RESTORATION AND EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY ENGLISH DRAMATIC CRITICISM |
BETWEEN
the publication of Jonson's
Discoveries (1641) and that of Dryden's
Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668), there is no outstanding
piece of dramatic criticism in English. However, Davenant's
efforts to create the opera, his Preface to Gondibert
and Hobbes' reply, in 1650, together with the former's Dedication
and To the Reader prefixed to his Siege of Rhodes
(printed 1663), deserve passing notice as connecting links. Sir
Robert Howard's Preface to Four New Playes (1665),
which called forth Dryden's reply, and Howard's further Preface
-- toThe Great Favorite (1668) -- Richard Flecknoe's A
Short Discourse of the English Stage (1664), and the various
prefaces, dedications, and prologues, especially of Shadwell's
The Sullen Lovers (1668) and of The Humourists
(1671), are further indications of interest in dramatic controversies.
Thomas Rymer entered the field a few years after Dryden. His
Preface to his translation of Rapin's Reflexions sur
la poétique (1674) attacked all stragglers from the
narrow path prescribed by the rigid neo-classicists; he followed
this with a severe criticism of the Elizabethans, in The Tragedies
of the Last Age Consider'd, etc. (1678), and in 1693 he published
his Short View of Tragedy, etc., containing the famous
onslaught on Othello.
Milton published his short dissertation on tragedy with his Samson
Agonistes (1671) as a sort of apology. It is bases almost
entirely upon the Italian Renaissance critics' conception of
Aristotle's remarks
on tragedy. Other contemporaries of Dryden, who dominated the
last years of the century are, among others of less importance:
the Duke of Buckingham, whose Essay upon Poetry was published
in 1682; Ravenscroft's preface to the play Dame Dobson
(1684); Sedley, whose Bellamira (1687) had a short Preface;
Sir Thomas Pope Blount, whose extensive treatise -- De Re
Poetica -- with numerous excerpts from ancient and modern
poets, appeared in 1694; and the dramatists, Blackmore -- Prefaces
to Prince Arthur (1695) and King Arthur (1697)
-- and Dilke -- Preface to The City Lady (1697).
Of Dryden's thirty odd prefaces, essays, etc., on the drama,
the first, the Epistle Dedicatory to his play The Rival
Ladies, was published in 1664. This was followed by the Essay
of Dramatick Poesie (1668), and the Defence, the same
year. Nearly every one of his plays carries a preface, dedication,
or separate essay defending his dramatic practice, setting forth
some theory, or attacking the practice or theory of others. His
last word on the drama is found in the Discourse on Epick
Poetry, prefixed to his translation of the Aeneid
in 1697, three years before his death. Dryden was a great critic,
one of the greatest of all time. "He established (let us
hope for all time)," says Saintsbury, "the English
fashion of criticizing, as Shakespeare
did the English fashion of dramatizing,--the fashion of aiming
at delight, at truth, at justice, at nature, at poetry, and letting
the rules take care of themselves." The controversy between
the Puritans and the stage assumed its most violent form in the
famous Collier dispute. In 1696 Jeremy Collier, a Nonjuring clergyman,
published his Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality
of the English Stage. This pamphlet was aimed primarily against
the dramatists who "profaned" the stage with immoral
characters and situations, and who attacked the clergy. While
his purpose was primarily a moral one, there is a good deal of
literary criticism in his work. There is no doubt that he was
a most important factor in changing the tone of the plays of
his generation, and stultifying the comedies of the next. The
Short View called forth many replies, some of which were
anonymous. Congreve
replied with his Amendments upon Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect
Citations, etc., the same year. Collier at once riposted
with his Defence of the Short View, etc., Farquhar
is the probable author of The Adventures of Covent Garden,
in which he answered Collier by suggesting that the "best
way of answering Mr. Collier was not to have replied at all."
Vanbrugh, who together with Congreve and Dryden, was specifically
attacked, replied in his Vindication of the Relapse, etc.
(1699). John Dennis, a critic of no mean ability, defended the
stage in a lengthy treatise on The Usefulness of the Stage
to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government, and to Religion,
etc. (1698). When, in 1705, Collier published his Dissuasive
from the Play House, Dennis again answered with A Person
of Quality's Answer to Mr. Coller's Letter. Before the Collier
controversy started, Dennis had written his first criticism,
the Impartial Critick (1693), in reply to Rymer's Short
View of Tragedy. Among his subsequent dramatic criticisms
may be mentioned: An Essay on the Opera (1706), An
Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare (1712), Remarks
upon Cato, a Tragedy (1713), A Defence of Sir Fopling
Flutter, a Comedy (1722), Remarks on a Play call'd The
Conscious Lovers, a Comedy (1723), The Stage Defended
from Scripture, Reason and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two
Thousand Years (1726). Drake's Antient and Modern Stages
survey'd (1699) called forth Collier's Second Defence
of the Short View, etc. (1700). E. Filmer's A Defence
of Plays, etc. (1707), found Collier once more ready with
an answer, A Farther Vindication of the Short View, etc.
(1708). Mr. Collier's Dissuasive from the Play House (1703),
completes the list of the clergyman's attacks on the stage. Among
the many defenses of Collier may be mentioned the anonymous A
Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage,
etc. (1704). Formal treatises on the art of poetry made their
appearance early in the new century. Edward Bysshe's Art of
English Poetry (probably 1700) is of great historical importance,
and sums up the neo-classic tendencies of the time. This was
followed in 1721 by Charles Gildon's Complete Art of Poetry.
It was probably Gildon who "improved" and continued
Gerard Langbaine's Lives and Characters of the English Dramatic
Poets, etc., which was published in 1699 (?). Addison, great
as he was in other fields, is not important as a dramatic critic.
In the Spectator, however, he touches on drama at several
points. In THe Tatler, The Guardian, and other papers,
Richard Steele also occasionally wrote on the drama, and in the
dedications and prefaces to his plays (The Funeral, 1702,
The Lying Lover, 1704, The Conscious Lovers, 1723).
Farquhar, the last of the great Restoration dramatists, made
his contributions to dramatic criticism in the Prologue to
Sir Harry Wildair (1701) and in the Discourse upon
English Comedy (1702). The latter, which is of course much
fuller, is a sort of summing-up of the theories of drama held
by many dramatists. It contains a vigorous protest against Aristotle
and the Rules, and a loose definition of comedy as a moral guide,
with the Horatian ingredient of the "useful" and the
"pleasing." The Shakespearean Prefaces of the seventeenth
century contain interesting critical matter. The most important
are collected by D. Nichol Smith in his Eighteenth Century
Essays on Shakespeare, which contains the following, among
others: Nicholas Rowe's Some Account of the Life . . . of
Mr. William Shakespeare (1707); Pope's Preface (1725);
essays of Theobald (1733), Hanmer (1744), Warburton (1747), Jonson
(1765), and Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare
(1767). Pope's Essay on Criticism (1711) may also
be consulted for its sections relating to the drama. Many literary
critics of the period referred to the drama in the course of
their writings on general literature, rhetoric, and poetry. David
Hume's Essay on Tragedy (1742), Joseph Warton's papers
in The Adventurer (on The
Tempest, Nos. 93 and 97, and on King
Lear, Nos. 113, 116, and 122); Colley Cibber's Apology
(1740)--deal with various aspects of the drama, while Blair,
Hurd, and Kames are more especially concerned with the historical,
rhetorical, and aesthetic sides. Burke's Essay on Tragedy,
and On the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), are concerned
almost wholly with purely aesthetic considerations, and Samuel
Foote's Roman and English Comedy Considered and Compared
(1747) is little more than a curious document on contemporary
plays and acting. Dr. Johnson's contribution to the criticism
of the drama is not great in extent, but is important as an indication
of the spirit of the times. His essays in the Rambler, the
Idler, and the Adventurer, the casual remarks in
the Lives of the Poets (1789-91), and the Preface
to his edition of Shakespeare (1765) are practically his only
dramatic criticism. Goldsmith was not a great critic, but his
knowledge of the stage and inborn shrewdness make his observations
in The State of Polite Learning (1759), the Preface
to The Good-Natur'd Man (1768), and the Essay
on the Theatre (1772), dramatic manifestos, attractive
and interesting. They indicate the reaction against the Sentimental
Comedy, which was at that time in its heyday. The century closed
with a few treatises on the more formal aspects of dramatic criticism,
like Cooke's Elements of Dramatic Criticism (1775), J.
Penn's Letters on the Drama (1796), B. Walwyn's Essay
on Comedy (1782), and Samuel Wyte's The Theatre, a Didactic
Essay (1790).
This article was originally
published in European Theories of the Drama. Barrett H.
Clark. Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd Company, 1918.
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