Ho. fot i THEORIES OF DRAMATIC COMEDY IN THE AGE OF JOHNSON Daniel V. Brislane A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate 5chool of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1970 Approved by Doctoral Committee doming green sw universitylib^> ii ABSTRACT During the mid-eighteenth century, critical theorists accepted the doctrine of John Locke that a general pattern for behavior exists which is valid for all men in all ages, and which can be recognized empirically by any properly educated man who uses his reason. They concluded that ideally dramatic comedy should offer delightful but posi­ tive moral instruction rather than a mere reflection of 'life as it is,' because audiences were presumed to imitate in real life the manner of behavior celebrated on the stage. Because critics wanted general moral truths to become more readily evident to everyone, they stressed the need for 'naturalness,' but then each assumed his own infallibility and argued for whatever comic material seemed natural to him. Although the principal critics of the period, Lord Karnes and Samuel Johnson, defended laughter as an emotional release from real-life tensions, everyone who welcomed laughter hoped that it would be allied with ridicule to produce direct moral instruction. Similarly the few critics who acknowledged that wit could be delightful agreed with the majority that it could distract from moral instruction or even could be misused to render foolish behavior pleasing. Advocates of sentimental comedy during the Johnson era confidently asserted that audiences familiar with general moral truths would necessarily enjoy such celebrations of virtue and would profit from explicit moral instruction. These few critics were able to discomfit the larger number who favored the use of ridicule but who conceded that any material of dramatic comedy had to be defended on a moral basis. While the actual demands of theatre-goers during the mid-eighteenth century worried professional dramatists, they were of less consequence to those who were only theorizing about comedy. Most critics must have recognized that the judgment of audiences was inconclusive since comedies focusing upon wit, ridicule, laughter, and positive examples of virtue were successfully coexisting in repertory. Also, some critics were unwilling or unable to recognize that audiences* frequent enthusiasm for bawdiness and farce demonstrated that even educated men do not always want to see and hear about general moral truths. Examples of English dramatic practice, particularly Shakespeare's, led most critics to require only modified adherence, if any, to presumably ancient rules. The principal critical preoccupation, then, was not rules but delightfully moral instruction. Ill ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To Professor Richard C. Carpenter I owe a debt much larger than the usual obligation of a doctoral candidate to his advisor. His patient encouragement, valuable insights, and prompt criticisms of this manuscript consid­ erably eased my task. I have also benefited from the comments of Professors Charles Boughton, Paul Parnell, and Brownell Salomon. I must here enter the usual disclaimer that anyone but myself is responsible for remaining errors in this work. My progress was facilitated by a research grant received in the summer of 1968 from the Graduate School at Bowling Green State University. I have received courteous assistance from the staffs at the Bowling Green State University Library and at Friedsam Memorial Library of St. Bonaventure University, and Mrs. Edie Van Dixon has been conscientious far beyond the call of duty in typing this manuscript. Finally, this dissertation would never have been completed without the support of'my parents, who have always listened sympathetically to my problems. I dedicate this paper to them with gratitude and love. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Page I. INTRODUCTION......................................................... 1 II. PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND............................. 6 III. THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF COMEDY. ... 21 IV. THE MATERIALS OF COMEDY: THE NATURAL AND THE WITTY............................. 42 V. THE MATERIALS OF COMEDY: THE RIDICULOUS.................................................... 61 VI. THE MATERIALS OF COMEDY: THE LAUGHABLE......................................................... 85 VII. THE MATERIALS OF COMEDY:P OSITIVE EXAMPLES OF VIRTUE................................. 92 VIII. THE UNITIES AND RELATED RULES OF COMEDY...............................................................113 IX. CONCLUSION....................................................................130 BIBLIOGRAPHY...............................................................136 1 I. INTRODUCTION Perhaps because of the widespread assumption that most of the dramatic comedies staged during the mid-eighteenth century were heavily sentimental and notoriously forgettable, a comprehensive study of the critical theories of dramatic comedy in that period has not been undertaken previously. But in several ways the dramatic practices then were hospi­ table to significant theorizing about comedy. First, consider the apparently inexhaustible curiosity about the theatre among London's influential upper-middle class. For this group regular attendance at the two licensed theatres, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, became an accepted social practice, so that the managers of these theatres were encouraged to enlarge the combined seating capacities from 2336 in 1732 to 3697 by 1762.2 After this date the managers boldly eliminated the popular third-act, half-price ticket, and still the theatres averaged nearly twelve thousand 1An article by John W. Draper ("The Theory of the Comic in Eighteenth Century England”, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XXXVII (April, 1938), 207-223) provides a helpful preliminary bibliography but is incomplete and too oversimplified to be regarded as comprehensive. Harry W. Pedicord, The Theatrical Public in the Time of Garrick (New York: King's Crown Press, 1954), pages 14-15 and 43. See also James J. Lynch, Box, Pit and Gallery: Stage and Society in Johnson's London (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. ofCalif. Press, 1953')', page 304. According to Lynch, many clerks and servants plus a small number of aristocrats also frequented the theatre. 2 customers per week.^ Furthermore the figure for total attendance at all performances of comedies probably was almost four times the attendance figure for tragedies. Thus no critic questioned the importance of theorizing about comedy; some even insisted that comedy deserved more atten- tion than tragedy. Audiences at comedies were treated to displays not only of sentimentalism but also of laughter, wit, and ridicule-- sometimes awkwardly in the same play. The most popular new comedy of the period was not Richard Cumberland’s stolidly sentimental West Indian but Benjamin Hoadley’s Suspicious Husband. which blended a heavy dose of farcical intrigue with conflicting touches of bawdry and sentimentalism.® ^Ricardo Quintana, Oliver Goldsmith (New York: Macmillan, 1967), page 139, Attendance figures are for the regular theatre season, from September through May. See also Elizabeth P. Stein, David Garrick, Dramatist (1938: rpt. New York: Blom, 1967), page 10. As manager at Drury Lane, Garrick was the first to eliminate the reduced price tickets in spite of a small riot by the theatre-goers. ^Allardyce Nicoll, History of English Drama, 1660-1800, 3 vols.(Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1952), II, 125. See also Pedicord, pages 138-140; of 113 different comedies performed at Drury Lane from 1747 through 1776, seventy-seven ran for nine or more performances. Only sixty of eighty-four tragedies won similar success. For a list of plays performed at Covent Garden and Drury Lane during this period, see Pedicord, Appendix C. ®For example, see a publication by "a Student of Oxford” titled, A Dissertation on Comedy: in which the Rise and Progress of that Species of the Drama Is Particularly Consider’d and Deduc'd from the Earliest to the Present Age (London, 1750), page 6. ®Pedicord, Theatrical Public, page 143. There were 126 performances of The Suspicious Husband through twenty-nine seasons. 3 Furthermore, because of the repertory system and also the Licensing Act of 1737, later eighteenth-century audiences saw fewer new plays than revivals or alterations of earlier ones; only twenty-six of those seventy-seven comedies seen at Drury Lane between 1747 and 1776 were new comedies. Among the most popular comic dramatists were William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Colley Cibber, John Vanbrugh, William Congreve, George Farquhar, and Richard Steele. Thus the critics wrote for a theatre-going public exposed to most kinds of comedies except romantic comedies, which were poorly attended and therefore rarely staged.® Concerned then with the varying effects on the audience of the several prevalant types of materials for comedy, the criticism of this period is not “surprisingly homogeneous” □ as John W. Draper has asserted. Nor can the critics be con­ veniently separated into two camps, one favoring and the other opposing sentimental drama, as Arthur Sherbo has claimed.^ Instead each of the four prevalent materials for comedy—wit, ridicule, laughter, and positive examples of virtue—was defended and attacked, as well as impartially commented upon. 7Pedicord, Theatrical Public, pages 140-142. ®Nicoll, History of English Drama, page 140. 9”Theory of the Comic,” page 222. ^English