John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  CHAPTER V. DRAMATIC POETS AND PLAYWRIGHTS.

  After Dryden, the metrical dramatists of the Restoration, as of other epochs, may be accurately divided into two classes, the poets and the playwrights. As was to be expected in an age when even genuine poetry drooped earthward, and prose seldom kindled into poetry, the latter class was largely in the majority. Only three dramatists can justly challenge the title of poet — Dryden, Otway, and Lee. In Dryden a mighty fire, half choked with its own fuel, struggles gallantly against extinction, and eventually evolves nearly as much flame as smoke. In Otway a pure and delicate flame hovers fitfully over a morass; in Lee the smothered fire breaks out, as Pope said of Lucan and Statius, ‘in sudden, brief, and interrupted flashes.’ Dryden was incomparably the most vigorous of the three, but Otway was the only born dramatist, and the little of genuine dramatic excellence that he has wrought claims a higher place than the more dazzling productions of his contemporary.

  Otway (1651-1685).

  Thomas Otway, son of the vicar of Woolbeding, was born at Trotton, near Midhurst, in Sussex, March 3rd, 1651. He was educated at Winchester and Christchurch, but (perhaps driven by necessity, for he says in the dedication to Venice Preserved, ‘A steady faith, and loyalty to my prince was all the inheritance my father left me’) forsook the latter ere his academical course was half completed to try his fortune as a performer on the stage, where he entirely failed. His first play, Alcibiades (1675), a poor piece, served to introduce him to Rochester and other patrons; and in the following year Don Carlos, founded upon the novel by Saint Réal, obtained, partly by the support of Rochester, with whom Otway soon quarrelled, a striking success, and is said to have produced more than any previous play. Two translations from the French followed; next (1678) came the unsuccessful comedy of Friendship in Fashion, and in 1680 Caius Marius, an audacious plagiarism from Romeo and Juliet. In the interim Otway had made trial of a military career, but the regiment in which he had obtained a commission was speedily disbanded, his pay was withheld, and he had to support himself by plundering Shakespeare. In the same year in which he had stooped so low he proved his superiority to all contemporary dramatists by his tragedy of The Orphan, in which he first displayed the pathos by which he has merited the character of the English Euripides. Johnson remarks that Otway ‘conceived forcibly, and drew originally, by consulting nature in his own breast;’ and it is known that he experienced the pangs of a seven years’ unrequited passion for the beautiful actress, Mrs. Barry. In 1681 he produced The Soldier’s Fortune, a comedy chiefly interesting for its allusions to his own military experiences. According to Downes, its success was extraordinary, and brought both profit and reputation to the theatre. If it brought any of the former to the author, this must have been soon exhausted, since in the dedication to Venice Preserved (1682) he speaks of himself as only rescued from the direst want by the generosity of the Duchess of Portsmouth. For this great play, as well as for The Orphan, he is said to have received a hundred pounds. The Atheist, a second part of The Soldier’s Fortune (1684), was probably unproductive; and in April, 1685, Otway died on Tower Hill, undoubtedly in distress, although, of the two accounts of his death, that which ascribes it to a fever caught in pursuing an assassin, is better authenticated than the more usual one which represents him as choked by a loaf which he was devouring in a state of ravenous hunger. Such a story, nevertheless, could not have obtained credit if his circumstances had not been known to have been desperate. It is not likely that he had much conduct or economy in his affairs, or was endowed in any degree with the severer virtues. The tone of his letters to Mrs. Barry, however, and the constancy of his seven years’ affection for her, seem to indicate a natural refinement of feeling, and if there is truth in the dictum,

  ‘He best can paint them, who can feel them most,’

  the creator of Monimia and Belvidera must have been endowed with a heart tender in no common degree. ‘He was,’ we are told, ‘of middle size, inclinable to corpulency, had thoughtful, yet lively, and as it were speaking eyes.’

  Otway’s reputation rests entirely on his two great performances, The Orphan and Venice Preserved. His other plays deserve no special notice, although Don Carlos, which is said to have for many years attracted larger audiences than either of his masterpieces, might have been a good play if it had not been written in rhyme. The action is highly dramatic, and the characters, though artless, are not ineffective; but the pathos in which the poet excelled is continually disturbed by the bombastic couplets, ever trembling on the brink of the ridiculous. The remorse of Philip after the murder of his wife and son is as grotesque an instance of the forcible feeble as could easily be found, and is a melancholy instance indeed of the declension of the English drama, when contrasted with the demeanour of Othello in similar circumstances. Otway, however, was yet to show that his faults were rather his age’s than his own. The fashion of rhyme must have had much to do with the bombast of Don Carlos, for in The Orphan, his next effort in serious tragedy, there is hardly any rant, even when the situation might have seemed to have excused the exaggerated expression of emotion. The central incident of this admirable tragedy — the deception of a maiden beloved by two brothers, through the personation of the favoured one by his rival — seems now to be held to exclude it from the stage. The objection would probably prove to be imaginary, for the play was performed as late as 1819, when no less an actress than Miss O’Neill represented Monimia, and the diction is in general of quite exemplary propriety for a play of the period. Its principal defect as a work of art is that the pathos springs almost solely from the situation, and that the personages have hardly any hold upon our sympathies except as sufferers from an unhappy fatality. So powerful is the situation, nevertheless, that the sorrows of Castalio and Monimia can never fail to move; the poet’s language, too, is at its best, simpler and more remote from extravagance than even in Venice Preserved. The description of the old hag is justly celebrated:

  ‘I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself; Her eyes with scalding rheum were galled and red; Cold palsy shook her head, her hands seemed withered, And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapt The tattered remnant of an old striped hanging, Which served to keep her carcase from the cold; So there was nothing of a piece about her; Her lower weeds were all o’er coarsely patched With different coloured rags, black, red, white, yellow, And seemed to speak variety of wretchedness.’

  There are also delightful touches of poetry:

  ‘Oh, thou art tender all: Gentle and kind as sympathizing nature! When a sad story has been told, I’ve seen Thy little breasts, with soft compassion swelled, Shove up and down and heave like dying birds.’

  The opening speech of act iv., sc. 2, also reveals a feeling for nature unusual in Restoration poetry, and may be taken to symbolize Otway’s regrets for the country. The items of the description are in no way conventional, and would not have occurred to one without experience of rural life:

  ‘Wished morning’s come! And now upon the plains And distant mountains, where they feed their flocks, The happy shepherds leave their homely huts, And with their pipes proclaim the new-born day. The lusty swain comes with his well-filled scrip Of healthful viands, which, when hunger calls, With much content and appetite he eats, To follow in the fields his daily toil, And dress the grateful glebe that yields him fruits. The beasts that under the warm hedges slept, And weathered out the cold bleak night, are up, And looking towards the neighbouring pastures, raise Their voice, and bid their fellow-brutes good-morrow. The cheerful birds, too, on the tops of trees Assemble all in quires, and with their notes Salute and welcome up the rising sun. There’s no condition here so cursed as mine.’

  Venice Preserved, Otway’s most memorable work, though inferior in mere poetry and unstudied simplicity to The Orphan, surpasses it in tragic grandeur, in variety of action, and in intensity of interest. It has the further great advantage that the interest does not entirely arise from the situat
ion, but that at least one of the characters is a skilful piece of painting from the life, and very probably from the author. In Jaffier we have a vivid portrait of the man who is entirely governed by the affections, and who sways from ardent resolution to a weakness hardly distinguishable from treachery, as friendship and love alternately incline him. The little we know of Otway warrants the impression that he was such a man, and assuredly he could not have excited such warm interest in a character so feeble in his offence, so abject in his repentance, and in general so perilously verging on the despicable, without a keen sympathy with the subject of his portrait. Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. Pierre, though an imposing figure, is much less subtly painted than his friend; and Belvidera, her husband’s evil genius, interests only through her sorrows. The ‘despicable scenes of low farce’ which eke the drama out, are a grievous blot upon it. M. Taine may be right in deeming some comic relief allowable, but such trash is neither relief nor comedy. The language of the serious portion of the play, however, is in general dignified and tragic. Perhaps the best conducted, as it is the best known, is that in which Pierre spurns the remorseful Jaffier:

  ‘Jaff. I must be heard, I must have leave to speak. Thou hast disgraced me, Pierre, by a vile blow: Had not a dagger done thee nobler justice? But use me as thou wilt, thou canst not wrong me, For I am fallen beneath the basest injuries; Yet look upon me with an eye of mercy, With pity and with charity behold me; Shut not thy heart against a friend’s repentance, But, as there dwells a godlike nature in thee, Listen with mildness to my supplications.

  Pier. What whining monk art thou? what holy cheat, That wouldst encroach upon my credulous ears, But cant’st thus vilely? Hence! I know thee not. Dissemble and be nasty: leave me, hypocrite.

  Jaff. Not know me, Pierre?

  Pier. No, know thee not: what art thou?

  Jaff. Jaffier, thy friend, thy once loved, valued friend, Though now deservedly scorned, and used most hardly.

  Pier. Thou Jaffier! thou my once loved, valued friend? By Heavens, thou liest! The man so called, my friend, Was generous, honest, faithful, just, and valiant, Noble in mind, and in his person lovely, Dear to my eyes and tender to my heart: But thou, a wretched, base, false, worthless coward, Poor even in soul, and loathsome in thy aspect; All eyes must shun thee, and all hearts detest thee. Pr’ythee avoid, nor longer cling thus round me, Like something baneful, that my nature’s chilled at.

  Jaff. I have not wronged thee, by these tears I have not, But still am honest, true, and hope, too, valiant; My mind still full of thee: therefore still noble. Let not thy eyes then shun me, nor thy heart Detest me utterly: oh, look upon me, Look back and see my sad, sincere submission! How my heart swells, as even ‘twould burst my bosom, Fond of its goal, and labouring to be at thee! What shall I do — what say to make thee hear me?

  Pier. Hast thou not wronged me? Dar’st thou call thyself Jaffier, that once loved, valued friend of mine, And swear thou hast not wronged me? Whence these chains? Whence the vile death which I may meet this moment? Whence this dishonour, but from thee, thou false one?

  Jaff. All’s true, yet grant one thing, and I’ve done asking.

  Pier. What’s that?

  Jaff. To take thy life on such conditions The Council have proposed: thou and thy friends May yet live long, and to be better treated.

  Pier. Life! ask my life? confess! record myself A villain, for the privilege to breathe, And carry up and down this cursèd city A discontented and repining spirit, Burthensome to itself, a few years longer, To lose it, may be, at last in a lewd quarrel For some new friend, treacherous and false as thou art! No, this vile world and I have long been jangling, And cannot part on better terms than now, When only men like thee are fit to live in’t.

  Jaff. By all that’s just —

  Pier. Swear by some other powers, For thou hast broke that sacred oath too lately.

  Jaff. Then, by that hell I merit, I’ll not leave thee, Till to thyself, at least, thou’rt reconciled, However thy resentments deal with me.

  Pier. Not leave me!

  Jaff. No; thou shalt not force me from thee. Use me reproachfully, and like a slave; Tread on me, buffet me, heap wrongs on wrongs On my poor head; I’ll bear it all with patience, Shall weary out thy most unfriendly cruelty: Lie at thy feet and kiss them, though they spurn me, Till, wounded by my sufferings, thou relent, And raise me to thy arms with dear forgiveness.

  Pier. Art thou not —

  Jaff. What?

  Pier. A traitor?

  Jaff. Yes.

  Pier. A villain?

  Jaff. Granted.

  Pier. A coward, a most scandalous coward, Spiritless, void of honour, one who has sold Thy everlasting fame for shameless life?

  Jaff. All, all, and more, much more: my faults are numberless.

  Pier. And wouldst thou have me live on terms like thine? Base as thou’rt false —

  Jaff. No; ’tis to me that’s granted. The safety of thy life was all I aimed at, In recompense for faith and trust so broken.

  Pier. I scorn it more, because preserved by thee: And as when first my foolish heart took pity On thy misfortunes, sought thee in thy miseries, Relieved thy wants, and raised thee from thy state Of wretchedness in which thy fate had plunged thee, To rank thee in my list of noble friends, All I received in surety for thy truth Were unregarded oaths; and this, this dagger, Given with a worthless pledge thou since hast stolen, So I restore it back to thee again; Swearing by all those powers which thou hast violated, Never from this cursed hour to hold communion, Friendship, or interest with thee, though our years Were to exceed those limited the world. Take it — farewell! — for now I owe thee nothing.

  Jaff. Say thou wilt live then.

  Pier. For my life, dispose it Just as thou wilt, because ’tis what I’m tired with.

  Jaff. O Pierre!

  Pier. No more.

  Jaff. My eyes won’t lose the sight of thee, But languish after thine, and ache with gazing.

  Pier. Leave me. — Nay, then thus, thus I throw thee from me, And curses, great as is thy falsehood, catch thee!’

  Nathaniel Lee (1653-1691).

  The only tragic dramatist of the age, after Dryden and Otway, who had any pretension to rank as a poet, was Nathaniel Lee, and his claims are not very high. Notwithstanding his absurd rants, however, there are fire and passion in his verse which lift him out of the class of mere playwrights. After receiving a Cambridge education, Lee came up to town to seek his fortune. Thrown on the world, it is said, by the failure of the Duke of Ormond to redeem his promises of patronage, Lee became an actor, but obtained no success, although celebrated for the beauty of his elocution as a dramatic reader. The transition from actor to author was easy. Lee produced three bad rhyming plays in the taste of the time, and in 1677 did himself more justice in The Rival Queens, a tragedy on the history of Alexander the Great, which kept the stage for nearly a century and a half. Mithridates (1678) was also successful, and Dryden thought sufficiently well of Lee to combine with him in the production of an Œdipus, which continued to be acted until 1778, when the situation, rather than the diction, was found unendurable. Kemble wished to revive it so late as 1802, but was prevented by the reluctance of Mrs. Siddons. It is true that on a modern stage the piece must want the religious consecration which accompanied it on the Greek. Lee wrote on, enjoying the notoriety of the prohibition by authority of his Lucius Junius Brutus, in which allusions, merely imaginary, to the vices of Charles II., were discovered by the Court, and regaining his lost favour by the tragedy of The Duke of Guise (1682), a play full of political allusions, in which also Dryden had a hand. In 1684 he was disabled by an attack of insanity, brought on, it is alleged, by his intemperate habits; and although he recovered sufficiently to be released from confinement, he wrote no more, his last two published plays being compositions of an earlier date. He died miserably in returning from the tavern on a winter’s night, fallen down and stifled in the snow.

  That Lee was a poet,
a passage quoted by Mr. Saintsbury would prove, had he written nothing else:

  ‘Thou coward! yet Art living? canst not, wilt not, find the road To the great palace of magnificent death, Though thousand ways lead to his thousand doors, Which day and night are still unbarred for all?’

  A variation of this thought in Lee’s Theodosius might well have inspired Beckford with the conception of his Hall of Eblis, nor would it be difficult to find other impressive passages. Lee’s rants of mere sound and fury are unfortunately much more frequent, and his pre-eminence above all competitors in this line is so indisputable, that it is no wonder if he is remembered by his gigantic faults rather than by his comparatively tame and temperate merits. The following speech of Roxana in The Rival Queens, for instance, is quite an average specimen of her conversation: