ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors][merged small]

[AS ORIGINALLY ACTED AT COVENT GARDEN IN 1773.]

[blocks in formation]

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 2 — 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.
When the sweet maid is laid upon the bier,
Shuter 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!

[ocr errors]

4

They'll turn us out, and no one else will take us.

1 Woodward was one of the Covent Garden actors. He played the rôle of Lofty in The Good-Natured Man.

2 A parody on Hamlet, I., ii., 77 and 85.

3 Ned Shuter, the actor who played the rôle of Hardcastle in this play and of Croaker in The Good-Natured Man.

4 In this play the prevailing sentimental or "genteel" comedy received a decisive blow. See the Dedication and the fourth Epilogue, and compare the second Prologue to The Rivals. See also Introduction and Appendix.

But why can't I be moral?

Let me try

My heart thus pressing fix'd 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 glitters,

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;

1

To make you laugh, I must play tragedy.
One hope remains — hearing the maid was ill,
A doctor 1 comes this night to show his skill.
To cheer her heart, and give your muscles motion,
He in five draughts prepar'd, presents a potion:
A kind of magic charm for be assur'd,
If you will swallow it, the maid is cur'd.
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 he lives,
No poisonous drugs are mix'd in what he gives.
Should he succeed, you 'll give him his degree;
If not, within he will receive no fee!

The College, you, must his pretentions back,
Pronounce him regular, or dub him quack.

[merged small][ocr errors]

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER;

OR,

THE MISTAKES OF A NIGHT.

ACT I.

SCENE I.—A Chamber in an old-fashioned House.

Enter MRS. HARDCASTLE and MR. HARDCASTLE.

Mrs. Hard. I vow, Mr. Hardcastle, you're very particular. Is there a creature in the whole country, but ourselves, that does not take a trip to town now and then, to rub off the rust a little? There's the two Miss Hoggs, and our neighbour Mrs. Grigsby, go to take a month's polishing every winter.

Hard. Ay, and bring back vanity and affectation to last them the whole year. I wonder why London cannot keep its own fools at home. In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stage-coach. Its fopperies come down, not only as inside passengers, but in the very basket.2

1 "What now stands as the second title, The Mistakes of a Night, was originally the only one; but it was thought undignified for a comedy. The Old House a New Inn was suggested in place of it, but dismissed as awkward. Reynolds then named it The Belle's Stratagem. This name was still under discussion, and had well-nigh been snatched from Mrs. Cowley, when Goldsmith (in whose ears perhaps Dryden's line may have lingered,

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

'But kneels to conquer, and but stoops to rise')

hit upon She Stoops to Conquer." — FORSTER, IV., xv.

2 The two back seats on the outside of a stage-coach. Compare page 72.

Mrs. Hard. Ay, your times were fine times, indeed; you have been telling us of them for many a long year. Here we live in an old rumbling mansion, that looks for all the world like an inn,1 but that we never see company. Our best visitors are old Mrs. Oddfish, the curate's wife, and little Cripplegate, the lame dancing-master; and all our entertainment your old stories of Prince Eugene 2 and the Duke of Marlborough. I hate such old-fashioned trumpery.

Hard. And I love it. I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine; and, I believe, Dorothy [taking her hand], you'll own I have been pretty fond of an old wife.

Mrs. Hard. Lord, Mr. Hardcastle, you're for ever at your Dorothys and your old wifes. You may be a Darby, but I'll be no Joan,3 I promise you. I'm not so old as you'd make me, by more than one good year. Add twenty to twenty, and make money of that.

Hard. Let me see; twenty added to twenty, makes just fifty and seven!

Mrs. Hard. It's false, Mr. Hardcastle: I was but twenty when I was brought to bed of Tony, that I had by Mr. Lumpkin, my first husband; and he's not come to years of discretion yet.

Hard. Nor ever will, I dare answer for him. Ay, you have taught him finely!

Mrs. Hard. No matter; Tony Lumpkin has a good fortune. My son is not to live by his learning. I don't think a boy wants much learning to spend fifteen hundred a year.

Hard. Learning, quotha! A mere composition of tricks and mischief.

Mrs. Hard. Humour, my dear; nothing but humour. Come, Mr. Hardcastle, you must allow the boy a little humour.

1 Observe how the author is preparing the way for the mistake which follows.

2 Prince Eugene of Savoy, ally of Marlborough at Blenheim (1704), Oudenarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709).

3 Darby and Joan, an old-fashioned couple, hero and heroine of the ballad of The Happy Old Couple, variously ascribed to Prior and to Henry Woodfall.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »