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ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY
OF THE LAST CENTURY
THE artificial Comedy, or Comedy of
manners, is quite extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquhar
show their heads once in seven years only, to be exploded and
put down instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is it for a few
wild speeches, an occasional license of dialogue? I think not
altogether. The business of their dramatic characters will not
stand the moral test. We screw every thing up to that. Idle gallantry
in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an evening, startles
us in the same way as the alarming indications of profligacy in
a son or ward in real life should startle a parent or guardian.
We have no such middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We
see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours' duration,
and of no after consequence, with the severe eyes which inspect
real vices with their bearings upon two worlds. We are spectators
to a plot or intrigue (not reducible in life to the point of strict
morality) and take it all for truth. We substitute a real for
a dramatic person, and judge him accordingly. We try him in our
courts, from which there is no appeal to the dramatis personae!,
his peers. We have been spoiled with -- not sentimental comedy
but a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded
to it, the exclusive and all devouring drama of common life; where
the moral point is every thing; where, instead of the fictitious
half-believed personages of the stage (the phantoms of old comedy)
we recognise ourselves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies,
patrons, enemies, -- the same as in life, -- with an interest
in what is going on so hearty and substantial, that we cannot
afford our moral judgment, in its deepest and most vital results,
to compromise or slumber for a moment. What is there transacting,
by no modification is made to affect us in any other manner than
the same events or characters would do in our relationships of
life. We carry our fire-side concerns to the theatre with us.
We do not go thither, like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure
of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it; to make
assurance double, and take a bond of fate. We must live our toilsome
lives twice over, as it was the mournful privilege of Ulysses
to descend twice to the shades. All that neutral ground of character,
which stood between vice and virtue; or which in fact was indifferent
to neither, where neither properly was called in question; that
happy breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual moral questioning
-- the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted casuistry -- is broken
up and disfranchised, as injurious to the interests of society.
The privileges of the place are taken away by law. We dare not
dally with images, or names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs
at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic representation
of disorder; and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety that our
morality should not take cold, we wrap it up in a great blanket
surtout of precaution against the breeze and sunshine.
I confess for myself
that (with no great delinquencies to answer for) I am glad for
a season to take an airing beyond the diocese of the strict conscience,
-- not to live always in the precincts of the law-courts, -- but
now and then, for a dream-whim or so, to imagine a world with
no meddling restriction -- to get into recesses, whither the hunter
cannot follow me -
-----------Secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove --
I come back to my cage and my restraint
the fresher and more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly
for having respired the breath of an imaginary freedom. I do not
know how it is with others, but I feel the better always for the
perusal of one of Congreve's -- nay, why should I not add even
of Wycherley's -- comedies. I am the gayer at least for it; and
I could never connect those sports of a witty fancy in any shape
with any result to be drawn from them to imitation in real life.
They are a world of themselves almost as much as fairy-land. Take
one of their characters, male or female (with few exceptions they
are alike), and place it in a modern play, and my virtuous indignation
shall rise against the profligate wretch as warmly as the Catos
of the pit could desire; because in a modern play I am to judge
of the right and the wrong. The standard of police is the measure
of political justice. The atmosphere will blight it, it cannot
live here. It has got into a moral world, where it has no business,
from which it must needs fall headlong; as dizzy, and incapable
of making a stand, as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has wandered
unawares into the sphere of one of his Good Men, or Angels. But
in its own world do we feel the creature is so very bad ? -- The
Fainalls and the Mirabels, the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods,
in their own sphere, do not offend my moral sense; in fact they
do not appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in, their proper
element. They break through no laws, or conscientious restraints.
They know of none. They have got out of Christendom into the land
-- what shall I call it ? -- of cuckoldry -- the Utopia of gallantry,
where pleasure is duty, and the manners perfect freedom. It is
altogether a speculative scene of things, which has no reference
whatever to the world that is. No good person can be justly offended
as a spectator, because no good person suffers on the stage. Judged
morally, every character in these plays -- the few exceptions
only are mistakes -- is alike essentially vain and worthless.
The great art of Congreve is especially shown in this, that he
has entirely excluded from his scenes, -- some little generosities
in the part of Angelica perhaps excepted, -- not only any thing
like a faultless character, but any pretensions to goodness or
good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did this designedly, or instinctively,
the effect is as happy, as the design (if design) was bold. I
used to wonder at the strange power which his Way of the World
in particular possesses of interesting you all along in the pursuits
of characters, for whom you absolutely care nothing -- for you
neither hate nor love his personages -- and I think it is owing
to this very indifference for any, that you endure the whole.
He has spread a privation of moral light, I will call it, rather
than by the ugly name of palpable darkness, over his creations;
and his shadows flit before you without distinction or preference.
Had he introduced a good character, a single gush of moral feeling,
a revulsion of the judgment to actual life and actual duties,
the impertinent Goshen would have only lighted to the discovery
of deformities, which now are none, because we think them none.
Translated into real
life, the characters of his, and his friend Wycherley's dramas,
are profligates and strumpets, -- the business of their brief
existence, the undivided pursuit of lawless gallantry. No other
spring of action, or possible motive of conduct, is recognised;
principles which, universally acted upon, must reduce this frame
of things to a chaos. But we do them wrong in so translating them.
No such effects are produced in their world. When we are among
them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We are not to judge them
by our usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by their
proceedings, -- for they have none among them. No peace of families
is violated -- for no family ties exist among them. No purity
of the marriage bed is stained, -- for none is supposed to have
a being. No deep affections are disquieted, -- no holy wedlock
bands are snapped asunder, -- for affection's depth and wedded
faith are not of the growth of that soil. There is neither right
nor wrong, -- gratitude or its opposite, -- claim or duty, --
paternity or sonship. Of what consequence is it to virtue, or
how is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir Simon, or Dapperwit,
steal away Miss Martha; or who is the father of Lord Froth's,
or Sir Paul Pliant's children.
The whole is a passing
pageant, where we should sit as unconcerned at the issues, for
life or death, as at a battle of the frogs and mice. But, like
Don Quixote, we take part against the puppets, and quite as impertinently.
We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our
coxcombical moral sense is for a little transitory ease excluded.
We have not the courage to imagine a state of things for which
there is neither reward nor punishment. We cling to the painful
necessities of shame and blame. We would indict our very dreams.
Amidst the mortifying
circumstances attendant upon growing old, it is something to have
seen the School for Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew out
of Congreve and Wycherley, but gathered some allays of the sentimental
comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that it should
be now acted, though it continues, at long intervals, to be announced
in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph
Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn
plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice -- to express
it in a word -- the downright acted villany of the part, so different
from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness, -- the hypocritical
assumption of hypocrisy, -- which made Jack so deservedly a favourite
in that character, I must needs conclude the present generation
of play-goers more virtuous than myself, or more dense. I freely
confess that he divided the palm with me with his better brother;
that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but there are passages,like
that, for instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a pittance
to a poor relation, incongruities which Sheridan was forced upon
by the attempt to join the artificial with the sentimental comedy,
either of which must destroy the other -- but over these obstructions
Jack's manner floated him, so lightly, that a refusal from him
no more shocked you, than the easy compliance of Charles gave
you in reality any pleasure; you got over the paltry question
as quickly as you could, to get back into the regions of pure
comedy, where no cold moral reigns. The highly artificial manner
of Palmer in this character counteracted every disagreeable impression
which you might have received from the contrast, supposing them
real, between the two brothers. You did not believe in Joseph
with the same faith with which you believed in Charles. The latter
was a pleasant reality, the former a no less pleasant poetical
foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous; a mixture
of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety upon
the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art of Palmer
to reconcile the discordant elements.
A player with Jack's
talents, if we had one now, would not dare to do the part in the
same manner. He would instinctively avoid every turn which might
tend to unrealise, and so to make the character fascinating. He
must take his cue from his spectators, who would expect a bad
man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as the death-beds
of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints, which I am sorry
to say have disappeared from the windows of my old friend Carrington
Bowles, of St. Paul's Church-yard memory -- (an exhibition as
venerable as the adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the
bad and good man at the hour of death; where the ghastly apprehensions
of the former, -- and truly the grim phantom with his reality
of a toasting fork is not to be despised, -- so finely contrast
with the meek complacent kissing of the rod, -- taking it in like
honey and butter, -- with which the latter submits to the scythe
of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive
finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon. What flesh, like loving
grass, would not covet to meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate
mower ? -- John Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part.
He was playing to you all the while that he was playing upon Sir
Peter and his lady. You had the first intimation of a sentiment
before it was on his lips. His altered voice was meant to you,
and you were to suppose that his fictitious co-flutterers on the
stage perceived nothing at all of it. What was it to you if that
half-reality, the husband, was over-reached by the puppetry --
or the thin thing (Lady Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it
was dying of a plethory? The fortunes of Othello and Desdemona
were not concerned in it. Poor Jack has past from the stage in
good time, that he did not live to this our age of seriousness.
The pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone in good time. His manner
would scarce have past current in our day. We must love or hate
-- acquit or condemn -- ensure or pity -- exert our detestable
coxcombry of moral judgment upon every thing. Joseph Surface,
to go down now, must be a downright revolting villain -- no compromise
-- his first appearance must shock and give horror -- his specious
plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers
welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic
harm even) could come, or was meant to come of them, must inspire
a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real canting person
of the scene -- for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate
ends, but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in
down-right self-satisfaction) must be loved, and Joseph hated.
To balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle
must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bride-groom,
whose teasings (while King acted it) were evidently as much played
off at you, as they were meant to concern any body on the stage,
-- he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury
-- a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged -- the
genuine crim-con antagonist of the villanous seducer Joseph. To
realise him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must
have the downright pungency of life -- must (or should) make you
not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would
move you in a neighbour or old friend. The delicious scenes which
give the play its name and zest, must affect you in the same serious
manner as if you heard the reputation of a dear female friend
attacked in your real presence. Crabtree, and Sir Benjamin --
those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your mirth
-- must be ripened by this hot-bed process of realization into
asps or amphisbaenas; and Mrs. Candour -- O! frightful! become
a hooded serpent. Oh who that remembers Parsons and Dodd -- the
wasp and butterfly of the School for Scandal -- in those two characters;
and charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished
from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part -- would forego
the true scenic delight -- the escape from life -- the oblivion
of consequences -- the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection
-- those Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from
the world -- to sit instead at one of our modern plays -- to have
his coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left for a moment)
stimulated with perpetual appeals -- dulled rather, and blunted,
as a faculty without repose must be -- and his moral vanity pampered
with images of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved
without the spectators' risk, and fortunes given away that cost
the author nothing?
No piece was, perhaps,
ever so completely cast in all its parts as this manager's comedy.
Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abingdon in Lady Teazle; and
Smith, the original Charles, had retired, when I first saw it.
The rest of the characters, with very slight exceptions, remained.
I remember it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble, who
took the part of Charles after Smith; but, I thought, very unjustly.
Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with a certain
gaiety of person. He brought with him no sombre recollections
of tragedy. He had not to expiate the fault of having pleased
beforehand in lofty declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of
Richard to atone for. His failure in these parts was a passport
to success in one of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I
could judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal
incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this
part came steeped and dulcified in good humour. He made his defects
a grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only
served to convey the points of his dialogue with more precision.
It seemed to head the shafts to carry them deeper. Not one of
his sparkling sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he delivered
each in succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any of
them could be altered for the better. No man could deliver brilliant
dialogue -- the dialogue of Congreve or of Wycherley -- because
none understood it -- half so well as John Kemble. His Valentine,
in Love for Love, was, to my recollection, faultless. He flagged
sometimes in the intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber
over the level parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth has been
known to nod. But he always seemed to me to be particularly alive
to pointed and witty dialogue. The relaxing levities of tragedy
have not been touched by any since him -- the playful court-bred
spirit in which he condescended to the players in Hamlet -- the
sportive relief which he threw into the darker shades of Richard
-- disappeared with him. He had his sluggish moods, his torpors
-- but they were the halting-stones and resting-places of his
tragedy -- politic savings, and fetches of the breath -- husbandry
of the lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist -- rather,
I think, than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less
painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable vigilance, the
"lidless dragon eyes," of present fashionable tragedy.
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