Priu. Strengthen her heart with patience, pitying Heaven.

Belv. Come, come, come, come, come, nay, come to bed!

Prithee, my love. The winds! hark how they whistle!

And the rain beats: oh, how the weather shrinks me!

You are angry now, who cares? pish, no indeed.

Choose then; I say you shall not go, you shall not;

Whip your ill nature; get you gone then! oh,

(Jaffeir's Ghost rises.)

Are you return'd? See, father, here he's come again!

Am I to blame to love him? O thou dear one!

Stand off, don't hide him from me. He's here somewhere.

Stand off, I say! what, gone? remember it, tyrant!

I may revenge myself for this trick one day.

I'll do 't-I'll do 't! Renault's a nasty fellow.

Hang him, hang him, hang him.

(Enter Officer and others.)

Priu. News, what news?

(Officer whispers Priuli.)

Offic.
Most sad, sir.
Jaffeir, upon the scaffold, to prevent
A shameful death, stabbed Pierre, and
next himself:

The text is done, and now for application,

And when that's ended, pass your approbation.

Though the conspiracy 's prevented here, Methinks I see another hatching there; And there's a certain faction fain would sway,

If they had strength enough, and damn this play,

But this the author bade me boldly say: If any take his plainness in ill part, He's glad on 't from the bottom of his heart;

Poets in honor of the truth should write, With the same spirit brave men for it fight;

And though against him causeless hatreds rise,

23 fondle. 24 Dryden, who was friendly with Otway, in 1679 was

more.

William Congreve (1670-1729), brought up and highly educated in Ireland, passed his early manhood in fashionable life in London, where he held small government offices and was made much of by the great; later he lived more retired. His four comedies and one tragedy were produced early in his life - the first, The Old Bachelor, when he was but twenty or so, and the last, The Way of the World, when he was thirty. In spite of his success as a dramatist, that of his last play did not come up to his desires, and, his health failing, he withdrew from the stage. He also wrote a novel, criticism, and poems.

The Way of the World represents a large, distinguished, and notorious body of drama, Restoration comedy. The chief foreign influence under which it arose is that of Molière, though by no means all its traits can be fathered on him. The type is wellmarked as to its characterization, its plotting, its style, and its morals. The characterization is broad and slight, typical rather than individual. As Congreve says in the epilogue to The Way of the World, in disclaiming satire of real persons,

as when painters form a matchless face, They from each fair one catch some different grace;

So poets oft do in one piece expose Whole belles assemblees of coquettes and beaux. Occasionally distinctive traits (superficial ones) are given the various persons, such as Lady Wishfort's trick of asseverating " As 1 am a person," and occasional "low" language spoken by the servants, like Mincing crips (II. i) and "I Vow, mem, 1 thought once they would have fit" (III. i). Usually, however, the very servants talk like their betters and are almost as witty-perhaps less so in this than in other Restoration comedies; in striking contrast with the ignorant in Shakespeare's plays, who divert us by their dialect and blunders. The contrast strikingly illustrates the prevalence in the romantic drama of humor and the characteristic and individual, and in the "classical " eighteenth-century drama of wit and the typical. Sir Wilful Witwoud, the person who most conspicuously stands out among the others, with his downrightness and coarseness, would have melted into his social background if he had joined it as early as his half-brother did. Petulant, unlike Mirabell and Fainall, who are to the manner born, is

But

impertinent and ill-bred, and Witwoud is a snob, but this is merely because they are still climbing. We may know that one of the female characters, Millamant, differs from the others in the important point of being virtuous; in most of Congreve's plays there is one such part, which he always wrote for Mrs. Bracegirdle, many years his friend, a charming actress who stood out equally among actresses for her discretion. Millamant breathes the same atmosphere as the others, and for the purposes of the play really differs only in being a little more fascinating. In The Way of the World it may almost be said that all the persons, men and women, servants and all, under the same circumstances speak alike and act alike. The play represents the life and especially the standards of one of the most unified, limited, conventional societies ever known. Under the fascinating surface glitter, the people are all alike hard and cold, and much as we delight to hear them talk, Charles Lamb truly says we care not a farthing for any one of them (unless, like George Meredith, we cherish a pious opinion that Millamant might grow into a human being).

The Way of the World is one of the most brilliant examples in English of the "comedy of manners," which gives an external picture of social life, with all its activity, intrigues, and foibles. In the Elizabethan drama the picture is a much broader one, taking in various social strata, the whole life of the community with its bustle and enjoyment. In some of Fletcher's and Shirley's comedies, however, we find the same tendency to limit the picture to "society" in the small sense; and this is the rule in the comedy of the Restoration period. In other words it is what is now called high comedy. The matters at issue are love and marriage (often rather, love or marriage), and it is no accident that in The Way of the World the dramatis persona are mostly women. The play may very properly be called a picture of life, for the main interest in it is in seeing how things are, not in seeing what happens. True, it is unjust to censure the play, as has been done, for lacking plot. After the earlier part the action is constant, with abundance of suspense and surprise, and our interest would be fairly maintained for the time being even if there were nothing else. But the first two acts consist mostly of talk and of very leisurely exposition. When the compli

[]

cated plot begins to unfold, it is not lifelike, we do not feel that by itself it brings us nearer the life of the time. It is fantastic and borders on farce, turning on the all but successful scheme to marry a dressed-up footman to a fine lady, in order to blackmail her into giving up her niece's fortune; it is also hardly likely that Fainall and Mrs. Marwood could squander her fortune between them under the nose of the gossips without it arousing scandal. Congreve's claim in the prologue is barely true,

Some plot we think he has, and some new thought;
Some humor too, no farce.

All that saves the plot from being farce is
that there are no farcical situations. But
ny plot would have been brilliantly carried
off. Long after we have forgotten the story,
the impression of the whole play is almost
as sharp as ever, the impression of a gay
unscrupulous social life, and of unparalleled
mental agility and cleverness.

If Congreve is not the most brilliant English writer of dialogue certainly none is more brilliant. His dialogue is a series of flashes so close together that they impress one as a continuous radiance. Nothing can surpass the combination of sheer inventive cleverness with good breeding, restraint and literary polish of style. Among the best passages are that with Lady Wishfort at her toilet (III. i), and above all Mrs. Marwood's picture of the consequences of divulging the family scandal (V. i). Nobody ever talked as well as Congreve's people; we have here a conversational idealism more genuine than the moral idealism of The Conquest of Granada. Vituperation has become a fine art. The cleverness of the talk actually gives us somewhat the same heightened sense of the value of life and the dignity of human nature that we gain from the beauty and heroism in a play of a different sort.

And all this in spite of the frivolous, heartless, and vicious set of people who do the talking. But the picture may easily be misunderstood. The dramatist's purpose is to show the surface and the surface only of a fashionable society. Good Mirabell," says Mrs. Millamant, "don't let us be familiar or fond, nor kiss before folks; but let us be very strange and well-bred: let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while; and as well-bred as if we were not married at all"; to which he replies, "Your demands are pretty reasonable." To conceal deeper feeling, and to turn everything into mirth, are two of the ten commandments of such a society. We must forgive, too, even

Millamant's malice for the sake of her high spirits; and after all Mrs. Marwood is fair game. Aside from the occasional license of the language, which is that of its age, the air of cynicism is inevitable; even Congreve I could not have written five acts of incessant splendor without an occasional joke at the expense of virtue, or the pose that marriage is bondage, or the like. Wit being his commodity, we have to pay for it. But we are paying merely imitation money; we are sacrificing no real convictions. In other words, the cynical wit is no more to be taken seriously than the cynical wit of a good talker in a club. Whether there is anything worthy

under the attractive outside we are not supposed to ask, either in the play or in the society it represents. We are to eat such meat as is set before us, asking no questions for conscience' sake.

estion

But if the moral issue will not stay down, if we must allow the much-debated question as to the moral effect of Restoration comedy in general, what then? Few persons have been able to accept Charles Lamb's theory that the life represented in it is a purely imaginary life with which morality has nothing to do. In such plays as those of Wycherley we are asked to follow with sympathetic/ interest deep-laid plans, to debauch ignorant and innocent women. (If a play has sufficient reanty to interest us aside from the interest of its wit, it cannot escape the moral question which is so important a part of reality.) The greater part of Restoration comedy from this point of view is brutal and repulsive; it surrounds us, in the words of Macaulay, "with foreheads of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire of hell." But even Voltaire esteemed Congreve as more decent than his predecessors. There is nothing brutal or repulsive in the ethics of The Way of the World, unless it be so to scheme light-heartedly to outwit a stingy and tyrannical old coquette, and to associate with people who have been no better than they should be. We are not asked to give our sympathy or liking to anything or anybody whatever; nor even to watch with interest anything which involves moral turpitude. The play does not make vice attractive, though it grants that vicious people may be. It does not sentimentalize over illicit passion; there is no passion in it. No one can carp at the morality of the ending. The Way of the World is therefore in the fortunate position of being one of the most characteristic specimens of the type on its best side, with but little of the qualities that have made the type notorious.

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