FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135  
136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   >>   >|  
defended them by the ingenious sophistries which it has pleased later literary criticism to suggest on their behalf, now began with uneasy merriment to allude in their prologues to the reformation which had come over the spirit of the town. Writers like Mrs Centlivre became anxious to reclaim their offenders with much emphasis in the fifth act; and Colley Cibber--whose _Apology for his Life_ furnishes a useful view of this and the subsequent period of the history of the stage, with which he was connected as author, manager and actor (excelling in this capacity as representative of those fools with which he peopled the comic stage)[232]--may be credited with having first deliberately made the pathetic treatment of a moral sentiment the basis of the action of a comic drama. But he cannot be said to have consistently pursued the vein which in his _Careless Husband_ (1704) he had essayed. His _Non-Juror_ is a political adaptation of _Tartuffe_; and his almost equally celebrated _Provoked Husband_ only supplied a happy ending to Vanbrugh's unfinished play. Sir R. Steele, in accordance with his general tendencies as a writer, pursued a still more definite moral purpose in his comedies; but his genius perhaps lacked the sustained vigour necessary for a dramatist, and his humour naturally sought the aid of pathos. From partial[233] he passed to more complete[234] experiment; and thus these two writers, who transplanted to the comic stage a tendency towards the treatment of domestic themes noticeable in such writers of Restoration tragedy as Southerne and Rowe, became the founders of _sentimental comedy_, a species which exercised a most depressing influence upon the progress of English drama, and helped to hasten the decline of its comic branch. With _Cato_ English tragedy committed suicide, though its pale ghost survived; with _The Conscious Lovers_ English comedy sank for long into the tearful embraces of artificiality and weakness. The drama and stage in the period before Garrick. Garrick. During the 18th century the productions of dramatic literature were still as a rule legitimately designed to meet the demands of the stage, from which its higher efforts afterwards to so large an extent became dissociated. The goodwill of most sections of the public continued to be steadily accorded to a theatre which had ceased to defy the accepted laws and traditions of morality; and the opposition still aroused by it was c
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135  
136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

English

 

period

 

comedy

 

pursued

 

writers

 

treatment

 

Garrick

 

Husband

 
tragedy
 

sentimental


depressing
 

influence

 

progress

 
hasten
 

helped

 
exercised
 
decline
 

species

 

themes

 

pathos


partial

 

complete

 
passed
 

sought

 
vigour
 

sustained

 

dramatist

 

naturally

 
humour
 

experiment


noticeable

 

branch

 

Restoration

 

Southerne

 

domestic

 

tendency

 

transplanted

 

founders

 
extent
 
dissociated

goodwill

 

sections

 

demands

 

higher

 

efforts

 

public

 

continued

 

morality

 

traditions

 

opposition