THE RESTORATION SALON.
A History of Restoration Drama, 1660-1700. By Allardyce - Nicoll. (Cambridge University Press. les. net.)
Ouns is a profligate and irreverent age. Mummy is become merchandise, and because wit offends the equilibrium of the wise, we are exhorted to eschew the comedy of the Restora-- tion and admire the domestic excellences of the "London Merchant." This is too great a price to pay for the industrial revolution. Whether it be the "love and honour" of heroic Dryden, the mad bombast of " Bedlam " Lee, the intrigue' of Mrs. Aphra Beim, the humours' of Shadwell, or the transcen- dent comic spirit of Congreve, the drama of the later seven- teenth century is a vast artificial structure, pleasurable and moving if one Imow the rules of the game, bewildering to the scoffer and the uninitiated. No study of this period is valid unless we take the writers at their own valuation., We shall find nothing exaggerated, no claims of greatness, but the recognition of a culture that was limited to a circle of wits amusing each other before a select audience. When we remember that the age was equally that of Bunyan and Milton, Henry Vaughan and Sir Thomas Browne, our perspective changes, but none the less the amusing life of the period centred in the theatre. A theatre bent on pleasing the King, supported by him even to the extent of lending his coronation robes, shunned by the citizens for fear of moral contagion, speedily became a court diversion in which private gossip and allusion assumed an importance ludicrous elsewhere. Pepys' diary is a running comment on the conventions of this group whose activities were eagerly followed even by country clergymen. The social history of this drama is fascinating, its bibliography is heavy and complicated, but the balanced reader has a joy midway between the two in selecting and reading the plays of the time. For those who are not specialists a volume containing- the best of Etherege, Seclley, Dryden, Lee, Shadwell, Crowne, Otway, Wycherley, Behn, Vanbrugh, Congreve, and Farquhar would suffice. The Ravenscrofts, Duffets, Pixes, Settles and Pordages serve between them to justify Lamb's thesis of a Utopia of gallantry and cuckoldry. No serious defender of this drama pretends that everything is of interest, but passages of pure wit trans-. lated into action, quintessential information magnified almost to epic proportions concerning the evanescent behaviour of past brains, the life of the Restoration Salon depicted as perhaps no other social group has been, a dispassionate presentation of social attitudes where the intrusion of morality. is -impertinent, and more than , that, a vivacity as though Harlequin were impersonating the spirit of comedy, repay any attention we may bestow. For technique the " china " scene of Wycherley's cold-blooded Country Wife ; for rich bustle of town life, Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia ; for unbalanced yet impassioned poetry, Nat Lee's Sophon- isba; for easy and glove-fitting manners, Etherege's Man of Mode are not easily surpassed. Congreve stands apart. There is a music in the conduct of his argument, in the ease of his endings, in the lambent wit of his dialogues, the dis- position of his intrigues, and the giant mating of his Mirabel and Millamant, that is approached only by the Mozartian melody of the catechism of love in Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem. Beyond this quality wit were too attenuated to proceed, and the Comic Spirit on its deathbed assures the murderous reformer of morals that "he is not so sure of our private approbation as of our public thanks."
Mr. Nicoll deserves our public thanks for this first History of Restoration Drama. It is a mine of information concerning the theatre, the actors and the audience, though he perhaps exaggerates the pandemonium of deadheads rioting beyond control. The methodical analysis of the origins and nature of both tragedy and comedy of the period will be of use to future workers. The treatment of Nat Lee is of rare excellence. Sound as the work is, and however much we are grateful for the valuable appendix of unpublished documents on the history of the stage, it must be confessed that the book is dull. It needs to be supplemented by Mr. John Palmer's brilliant Comedy of Manners. The difference is between sweeping searchlight and methodical candle. It is difficult to avoid the feeling that the time is not yet ripe for a definite and mature history of the period, and that this brave but ambitious attempt would have gained by waiting.
J. IstiAcs.
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