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The “Character” in Restoration Comedy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Every reader of the Restoration comedy of manners cannot fail to be impressed with the frequent occurrence of the character-sketch. Often this is of a typical personage having no part in the action, as when in Wycherley's Plain Dealer, Novel and Olivia together in dialogue form describe Lady Autumn, her daughter, and a fop, none of whom appears in the play. Again, one notices a marked use of the dramatic convention of making one actor describe another who is about to enter. A typical instance occurs in the scene just mentioned when Novel describes in the form of a “character,” Lord Plausible, and is interrupted by that gentleman's entrance.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1915
References
1 Act II, sc. i.
2 Some account of the influence of Theophrastus upon the early writers of “characters,” and of the development of “character” writing in England, may be found in my articles in The Publications of the Modem Language Association of America, vol. xviii, July, 1903, and vol. xix, March, 1904.
3 Ll. 544-568.
4 Professor Schelling in English Literature in the Lifetime of Shakespeare, p. 332.
5 Act IV, sc. I and Act III, sc. I.
6 Some account of Jonson's indebtedness is furnished by my article in Modern Language Notes for Nov. 1901, vol. xvi, pp. 385 ff.
7 Professor Schelling in English Literature in the Lifetime of Shakespeare, p. 332.
8 The title is “A Morose Man who has Married a Talkative Wife denounces Himself.” Vol. iv, Reiske's edition of the Works of Libanius.
9 Contained in The Rambler for Oct. 9th, 1750.
10 La Bruyère, in his “Discours sur Théophraste,” the first chapter of his Caractères, was the first formally in writing to recognize this kinship. “Les savants, faisant attention à la diversité des mœurs qui y sont traitées et à la manière naïve dont tous les caractères y sont exprimés, et la comparant d'ailleurs evec celle du poëte Ménandre, disciple de Théophraste, et qui servit ensuite de modèle à Té rence, qu' on a dans nos jours si heureusement imité, ne peuvent s'empêcher de reconnaître dans ce petit ouvrage la première source de tout le comique; je dis de celui qui est épuré des pointes, des obscénités, des équivoques, qui est pris dans la nature, qui fait rire les sages et les vertueux” (p. 5, edition of 1750).
11 Wilson's first play, The Cheats, written 1662, enjoyed a remarkable popularity. Scarcely less popular was The Projectors, 1664. Both these plays followed the Jonsonian tradition, and revived the comedy of humours.
12 Upon the influence of La Bruyère on Addison, see my article in the Publications of the Modem Language Association, vol. xix, Dec. 1904.
13 See Brander Matthews, Molière, pp. 70 ff.
14 The Cyrus contained 12,946 pages, not including prefaces, dedications, and appeared (1649-1653) in ten volumes. Besides the thirty-two volumes containing her four romances, she published (1665) Les Femmes illustres, and (1680-1692) ten volumes of Conversations.
15 These have been identified by V. Cousin, with the help of a key discovered in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris. A similar “key,” though somewhat less complete, has been found for the Clélile. See La Societé Française au XVII Siècle, 2 vols., Paris, 1886.
16 Ed. Cheruel, ii, p. 181.
17 The fashion seems to have spread like an epidemic. V. Cousin says: Les portraits se multiplièrent à Paris et dans les provinces; ils descendèrent du grand monde dans la bourgeoisie; il y en eut d'excellentes, il y en eut de médiocres et aussi de détestables, jusqu' à ce qu'en 1688 La Bruyère renouvela et éleva le genre, et, sous le nom de Caractères, au lieu de quelques individus peignit son siècle et l'humanité (Madame de Sablé, p. 77).
18 The Histovre comique de Francion is frankly picaresque, and the Berger extravagant is a direct parody of the pastoral romance.
19 La Description de l'Ile de Portraiture et la Ville de Portraits, in Voyages Imaginaires. Amsterdam, 1788, vol. xxvi.
20 Page 364.
21 Vol. x, pp. 554 ff.
22 Scene iv.
23 It is evident in the work of the memoir-writers, especially Saint Simon, and, of course, in La Bruyère.
24 Cf. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Act I, sc. i, in which the music master and the dancing master prepare us for the entrance of Jourdain by giving us his “character.”
25 See Besing, Molière's Einfluss auf das englische Lustspiel bis 1700, Inaugural-Dissertation, Leipzig, 1913, and Miles, The Influence of Molière upon Restoration Comedy, Columbia Univ. Press, 1910.
26 Both quotations are cited by Miles, p. 81.
27 Butler's Remains, Thyer's ed., Vol. i, pp. 168 ff.
28 The play is practically a paraphrase of L'Avare.
29 This is a translation, with some omissions, of Les Fourberies de Scapin.
30 The play is an adaptation, with some changes from the original, of Molière's Amphitryon.
31 The play is scarcely more than a translation of Le Dépit Amoureux.
32 Miles enumerates sixty-four plays that owe more or less to Molière.
33 “'Tis not barrenness of wit or invention, that makes us borrow from the French but laziness; and this was the occasion of my making use of l'Avare. This play was wrote in less than a moneth” (Preface to The Miser).
Beljame says the smallness of the audiences, since the majority of the people retained the Puritan prejudice against the theatre, made necessary a larger repertoire than playwrights could supply without borrowing (Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres en Angleterre au XVIII Siècle, pp. 50 ff.).
34 The Preface to The Sullen Lovers.
35 Le Misanthrope, Act II, sc. iv.
36 Wycherley took nearly half his Dramatis Persona from Molière. There are thirteen named characters in The Plain Dealer.
37 Timante represents the Comte de Saint-Gilles according to Brossette (in notes on Boileau, quoted in Œuvres de Molière, Tome v, p. 481).