needs emphasis in view of assertions that Sheridan intended The Critic as a vehicle of personal revenge upon his enemies. One illustration of such charges will suffice. After speaking of the complaints of Cumberland, Watkins adds:1 "and as other literary persons had similar complaints against the conduct of the manager, a common concern was made of the injury, and the newspapers daily exhibited some severe criticisms upon theatrical subjects and the direction of Drury Lane. To counteract these attempts upon his official character, Sheridan took 'The Rehearsal,' as a model for an attack upon his adversaries." That Sheridan was ready to meet his critics with good-humored banter is obvious, but it is idle to maintain that The Critic was designed primarily as a defense of "his official character" or as "an attack upon his adversaries." Circumstantial evidence of the falsity of such accusations is to be found in the expansion in The Critic of Sheridan's early burlesque, Jupiter; direct evidence is furnished in The Critic itself in the subordination of personal caricature to general burlesque. Had Sheridan's primary object been to pillory Cumberland he would not have dismissed Sir Fretful from the boards in the opening scene, but would have assigned to him the chief role filled by Puff in the remaining acts. In The Rehearsal Dryden is kept ever in the foreground in the part of Bayes.

Conspicuous, then, as is the element of personal caricature in the opening scene of The Critic, it is by no means the primary object of the play. In turning the laugh against the absurdities of the stage, Sheridan was ready to expose good-humoredly the foibles of some of his contemporaries, but his wit was sharpened by neither envy nor malice.

1 Memoirs of Sheridan, I, 239.

4. BURLESQUE AND PARODY OF CONTEMPORARY DRAMA IN THE CRITIC

In The Rivals and The School for Scandal Sheridan ran counter to the sentimental comedy of the day; in The Critic he turned the laugh against bombastic tragedy. So broad and universal, however, is Sheridan's satire that it strikes not so much at individual plays, or even at the extravagances of tragedy alone, as at the general absurdities of the entire drama. Though Puff's play is A Tragedy Rehearsed, Sheridan did not fail to administer some final blows to the sentimental comedy whose fate had been so largely sealed by Lydia Languish, the sentimental heroine, and Joseph Surface, the "man of sentiment." An excellent example of ridicule of sentimental comedy is in the opening scene of The Critic:

DANGLE. (reading) Bursts into tears and exit. - What, is this a tragedy?

SNEER. No, that's a genteel comedy, not a translation - only taken from the French: it is written in a style which they have lately tried to run down; the true sentimental, and nothing ridiculous in it from the beginning to the end.

By thus ridiculing the spirit, rather than the letter, of absurdities prevalent both in tragedy and comedy, The Critic has maintained its vitality. Personal caricature rarely outlives the person caricatured; dramatic travesty rarely outlives the drama travestied. Yet Sir Fretful lives, even if the caricature of Cumberland is unheeded, and The Critic lives, though the particular dramas it burlesqued are familiar to few.

A decided contrast may be drawn between the general burlesque of The Critic and the individual parodies of The Rehearsal. In fairness, it must be conceded that many parts of The Rehearsal burlesque general absurdities of the drama of all times. Otherwise it is improbable that even the inter

polation into its text of local hits, or the genius of Garrick as Bayes, could have contrived to maintain The Rehearsal on the stage until its final eclipse by The Critic. Discussion of the prevalence of individual parodies of particular plays in The Rehearsal is best furthered by study of the different Keys included in Arber's reprint of the play. Here the "Illustrations from Previous Plays" given on the even-numbered pages come somewhat near to balancing the text of The Rehearsal given on the odd-numbered pages. Among the plays from which, according to the table of contents, the illustrations are "principally taken," are seven plays of Dryden, three of D'Avenant, two of Killigrew, and single plays of Mrs. Behn, Fanshaw, J. Howard, Col. H. Howard, Porter, Quarles, and Stapylton. Though comparison of some of these extracts with the text of The Rehearsal shows but slight suggestion of parody, there remain enough unquestionable parallels to prove that specific parody was a vital part in the authors' conception of The Rehearsal.

One fact may help to account in large measure for the prevalence of direct parody in The Rehearsal, and its comparative absence in The Critic. The Rehearsal grew into final form not merely from the collaboration of various authors, but from years of evolution. Though said to have been commenced in 1663,2 it was not produced until December 7, 1671. The hero seems to have been intended, at first, to burlesque D'Avenant, then Howard, and finally Dryden, who had meantime been appointed poet-laureate. The gradual progress of the burlesque invited constant additions to the exact parodies of contemporary dramas. On the other hand, The Critic may fairly be said to have been composed with a rapidity which practically precluded a con

1 English Reprints, London, November 2, 1858.

2 Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature, revised ed. 1899, III, 363.

stant succession of such elaborate specific parodies as are found in The Rehearsal.

2

In the Memoirs of John Bannister, Comedian,1 John Adolphus writes: "I have heard Mr. Holcroft say, that he could make a key to 'The Critic' similar to that which is published with 'The Rehearsal,' by selecting from the works of contemporary tragic writers, passages and lines exactly similar to those in the burlesque drama." This remark, more or less distinctly referred to by some of Sheridan's biographers, has seemingly been allowed to pass, with little comment, as proof that The Critic abounds in direct parody of specific passages in contemporary tragedy. In this vein writes Sigmond: "It would not be difficult for any one in the habit of reading the plays of the period to show the different passages that are burlesqued. Holcroft had at one time an idea of publishing a key to the Critic; such has been done for the Rehearsal." Whoever attempts the task pronounced so easy will conclude that Sigmond himself never made the test. Nor should too much stress be laid on a chance remark whose truth Holcroft himself never demonstrated. The next sentence of Adolphus after that already quoted implies some doubt at least of Holcroft's assertion, for it begins, "If that were so." Prolonged though necessarily incomplete, investigation of the tragedies that preceded The Critic on the London stage suggests the general subjects of Sheridan's burlesque rather than "passages and lines exactly similar to those in the burlesque drama.” The only definite suggestion of Sigmond himself is this: "The family recognition of the Justice, and the wife of the highwayman, is admirable. It is a supposed hit at the tumid language of Home, the author of 'Douglas,' in the 'Fatal Discovery,' a tragedy of bombast and nonsense." Significant is

1I, 49-50.

2 Life of Sheridan, Bohn's Standard Library (1848), p. 86.

3 Ibid., p. 87.

3

the fact that, instead of positive assertion, the "hit" is said only to be "supposed," and that Sigmond fails to show any particular bit of "tumid language" in Home's play which Sheridan may have parodied. If, by "the wife of the highwayman," Sigmond refers to the Justice's Lady who in the "family recognition" scene proves to be the mother of the criminal who is brought before the Justice, the passage occurs in the first part of the third act of The Critic. Though one will readily grant that Sheridan hits at such "tumid language" as that of Home's tragedy, careful reading of The Fatal Discovery seems to afford no specific passage that is closely parodied. The suggestion is offered, with a diffidence born of long and usually fruitless search in contemporary tragedies for individual passages burlesqued in The Critic, that Sheridan may have intended to parody not merely somewhat of the situation, but somewhat of the language in Home's Douglas (ii, 1). There Lady Randolph, welcoming the "young stranger" who has saved her husband's life, is instinctively reminded of the lost son of her first husband, Douglas. To her confidante, Anna, she laments:

I thought, that had the son of Douglas liv'd,

He might have been like this young gallant stranger,
And pair'd with him in features and in shape.

So the Justice's Lady, on seeing the youthful prisoner, says:

In both cases the unknown, turns out to be the long-lost son to whom "some powerful sympathy" has directed the mother's heart. If the similarities be regarded and the dissimilarities be neglected, there is certainly some ground for suggestion of specific parody.