University of Virginia Library

OLD ENGLISH COMEDIES.

The above sentence, it is presumed, was written
with reference to the comedies that held possession
of the stage in the days of our unenlightened ancestors,
some century and a half ago; for, if applied
to the three and five-act farces which modern manufacturers
impudently baptize by the name of
“comedies,” and which the present generation are
well contented to receive as such, instead of a graceful
truth, it becomes a piece of caustic irony, from
the pointed severity of which neither the public nor
the playwrights of the year eighteen hundred and
twenty-nine have wherewithal to shield themselves.
Without at all canting about the “good old times,”
it must be conceded on all hands, that whatever

may have been the faults and deficiencies of our
ancestors, and however well assured the present
self-sufficient race of mortals may feel, of their general
superiority, they are at present at an immeasurable
distance behind them in every department of
dramatic literature, but more particularly in comedy.
Formerly a comedy was a work of genius—
a green leaf added to the literary coronal of the
land; it was then composed of sparkling wit and
rare invention—of characters rich and racy, yet natural;
and of incidents gay and sprightly, yet probable;
and was, indeed, a mirror to show “the very
age and body of the time, its form and pressure.”
Now, what is a comedy? Messrs. Morton, Peake,
and Poole can best answer that question. “Ay,
tell us that, and unyoke.” It is a thing where the
broad and coarse extravagancies of farce are jumbled
together with mawkish and lachrymose sentimentality,
where the characters are caricatures
vilely executed, and the incidents precisely such as
could not by any possibility ever have taken place—
where the dialogue consists of puns, slang, stray jests,
and flowers of rhetoric from the circulating libraries,
with a copious infusion of ordinary slip-slop conversation—where
the jokes are all practical, and stumbling
over a chair, or drawing out a ragged pocket-handkerchief,
are among the happiest inventions of
the author; and though, at times, a few gleams of
humor may shine athwart the gloom, yet wit, who
is a little more aristocratical and choice in his company,
absents himself altogether. And what is it
that makes this farrago of abominations escape the
fate decreed against all sinful transgressions? It is
stage effect. To this every thing is sacrificed—
this the authors have studied, and this they understand,
and hence the secret of their disgraceful
success.

It is not meant, however, to be said, that this and
this alone strictly applies to the three gentlemen
mentioned above, though any one who will take
the trouble of reading their works, (particularly
Morton's) will find that a great part may be truly
applied to most of their productions. They are
mentioned by name because they are the three
best of the numerous herd of stage writers of the
present day; and Poole, in his Paul Pry, has even
given us a glimpse of better things. True, the dialogue
in that piece is meagre enough, but there is
a good deal of broad humor and no sentiment; the
situations are extremely laughable, and the character
of the inquisitive Mr. Pry himself very cleverly
sketched. It would be well if we had more
pieces like this, instead of such plays as “Town and
Country,” which Kean honored and brought into

notice by personating the mouthing and melancholy
hero, and which example many clever actors have
since inconsiderately followed.

But, alas! for the dashing gallants and wits that
glitter in the pages of Wycherly, Congreve, Vanburgh,
and Farquhar. Their day, it would seem,
is gone for ever; and what have we in their
place? Look at modern comedy, and in nine cases
out of ten you will find a variety of the “Tom and
Jerry” species for its hero;—some heedless spendthrift,
worthless but not witty enough for a rake;
who commits all sorts of folly with impunity through
the space of five acts, and then ends by laying his
five fingers on his bosom, and informing the dramatis
personæ in general, and the young lady in
white, whose hand he of course receives, in particular,
that “though his head may have erred, his
heart is still in the right place!” What the deuce
have the audience to do with his heart? It is from
his head that they expect entertainment, and if they
are disappointed in that, what satisfaction to them,
after the infliction of his slang and impertinence in
the place of genuine wit and spirit, is the information
that he intends to reform and live decently and
soberly with his wife?

But objections, and in some instances, on good
grounds, have been raised to the representation of

the older dramatists, on the score of indelicacy;
though it is one which might easily be obviated
by judicious pruning; and, after all, the gay and
polished libertinism of some of the old comedies is
not half so indelicate, and not one quarter so
disgusting, as the vulgar liberties so frequently
taken with modern would-be fastidious audiences,
and which they not only suffer, but chuckle over
with evident satisfaction. But the old comedies
have a bad character on this account, and we all
know the force of the proverb “give a dog a bad
name,” &c. There is too much truth in what a
clever writer has said, that “the cant of delicacy
has done thrice the injury to the drama that sheer
downright fanaticism has ever done; and shallow
refinement is ten times more hopelessly inaccessible
than the prejudices of the narrowest bigotry.” Even
George Colman the younger, who ought to have
known better, and who in his younger days was by
no means fastidious, has joined in the pestilential
cry, that has been one great cause of driving the gay
and sparkling Thalia from the stage, and substituting
a Merry Andrew in her place.