ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

To Hampstead or to Highgate does repair,

Her to make haste her husband does implore,

And cries, "My dear, the coach is at the door:"

With equal wish, desirous to be gone, She gets into the coach, and then she cries-"Drive on!"

Thumb. With those last words 134 he vomited his soul,

Which, 135 like whipt cream, the devil will swallow down.

Bear off the body, and cut off the head, Which I will to the king in triumph lug. Rebellion's dead, and now I'll go to breakfast.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

men, whores;

Aloft he bore the grizly head of Grizzle; When of a sudden through the streets there came

A cow, of larger than the usual size,
And in a moment-guess, Oh! guess the
rest!-

And in a moment swallowed up Tom
Thumb.

King. Shut up again the prisons, bid my
treasurer

Not give three farthings out-hang all the culprits,

Guilty or not-no matter.-Ravish virgins:

Go bid the schoolmasters whip all their boys!

Let lawyers, parsons, and physicians loose,

To rob, impose on, and to kill the world. Nood. Her majesty the queen is in a

swoon.

137 Here is a visible conjunction of two days in one, by which our author may have either intended an emblem of a wedding, or to insinuate that men in the honey moon are apt to imagine time shorter than it is. It brings into my mind a passage in the comedy called The Coffee House Politician:

We will celebrate this day at my house to-morrow. 138 These beautiful phrases are all to be found in one single speech of King Arthur, or The British Worthy.

139 I was but teaching him to grace his tale With decent horror.

Cleomenes.

[blocks in formation]

I drive to thine, O Doodle! for a new one. (Kills Doodle.) King. Ha! murderess vile, take that. (Kills Must.)

140 And take thou this.

(Kills himself, and falls.)

So when the child, whom nurse from danger guards,

Sends Jack for mustard* with a pack of cards,

Kings, queens, and knaves, throw one another down,

Till the whole pack lies scattered and
o'erthrown;

So all our pack upon the floor is cast,
And all I boast is-that I fall the last.

(Dies.)

140 We may say with Dryden [Conquest of Granada]:

Death did at length so many slain forget,
And left the tale, and took them by the great.

I know of no tragedy which comes nearer to this
charming and bloody catastrophe than Cleomenes,
where the curtain covers five principal characters
dead on the stage. These lines too-

I asked no questions then, of who killed who?
The bodies tell the story as they lie-
seem to have belonged more properly to this scene of
our author; nor can I help imagining they were orig-
inally his. The Rival Ladies by Dryden], too,
seem beholden to this scene:

We're now a chain of lovers linked in death;
Julia goes first, Gonsalvo hangs on her,
And Angelina hangs upon Gonsalvo,
As I on Angelina.

No scene, I believe, ever received greater honors than
this. It was applauded by several encores, a word
very unusual in tragedy. And it was very difficult
for the actors to escape without a second slaughter.
This I take to be a lively assurance of that fierce spirit
of liberty which remains among us, and which Mr.
Dryden, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, hath ob-
served: "Whether custom," says he, "hath so insin-
uated itself into our countrymen, or nature hath so
formed them to fierceness, I know not; but they will
scarcely suffer combats and other objects of horror
to be taken from them." And indeed I am for
having them encouraged in this martial disposition:
nor do I believe our victories over the French have
been owing to anything more than to those bloody
spectacles daily exhibited in our tragedies, of which
the French stage is so entirely clear.

* Apparently a trick or, game in which cards are stood up on end and then knocked over.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), born in central Ireland, was educated in Dublin, later studying medicine in various parts of Great Britain and the Continent. After attempts as schoolmaster and physician, he settled down as a hack or miscellaneous writer, as which he was very successful, though nothing could have made him rich. Careless, mercurial, unpractical, generous, he like Steele and Sheridan was an example of some of the traits often associated with the Irishman and with the artistic temperament. Most of his literary work was made-to-order and mediocre; with now and then a masterpiece, like The Deserted Village among poems, The Vicar of Wakefield among novels, and She Stoops to Conquer among plays, which advance him close to the front rank of eighteenth-century writers.

Goldsmith's principal other play, The Good Natur'd Man, only moderately good and only moderately successful, in 1768 had earned him £400 or £500, while The Vicar of Wakefield seems to have fetched only some £63; though others of his non-dramatic works had made more than this, it is no wonder that in his needs he turned to the stage again, and in 1771 wrote She Stoops to Conquer, which was published and performed two years later. Since he badly needed money, it is the more to the credit of his literary conscience that he set himself against the prevailing fashion of sentimentalism, and even publicly ridiculed it; but he had the personal reason that Hugh Kelly's False Delicacy, a rather wishy-washy specimen of the type, had come out as a rival to his own earlier play. George Colman, the manager of the Covent Garden theater, doubting the success of She Stoops to Conquer, accepted it only through the persuasions and almost the compulsion of Dr. Johnson, a warm friend of Goldsmith's. Johnson and other friends went the first night to force applause, but when the nervous author entered the theater behind the scenes during the fifth act, and heard a hiss (at the supposed improbability of Mrs. Hardcastle in her own garden believ ing herself forty miles from home), Colman maliciously said to him, Pshaw, Doctor, don't be fearful of squibs, when we have been sitting almost these two hours upon a barrel of gunpowder." So strong had been the tide of sentimentalism. But the tide was turned back. The hiss was understood next day to have come only from Cumberland, the highpriest of sentimental comedy; the play suc

66

66

ceeded prodigiously," according to even Hor ace Walpole, who disliked it; everybody watching Dr. Johnson, and laughing when he did. No wonder the author dedicated his play to its greatest supporter.

66

The ridicule of sentimentalism is most ap parent in the prologue and in scene ii of act 1. In the former, which was written by David Garrick the actor, the play is represented as a last effort to revive the dying muse of sound legitimate comedy, and to save the world from the deluge of maudlin sentimentality and platitude-sentiments poured out by her rival. The parody of the manner and speeches of the sentimental hero must have been highly diverting on the stage. In the other passage, the fellows at The Three Pigeons love to hear the booby Tony Lumpkin sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that's low." May this be my poison if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest of tunes." Elsewhere also there is plenty of satire, as in that on the insincere talk of the conventional hero in the embarrassed Mar lowe's stuttering attempts at genteel conver sation with Miss Hardcastle (II. i), who speaks satirically of a man of sentiment. Yet, so hard is it to escape the mental atmosphere in which one lives, there are some slight signs of the disease even in the physi cian who is to cure it, notably in Miss Ne ville's somewhat exaggerated sense of propriety. When she at last refuses to elope.

prudence once more comes to her relief, and she will obey its dictates," but she is restrained less by sense than by sensibility. It would have harmonized better with the high spirits of the play if she had been al lowed to rattle off toward Scotland. But this would have prevented not only a grand finale, with all the chief personages on the stage, but also a sense of complete and dutiful propriety at the end, of all for the very best, of submitting oneself to all one's gover nors, teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters.

Pshaw, pshaw!" cries Mrs. Hardcastle, ap parently conscious of it, "this is all but the whining end of a modern novel."

Instead of the edification afforded by the over-sweet new style of play, Goldsmith meant simply to amuse. He asked a friend to whom he had given a ticket how he had liked the play. To the reply that it had made him laugh he said, "That is all I ask." He would stick to good old-fashioned styles in comedy. as old Hardcastle in dress: "Is not the whole age in a combination to drive sense

and discretion out of doors?" He aimed but little, after all, at either satire or the exhibition of truth for its own sake; rather to excite a state of mind as different as possible from that produced by a Kelly or a Cumberland. She Stoops to Conquer is in the main a comedy of intrigue. Even Horace Walpole, who thought it mean and "low," worse than the sort of comedy it satirized, allowed merit in the situations, and that it made one laugh; its admirer Johnson, while admitting that the plot, with its confusion of a gentleman's house with an inn, bordered upon farce, felt that the incidents were so prepared for as not to seem improbable. The preparation is fairly obvious, as where in the first scene Mrs. Hardcastle calls the audience's attention to the inn-like look of the house, and Miss Hardcastle informs her father that she is wont at night to wear a "housewive's dress, to please him"; and elsewhere information is given the audience in a sufficiently deliberate way. Like Sheridan, Goldsmith cared less to surprise the spectator than to gratify him by sharing secrets with him. It may make us a little readier in accepting two of the most surprising incidents, to know that Goldsmith as a boy spent a night in a squire's house in Ardagh thinking it an inn, and that Sheridan played on Mme. de Genlis a trick like Tony's on his mother. Chance constantly favors the deceptions, as in the play of crosspurposes between Marlow and old Hardcastle (IV. i), where the former thinks he is doing his landlord a favor by instructing his servants to drink heavily and thus increase the bill. Hastings is too much absorbed in his own amorous schemes to undeceive his friend (his fear of disconcerting him is hardly enough). The light is dim when the bashful Marlow sees Miss Hardcastle so little as not to recognize her the next time. We are willing to give the dramatist the benefit of every doubt; though our generosity is somewhat tried where Miss Neville returns to Tony her lover's letter. The gaiety and rapidity of the action keep such improbabilities from offending us. The farther any play departs from probability - the nearer it comes to farce, the more crowded must be the action; which here is quick and abundant, with an unusual amount of surprise and reversal. Assuredly it well fulfilled its purpose, as Dr. Johnson said: "I know of no comedy for many years that has so much exhilarated an audience, that has answered so much the great end of comedy making an audience merry."

The characterization, as fits a comedy of intrigue, is simple but firm. Few sketches of a heroine have more charm than Miss Hardcastle. If her talk to her father sometimes sounds a trifle prim, that was only to be expected in a patriarchal century, and her merry impudence and tact in talking with Marlow, her freedom from prudishness, her living vigor, recall the heroines of Shakespeare's comedies, the Rosalinds and the Beatrices. Hastings, who realizes that more flies are caught by honey than vinegar, is the softtongued sort that gets what he wants, yet keeps the good-will of those who would have withheld it; Mrs. Hardcastle has never a harsh word for him. He is the off-spring of an Irishman's heart. His one slip, if it is such, is assuring Mrs. Hardcastle that jewels do not befit a woman under forty, and so making it harder for Miss Neville to filch her own. Tony Lumpkin, the inspired hobbledehoy, is the most enlivening creation in the play (suggested by Humphry Gubbin in Steele's The Tender Husband). Though critics have protested that a fellow who could scarcely read should not have composed the admirable drinking-song in the first act, a light comedy may take full advantage of the license of art to make any type of person more perfect in the type than he would be in life; and is not a clever drinking-song directly in the line of this resourceful lover of the bottle? Marlow and his adventures bring us nearest to farce, but his timidity or boldness with different sorts of women are only heightened beyond those of Thackeray's Harry Foker.

She Stoops to Conquer prevailed over its adversary not only with a sling and with a stone, but also by temperate and sincere use of what had been overdone in the other. With all the merriment and extravagance, there is no lack of genuine sentiment, and old Hardcastle even manages to slip in sotto voce a moral (V. ii) more practical than the edifying commonplaces of the rival type of play. It follows the sentimental tradition as started by Steele in its entire cleanness and sweetness. Garrick's promise in the prologue is well fulfilled;

No poisonous drugs are mixed in what he gives. If it is too much to say, though it has been said, that this play gave a deadly blow to the sentimental drama, it certainly reinstated pure comedy, and no reader needs to be told that, along with Sheridan's best two plays, alone among eighteenth-century dramas, it still excites spontaneous delight on the stage.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER, OR, THE MISTAKES OF

A NIGHT

TO SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

DEAR SIR,-By inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honor to inform the public, that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.

I have, particularly, reason to thank you for your partiality to this performance. The undertaking a comedy, not merely sentimental, was very dangerous; and Mr. Colman, who saw this piece in its various stages, always thought it so. However, I ventured to trust it to the public; and, though it was necessarily delayed till late in the season, I have every reason to be grateful. I am, dear Sir, your most sincere friend and admirer,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

PROLOGUE

By David Garrick, Esq. (Enter Mr. Woodward,1 dressed in black, and holding a Handkerchief to his Eyes.) Excuse me, sirs, I pray-I can't yet speak

I'm crying now-and have been all the week!

'Tis not alone this mourning suit, good masters;

I've that within-for which there are no

plasters!

Pray would you know the reason why I'm crying?

The Comic muse, long sick, is now a-dying! And if she goes, my tears will never stop; For as a player, I can't squeeze out one drop:

I am undone, that's all-shall lose my bread

I'd rather, but that's nothing-lose my head.

1 An actor.

When the sweet maid is laid upon the bier, Shuter 2 and I shall be chief mourners here. To her a mawkish drab of spurious breed, Who deals in sentimentals will succeed! Poor Ned and I are dead to all intents, We can as soon speak Greek as sentiments! Both nervous grown, to keep our spirits up, We now and then take down a hearty cup. What shall we do?-If Comedy forsake us! They'll turn us out, and no one else will take us,

But why can't I be moral?-Let me tryMy heart thus pressing-fixed my face and eye

With a sententious look, that nothing means (Faces are blocks, in sentimental scenes), Thus I begin-All is not gold that glit ters,

Pleasure seems sweet, but proves a glass of bitters.

When ignorance enters, folly is at hand;
Learning is better far than house and land.
Let not your virtue trip, who trips may
stumble,

And virtue is not virtue, if she tumble.
I give it up-morals won't do for me;
To make you laugh I must play tragedy.
One hope remains-hearing the maid was
ill.

A doctor comes this night to show his skill. To cheer her heart, and give your museles motion,

He in five draughts prepared, presents a potion:

A kind of magic charm-for be assured, If you will swallow it, the maid is cured. But desperate the Doctor, and her case is,

If you reject the dose, and make wry faces! This truth he boasts, will boast it while be

lives,

No poisonous drugs are mixed in what he gives;

Should he succeed, you'll give him his de

gree;

If not, within he will receive no fee!
The college you, must his pretentions back.
Pronounce him regular, or dub him quack.
2 An actor who played old Hardcastle.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »