobleman and her lover is a young lord. Jane
Shore tells the ruin of a woman of lower class; but it is a great
noble who compasses her downfall. Otway's Orphan, like most
of the domestic tragedies that precede Lillo's, seems rather to
neglect the aristocratic tone of tragedy than to magnify its demo-
cratic character.
With Lillo, domestic tragedy becomes positively and insistently
familiar. He deliberately dramatises ordinary commercial life,
and teaches the importance of the commonplace. The prologue
to George Barnwell dwells on the fact that the tragic muse, after
moving in the very highest social spheres, has 'upon our stage'
been sometimes seen, nor without applause,
in a humbler dress-
Great only in distress. When she complaing
In Southern's, Rowe's, or Otway's moving strains,
The brilliant drops that fall from each bright eye
The absent pomp with brighter jems supply.
Forgive us then, if we attempt to show,
In artless strains, a tale of private woe,
A London 'Prentice ruin'd is our theme.
Lillo puts Rowe's earlier creed into aggressive practice. The
atmosphere of George Barnwell is that of the trading class, and
its ideal the virtue of the merchant's calling. Thorowgood, the
honest merchant, gratifies the ‘laudable curiosity' of his faithful
apprentice, Trueman, as to the political situation,
because from thence you may learn how honest merchants, as such, may
sometimes contribute to the safety of their country, as they do at all times to
its happiness; that if hereafter you should be tempted to any action that has
the appearance of vice or meanness in it, upon reflecting on the dignity of
our profession, you may with honest scorn reject whatever is unworthy of it.
. . . As the name of merchant never degrades the gentleman, so by no means
does it exclude him.
Even the rapid downward course of Lillo's erring prentice-hero is
interrupted, at the opening of the third act, to allow Thorowgood
to continue his instructions to Trueman on the ethics of business
and the moral mission of commerce. Trueman is bidden to observe
how trade
has promoted humanity, as it has opened and yet keeps up an intercourse
between nations, far remote from one another in situation, customs, and
religion; promoting arts, industry, peace and plenty; by mutual benefits
diffusing mutual love from pole to pole.
i See the lines beginning :
Long has the fate of kings and empires been
The common business of the tragick scene.
## p. 75 (#101) #############################################
The Morality of Lillo
75
6
The merchant's vocation is thus defined: 'It is the industrious
merchant's business to collect the various blessings of each soil
and climate, and, with the product of the whole, to enrich his
native country. ' Even when, with something of a sigh, he descends
to the routine of the day's work, he delivers such business maxims
as, Method in business is the surest guide. '
In conscious moral aim, Lillo is akin to the sentimental
dramatists. He seeks deliberately
thoughtless youth to warn, and shame the age
From vice destructive.
Thorowgood is 'a man of sentiment,' and, unlike Joseph Surface,
'acts up to the sentiments he professes. ' From his store of
commonplaces, he draws apposite maxims for moral as well as
business emergencies— When innocence is banish’d, modesty
soon follows'; 'When vice becomes habitual, the very power of
leaving it is lost. Maria inherits her father's gift for sentiment.
Even when Barnwell yields precipitately to Millwood's seductions,
he ejaculates such unavailing precepts as these : "To ease our
present anguish, by plunging into guilt, is to buy a moment's
pleasure with an age of pain'; 'The law of Heaven will not be
revers'd; and that requires us to govern our passions. Sentiment
attends him even to the gallows. He parts from his mistress with
this cold consolation :
From our example may all be taught to fly the first approach of vice; but, if
o'ertaken
By strong temptation, weakness, or surprize,
Lament their guilt and by repentance rise !
Th' impenitent alone die unforgiven;
To sin's like man, and to forgive like Heaven.
In the moralised drama of the eighteenth century, didactic senti-
ment is not merely the reward of virtue but a very present help in
trouble.
The plot of George Barnwell, as Lillo says, is 'Drawn from
the fam'd old song that bears his name. ' Ballad and play tell
alike the story of the ruin of an apprentice by a courtesan. The
theme suggests Hogarth's plates ? _Trueman is the industrious,
and Barnwell the idle, apprentice. Lillo ekes out the somewhat
meagre materials of the ballad by introducing Maria, Trueman
and Millwood's servants, and by expanding the shadowy figure of
the merchant into Thorowgood. He presents his hero in a more
1 Hogarth's first work of importance, A Harlot's Progress, appeared the year after
George Barnwell.
## p. 76 (#102) #############################################
76
The Drama and the Stage
sympathetic light by shifting to Millwood the responsibility for
the suggestion of his uncle's murder, and by emphasising his
'fear and sting of conscience,' of which the ballad makes but
passing mention.
In portrayal of character, Lillo is often crude and sometimes
inconsistent. At the outset, Barnwell, young, innocent, and
bashful,' is an unsuspecting innocent, whose response to Millwood's
leading question as to his thoughts of love would, in a less senti-
mental age, stamp him as either a prig or a hypocrite:
If you mean the love of women, I have not thought of it all. My youth and
circumstances make such thoughts improper in me yet. But if you mean the
general love we owe to mankind, I think no one has more of it in his temper
than my self. I don't know that person in the world whose happiness I don't
wish, and wou'dn't promote, were it in my power. In an especial manner I
love my Uncle, and my Master, but, above all, my friend.
Yet he yields to temptation, almost without resistance; nor can he
be defended on the score of innocent ignorance, since the moral
aphorisms with which he meets Millwood's advances clearly betray
his consciousness of guilt. His morality is but a thin veneer,
penetrated at the first touch. Yet, assuredly, this is not the con-
ception of character which Lillo sought to impart. Millwood is a
more consistent study in passion and depravity, and became the
prototype of more than one powerful dramatic figure? .
To Lillo's influence on the subjects of English tragedy must
be added his no less marked influence upon its language. He
deliberately adopted prose as the vehicle 'of expression for
domestic tragedy. He accepts, indeed, the convention of rime-
tags at the end of every act and at the conclusion of some scenes
during the act; but his main intent is to give domestic drama the
vocabulary and phrase that suit his theme. Judged by modern
standards, his attempt to abandon the sublime frequently achieves
the ridiculous. So firmly fastened was the habit of verse tragedy
that Lillo's dialogue often preserves the inverted phrases and
general rhythmic movement, and, at times, the actual scansion, of
blank verse.
The martyr cheaply purchases his heaven. Small are his sufferings, great
ward; not so the wretch who combats love with duty. . . . What is an
hour, a day, a year of pain, to a whole life of tortures such as these?
The habit of ornate description also persists even with the honest
merchant : "The populous East, luxuriant abounds with glittering
gems, bright pearls, aromatick spices, and health-restoring drugs.
1
is his rew
à
1 Notably of Marwood in Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson.
## p. 77 (#103) #############################################
George Barnwell and Fatal Curiosity 77
6
The late found Western World glows with unnumber'd veins of
gold and silver ore. ' Most grotesque is the dialogue of the scenes
of the uncle's murder.
His prophetic soul forebodes evil and his
'imagination is fill’d with gashly forms of dreary graves, and
bodies chang'd by death. His apostrophe to 'Death, thou strange
mysterious power—seen every day, yet never understood but by the
incommunicative dead'-unnerves the murderer for the moment,
and hardly has the deed been perpetrated when Barnwell throws
himself on the body of the 'expiring saint,' his 'martyr'd uncle,'
with an outbreak of inflated rhetoric which expires in moralised
heroic couplets. Judged by the modern standards of prose drama
that has felt the influence of Ibsen, Lillo's prose is sheer travesty.
Yet his was an age accustomed to the artificial rhetoric of senti-
mental drama, as it was to the 'grand manner' in acting. Even
so classical a critic as Pope deemed that, if Lillo 'had erred
through the whole play, it was only in a few places, where he had
unawares led himself into a poetical luxuriancy, affecting to be
too elevated for the simplicity of the subject' In Lillo's hands,
the old shackles of verse tragedy are broken ; but cruel marks of
the fetters remain visible. Beyond doubt, he sinned greatly; yet
much may be forgiven to one who showed, however imperfectly,
that serious drama might find expression in prose.
In The Christian Hero (1735), Lillo relapses into more con-
ventional tragedy. Prose gives way to blank verse, the London
prentice to 'a pious hero, and a patriot king,' and London to
Albania. In Fatal Curiosity: A True Tragedy of Three Acts?
(1736), Lillo retains blank verse, but reverts to domestic tragedy.
'From lower life we draw our scene's distress' The elder Colman,
in his prologue written for the revival of the play in 1782, pro-
claimed Lillo's kinship with Shakespeare in disregard of dramatic
rules and boldly suggested that
Lillo's plantations were of forest growth,
Shakespear's the same, great Nature's hand in both!
The strong verbal reminiscences of Macbeth and Hamlet would
seem rather to indicate that Shakespeare's hand was in Lillo's.
The plot itself, based on an old story of a Cornish murder, shows
how old Wilmot, urged by his wife to relieve their poverty, kills
the stranger that is within their gates, only to find that he has
1 The Lives of the Poets of Great-Britain and Ireland. By Mr (Theophilus) Cibber,
and other Hands. (1753), vol. v, p. 339.
? The original title was Guilt Its Own Punishment, or Fatal Curiosity.
3 Fielding's prologue.
## p. 78 (#104) #############################################
78
The Drama and the Stage
murdered his son, whom 'fatal curiosity' has led to conceal his
identity. In Lillo's play, fatality, not poverty, is the real motive
force. With something of the Greek conception, destiny dominates
the tragedy. Old Wilmot, to be sure, expires with the confession
that ‘We brought this dreadful ruin on ourselves. ” But Randal,
whose couplets point the conventional moral,
The ripe in virtue never die too soon,
protests against any censure of
Heaven's mysterious ways.
In Lillo's tragedy of destiny, we are not 'to take upon 's the
mystery of things, as if we were God's spies. '
Lillo's other dramatic works may be dismissed with brief
mention. Marina (1738), a three-act drama, based on Pericles,
Prince of Tyre, is additional evidence of Lillo's indebtedness to
Shakespeare. The brothel-scenes, which tend to abandon decency
as well as blank verse, can hardly be justified by a conclusion
that shows “Virtue preserv'd from fell destruction's blast. '
Britannia and Batavia, a rather belated instance of masque,
Elmerick, or Justice Triumphant, a regular blank-verse tragedy
which won Fielding's praise, and Arden of Feversham, which gives
further evidence of Lillo's interest in domestic tragedy and of his
indebtedness to Elizabethan drama, were published posthumously.
In the history of English drama, Lillo holds a position wholly
disproportionate to his actual dramatic achievement. Like
D'Avenant, his importance is chiefly that of a pioneer. The
modern reader sympathises more readily with Charles Lamb's
familiar strictures upon Lillo than with Fielding's praise. But,
artificial as his work appears today, Lillo set in motion powerful
forces that pointed toward natural tragedy. He deliberately put
aside the dignity of rank and title and the ceremony of verse. He
animated domestic drama, and paved the way for prose melodrama
and tragedy.
The influence of Lillo is not to be measured simply in the
records of English drama. On the continent, especially in France
and Germany, the effect of his domestic tragedy was striking. In
French drama, this influence may best be observed in Diderot.
From the previous discussion of the rise of sentimental drama
and its development on the continent as well as in England, it is
evident that French drama had already responded to the influences
of sentimental drama before the success of George Barnwell
moralised bourgeois tragedy. Destouches had admitted a serious
## p. 79 (#105) #############################################
Lillo and Diderot
79
undertone in his Philosophe marié (1727), and Marivaux, in his
Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard (1730), had delicately touched senti-
ment with pathos. In the score of years between the English
production of George Barnwell and the French translation which
probably directly influenced Diderot, drame sérieux was developing
toward comédie larmoyante. Nivelle de la Chaussée bathed virtue
in tears, and, in dramatising Pamela, had brought the influence
of Richardson's novel of sentiment to swell the tide of sentimental
drama. Even Voltaire borrowed from Pamela and found praise
for George Barnwell.
Though the general tendencies of the time should thus be
remembered, there is no need to belittle Lillo's direct and powerful
influence on Diderot. Like Voltaire, Diderot's influence on drama
was twofold—in actual dramatic production and in dramatic
theory. But Diderot set himself in direct opposition to the
classical standards which, despite some inconsistencies, Voltaire
maintained. In Le Fils Naturel (printed 1757), and in Le Père
de Famille (printed 1758), with the critical discourses that accom-
pany them, Diderot set forth the type of drama which he sought
to introduce into France. His very term, tragédie domestique et
bourgeoise, suggests the nature of Lillo's influence upon him.
Diderot carried his enthusiasm for George Barnwell to the point
of comparing the prison scene between Barnwell and Maria with
the Philoctetes of Sophocles. He followed his English master in the
choice of characters drawn from ordinary life, in the moralisation
of tragedy and in the use of prose. Diderot, in fact, carried his
belief in prose into more consistent practice than did Lillo. In
his treatise De la Poésie Dramatique, he expresses the conviction
that domestic tragedy should not be written in verse, though,
doubtless, it is French verse that he has in mind rather than the
English blank verse to which Lillo himself reverted in Fatal
Curiosity. The length of time before Diderot's plays were put
on the stage, and their rather indifferent reception by the public,
suggest that his own dramatic accomplishment was less significant
than his influence upon dramatists like Sedaine and Lessing.
Largely through Diderot, Lillo's influence was extended to
German drama. Lessing's translations of Diderot's plays and his
critical interpretations of his dramatic theories fell on favourable
soil in Germany. Lessing's own domestic tragedy, Miss Sara
Sampson (1755), which dissolved its audience in tears, has the
1 Le Fils Naturel, publicly produced in 1771, failed. Le Pere de Famille had
found moderate favoar on the Parisian stage in 1761.
## p. 80 (#106) #############################################
80
The Drama and the Stage
general tone of Lillo's drama. To the influence of George Barnwell
upon German domestic tragedy (bürgerliches Trauerspiel) should
be added that of Fatal Curiosity upon the German tragedy of
destiny (Schicksalstragödie). During the last two decades of the
eighteenth century, versions of Fatal Curiosity appeared in
German, its actual theme was taken for a brief play by Werner
(1812), and other examples of the 'tragedy of destiny' were borne
along on the passing wave of popularity'.
Though the effect of Lillo's dramas was far-reaching and
persistent, it must not be supposed that his bourgeois tragedy
thereafter dominated the English stage. Occasional plays, like
Charles Johnson's Caelia, or The Perjured Lover (1732), reflect
Lillo's influence. But, year after year, the English stage con-
tinued to produce a remarkable variety of theatrical productions,
from classical tragedy to nondescript farce. Not until the days
of Edward Moore did Lillo find a conspicuous follower. Moore,
like Lillo and Gay, was an apprentice turned playwright. The
mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease, in days when playwriting
was more in fashion, had noticeably, like the old drama itself, given
way to a less high-born school. Moore's early comedy, The
Foundling (1748), has some suggestion of Steele's last sentimental
comedy, while Gil Blas (1751) darkens the comic action with
a tragic underplot. But Moore's tragic and moral bent unite
most clearly and forcibly in The Gamester (1753).
In The Gamester, prose domestic tragedy again prevails.
Moore dramatises a new commandment—Thou shalt not gamble. '
To the playful hits of Pope and the more vigorous attacks of
Addison upon gambling, Moore gave tragic intensity. The very
singleness of his purpose gives unity to his drama. Without
remarkable dramatic skill, he conceived his framework on large
lines, and, in many ways, executed it impressively. He stoops, at
times, to melodrama, in the use of surprise ; but, like Lillo, he shows
dramatic restraint in not permitting Mrs Beverley to expire on
her husband's corpse. His failure to introduce his hero in the
actual setting of the gaming-house seems, however, a needless
sacrifice of a situation that would have strengthened at least the
acting possibilities of the drama. Moore's prose, despite obvious
evidences of unnaturalness, marks an advance over Lillo's. They
author's own confession? , that in scenes of elevated passion, it was
>
a
cala
1 For further details, see the study of Lillo's work and its influence in Ward's, A. W. ,
edition of The London Merchant and Fatal Curiosity (Belles Lettres Series).
· See Introduction to The Gamester.
## p. 81 (#107) #############################################
81
Voltaire and the English Drama
harder to refrain from verse than to produce it, helps to explain
Lillo's inflated diction. Diderot coupled The Gamester and The
Merchant of London as instances of English tragedies in prose,
and Saurin's vein in Beverlei (1768) is further evidence of Moore's
influence on the continental drama.
While Lillo and Moore were thus enlarging the field of tragedy
by extending it to the concerns of ordinary life and developing,
however crudely, a new medium of prose expression, the influence
of Voltaire was being exerted in behalf of classical standards. In
1726, he began a residence of almost three years in England which
brought him into contact with English drama. Cato he regarded
as a masterpiece of classical tragedy. Yet, like Addison, he con-
fessed, once, at least, that creative energy such as Shakespeare's
'leaves far behind it everything which can boast only of reason
and correctness' The greater freedom and vigour of action of
the English stage clearly affect both Voltaire's classical dramatic
standards and his own dramatic practice. In a letter of 1735, he
declares that French drama 'is ordinarily devoid of action and of
great interests,' and, in another of 1750, full of his usual strictures
on the barbarities of English tragedy, he concedes that “'tis true
we have too much of words, if you have too much of action,
and perhaps the perfection of the art should consist in a due
mixture of the French taste and the English energy? His own
dramas borrow from Shakespeare with a freedom that impressed
even those who translated and adapted Voltaire's plays for the
English stage. In the prologue to Aaron Hill's Zara (1736), a
version of Voltaire's Zaire, Colley Cibber says plainly:
From English plays, Zara's French author fired,
Confessed his muse, beyond himself, inspired;
From rack'd Othello's rage he raised his style,
And snatched the brand that lights his tragic pile.
The prologue to James Miller's version of Mahomet (1744) is
equally frank:
Britons, these numbers to yourselves you owe;
Voltaire bath strength to shoot in Shakespeare's bow.
The monstrosities which Voltaire took pains to point out in
Shakespeare's tragedies did not prevent him from borrowing from
such dramas as Othello, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth and
King Lear far more than he troubled himself to acknowledge.
i Quoted by Lounsbury, T. R. , Shakespeare and Voltaire, p. 52.
? Ibid. pp. 71, 138.
E. L. X.
CH. IV.
6
## p. 82 (#108) #############################################
82
The Drama and the Stage
Nor did his borrowings from Shakespeare measure his indebted-
ness to English drama. William Duncombe's adaptation of
Brutus (1734), which begins the long list of English stage
versions of Voltaire, brought upon the French dramatist the
charge of plagiarism from Lee's restoration tragedy, Brutus.
Voltaire's influence upon English drama is, accordingly, not
that of an uncompromising continental classicist. In the main,
he supported the cause of classical drama ; but it is wholly
misleading to ignore the strength of the counter influences of
English drama upon him. Criticism, likewise, has frequently
exaggerated the influence of Voltaire's dramas on the English
stage. Of the various versions of Voltaire that appeared during
the second quarter of the eighteenth century, which include, besides
those already mentioned, Hill's Alzira (1736) and Merope (1749), the
most successful was the same writer's Zara. Yet its continuous run
of fourteen nights was an exceptional success.
The early recog-
nition of Voltaire's large indebtedness to Shakespeare helps to
explain why he failed to supplant the native genius from whom
he borrowed. Performances of Shakespearean drama far out-
numbered those of English versions of Voltaire's plays. The
succession of critical editions of Shakespeare, beginning with that
of Rowe (1709) ? , increased Shakespeare's influence with readers.
David Garrick powerfully advanced his popularity with playgoers.
The tide of patriotic feeling rose in increasing resentment against
Voltaire's strictures on English drama. Even Aaron Hill, the
zealous adapter of Voltaire, in the preface to Merope, asserts that
80 much over-active sensibility to his own country's claims, with so unfeeling
a stupidity in judging the pretensions of his neighbors might absolve all
indignation short of gross indecency towards one who has not scrupled. . . to
represent the English as incapable of tragedy; nay, even of painting or of
music.
The plain speech of Voltaire's English sympathisers became violent
invective, when Foote, in 1747, denounced him as 'that insolent
French panegyrist who first denies Shakespeare almost every
dramatic excellence, and then, in his next play, pilfers from him
almost every capital scene,' and pictured him in his dual role of
critic and dramatist as the carping, superficial critic and the low,
paltry thief? . ' Such bursts represent the extreme of patriotic ire
rather than the mean of ordinary criticism; yet there is abundant
evidence that the mid-eighteenth century stage which acclaimed
>
>
1 Cf. ante, vol. v, pp. 267 ff.
Cf. Lounsbury, u. 8. pp. 148—9.
## p. 83 (#109) #############################################
Fielding and Burlesque
83
Garrick's Shakespearean productions was in little danger of blind
allegiance to a continental authority.
Even before the deference at first accorded to Voltaire had
perceptibly abated, classical drama did not hold the English
stage unchallenged. Lillo's bold innovations threatened its pres-
tige, and pantomime its popularity. The vein of dramatic
burlesque struck by Gay in What-dye-Call-it and The Beggar's
Opera was developed by Fielding and Carey. In Tom Thumb;
A Tragedy (1730), afterwards called The Tragedy of Tragedies ;
or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1731),
Fielding (of whose comedies something has been said in an earlier
chapter)? ridiculed the absurdities of contemporary drama, and,
in his later mock critical and explanatory notes, satirised the
theories of Corneille and such tragedies as Cato, Busiris and
Fenton's popular Mariamne (1723). The coarser burlesque
of Fielding's Covent Garden Tragedy (1733) is directed, in part,
against Philips's Distrest Mother. The spirit of Tom Thumb is
maintained in Henry Carey's Chrononhotonthologos, the Most
Tragical Tragedy that ever was Tragediz'd by any Company
of Tragedians (1734), and, less effectively, in his burlesque
opera, The Dragon 'of Wantley (1734), which displays, in the
words of its dedication, the beauty of nonsense, so prevailing
in Italian opera' While Fielding and Carey thus out-Heroded
Herod, they, too, were on the side of sanity in English drama.
Tom Thumb is the ironic expression of that revolt against con-
ventional English tragedy which Fielding phrased seriously in
his prologue to Lillo's Fatal Curiosity :
No fustian Hero rages here to-night;
No armies fall, fix a tyrant's right.
To the negative effect of burlesque, Fielding added a positive
influence against the accepted dramatic conventions by devoting
a large share of his energies to the composition of short dramatic
pieces. Though some of his plays accept the five-act formula,
most of them do not exceed three acts. The production of brief
dramatic pieces by Samuel Foote and other followers of Fielding
is intimately connected with the eighteenth century fashion of
appending to regular drama an after-piece, usually farce or
pantomime. The ultimate effects of this practice may be illus-
trated by the fact that Sheridan's Critic was produced, originally,
as an after-piece to Hamlet.
1 Cf. ante, chap. 11, pp. 21–2.
* Cf. ante, vol. ix, chap. VI, p. 190.
7
6
6--2
## p. 84 (#110) #############################################
84
The Drama and the Stage
In still another way, Fielding shook the conventions of formal
drama. Improving on Gay’s ‘local hits’ at politicians of the day,
Fielding carried personal allusion and innuendo to daring extremes.
Pasquin (1736) is 'a dramatick Satire on the Times,' and The
Historical Register for 1736 (acted 1737) overruns with political,
theatrical and social satire. Fielding's bold political references
were largely responsible for the licensing act of 1737, which
limited the metropolitan theatres to two, and brought plays,
prologues and epilogues under direct legal supervision. Though
Sir John Barnard, in March 1735, had interested himself, in the
House of Commons, in the question of restricting the theatres,
and, though the immediate stimulus to the licensing act is usually
held to have been an abusive piece, called The Golden Rump,
there is little reason to doubt that Walpole recognised in Fielding
his most dangerous foe. The licensing act restricted Fielding's
lawless freedom; already, however, he had set in motion forces
which the censorship of the stage might in part check, but
could not wholly control. Essentially the playwright of his own
day, Fielding influenced drama in the direction of themes of
contemporary life. Even Lillo, who set his face against a
social restriction of the sphere of tragedy, passively conceded
the historic background in giving, nominally, at least, an
Elizabethan setting to George Barnwell, in assigning Fatal
Curiosity to the reign of James I and in choosing Arden of
Feversham as the theme of 'an historical tragedy. Fielding's
actual dramatic works resembled cartoons rather than finished
works of comic art. Yet, his burlesque of conventional drama,
his development of short dramatic pieces that challenged the
authority of the five-act formula and his attention to the subjects
and personages of contemporary life, powerfully combined towards
enlarging the freedom and advancing the naturalness of dramatic
expression.
The transfer of Fielding's literary activity from drama to
novel suggests another potent factor in the decline of the drama.
To the forces of Italian opera, pantomime, burlesque, ballad-
opera, farce and spectacle, whose constant inroads had grievously
thinned the ranks of regular drama, was now added a more
dangerous, if more subtle, rival off the boards. Robinson Crusoe
(1719—20) and Gulliver's Travels (1726—7) had already fired the
fancy of English readers. With Richardson's Pamela (1740), the
English novel began its great period of literary dominance! It
1 Cf. ante, chap. I.
## p. 85 (#111) #############################################
Garrick
85
is not an accidental coincidence that the middle of the eighteenth
century is marked by poverty in dramatic composition as well as
by the strenuous advance of the novel. Nevertheless, two powerful
forces helped to sustain the vitality of the theatre. Provided with
a strong repertory of stock plays, the genius of actors was able to
triumph even over the mediocrity of contemporary drama. It
was the age of the player, not of the playwright. The period of
which we speak is the era of Garrick.
The record of David Garrick belongs, primarily, to theatrical
annals. Yet his own dramatic work, his Shakespearean revivals
and the influence of his natural method of acting, which indirectly
affected the artificiality of the drama itself, while directly opposing
the old school of acting, entitle him to a place in English dramatic
history. His mythological skit Lethe (1740) gained a place on
the boards in the year before its author's histrionic triumph as
Richard III. Reynolds's picture showing Garrick torn between
the rival muses of tragedy and comedy suggests his range and
versatility both as actor and as manager. He produced on the
stage more than a score of Shakespeare's dramas, and himself
appeared in the great majority of them. He was the dominant
factor in confirming Shakespeare's popularity with audiences in the
middle of the eighteenth century. Yet his service consisted rather
in accelerating the popular current than in setting it in motion.
Rich's noteworthy Shakespearean revivals, in 1738, which included
many long unacted plays, Macklin's famous triumph as Shylock
and the Drury lane productions of Shakespearean comedies, in
1740—1, are but instances of increasing interest in Shakespearean
performances before Garrick's advent. Furthermore, though
Garrick's influence, in the main, was salutary, his versions of
Shakespeare were, at times, unfaithful both to the original text
and to its spirit. Early in 1756, he produced, within a month,
alterations of three Shakespearean dramas, excising most of the
first three acts of The Winter's Tale, despite the protestation of
the prologue,
'Tis my chief Wish, my Joy, my only Plan,
To lose no Drop of that immortal Man!
Theophilus Cibber indignantly demanded, “Were Shakespeare's
ghost to rise, would he not frown indignation on this pilfering
pedlar in poetry-who thus shamefully mangles, mutilates, and
emasculates his plays? ? ' Though sweeping generalisations as to
Garrick's fidelity to his original are thus disproved by actual facts,
i Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, vol, wv, p. 452.
## p.
playwrights reflect the influence of French classical drama and
dramatic theory. Racine and Corneille were adapted for the
English stage in a whole series of versions? Addison, whose
critical influence was cast in favour of dramatic rule and regularity,
put classical theory so effectively into practice in Cato (1713) that
Voltaire hailed it as the first tragédie raisonnable in English? .
Stimulated by the successes of Ambrose Philips3 and Addison,
other English playwrights turned to classical models and trans-
lated, though often with considerable freedom, such dramas as
Le Cid, Cinna and Iphigénie.
Though the influence of French classical drama and dramatic
standards upon eighteenth century English drama demands
ample recognition, it should not be overestimated. Not even
under queen Anne was the Elizabethan tradition forgotten.
Shakespeare's tragedies, Jonson’s comedies and Beaumont and
Fletcher's romantic plays continued to hold the stage. Rowe
turned freely to Elizabethan models and sought to imitate Shake-
speare's style. Even Addison, a confirmed classicist, in at least one
memorable passage“, treated Shakespeare's genius as above arti-
ficial restraints. English translators of French tragedy sometimes
abated the rigid classical conventions in their adaptations for the
freer English stage. In reality, English drama, even during the
Augustan period, was often an unconscious compromise between
the restraint of French theory and the inherited freedom of
English dramatic practice. Furthermore, the English element in
queen Anne drama is not confined to the survival of Elizabethan
influences. The note of sentiment struck in contemporary comedy
by Steele is perceptible, not merely in the tragedy of Rowe, but,
perhaps, even in classical English drama itself. The triumphs of
Philips and Addison were founded on the distresses of the heroine
and the moralised sentiments of the hero. Despite, then, the domi-
nance of classical standards, queen Anne drama is not a merely
Gallicised product. It is the resultant of English and continental
forces.
If critical survey of the period be broadened so as to include
1 Cf. ante, vol. VIII, chap. VII, pp. 180–1.
2 Cf. ante, vol. ix, chap. II, pp. 63—4,
3 The Distrest Mother (adapted from Racine's Andromaque) was produced in 1712.
• The Spectator, no. 592.
## p. 70 (#96) ##############################################
70
The Drama and the Stage
1
1
the history of the stage as well as of the drama, the dramatic
currents will appear still more complex. Dorset gardens theatre
had catered more and more to the popular demand for spectacle.
Foreign singers and dancers invaded the boards of the patent
theatres. The successful advent of Italian opera made the judicious
Cibber grieve and Steele demand that Britons should 'from foreign
insult save this English stage? ' But even Colley Cibber, sworn
advocate of regular drama, compromised his convictions and, as a
manager, ‘had not Virtue enough to starve by opposing a Multitude
that would have been too hard for me? ' Meanwhile, the attacks
of Collier and his followers were continued, through almost a
generation, until, in 1726, William Law published his treatise,
The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage Entertainment fully
demonstrated. Thus, beset by foes without and by rivals within
the theatre, regular drama had fallen on evil days.
To the adverse factors which threatened the ascendancy of
formal tragedy and comedy must be added two theatrical develop-
ments of great significance. The second decade of the eighteenth
century marks the introduction of English pantomime; the
third, that of ballad-opera. The elements of pantomime had long
-
been present on the English stage before John Rich fused them
into an extraordinarily popular type of theatrical entertainment.
Dumb-shows,' introduced as early as Gorboduc, scenic and
mechanical elements in masque and the spectacular accessories
of restoration opera anticipate salient features of Rich's pro-
ductions. Yet, even if Cibber's suggestion be accepted that
the 'original hint' for pantomime is to be found in Weaver's
Drury lane production of The Loves of Mars and Venus
(1717), John Rich was the dominant factor in establishing the
popular type. He had none of Cibber's scruples about catering
to 'the vulgar taste. ' A remarkable mimic, but without the
gift of stage speech, Rich cleverly turned his limitation to
advantage. The speaking barlequin, familiar on the Italian stage
and already introduced on the English, now became dumb; but
Rich made actions speak louder than words. To a theme usually
drawn from fabulous history or classical myth, the pantomime
added the comic courtship of harlequin and columbine, heightening
the effect with spectacular transformations, elaborate scenery and
music. The patent theatres vied with each other in producing
pantomimes; for the receipts from them doubled those from
· Epilogue to The Tender Husband (1705).
* Apology, vol. II, p. 182.
Apology, vol. II, pp. 180 ff.
1
1
3
## p. 71 (#97) ##############################################
6
The Beggar's Opera. Transition
71
regular drama. Henceforth, pantomime had to be numbered as
one of the stock attractions of the eighteenth century stage.
Hardly had pantomime firmly established itself in popular
favour, when Rich produced another formidable rival to regular
drama in John Gay’s Beggar's Opera (1728)". This work marked
the triumph of ballad-opera. "The vast Success of that new
Species of Dramatick Poetry' was, to Colley Cibber, further
proof of the 'vulgar taste' which had already welcomed pantomime.
But the influence of Gay's opera is not confined to its intro-
duction of popular lyrics. In satirising not merely the absurdities
of Italian opera but the conscious moralisings of sentimental
drama, and in providing happy issues out of all the afflictions of
its charmingly pathetic' prison scenes, Gay points towards the
dramatic burlesques of Fielding and Carey. Palpable hits at
Sir Robert Walpole and other politicians of the day open the vein
of social and political satire, worked to the full in Fielding's farces.
The Beggar's Opera, accordingly, holds an important place in
English dramatic annals. Like pantomime, ballad-opera, hence-
forth, must be regarded as a stock attraction of the theatre.
During the Garrick era, its popularity was maintained by many
operas like those of Isaac Bickerstaff, and the initial run of
Sheridan's Duenna surpassed that of The Beggar's Opera.
Even this general survey of those earlier aspects of eighteenth
century drama, which form a necessary background to any account
of its later history, must make it clear that English drama is the
resultant of many forces. So complex, indeed, is the interaction
of these various forces that it is idle to seek to resolve actual
dramatic products exactly into their precise component parts.
Still more futile are attempts to warp the actual facts of dramatic
history into conformity with a rigid preconceived theory of dramatic
evolution. The convenient distinction between tragedy and
comedy, if converted into an arbitrary critical formula, becomes a
stumbling-block to the critic of sentimental drama. To attempt
to explain English classical drama simply from the standpoint of
French classical, or pseudo-classical, theory is to ignore English
influences which directly affected the dramatic practice, and even
the theories, of Voltaire himself. To regard the transition from
the immorality of restoration comedy to the sentimentalised
morality of the eighteenth century as a complete moral regenera-
tion is to forget the frank licence of Mrs Centlivre and the imperfect
ethical standards of even professed moralists like Cibber.
1 Cf. ante, vol. 1x, chap. VI, p. 163.
Apology, vol. 1, pp. 243, 245.
2
## p. 72 (#98) ##############################################
72
The Drama and the Stage
2
Broadly viewed, eighteenth century drama shows decided
reaction from the immorality that provoked the attacks of
Sir Richard Blackmore and Jeremy Collier. Yet, despite many
evidences of an awakening sense of moral responsibility in the
attitude of the court, of society and of administrators of the
law, the conversion of drama was neither sudden nor complete.
Farquhar, whose dramatic work is subsequent to Collier's attack,
maintains, essentially, the spirit of restoration comedy. Even The
Careless Husband, despite Cibber's good intentions, presents the
stock characters of restoration comedy purged of their gross
excesses, doubtless, but yet not wholly chastened in spirit. The
tendencies of earlier comedy are maintained in the dramatic work
of Mrs Centlivre. The sins of various dramatists of her sex
seem to have been visited chiefly upon Mrs Aphra Behn'; but,
though Mrs Centlivre has largely escaped the notoriety of the
'chaste Aphra,' the character of her drama is without fear rather
than without reproach. A certain concession to Collier's charge
that 'the Stage-Poets make their Principal Personages Vicious,
and reward them at the End of the Play,' may, perhaps, be detected
in the fifth-act repentance which she allows to sinners whose
consciences have lain comfortably dormant through the earlier acts.
Yet, for the most part, she can be acquitted of any intention 'to
moralise the stage. ' With considerable skill in dramatic structure
and facility in securing comic effect, she was content to achieve
theatrical effectiveness with little hesitation as to methods. An
early attempt at blank-verse tragedy, The Perjur'd Husband, or
The Adventures of Venice (1700), proves that her dramatic aptitude
did not extend either to verse or to tragedy. Her forte lay in
cleverness of comic intrigue and fluency of prose dialogue. Her
characters often have the salient traits which are within the ready
grasp of the actor, while the best of them are more vital comic
creations. Marplot, in The Busy-Body (1709) and its sequel,
lateras Marplot in Lisbon (1710), is much more than a copy from Molière's
L'Étourdi; and Don Felix, in The Wonder! A Woman keeps a
Secret (1714), became one of Garrick's most popular parts. From
Molière and from Spanish sources, Mrs Centlivre drew materials
freely for various plays; but she deserves credit for ability in
adaptation and for the addition of effective original touches. Of
her later plays, A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718) was a successful
comedy, and The Artifice (1722) reflects in some measure the
4
from
1 Cf. , as to Aphra Behn, ante, vol. VIII, chap. v, pp. 140-2.
## p. 73 (#99) ##############################################
Lillo 73
Young
Hughes. Thomson. .
influence of sentimental drama. Mrs Centlivre serves as a
convenient illustration of the fact that comedy had not wholly
responded to the movement for its moral improvement; but it
is fair to recall, at the same time, that the epilogues appended
to some of Young's dramas maintain the restoration practice of
enlivening tragedy with coarsely comic epilogues.
Like the current of moral reform, the current of classical in-
fluence, which was very strong in queen Anne drama, encountered
various obstacles in its course. Some of the early Georgian tragedies
of Edward Young (1683—1765)' have much of the violent action
of Elizabethan drama and the unrestraint, though not the poetic
imagination, of Lee's dramatic utterance. It needed but little
exaggeration for Fielding to turn the heroics of Busiris (1719) to
mockery in his burlesque tragedy, Tom Thumb. The Revenge
(1721), in striving to depict 'the tumults of a Godlike mind,'
recalls the heroic drama of the restoration, though Zanga, the
Moor, is reminiscent of Othello. Thus, these tragedies of Young
seem, in reality, to follow English, rather than strict continental,
models. In The Siege of Damascus (1720), a tragedy far superior
to the mediocre work of Young, John Hughes had turned to an
English source in borrowing from D'Avenant's play, The Siege? .
While the ponderous tragedies of James Thomson, to which
reference is made elsewhere3, lent weight rather than dignity to
the cause of classical drama, the rather uneventful course of
English tragedy during the second quarter of the eighteenth
century was broken by one radical innovation.
In The London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell
(1731), George Lillo introduced prose domestic tragedy. Brought
up, to his father's trade of jeweller in the city of London, Lillo
became the dramatist of domestic life. His first theatrical venture
was an insignificant ballad-opera, Silvia, or The Country Burial
(1730). The production at Drury lane theatre, on 22 June 1731,
of The London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell,
is, however, an important landmark in English dramatic history.
Domestic tragedy, in a sense, was no novelty on the English stage.
Elizabethan dramas such as Arden of Feversham, A Yorkshire
Tragedy and A Woman Killed with Kindness, forego the usual
noble preferences of tragedy. Otway, Southerne and Rowe found
that pathos was not dependent upon rank and title. The pro-
logue to Rowe's Fair Penitent, indeed, deliberately announces
1 Cf. chap. VII, post.
* Ct. ante, vol. VIII, p. 184.
3 Cf. chap. , post.
## p. 74 (#100) #############################################
74
The Drama and the Stage
the creed which Lillo followed. Yet the father of the fair Calista
is a Genoese nobleman and her lover is a young lord. Jane
Shore tells the ruin of a woman of lower class; but it is a great
noble who compasses her downfall. Otway's Orphan, like most
of the domestic tragedies that precede Lillo's, seems rather to
neglect the aristocratic tone of tragedy than to magnify its demo-
cratic character.
With Lillo, domestic tragedy becomes positively and insistently
familiar. He deliberately dramatises ordinary commercial life,
and teaches the importance of the commonplace. The prologue
to George Barnwell dwells on the fact that the tragic muse, after
moving in the very highest social spheres, has 'upon our stage'
been sometimes seen, nor without applause,
in a humbler dress-
Great only in distress. When she complaing
In Southern's, Rowe's, or Otway's moving strains,
The brilliant drops that fall from each bright eye
The absent pomp with brighter jems supply.
Forgive us then, if we attempt to show,
In artless strains, a tale of private woe,
A London 'Prentice ruin'd is our theme.
Lillo puts Rowe's earlier creed into aggressive practice. The
atmosphere of George Barnwell is that of the trading class, and
its ideal the virtue of the merchant's calling. Thorowgood, the
honest merchant, gratifies the ‘laudable curiosity' of his faithful
apprentice, Trueman, as to the political situation,
because from thence you may learn how honest merchants, as such, may
sometimes contribute to the safety of their country, as they do at all times to
its happiness; that if hereafter you should be tempted to any action that has
the appearance of vice or meanness in it, upon reflecting on the dignity of
our profession, you may with honest scorn reject whatever is unworthy of it.
. . . As the name of merchant never degrades the gentleman, so by no means
does it exclude him.
Even the rapid downward course of Lillo's erring prentice-hero is
interrupted, at the opening of the third act, to allow Thorowgood
to continue his instructions to Trueman on the ethics of business
and the moral mission of commerce. Trueman is bidden to observe
how trade
has promoted humanity, as it has opened and yet keeps up an intercourse
between nations, far remote from one another in situation, customs, and
religion; promoting arts, industry, peace and plenty; by mutual benefits
diffusing mutual love from pole to pole.
i See the lines beginning :
Long has the fate of kings and empires been
The common business of the tragick scene.
## p. 75 (#101) #############################################
The Morality of Lillo
75
6
The merchant's vocation is thus defined: 'It is the industrious
merchant's business to collect the various blessings of each soil
and climate, and, with the product of the whole, to enrich his
native country. ' Even when, with something of a sigh, he descends
to the routine of the day's work, he delivers such business maxims
as, Method in business is the surest guide. '
In conscious moral aim, Lillo is akin to the sentimental
dramatists. He seeks deliberately
thoughtless youth to warn, and shame the age
From vice destructive.
Thorowgood is 'a man of sentiment,' and, unlike Joseph Surface,
'acts up to the sentiments he professes. ' From his store of
commonplaces, he draws apposite maxims for moral as well as
business emergencies— When innocence is banish’d, modesty
soon follows'; 'When vice becomes habitual, the very power of
leaving it is lost. Maria inherits her father's gift for sentiment.
Even when Barnwell yields precipitately to Millwood's seductions,
he ejaculates such unavailing precepts as these : "To ease our
present anguish, by plunging into guilt, is to buy a moment's
pleasure with an age of pain'; 'The law of Heaven will not be
revers'd; and that requires us to govern our passions. Sentiment
attends him even to the gallows. He parts from his mistress with
this cold consolation :
From our example may all be taught to fly the first approach of vice; but, if
o'ertaken
By strong temptation, weakness, or surprize,
Lament their guilt and by repentance rise !
Th' impenitent alone die unforgiven;
To sin's like man, and to forgive like Heaven.
In the moralised drama of the eighteenth century, didactic senti-
ment is not merely the reward of virtue but a very present help in
trouble.
The plot of George Barnwell, as Lillo says, is 'Drawn from
the fam'd old song that bears his name. ' Ballad and play tell
alike the story of the ruin of an apprentice by a courtesan. The
theme suggests Hogarth's plates ? _Trueman is the industrious,
and Barnwell the idle, apprentice. Lillo ekes out the somewhat
meagre materials of the ballad by introducing Maria, Trueman
and Millwood's servants, and by expanding the shadowy figure of
the merchant into Thorowgood. He presents his hero in a more
1 Hogarth's first work of importance, A Harlot's Progress, appeared the year after
George Barnwell.
## p. 76 (#102) #############################################
76
The Drama and the Stage
sympathetic light by shifting to Millwood the responsibility for
the suggestion of his uncle's murder, and by emphasising his
'fear and sting of conscience,' of which the ballad makes but
passing mention.
In portrayal of character, Lillo is often crude and sometimes
inconsistent. At the outset, Barnwell, young, innocent, and
bashful,' is an unsuspecting innocent, whose response to Millwood's
leading question as to his thoughts of love would, in a less senti-
mental age, stamp him as either a prig or a hypocrite:
If you mean the love of women, I have not thought of it all. My youth and
circumstances make such thoughts improper in me yet. But if you mean the
general love we owe to mankind, I think no one has more of it in his temper
than my self. I don't know that person in the world whose happiness I don't
wish, and wou'dn't promote, were it in my power. In an especial manner I
love my Uncle, and my Master, but, above all, my friend.
Yet he yields to temptation, almost without resistance; nor can he
be defended on the score of innocent ignorance, since the moral
aphorisms with which he meets Millwood's advances clearly betray
his consciousness of guilt. His morality is but a thin veneer,
penetrated at the first touch. Yet, assuredly, this is not the con-
ception of character which Lillo sought to impart. Millwood is a
more consistent study in passion and depravity, and became the
prototype of more than one powerful dramatic figure? .
To Lillo's influence on the subjects of English tragedy must
be added his no less marked influence upon its language. He
deliberately adopted prose as the vehicle 'of expression for
domestic tragedy. He accepts, indeed, the convention of rime-
tags at the end of every act and at the conclusion of some scenes
during the act; but his main intent is to give domestic drama the
vocabulary and phrase that suit his theme. Judged by modern
standards, his attempt to abandon the sublime frequently achieves
the ridiculous. So firmly fastened was the habit of verse tragedy
that Lillo's dialogue often preserves the inverted phrases and
general rhythmic movement, and, at times, the actual scansion, of
blank verse.
The martyr cheaply purchases his heaven. Small are his sufferings, great
ward; not so the wretch who combats love with duty. . . . What is an
hour, a day, a year of pain, to a whole life of tortures such as these?
The habit of ornate description also persists even with the honest
merchant : "The populous East, luxuriant abounds with glittering
gems, bright pearls, aromatick spices, and health-restoring drugs.
1
is his rew
à
1 Notably of Marwood in Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson.
## p. 77 (#103) #############################################
George Barnwell and Fatal Curiosity 77
6
The late found Western World glows with unnumber'd veins of
gold and silver ore. ' Most grotesque is the dialogue of the scenes
of the uncle's murder.
His prophetic soul forebodes evil and his
'imagination is fill’d with gashly forms of dreary graves, and
bodies chang'd by death. His apostrophe to 'Death, thou strange
mysterious power—seen every day, yet never understood but by the
incommunicative dead'-unnerves the murderer for the moment,
and hardly has the deed been perpetrated when Barnwell throws
himself on the body of the 'expiring saint,' his 'martyr'd uncle,'
with an outbreak of inflated rhetoric which expires in moralised
heroic couplets. Judged by the modern standards of prose drama
that has felt the influence of Ibsen, Lillo's prose is sheer travesty.
Yet his was an age accustomed to the artificial rhetoric of senti-
mental drama, as it was to the 'grand manner' in acting. Even
so classical a critic as Pope deemed that, if Lillo 'had erred
through the whole play, it was only in a few places, where he had
unawares led himself into a poetical luxuriancy, affecting to be
too elevated for the simplicity of the subject' In Lillo's hands,
the old shackles of verse tragedy are broken ; but cruel marks of
the fetters remain visible. Beyond doubt, he sinned greatly; yet
much may be forgiven to one who showed, however imperfectly,
that serious drama might find expression in prose.
In The Christian Hero (1735), Lillo relapses into more con-
ventional tragedy. Prose gives way to blank verse, the London
prentice to 'a pious hero, and a patriot king,' and London to
Albania. In Fatal Curiosity: A True Tragedy of Three Acts?
(1736), Lillo retains blank verse, but reverts to domestic tragedy.
'From lower life we draw our scene's distress' The elder Colman,
in his prologue written for the revival of the play in 1782, pro-
claimed Lillo's kinship with Shakespeare in disregard of dramatic
rules and boldly suggested that
Lillo's plantations were of forest growth,
Shakespear's the same, great Nature's hand in both!
The strong verbal reminiscences of Macbeth and Hamlet would
seem rather to indicate that Shakespeare's hand was in Lillo's.
The plot itself, based on an old story of a Cornish murder, shows
how old Wilmot, urged by his wife to relieve their poverty, kills
the stranger that is within their gates, only to find that he has
1 The Lives of the Poets of Great-Britain and Ireland. By Mr (Theophilus) Cibber,
and other Hands. (1753), vol. v, p. 339.
? The original title was Guilt Its Own Punishment, or Fatal Curiosity.
3 Fielding's prologue.
## p. 78 (#104) #############################################
78
The Drama and the Stage
murdered his son, whom 'fatal curiosity' has led to conceal his
identity. In Lillo's play, fatality, not poverty, is the real motive
force. With something of the Greek conception, destiny dominates
the tragedy. Old Wilmot, to be sure, expires with the confession
that ‘We brought this dreadful ruin on ourselves. ” But Randal,
whose couplets point the conventional moral,
The ripe in virtue never die too soon,
protests against any censure of
Heaven's mysterious ways.
In Lillo's tragedy of destiny, we are not 'to take upon 's the
mystery of things, as if we were God's spies. '
Lillo's other dramatic works may be dismissed with brief
mention. Marina (1738), a three-act drama, based on Pericles,
Prince of Tyre, is additional evidence of Lillo's indebtedness to
Shakespeare. The brothel-scenes, which tend to abandon decency
as well as blank verse, can hardly be justified by a conclusion
that shows “Virtue preserv'd from fell destruction's blast. '
Britannia and Batavia, a rather belated instance of masque,
Elmerick, or Justice Triumphant, a regular blank-verse tragedy
which won Fielding's praise, and Arden of Feversham, which gives
further evidence of Lillo's interest in domestic tragedy and of his
indebtedness to Elizabethan drama, were published posthumously.
In the history of English drama, Lillo holds a position wholly
disproportionate to his actual dramatic achievement. Like
D'Avenant, his importance is chiefly that of a pioneer. The
modern reader sympathises more readily with Charles Lamb's
familiar strictures upon Lillo than with Fielding's praise. But,
artificial as his work appears today, Lillo set in motion powerful
forces that pointed toward natural tragedy. He deliberately put
aside the dignity of rank and title and the ceremony of verse. He
animated domestic drama, and paved the way for prose melodrama
and tragedy.
The influence of Lillo is not to be measured simply in the
records of English drama. On the continent, especially in France
and Germany, the effect of his domestic tragedy was striking. In
French drama, this influence may best be observed in Diderot.
From the previous discussion of the rise of sentimental drama
and its development on the continent as well as in England, it is
evident that French drama had already responded to the influences
of sentimental drama before the success of George Barnwell
moralised bourgeois tragedy. Destouches had admitted a serious
## p. 79 (#105) #############################################
Lillo and Diderot
79
undertone in his Philosophe marié (1727), and Marivaux, in his
Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard (1730), had delicately touched senti-
ment with pathos. In the score of years between the English
production of George Barnwell and the French translation which
probably directly influenced Diderot, drame sérieux was developing
toward comédie larmoyante. Nivelle de la Chaussée bathed virtue
in tears, and, in dramatising Pamela, had brought the influence
of Richardson's novel of sentiment to swell the tide of sentimental
drama. Even Voltaire borrowed from Pamela and found praise
for George Barnwell.
Though the general tendencies of the time should thus be
remembered, there is no need to belittle Lillo's direct and powerful
influence on Diderot. Like Voltaire, Diderot's influence on drama
was twofold—in actual dramatic production and in dramatic
theory. But Diderot set himself in direct opposition to the
classical standards which, despite some inconsistencies, Voltaire
maintained. In Le Fils Naturel (printed 1757), and in Le Père
de Famille (printed 1758), with the critical discourses that accom-
pany them, Diderot set forth the type of drama which he sought
to introduce into France. His very term, tragédie domestique et
bourgeoise, suggests the nature of Lillo's influence upon him.
Diderot carried his enthusiasm for George Barnwell to the point
of comparing the prison scene between Barnwell and Maria with
the Philoctetes of Sophocles. He followed his English master in the
choice of characters drawn from ordinary life, in the moralisation
of tragedy and in the use of prose. Diderot, in fact, carried his
belief in prose into more consistent practice than did Lillo. In
his treatise De la Poésie Dramatique, he expresses the conviction
that domestic tragedy should not be written in verse, though,
doubtless, it is French verse that he has in mind rather than the
English blank verse to which Lillo himself reverted in Fatal
Curiosity. The length of time before Diderot's plays were put
on the stage, and their rather indifferent reception by the public,
suggest that his own dramatic accomplishment was less significant
than his influence upon dramatists like Sedaine and Lessing.
Largely through Diderot, Lillo's influence was extended to
German drama. Lessing's translations of Diderot's plays and his
critical interpretations of his dramatic theories fell on favourable
soil in Germany. Lessing's own domestic tragedy, Miss Sara
Sampson (1755), which dissolved its audience in tears, has the
1 Le Fils Naturel, publicly produced in 1771, failed. Le Pere de Famille had
found moderate favoar on the Parisian stage in 1761.
## p. 80 (#106) #############################################
80
The Drama and the Stage
general tone of Lillo's drama. To the influence of George Barnwell
upon German domestic tragedy (bürgerliches Trauerspiel) should
be added that of Fatal Curiosity upon the German tragedy of
destiny (Schicksalstragödie). During the last two decades of the
eighteenth century, versions of Fatal Curiosity appeared in
German, its actual theme was taken for a brief play by Werner
(1812), and other examples of the 'tragedy of destiny' were borne
along on the passing wave of popularity'.
Though the effect of Lillo's dramas was far-reaching and
persistent, it must not be supposed that his bourgeois tragedy
thereafter dominated the English stage. Occasional plays, like
Charles Johnson's Caelia, or The Perjured Lover (1732), reflect
Lillo's influence. But, year after year, the English stage con-
tinued to produce a remarkable variety of theatrical productions,
from classical tragedy to nondescript farce. Not until the days
of Edward Moore did Lillo find a conspicuous follower. Moore,
like Lillo and Gay, was an apprentice turned playwright. The
mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease, in days when playwriting
was more in fashion, had noticeably, like the old drama itself, given
way to a less high-born school. Moore's early comedy, The
Foundling (1748), has some suggestion of Steele's last sentimental
comedy, while Gil Blas (1751) darkens the comic action with
a tragic underplot. But Moore's tragic and moral bent unite
most clearly and forcibly in The Gamester (1753).
In The Gamester, prose domestic tragedy again prevails.
Moore dramatises a new commandment—Thou shalt not gamble. '
To the playful hits of Pope and the more vigorous attacks of
Addison upon gambling, Moore gave tragic intensity. The very
singleness of his purpose gives unity to his drama. Without
remarkable dramatic skill, he conceived his framework on large
lines, and, in many ways, executed it impressively. He stoops, at
times, to melodrama, in the use of surprise ; but, like Lillo, he shows
dramatic restraint in not permitting Mrs Beverley to expire on
her husband's corpse. His failure to introduce his hero in the
actual setting of the gaming-house seems, however, a needless
sacrifice of a situation that would have strengthened at least the
acting possibilities of the drama. Moore's prose, despite obvious
evidences of unnaturalness, marks an advance over Lillo's. They
author's own confession? , that in scenes of elevated passion, it was
>
a
cala
1 For further details, see the study of Lillo's work and its influence in Ward's, A. W. ,
edition of The London Merchant and Fatal Curiosity (Belles Lettres Series).
· See Introduction to The Gamester.
## p. 81 (#107) #############################################
81
Voltaire and the English Drama
harder to refrain from verse than to produce it, helps to explain
Lillo's inflated diction. Diderot coupled The Gamester and The
Merchant of London as instances of English tragedies in prose,
and Saurin's vein in Beverlei (1768) is further evidence of Moore's
influence on the continental drama.
While Lillo and Moore were thus enlarging the field of tragedy
by extending it to the concerns of ordinary life and developing,
however crudely, a new medium of prose expression, the influence
of Voltaire was being exerted in behalf of classical standards. In
1726, he began a residence of almost three years in England which
brought him into contact with English drama. Cato he regarded
as a masterpiece of classical tragedy. Yet, like Addison, he con-
fessed, once, at least, that creative energy such as Shakespeare's
'leaves far behind it everything which can boast only of reason
and correctness' The greater freedom and vigour of action of
the English stage clearly affect both Voltaire's classical dramatic
standards and his own dramatic practice. In a letter of 1735, he
declares that French drama 'is ordinarily devoid of action and of
great interests,' and, in another of 1750, full of his usual strictures
on the barbarities of English tragedy, he concedes that “'tis true
we have too much of words, if you have too much of action,
and perhaps the perfection of the art should consist in a due
mixture of the French taste and the English energy? His own
dramas borrow from Shakespeare with a freedom that impressed
even those who translated and adapted Voltaire's plays for the
English stage. In the prologue to Aaron Hill's Zara (1736), a
version of Voltaire's Zaire, Colley Cibber says plainly:
From English plays, Zara's French author fired,
Confessed his muse, beyond himself, inspired;
From rack'd Othello's rage he raised his style,
And snatched the brand that lights his tragic pile.
The prologue to James Miller's version of Mahomet (1744) is
equally frank:
Britons, these numbers to yourselves you owe;
Voltaire bath strength to shoot in Shakespeare's bow.
The monstrosities which Voltaire took pains to point out in
Shakespeare's tragedies did not prevent him from borrowing from
such dramas as Othello, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth and
King Lear far more than he troubled himself to acknowledge.
i Quoted by Lounsbury, T. R. , Shakespeare and Voltaire, p. 52.
? Ibid. pp. 71, 138.
E. L. X.
CH. IV.
6
## p. 82 (#108) #############################################
82
The Drama and the Stage
Nor did his borrowings from Shakespeare measure his indebted-
ness to English drama. William Duncombe's adaptation of
Brutus (1734), which begins the long list of English stage
versions of Voltaire, brought upon the French dramatist the
charge of plagiarism from Lee's restoration tragedy, Brutus.
Voltaire's influence upon English drama is, accordingly, not
that of an uncompromising continental classicist. In the main,
he supported the cause of classical drama ; but it is wholly
misleading to ignore the strength of the counter influences of
English drama upon him. Criticism, likewise, has frequently
exaggerated the influence of Voltaire's dramas on the English
stage. Of the various versions of Voltaire that appeared during
the second quarter of the eighteenth century, which include, besides
those already mentioned, Hill's Alzira (1736) and Merope (1749), the
most successful was the same writer's Zara. Yet its continuous run
of fourteen nights was an exceptional success.
The early recog-
nition of Voltaire's large indebtedness to Shakespeare helps to
explain why he failed to supplant the native genius from whom
he borrowed. Performances of Shakespearean drama far out-
numbered those of English versions of Voltaire's plays. The
succession of critical editions of Shakespeare, beginning with that
of Rowe (1709) ? , increased Shakespeare's influence with readers.
David Garrick powerfully advanced his popularity with playgoers.
The tide of patriotic feeling rose in increasing resentment against
Voltaire's strictures on English drama. Even Aaron Hill, the
zealous adapter of Voltaire, in the preface to Merope, asserts that
80 much over-active sensibility to his own country's claims, with so unfeeling
a stupidity in judging the pretensions of his neighbors might absolve all
indignation short of gross indecency towards one who has not scrupled. . . to
represent the English as incapable of tragedy; nay, even of painting or of
music.
The plain speech of Voltaire's English sympathisers became violent
invective, when Foote, in 1747, denounced him as 'that insolent
French panegyrist who first denies Shakespeare almost every
dramatic excellence, and then, in his next play, pilfers from him
almost every capital scene,' and pictured him in his dual role of
critic and dramatist as the carping, superficial critic and the low,
paltry thief? . ' Such bursts represent the extreme of patriotic ire
rather than the mean of ordinary criticism; yet there is abundant
evidence that the mid-eighteenth century stage which acclaimed
>
>
1 Cf. ante, vol. v, pp. 267 ff.
Cf. Lounsbury, u. 8. pp. 148—9.
## p. 83 (#109) #############################################
Fielding and Burlesque
83
Garrick's Shakespearean productions was in little danger of blind
allegiance to a continental authority.
Even before the deference at first accorded to Voltaire had
perceptibly abated, classical drama did not hold the English
stage unchallenged. Lillo's bold innovations threatened its pres-
tige, and pantomime its popularity. The vein of dramatic
burlesque struck by Gay in What-dye-Call-it and The Beggar's
Opera was developed by Fielding and Carey. In Tom Thumb;
A Tragedy (1730), afterwards called The Tragedy of Tragedies ;
or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1731),
Fielding (of whose comedies something has been said in an earlier
chapter)? ridiculed the absurdities of contemporary drama, and,
in his later mock critical and explanatory notes, satirised the
theories of Corneille and such tragedies as Cato, Busiris and
Fenton's popular Mariamne (1723). The coarser burlesque
of Fielding's Covent Garden Tragedy (1733) is directed, in part,
against Philips's Distrest Mother. The spirit of Tom Thumb is
maintained in Henry Carey's Chrononhotonthologos, the Most
Tragical Tragedy that ever was Tragediz'd by any Company
of Tragedians (1734), and, less effectively, in his burlesque
opera, The Dragon 'of Wantley (1734), which displays, in the
words of its dedication, the beauty of nonsense, so prevailing
in Italian opera' While Fielding and Carey thus out-Heroded
Herod, they, too, were on the side of sanity in English drama.
Tom Thumb is the ironic expression of that revolt against con-
ventional English tragedy which Fielding phrased seriously in
his prologue to Lillo's Fatal Curiosity :
No fustian Hero rages here to-night;
No armies fall, fix a tyrant's right.
To the negative effect of burlesque, Fielding added a positive
influence against the accepted dramatic conventions by devoting
a large share of his energies to the composition of short dramatic
pieces. Though some of his plays accept the five-act formula,
most of them do not exceed three acts. The production of brief
dramatic pieces by Samuel Foote and other followers of Fielding
is intimately connected with the eighteenth century fashion of
appending to regular drama an after-piece, usually farce or
pantomime. The ultimate effects of this practice may be illus-
trated by the fact that Sheridan's Critic was produced, originally,
as an after-piece to Hamlet.
1 Cf. ante, chap. 11, pp. 21–2.
* Cf. ante, vol. ix, chap. VI, p. 190.
7
6
6--2
## p. 84 (#110) #############################################
84
The Drama and the Stage
In still another way, Fielding shook the conventions of formal
drama. Improving on Gay’s ‘local hits’ at politicians of the day,
Fielding carried personal allusion and innuendo to daring extremes.
Pasquin (1736) is 'a dramatick Satire on the Times,' and The
Historical Register for 1736 (acted 1737) overruns with political,
theatrical and social satire. Fielding's bold political references
were largely responsible for the licensing act of 1737, which
limited the metropolitan theatres to two, and brought plays,
prologues and epilogues under direct legal supervision. Though
Sir John Barnard, in March 1735, had interested himself, in the
House of Commons, in the question of restricting the theatres,
and, though the immediate stimulus to the licensing act is usually
held to have been an abusive piece, called The Golden Rump,
there is little reason to doubt that Walpole recognised in Fielding
his most dangerous foe. The licensing act restricted Fielding's
lawless freedom; already, however, he had set in motion forces
which the censorship of the stage might in part check, but
could not wholly control. Essentially the playwright of his own
day, Fielding influenced drama in the direction of themes of
contemporary life. Even Lillo, who set his face against a
social restriction of the sphere of tragedy, passively conceded
the historic background in giving, nominally, at least, an
Elizabethan setting to George Barnwell, in assigning Fatal
Curiosity to the reign of James I and in choosing Arden of
Feversham as the theme of 'an historical tragedy. Fielding's
actual dramatic works resembled cartoons rather than finished
works of comic art. Yet, his burlesque of conventional drama,
his development of short dramatic pieces that challenged the
authority of the five-act formula and his attention to the subjects
and personages of contemporary life, powerfully combined towards
enlarging the freedom and advancing the naturalness of dramatic
expression.
The transfer of Fielding's literary activity from drama to
novel suggests another potent factor in the decline of the drama.
To the forces of Italian opera, pantomime, burlesque, ballad-
opera, farce and spectacle, whose constant inroads had grievously
thinned the ranks of regular drama, was now added a more
dangerous, if more subtle, rival off the boards. Robinson Crusoe
(1719—20) and Gulliver's Travels (1726—7) had already fired the
fancy of English readers. With Richardson's Pamela (1740), the
English novel began its great period of literary dominance! It
1 Cf. ante, chap. I.
## p. 85 (#111) #############################################
Garrick
85
is not an accidental coincidence that the middle of the eighteenth
century is marked by poverty in dramatic composition as well as
by the strenuous advance of the novel. Nevertheless, two powerful
forces helped to sustain the vitality of the theatre. Provided with
a strong repertory of stock plays, the genius of actors was able to
triumph even over the mediocrity of contemporary drama. It
was the age of the player, not of the playwright. The period of
which we speak is the era of Garrick.
The record of David Garrick belongs, primarily, to theatrical
annals. Yet his own dramatic work, his Shakespearean revivals
and the influence of his natural method of acting, which indirectly
affected the artificiality of the drama itself, while directly opposing
the old school of acting, entitle him to a place in English dramatic
history. His mythological skit Lethe (1740) gained a place on
the boards in the year before its author's histrionic triumph as
Richard III. Reynolds's picture showing Garrick torn between
the rival muses of tragedy and comedy suggests his range and
versatility both as actor and as manager. He produced on the
stage more than a score of Shakespeare's dramas, and himself
appeared in the great majority of them. He was the dominant
factor in confirming Shakespeare's popularity with audiences in the
middle of the eighteenth century. Yet his service consisted rather
in accelerating the popular current than in setting it in motion.
Rich's noteworthy Shakespearean revivals, in 1738, which included
many long unacted plays, Macklin's famous triumph as Shylock
and the Drury lane productions of Shakespearean comedies, in
1740—1, are but instances of increasing interest in Shakespearean
performances before Garrick's advent. Furthermore, though
Garrick's influence, in the main, was salutary, his versions of
Shakespeare were, at times, unfaithful both to the original text
and to its spirit. Early in 1756, he produced, within a month,
alterations of three Shakespearean dramas, excising most of the
first three acts of The Winter's Tale, despite the protestation of
the prologue,
'Tis my chief Wish, my Joy, my only Plan,
To lose no Drop of that immortal Man!
Theophilus Cibber indignantly demanded, “Were Shakespeare's
ghost to rise, would he not frown indignation on this pilfering
pedlar in poetry-who thus shamefully mangles, mutilates, and
emasculates his plays? ? ' Though sweeping generalisations as to
Garrick's fidelity to his original are thus disproved by actual facts,
i Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, vol, wv, p. 452.
## p.
