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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 Sentimental Drama (East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan St1. Univ. Press, 1957), page 3. 4

Thus this study presents a few organizational problems. To consider separately, perhaps in chronological order, the theories of more than forty critics would become tedious and also repetitious, especially since some of them borrowed ideas freely from their contemporaries.'*1 This study is therefore structured around those prevalent materials of comedies noted above—the witty, the ridiculous, the laughable and positive examples of virtue. Because critics on all sides emphasized the effects of comedy on its audience, this study begins with a brief look at some underlying epistemological, moral, and aesthetic principles (Chapter II), and then considers critical arguments concerning the general purposes of comedy (Chapter III). Some lesser problems arise concerning influences, par­ tialities, and contradictions. Since borrowing ideas without acknowledgement was an accepted practice among critics, and since manuscript dates and even authorship are not always certain, the influence of one critic upon another is very

11 James Beattie, for example, acknowledged that he wrote “An Essay on Laughter and Ludicrous Composition" (Essays Edinburgh, 1776 , page 586) to illustrate the opinion of others. Probably among Beattie's principal sources were George Campbell's The Philosophy of Rhetoric (written c. 1750, published 1777) and Henry Home, Lord Kame's Elements of Criticism (Edinburgh, 1761); perhaps Beattie also had seen the Reverend John Brown's Essays on the Characteristics (London, 1751). Because this paper does not involve an intensive linguistic analysis of any of the several works cited, and because of the difficulty in obtaining a standard edition of some of these works, alternate editions, which are less definitive but still basically reliable, have sometimes been used. 5 difficult to establish, and assertions of such influence must be made cautiously. A larger question—but an unanswerable one—is whether the advice of critics, the practice of dram­ atists, or the demand of audiences chiefly determined the dramatic fare of the period. Each influenced and was influ­ enced by the others, although audiences rendered the final verdict at the box office. In this respect, disagreements between the mere theorists and the theorists who also wrote comedies is sometimes enlightening. Then as now critics frequently assumed that what seemed reasonable or tasteful to them must seem so to all men. . More significantly, it is a delight and a frustration to discover that some critics applauded comedies which clearly violate some literary principle which elsewhere they had declared inviolable. Such inconsistencies in the writings of lesser critics often derived from political allegiances, personal stage successes or disasters, or eclecticism. But sometimes the contradictions of the best critics, such as Samuel Johnson, illustrate the deeper theoretical conflicts inherent in a period of transition. Finally, for a more thorough study of this topic, the i ■ ■ "age” of Samuel Johnson has been stretched to embrace the years from 1744, when Mark Akenside’s Pleasures of the Imag­ ination and Corbyn Morris's Essay towards Fixing the True Standard of l/Jit were published, through 1788, when Henry Pye wrote A Commentary Illustrating the Poetics of Aristotle. 6

II. PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND

Critics during the mid-eighteenth century, whether writing a lengthy treatise or a periodical essay, generally responded to the popularity of the drama by focusing upon the moral and aesthetic influences that a drama should have upon an audience. As Chapter VIII of this paper will illustrate, even the usefulness of such presumably traditional rules as the unities was argued principally on the basis of audience response. Of course playwrights and critical theorists during the Johnson era inevitably accepted numerous theat­ rical traditions inherited from the past, but they did so only to the extent that these traditions did not seem to impede an effective representation of their contemporary cultural milieu. In a recent analysis of modern American drama, Thomas Porter has emphasized that in any era the dramatist, at least, has no other choice: The very existence of a theatre depends on common ground, on the congruence of the universe of playwright and audi­ ence. The playwright can only present what the members of the audience will credit. If his values and his problems and his attitudes differ from theirs, then his play does not move them. When a play purports to speak to them, to depict their culture and to describe their values, they will not willingly suspend their disbelief if it fails to do so.** Most critics during the mid-eighteenth century, influenced by a cosmology and an epistemology derived from seventeenth- century and Augustan empiricists, even insisted that plays

^Myth and Modern American Drama (Detroit: Wayne St. Univ. Press, 1969), page 24. 7

written before 1745 should have reflected the standards of the Johnson era. Thus a survey of the epistemological, moral, and aesthetic principles which provided the basis for their literary criticism is in order. The empirical philosophers of the seventeenth century never doubted that the universe was ordered and therefore know­ able. But they rejected the convenient alliance of faith and reason which in the scholastic cosmology had bridged the dual­ ities of matter and spirit. Their problem, then, was to estab­ lish how man, by reasoning about himself and his experience, can come to know that ordered reality. Thomas Hobbes simplified this problem by denying the existence of spirit; the Cambridge Platonists (and later George Berkeley) denied the existence of matter. David Hume shocked the mid-eighteenth century by doubting that man can know anything with certainty.Hume’s contemporaries generally preferred a cosmology such as John Locke’s which accepted the dualities of matter and spirit, and then, through a modified empirical epistemology, tried to avert skepticism and to preserve the doctrine of man’s free will. According to Locke, man attains knowledge about himself and about God through a kind of intuition (thus the door is opened to acts of faith); he attains knowledge about external nature through sensations imposed upon his passive senses and

2James Beattie attacked Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) as “a system of licentious doctrine" which would promote infidelity (Essays. xiii-xiv). 8

then perhaps modified by his imagination. Locke concurred

with Rene Descartes’s earlier assurances that man can distin­

guish whenever these sense impressions have been modified by

imagination, that is, when external reality (such as a grey

elephant) has assumed false appearances (a pink elephant) in

the mind of the perceiver. But whereas Descartes had held

that ideas which were "clear and distinct" were immediately

identifiable as true, Locke observed that sometimes false

ideas are or at least seem clear and distinct to some men.

Locke argued, though, that this deception can occur only when the mind receives single ideas in separate perceptions, but that when the mind receives ideas in combination it thereby can distinguish the evident unity and agreeableness in the true package (greyness plus elephantness) from the equally evident disunity and disagreeableness of the false package (pinkness plus elephantness). Thus Locke’s more elaborately reasoned empiricism still begged the central epistemological question--how does man know external reality- with an assertion.

In The Leviathan, a much abused text during the mid­ eighteenth century, Thomas Hobbes followed the alternate epistemological path of determinism. According to his mechan ical view of the mind’s operation, external matter imposes mysterious material waves on man’s material mind which then

^An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. A. C, Fraser^ 2 vols.(New York: Dover 1959) , 1^ 486-496. 9 reacts with preconditioned desire, aversion, or neutrality, Man’s will, then, is not free; it only feels free because the regular laws of matter work beyond the level of his consciousness. The Leviathan was denounced because of the theory of morality as expediency which Hobbes logically derived from his epistemology. He concluded that each man is predeter­ mined to seek his self-interest, and that moral truth is relative to whatever this self-interest may be: "For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so. . . .A common moral code is artificially established only as a selfish expedient when a group of individuals, compelled by temporary circumstances to live together and yet wary of each other’s unrestricted selfishness, agree to surrender some of their power for pursuing self-interest to a central government, the Leviathan. In the Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc. (1711), Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, echoed the epistemology of his tutor, John Locke. But Shaftesbury added that, if the mind can perceive the agreeable ness and thereby the truthfulness of composite images received

^Edited by Michael Oakeshott (Oxford: Blackwell, I960), pages 8-9 and 440-441. ®Pages 32-33. The spelling, capitalization, and some of the punctuation of quotations in this paper have been modernized. ®Page 85. 10 from external nature, then by this same power, called the moral sense, the mind should also be able to perceive when a mode of behavior is agreeable or morally right. Thus Shaftesbury returned to the view, abandoned by Hobbes, that essential moral principles are absolute and can be known by all men: Some moral and philosophical truths there are withal so evident in themselves, that ’twould be easier to imagine half mankind to have run mad, and joined precisely in one and the same species of folly, than to admit anything as truth which should be advanced against such natural knowledge, fundamental reason, and common sense.7 While Samuel Johnson readily conceded that men might yoke themselves to some common folly, neither he nor any other notable literary critic in the mid-eighteenth century denied the existence of universally valid and knowable moral principles.® However, Shaftesbury’s further moral views did provoke considerable debate during the Johnson era. Shaftesbury accepted Hobbes’s contention that all men are selfish. But, while Hobbes viewed man as essentially a solitary creature, Shaftesbury thought that man is in his true state of nature

7Edited by John M. Robertson, 2 vols.(1900: rpt. Gloucester, Mass,: Peter Smith, 1963), I, 97. ®See James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1953), paqe 314. See also Mark Akenside, Pleasures of the Imagination (London, Bell and Daldy, n.d.), page 75; Reverend John Brown, "Essay I: On Ridicule, considered as a Test of Truth." Essays on the Characteristics. 3rd edn. (London, 1752), page 230; Alexander Gerard, Essay on Taste (Edinburgh, 1759), pages 69 and 71; Henry Home, Lord Karnes, Elements of Criticism. 7th edn., 2 vols.(Edinburgh, 1768), I, 6 and 348; James Beattie, Essays, page 17; and Hugh Blair, "Lecture II: On Taste", Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. Harold F. Harding, 2 vols.(l783: rpt. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Ill. Univ., 1965), I, 34. 11

in a civilized society and is most happy with himself when he is admired by other men. From this premise Shaftesbury con­ cluded that man’s moral sense, when developed through exposure to a suitably cultural environment, would encourage acts of selflessness: He who would enjoy a freedom of mind, and be truly pos­ sessor of himself, must be above the thought of stooping to what is villainous or base. He, on the other side, who has a heart to stoop, must necessarily quit the thought of manliness, resolution, friendship, merit, and a character with himself and others. As for the hypocrite who would mask his dishonesty, he must inevitably suffer “inconstancy, irresolution, remorse, vex­ ation, and an ague fit.’’^ Indeed a fully developed moral sense would make evil- doing impossible: A man of thorough good breeding ... is incapable of doing a rude or brutal action. He never deliberates in this case. ... He acts from his nature, in a manner necessarily, and without reflection. . . .10 How, then does evil persist in this world? Influenced by Locke and the Cambridge Platonists, Shaftesbury argued that the puerile disputes of speculative philosophers had smothered the moral sense by causing men to doubt their natural instincts. He further objected that the moral sense atrophied from neglect when moralists appealed- instead to 11 man’s fear of eternal punishment. But Shaftesbury never

9Characteristics, I, 86-87. 1OCharacteristies, I, 86. 11 Characteristics, I. 84-85 and 88, 12

expected that a fully developed moral sense would be evi­ denced in the behavior of every man. Concerning the use of threats to promote virtue, Shaftesbury conceded, “the mere vulgar of mankind stand in need of such a rectifying object as the gallows before their eyes." £ The literary critics of the Johnson era were deeply influenced by these very different epistemologies of Locke, Hobbes, and Shaftesbury. Samuel Johnson’s cosmology and epistemology most closely resemble the position of Locke, in which empiricism is modified to allow for traditional religious convictions. Johnson regarded man as a duality of matter and spirit, who attains knowledge of reality * • 5 ' through a balanced operation of mental faculties under the direction and restraint of reason. The sources of man’s knowledge are experience plus a common-sense awareness of such essential moral principles as the notion of man’i free 11 will which Johnson held as a doctrine “above reason.“ Johnson rejected Hobbes’s contention that all men are unavoidably selfish, and he endorsed Shaftesbury’s view that benevolence is the only truly virtuous way of life, Johnson wrote, “no man is good but as he wishes the good of’others. . . .But Johnson added that, because they

12 Characteristics. I, 84. 13As reported by James Boswell, Life of Johnson, page 319. 1^In a letter to William Drummond reprinted by James Boswell, Life of Johnson, page 374. 13 are creatures of passion as well as of reason, ”to act from pure benevolence is not possible for human beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.” Johnson therefore defended the moralists’ threats of hellfire not just for the ’vulgar’ but for everyone: to the instructions of infinite wisdom, it was necessary that infinite power should add penal sanctions, that every man to whom these instructions shall be imparted may know that he can never ultimately injure himself by benefiting others, or ultimately, by injuring others, benefit himself. . . The epistemological and moral positions adopted by other literary critics in the mid-eighteenth century fall somewhere between those of Shaftesbury and Johnson. One work which may even have influenced Johnson was the Reverend John Brown’s Essays on the Characteristics (1751), a widely read rebuttal of Shaftesbury. Brown granted that essential moral truths, since they are “common to the whole species, must, if properly inculcated, universally prevail.” But he described human reason as "always fallible, often erroneous," and he dismissed Shaftesbury’s description of the fully developed moral sense as “not calculated for use but admiration." Since Brown,

1®As reported by James Boswell, Life of Johnson, page 750. Concerning Hobbesian determinism Johnson wrote in Rambler #4: "It is of the utmost importance to mankind, that positions of this tendency should be laid open and confuted. . . ." The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1969), III, 24. (This most recent but still incomplete edition is cited whenever possible; otherwise the 1825 Oxford edition is used. 1®"A review of Soame Jenyns* A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil", The Works of Samuel Johnson. 11 vols.(Oxford, 1825), VI, 71-72. 14 like Johnson, judged most men to be neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly evil, he too sanctioned threats of hellfire 1 7 to strengthen their resolve. Alexander Gerard, in his Essay on Taste (1759), and Hugh Blair, in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), endorsed Shaftesbury’s view that education could protect man’s moral sense from being ’’perverted by ignorance and prejudice," as Blair wrote. But they agreed with Johnson that this moral sense. now identified as a taste, required 4 Q constant direction from man’s reason or judgment. Closest to Shaftesbury’s moral position were Lord Karnes, James Beattie, and the Reverend Richard Hurd. All three men insisted that man instinctively admires virtue and detests vice, and that only by a conscious effort can he overrule common sense and choose evil. In the seventeenth century Hobbes and Locke had revived Plato’s aesthetic theory that art, insofar as it imaginatively colors or distorts reality, impedes man’s empirical discovery

17"0n Ridicule," pages 96, 210, and 229-230. 10Blair, "On Taste," pages 32-34; and Gerard, pages 1 and 88. 1^Karnes, Elements of Criticism, I, 63-64; Beattie, "Preface" and ttAn Essay on Poetry and Music as They Affect the Mind" (written in 1762), Essays, pages 13 and 355; and Hurd, "Dissertation II: On the Provinces of Drama" (written c. 1757), Epistolae ad Plsones et Auqustum: with an Enqlish Commentary and Notes: to which are added Critical Dissertations. 5th edn.. 3 vols.(London. 1776), II, 238-239. According to James Boswell, Samuel Johnson said of Karnes’ view on this matter: "This is saying a thing which all mankind knows not to be true." Life of Johnson. page 995. 15

of essential truths about the ordered universe. Hobbes was especially antagonistic toward art since he regarded man’s imagination, the source of artistic creation, as a decaying faculty.20 Locke was anxious, as Plato had been, to accept art as useful if only its truthfulness could somehow be validated.2*1 If the qualms of these philosophers were not shared by the general public in the eighteenth century, they were a concern to critical theorists about literature. Most of them begged the question with the same assertion made famous by Johnson, that art can and should reflect general truths of nature.22

The faculty of aesthetic judgment was variously identi­ fied by the critics of the mid-eighteenth century as an aesthetic sense. a taste, or common sense. The important issue was whether this faculty operated independently of reason, as Shaftesbury had thought it did. He had argued that, since only goodness is beautiful, the aesthetic sense and the moral sense are one. Thus he concluded that a fully developed moral/aesthetic sense instantly distinguishes "the

20Leviathan. page 9. 2lHuman Understanding. II, 370-371. 22«The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia," Oxford edn., I, 222; and "Preface to Shakespeare," Yale edn., VII, 61. This precept is discussed further on page 44 of this paper. 16

fair and shapely, the amiable and admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or the despicalbe.23 Mid- eighteenth century critics, however, were unwilling to concede that instinct should prevail over reason. Brown, Gerard, Karnes, and Blair identified the aesthetic faculty as a taste (or feeling) linked with experience and ultimately guided by reason.24 Johnson identified the aesthetic faculty as common sense or reason itself. The next question was whether there exists absolute standards for making aesthetic judgments. Hobbes had regarded aesthetic judgments just as he had regarded moral ones, as valid only for the selfish individual who makes them. Not surprisingly, the literary critics of the mid-eighteenth century concurred instead with Shaftesbury that absolute standards do indeed exist. But are these absolute standards knowable? Shaftesbury's confidence was at least equalled in the mid-eighteenth cen­ tury by Gerard, Blair, and especially Karnes whose Elements of Criticism was intended to reveal by empirical procedures

^Characteristics, II, 137. 24f3rown, "On Ridicule," Essays, page 12; Gerard, Essay on Taste, page 88; Karnes, Elements of Criticism. I, 12 and II, 499; Blair, "Lecture II: Criticism--Genius--Pleasures ' of Taste--Sublimity" Lectures. I, 38. 25Rambler #92 and Rambler #208, Yale edn., IV, 122 and V, 319. Note that this aesthetic faculty used to evaluate literature is not that faculty most immediately affected by a reading or by a dramatic performance; see pages 21-27 of this paper. 2^Leviathan. pages 32-33. 17

the fundamental principles of the fine arts.2? Karnes promised "to ascend gradually to principles from facts and experiments, instead of beginning with the former, held arbitrarily, and descending to the latter.“28 But sometimes Karnes’s facts and his conclusions were only distantly related. For example, to prove that universally valid aesthetic principles do exist, Karnes cited three facts: (1) critics offer public evaluations of works of art; (2) these same critics worry when others question their evaluations; (3) wealthy men commission artists to write music or to sculpture a statue on the assumption that a large number of men will approve the finished work. 29 But Karnes’s facts may only prove the existence of standards which are temporarily widespread but inconstant. Concerning the knowableness of universal aesthetic stand­ ards Karnes conceded, “History informs us, that nothing is more variable than taste in the fine arts."^® Then he ex­ plained that aesthetic standards must be less clear than moral standards lest the former "usurp upon our duty, and call off the attention from matters of great moment. . . ."^1

2?Page 13. Karnes offered a more detailed presentation than either Gerard, who may have influenced Karnes, or Blair, who acknowledges that he has been influenced by Karnes. See Gerard, Essay on Taste, pages 225-227, 245, 253-255, and 273; and Blair, "On Taste," Lectures. I, 33-34.

^Elements of Criticism. I, 13-14. ^Elements of Criticism. II, 490-495 30Elements of Criticism. II, 497. •^Elements of Criticism. II. 499. 18

Karnes also argued that the obscurity of aesthetic standards encouraged rivalry and consequent improvement among artists, although it may seem more logical that a clear knowledge of aesthetic standards would promote artistic improvement more effectively.32 As a further explanation for the obscurity of aesthetic standards, Karnes cited the material needs of society: It is necessary that the different branches of business, whether more or less agreeable, be filled with hands: a taste too refined ... would crowd some employments leaving others, no less useful, totally neglected. For Karnes, then, it was a social blessing that the laboring class is “totally void ... of such a taste as can be of use in the fine arts.”33 Other factors which, according to Karnes, obscured aesthetic standards were a blind reverence for custom or for the dictates of authority, an unreasonable expectation that aesthetic standards should resolve trivial issues (such as whether beef tastes better than mutton), and a mistaking of individual prejudices for universal truths.Yet of this final obstacle, which is evidenced in so much literary crit­ icism including hi§ Elements of Criticism. Karnes was not seriously concernedj he confidently predicted that an aware­ ness of aesthetic error would ultimately assert itself. For a supporting fact he drew a dubious analogy: those who prefer “the grosser amusements of gaming, eating, £andj drinking . .

3^Elements of Criticism, II, 499. ^Elements of Criticism. II, 489-490 and 495. •^Elements of Criticism, I, 420 and II, 493-494. 19

invariably approve those who have a more refined taste, being ashamed of their own as low and sensual."35 Man could there­ fore look with confidence for universally valid aesthetic standards in the long-held judgments of men whose "good natural taste” had been ’’improved by education, reflection, and experience" and "preserved in vigour by living regularly, by using the goods of fortune with moderation. . . .*'36 In contrast, Samuel Johnson doubted that universal stand­ ards would ever be perfectly known. He acknowledged that the literary criticism of his own era lacked scientific certainty, and he added that, while human judgment was "gaining upon certainty," it could never attain infallibility.^7 Even his well-known profession of faith in the judgment of time—"About things on which the public thinks long, it commonly attains to think right"—is tempered by a warning: "approbation, though long continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion. . . Still Johnson urged that the literary critic must work toward a perfect knowledge of aesthetic standards: It is . . . the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to distinguish those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes

3^Elements of Criticism, II, 494. 3^Elements of Criticism, II, 501. 32"Preface to Shakespeare," Yale edn., VII, 61; see also Rambler #158, Yale edn., V, 75-76. 38!!Life of Addison," Oxford edn., VII, 456; and "Preface to Shakespeare," Yale edn., VII, 61. 20

and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which appeal wholly to the fancy. . . .39 Johnson directed that the search for general principles should concentrate upon works enjoying long-term approbation, so that some day the critical worth of all works, new and old, might be more immediately determined.49 Like Karnes, however, Johnson sometimes confused his own prejudices with general principles of nature. Concerning the literary judgments which he had published in the Rambler essays, Johnson solemnly boasted: Arbitrary decision and general exclamation I have care­ fully avoided, by asserting nothing without a reason, and establishing all my principles of judgment on un­ alterable and evident truth.41 However, unmistakably clear aesthetic standards seemed less essential to critics during the mid-eighteenth century because of their widespread agreement about the general purposes of dramatic comedy. As the next chapter will explain and as subsequent chapters will demonstrate,, this agreement often led them to base their literary Judgments upon moral principles rather than upon purely aesthetic ones.

39Rambler #92. Yale edn., IV, 122. 40"Preface to Shakespeare," in Yale edn., VII, 59-60. AlRambler #208, Yale edn., V, 319. 21

III. THE GENERAL PURPOSES OF COMEDY

In his Ars Poetica Horace recognized that a poet might serve one of three general purposes: "to profit, or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful.“ The third choice seemed best to Horace, partly because it would satisfy the largest audience: Elder folks rail at what contains no serviceable lesson; our young aristocrats cannot away with grave verses: the man who mingles the useful with the sweet carries the day by charming his reader and at the same time instructing him.1 From the Elizabethan era through the eighteenth century, most Enqlish dramatists and critics theorizing about drama were aware, as Horace had been, of the needs and demands of audi­ ences; thus, although they debated whether delight or instruc tion should be a dramatist’s primary aim, they usually echoed Horace’s call for both. For example, here is the concluding dialogue from Hugh Kelly’s The School for Wives (1773): Belville: I shan’t therefore part with one of you, ’till we have had a hearty laugh at our general adventures. Miss Walsinoham: They have been very whimsical indeed; yet if represented on the stage, I hope they would be found not only entertaining, but instructive. Lady Rachel Mildew: Instructive! why the modern critics say that the only business of comedy is to make people laugh. Belville: That is degrading the dignity of letters exceedingly, as well as lessening the utility of the stage. A good comedy is a capital effort of genius, and should therefore be directed to the noblest pur­ poses.

1 Translated by Edward H. Blakeney. The Complete Works of Horace. (New York: Random House, 1936), page 408. 22

Miss Walsinqham: Very true; and unless we learn something while we chuckle, the carpenter who nails a pantomine together, will be entitled to more applause than the best comic poet in the kingdom. _ (Exeant omnes. In the late seventeenth century, the usefulness of resto­ ration comedies was challenged because they focused upon folly and vice. The Reverend Jeremy Collier, Sir Richard Blackmore, and the newly organized Societies for the Reformation of Manners were not satisfied with the kind of instruction evi­ dent in a portrayal of life ‘as it really is.* They insisted upon adherence to a moral ideal supposedly reflected in those 3 general truths deemed self-evident to all men. Admittedly, Platonic and Christian asceticism had always bred suspicion toward comedy’s traditionally lighthearted focus on foolish or wicked behavior. But, whereas most critics before Collier’s time were careful to allow that vice could be depicted if treated as vice, Collier opposed any representation of vice as morally dangerous. Many restoration dramatists—including John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, William Congreve, and George Farquhar—responded that potentially comedy could offer

zIn British Theatre, ed. John Bell, 34 vois.(London, 1797), VII. 3Jeremy Collier, "A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, together with the Sense of Antiquity upon this Argument" (1690), in Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. Spingarn, 3 vols?(l908: rpt. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1957), III, 253-256; Sir Richard Blackmore, "Preface to Prince Arthur" (1695), also in Spingarn, III, 227-229; see also Joseph Wood Krutch, Comedy and Conscience after the Restoration (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1949), page 159. 23

delightfully effective moral instruction,Of course, in saying this they conceded that universally valid and knowable moral principles existed and were applicable to the behavior of characters in a drama. In the first decades of the eighteenth century, as the moralists* influence increased, leading dramatists such as Colley Cibber, Joseph Addison, and Richard Steele continued to insist that a dramatic comedy could be a useful tool of morality. In Spectator #446 (1712) Addison wrote: It is to be hoped, that some time or other we may be at leisure to restrain the licentiousness of the Theatre,

^John Dryden, "Defense of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy" (1667), Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker, 2 vols.(Oxford, 1900), I, 113; Thomas Shadwell, "Preface to The Royal Shepherdess" (1669) and "Preface to The Humourists” (1675). The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, ed. Montague Summers, 5 vols.(London: Fortune Press, 1927), I, 100 and 183-184; William Congreve, "Amendments of Mr. Collier’s False and Imperfect Citations" (1698), in The Works of William Congreve, ed. Montague Summers, 5 vols.(New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), III, 173; and George Farquhar, "A Discourse upon Comedy in Reference to the English Stage: in a Letter to a Friend" (1702), Critical Essays of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Willard H. Durham (1915: rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1961), page 273. Although Dryden sometimes be­ littled the usefulness of comedy, he did so chiefly to harrass Shadwell who wrote only comedies. As a practicing dramatist, Dryden frequently identified delightfulness as the primary end of comedy only because without it efforts to instruct would be futile. Shadwell attacked Dryden’s comedies as immoral but boasted endlessly of the moral value of his own comedies (which a modern reader might be reluctant to concede) and of Ben Jonson’s, whose literary descendant Shadwell claimed to be. Only Mrs. Aphra Behn dared to question comedy’s moral instructiveness: "Comedy was never meant either for a converting or a conforming ordinance. . . . This being my opinion of plays, I studied only to make them as entertaining as I could. . . ." "Epistle to the Reader of The Dutch Lover" (1673), The Works of Aphra Behn. ed. Montague Summers, 6 vols.(1915 rpt: New York: Blom, 1968), I, 223. 24

and make it contribute its assistance to the advancement of morality and to the reformation of the age.5 Richard Steele even argued that a properly executed play could offer more forceful moral instruction than a sermon. In the mid-eighteenth century no critic would deny that ideally comedy should be morally instructive in some way. But audiences* acclaim for such engagingly uninstructive comedies as The Merry Wives of Windsor encouraged a few critics to become less defensive about comedy's delightfulness. While Samuel Johnson speculated that a clearer moral purpose and less bawdry would have increased the value of Shakespeare’s comedies, he confidently proclaimed that comedy’s distin­ guishing characteristic is the provoking of mirth, and he added that an audience’s desire for mirth is a sufficient excuse for a comedy to be performed, provided only that the mirth is not provoked at virtue’s expense.’ Even the Reverend Thomas Hurd, who favored sentimental comedies with their

5The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols.(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), IV, 66-67; see also Colley Cibber, “Dedication of The Careless Husband" (1704), The Dramatic Works of Colley Cibber, Esq.. 5 vols.(l777: rpt. New York: A.M.S. Press, 1966), II, 5. ^Guardian #43 (1713), The Guardian. 2 vols.(London, 1745), I, 187-108. In "The Fears of the Pretender Turn’d into the Fears of Debauchery with a Hint to Richard Steele, Esq." (London, 1715), Daniel Defoe expressed horror at Steele’s perference for the stage rather than the pulpit. But Steele’s idea was repeated many times in succeeding years; see for example Thomas Cooke, "Considerations on the Stage, and on the advantages which arise to a nation from the encouragement of the arts" (London, 1731), re­ printed in Works of Thomas Shadwell. I, cci-ccii. ^"Preface to Shakespeare" (1765), Yale edn., VII, 72; 25

explicit and endless moralizing, agreed: “if [comedy] pleased only, by its ingenious fictions and harmonious struc­ ture, it would discharge its office, and answer its end."® However, most mid-eighteenth century critics held that comedy must offer moral instruction as well as delight. The author of A Dissertation on Comedy (1750) wrote that the dramatist "must lay down some useful and instructive lesson, by the due observation of which, the attentive auditor may Q become the wiser and better man." David Garrick, in two letters to hopeful amateur playwrights, advocated a "vein of pleasantry" and "a good moral, deduced from the whole" as essentials of comedy,1° James Beattie, who had endorsed

Rambler #125 (1751), Yale edn., IV, 300-301; Adventurer #137 O754), Yale edn., II, 491; see also James éoswell, Life of Johnson, page 525. Johnson’s defense of harmless mirth was endorsed, again with specific application to Shakespeare’s comedies, in the Monthly Review (London. 1765), XXXIII, 291-292, and in the Public Ledger (1772), cited by Charles H. Gray, Theatrical Criticism in London to 1795 (New York: Columbia Ùniv. Press, 1931), page 196. ^"Dissertation I: On the Idea of a Universal Poetry" (1765), in Epistolae. II, 149-150. 9Page 54. I^The Letters of David Garrick, ed. David M. Little and George M.Kahrl, 3 vols.(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1963), II, #375 (1765) and III, #817 (1777). See also George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (written c. 1750), ed. Lloyd F. Bitzer (Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Ill. Univ. Press, 1963), page 22; Richard Cumberland, Observer #80 (1785) in British Essayists. 45 vols.(London, 1819j"j XXXIX, 209-210; Edmund Burke, Reformer #2 (Dublin, 1748), cited by Arthur P. Samuels, The Early Life and Correspondence and Writings of Edmund Burke (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1923), pages 166-167; Reverend John Brown, "On Ridicule," page 16; General Evening Post (January 4-7, 1772), cited by Emmett R. Avery. Conoreve’s Plays on the Eighteenth-Century Stage (New York: M.L.A., 1951), page 7. 26

Shaftesbury’s notion that man instinctively thirsts for goodness, concluded that an uninstructive drama “cannot please those who retain any moral sensibility or uprightness of judg­ ment, and must consequently displease the greater part of any regular society of rational creatures.“11 Several critics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been less emphatic about the relevance of morality to comedy. Charles Lamb described the world of restoration com­ edy as artificial and therefore exempt from the moral code of 12 the real world. Leigh Hunt and John Palmer suggested that comedy’s limited instructiveness derived principally from its historical accuracy.1^ A few mid-eighteenth-century critics reqarded restoration comedy as artificial but only in the sense that its characters spoke with unnatural wittiness.1^ These critics still insisted that restoration comedy outjht to conform to a moral code. Several critics of :the Johnson era were also aware that restoration comedy reflected more or less accurately the social behavior of the court under Charles II. Horace Walpole said of Etherege's dialogue in The Man of Mode: "less licentious conversation would not

11"Poetry and Music," Essays. pages 356-357. 12"0n the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century" (c. 1821), The Complete Works and Letters of Charles Lamb, 4 vols.(New York: Random House, 1935), 126-127. 13The Comedy of Manners (London, 1913), page 22. See also The Dramatic Works of Wycherley. Conoreve, and Farquhar: with Biographical and Critical Notices by Leigh Hunt (London. I849), lxii-lxx. 14 14See pages 55-56 of this paper. 27 have painted the age."^ But critics still applied a moral code. The critic for the Gazeteer and London Daily Advertiser (October 27, 1764) wrote of Congreve’s knaves and strumpets: Nobody can doubt that there are such characters in nature (perhaps they are common), but it does not follow that every character in nature can, with propriety, be brought on the stage.16 Critics of the mid-eighteenth century, then, agreed that a comedy ought to end happily with the reestablishment in the final act of an ordered society based not merely upon the social standards of the playwright but also reflecting, or at least not repudiating, certain moral principles derived from man’s general nature and therefore presumed universally inviolable. Some twentieth-century critics have emphasized that any ordered society reflected in a comedy can function as a modifier of moral principles. A comedy can therefore be expected to observe the social standards of the era when it is written, but whether these standards are morally suitable for later generations may be at best a valid secondary con­ cern. L. J. Potts has explained: It is not the business of comedy to inculcate moral doc­ trine. Its business is to satisfy a healthy human desire to understand the behaviour of man and women towards one another in social life, and to judge them according to

^"Thoughts on Comedy" (written 1775-6), The Works of Horatio Walpole. 5 vois.(London, 1798), II, 315. See also the Morning Chronicle (Nov. 4, 1776), cited by Avery, Congreve’s Plays, page 13. Incited by Avery, Congreve’s Plays, page 9; see also Samuel Johnson, Rambler #4 (1750). Yale edn., Ill, 22. 28

1 7 their own pretensions and standards. But mid-eighteenth-century critics lacked this requisite historical sense, and their Lockean epistemology led them to mistake contemporary social standards for universally valid norms. Thus they laid down a general law that comedy should never deliberately ridicule an acknowledged virtue or sanction an acknowledged vice, and then they pronounced as unsuitable 19 for all ages what may have been unsuitable only for their own. The moral issue was further complicated in the mid­ eighteenth century by disagreements about the ways in which comedy should fulfill its moral obligation. Everyone agreed that

17Comedy (New York, 1966), page 56; see also Northrup Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1957), page 167; Bonamy Dobree, Restoration Comedy, 1660-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), pages 22-26; Norman Holland, The First Modern Comedies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1959), pages 3-4; and Thomas H. Fujimura, The Restoration Comedy of Wit (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1952), pages 5^-72. fujimura subordinated morality to aesthetics; to appreciate restoration comedy, he argued, one must embrace naturalism (as Fujimura himself evidently did) and suspend all conflicting moral judgments. 1 8 Since he presumed that moral truth is unchanging, Samuel Johnson would not recognize the applicability here of his own good advice to literary critics concerning his­ torical awareness: "To judge rightly of an author we must transport ourselves to his time. . . .” “Life of Dryden," Oxford edn., VII, 302. 1^See Lord Karnes, Elements of Criticism. I, 56; Hugh Blair, "Lecture XLVII: On Comedy." Lectures. II, 543-544; Edmund Burke, Reformer (Bef. 4, 1748), cited by Avery, Conoreve*s Plays, page 13; An Essay upon the Present State of the Theatre in France, England, and Italy (London. 1760), page 175: Samuel Johnson. Rambler #4 (175O). Yale edn., Ill, 22; and William Cooke, The Elements of Dramatic Criticism (London, 1775), pages 113-115. Cooke insisted that, since comedy involves more familiar characters and situations than tragedy, it should heed the moral code even more rigorously. 29

foolish or vicious characters should not be attractively repre­ sented, but to some critics this meant that in the play’s closing moments such characters must either repent or be pun­ ished. This question of poetic justice is also relevant to tragedy, of course, where it involves an additional concern: whether the virtuous can be allowed to suffer defeat and even death. The debate about poetic justice thrived in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries partly because the critics mis­ read Aristotle but mostly because they worried whether too much dramatic realism would be morally harmful for audiences. Joseph Addison argued on aesthetic grounds that virtuous char­ acters might sometimes suffer defeat and death in a tragic drama as in real life; he worried that an audience confident of virtue’s inevitable triumph in the fifth act would not attend seriously to the play or tb its moral lessons. 20 But then Addison ignored real life when he insisted on moral grounds that in comedy and tragedy unrepentant vice must be punished. In defense of this aesthetic inconsistency he re­ called man’s fallen nature: “The best of men may deserve punishment, but the worst of men cannot deserve happiness.”21 John Dennis, who advocated strict observance of poetic justice, responded that, in theorizing that a virtuous char­ acter in a tragedy could experience defeat, Addison had merely

20spectator #40, ed. Bond, I, 169, 21Spectator #548, ed. Bond, III, 465. 30

been trying to prepare audiences for the premiere of Cato. Dennis argued that God sometimes allows the virtuous to suffer and the vicious to triumph in this life so that men will look for justice in the next life. But, since stage characters exist only for the duration of the performance, Dennis:concluded that they must receive justice before the final curtain.He might have argued more sensibly that an audience which recognized stage characters as unreal should not demand poetic justice at all. Both Addison and Dennis, then, defended poetic justice in comedy with strangely illogical but moral arguments. At least a few critics in the mid-eighteenth century treated poetic justice as more of an aesthetic problem than a moral one. In his “Life of Addison” Samuel Johnson re- viewed the Addison/Dennis debate and then argued, more consistently than Addison had, that in drama not only could the virtuous suffer but the foolish and the vicious could escape punishment: Since wickedness often prospers in real life, the poet is certainly at liberty to give it prosperity on the stage. For if poetry has an imitation or reality, how are its laws broken by exhibiting the world in its true form? The stage may sometimes satisfy our wishes, but, if it be truly the mirror of life, it ought to show us sometimes what we are to expect.23

22 "To the Spectator, upon his paper on the 16th of April,” The Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. Edward N. Hooker, 2 vols (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1939-43), II, 18-22. 23oxford edn., VII, 458. 31

David Garrick and James Harris complained about the frequently unrealistic fifth-act reformations occasioned by dramatists’ regard for poetic justice. Harris cited these examples: The old gentleman of the drama, after having fretted and stormed through the first four acts, towards the conclusion of the fifth is unaccountably appeased. At the same time the dissipated coquette and the dissolute fine gentleman, whose vices cannot be occasional but must clearly be habit­ ual, are in the space of half a scene miraculously reformed, and grow at once as completely good as if they never had been otherwise. Harris added, "’twas from a sense of this concluding jumble, this unnatural huddling of events, that a witty friend of mine ¿Henry FieldingJ used ... to damn the man who invented fifth acts.*'24 Other mid-eighteenth-century critics defended poetic justice, usually for morality’s sake. The author of A Disser­ tation on Comedy argued that, while the triumph of virtue is not inevitable in real life, the "vulgar“ think it is and their simple beliefs ought not to be upset by the drama. Furthermore, virtue must be materially rewarded: "The ideas of riches and innocence are as inseparably connected in the minds of the vulgar, as those of darkness and hobgoblins."2^ B. Walwyn, who favored sentimental comedy, identified himself with the vulgar by insisting that the triumph of vice is unnatural:

^Philological Inquiries (London, 1781), pages 162-163; see also David Garrick, Letters. II, #646 (1711). 25page 11. 32

When incidents apparently arise more from art than from nature, it is perverting the intention of the scene. Vice should produce its punishment, folly its ridicule, and virtue its reward.26 James Beattie, still consistent with his belief in man’s connatural moral sense, insisted that most men cannot enjoy a play if unrepentant vice is not punished.But perhaps those playgoers who preferred poetic justice acted out of sentiment rather than because of moral scruples. Thus, for example, Samuel Johnson wished for poetic justice in King Lear.2** Actually, audiences in this period seem to have liked it either way. John Gay’s successful Beggar's Opera concludes with a delicious ridicule of poetic justice.But two prin­ cipal characters in Colley Cibber’s equally popular The Provok’d Husband (1728) were made to comment just before the final curtain: Lord Townly: Never were knaves and fools better dispos'd of. Manly: A sort of poetical justice, my Lord, not much above the judgment of a modern comedy.30

2&An Essay on Comedy (London, 1782), pages 18-19. 2?MPoetry and Music,” Essays, page 471. 28«Notes to Lear." Yale edn., VIII, 704. In 1788 Henry James Pye, who like Johnson claimed to prefer realism rather than rigid poetic justice, deplored the hanging of Cordelia and the suicides of Romeo and Juliet but approved the stran­ gling of Desdemona and the fifth-act bloodbath in Venice Preserv’d; see A Commentary Illustrating the Poetics of Aristotle, by examples taken chiefly from the modern poets (London, 1792), pages 263-268. 29-,729: rpt. Larchmont, New York: Argonaut, 1961, pages 59-60 (Act III, scene 16). 3Ofhe Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, ed. Bonamy 33

Samuel Johnson complained about the “capricious distri­ bution of theatrical praise" throughout the eighteenth cen- tury. 31 Certainly critics often tolerated or even preferred plays which did not wholly satisfy their moral reguirements for drama, Johnson’s own preference for some of the plays of Shakespeare above all other dramas, in spite of Shake­ speare’s supposed lack of clear moral purpose, is the most familiar example of this kind of inconsistency which arises less from capriciousness than from an inclination to bend rigid moral restraints in order to satisfy aesthetic in- 32 stincts. Any number of further examples can be cited. The most often performed comedy during the mid-eighteenth century was Benjamin Hoadley’s near-farce, The Suspicious Husband (1747).33 The behavior of Ranger, the central character, should have wrung anathemas from the moralists: he climbs through a bed­ room window and tries to seduce a married woman, Mrs. Strict- land; then, when her husband approaches, Ranger hides in another bedroom where a few minutes later he tries to seduce

Dobree, 4 vols.(Bloomsbury, England: Nonesuch Press, 1927), III, 261. (This play appears with Vanbrugh’s collected plays rather than with Cibber’s because it was based upon an incom­ plete play by Vanbrugh. For personal reasons Cibber concealed the extent of his own contributions, which are so considerable that the play properly should be attributed to him.) Curiously, this play does not illustrate strict poetic justice since the Wrongheads do not explicitly repent their foolish social­ climbing. 3^"Life of Addison," Oxford edn., VII, 437. 32»’preface to Shakespeare," Yale edn., V.'LI, 62 and 69-71. 33In The New English Theatre. 12 vols.(London, 1776), 34

Mrs. Strictland’s daughter Jacinta. For his efforts Ranger undergoes neither punishment nor remorse, as the moral code required. The author of An Examen of the New Comedy Called “The Suspicious Husband" even claimed that punishment or repentance for Ranger would be unnatural since his "noble spirit and good heart" excuse his vices. Generally critics were less inclined to forgive the supposed moral deficiencies in restoration comedies. Samuel Johnson wrote in his "Life of Congreve": It is acknowledged, with universal conviction, that the perusal of his works will make no man better; and that their ultimate effect is to represent pleasure in alli­ ance with vice, and to relax those obligations by which life ought to be regulated.35 Johnson exaggerated when he represented his censorious view as a "universal conviction." The author of A General View of the Stage (1759) felt that Congreve had ridiculed his rakes and thereby offered "pleasure and utility" to his audiences.36 But most critics shared Johnson’s view, sometimes intemperately.

I. Harry Pedicord reported that this play was performed a total of 126 times through twenty-nine seasons, thanks largely to David Garrick’s skillful portrayal of Ranger. Theatrical Public, page 143. ^London, 1747, page 10; see also Samuel Foote, The Roman and English Comedy Consider’d and Compar’d (London, 1747). oaoes 28-30: Edmund Burke. Reformer #10 (Ì748), cited by Samuels, Early Writinqs of Burke, page 175; and James Boswell, Life of Johnson, page 390. Burke and Johnson questioned the naturalness of the characters but did not comment on the moral worth of the play. 35oxford edn., VIII, 28. 36cited toy Avery, Congreve's Plays, pages 56-57. Arthur Murphy concurred; see London Chronicle (Nov. 14-16, 1758), reprinted in New Essays by Arthur Murphy, ed. Arthur Sherbo (East Lansing, Michi: Mich. St. Univ. Press, 1963), page 89. 35

Lord Karnes emphatically expressed his revulsion: "If the com­ edies of Congreve did not rack him with remorse in his last moments, he must have been lost to all sense of virtue." Playwrights sometimes protested that a double standard was being invoked here. Samuel Foote recalled that, during his school days, in the morning I was jerked for reading a comedy of Congreve’s, and in the afternoon was again turned up for not being prepared in a bawdy scene between the two maids in the Eunuch of Terence.38 And in The Critic (1779) Sneer can be presumed to speak for his creator, Richard Sheridan, when he ridicules expurgations of restoration comedies? Our prudery in this respect is just on a par with the artificial bashfulness of a courtezan, who increases the blush upon her cheek in an exact proportion to the dimi­ nution of her modesty.39 Yet even this finest dramatist of the period was not immune to the pressures of the moralists. Two years before he wrote The Critic. Sheridan prepared A Trip to Scarborough (1777), which was a much altered version of John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse (1698). For Sheridan’s play David Garrick wrote a prologue which justified alterations for morality’s sake:

37Elements of Criticism, page 57. Hugh Blair guoted and approved this judgment in "On Comedy," Lectures. II, 547. See also Present State of the Theatre, pages 172-173; and Court Magazine (February, 1762), cited by Avery, Conqreve's Plays, page 9. *1 Q Roman and English Comedy, page 9. ^Tho Plays and Poems of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, ed. R. Compton Rhodes, 3 vols.(Oxford: Blackwell, 1928), 11, 192 (Act I, scene 1). 36

Those writers well and wisely use their pens, Who turn our wantons into Magdalens.4® Vanbrugh had written his play as a scornful sequel to Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift (1696) in which a wife dis­ guises herself as a prostitute and sleeps with her errant husband, Loveless. Later, when she reveals her identity, he burst into tears of remorse and pledges to live virtuously thereafter: "The greatest happiness we can hope on earth, and sure the nearest to the joys above, is the chaste rapture of a virtuous love.“4^ Vanbrugh questioned the plausibility of Loveless’s reform. So, as The Relapse opens, Loveless has returned from a play where he has seen Berinthia, an attractive coquette. Loveless explains that his desire to confront her was temporarily mol­ lified by the plot of the play they were attending, which de­ picted the relapse of a reformed libertine. In Act IV, however, Loveless arranges to meet Berinthia at night in her chambers where, as he carries her into the closet, she cries (very softly, according to the stage directions): "Help, help, I’m ravished, ruined, undone. 0 Lord, I shall never be able to bear it."4^ A second plot in some ways overshadows the Loveless epi­ sodes, since Loveless does not reappear after the seduction scene. Young fashion, a penniless younger brother, determines

4QPlays of Sheridan, 1, 290. 41Dramatic Works of Cibber, I, 97. 42Works of Vanbrugh. I, 69 37 to marry for money. He chooses Miss Hoyden, although she is presently engaged to his wealthy but miserly older brother, Lord Foppington. With some assistance from a homosexual pimp named Coupler, Young Fashion disguises himself as his older brother, marries the girl in a secret ceremony, and then flees when Lord Foppington arrives to claim his bride. The bewil­ dered Miss Hoyden says nothing of the first marriage and enters into a second one with Lord Foppington. Young Fashion returns, hoping to reveal the first marriage before the second one can be consummated, but the clergyman who performed the secret marriage refuses to confirm it until he is assured that the other witness to the marriage, a nurse, will marry him. Before the final curtain Young Fashion’s morally questionable con­ triving is rewarded with an attractive wife and an annual income of two thousand pounds. In Sheridan’s version the revisions for morality’s sake are extensive. Berinthia is unmarried and in love with Townly, who is apathetic toward her. She flirts with Loveless only to make Townly jealous, so of course she does not succumb in the garden scene. Instead she and Loveless overhear Loveless’s virtuous wife spurn an offer of seduction from Townly. Both men are moved to tearful repentance. In the other plot, Young Fashion feels remorse immediately after his secret marriage, and so he reveals that marriage at one. Thus his cowardly flight, Miss Hoyden’s second marriage, and the bribe for the preacher are eliminated by Sheridan. Still virtue must enjoy

43The role of Coupler was deleted from the Vanbrugh play 38 its material reward and so Young Fashion receives an annual income of three thousand pounds, one thousand more than Vanbrugh allotted to him.' '• ' Thus the widespread concern for morality affected dra­ matic practice as well as theory, though in neither area was the moralists’ victory complete. The critic from the Town and Country Magazine (April, 1777) who reviewed the opening performance of A Trip to Scarborough complained that morality had been restored to The Relapse plot at a heavy cost: •It was purged of its greatest indelicacies by Mr. Sheridan. (ButJ The Relapse, without its obscenities, was also de­ prived of the greatest part of its wit. The audience felt these omissions very sensibly and expressed their disgust.44 This last remark is especially ironic since the critics’ con­ cern for morality in comedy arose because they worried about the influence of comedy on its audience. Most critics, in contrast to the Town and Country critic, agreed with Edmund Burke’s comment in Reformer #1 (January 1748): Plays are the favorite diversion of people of fashion, and everyone is sensible how much they influence their taste and manners; if the source be corrupted, what a deprivation must we expect of both; the people copy from early in the eighteenth century; of course Sheridan did not restore it. R. Compton Rhodes has noted that Sheridan's alterations answered most of the objections which Jeremy Collier had raised concerning Vanbrugh’s play. The title change satisfied Collier’s complaint that Vanbrugh’s title referred to a subordinate plot; a shift in locale amended certain violations of the unities cited by Collier; and the moral revisions also responded to specific objections by Collier. See Plays of Sheridan. I, 281-285. 44Cited by Rhodes, Plays of Sheridan. I, 285-286. 39

the gentry, and bad authors from the people; thus vice and folly . . . go round the nation hand in hand, and doubtless will continue to do so, unless some people are found public-spirited enough to oppose them. . . .45 The drama critic for the London Magazine (July 1769) even theorized: "It is much better to be dull than to be profli­ gate."46 But the evidence from attendance records plainly demon­ strates that, then as now, theatre audiences were not attracted by promises of moral instruction. In The Critic Sheridan pro­ vided Sneer with this ironic comment: "The theatre, in proper hands, might certainly be made the school of morality; but now, I am sorry to say it, people seem to go there principally for their entertainment."

4^Cited by Samuels, Carly Writinqs of Edmund Burke, page 161; see also George Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, pages 19 and 22; Lord Karnes, Elements of Criticism. I, pages 56-57; Present State of the Theatre, pages 174-175. 5ee also the controversy concerning The Beggar’s Opera, discussed on pages 80-81 of this paper. ^6Cited by Avery, Conqreve's Plays, page 8; see also Present State of the Theatre, page 177. Critics especially worried that a dramatic performance could instantly arouse an observer’s passions without time for reasoned reflection; see Monthly Review (1765), XXXIII, 376. Yet surprisingly only Oliver Goldsmith, exhausted by efforts to get his plays onto the stage, recommended that plays be read rather than seen. Samuel Johnson and Henry Pye both maintained that performance could improve comedy. See Goldsmith, "An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe" (1759), The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Arthur Friedman, 5 vols.(Oxford: 1966), I, 325; Johnson, "Preface to Shake­ speare," Yale edn., VII, 79; and Pye, Commentary, pages 270-271 47 47Plays of Sheridan. II, 197 (Act I, scene 1); see also Lynch, Box. Pit and Gallery, pages 297 and 303-304. Lynch described the audiences of the mid-eighteenth century as "theatre- rather than drama-minded." Many chiefly wanted to enjoy a familiar actor or actress in a familiar role. The actor John Hill complained that many young men went to a 40

And, as several critics and especially the practicing playwrights pointed out, audiences by their attendance deter­ mined what would be presented on the stage. In the prologue which he wrote for Garrick’s managerial debut at Drury Lane, Johnson addressed the audience and fellow critics: Ah, let not censure term our fate our choice, The stage but echoes back the public voice. The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give, For we that live to please, must please to live.48 Audiences even welcomed some ribaldry. Edmund Burke said of the mid-century audiences: “I am sorry to say that, so far from being disgusted at seeing anything immoral represented we are seldom better pleased. . . ."49 Arthur Murphy noted that the pit and boxes at Drury Lane were filled for a sub­ stantially unexpurgated performance of The Way of the World, during which the audience expressed “great satisfaction . . . at the whole performance."3^1 Thus dramatists like Samuel play "to see the actress rather than the character." The Actor: or A Treatise on the Art of Playing (London, 1755), page 141: see also Edmund Burke. Reformer #3 (February 11, 1748), cited by Samuels, Early Writings of Burke, page 169. 4®Yale edn., VI, 89 (lines 51-54). See also Mrs. Dangleis rebuke to her critic-husband in Richard Sheridan’s The Critic (Act I, scene 1), Plays of Sheridan. II, 195. ^Reformer #3 (February 11, 1748), cited by Samuels, Early Writings of Burke, page 168; also Hugh Blair, "On Comedy. "Lectures. pa~oe 550. A vote of dissent came from the author of A Dissertation on Comedy (1750), who perhaps did not regularly attend the theatre: "since Mr. Garrick’s management, the Stage is become the school of manners and morality: ribaldry and profaneness are no longer tolerated" (page 15). In his "Life of Dryden," Samuel Johnson con­ trasted the "universal approbation" given drama in his own time with the alarm raised against it in Dryden’b time. Oxford edn., VII, 270. 3^London Chronicle (Nov. 14-15, 1758), New Essays by 41

Foote pleaded that they had to include some ribaldry in their plays to satisfy their audiences.®^ From the moralists* point of view, then, the theoretical and the practical requirements of dramatic comedy were some­ times regretably contraposed. Succeeding chapters will deal with specific moral arguments about each of the materials for comedy in which critics sought the harmony of delightful in­ struction.

Arthur Murphy, page 89. However Emmett Avery has noted that Congreve's popularity was steadily declining during the 1750*s. Congreve*s Plays, page 2. S^Roman and English Comedy, page 14. 42

IV. THE MATERIALS OE COMEDY: THE NATURAL AND THE WITTY

Hugh Blair was repeating an eighteenth-century cliché when he insisted upon "the natural" in plot, character devel­ opment, and dialogue, as the "great foundation" of dramatic comedy, necessary both for delight and for instruction. This vague literary concept of naturalness in the sense of probability and consistency originated with Aristotle and then was codified into several rules by Horace. In the seven teenth century, while French critics followed Aristotle in stressing the importance of a natural plot, most English critics, influenced by the examples of Shakespeare and Jonson concerned themselves principally with characterization. But predictably each critic applied the rules to suit his own taste: for example, John Dryden labelled as unnatural the traditional humours characters of Thomas Shadwell, while Shadwell deplored as unnatural the new wittiness of Dryden’s 2 comic heroes and heroines.

"Lecture XLVII: On Greek, Roman, French, and English Comedy," Lectures. II, 530; see also James Beattie, "Poetry and Music," Essays. page 373; B. Walwyn, Essay on Comedy, page 1; and Horace Walpole, "Thoughts on Comedy." Works? II, ^Dryden, "A Parallel of Poetry and Painting" (1695), Essays. II, 125-126; and Shadwell, "Preface to The Sullen Lovers." Works. I, 11. The humours characters of Shadwell and the witty characters of Dryden may be poor examples of these types, but the point here is that Dryden and Shadwell questioned not only each other’s skill but also the character- type itself. At the end of the century Jeremy Collier abused the concept of naturalness by demanding that drama reflect, not what is realistically probable, but what is morally ideal "Short View," in Critical Essays, ed, Spingarn, III, 253-260. 43

In the mid-eighteenth century, critics continued to agree that, as Blair wrote, the comic dramatist’s “principal object is to exhibit character.“3 Richard Hurd complained that because the intrigue plots of Spanish dramas captured audiences* interest with “perplexed apartments, dark entries, disguised habits, and ladders of ropes," the characters in such plays had "no opportunity of being called out and dis­ playing themselves."4* Significantly, some critics of the Johnson era, exposed to repertory performances of humours comedies by Ben Jonson, witty comedies by William Congreve, and sentimental comedies by Richard Steele, began to recognize that man’s concept of naturalness could never be wholly immutable. In a review of Samuel Johnson’s "Preface to Shakespeare," the critic for the Monthly Review (1765) commented: "the same characters and actions, which in one age or country might seem natural and probable, might in another appear unnatural, improbable, and marvelous."5 Partly for this reason critics generally agreed

Advocates of so-called ’sentimental comedy,' such as Richard Steele, followed Collier’s lead to this extent; see Chapter VII of this paper. 3"0n Comedy," Lectures. II, 532. 4"0n Drama," Epistolae. II, 173. See also John Newbery, The Art of Poetry on a New Plan. 2 vo1s.(London, 1762), II, 160; John Hill. The Actor, pages 224-5; Examen. page 22; Present State of the Theatre, page 125; B. Walwyn, Essay on Comedy, pages 18-19; Oliver Goldsmith, "Preface to The Goo'd- Natur'd Man." The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Arthur Friedman, 5 vols.(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), V, 13-14. 5XXXIII, 377 44

that comedy required a local setting.® But more importantly

they realized that somehow the demand for naturalness had to be reconciled with the acknowledged general purpose of all literature, to offer universal delight and instruction. They turned to the notion, derived from Locke and from Shaftesbury, that fundamental moral values are unchanging and knowable, and they concluded that whatever local customs or individual eccentricities a dramatist portrays must not obscure this general pattern for moral behavior applicable to all societies and to all men. As Johnson expressed it for almost all of his contemporaries, Nothing can please many, and please long, but just repre­ sentations of general nature. Particular manners can be known to few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are copied.7 The goal, then, was a poem or a play’, not written in a general and abstract manner, but filled with particular images—such as the famous character sketch of Charles XII of Sweden in Johnson’s "The Vanity of Human Wishes"—which lead the reader to some general moral truth about mankind. The dramatist who focused almost exclusively on merely temporal social practices might well please and instruct his contemporaries, but he

^See for example Richard Hurd, "On Drama," Epistolae. II, 187 and 232-233. The most popular Shakespearean comedy in this era, The Merry Wives of Windsor, was regularly praised for its local setting, and most eighteenth-century comic dram­ atists followed this example. 7"Preface to Shakespeare," Yale edn., VII, 61-62; see also James Beattie, "Poetry and Music," Essays. pages 364, 391 and 430; Sir Joshua Reynolds, "Discourse VII" (1776), The Literary Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2 vols.(London, 1846), TJ 412-415; and Richard Hurd, "Notes," Epistolae. I, 252. 45

could not hope to satisfy the audiences of a later generation. For this reason Imlac concludes in "Rasselas" that a poet must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their ab­ stracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcen­ dental truths, which will always bb the same. . . ,® Johnson, through Rasselas, appears to smile at Imlac’s grand assessment of his own vocation. But, according to Locke and Shaftesbury, man could achieve all of Imlac’s goals through his reason or moral sense. and sometimes, as this paper already has demonstrated, Johnson and other mid-eighteenth-century critics concluded that they possessed such transcendental truths about the nature of dramatic comedy. Critics concerned about universality imposed two general limitations upon a comic dramatist’s pursuit of naturalness. First, he was advised to represent a heightened reality. As Hurd explained, "real action does not ordinarily afford vari- ety of incidents enough to show the character fully. . . ." 9 In the restoration era John Dryden had advocated dramatic heightening to avoid the tedium of real life; concerning Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair. Dryden wrote: That degree of heightening is used, which is proper to set off that subject . . . £and] to render it delightful, which he could never have performed had he only said or done those very thinqs that are daily spoken or practiced at the fair. . . ,^0

®"Rasselas," Oxford edn., I, 221-222. 9"On Drama," Epistolae. II, 181. ^"Defense of An Essay of Dramatic Poesy" (1667), Essays I, 114. 46

But most critics during the Johnson era worried about the extent to which heightening should be allowed to compromise naturalness. James Beattie thought that heightening was tolerable only "to that degree which is consistent with probability. . . ,"11 As later sections of this paper will demonstrate, critics who opposed wit, laughter, ridicule, or positive examples of virtue in dramatic comedy designated such elements as excessive and improbable heightening. The critical demand for universality also restricted a comic dramatist’s freedom to select characters from real life to be represented on the stage. Englishmen frequently boasted that the greater political freedom in their country allowed individualism to flourish more abundantly than in other na­ tions, especially France; David Garrick complained, "when you have seen half a dozen French men and women you have seen the whole."12 A few critics concluded that English comic dram­ atists were especially fortunate to be able to derive their fictional characters from the country’s rich accumulation of of individual peculiarities.13 But, mindful of the need for universality, Horace Walpole warned, "the affectation of a

11 "Poetry and Music," Essays. pages 415 and 389; see also Memoirs of Richard Cumberland: written by Himself, 2 voIs.(London, 1807), I, 304; and Richard Hurd, "On Drama," Epistolae. II, 185. 12"Letter to Kelfrich Peter Sturz" (January 3, 1769), Letters. II, #528; see also Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures. II, 541-2; and Corbyn Morris, Essay on Wit, page 23. 13ses for example Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures. II, 541; Joseph Warton, Adventurer #133 (FeB. 12, 1754), in Brit­ ish Essayists. XXVI, 126-133; and James Beattie, "On Laughter," Essays, pages 687-699. 47 private or single person is not prey for the stage,” since the character-types in a comedy should be "common enough to be understood by the generality."^ The concept of naturalness and the dramatists’ selection of characters were further circumscribed by the principle of decorum, which some critics invoked to discourage the repre­ sentation of persons of high political and social position as comic characters. In his Poetics Aristotle had observed that ’new’ Greek comedy ridiculed the follies of twv yrtuAujy. the low in rank. 1 5 Critics in the mid-eighteenth century rarely cited an ancient critic except to lend additional weight to a critical position which they had already con­ cluded to be reasonable. Thus Oliver Goldsmith, who had writ­ ten two comedies which focus upon the follies of the low and

^"Thoughts on Comedy," Works. II, 319. William Cooke also favored this requirement but felt that it thus is more difficult for the comic dramatist to please his audience (Dramatic Criticism, pages 122-126 and 159); see also Disser­ tation on Comedy, pages 53-54; and John Newbery, Art of Poetry. II, 161. Critics frequently objected on this basis to the comedies of Aristophanes; see Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures, page 550. ^3Pe Arte Poetica. ed. Ingram Bywater (1911: rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), section 1448b, line 26. In The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1954, page 17), Bywater has translated this phrase as "the ignoble," which could indicate either a social or a moral condition. But according to A Greek-English Lexicon (ed. H. Liddell and R. Scott, New York, 1897), the adjective, Kukos . when applied to persons, regularly meant low in rank ind then, as consequences of that social condition, worthless. poor, and weak. 48

middle classes, insisted that Aristotle had intended to ex­ clude the upper class as characters in the comedies of any era.^ ® Most other English comic dramatists during the Johnson era, influenced by longstanding English dramatic traditions, continued to depict all social classes in their plays, and most critics avoided futile speculation about the precise intentions of Aristotle or Horace, and instead tried to apply their own common sense to critical problems. James Beattie thought that comic characters should come from “the middle and lower ranks of mankind,” not because of what the Greeks may have done in their plays, but because comedy was presumed to focus on everyday events familiar to its audience. Richard Hurd presented a more elaborate rationale. He conceded that persons who are socially and politically prom­ inent sometimes behave foolishly, and he further allowed that they themselves would not be offended by such representations. But he argued that, because the follies of such persons could endanger an entire community, an audience would only feel grave moral concern. Secondly Hurd claimed that members of the upper class were trained, when lesser troubles arose, to "repress their emotions, so that the distinctness ... ex­ pected in comic characters is not possible." Finally and most

^®?.'Essay/ on the Theatre," Works. Ill, 210. 17«Poetry and Music," Essays. pages 511 and 436. See also Samuel Johnson, "Life of Congreve," Oxford edn., VIII, 25. 49

incredibly, in an age noted for its lively interest in biog­ raphy Hurd insisted that audiences were not conditioned to take an interest in the minor foibles of the upper class: Persons of high rank and public life, if they are drawn agreebbly to our accustomed ideas of them, must be em­ ployed in such a course of action as arrests the atten­ tion or interests the passions; and either way it diverts the mind from observing the truth of manners, that is, it prevents the attainment of the specific and which comedy designs.18 Edmund Burke disagreed: "Wherever men run into the absurd, whether high or low, they may be the subject ... of comedy." He conceded that the king ought to be exempted from comic ridicule out of respect for his position, but he rejected Hurd’s contention that the disciplined manners of the upper class inhibit their effectiveness as comic char­ acters; Burke observed that in a comedy "the parties are to be put into situations in which . . , their real characters are called forth. . . Concern for naturalness also provoked a debate concern­ ing the use of verse in comedy. Hurd thought that a loose iambic blank verse was "requisite" if comedy was to "contrib­ ute all that is within its power and province, to please."2° But most critics agreed with John Newbery that the greater

18»0n Drama," Epistolae. 175, 221-227. 1^"Hints for an Essay on the Drama" (1764),’ in The Works of Edmund Burke. 12 vols.(Boston, 1866), VII, 151. See also Samuel Johnson, Rambler #125, Yale edn., IV, 301; and Dissertation on Comedy, page 44. 2Q"0n Drama," Epistolae. II, 159. 50

naturalness in prose was "very obvious to every man of understanding."21

Several additional limitations were imposed on the comic dramatist for the sake of naturalness. Most critics shared Newbery’s view that comic characters should act consistently and in a manner appropriate to “age, sex, rank, climate, and condition."22 Critics further agreed that, to avoid monotony, a comic dramatist should not present two principal characters of similar disposition, but that, to avoid unnaturalness, neither should he present striking contrasts between the dispositions of two principal char- acters. 23 David Garrick protested on behalf of naturalness that type-names for comic characters "break in upon the agreeable delusion of the story’s being true," and Henry Pye noted the confusion which arises when a wife must share her husband’s type-name. 2 A Garrick also called

2^Art of Poetry. II, 161; see also William Cooke, Dramatic Criticism, pages 80-81; James Beattie, "Poetry and Music." Essays, page 562; and Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures. II, 534. 22Art of Poetry. II, 161; see also Henry Pye, Commentary, pages 126-127. This is a commonplace of dram­ atic criticism; John Dryden offered the same advice in "Preface to Troilus and Criseyde." in Essays. I, 214-215. 23Richard Hurd, "On Drama," Epistolae. II, 191-192; and Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures, pages 533-534.

24Garrick, "Letter to the Reverend Charles Jenner," Letters. II, #583; and Pye, Commentary, pages 187-188. Garrick freely used type-names in the after-pieces he wrote, 51 for costuming more consistent with the supposed time and locale of the play; as manager at Drury Lane he put an end to the kind of ludicrousness described by James Beattie: "We have seen Macbeth dressed in scarlet and gold, with a full-bottom’d periwig which, on his usurping the sovereignty, was forthwith decorated with two additional tails."73 But eighteenth-century audiences were so little con­ cerned about naturalness and decorum that their favorite plays were neither comedies nor tragedies but farces, noted mostly for implausible plots, bawdy dialogue, and carica­ tures of real persons. In a recent critical study of these plays, Leo Hughes has expressed bewilderment that, although farce thrived during the eighteenth century, "One looks in vain for any sort of kindly- comment in the works of major writers."73 But this is because the term farce was used by almost everyone to denote unnatural comedy or, as John Newbery wrote, "comedy beyond the reach of reason."*27 25 I*f a critic such as Pry, Gayless, and Gadabout in The Lyino Valet (in Didbin, London Theatre. XXII'), and he and his collaborator George Colman also chose the name Loveless for the hero of The Clandestine Marriage (In Didbin, London Theatre, XII). 25"0n Laughter," Essays, page 640. 26ft Century of English Farce (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1956), page 276. 27Art of Poetry. II, 171; see also Horace Walpole, "Thoughts on Comedy," Works. II, 319; William Cooke, Dram­ atic Criticism, page 170; George Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, page 21; John Pinkerton (under the penname ’Robert Heron*), Letters of Literature (London, 1785), page 193; and Richard Hurd. "On Drama." Epistolae. II, 236-239. Hurd distinguished between two kinds of farce, but unnaturalness is common to both species. 52

looked upon the use of wit or ridicule as a defect in comedy, he labelled as a farce any play with the offending element. Playwrights seldom admitted to having written a farce; Samuel Foote, who penned the most successful farces of the era, rede fined comedy to accommodate the caricatures for which he was notorious: Comedy I define to be an exact representation of the peculiar manners of that people among whom it happens to be performed, a faithful imitation of singular absurd­ ities fandj particular follies which are openly produced, as criminals are publicly punished, for the correction of individuals and as an example to the whole community. Foote acknowledged, then, that comedy should offer moral instruction, but he explicitly denied that a comic playwright must focus upon truths of general nature so that his lesson will have universal application: "a comedy’s being local or temporary is so far from being a moral or critical fault that it constitutes its chiefest merit."28 Not surprisingly, other critics disapproved of Foote’s plays, although Samuel Johnson did acknowledge Foote’s clever ness. But Johnson told Boswell that Foote’s work "is not comedy. which exhibits the character of a species, as that of a miser gathered from many misers: it is farce. which exhibits individuals,"29

28«A Letter from Mr. Foote, to the Reverend Author of the Remarks, Critical and Christian, on The Minor" (1760), quoted by Mary Belden, The Dramatic Work of Samuel Foote (New Haven: Yale Univ. Pressé 1929), page 173. 2^Life of Johnson, page 417. 53

This demand for a balance of naturalness and universality was a relevant issue in debates about the appropriateness in comedy of ridicule, laughter, and positive examples of virtue, but it was the central issue only in the debate concerning

wit. The term wit was used as variously in the eighteenth cen­ tury as it is today, but when applied to drama the word usually referred to repartee involving an especially clever association of words and ideas. The most detailed study of wit in the mid­ eighteenth century was written around 1744 by Corbyn Morris, who complained that a few critics described dramatic wit as not only ’clever’ but also ’amusing’ or ’satirical,’ on the mistaken assumption that wit was necessarily allied with laughter or with ridicule.39 However they defined the term, when critics argued the merits of wit in dramatic comedy they clearly had in mind such striking repartee as distinguished the comedies of Congreve. Back in 1676 John Dryden, speaking through Neander in

39An Essay toward Fixing the True Standard of Wit, Humour. Raillery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744). in Auoustan Reprints. Series I, #4 (1947). John Brown associated wit with laughter; see "On Ridicule," Essays. page 41. Lord Karnes and George Campbell associated wit with ridicule; see Karnes, Elements of Criticism. I, 381; and Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, pages 8-15. Another group of critics, including James Beattie, Lord Karnes, Oliver Goldsmith, and Corbyn Morris himself, described dramatic wit in terms better suited to metaphysical poetry; see Beattie, "On Laughter," Essays. page 586; Karnes, I, 278-279; Goldsmith, "Polite Learning," Works. I, 320-321; and Morris, page 1. 54

An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, could justly say of contemporary comedy that "repartee is one of its chief graces; the greatest pleasure of the audience is a chase of wit, kept up on both sides, and swiftly managed."3^ But very few critics in the mid-eighteenth century offered even guarded praise to Dryden, George Etherege, or William Congreve for their witty couples. 32 The author of A Dissertation on Comedy went back to the frag­ ments of Menander for wit he could esteem, while most critics rejected dramatic wit altogether. 33 Several expressed moral reservations about the use of dramatic wit. Lord Karnes repeated John Locke’s warning that a witty style could distract an audience from rendering any moral judgment about what is being said or done.34 Even worse, critics argued that unscrupulous playwrights had used witty repartee to lull an audience into rendering the wrong moral judgment. Horace Walpole said of Congreve’s characters: "We are so pleased with each person, that we wish success to all. . . ." Walpole added that the danger here was that no

3^"Essay of Dramatic Poesy" (written 1666), Essays. I, page 72. 32The exceptions include the author of Present State of the Theatre, pages 31-32 and 146; John Newbery, Art of Poetry. II, 165; and the critic for the Morning Post and Daily Adver­ tiser (December 28, 1776), cited by Avery, Congreve's Plays, page 14. The latter praised Congreve for having exposed the folly of this world in order to reform it, but in the later eighteenth century Congreve’s dialogue was often substantially altered. 33Pages 25-26. 34Elements of Criticism. I. 22. 55 member of the audience "would be corrected, if sure that his wit would make his vices or ridicules overlooked." 35“ Morris, Karnes, and Johnson conceded that wit could ob­ scure truth, but they argued that, properly used, it could give audiences an insight into a character's moral worth. To illustrate, Morris carefully chose the dramatic character most acclaimed during the mid-eighteenth century: Falstaff's witty remarks, according to Morris, actually emphasize his cowardice. 3 6 However, the principal objection to wit in dramatic com­ edy was not moral but aesthetic, based on the literary concept of naturalness. Most critics not only believed that prose was more suitable than verse for comic dialogue, but they added that the level of prose should approximate the language of everyday life. Samuel Johnson commented: "the dialogue of comedy, when it is transcribed from popular manners and real life, is read from age to age with equal pleasure."32

*ic "Thoughts on Comedy," Works. II, 316; see also Edmund Burke, Reformer #2 (Feb. 4, 1748), Early Writinqs of Burke, pages 166-167; Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures. page 547; Samuel Johnson, "Prologue for Garrick at Drury Lane" (1747), Yale edn., VI, 88 (line 20); London Chronicle (Nov. 14-16, 1758), cited by Avery, Conqreve's Plays, page 107; Gazetteer (October 4, 1765), cited by Avery, pages 9-10; General Eve­ ning Post Nov. 23-26, 1771), cited by Avery, pages 116-117. See also Chapter III, pages 27 and 36 of this paper. 36Kames, Elements of Criticism, page 57; and Morris, True Standard of Wit, xiv-xv and page 25. See also Samuel Johnson,'‘"Life of Addison," Oxford edn., VII, 461. 32"Life of Cowley," in Oxford edn., VII, 34. 56

Thus, while critics conceded that some heightening was permissible in plot structure, they could not abide the heightened dialogue of restoration comedies. Johnson com­ mended the originality of Congreve’s wit but thought that it often rendered his characters fictitious and artificial, with very little of nature and not much of life. He formed a peculiar idea of comic excellence, which he supposes to consist in gay remarks and unexpected answers. . . .38 Predictably, then, eighteenth-century dramatists, with the notable exception of Richard Sheridan, did not engage their characters in witty repartee. As manager at Drury Lane, Sheridan revived the comedies of Congreve, but as a dramatist he tempered his own wittiness with moral equivo­ cation. His attitude toward Julia and Faulkland in The Rivals is too sentimentally tender, and in The School for Scandal. where gossiping has replaced fornication as the most popular social pastime and where the gossipers ulti­ mately hurt only themselves, he even issued a witty warning concerning the abuse of wit: Sir Peter Teazel (to his wife): Ah! madam, true wit is more nearly allied to good nature than your ladyship is aware of. Lady Teazel: True, Sir Peter: I believe they are so near akin that they can never be united. Sir Benjamin Backbite: Or rather, madam, suppose them to be man and wife, because one seldom sees them together.39

38"Life of Congreve," in Oxford edn., VII, 31; see also Joseph Warton, Adventurer #133 in British Essayists. XXV, 260-266. 39Plays of Sheridan. II, 48 (Act II, scène 1). 57

Critics, suspicious of dramatic wit, nevertheless applauded this play? Horace Walpole proclaimed that Sheridan had '‘equalled Terence in the graces of style, and excelled him in wit and character.1,49 But when he searched for an English comedy to compare with The School for Scandal. Walpole chose one not by Congreve but by Colley Cibber: "I have seen no comedy that comes near it since The Provok’d Husband."4^ In addition to Sheridan’s comedies, the only mid­ eighteenth-century play frequently performed today is Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer. Its plot actually borders on farce (but without overstepping that boundary, as Samuel Johnson noted), and there is almost no witty repartee—the conversation strikes our ears as rarely sparkling but consistently natural and lively. But not all of Goldsmith’s contemporaries were satisfied; Walpole complained that not one of Goldsmith’s characters "says a sentence that is natural or marks any character at all."4^ The level of dialogue which most often pleased critics during the Johnson era can be found in the now largely for­ gotten comedies of Colley Cibber. Hugh Blair thought that

49"Thoughts on Comedy," Works. II, 322; see also London Magazine (May 1777), cited by Gray, Theatrical Criticism, pages 237-238; and James Harris, Philological Inquiries, page 161. 4^"Letter to Robert Jephson" (July 13, 1777), The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Paget Toynbee, 16 vols.(Oxford, 1904), X, 82. 42"Letter to Rev. William Mason" (March 27, 1776), Letters. VIII, 257. Several critics objected to Tony Lumpkin’s ’low humour’; Goldsmith had foreseen this reaction and mocks it in the alehouse scene (Act I, scene 2). 58

The Careless Husband (1704) exhibited "a current of easy, genteel, unaffected dialogue, without pertness and flippancy, without too much studied and unseasonable wit, without dullness and formality." A reader today probably would agree that Cibber wrote without wit or flippancy, but he probably would add that the dialogue is noticeably affected and either dull or, where seriousness is intended, laughable. Here, for example, is an excerpt from Lady Easy's speech at the play's climactic moment, usually dubbed the 'steinkirk scene.* Through four a half acts she has shown incredible patience as her husband Sir Charles slept with two other women. Now she enters his bedroom where she observes him and a young servant-girl asleep in two chairs. At first she threatens to awaken and rebuke him, then she rebukes herself, then she flounders in self-pity, and finally she notices that Sir Charles is not wearing his wig: Ha! bareheaded, and in so sound a sleep! Who knows, while thus exposed to th' unwholesome air, But heav'n, offended, may o'ertake his crime, And, in some languishing distemper, leave him A severe example of its violated laws. Forbid it mercy, and forbid it love! This ma^ prevent it. She removes a steinkirk, or scarf, from her shoulders and covers her husband's bald head as she concludes: "And if he should wake offended at my too busy care, let my heart-breaking patience, duty, and my fond affection plead my pardon."44

48 "On Comedy," Lectures, pages 534-535. 44Pramatlc Works. II, 77-78 (Act V, scene 5). 59

It is difficult to be sure that one is criticizing the language apart from the psychology here, but surely both ring very false. Cibber explained in the play’s dedication that he had tried to imitate the speech of the upper class,, but, as one twentieth-century biographer has commented, "he writes like an outsider."43 Yet this hollow style established the prevailing pattern for comic dialogue for over a century. In 1764 the dramatist David Baked cited The Careless Husband as having exhibited "the most elegant dialogue and the most perfect knowledge of the manners of persons in real high life extant in any dramatic piece that has appeared in any language whatsoever."46 The fact that Cibber had resorted to blank verse in Lady Easy’s speech raised not a murmur of protest from those who had forbade its use in dramatic comedy. With this background one can more fully appreciate Samuel Johnson’s remarks about dramatic comedy in his "Preface to Shakespeare." Johnson found the perfect union of naturalness and universality in Shakespeare’s comedies: As his personages act upon principles arising from genuine passion, very little modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural and therefore durable. ... And concerning the language of Shakespeare Johnson wrote: "there is a conversation above grossness and below refine­ ment where propriety resides, and where this poet seems to

45Richard H. Barker, Mr. Cibber of Drury Lane (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1939), page 50. 46The Companion to the Playhouse (London, 1764), n. pag.. 60 have gathered his comic dialogue." Johnson concluded: The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arise in the commerce of mankind.4' It is refreshing to note, then, that Johnson rejected as unnatural the turgid prose which Colley Cibber had estab­ lished as standard for dramatic comedy in the eighteenth century. But neither did he dispute the majority judgment of eighteenth-century critics and audiences who rejected, on aesthetic as well as on moral grounds, the substantial use of wit in dramatic comedy.

47 "Preface to Shakespeare," in Yale edn., 63 and 69-70 61

V. THE MATERIALS OF COMEDY: THE RIDICULOUS

The basic material of dramatic comedy has been tradi- tionally identified as the ridiculous. In the mid-eighteenth century even those comic dramatists who tried to please every­ one with plays which both chided and sanctioned sentimentalism occasionally used their prefaces and prologues for a plain- spoken endorsement of ridicule. Hugh Kelly, whose False Deli­ cacy successfully drew audiences to Covent Garden and away from Oliver Goldsmith’s The Good-Natur’d Man at Drury Lane, described a dramatist’s duty to his audiences: "we must in comedy laugh them into correctness, by showing the ridicule they necessarily incur when they act below the consequences of their characters.And Richard Cumberland, whose The West Indian was the most successful sentimental comedy of the

Ipiato, Philebus. transl. A. E. Taylor (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1956), pages 170-171 (section 50); Aristotle. Poetics transl. Bywater, chapter V, section 1449a, lines 31-36; Sir Philip Sidney, An Apoloqy for Poetry, in Elizabethan Critical Essays. ed. Gregory Smith, 2 vols.(1904: rpt. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), I, 176-177; John Dryden, "Poetry and Paint­ ing," Essays. II, 126; William Congreve, "Epistle Dedicatory to The Double Dealer"(1693). Works. II, 11; Joseph Addison, Spectator #249, ed. Bond. II, 467; William Hazlitt, "Lectures on the English Comic Writers," (1819), The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P.P. Howe, 12 vols.(London: Dent, 1930-34), VI, 149; Henri Bergson, "Laughter," in Comedy (New York: Doubleday-Anchor, 1956), pages 74-79; and Northrup Frye, "The Argument of Comedy," English Institute Essays: 1948. ed. D. A, Robertson, Jr. (New York:: Columbia Univ. Press, 1949), page 61. 2"Preface to Romance of an Hour" (1774), in Three Cen­ turies of Drama, ed. Henry Wells (New York: Readex Microprint, 1956); see also Arthur Murphy, Gray’s Inn Journal #76 (March 30, 1754), The Lives of Henry Fielding and Samuel Johnson, 62 period, acknowledged in his Memoirs that "the scourge of ridicule" as a basic tool of the comic dramatist. So, too, most critical theorists of the period agreed with Edmund Burke that ridicule was the "characteristic passion" of dram­ atic comedy.4* *3 Alexander Gerard began his discussion of the ridiculous by describing it in a very general way as an "incongruity, or a surprising and uncommon mixture of relation and contra­ riety in things."6 * Aristotle had observed, though, that comedy did not focus upon every incongruity in human behavior but only upon oretw (the ridiculous), which he identified as "a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others. . . ."8 Consistent with their Lockean trust in the

Together with Essays from the Gray's-Inn Journal (rpt. Gaines­ ville,Fla.^ Scholar’s Facsimiles, 1968), pages 138-146. 3I, 273.

4"Hints," Works, VII, 150; see also Dissertation on Comedy, page 21; Joseph Warton, Adventurer #105 (Nov. 6. 1753), in British Essayists. XXV, 81-86; John Newbery, Art of Poetry. II, 160; David Garrick, "Letter to Mrs. Benjamin Victor" (Nov. 16, 1765), Letters. II, #375; Samuel Johnson, "Preface to Shakespeare," Yale edn., VII, 66-67; Oliver Goldsmith, "Essay on the Theatre," Works. Ill, 210; B. Walwyn, Essay on Comedy, page 1; Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures. II, 528; Henry Mackenzie, Lounger #49 (Jan. 7, 1786), in British Essay­ ists. XXXVI, 305-312; and Richard Hurd, "On Drama," Epistolae. II, 202-206. 6Essay on Taste, page 62. ^Poetics, transi. Bywater, chapter IV, section 1449a, lines 34-35. As the author of Dissertation on Comedy observed (page 47), the meaning of can range from "the vicious" to "the ridiculous," but in this context "the ridic­ ulous" is clearly the intended meaning. 63

knowableness of basic moral truths, mid-eighteenth-century critics accepted Aristotle’s qualification; Gerard wrote: "an enormous vice, though of all things the most incongruous to the natural system of our minds, is never esteemed ridic­ ulous.”7 Thus in his satiric afterpiece, The Critic. Richard Sheridan mocked a fictitious playwright who believed that "the Comic Muse ... should be taught to stoop only at the greater vices and blacker crimes of humanity—gibbeting capital of­ fenses in five acts and pillorying petty larcenies in two." Sheridan has Sneer make this preposterous claim for the man’s new play, The Reformed Housebreaker: 8y the mere force of humour, housebreaking is put into so ridiculous a light that, if the piece has its proper run, I have no doubt but that bolts and bars will be entirely useless by the end of the season.8 Lord Karnes complained that Aristotle should have speci­ fied also that a dramatic exposure of the ridiculous, man’s

7Essay on Taste, page 64; and see page 10 of this paper. See also Corbyn Morris, True Standard of Wit, page 12, Samuel Foote, Roman and English Comedy, page 6; George Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, pages 21-22; Arthur Murphy, Gray's Inn Journal #91 (July 13, 1754), Lives and Essays, pages 202- 203; John Newbery, Art of Poetry. II, 162-163; James Beattie, "On Laughter" and "Poetry and Music," Essays. pages 435 and 661; Edmund Burke, "Hints," Works. VII, 150; General Evening Post (June 30-July 2, 1772), cited in Ayery. Congreve's Plays, page 10; William Cooke, Elements of Dramatic Criticism, page 132; John Burgayne, "Preface to The Lord of the Manor" (1780), The Dramatic and Poetical Works of the Late General John Burgayne and Henry Pye, Commentary. page 122. Bpiays. II, page 197 (Act I, scene 1). 64 lighter follies, should provoke "a laugh of derision or scorn."9 This additional qualification was widely accepted in the mid-eighteenth century; Arthur Murphy explained that without laughter "there will be danger of exhibiting dis- agreeable characters without the proper entertainment." 1 n In the early seventeenth century Ben Jonson had created humours characters, which he described in the "Prologue to Every Man Out of His Humour": . . . some peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way.11 Later in that century William Congreve accepted Jonson’s use of the term: "Humour is from nature, Habit from custom, and Affectation from industry."^ In the mid-eighteenth century the term humour was widely used but not always in the Jonson manner. Samuel Foote em­ ployed it to indicate good-naturedness; he described a man of humour as "always joyous and pleasant."^3 Other critics

9Elements of Criticism. I, 366; see also 274. ^Gray's-Inn Journal #90 (July 6, 1754), Lives and Essays, page 193; see also John Brown, "On Ridicule," Essays, page 42; James Beattie, "On Laughter," Essays. page 587; William Cooke, Elements of Dramatic Criticism, page 133; and B. Walwyn, Essay on Comedy, page 1. 11 Ben Jonson. ed. C. H. Herford and P. Simpson, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), III, 407-408. 12»»An Essay concerning Humour in Comedy" (1696), in Works, III, 163. 13Roman and English Comedy, page 12. 65 used humour as a synonym for the ridiculous, which for Jonson and Congreve had a more general meaning; Corbyn Morris specif ically objected that Congreve’s description of humour had been tod restrictive: For Humour. extensively and fully understood, is any remarkable oddity or foible belonging to a person in real life; whether this foible be constitutional, habit­ ual, or only affected; whether partial in one or two circumstances or tinging the whole temper and conduct of the person.14 More important, while a few critics commended Jonson’s humours characters, several objected that their follies were too serious and that sometimes Jonson’s treatment of them was too somber for comedy; Corbyn Morris Wrote, "after you have been gratified with their detection and punishment, you are quite tired of their company."I5

14True Standard of Wit, page 23; and see pages xxi-xxv. See also Samuel Foote, Roman and English Comedy, page 22; fln Essay on Ridicule (London, 1753), page 12; John Newbery, Art of Poetry. II, 162-163. Northrup Frye has noted that the source for potential laughter at a Jonsonian humours character is in the repetition of the humour; of course, the same is true of habit and affectation; see Anatomy of Criticism, pages 168-169. I^True Standard of Wit, page 30; and see pages xxvii and 41. Morris and others praised Falstaff as a character with suitably mild faults; yet, as a potential corrupter of Prince Hal, Falstaff was actually more dangerous than most of Jon­ son’s humours characters. The critics’ preference, then, was really based on Shakespeare’s lighter treatment of Falstaff’s weaknesses. See Arthur Murphy, Gray’s-Inn Journal and "An Essay on the Life and Genius of Henry Fielding, Esq." (1762), in Lives and Essays, pages 193 and 248; Horace Wal­ pole, "Thoughts on Comedy," Works. II, 315; and Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures. page 542. Critics who admired Jonson’: humours characters included: Joseph Warton, Adventurer #127 Burke, "Hints," Works. VII, 153. 66

Others dismissed Jonson's characters as unnaturally

heightened. Because of the medical theory prevailing in the

early seventeenth century that abnormalities in human behav­

ior were traceable to an imbalance of phlegm, blood, or bile,

Jonson had regarded his humours characters as natural. But

Horace Walpole worried that "comedies degenerate into farce

and buffoonery when follies are exaggerated in the represen­

tation."16 And Richard Hurd described Every Man Out of His

Humour as "an unnatural . . . delineation of a group of simply

existing passions, wholly chimerical and unlike to any thing

we observe in the commerce of real life." Most critics con­

cluded, then, that habits and especially affectations were

more suitable than Jonsonian humours as targets for ridicule 1 8 in dramatic comedy.

Samuel Johnson told James Boswell, "A man should pass a

part of his time with the laughers. by which means any thing ridiculnus or particular about him might be corrected.

18"Thoughts on Comedy," Works. II, 319.

17"0n Drama," Epistolae. II, 188-189; and see pages 192-193. Hurd also disliked Volpone and The Alchemist; in fact, he regarded the use of ridicule as more suitable in farce than in comedy where he preferred sentimentalism; see page 52 of this paper.

18See John Brown, "On Ridicule," Essays, pages 103-104; Mark Akenside, Pleasures. paqes 76-78; Corbyn Morris, True Standard of Wit, page 15; George Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, page 21; and Arthur Murphy, Gray's-Inn Journal #90. Lives and Essays, page 191. Henry Fielding held that affectation was the only true source of the ridiculous; see "Preface to Joseph Andrews," Works of Henry Fielding, ed. George Saintsbury, 12 vols.(London, 1893-1899), xliv. 19

19Life of Johnson, page 1207. Boswell added that only 67

Johnson’s theory of dramatic comedy, and those of most of his contemporaries, followed the traditional pattern since Plato’s time by favoring plays which used ridicule for unmistakable moral instruction. As John Newbery wrote, "the design is to make vice and folly appear ridiculous. . . ."20 Arthur Murphy, with sentimental comedy clearly in mind, even advocated ridi-- cule of "the virtues of men, when carried to some degree of excess."21 Samuel Foote explained that audiences should learn, "by a representation of fashionable foibles and particular extravagant humours, to shun ridicule and absurdity."22 Hugh Blair added, "Many vices might be more successfully exploded by employing ridicule against them than by serious attacks and arguments."2^ * 21

"a bold laugher ... would have ventured to tell Dr. Johnson of any of his particularities." See also page 52 of this paper, concerning Johnson and Samuel Foote. 29Art of Poetry. II, 160; see also Plato, Republic, transl. B. Jowett (New York: Random House-Modern Library, n.d.), pages 171=172 (Book V, section 452); Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, in Elizabethan Critical Essays. II, 176-177; William Congreve, "Amendments," Works, III, 171-172; Dissertation on Comedy, pages 6 and 13; William Cooke, Ele- ittents of Dramatic Criticism, page 133; Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (Dec. 26. 1776). cited in Avery, Congreve’s Plays, page 14; and John Mackenzie, Lounger #49, in British Essayists. XXXVI, 305-312. 21 Gray’s-Inn Journal #90, Lives and Essays, page 193. 22Roman and English Comedy, page 6. 23»0n Comedy," Lectures. page 529. Blair may have been influenced here by George Campbell who wrote earlier that ridicule should "influence the will and persuade to a certain conduct" by directing contemptuous laughter at minor follies which are so absurd that reasoned refutation is ineffective. 68

But many who acknowledged that ridicule was a customary ingredient in dramatic comedy were not completely happy about it. Critics during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods regularly reminded their readers of Plato’s misgivings about potential misuse of ridicule. Under the influence of Jeremy Collier and others, such accusations became so fre­ quent and shrill in the early eighteenth century that those who favored the use of ridicule were alarmed. As a result, at the time that Joseph Addison and others were cataloging supposed abuses of ridicule in restoration comedies, The Earl of Shaftesbury wrote his Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc, to reaffirm the potential instructive­ ness of ridicule.73 In the process he initiated a debate concerning ’ridicule as a test of truth,’ which was waged in vigorous confusion for more than fifty years. As noted in Chapter II above, Shaftesbury believed that each man possessed

Unfortunately, Campbell seemed to adopt a very different position a few pages earlier when he wrote that humour. which seeks "to arouse the passions merely as a diversion. is the principle element of comedy" (my italicsT. But it is reason­ able to assume that Campbell meant to say that humour was the principal element of farce, for, although he demanded natural­ ness in comedy, he assumed that writers of humour would focus upon the peculiarities of individuals rather than upon general truths of human nature; and he even sanctioned overacting in the performance of humours. See Philosophy of Rhetoric, pages 4, 15-17, and 20. See also John Newbery, Art of Poetry. II, 150; and James Beattie, "On Laughter," Essays. page 585. 74Eor example, see Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, in Elizabethan Critical Essays, I, 186-191. 73Addison, Spectator #35 and #249, ed. Bond, I, 147-148 and II, 415-419. 69 a connatural moral/aesthetic sense which, if properly developed through education, not only enabled him to recognize virtuous conduct but also prevented him from choosing to behave other­ wise. To confirm the validity of these instantly recognized truths, Shaftesbury rejected somber syllogistic speculations; instead he wrote: "one of those principal lights or natural mediums, by which things are to be viewed in order to a thorough recognition, is ridicule itself. . . ." Thus he recommended "a freedom of raillery, a liberty in decent lan­ guage to question everything. . . ." And since he held that truth and beauty are one, Shaftesbury concluded: "nothing is ridiculous except what is deformed; nor is anything proof against raillery except what is handsome and just."28 It is important to note--because some later critics overlooked them—that Shaftesbury attached two significant qualifications to this use of ridicule as a test of truth. First, he did not claim that everyone is qualified to use this test; only a man with a fully developed moral sense would invariably recognize that only foolish or vicious behavior is really ridiculous because it is contrary to social love, the highest manifestation of self-love. When such a man examined an attempt to ridicule virtue, he would recognize that ridicule had been misused, and his laughter— if he laughed at all—would be directed not at truth but at

^Characteristics. I, 44, 49, and 85. See also pages 9-12 of this paper. 70 the folly of the person who had tried to make truth appear ridiculous. 27 Secondly, Shaftesbury acknowledged that some men try "to raise a laugh from everything." He conceded, then, that virtuous behavior can be a topic for ridicule, and he added that any man with an imperfectly developed moral sense can o fl be misled to accept such ridicule as valid. Francis Hutcheson, who in 1725 more or less systematized Shaftesbury’s rambling speculations about the use of ridicule as a test of truth, urged that, since weaker minds could be deceived, a comic writer should clearly ridicule only the follies of a character while at the same time acknowledging his virtues and emphasizing esteem for them. Also, Hutcheson saw no usefulness in ridiculing unamendable faults. He con­ cluded, "Ridicule, like other edged tools, may do good in a wise man’s hands, though fools may cut their fingers with it or be injurious to an unwary bystander."7^ Mid-eighteenth-century critics who accepted the Shaftesbury/ Hutcheson position without modification included Mark Akenside in and the author of An Essay on Ridicule. Also, as noted in

7^Characteristics; 1,85. ^Characteristics. I, 85. ^^Relections upon Laughter (in Dublin Journal. June 5-19, 1725; rpt. Glascow, 1750), pages 34-36. 3f] Akenside, Pleasures. Book III, lines 249-265 and footnote on pages 80-81; and An Essay on Ridicule, pages 6-7. 71

Chapter II of this paper, although Lord Karnes substituted taste for Shaftesbury’s concept of moral sense, he accepted much of Shaftesbury’s optimistic philosophy. Concerning attempts to ridicule correct behavior Karnes asserted: "Such vulgar use made of a talent for wit or ridicule cannot long impose upon mankind; it cannot stand the test of a correct and delicate taste. . . ." Karnes even went beyond the qualified position of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson by adding, "truth will at last prevail even with the vulgar."3^ In 1751 John Brown attacked Shaftesbury’s position concerning ridicule as a test of truth. Brown doubted that Shaftesbury's judge of ridicule’s validity, the man with a fully developed moral sense. could exist: Show me him whose imagination never received or retained a false impression, and I shall readily allow he can never endure a ridicule wrongly placed. But of this infallible race I know none, except the inhabitants of Utopia. Brown acknowledged that education could help a man to see through some lower forms of ridicule: "The coarse pranks of a merry Andrew that engages the attention of a county fair would make but a poor figure at St. James’s." But to Brown this only meant that the mode of ridicule which appeals to "men of breeding" must be ’’a finer but by no means a truer kind. ..." Brown also noted that even among educated men the same object can "in one mind produce approbation, in another contempt" because each man’s concept of the ridiculous

^Elements of Criticism. I, 379; see also page 14 of this paper 72

is derived from "preconceived opinion." For example, he asked, "what is more ridiculous to a beau than a philosopher to a philosopher than a beau?" 32 Brown also charged that ridicule had been successfully used to defend false religions. 33 To this the author of An Essay on Ridicule responded with a loyally Anglican but dubiously logical protest: Suppose a Catholic should raise the laugh ever so properly against the worship of Fum Ho, and the Chinese should return it full upon St. Anthony of Padua, would anyone be more convinced of the Chinese or Popish idolatry than he was before?343 * Concerning the abuse in drama of the ridiculous, Brown turned back to restoration comedy: "we cannot perhaps in history find a more flagrant proof of the power of ridicule against virtue itself than in that heap of execrable comedies. . . ." Brown's catalogue of abused virtues, which included feminine modesty, marital fidelity, and religious conviction, led him to conclude: "Ridicule is one of the most powerful engines by which error can be maintained and established."36

32"0n Ridicule," Essays, pages 48-49 and 65-67; see also page 15 of this paper. 33"0n Ridicule," Essays, page 80. George Berkeley, who also denied the usefulness of ridicule as a test of truth, recalled that the theories of Copernicus had been ridiculed successfully for several decades; see "Alcephron, or the Minute Philosopher," in The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, 9 vols.(1950: rpt. London: Thomas Nelson, 1964), III, 136-138 (Dialogue III, Chapter 15). 34Page 49. 38H0n Ridicule," Essays. pages 63 and 73-74; see also 73

Lord Karnes compared the ‘sense of ridicule with the sense

of beauty: "No person doubts but that our sense of beauty is the true test of what is beautiful. . . .36 But Brown

observed that, "through the error of imagination, things

apparently deformed may be really beautiful." He concluded

that Shaftesbury should have said that "nothing is ridiculous

except what is apparently deformed" and that "nothing is proof

against raillery except what is apparently handsome and just."

Brown added,

This new design of discovering truth by the vague and unsteady light of ridicule puts me in mind of the honest Irishman who applied his candle to the sun-dial, in order to see how the night went.32

Conceding, as Shaftesbury had, that ridicule could be

abused, Akenside still defended its use: "Since it is beyond

all contradiction evident that we have a natural sense or

feeling of the ridiculous," it is wrong to "vilify and blacken it without distinction."*3 ® Brown agreed that ridicule is not

"a universal instrument of practical deceit; ... on the contrary, it should seem the moral is more natural than the

immoral application of it" which involves distortions of nature. Brown even accepted Akenside’s argument that,

Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures. page 529; and pages 34-35 of this paper.

Elements of Criticism, I, 378. 3?"0n Ridicule," Essays, pages 55-56 and 107.

3®Pleasures, page 79.

39"0n Ridicule," Essays. page 31; see also John Newbery, Art of Poetry. II, 149; and Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures page 529. 74 compared with "speculative inquiry," ridicule could "impress the minds of men with a stronger sense of the vanity and error" of foolish behavior.4® Thus Brown welcomed the use of controlled ridicule in dramatic comedy: Before it can be determined whether our contempt be just, reason alone must examine circumstances, separate ideas, decide upon, restrain, and correct the passion fof ridi- culej . In this Lockean sense Brown judged that "reason alone is the detector of falsehood and the test of truth."41 Mark Akenside and Lord Karnes countered that reason was not immune to abuse; Akenside recalled that Spinoza had reasoned himself into uncertainty about the existence of God. Brown conceded that reason "is always fallible, often errone­ ous," but he confidently asserted that, compared with the sense of ridicule, reason is less susceptible to error and tends eventually to correct itself: The imagination, to which the way of ridicule applies, is apt to form to itself innumerable fictitious resemblances of things which tend to confound truth with falsehood; whereas the natural tendency of reason is to separate these apparent resemblances and determine which are the real and which are the fictitious. Again concerning the abuse of ridicule in dramatic comedy, Brown speculated that Aristophanes’ "prior suggestions of

4®Akenside, Pleasures. page 80; and Brown "On Ridicule," Essays, page 92. 41"0n Ridicule," Essays. pages 40 and 43; see also Cicero, De Oratore. transl. E. W. Sutton, 2 vols.(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1948), I, Book 2, section 247. ^Pleasures, pages 80-81; see also Lord Karnes, Elements of Criticism, I, 379. 75

ridicule" may have influenced many Greeks to accept the false evidence presented at Socrates* trial that the great philos­ opher was a "contemptible sophist."43 Both Akenside and the author of An Essay Dn Ridicule had conceded that Aristophanes had misused ridicule against Socrates, but they argued lamely that Greek audiences should not have equated the behavior of Aristophanes’ character in a baloon with the actual behavior /l h of Socrates. 4 Brown replied: ’Tis true, the people laughed at the ridiculous sophist; but when the ridiculous sophist was doomed to drink the poison, what think you became of the father of ancient wisdom?43 In 1754 Arthur Murphy dismissed the question of ridicule’s usefulness as a test of truth as "an idle and frivolous debate."48 To the extent that the discussions rested upon mistaken assumptions as to what Shaftesbury had written, or substituted religious enthusiasm for historical accuracy and common sense, or demonstrated a naive over-confidence in the perfectibility of man, Murphy was correct. But the debate had a practical result not intended by the participants, all of whom favored the use of ridicule in dramatic comedy. Admissions that ridicule could be misused, and counter-charges

43"0n Ridicule," Essays, pages 96-96. 44Akenside, Pleasures. pages 80-81; and An Essay on Ridicule. pages 73 and 76. 43"0n Ridicule," Essays, page 94. 48Gray’s-Inn Journal #90, Lives and Essays, page 191. 76

that neither moral sense nor taste nor reason could always detect such abuses, strengthened the case against the use of ridicule, especially in dramatic comedy where pacing usually precludes sober reflection during the performance. In the mid-eighteenth century most defenders of ridicule willingly imposed some specific limitations on its use so as to prevent potential abuses. First, as noted earlier in this paper, everyone except Samuel Foote urged that, since comedy should reflect general truths of nature, ridicule should not be directed at specific individuals. 47 Second, they agreed that unavoidable physical deformities were not proper targets for ridicule, unless the victim foolishly emphasized his plight. For example, Oliver Goldsmith suggested that a man without a nose would deserve to be ridiculed if he took special care in selecting a snuff box for himself. 4 fl There was less agreement about Jeremy Collier’s objec­ tion to ridicule of religion and of clergymen, "the messen- A Q gers of heaven." James Beattie thought that an innocent laugh over any religious matter was permissible but he

4?See pages 46-47 of this paper. Even Foote claimed to prefer Menander’s indirect use of ridicule to Aristophanes’ caricatures of real persons; see Roman and English Comedy, page 7. 4®"Polite Learning," Works. I, 321. The same general principle was cited earlier by Richard Steele to justify ridicule of Old Target’s stutter in The Conscious Lovers (Act II, scene 1); the hero Bevil Jr. explains: "it would be an immoral thing to mock him were it not that his impertenance is the occasion of its breaking out." In The Complete Plays of Steele, ed. George A. Aitken (London, 1894), page 300. 49"Short View," in Critical Essays, ed. Spingarn, III, 267 77

warned, "between smiling and sneering . . . there seems to me to be a very wide difference,"38 Lord Karnes favored the use of ridicule against the "superstition or enthusiasm" of false religions. But John Brown, in the manner of a twentieth- century ecumenist, advised that ridicule of other religions, however false they might be, is unlikely to convert anyone co and can only hinder men from living in peace. Some critics, aware that particular follies expire in time, worried that a comedy which focused upon the ridiculous could not provide universal delight and instruction. On this basis Horace Walpole and B. Walwyn objected to Ben Jonson's ridicule of alchemy. 53 Advocates of ridicule conceded that a comedy must reflect the times in which it is written, but they also believed, as indicated above, that human behavior becomes fundamentally ridiculous when it deviates not merely from temporary social conventions but from unchanging moral standards knowable to all men. They argued, then, that within a contemporary social foible a dramatist could and should uncover a timeless moral flaw, such as the disarming

* cn "On Laughter," Essays. pages 625-664; and see his Dissertations Moral and Critical. 2 vols.(Dublin, 1783), I, 240-241. Bee also Arthur Murphy, "Life of Fielding," Lives and Essays, page 237. 31 Elements of Criticism, 1, 380. 32”0n Ridicule," Essays. pages 99-102. 63Walpole, "Thoughts on Comedy," Works. II, 319; and Walwyn, Essay on Comedy, pages 2 and 8. 78

neglectfulness revealed in Falstaff or the consuming greed seen in those who courted Jonson’s alchemist.34 But the basic concern about ridicule arose because, if it encourages moral behavior at all, it does so negatively cc by focusing on how a man should not behave. Since the epistemologies of Locke and Shaftesbury assumed that obser­ vation and imitation play major roles in man’s behavioral development, several critics wondered whether audiences would laugh at or with the intended targets of ridicule-- would they be inclined to shun or to emulate the folly which c r they observed for four and a half acts? But if essential moral truths are instinctively known, how could anyone fail to see folly as ridiculous? James Beattie explained that, while it seemed "impossible, or at least unnatural," that dramatists could transform "beastli­ ness, robbery, lying, and adultery" into harmless or even virtuous aptidhs, they could and sometimes did "adorn their respective reprobates with engaging qualities to seduce

34see Samuel Johnson, Rambler $86 (Jan. 12, 1751), Yale edn., IV, 88; Oliver Goldsmith, "Polite Learning," Works. I, 344; James Beattie, "On Laughter," Essays, pages 686-687; Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures. page 543; and pages 10 and 27-28 of this paper. 35sBe John Brown, "On Ridicule," Essays. page 103. S^For example, see Henry Mackenzie, Lounger #49, in British Essayists. XXXVI, 305-312; see also pages 7-8 and 9-12 of this paper. 79

c*7 others into imitation." For this reason Jeremy Collier had argued that any dramatic representation of folly or vice was c □ dangerous. But Beattie believed that dramatists could overcome this "greatest difficulty" and could create plausible characters whose faults were not gilded by their virtues.®9 To this end some critics thought that a character’s follies should be dramatically heightened or emphasized; William Cooke urged that a comedy "cannot render the ridiculousness of its personages too visible to the spectators."®9 However, other critics, concerned for naturalness and mindful that ridicule was to be directed in dramatic comedy only at man’s lighter faults, recommended clarity but obliqueness, too; George Campbell recalled the old aphorism, "the perfection of art consists in concealing art." Some added that heavy- handed ridicule would more likely anger than reform spectators guilty of the same folly. As an example of the critical response to ridicule in a

57"0n Laughter," Essays, page 661; see also Dissertation on Comedy, page 10; Present State of the Theatre, pages 171-172; and pages 23-24 of this paper. ®®See page 22 of this paper. ®9"Poetry and Music," Essays, page 403; see also pages 15-16 and 28-32 of this paper. ®9Elements of Dramatic Criticism, page 133. ®1Philosophy of Rhetoric, page 23; see also pages 45-46 of this paper. James Beattie credited Christianity, the monarchy, and women with having refined the British sense of ridicule; see "On Laughter," Essays. pages 699-705. 80

specific dramatic comedy, consider reactions to John Gay’s

Beggar's Opera, one of the century’s most popular plays.

The central target of ridicule is Shaftesbury’s belief—

customarily reflected in sentimental dramas—that man can

recognize that the greatest happiness comes only through

selfless behavior. In the final scenes Macheath, eager to escape from the whining of Polly, Lucy, and four other former mistresses with their bastard offspring, willingly follows the hangman to the scaffold. But then the poet- author is persuaded by a companion to rewrite the conclu­ sion so that Macheath is rescued from the gallows and released from prison.8^

As John Brown later observed, "though ^playwrights] are not dishonest in obtruding false circumstances upon us, we may be so weak as to obtrude them upon ourselves.1,84

Thus, while some of Gay’s contemporaries acknowledged his intention to ridicule Macheath’s behavior, they reported that most members of the audience were not absorbing this moral.86

82Because this play is a burlesgue opera rather than a pure comedy, the use of ridicule is especially obvious, as most twentieth-century critics have observed-; see F. W. Bateson, English Comic Drama, 1700-1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), page 102; Bertrand H. Bronson, "The Beggar’s Opera," Studies in the Comic (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1941), pages 197-231; and Sven M. Armens, John Gay, Social Critic (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1954), page 53

63pages 58-60 (Act III, scenes 15 and 16).

64"0n Ridicule," Essays. page 92.

For example, see Henry Stonecastle, The Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal (April 10, 1731), in Augustan Reprint #85-86^ page 18, 81

In 1777 Sir John Hawkins even insisted that David Garrick’s production was encouraging thievery.®® But Samuel

Johnson doubted that many highwayman and housebreakers attend

plays. Consistent with his belief that audiences were con­

stantly aware that events occurring on-stage were only make-

believe, Johnson added, "nor is it possible for anyone to

imagine that he may rob with safety because he sees Macheath

reprieved upon the stage."Df Ironically, after the play's

ending was rewritten so that Macheath was sentenced to three

years at hard labor, one critic observed, "Morality and

dullness are frequently stage companions," and he suggested,

that playgoers could avoid boredom by leaving the theatre early.®8

A few critics in the Augustan era had questioned whether

ridicule could be morally instructive under any circumstances.

Although the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes was generally treated

scornfully then, some had accepted his premise that a selfish sense of "sudden glory" explains an observer's pleasure when CQ "some deformed thing in another" is revealed before him.

88"0n the Dangerous Tendency of the Beggar's Opera?" Universal Magazine (January, 1777), LX, 47-48. 670xford edn., VIII, 68; see also London Chronicle, cited by Gray, Theatrical Criticism, page 134.

6®The quotation is from an unidentified clipping in the collection of Ernest Lewis Gay at Harvard University Library, cited by Patricia M. Spacks, John Gay (New York: Twayne, 1965). pages 124-125; see also Henry Bate, Morning Post (1776), cited by Gray, Theatrical Criticism, pages 229-233.

S^Leviathan, page 36; see also Plato, Philebus. pages 170-171 (section 50). 82

Richard Steele, sometimes credited as the founder of senti­ mental comedy, had characterized ridicule as ... a distorted passion born Of sudden self-esteem and sudden scorn79 In the mid-eighteenth century the author of An Essay on Ridicule. eager to defend the use of ridicule, tried awkwardly to locate another source for an observer’s pleasure at the ridicule of someone else: "To me it appears very plain that the laughter, in this case, is ... a laugh of pleasure from the art itself and of applause to the artist." 71 James Beattie, also anxious to deny a connection between vanity and the enjoyment of ridicule, observed that many conceited men behave somberly rather than chortling at the supposed weaknesses of others. He further asserted that, if Hobbes were correct, then The wise, the beautiful, the strong, the healthy, and the rich, must giggle away a great part of their lives, because they would every now and then become suddenly sensible of their superiority over the foolish, the homely, the feeble, the sickly, and the poor. . . .22 But these arguments rested upon a probably unintentional reversal of Hobbes’ basic premise that the enjoyment of ridicule required a feeling of superiority.

70 "Epilogue to The Lying Lover (1703), in Plays. page 187; see also Joseph Addison, Spectator #47, ed. Bond, I, 200-203. 71 Pages 69-70; see also Henry Pye, Commentary, page 122. 72»'0n Laughter," Essays, page 595. 83

Hobbes had added, Ridicule is incident most to them that are conscious of the fewest abilities in themselves, who are forced to keep themselves in their own favor by observing the imperfections of other men. And therefore much laughter at the defects of others is a sign of pusillanimity.73 But Lord Karnes and Oliver Goldsmith replied that, when ridicule is justly used, it is proper and useful that a virtuous and reasonable man should experience a sense of superiority over the vicious and foolish object of ridicule.74 75 Hobbes had also protested that ridicule, by encouraging an observer to regard himself as different from the person under attack, actually impeded moral instruction. 75 Henry Mackenzie adopted the same position in 1786: The images which comedy presents and the ridicule it excites being almost always exaggerated, their resem­ blances to real life are only acknowledged by those whose weaknesses they flatter, whose passions they excuse. He concluded, "they who wish to escape its correction easily discover the differences between the scenic situation and theirs."76 William Cooke also conceded that ridicule might not "correct all the failings it exposes," and he was willing to settle for a lesser usefulness:

73 Leviathan, page 36. 74Kames, Elements of Criticism. I, 345; and Goldsmith, "Polite Learning," Works. I, 320-321. 75Leviathan. page 50. 76Lounqer #49 (Jan. 7, 1786)> in British Essayists. XXXVI, 305-312. 84

It teaches us, at least, houi to live with such as are subject to such failings, and how to conform so in company as to avoid that roughness which provokes them or that servility which flatters them.77

Indeed most critics during the Johnson era acknowledged

that, as the author of An Essay on Ridicule noted, it is no

easy task to stimulate "fools and prejudiced persons" to 7 fl recognize their own faults and then to reform, But their

faith in the knowableness of essential moral truths prompted most critics to reaffirm that, if ridiculous images are not exaggerated or heightened to the point of unnaturalness--as

Mackenzie thought they usually were--but instead conform to

general truths of nature, then the use of such materials in dramatic comedy could assist reason or taste or moral sense to finally prevail over folly.

77Elements of Dramatic Criticism, pages 115-116.

78Page 23. 85

VI. THE MATERIALS OF COMEDY: THE LAUGHABLE

James Beattie, whose "Essay on Laughter and Ludicrous Composition" is a useful compendium of mid-eighteenth-century attitudes on the topic, noted that a laugh (ticklish laughter excepted) is a physical response to a "sentiment" or mental attitude. Several critics from the time of Aristotle to the present have assumed that laughter in dramatic comedy is always allied with ridicule—Sir Philip Sidney described laughter as "a scornful tickling"—and so they have identified its initiatory ’sentiment* as pride. But in the mid-eighteenth century George Campbell observed, "there may be, and often is, ... laughter without 3 contempt." More specifically, Lord Karnes recognized two kinds of laughable materials, the risible and the ridiculous: "a risible object is mirthful only; a ridiculous object is both mirthful and contemptible."4 Recently Suzanne Langer has offered this thoughtful analysis of a purely risible situation: A baby will laugh uproariously at a toy that is made to appear suddenly, again and again, over the edge of

^Essays, page 589. ?An Apoloqy for Poetry, in Elizabethan Critical Essays, page 199; see also Aristotle, Poetics. transl. Bywater, Chapter 4, section 1449a, lines 34-35; and Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, page 36. See also Benjamin Lehmann, "Comedy and Laughter," University of California Publications: English Studies. X (1954), 81 ; and pages 92-93 of this paper. ^Philosophy of Rhetoric, page 30; see also James Beattie, "On Laughter," Essays. pages 601 and 605. 4Elements of Criticism, page 340. 86

the crib or the back of a chair. It would take artful interpretation to demonstrate that this fulfillment of his tense expectation makes him feel superior. Superior to whom? The doll? A baby of eight or nine months is not socialized enough to think: "There, I knew you were coming!" and believe that the doll couldn’t fool him. Such self-applause requires language, and enough experience to estimate probabilities. The baby laughs because his wish is gratified; not because he believes the doll obeyed his wishing, but simply because the suspense is. broken, and his energies are released. The sudden pleasure raised his general feeling tone, so he laughs.3

In 1725 Francis Hutcheson wrote a series of essays for the Dublin Journal in which he broadened the characteristics of deformity and inferiority, which most critics required in a ridiculous object, into incongruity and amorality, which he required in a purely risible object:

That then which seems generally the cause of laughter is the bringing together of imaged which have contrary additional ideas, as well as some resemblance in the principal idea. . . . (But toK observe the contortions of the human body in the air, upon the blowing up of an enemy’s ship, may raise laughter fonlyj in those who do not reflect on the agony and distress of the sufferers. . . .3

Hutcheson’s remarks, reprinted in Glascow in 1750, probably influenced Campbell, who was then writing his

Philosophy of Rhetoric in which he cited incongruity as the

^Feeling and Form, A Theory of Art (New York: Scribner, 1953), page 340. ^Reflections upon Laughter, pages 19, 21, and 30. As James Beattie noted, Hutcheson’s examples did not consistently demonstrate the purely risible rather than the ridiculous; in fact, Hutcheson’s intention as a disciple of Shaftesbury was to advocate the use not of pure laughter but of ridicule. See Beattie, "On Laughter," Essays, pages 597-599. 8?

7 basic source of laughter. Then, in his Elements of Criticism

(1761), Lord Karnes added that the incongruity must be sur- g prising. Beattie, who acknowledged that he had read

Hutcheson, Campbell, and Karnes, concluded that only a sur­ prising and amoral incongruity provides the necessary

•sentiment* for pure laughter; thus Beattie’s essay listed, apparently for the first time in one text, those character­ istics of a purely risible object which have been accepted 9 by many modern critics.

Because of their concern for moral instruction in dramatic comedy, eighteenth-century critics could not easily defend purely laughable materials which required audiences temporarily to adopt an amoral outlook. Joseph Addison wrote: "I would not willingly laugh but in order to instruct"; thus he and most other critics only defended laughter allied with ridicule.1®

7Page 19.

8Pages 273-274 and 323.

9"0n Laughter," Essays, pages 585, 602, 658-660, and 682. The phenomenon of laughter has received increasing attention from psychologists in the twentieth century, and the terminology has become more complicated; for example, Arthur Koestler has referred not to the incongruous but to "the interference of series" and to "bisociated contexts"; Insight and Outlook (New York: Macmillan, 1949), page 102. See also Northrup Frye, "The Argument'of Comedy," pages 65- 67; W. H, Auden, The Dyer’s Hand (New York: Random House, 1952), pages 371-372; Benjamin Lehmann, "Comedy and Laughter," pages 100-101; and J. L. Styan, The Dark Comedy (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pages 42-47. As already noted on pages 27-28 of this paper, twentieth- century critics usually have recognized that the standard by which behavior can become laughably incongruous is social rather than moral. 1^Spectator #179, ed. Bond, II, 204-207; see also Joseph 88

But occasionally the ridiculously laughable can be difficult to distinguish from the purely laughable. Miss

Langer could conclude confidently that the laughter in her illustration was not allied with ridicule because it was the

laughter of a baby not yet ’’socialized." Suppose that the adult manipulating the doll in that illustration also laughed as he observed the baby’s behavior—would he have laughed only because he was happy to make the baby happy, or might he have been thinking, "how naive this baby’s behavior is"?

Sometimes the laughter stimulated by a dramatic comedy is unmistakably allied with ridicule—consider the ubiquitous

Lord Foppingtons of restoration and early eighteenth-century comedies. But at other times thé ’sentiment’ which causes laughter is less obvious: each onlooker at a performance of

The Country Wife can only try to answer for himself whether he laughs at or with Horner’s behavior and the witty device of the china scene. Because mid-eighteenth-century critics could not be certain how audiences were responding, their confidence in the moral usefulness of ridicule was challenged;

Beattie warned:

If we laugh at our faults without despising them, that is, if they appear ludicrous only and not ridiculous, it is to be feared that we shall be more inclined to love than to hate them; and hence the imperfection of those writings in which human follies are made the subject of mere pleasantry and amusement.H

Warton, Adventurer #105, in British Essayists. XXV, 81-86; James Beattie, "On Laughter," Essays, page 660; and Chapter V of this paper. 11"On Laughter," Essays, page 661. 89

One disadvantage cited against laughter during the

Augustan era but rejected during the Johnson era concerned

the facial distortions caused by laughter, which had prompted

Lord Chesterfield to hope that his son would "often be seen 1 7 to smile but never heard to laugh. . . ." Beattie replied

that, since laughter is a natural human emotion, it would be

Samuel Johnson, who thought that comedy’s distinguishing

characteristic was "the provoking of mirth," praised laughter

as a useful distraction:

There are in the present state of things so many more instigations to evil than incitements to good, that he who keeps men in a neutral state may be justly con­ sidered as a benefactor to life.14

John Brown and Lord Karnes went a step further to suggest

that laughter could function as one kind of catharsis. Karnes

explained:

Such is the nature of man, that his powers and faculties are soon blunted by exercise. The returns of sleep, suspending all activity, are not alone sufficient to preserving him in vigor: during his waking hours, amuse­ ment by intervals is requisite to unbend his mind from serious occupation. 17

17Letter dated March 9, 1748, Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son and Others (1929? rpt. New York: Dutton-Everyman, 1963). This argument originated with Plato and was cited by Jeremy Collier, "Short View," Critical Essays, ed. Spignarn, III, 267.

13"0n Laughter," Essays. page 667.

14Life of Johnson, page 525; and Adventurer #137, Yale edn., II, 491. See also James Boswell, "The Hypochondriack" #40 (January 1781), in Boswell's Column (London: Wm, Kimber, 1951). 90

Laughter, he concluded, "most successfully unbends the mind and recruits the spirits."^3

And of course a few mid-eighteenth-century dramatists

defended the use of laughable materials on very practical

grounds; John Burgoyne, who was at least slightly more

successful as a playwright in London than as a commanding

general at Saratoga, commented: "the bulk of the English

audience, including many of the best understanding, go to 1 a comic performance to laugh, in some part of it at least.

But William Cooke feared that this imposed a special hard­

ship on the comic dramatist, who could not easily please both 1 7 the gentleman and the rustic. John Hill and James Beattie

1 5 Elements of Criticism. I, 21. See also John Brown, "On Ridicule," Essays. page 96. Twentieth-century critics have regarded laughter as a catharsis in another sense which, according to some, was first noted by Aristotle; Lane Cooper and Nathan Scott have inferred from the Tractatus Coislineanus that Aristotle believed that comedy purges our impulse to laugh just as tragedy supposedly purges our impulse to fear. Cooper further argued that comedy teaches us when laughter is appropriate; see An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy (New York: Harcourt, 1922), pages 10-15 and 60-74. Scott thought that comedy conditions us to accept our imperfect world as God’s plan for us; see "The Bias of Comedy and the Narrow Escape into Faith," The Christian Scholar. XLIV (Spring, 1961), pages 17-39.

16tipreface to The Lord of the Manor." page 139; see also Corbyn Morris, True Standard of Wit, page 32; Dissertation on Comedy, page 13; John Pinkerton, "On Comedy," Letters. page 46; and pages 51 and 61-84 of this paper concerning the popularity of farce and of laughter allied with ridicule. After surveying the repertory schedules of the period, Henry Pedicord also has concluded that audiences wanted "primarily to be amused . . ." (Theatrical Public, page 151). Oliver Goldsmith argued that audiences would prefer laughter to tears if sentimental comedy did not drive laughing comedy from the stages; see "Essay on the Theatre," Works. Ill, 212. 17 Elements of Dramatic Criticism, page 160. 91

added that performers, by overacting a comic scene, could

turn a natural comedy into an unnatural farce; Beattie

cautioned that "witticisms that seem to be studied give 1 R offense instead of entertainment. '* °

In fact, everyone admitted that laughter was too easily

aroused by unnatural or farcical materials; Horace Walpole

complained, "a Scot, an Irishman, a Mrs. Slipsop can always produce a laugh, at least from half the audience."'’9 A few

critics even associated laughter exclusively with farce:

John Pinkerton advised that comedy should only "simper and o n smile; whereas Farce ought always to laugh about."

Clearly, then, as long as audiences were filling the

theatres to laugh at farces, no critic in the Johnson era could be completely satisfied with the purely laughable as a material for dramatic comedy.

1 R "On Laughter," Essays. page 658; and Hill, The Actor, page 143. 1 Q "Thoughts on Comedy," Works, II, 330. For this reason John Dryden had described laughter as "a kind of bastard pleasure"; "Poetry and Painting," Essays, II, 133. See also Aristotle, Nichomanchean Ethics, transl. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1948), page 247 (Book IV, section 8, line 4): George Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, page 21; and William Cooke, Elements of Dramatic Criticism, page 170.

29"0n Comedy," Letters. page 199. 92

VII. THE MATERIALS OF COMEDY: POSITIVE EXAMPLES OF VIRTUE

Justice has traditionally triumphed in dramatic comedies,

as an ordered society reestablishes itself after four and a

half acts of chaotic foolishness. But in his "Lecture on

Comedy," Huqh Blair described a type of comedy, introduced in

England early in the eighteenth century, which focuses for five full acts not upon folly but upon

tender and interesting situations; it aims at being sentimental and touching the heart by means of the capital incidents; it makes our pleasure arise, not so much from the laughter which it excites, as from the tears of affection and joy which it draws forth.1

These tears are principally to be shed out of worshipful concern for the central characters who are, in Ricardo

Quintana’s apt phrase, "veritable machines of delicate, benev­ olent feeling."7

For example, consider how Richard Steele continuously underscored the selflessness of Bevil’s behavior in The

Conscious Lovers. Bevil secretly loves Indiana, an apparently penniless orphan whom he maintains (virtuously, of course) in a nearby apartment. However, his father has decided that

Bevil must marry the well dowered Lucinda Sealand, and so, as a dutiful son, Bevil vows not to marry Indiana without his father’s permission. Furthermore, Bevil will not even

"On Comedy," Lectures. II, 548; see also Oliver Goldsmith, "Essay on the Theatre," Works. Ill, 212. ^Oliver Goldsmith, page 142. 93

tell Indiana that he loves her because, as he explains to a servant,

My tender obligations to my father have laid so inviolable a restraint upon my conduct that, till I have his consent to speak. I am determined, on that subject, to be dumb forever.3 4

Later Bevil’s impulsively jealous friend Myrtle, who loves Lucinda, wrongly concludes that Bevil only pretends not to love her, so Myrtle challenges him to a duel. Bevil accepts at first but then refuses, not just because it is all a mis­ understanding, but mostly because he generously wishes to save

Myrtle from lifelong remorse: Bevil explains that Myrtle might kill him and then find in Bevil’s pocket a letter from

Lucinda identifying Bevil as her confidant and no more.

Another characteristic of sentimental comedies (a term coined for these plays sometime during the eighteenth century) is that their selflessly virtuous heroes labor ceaselessly to reclaim those who have strayed from the path of righteous­ ness. Thus Bevil shows Lucinda’s letter to Myrtle before the duel can take place. While Myrtle reads, Bevil explains in an aside why he disregarded Lucinda’a request that he conceal the letter until Myrtle’s jealousy was cured: "When he is thoroughly mortified and shame has got the better of jealousy, when he has seen himself thoroughly, he will deserve to be ti 4 assisted towards obtaining Lucinda.

3Plays, page 295 (Act I, scene 2).

4Plays. page 334 (Act IV, scene 1). 94

Lest any playgoer should be inclined to emulate them,

the transgressors in a sentimental comedy often repent and

then interminably extol the moral superiority of their

deliverer. After reading Lucinda’s letter, Myrtle asks

Bevil': "What had become of one of us, or perhaps both, had you been as weak as I was, and as incapable of reason?"®

Mytle still is on this topic during the play’s final scene: "I rejoice in the preeminence of your virtue. . . ."® Bevil receives similar tributes from almost everyone else in the play; Indiana even claims that she is more content to deserve the esteem of such a faultless man than to enjoy the "homage of a sincere and humble love." Although Bevil never praises himself directly, he does recommend selfless behavior: "If pleasure be worth purchasing, how great a pleasure is it to him, who has a true taste of life, to ease an aching heart. . . ."®

As part of the inevitable fifth-act triumph of virtue, sentimental playwrights bestow abundant material rewards upon their heroes and heroines. Thus, after Lucinda’s father recognized Indiana as his long-lost second daughter, all agree that she and Bevil should marry; then Mr. Sealand

®Plays, page 335 (Act IV, scene 1).

®Plays. page 359 (Act V, scene 3).

7Plays, page 306 ( Act II, scene 2).

Splays, pages 310 -311 ( Act II, scene 95

confers half of Lucinda's dowry upon Indiana. Bevil, altru­

istic to the end, tells Mr. Sealand that he accepts this

financial windfall but not for his own sake: "I hear your

mention, Sir, of fortune, with pleasure only as it may prove

the means to reconcile the best of fathers to my love."9

Bevil's father then addresses these curtain lines to the

others on stage: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, you have set

the world a fair example. Your happiness is owing to your

constancy and merit, and the several difficulties you have

struggled with evidently show

Whate'er the generous mind itself denies. The secret care of Providence supplies.18

As this partial plot summary indicates, sentimental dramatists did not necessarily eschew minor elements of ridicule. Steele even claimed in the "Preface to The

Conscious Lovers" that his primary purpose was to ridicule dueling, but note that it is Myrtle, a supporting character, who is derided; the hero Bevil succumbs to temptation only long enough to establish that he is not a coward.11

In The West Indian, the most popular sentimental comedy of the Johnson era, Richard Cumberland also used elements of ridicule, plus some very mild bawdiness when the hero Belcour 1 2 mistakes virginal Louise for a strumpet.

Splays, page 357 (Act V, scene 3).

18Plays, page 359 (Act V, scene 3).

11 Plays, pages 269-270. l7Act IV, scene 3 (in Didbin, London Theatre, II, 66-70), 96

John Harrington Smith was therefore incorrect when he

recently insisted that the "exemplary method" should be

regarded as the distinguishing characteristic of sentimental

comedy. Because this would allow a sentimental hero to live

riotously for four acts if he repents in the fifth, Smith

has credited Thomas Shadwell as England’s first sentimental 1 3 dramatist. But sentimental comedies can be more readily distinguished from comedies of ridicule if one accepts Hugh

Blair’s judgment that the former are to be identified, not by a lachrymose, fifth-act conversion or a total exclusion of "gaiety and ridicule," but by a persistant emphasis upon positive examples of virtue. And so, while it is true that in Shadwell’s Squire of Alsatia. for example, the hero

Belfond Jr. ultimately is influenced by a virtuous heroine to reform, in a true sentimental comedy the central character is not allotted four and a half acts of zealous wenching; and even if such sexual excesses were enacted by a minor character, they would not be glibly excused as the normal activities of a youth studying to become "a compleat, accomplish’d English gentleman," nor would his mistresses and bastard be casually paid off and then forgotten.3 Not

1 3 "Shadwell, the Ladies, and the Change in Comedy," Modern Philology. XLVI (1948), 24.

14»0n Comedy," Lectures. II, 548.

l5Works. IV, 232 (Act II, scene 1 ). 97

surprisingly, then, audiences accustomed to true sentimental­ ism were displeased with a 1763 revival of Squire; the play closed after seven performances and was restaged in 1765 only after substantial alterations in plot and dialogue.

In 1935 Eugene Page claimed that, as a general rule during the mid-eighteenth century, sentimental comedy was opposed by fulltime dramatists and favored only by those literary critics who rarely or never wrote plays. ' Unfortu­ nately this simple dichotomy is inaccurate. Some professional dramatists, most notably Richard Cumberland, defended senti­ mental comedies; others, including Samuel Foote and Oliver

Goldsmith, opposed them. George Colman opposed them in theory but wrote the heavily sentimental The English Merchant.

David Garrick favored comedy of ridicule but produced several new sentimental comedies at Drury Lane, including The English

Merchant and The West Indian, and he rejoiced to learn that 1 fi a friend had wept at one of these performances.

Arthur Murphy and Hugh Kelly favored a modified blend of sentimentalism plus laughter allied with ridicule.”

Likewise some critics—including Lord Karnes and Hugh Blair- supported sentimental comedy as one but not the only suitable

1 ® S e e Albert Borgman, Thomas Shadwell: His Life and Comedies (New York: Ñ.Y.U. Press, 1928), page 204. ^George Colman the Elder (1935; rpt. New York: A.M.S. Press, 1966), page 50. 1®"Letter to John Hoadley," Letters. II, #632; see also "Letter to Rev. Charles Jenner," Letters. II, #583; and Elizabeth Stein, David Garrick, Dramatist, pages 202-203. I^Murphy, Gray’s-Inn Journal #91 (July 31, 1754), Lives and Essays, pages 196-203; and Kelly, "Preface to The School for Wives" (1774) in British Theatre, VII, 111. 98

type, while Richard Hurd, Horace Walpole, and Henry Mackenzie

thought it was the best type. Others—including Edmund Burke

and William Cooke—opposed it. Samuel Johnson opposed it in

theory but spoke well of some specific plays with sentimental

elements. James Beattie favored the Murphy/Kelly blend of 7n sentimentalism and ridicule. u

Some of those critics who theorized that dramatic comedy

should offer laughter allied with ridicule complained that a

primary emphasis on positive examples of virtue was contrary to comedy's traditional methods. Even Richard Steele had

acknowledged that scenes of anguish and sorrow "are, perhaps, an injury to the rules of comedy. . . ." In the "Preface to

The Conscious Lovers" he therefore had broadened his view of the materials proper for comedy: "anything that has its foundation in happiness and success must be allowed to be the object of comedy. . . ."21

Samuel Johnson disagreed, although he was not wholly immune to the charms of sentimentalism. He theorized that a mirthful tone should predominate in a true comedy and that it was therefore not enough merely to append a happy resolu- 77 tion to the trials of the virtuous. Oliver Goldmsith

2n "Poetry and Music," Essays, pages 397 and 435-436.

21Plays. page 270; and "Preface to The Lying Lover," in Plays, 102. 22"preface to Shakespeare," Yale edn., VII, 68; and Boswell, Life of Johnson, page 525. 99 c

argued th£t "all the great masters in the dramatic art" had

taught that comedy should principally stimulate audiences

to laugh at fools. Further conditioned by dramatic tradition

not to foresee the eventual development of so-called ’black

comedy," he mockingly proposed:

If we are permitted to make comedy weep, we have an equal right to make tragedy laugh, and to set down in blank- verse the jests and repartees of all the attendants in a funeral procession.23

For the same traditional reasons Horace Walpole, who actually

preferred plays which offered "distress with a cheerful

conclusion," suggested that they should more properly be

called "traqedie mitiqee" or traqedie bourqeoise."24

Hugh Blair dismissed this as a "trifling" semantic dispute and denied that critical terms could have "invariably

fixed the essence and ascertained the limits of every sort of composition."73 Richard Hurd tried to resolve this problem in a more complicated manner, as usual. On the mistaken assumption that Aristotle had distinguished between comedy and tragedy solely on the basis of the characters’ social 1 rank, Hurd concluded that he had "proposed for (comedy’s} object, in general, the actions and characters of ordinary. life. which are not, of necessity, ridiculous but of a mixt kind, serious as well as ludicrous. . . ." But then Hurd

73"Essay on the Theatre," Works. Ill, 210.

24"Thoughts on Comedy," Works. II, 321; see also Samuel Foote, Roman and English Comedy, page 6.

23"0n Comedy," Lectures. II, 549. 100

backed away from this awkward proposition by adding that the

"deepest distresses" are unsuitable in comedy. While he

thus altered ancient criticism to justify sentimental comedy,

Hurd could not do the same with early Greek dramas, so he

dismissed them as "of no further authority" because their

use of ridicule allied with laughter had derived from an

"accidentally fixed" agreement that comedy should stimulate

laughter merely because it had originated in mirthful choral

s_o__n_g_s . 26

Hurd and a few others did claim that the plays of

Terence, especially the Andria. had established a precedent for sentimental comedy.77 But, as Ernest Bernbaum’s careful analysis has demonstrated, the Andria plot chiefly provokes laughter allied with ridicule, since the audience learns early in the play that the fears of the central characters

26"0n Drama," Epistolae. pages 201-202, 206-20B, and 211-212.

77"0n Drama," Epistolae. paqe 209. Richard Steele was the first English critic to accept this French critical view, and he claimed that the plot of The Conscious Lovers was partly derived from the Andria; see Spectator #502 and 521, ed. Bond, IV, 280 and 356; and "Preface to The Conscious Lovers." in Plays. pages 269-270. See also Present State of the Theatre, page 145; Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures, II, 538-539 and 548; and Henry Mackenzie, Lounger #50 (Jan. 14, 1786), in British Essayists. XXXVI, 312-318 Henry Pye concluded that, since Terence presumably had imitated them, the plays of Menander must also have been sentimental; see Commentary. page 313. 101

are groundless.2® So, too, George Colman, in the preface to his translation of Terence's plays, indicated that he did not detect sentimentalism in them. Oliver Goldsmith was willing to concede that although the plays of Terence offer some evidences of sentimentalism, "All other comic writers of antiquity aim only at rendering vice or folly ridic- ulous. . . ." Richard Cumberland agreed that there was little sentimentalism in Terence, but he insisted that the

Greek comedies of Menander, Philemon, Diphilus, Posidippus, and Apollodorus Gelous, though preserved only in fragments, are clearly filled with "moral sententious passages, elegant in their phrase but grave. . . ." And he added that Marcus

Terentius Varro, "the most learned of the ancients," had written that the Roman comedies of Trabea, Attilius, and

Caecillus were heavily sentimental. Cumberland therefore concluded with this sharp rebuke to Goldsmith:

We have found a learned critic who is hardy enough to assert that the pathetic is the very essence of the vis comica . . . , the very opposite doctrine to what you, most learned sir, have maintained.31

7 Q The Drama of Sensibility: a Sketch of the History of English Sentimental Comedy and Domestic Tragedy. 1696-1780 (1 91 5 ; rpt. Gloucester, Mass.r Peter Smith, 1958), pages 20-21.

29See Eugene Page, George Colman the Elder, page 99; see also Joseph Warton, Adventurer #105^ in British Essayists. XXV, 81-86. 39"Essay on the Theatre," Works. Ill, 211.

31"Dedication to The Choleric Man" (1775), in British Theatre. XXII. 102

Beyond these delusive efforts to find a classical

precedent for sentimental comedy, John Draper claimed in

1938 that during the eighteenth century, while moralists welcomed sentimental comedy, "aesthetic theorists chose either to ignore or to condemn it." He concluded, "In short, the theory of comedy did not adapt itself to the sentimental and Romantic fashions of the contemporary stage."32 But, as indicated earlier in this paper, a purely aesthetic defense of any type of comedy was unheard of in the eighteenth century since everyone assumed that a comedy, like any other piece of literature, should offer moral instruction by encouraging audiences to carry into their lives the lessons observed during a play.u

As the plot synopsis above of The Conscious Lovers suggests, advocates of sentimental comedy based their defense upon the Earl of Shaftesbury’s new ethic which emphasized that man is naturally inclined toward selfless behavior as the purest source of happiness. They argued that, whereas ridicule if abused could mislead audiences by making vice seem attractive and if used properly could merely deter them from vice, positive examples of virtue would, in Lord Karnes’ phrase, directly arouse their "emotion of virtue." He

32"Theory of the Comic," page 221.

33See pages 24-27 of this paper. 103

explained: "When we contemplate a virtuous action . , . ,

our propensity at the same time to such actions is so much enlivened as to become for a time an actual emotion."34

James Beattie added that examples of virtue in distress and

then triumphant encourage selflessness and therefore mold the observer into a more welcome member of society:

Nothing renders a man more amiable or more useful than a disposition to rejoice with them that rejoice and to weep with those that weep, to enter heartily— not officiously—into the concerns of his fellow creatures. . . .35

All of this presupposes that audiences must regard the characters and situations in sentimental comedy as credible or ’natural* since, as F. W. Bateson has noted, for senti­ mental dramatists "the question of probability is everything

It is essential to their success that we can believe and identify ourselves with the characters they have created."

He added as an example that audiences "must be induced to sympathize with Bevil's refusal to fight his duel with

Myrtle.1,36

This is asking too much of most modern readers, since

Bevil and other sentimental heroes frequently practice a kind of self-deception which we may regard as unreasonable.

/ 4Elements of Criticism. I, 63-64 and II, 374; see also Richard Steele. Spectator #51. ed. Bond, I, 219-220; and pages 7B-79 of this paper. 36"Poetry and Music," Essays, page 492.

3^English Comic Drama, page 8. 104

We are not likely to miss the fact that Bevil’s refusal to

duel ultimately leads him to conveniently disregard Lucinda’s

request not to show her letter to Myrtle. And we can barely

suppress a snicker earlier in the play when Bevil, although

scheduled to marry Lucinda in a few hours, devises ingen­

iously noble excuses for a visit to Indiana:

I’ll let her see at least my conduct to her is not changed. I’ll take this opportunity to visit her; for though the religious vow I have made to my father restrains me from ever marrying without his approbation, yet that confines me not from seeing a virtuous woman that is the pure delight of my eyes and the guiltless joy of my heart.32

After reading that passage we even might be tempted to agree with Allardyce Nicol1 that sentimental characters are sometimes hypocritical, but Paul Parnell has observed more accurately that the sentimentalist never doubts the sincerity *Z Q of his rationalizations. Of course we cannot be certain if the playwright always is being equally honest, but

Richard Steele reminded readers of the Spectator that such unconscious self-deceptions could overtake any man:

It is our natural weakness to flatter ourselves into a belief that, if we search into our inmost thoughts, we find ourselves wholly disinterested and divested of any views arising from self-love and vain-glory.3"

37Plays. page 301 (Act II, scene 1).

38Nicoll, History of English Drama. II. 109; and Parnell, "The Sentimental Mask." PMLA. LXXVIII (1963). 535.

^Spectator #356, ed. Bond, III, 326. 105

Furthermore, the Earl of Shaftesbury’s ethic of benevolence

was widely approved—even such an outspoken opponent of

sentimental comedy as Oliver Goldsmith accepted this ethic

as an ideal not to be obtained but to be striven for.49

There was, then, a ready-made audience for plays which, instead

of using ridicule to uncover realities behind appearances,

substitute fantasy for reality by depicting a supposed moral

ideal. The critic for the St, James Journal wrote of Bevil:

"That there are some such characters in the world is very

certain." That critic and many other eighteenth-century

theatre-goers could be convinced that Bevil's selfless

behavior was possible because they would credit him with an

almost perfectly developed moral sense. And they could

believe that the material rewards which come to Bevil reflect

what the real world would be like if more men developed their

moral senses more fully. Besides, just as Shaftesbury had

stressed that the altruist inevitably receives pleasure in

this life, sentimental dramatists reasoned that since virtue

is good it must always seem good and therefore it should be

generously compensated in this life.

Opponents objected that sentimental comedies could not

illustrate lessons to be emulated in real life because their

49Works. II, 108-120. For this reason Goldsmith’s -"Essay on the Theatre" is especially interesting for what it does not say against sentimental comedy. ^St, James Journal #30 (Nov. 22, 1722), in Augustan Reprint #85-86. page 29. 106

dialogue and situations were chimerical. William Cooke

claimed that sentimental playwrights substituted "names

instead of characters, poetical egotisms for manners, bombast

for sentiment. . . ,"47 Edmund Burke agreed: "In common

affairs and common life, virtuous sentiments are not even the character of virtuous men. . . ,"43 gur|

complained that the virtues of "insipidly perfect" heroines

who flooded the stage with tears at their moment of triumph

were "painted in an unnatural and consequently an unamiable

manner."

Shaftesbury, who actually had favored the use of ridicule

in dramatic comedy, had written that "the most delightful, the

most engaging and pathetic" of all beauties is "that which is

drawn from real life. . . ."45 But the sentimentalists

favored characters without any human frailties, exactly the

opposite of Jonsonian humours characters. The author of

Present State of the Theatre wrote, "A character which is to be represented as virtuous should be free from faults."48

Recently Mary Belden endorsed Ernest Bernbaum’s opinion

47e lements of Dramatic Criticism, page 141. 43"Hints," Works. VII, page 152.

44Reformer #10 (Mar. 31, 1748), Early Writings, pages 175-176. ¿^Characteristics, I, 90.

46page 57. 107

that, among all the mid-eighteenth-century adversaries of

sentimental comedy, only Samuel Foote looked beyond its pretentious style and questioned this unnatural idealization of common life.47 Here is a plot summary, reported by the

Town and Country Magazine, of Foote’s Piety in Patterns, a puppet parody of sentimental plays and novels:

A servant girl, who was fallen in love with by her master and offered a settlement by him, ... is warned by Thomas the butler, who loves her, ... to beware of her master, for if she once loses her virtue, she will have no pretensions to chastity. She takes his advice and slights her master who, overcome by her honest principles and the strength of his passion, offers to marry her; she begs Thomas may be by to hear the reply she gives to such a noble offer; she immediately bestows her hand on the butler for counselling her so well. The Squire, vanquished by such superior goodness, gives his consent to their junction; the heroine, out of gratitude for his condescension, resolves to marry neither and to live single, although she loves them both.48

Foote’s parodies, however, were not the only attacks upon idealization in sentimental comedy. The critic for the

Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (1776) thought that senti­ mental comedy was morally useless because "immaculate characters are rarely to be met with."49 And concerning the lovers in contemporary comedies Samuel Johnson objected:

"to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed, to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered is the

47Belden, Dramatic Work of Samuel Foote, pages 176-179; and Bernbaum, Drama of Sensibility, page 244.

4®Cited by Belden, Dramatic Work of Samuel Foote, page 153.

49 Cited by Avery, Congreve's Plays, page 14 108

business of a modern dramatist. For this, probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved.5®

Finally William Cooke wrote that sentimental comedies offered

"examples of rigid virtue whose duties are so sublimed that

they for the most part intimidate faudiencesj from the

trial." He concluded, "a citizen, ’tis true, may bring his

wife and daughter to [a sentimental comedyj with as much

safety as to a Methodist chapel—but with equal prospect of improvement."51

As for the potential delightfulness of these dramatized

homilies, Edmund Burke labelled "talking sense a dull

thing."32 Hugh Blair responded that, if sentimental comedy

became "insipid and drawling, this must be imputed to the

fault of the author, not to the nature of the composition,

which may admit of much liveliness and vivacity." Yet Blair

conceded that these plays "have not the spirit, the ease,

and the wit of Congreve and Farquhar, in which respect they must be confessed to be somewhat deficient."53 Richard

Cumberland•s defense of sentimental comedy’s delightfulness

38"Preface to Shakespeare," Yale edn., VII, 63. However, Johnson praised the comedies of Colley Cibber, particularly The Provok'd Husband; see Boswell, Life of Johnson, pages 388-389 and 771.

^Elements of Dramatic Criticism, pages 144-145. See also John Vanbrugh, "A Short Vindication of The Relapse and The Provoked Wife" (1698), Works, I, 260.

32"Hints."Works. VII, 156.

53"0n Comedy," Lectures. II, 548 and 550. 109

was similarly qualified: if the "worthy characters" were

"insipid" rather than "amiable," the moral lesson they

exemplified would become "not a whit more attractive than

the morality of a Greek chorus."34 Richard Hurd even

confessed that pathetic scenes were "not perfectly suited

to the apprehensions of the generality." He was willing,

then, to tolerate comedies of ridicule as a regrettable

necessity since "most men find a greater pleasure in

gratifying the passion of contempt than the calm instinct c c of approbation. . . ."

But Hurd also insisted that sentimental comedies "must

afford the highest pleasure to sensible and elegant minds,"

and he particularly noted their popularity among women.38

William Cooke countered that the "people of fashion"

preferred comedies which focused upon the ideal rather than

upon reality because they did not want to see themselves

ridiculed on the stage.37 And Burke thought that "persons,

and especially women, in lower life and of no breeding"

enjoy sentimental comedies because "it seems like introducing

them into good company, and the honor compensates the dullness

34Memoirs. I, 272.

55»0n Drama," Epistolae. II, 194 and 235.

38"0n Drama," Epistolae. II, 228-229 and 235; see also Richard Cumberland, "Epilogue to The Imposters" (1789), in Didbin, London Theatre, XI.

37Elements of Dramatic Criticism, page 142. 110

C Q of the entertainment." The ladies’ enthusiasm for the

emotionalism of sentimental comedy is understandable, but

some modern readers must be surprised that women were not

outraged at the pathetically submissive heroines: in The

Conscious Lovers, when Indiana finally is awarded to Bevil,

she exclaims, "Oh, my ever loved! my lord! my master!"®9

Eighteenth-century proponents of sentimental comedy's delightfulness theorized that audiences should prefer to observe exceedingly virtuous characters rather than foolish ones, another belief sanctioned by the new ethic of

Shaftesbury which taught that, since truth and beauty are one, an educated man instinctively derives the greatest pleasure from positive examples of virtue. Thus a reviewer for the Gentleman’s Magazine defended the absence of laughter in George Colman's ponderously sentimental comedy,

The English Merchant:

There is a luxury in tears that laughter can never taste; but these luxurious tears are perhaps less the tribute of pity to distress than of virtue to virtue; they are an effusion of tenderness, complacency, admiration, and joy excited by generous passion, untutored benevolence, and unexpected felicity.60

A few critical theorists—such as Hugh Blair—plus most authors of comedies of ridicule—including David Garrick and Oliver Goldsmith-worried that the popularity of sentimental

58"Hints," Works. VII, 156.

®9Plays. page 357 (Act V, scene 3).

®9XXXVII (March, 1767), 128; see also Henry Mackenzie, Lounger #50, in British Essayists, XXXVI, 312-318. 111

comedy would force other types off the stages. But senti­

mental comedy did not completely dominate the repertories

until the last decade of the eighteenth century when it

drifted into melodrama--in 17B5 John Pinkerton even dared

to proclaim the demise of sentimental comedy in England.

On the other hand, almost every successful new comedy

during the mid-eighteenth century is at least tinged with

sentimentalism. In the most enduring of these plays, Oliver

Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer and Richard Sheridan’s The

School for Scandal, the good-natured characters are kept at

an aesthetic distance but the ridicule of foolish characters

is uniformly gentle. Arthur Murphy’s The Way to Keep Him

and the most often performed new comedy during the Johnson era, Benjamin Hoadley’s The Suspicious Husband, exhibit tearful reforms. Throughout most of David Garrick and

George Colman’s The Clandestine Marriage, Hugh Kelly’s False

Delicacy. Goldsmith’s The Good-Natur’d Man, and Sheridan’s

The Rivals, those same excessively benevolent characters who are exalted in true sentimental comedies are used as foils for tempered ridicule; yet the conclusions to these plays are highly contrived and sentimental--the heroine of

Clandestime Marriage even faints in a moment of distress.

6^Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures. page 549; Garrick, "Letter to Rev. Charles Turner" Letters. II, #583; and Goldsmith, "Essay on the Theatre," Works. Ill, 142. 62Letters of Literature, page 46. 112

Thus Shaftesbury’s doctrine did not influence comedies written during the eighteenth century as extensively as is sometimes thought. Its influence upon critical theory, however, was so pervasive that even the most determined opponents of sentimental comedy accepted Shaftesbury’s wholly virtuous man as an ideal. 113

VIII. THE UNITIES AND RELATED RULES OF COMEDY

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the

unities of time, place, and action were widely discussed in

connection with tragedy as well as comedy, but some critics

during the Johnson era believed that they were especially

relevant to comedy since audiences presumably are better 4 able to judge the plausibility of its everyday actions.

The unities were first embellished into essential rules

by sixteenth-century Italian commentators upon Aristotle’s

Poetics, yet neither ancient critical theory nor ancient dramatic practice in tragedy or comedy actually supported strict adherence to all three unities. Concerning the duration of events in a play, Aristotle merely noted-- without specifically endorsing the practice—that "tragedy endeavors to keep as far as possible within a single circuit of the sun, or something like that." But, as Lord Karnes and

William Cooke noted, Euripides extended the action in The

Suppliants over ten days, which is still an incredibly brief time in which to raise an army near Athens, move it to Thebes and report an offstage battle there, and show the soldier’s return/

4 For example, see Edmund Burke, Reformer #10 (March 31, 1748), in Early Writinqs. page 175; and Hugh Blair, "On Comedy," Lectures. II, 530.

^Poetics. page 230.

^Karnes, Elements of Criticism. II, 425; and Cooke, Elements of Dramatic Criticism, 101. 114

Aristotle was silent about unity of place, and Greek dramatists ignored it in several plays including Sophocles'

Ajax, where the scene changes from the soldiers’ camp to the seashore. Lord Karnes, whose remarks on the unities were as widely read as Samuel Johnson's, cited similar violations in the plays of Plautus.4

Ancient critics did endorse unity of action, however.

Although Aristotle conceded that interruptions and episodic plots are sometimes evident in Greek plays, he and Horace emphatically deplored the practice.® Horace then amended some of Aristotle's observations into lesser rules related to unity of action: for example, whereas Aristotle merely noted that Sophocles had assigned speeches to no more than three actors in a scene, Horace demanded that this number should never be exceeded.®

Some English critics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries assumed that ancient dramatists had consistently observed the unities, and that ancient critics had thus been led by practical example to endorse the unities as necessary. James Harris wrote: "Aristotle we know did not form Homer, Sophocles, and Euripides: 'twas Homer, Sophocles,

^Elements of Criticism, page 426.

^Aristotle, Poetics. pages 235-236; and Horace, Art of Poetry. page 403.

®Aristotle, Poetics. page 228; and Horace, Art of Poetry, page 403. 115

7 and Euripides that formed Aristotle." Thomas Rymer and a

few others further assumed that ancient drama was superior

to contemporary English drama, which therefore could be

improved through conformity with ancient rules.

But mid-eighteenth-century critics were not wholly convinced that ancient dramas, especially comedies, were best. Concerning Aristophanes, John Pinkerton wrote: "He is so totally without merit, that to take the trouble of expressing supreme contempt for him is paying him too great honor."8 Horace Walpole agreed and concluded that, if the comedies of Menander really had been worthwhile, they would g have been preserved in place of "the farces of Aristophanes."

Pinkerton also thought that the plays of Terence are so intricate as to be suitable only for an audience of mathema- 1 0 ticians. Thus even those critics who believed that the unities actually derived from the consistent dramatic practice of the ancients were not unanimously predisposed to follow their example.

Nor were they inclined to automatically accept ancient critical dicta as inviolable. George Campbell wrote that if one of his own critical theories had been opposed by Aristotle,

7 Philological Inquiries, page 231.

8Letters of Literature, paqe 228.

^"Thoughts on Comedy," Works, II, 322.

^Letters of Literature, page 229. 116

"I should not think that equivalent to a demonstration of

its falsity."11 Samuel Johnson commented in Rambler #156:

It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to distinguish nature from custom, or that which is established because it is right from that which is right only because it is established, that he may neither’violate essential principles by a desire of novelty nor debar himself from the attainment of beauties within his view by a needless fear of breaking rules which no literary dictator had authority to enact.17

One of Johnson’s disciples, John Newbery, observed, "many

a man has left truth and nature to follow Aristotle and

Horace." He also echoed Johnson’s disparagement of Horace’s

dictum that no more than three characters should speak in

a scene. And he dismissed as "absurd or trifling" two

other presumably ancient rules which forbade an actor to

"go off the stage more than five times" and which limited 1 3 the cast to fourteen. Pinkerton expanded on another of

Johnson’s remarks about another of Horace’s rules:

That five acts should be considered as an essential division of a perfect drama, rather than any other number, is perhaps one of the strangest instances in which reverence for a rule laid down by an ancient poet, whose infallibility has never yet been proved, has totally got the better of common sense. . . .14

In 1755, after declaring that the French usually limited the time of action in their plays to twenty-four hours because they assumed that Aristotle had required it, the 11 * 13 *

11 Philosophy of Rhetoric, page 211.

17Yale edn., V, 70.

13Art of Poetry, II, 155-156.

1 ^Letters of Literature, page 133. 117

critic for the Monthly Review observed wryly: "Aristotle

talks, too, of the sun moving round the earth. I wonder

the French do not maintain the same thing, since they have his authority for it."^®

As more accurate translations of Aristotle became avail­

able in the second half of the eighteenth century, more

critics were made aware of what he really had said about the

unities. Henry Pye, whose translation is one of the best,

concluded that only where Aristotle’s comments are not merely reflections of temporary Greek customs can they be applicable to all drama. As examples of temporary customs Lord Karnes and his disciple William Cooke cited full compliance with the unities of time and place; they contended that the Greeks had observed them in many of their tragedies through necessity rather than choice, because of the presence of a chorus. 1 7

Strict enforcement of the unities suffered a further setback in the mid-eighteenth century since many new editions of Shakespeare’s plays, plus David Garrick’s new stagings of several of them, called everyone’s attention to successful violations. Critics, then, frequently discussed the relation ship between the rules and genius. A few dismissed the rules

1®XIII, 494.

1^Commentary, xi.

’^Karnes, Elements of Criticism. II, 412 and 426; and Cooke, Elements of Dramatic Criticism, pages 89-90. Karnes also noted, however, that Terence had adhered to these unities in his comedies, where there is no chorus. 118

as useless or even as obstacles to genius: the author of

Present State of the Theatre wrote, "rules can never impart

a genius to those who have not received one from nature, and

those who have can seldom submit to such a constraint."^8

Oliver Goldsmith warned that even a less talented playwright

could be harmed by the rules: "a melancholy, strict adherence

to all the rules of the drama is no more the business of

industry than of genius." Cooke agreed that a dramatist

devoid of genius who scrupulously observed the unities would

almost certainly create a play "as exact and regular as a timepiece but equally dull. . . ,"78 James Harris suggested that such a person might more profitably use his knowledge of rules to become a "tolerable critic."71

But Cooke also believed that "all persons who turn their abilities towards writing for the stage should be previously acquainted with rules. . . ."77 And, although Harris acknowl­ edged that good drama had preceded good criticism, he insisted that Shakespeare and even Homer owed their greatness to the rules:

1 8 Page 219; see also Samuel Foote, Roman and English Comedy. page 20; Joseph Warton, Adventurer #93 (Sept. 25. 1753), in British Essayists. XXV, 10; Edward Young, "Conjec­ tures on Original Composition" (1759), in The Works of the Author of the Night-Thoughts, 5 v o 1 s. (L ondon, 1768), V, 129; and "Ode to Shakespeare," in Monthly Review. XXIII (1760), 373 ^Monthly Review (May, 1757), cited in Gray, Theatrical Criticism, page 147.

7^Elements of Dramatic Criticism, page 140.

7Philological Inquiries, page 223. 77Elements of Dramatic Criticism, page 139. 119

We cannot admit that geniuses, though prior to systems, were prior also to rules, because rules from the beginning existed in thier own minds and were a part of that immutable truth, which is eternal and every­ where .

He further argued that the unities and other rules do not

tyrranize but rather "save genius from error by showing it

that a right to err is no privilege at all." Then he added

this surprising comment about Shakespeare: ’.'There is hardly

anything we applaud among his innumerable beauties which

will not be found strictly conformable to the rules of sound

and ancient criticism."73 Clearly, then, Harris was

advocating only very modified rules if he could discern them

in Shakespeare’s plays.

Most critics did not share Harris’ opinion that

Shakespeare had observed the rules: Hugh Blair felt that

his plays were admirable "in spite of" repeated violations of the unities and other rules.74 But these critics did

agree with Harris that some modified rules were1'desirable,

not because the ancients might have recommended them but

because they seemed a reasonable means to greater probability and naturalness.73 Here again these men demonstrated their

Philological Inquiries, pages 5, 217, 225, and 230-231 See also B. Walwyn. Essay on Comedy, pages 21-22. 74"0n Criticism," Lectures. I, 40.

73For example, see Richard Hurd, "On Drama," Epistolae, II, 178; Present State of the Theatre, page 85; John Newbery, Art of Poetry. II, 156; Edmund Burke, "Hints," Works. VII, 154-155; William Cooke, Elements of Dramatic Criticism, pages 136-139. Even Thomas Rhymer had defended the rules on this basis; see "Preface to the Translation of Rapin’s Reflections on Aristotle’s Treatise of Poesie" (1674), in Critical Essays, ed. Spingarn, II, 165. See also page 42 of this paper. 120

lack of objectivity: the critic for the Monthly Review, for

example, assumed that to whatever extent the ancient Greeks

had advocated the unities, they had done so for some other

mysterious reason since their use of a chorus and masks and

the absence of scenery ’proved* that they had been unconcerned about naturalness,26 And of course there were countless

arguments as each critic proposed specific regulations in

accordance with what seemed natural to him.

There was relative accord concerning the unity of action

since no one questioned its basic usefulness. Numerous

incontestable rules were suggested, such as John Newbery’s

request that the characters’ entrances and exits should be

plausibly motivated: "every man should be seen in pursuit of his own business, not that of the poet." Karnes declared,

every single speech, short or long, ought to arise from what is said by the former speaker, and furnish matter for what comes after, till the end of the scene.

As noted earlier in this paper, he rebuked Congreve for suspending action merely "to make way for a play of wit," 2 8 yet he praised Shakespeare as if he had never done the same.

Cooke worried that English audiences were distracted from the development of the plot of a drama by the pantomimes and

26XXXIII (1765), 375.

2?Art of Poetry, II, 158.

9 8 Elements of Criticism. II, 401-402; see also page 54 of this paper. 121

dances staged during intermissions.7^ Karnes considered

recommending revival of the Greek chorus to fill these

intervals, but then he called instead for "music between the

acts, vocal and instrumental," carefully selected to preserve the mood fo the play.

Horace Walpole protested against hurried plot resolutions, and Edmund Burke opposed "miraculous discoveries" to resolve a plot, especially in comedy "where the greatest probability should be preserved. . . ,"31 Also, as noted earlier in this paper, several critics protested on the same grounds that a man enthusiastically dedicated to villainy for four and a half acts should not undergo an astonishing reformation in the final scene, whether this was intended to preserve poetic justice in a comedy of ridicule or to add to the glorification of the virtuous hero in a sentimental comedy. 32

Other rules were disputed: James Beattie thought that scenes which "tend to elucidate any important character" were permissible even if they did not directly advance the action of the play, but Karnes and Cooke suggested that any less skillful dramatist who could not develop characterization

OQ Elements of Dramatic Criticism, pages 97-98. 3^Elements of Criticism, II, 421-422.

31Walpole, "Thoughts on Comedy," Works. II, 320J and Burke, Reformer #10, in Early Writinqs. page 175.

See pages 31 and 105-106 of this paper. 122

and action simultaneously should supply audiences beforehand with a written description of his characters.®®

Newbery held that the stage should not be empty within a scene, even for a few seconds, since "this discovers the fiction and removes all appearance of reality."34 But the critic for the Monthly Review observed that some French dramatists, in avoiding an empty stage, committed worse blunders such as requiring audiences to believe that the exiting characters did not see or hear the entering charac- ters. ‘ Again there was no mention that Shakespeare might also have presumed upon his audiences in this manner.

Critics generally concurred that one plot should be central, but they could not agree if subplots were allowable.

Richard Hurd insisted that they would not permit audiences to "fully enter into the representation. . . ."36 But several other critics, including Karnes and Johnson, argued that, for the sake of a delightful variety of actions, a clearly subordinate subplot was welcome.®7 Yet most of these

33 Beattie, "Poetry and Music," Essays. page 327; Karnes, Elements of Criticism. II, 409; and Cooke, Elements of Dramatic Criticism, page 86. 34Art of Poetry, II, 158.

35XXXIII (1765), 381.

®®"0n Drama," Epistolae. II, 178.

37 Karnes, Elements of Criticism. II, 399, 407, and 427; Johnson, Rambler #156. Yale edn., V, 69; see also Present 5tate of the Theatre, pages 1-2; John Newbery, Art of Poetry. II, 157; and B. Walwyn, Essay on Comedy, pages 6-7. 123

same critics rejected "that monster of the drama," as Henry

Pye described tragi-comedy. Its contradictory demands upon

audiences seemed "an insuperable objection" to Karnes and 39 seemed "unnatural" to Cooke. Predictably, however, Pye

made allowances for Shakespeare’s use of comic elements in

his tragedies:

That the necessity of committing this fault was imposed on him by the taste of the public is apparent from the practice of all the contemporary writers, and if he has contrived to do it with less impropriety than others, it surely is no small degree of merit.48

In Rambler #125, Johnson also seemed to oppose tragi-comedy

when he commented on restoration tragedies, "if they cannot

often move terror or pity, they are always careful not to

provoke laughter." But in Rambler #156 Johnson moved cautiously to the other side, saying that he found nothing that "impartial reason can condemn" about tragi-comedy:

The connection of important with trivial incidents, since it is not only common but perpetual in the world, may surely be allowed upon the stage, which pretends only to be the mirror of life.

Johnson then qualified his new position somewhat by speculating that

the effects of Shakespeare’s poetry might have been yet greater had he not counteracted himself, and we might have been more interested in the distresses of his heroes

3^Commentary, page 127. 3Q Karnes, Elements of Criticism. II, 399; and Cooke, Elements of Dramatic Criticism, pages 118-121. 48Commentary. page 127.

41 Yale edn., VI, 305 124

had we not been so frequently diverted by the jokes of his buffoons.42

However, fourteen years later in his "Preface to Shakespeare"

Johnson endorsed without qualification Shakespeare’s "compo­

sitions of a different kind, exhibiting the real state of

sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and

sorrow. . . ." This time he squarely faced the issue: That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed, but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature." And he specifically rejected as

"specious" the arqumeht that an audience would be uncomfort­ able in adjusting to the changing demands on their emotions:

"Fiction cannot move so much but that the attention may be easily transferred. . . ."43 The critic for the Monthly

Review commented upon Johnson’s defense of tragi-comedy:

"We do not feel the force of this reasoning, though we think the critics have condemned this kind of drama too seriously."44

The unities of time and place were more frequently disputed. While no one insisted that the duration of events on stage could not exceed the actual time of performance, or that only one setting could be used throughout the play,

42yale edn., V, 68-69. 43Yale edn., VII, 66-67.

44XXXIII (1765), 290 125

a few critics yielded only to minor departures. B. Walwyn,

for example, thought that events in a play could be presumed

to take twelve hours, but that "the lapse of a night, while

the characters are supposed to have been at rest, will seem to every sense of propriety a monstrous imposition on our reason." He further ruled that any changes of setting must occur between acts and must be limited to "as far as the characters can be supposed to have the power to go" during the intermission.4®

Most critics agreed that time and place should only be changed between acts and that the locale should be confined to one town, but they were willing that the duration of action could extend well beyond Walwyn’s twelve-hour limit and even beyond twenty-four hours. Newbery, again echoing

Johnson, wrote:

If a man can so far deceive himself as to suppose twenty-four hours in three, he may, I think, extend his conceptions a little farther without offering much greater violence to his understanding. . . .4®

Not surprisingly James Harris, who claimed that Shakespeare had adhered to the rules, was especially generous; he forbade only this kind of extreme violation: "suppose a play where

Lady Desmond in the first act shall dance at the court of

Richard the Third and be alive in the last act during the

4®Essay on Comedy, page 20.

4®Art of Poetry. II, 157; and Johnson, Rambler #156, Yale edn., V, 68. See also Present State of the Theatre, pages 97-99; and Karnes, Elements of Criticism. II, 418. 126

reiqn of James the First."47

Most critics, then, generally favored Karnes’ moderate

view that full compliance with the unities of time and place

is a pleasing but optional "refinement, which may justly 4 fl give place to a thousand beauties more substantial." On this basis critics praised Ben Jonson’s Epicoene in which adherence to the rules did not seem to produce greater absurdities than the rules avoided, but they censured

William Congreve’s The Way of the World in which events seemed implausibly compressed. And Henry Pye complained that the customary single setting for Roman comedies, a public street, is an unnatural place for the secret conver­ sations which abound in their intrigue-type plots.48

While most other critics thus were maintaining that audiences could still believe temporarily in the reality of actions on stage if the unities of time and place were properly modified, Johnson boldly proclaimed in his "Preface to Shakespeare" that, with or without these unities, audiences never mistake stage business for reality:

The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses and know, from the first act to the last, that the staoe is only a stage and that the players are only players. They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation.

47Philo logical Inquiries, page 220. 48Elements of Criticism, II, 417; see also William Gerard, Essay on Taste, page 258; and Present State of the Theatre, page 95. 4^Commentary, page 135; see also Dissertation on Comedy, paqes 35-40. 127

Johnson was careful to add, however, that a dramatist must

take care to present credible characters performing plausibly motivated actions so that the drama may be

credited, whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original, as representing to the auditor what he would himself feel if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done.38

While this account sustained the prevailing theory that playgoers were inclined to imitate in real life the kind of behavior celebrated on the stage, it seems a weak explanation for Johnson’s own shock as he read the final scene in King

Lear or for his honest enjoyment of Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer,31 After rejecting Johnson’s reasoning as "false or foreign to the purpose, the critic for the Monthly Review asserted that the unities were intended to promote only c 2 "apparent probability rather than literal delusion."'

Perhaps he was referring to that middle ground between delusion and total awareness—Samuel Taylor Coleridge would later call it a "willing suspension of disbelief"--that most theatre-goers probably would acknowledge to be their attitude 53 during an engrossing dramatic performance.

38Yale edn., VII, 77-78. In one sense John Hill agreed: "People go to a play to see imitations, not realities. They had rather see an old man made out of a young player than represented by a really old one, and the greater the dispro­ portion, the more the merit." The Actor, page 145. 31"Notes on Lear," Yale edn., VIII, 704; and James Boswell, Life of Johnson, paqe 525.

32XXXIII (1765), 380-381.

33Bioqraphia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross, 2 vols.(1907; rpt. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962), II, 6. 128

Johnson Claimed, "I am almost frighted at my own temerity" in questioning the need for the unities of time and place. But not only was his position—apart from his reason for adopting it—shared by most other critics during the era (including Karnes, whose views were published five years before Johnson’s "Preface"), but also most of the successful new comedies introduced during the Johnson era took at least minor liberties with the unities. There were few tragi-comedies but, as noted earlier in this paper, several plays tampered with unity of action by blending ridicule with sentimentalism.®4 Double plots were not uncommon, though usually one plot predominated as in The Suspicious Husband and The Way to Keep Him. And in almost every new comedy the action was suspended while a minor character was ridiculed or while a sentimental hero preached a homily.

Scene changes within acts were not uncommon, but other­ wise unity of place was only slightly meddled with. On-stage action in most plays was confined within a single town, although characters in The Suspicious Husband and The Good-

Natur’d Man travel from a town to a nearby inn, and in The

Rivals they journey from the city of Bath to a not-too-distant duel site.

The time-lapse in some comedies is not wholly clear, but in The Way to Keep Him and several others it is probably approximately twelve hours. Action in The Suspicious Husband

54 See pages 95-95 of this paper 129

and False Delicacy extends to almost a full day, while She

Stoops to Conquer consumes at least a day and a half. And

the pause between scenes in The Rivals was certainly less

time than the characters would literally require to travel

to the duel site.

Of course some amateur critics in the audiences of the

era still complained about such violations of the unities,

probably because, as Goldsmith suggested, they could not

think of anything else to say.33 But these people increasingly

became targets for ridicule. In Tristram Shandy, for example,

Lawrence Sterne mocked a theatre-goer who missed most of the

action on stage because he was timing with a stop-watch

David Garrick’s pauses "betwixt the substantive and the adjective. . . ,"36

33Monthly Review (May 1757), cited in Gray, Theatrical Criticism. page 147.

36The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (New York: Random House, 1950), paqe 186. 130

IX. CONCLUSIONS

Several recent scholarly studies have indicated that the

eighteenth century was, in Carl Becker’s phrase, "an age of

faith as well as of reason. . . ." This thesis can be

verified and more fully understood through an analysis of

mid-eighteenth-century theorizing about dramatic comedy,

since critics invariably based their literary judgments upon

a common substructure of interrelated philosophical, moral,

and aesthetic assumptions.

To begin with, critics accepted the doctrine of John

Locke and of his disciple, the Earl of Shaftesbury, that a

general pattern for behavior exists which is valid for all men in all ages. While Samuel Johnson and others questioned whether most men do identify this pattern of ’general truths of nature,* no one doubted that, since these general truths were presumed to be moral truths, they can be recognized empirically by any properly educated man who uses his reason, taste, or moral sense.

Likewise critics believed in the existence of univer­ sally valid aesthetic standards. Most added that, while these criteria are not completely knowable, properly educated

1fhe Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932; rpt. New Haven: Yale Univ.Press, 1959);see also Walter Jackson Bate, From Classic to Romantic: Premises of Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1946); and Jean H. Hagstrum, Samuel Johnson’s Literary Criticism (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1952). 131

men can partially and indirectly identify them because

beauty and delightfulness result only when literature

reflects general moral truths. During the Johnson era, then,

theoretical criticism on a purely aesthetic basis was almost

non-existent; James Beattie’s valuable description of the

four characteristics of the laughable is a remarkable exception.

Concerning dramatic comedy specifically, critics agreed that ideally it should offer delightful but positive moral instruction rather than a mere reflection of ’life as it is,’ because audiences were presumed to imitate in real life, at least in a general way, the manner of behavior celebrated on the stage. Because critics wanted those 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.

These critics were also influenced, but to a lesser extent, by dramatic theories and practices attributed to the ancient Greeks and Romans. While Oliver Goldsmith was recalling classical precedents for the use of ridicule, advocates of sentimentalism were claiming that ancient comedies also legitimized an emphasis upon positive examples of virtue.

Furthermore, classical theorizing about drama was plainly responsible for several critical debates during the Johnson era, such as those concerning decorum and the unities of place 132

and time. But the often contradictory examples of English dramatic practice, particularly Shakespeare’s, led most critics to require only modified adherence, if any, to presumably ancient rules.

Although every critic was concerned about audience reaction to dramatic comedy, the actual demands of theatre­ goers during the mid-eighteenth century worried professional dramatists but was 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. More significantly, men like Lord Karnes who fully endorsed Shaftesbury’s cheerfully optimistic ethic 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. Regardless of the actual prefer­ ences of audiences, then, moral instructiveness remained the primary concern of most critics.

Thus, although some dramatists cited audiences’ demands for laughter, and although the principal critics of the period, Lord Karnes and Samuel Johnson, defended laughter as an emotional release from real-life tensions, those who welcomed laughter hoped that it would be allied with ridicule so that direct moral instruction would be possible. 133

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. Those who deplored as

•unnatural* the repartee of William Congreve but commended the dialogue of Colley Cibber were undoubtedly influenced by the illusion of moral instructiveness in Cibber’s homilies. So, too, the innocence of Richard Sheridan’s softened wit helped win critical approval for it later in the period.

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 the explicit moral instruction.

However, some twentieth-century scholars who have examined these comedies have concluded that they are at best uninstructive and at worst a discouragement to realistically moral behavior: their heroes and heroines are unnaturally and insipidly perfect, their pious homilies are numbing, and their outrageously improbable plots do not grow out of charac ization but drift into melodrama by manipulating one-sided characters. This difference in critical viewpoint arises principally because modern scholars do not share the philo­ sophical optimism which the mid-eighteenth century inherited from Locke and Shaftesbury.

In fact, because of this prevailing ethic, advocates of sentimental comedy were able to discomfit the larger number 134

of critics who favored the use of ridicule but who conceded the key argument of the sentimentalists by assuming that any material of dramatic comedy had to be defended on a moral basis. Thus even when discussing the delightfulness of ridicule its proponents emphasized that an educated man enjoys attacks upon folly because of his supposed awareness of general moral truths and his consequent preference for virtue. So also those tangential debates about ridicule as a test of truth and about the impropriety of attacking permanent humours rather than changeable habits or affec­ tations were precipitated by a unanimous concern for moral instruction.

Because of this preoccupation, critical theorists of the mid-eighteenth century have left behind few enduring insights concerning the nature and function of dramatic comedy. But an analysis of their thinking on this topic is valuable in both an historical and a humanistic sense for the light which it casts back upon much of the literature written during the period. The same amalgam of literary and philosophical presuppositions which formed the basis for mid-eighteenth-century theorizing about dramatic comedy also helps to explain the era's preference for the clarity of the couplet in poetry and for relatively plain or ’natural’ language and syntax in prose. And as long as the demand prevailed the works which offered moral instruction about public issues, satire flourished, a romantic enthusiasm 135

for the personal and the exotic surfaced only sporatically,

and critics generally seconded Samuel Johnson's hope that

audiences would

. . . chase the charms of sound, the pomp of show, For useful mirth and salutary woe, Bid scenic virtue form the rising age, And Truth diffuse her radiance from the stage.

2"Proloque Spoken at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury-Lane" (1747), in Yale edn., VI, 90. 136

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