Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

Character. Butler is not a pleasing personality. He was bitter, scornful, and

[subsumed][ocr errors]

full of a hard common-sense. He had no gift for friendship, and seems to have owed to his temperament the neglect from which he suffered; but his satirical power was great, and he hit the mark full in the centre with every shot. He came to hate the Puritan squires with whom he lived. His views were mainly negative, but he was well read, with much human wisdom and an unusual power of concentrated thought.

Work.-Butler took the idea of his satire from Don Quixote, but his object was solely to satirize the Roundheads. His characters are types with little real life in them, and his work became less easy to read as a whole when the hatred for Roundheads was no longer stimulated by their actual existence. He lives by the breadth and humour of his outlook and by his skill in the distich; every one is familiar with such sayings as:

Ay me! what perils do environ
The man that meddles with cold iron !

[graphic]

Or again:

Samuel Butler.

(S. Kensington Museum.)

He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still.

The rugged metre and versatile rhymes are so exactly and inexhaustibly made to fit his subject that his use of them must be said to show genius.

ABRAHAM COWLEY (1618-67)

Life.-Born in London and bred at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge, Cowley was a Royalist, and from 1646 to 1656, and from 1658 to the Restoration, spent his time in France. He died in retirement at Chertsey, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Chief Works.-Poetical Blossoms (1633); The Mistress (1647); Pindarique Odes (1656); Davideis (1656).

Character. His character must be sought in his Essays, and he must have had himself in mind when he wrote of one "who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides " (Essays, III.). This was his disposition in his later years, but he had lived much in the world and is our earliest example of one who is less a poet than a man of letters.

Davideis is an epic, uncompleted but hardly readable; the so-called Pindarique Odes are fustian; but in the Essays there are lines of Cowley which Pope rightly called "the language of his heart."

Characteristics. — Cowley stood between two ages. His conceits, his "Metaphysical" subtleties, his dialectic pedantries, belong to a decadence, while as a man of science and polish he heralded an age of reason and prose or prose-poetry. Thus his vogue was immense but brief, for the following school absorbed all that was good in him and avoided his faults. (See also p. 269.)

SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST

Texts.-DRYDEN, JOHN: Poems, ed. G. R. Hayes (Oxford Press, 1910).-WALLER, E.: Poems, ed. by G. Thorn Drury (Muses' Library: Routledge, 1901).—DAVENANT, Sir W.: Works (1673).—Butler, SAMUEL: Works, ed. by Zachary Grey (1744); with Hogarth's illustrations (1726).-COWLEY, A.: Works, ed. by A. B. Grosart (Chertsey Worthies Library, 1881).

Studies.-Lives of Dryden, Waller, Davenant, Butler, and Cowley in Johnson's Lives of the Poets; Dryden, by G. Saintsbury (English Men of Letters: Macmillan); Lectures on Dryden, by A. W. Verrall (Cambridge Press, 1914); DOREN, MARK VAN: The Poetry of John Dryden (N. Y., Harcourt, 1925); John Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark (Clarendon Press, 1898).

CHAPTER 6. THE RESTORATION DRAMA

Dryden-Wycherley-Otway-Lee-Mrs. Aphra Behn-Congreve-Vanbrugh-Farquhar-
Other Dramatists

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

Plays. The following are Dryden's Plays, with dates of performance and publication:

(1) COMEDIES.-The Wild Gallant (1663, 1669); Secret Love, or The Maiden Queen (1667, 1668); Sir Martin Mar-all (1667, 1668); An Evening's Love, or The Mock Astrologer (1668, 1671); Marriage à la Mode (1672, 1673); The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery (1672, 1573); The Kind Keeper, or Mr. Limbraham (1678, 1679); Amphitryon (1690, 1690).

(2) TRAGI-COMEDIES.-The Rival Ladies (1663, 1664); The Spanish Fryer (1681, 1681); Love Triumphant (1694, 1694).

(3) TRAGEDIES.-The Indian Emperor (1665, 1667); Tyrannick Love, or The Royal Martyr (1669, 1670); Almanzor and Almahide, or The Conquest of Granada [two parts] (1670, 1672); Amboyna (1673, 1673); Aurungzebe (1675, 1676);, All for Love, or The World Well Lost (1678, 1678); Don Sebastian (1690, 1690); Cleomenes (1692, 1692).

(4) OPERAS.-The State of Innocence (not acted; pub. 1674); Albion and Albanius (1685, 1685); King Arthur (1685, 1685; altered version, 1691, 1691).

Further, Dryden wrote some part of Sir Robert Howard's Indian Queen (1664, 1664); the first and third acts of Lee's Edipus (1679, 1679); the opening scene, the fourth, and part of the fifth act of Lee's Duke of Guise (1682, 1683). With Davenant he turned Shakespeare's Tempest into an opera (1667, 1670); and he made a new version of Troilus and Cressida (1679, 1679).

The Spanish Fryer, which is described by Dryden as a tragi-comedy, gives a good example of his method. It contains two plots, one heroic but ending happily, the other comic. The dramatist thought the "contamination" successful, but in fact the two plots alternate with the flimsiest connection between them. The play may be taken as typical of Dryden in either form of the drama. Sancho, King of Saragossa, has been deposed and imprisoned by one of his noblemen, assisted by the Moors, and his children, as was supposed, all slain. The usurper on his deathbed betrothes his only child Leonora to Bertran, the son of his chief supporter in the rebellion. The Moorish king had desired Leonora's hand and now takes up arms. Bertran heads the Saragossans, but is thrice defeated, and thereon sends out a young warrior named Torrismond, who is immediately victorious. Torrismond is in love with Leonora, and

on his return allows Bertran to see his passion. Moreover, Leonora suddenly transfers her affection to him and secretly marries him. Bertran proposes to Leonora that

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][subsumed][merged small]

Sancho shall be murdered, and she, hoping to get rid of him by throwing the odium of the deed on him, agrees. Presently Raymond, the supposed father of Torrismond,

returns from unspecified regions, hears of Sancho's death, and, eager to avenge his old master, discloses to Torrismond the fact that Sancho is that young hero's parent. Torrismond, however, prefers love to revenge, and leads Leonora's troops against Raymond. The situation is uncoiled by Bertran's announcement that Sancho has not been murdered and is still alive. There is a patent absurdity in the plot, and the characters are little more than stage figures.

In the comic plot Lorenzo, a gay young officer, meets Elvira, the young wife of the old and miserly Gomez. She accosts him, but on hearing that her husband is coming, runs off. Lorenzo describes his adventure to Gomez, who sees that the lady is his wife, and is put on his guard. Presently Lorenzo bribes Friar Domenick, the lady's father confessor and a Falstaff in a cowl, to play the part of Pandarus. Disguised as a friar he visits Elvira, but is detected by Gomez and turned out of the house. Turning from fraud to force he brings soldiers, who carry off Gomez. He is about to elope with Elvira when Gomez returns. The matter comes into official cognizance, and a farcical scene ends with the discovery that Elvira is Lorenzo's sister. The tale is grossly told, and culminates in Lorenzo's regret that the lady is beyond his reach. The characters are less unreal than their heroic associates, but even Dominick, the chief among them, is rather a poor copy from Shakespeare and Fletcher than a drawing from life.

In the only play "written to please himself" Dryden ventured to challenge a comparison with Shakespeare. The subject of All for Love is the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. In construction Dryden's play perhaps excels its predecessor, but falls far short in grandeur, while the great scene of Ventidius and Antony is a copy from Fletcher. Rhyme, which is a characteristic of the heroic tragedy, is here discarded, and the diction is rather Jacobean than Caroline.

Characteristics. Except All for Love, Dryden's plays are no true part of his mind, and he knew it. His statement that he had written no others to please himself hits the lack of sincerity which is the worst of their many faults. Some of them had a catchpenny source-Amboyna, a wretched play, in the hatred felt for the Dutch; The Spanish Fryer in the fury against the Roman Church. But this was not the worst. Dryden wrote down to a debauched and frivolous audience, which looked in tragedy, not for human action or genuine passion, but for the rhetorical discussion of politics and love; while in comedy no imbroglio could satisfy it unless covered with the slime of indecency. And this fault, too, Dryden knew and confessed.

O Gracious God! How far have we
Prophan'd thy Heav'nly Gift of Poesy!

Oh wretched We! why have we hurry'd down
This lubrique and adult'rate age

(Nay, added fat Pollutions of our own),

T' increase the steaming Ordures of the Stage.

Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew.

« FöregåendeFortsätt »