MAE603_British Drama-I

Literary Terms 195 Partly, social realism developed as a reaction against Romanticism, which promoted lofty concepts such as the \"ineffable\" beauty and truth of art and music, and even turned them into spiritual ideals. As such, social realism focused on the \"ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working class people, particularly the poor.\" (The quotation is from George Shi, of the University of Fine Arts, Valencia). Trademarks Kitchen sink realism involves working class and accents, including accents from Northern England. The films and plays often explore taboo subjects such as adultery, pre-marital sex, abortion, and crime. Origins of the term In the United Kingdom, the term \"kitchen sink\" derived from an expressionist painting by John Bratby, which contained an image of a kitchen sink. Bratby did various kitchen and bathroom-themed paintings, including three paintings of toilets. Bratby's paintings of people often depicted the faces of his subjects as desperate and unsightly. Kitchen sink realism artists painted everyday objects, such as trash cans and beer bottles. The critic David Sylvester wrote an article in 1954 about trends in recent English art, calling his article \"The Kitchen Sink\" in reference to Bratby's picture. Sylvester argued that there was a new interest among young painters in domestic scenes, with stress on the banality of life.[1] Other artists associated with the kitchen sink style include Derrick Greaves, Edward Middleditch and Jack Smith. 1950s to 1960s Before the 1950s, the United Kingdom's working class were often depicted stereotypically in Noël Coward's drawing room comedies and British films. Kitchen sink realism was seen as being in opposition to the \"well-made play\", the kind which theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once denounced as being set in \"Loamshire\", of dramatists like Terence Rattigan. \"Well-made plays\" were a dramatic genre from nineteenth-century theatre which found its early 20th century codification in Britain in the form of William Archer's Play-Making: A Manual of Craftmanship (1912), and in the United States with George Pierce Baker's Dramatic Technique (1919). Kitchen sink works were created with the intention of changing all that. Their political views were initially labeled as radical, sometimes even anarchic.

196 British Drama - I John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger (1956) depicted young men in a way that is similar to the then-contemporary \"Angry Young Men\" movement of film and theatre directors. The \"angry young men\" were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. Following the success of the Osborne play, the label \"angry young men\" was later applied by British media to describe young writers who were characterised by a disillusionment with traditional British society. The hero of Look Back In Anger is a graduate, but he is working in a manual occupation. It dealt with social alienation, the claustrophobia and frustrations of a provincial life on low incomes. The impact of this work inspired Arnold Wesker, Shelagh Delaney, and numerous others, to write plays of their own. The English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, headed by George Devine and Theatre Workshop organised by Joan Littlewood were particularly prominent in bringing these plays to public attention. Critic John Heilpern wrote that Look Back in Anger expressed such \"immensity of feeling and class hatred\" that it altered the course of English theatre. The term \"Angry theatre\" was coined by critic John Russell Taylor. This was all part of the British New Wave — a transposition of the concurrent nouvelle vague film movement in France, some of whose works, such as The 400 Blows of 1959, also emphasised the lives of the urban proletariat. British filmmakers such as Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson (see also Free Cinema) channelled their vitriolic anger into film making. Confrontational films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and A Taste of Honey (1961) were noteworthy movies in the genre. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is about a young machinist who spends his wages at weekends on drinking and having a good time, until his affair with a married woman leads to her getting pregnant and him being beaten by her husband to the point of hospitalisation. A Taste of Honey is about a 16-year old schoolgirl with an abusive, alcoholic mother. The schoolgirl starts a relationship with a black sailor and gets pregnant. After the sailor leaves on his ship, Jo moves in with a homosexual acquaintance, Geoffrey, who assumes the role of surrogate father. A Taste of Honey raises the issues of class, race, gender and sexual orientation. Later, as many of these writers and directors diversified, kitchen sink realism was taken up by television directors who produced television plays. The single play was then a staple of the CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 197 medium, and Armchair Theatre (1956–68), produced by the ITV contractor ABC, The Wednesday Play (1964–70) and Play for Today (1970–84), both BBC series, contained many works of this kind. Jeremy Sandford's television play Cathy Come Home (1966, directed by Ken Loach for The Wednesday Play slot) for instance, addressed the then-stigmatised issue of homelessness. Kitchen sink realism was also used in the novels of Stan Barstow, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe and others. 5.8 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) A. Descriptive Types Questions 1. Write Aristotle’s concept of tragedy. 2. Explain the elements of tragedy. 3. What is catharsis? 4. What is hamartia? 5. What are the main features of the tragic character? 6. Write a note on the ideal tragic hero. 7. Critically examine the Restoration Comedy. 8. What do you understand from the term ‘The Theatre of the Absurd’? 9. What are ‘problem plays’? 10. Explain’Kitchen sink drama’? B. Multiple Choice/Objective Type Questions 1. Which of these is not a formative element of Tragedy (a) Plot (b) Character (c) Diction (d) Style 2. Which of these is not the characteristics of a Tragic Hero (a) Hamartia

198 British Drama - I (b) Catharsis (c) Intelligence (d) Peripeteia 3. What is the theatre of absurd? (a) A form of drama that emphasizes the meaninglessness of human existence (b) A form of drama that emphasizes the importance of fate in human life (c) A form of drama that ridicules the folly of society. (d) A poetic drama 4. Problem play is about________ (a) Social ills (b) Mental ills (c) Psychological ills (d) Physical ills 5. Which phrase is associated with Kitchen sink drama? (a) You must be the change you wish to see in the world (b) Everybody is a genius (c) Angry young man (d) he who fear, he will suffer. Answers: 1. (d), 2. (c), 3. (a), 4. (a), 5. (c). CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Terms 199 5.10 References 1. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/agamemnon-the-choephori-and-the- eumenides/critical-essay/aristotle-on-tragedy 2. http://neoenglishsystem.blogspot.com/2010/08/aristotles-concept-of-ideal-tragic- hero.html 3. https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to- restoration-comedy 4. https://blisty.cz/video/Slavonic/Absurd.htm 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_play 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink_realism

200 British Drama - I UNIT 6 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THEATRE Structure: 6.0 Learning Objective 6.1 17th Century Theatre 6.2 Restoration Drama 6.3. The Commercial Theatre in Early Seventeenth-Century England 6.4 A Royal Investigation 6.5 Parliament Closes the Theaters 6.6 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) 6.7 References 6.0 Learning Objective In this unit the students will understand how the seventeenth century theatre was and why were the theatres closed. They will understand the Restoration Drama. They will study about the Commercial theatres of the seventeenth century and understand the playwrights of the time. 6.1 17th Century Theatre The Court Masque The most lavish 17th century productions were not open to the public. King James I (reigned 1603–25) and later his son Charles I (reigned 1625–49) commissioned spectacular private performances called 'masques' which involved music, dance, opulent costumes and extraordinary scenery and special effects. They were performed once or twice at one of the royal palaces and were only seen by members of the court. Such lavish court entertainments were fashionable throughout Europe as an expression of princely power. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 201 Masques were often used to celebrate royal occasions such as a wedding or birth. Design and visual symbols played an important role in masques which called for lavish costumes and sets. Nobles and royalty would take part, often playing gods or heroes while the other roles were played by professional actors. Court entertainments were far more opulent than those of the public playhouses, but professional actors and writers crossed over between both. Masque-like elements began to be included in popular plays. There are masque scenes in Thomas Kyd's 'The Spanish Tragedy' and Shakespeare's 'Cymbeline' and 'The Tempest'. Ben Jonson wrote masques for the court as well as drama for the public playhouses. Inigo Jones (1573 - 1652) Inigo Jones introduced the proscenium arch and moveable scenery arranged in perspective into British theatre. While travelling in France and Italy he had been impressed and inspired by the use of stage machinery and scenic invention. Under James I and Charles I he collaborated with the writer Ben Jonson on a series of masques and elaborate court productions that cost a fortune. Inigo Jones's scenery used a series of shutters that slid in and out using grooves in the floor. He even flew in scenery from above and introduced coloured lighting by placing candles behind tinted glass. After a series of successful collaborations Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones quarrelled. Jonson accused Jones of ensuring that the scenic changes and transformations had more predominance in the masque than his poetry. Indeed 'The Masque of Oberon' in 1611 cost over £2000 and the costumes alone cost over £1000. Jonson received £40 for writing the script. Inigo Jones went on to design theatre buildings. In 1619 he transformed the Banqueting House at Whitehall into a theatre and in 1629 built the Cockpit at Court. The Closure of the Theatres In 1642 civil war broke out in England and theatres were closed to prevent public disorder. The theatres remained closed for 18 years, causing considerable hardship to professional theatre

202 British Drama - I performers, managers and writers. Illegal performances were only sporadic and many public theatres were demolished. The Puritans, led by Oliver Cromwell, opposed theatrical performances and were at loggerheads with King Charles I who promoted theatre at his court. In 1632 William Prynne had lost his ear for denouncing dancing as a 'Devil's Mass' and women actors as 'notorious whores' in his book Histriomastix. This was seen as a personal attack on Queen Henrietta Maria who loved the theatre and often performed in masques. However, Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans were less censorious about musical entertainment and tolerated occasional small-scale masques as the unavoidable trappings of government. In 1656, William Davenant succeeded in producing 'The Siege of Rhodes' in his home in an all-sung version. He staged it with moveable scenery arranged in perspective, which was to prove highly influential. According to legend, Davenant was the illegitimate son of William Shakespeare. He contributed to the last of the Stuart masques and was a fervent Royalist. After Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, Davenant and Thomas Killigrew were granted royal patents, which gave them virtual monopoly over presenting drama in London. These monopolies were not revoked until the 19th century. Davenant opened the Duke's Theatre where he presented adaptations of Shakespeare's plays with music, forerunners of the semi-operas of Purcell. Most scholars consider that Davenant's 'The Siege of Rhodes' was the first English opera. It was performed in 1656 at Rutland House in London. Davenant wrote the text but the score was the work of several different musicians. At this time, the theatres were closed and plays forbidden by law, although music was still played. It is possible that the entertainment was rather a way of getting round the law than an attempt to write a true opera. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 203 This engraving depicts the 'Duke's House' (later Duke's Theatre) where the Duke of York's players performed from 1661. It was originally a tennis court, built in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which Sir William Davenant converted into a performance space. It was at the Duke's Theatre that the first 'scenic' production of 'Hamlet' was staged, with Thomas Betterton as the Prince. 6.2 Restoration Drama The term 'Restoration' refers to the period following the restoration of Charles II to the throne of the United Kingdom in 1660. The introduction of scenery and elaborate stage machinery to the English public stage in the 1660s gave rise to blockbusting semi-operas. Many of these were adaptations of other plays, often by Shakespeare. These had episodes of music, singing, dancing and special effects. They even had transformation scenes. The 1674 production of 'The Tempest' had many spectacular scenes including a storm. The advances in scene design impacted on the design of theatre buildings, and behind the thrust stage a scenic stage was added, framed by a proscenium arch. The Duke's Theatre in Dorset Garden was planned by William Davenant and designed by Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul's Cathedral. It cost £9000 (about £600,000 today) paid for by 'adventurers' (we would call them backers). It stood by the River Thames and steps led up from the river for those patrons arriving by boat. The theatre was the grandest ever seen in Britain up to that time, with an elaborate proscenium arch, one of the first in London. Over the theatre were flats, where Thomas Betterton, the leading actor of the late 17th century and director of the acting company, lived. Restoration Dramatists Audiences had a preference for Restoration comedy and heroic tragedy in addition to plays by Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher and Shakespeare. Restoration dramatists include William

204 British Drama - I Wycherley, George Etherege, Thomas Otway, William Congreve and George Farquhar. The double standards of courtiers and members of the aristocracy were reflected in Restoration drama's obsession with social behaviour. Powerful and well-mannered characters were often portrayed as corrupt and sexually promiscuous. Women Writers The Restoration period also saw women become recognised as professional playwrights. The most famous of these was Aphra Behn. A group of women writers known as The Female Wits produced many works for the stage. They included Mary Pix, Catherine Trotter and the prolific Susannah Centlivre who wrote 19 plays including 'A Bold Stroke for a Wife'. When Charles II was restored to the throne, the theatre companies were quick to provide public performances again, initially in converted tennis courts. However, their freedom was short lived and Charles II soon reorganised the theatre by creating a monopoly through royal patent. This licensed only two companies to produce theatre in London. Their theatres Lincoln 's Inn Fields and Drury Lane became known as the 'patent theatres' and were managed and directed by Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant respectively. Charles II had a taste for the drama and opera he had seen in exile in France. He encouraged Killigrew and Davenant to introduce women on stage, thus breaking with the tradition of boy actors taking female roles and to introduce moveable perspective scenery which revolutionised staging and the design of theatre buildings. The royal patents also permitted a wide-ranging repertory, such as tragedies, comedies, plays, opera, musical theatre and dancing. Restoration Actors The leading Restoration actor was Thomas Betterton whom diarist Samuel Pepys regarded as the best in the world, noting that 'he could command attention even from the fops and flower girls'. Betterton went on to manage the Duke's Company from 1668. Other Restoration actors included Cave Underhill, Thomas Otway and Colley Cibber. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 205 The First Women on Stage The Restoration saw the emergence of the first professional actresses and playwrights. Breeches parts, where women disguised themselves as men (and thus revealed their ankles and legs in men's clothing) quickly proved very popular in Restoration drama. The first woman to appear on the professional stage in England is generally considered to be Margaret Hughes who performed at the Vere Street Theatre in 1660 in a production of Othello. Davenant employed eight actresses to perform with his company shortly afterwards. Other notable actresses included Elizabeth Barry who was known as the queen of tragedy. She was trained for the stage by the notorious womaniser, the Earl of Rochester, who was also her lover. The most infamous actress of this period was Nell Gwyn, who was painted nude for Charles II and bore him two children. 6.3 The Commercial Theatre in Early Seventeenth-Century England The Religious Legacy In the final quarter of the sixteenth century commercial theater experienced a sudden rise in popularity in England's capital of London. The new theaters were run by professionals, an unprecedented development in the country, since all of the elaborate medieval religious dramas had been staged by amateur actors. By 1600, Londoners and visitors to the capital could take their pick of a number of daily performances, staged in both outdoor public playhouses as well as in new \"private theaters\" that catered to a more elite clientele. Although England's new commercial theaters staged plays that made use of religious symbols and imagery to convey their ideas, the themes treated in the many plays staged in the capital's theaters were secular, a fact that arose from the country's religious Reformation. Around 1500, the most popular dramatic performance in England had been the great mystery cycles, performed in conjunction with the celebration of religious holidays, as well as the morality plays, which also treated religious themes. Growing criticism of these forms of drama in the first half of the sixteenth century from religious reformers had eventually resulted in the suppression of religious drama by the mid-sixteenth century. In the years that followed, the theater became a vehicle for religious propaganda, sometimes with undesirable results as audiences sometimes rioted in the wake of a particularly vigorous play that

206 British Drama - I did not align with their own religious convictions. As a consequence, regulations enacted in 1590 stipulated that plays must not treat religious subjects or controversies. Such requirements were also a concession to the many Puritans who lived in and around London at the time who found the theater morally degenerate and its staging of biblical and religious themes particularly objectionable. Puritanism, a form of Protestantism inspired in England by the ideas of the French Reformer John Calvin, rejected theater for a number of reasons. First, the Puritans knew well that the origins of drama lay in the great mystery cycles that had been performed in conjunction with church festivals in the later Middle Ages. Thus they attacked the theater as an art form whose origins lay in \"popery,\" the term the Puritans used to discredit all cultural features of medieval religion. Further, the Puritans advocated a sober and godly attitude toward everything in life and they came to detest the light comedies and other fare performed on London's stages as an affront to Christian living. A certain disreputability accrued to the theater as well, since to skirt London's regulations troupes often built their theaters at the edges of the city in quarters that were known to be haunts of thieves and prostitutes. Thus although Elizabeth I and her Stuart successors were to tolerate it, and in many cases to support its development, the theater remained controversial nonetheless in seventeenth-century England. Legacy of the Renaissance. When compared to the types of theater that flourished in many other parts of Europe, England's brand of entertainment was unusual for a number of reasons. During the fifteenth century the cultivated Renaissance courts of Italy had tried to revive ancient drama, and a number of authors had begun to fashion their plays according to the five-act structure that had flourished in the comedies of the Latin writers Plautus and Terence. In the most sophisticated circles, study of the ancient masters had given rise to vigorous attempts to recreate the ancient theater, and playhouses modeled on ancient examples had been just one of the consequences of the new fascination with Antiquity. By the mid-sixteenth century the elite fascination with antique drama produced in Italy and somewhat later in France a number of experiments in writing and staging tragedies based on Greek models. The appeal of many of the plays that resulted from these experiments had always been quite limited since the complex allusions with which they were filled and the structures upon which they were based were not fixed in native dramatic traditions CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 207 but in historical cultures that were, by and large, foreign to most audiences. Thus these experiments in reviving ancient comedy and tragedy — which were largely influenced by the culture of Renaissance humanism — rarely flourished outside court circles and small groups of cultivated elites. England's relative isolation from these currents of theatrical production, as well as the financial realities of the London stage — which depended on ticket sales rather than royal patronage for financial stability — meant that the influences it derived from the culture of the Renaissance were always relatively slight. The greatest of England's Elizabethan and seventeenth- century dramatists were, to be sure, men of learning, and many were certainly aware of the experiments in dramatic productions that had occurred over the previous generations in Continental Europe. Yet the plays that they wrote in great profusion in the final decades of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had to be pitched to a \"middle-brow\" audience. Thus rather than treating obscure subjects drawn from classical Antiquity or adopting the strict conventions of classical drama, England's playwrights chose themes that were well known to their audiences, or they wrote about subjects in ways that had a more universal appeal. This tendency can be seen in the great works of the eminent playwrights Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) and William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Marlowe was one of the best educated of the late Tudor-era dramatists. He had taken the bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Cambridge before embarking on his career as a writer for the London stage. In his great tragedy Tamburlaine the Great, Marlowe pioneered the use of blank, or unrhymed verse, a departure from the conventions of the day that relied on elaborate rhyme schemes. The use of blank verse allowed Marlowe's characters to speak with great naturalness and propelled the action of his drama forward in ways that held his audiences spellbound. In his slightly later Dr. Faustus, the dramatist treated elevated themes — the personal nature of evil, the quest for worldly success, and the damning consequences of pride — yet he did so in a way that could be understood by both the educated and uneducated classes. For instance, he relied on the traditional conventions of the late- medieval morality play rather than the more foreign structures of Greek tragedy. In this way his audiences found familiar signposts in his dramas that allowed them to follow themes and incidents that were nonetheless presented with considerable sophistication.

208 British Drama - I Legal Realities. Despite his ability to stage elevated themes and complex incidents in ways that did not sacrifice intellectual depth, Christopher Marlowe's career as a writer for the London stage also exemplified the dangers that existed in this choice of profession. In the years immediately preceding his death, Marlow repeatedly answered charges of immorality and religious heresy, and his death in a barroom brawl was most likely a planned execution, brought on by his unpopular religious opinions as well as his prominence on the London theatrical scene. The sudden rise of the English commercial theater — a phenomenon made possible only in 1574 by the crown's decision to allow public, week-day performances in London — was undoubtedly popular, but controversial all the same. In the city of London, public officials feared the theater as a forum that might foment rebellion and immorality, and the town's growing cadre of Puritan ministers also detested the stage as a violation of Old Testament prohibitions against idolatry. The town's first public playhouses thus were situated, not inside the area of the city controlled by London's town government, but in fringe zones known as the \"Liberties,\" where the municipal government held no authority. It was in these areas that dubious trades, prostitution, and other morally suspect enterprises had long flourished, and as the theater took up residence in these zones, it did little to dispel the dubious notoriety that already accrued to the entire dramatic enterprise. And while the crown tolerated London's stages, and even supported their cause against the municipal government, the monarchy promised censorship and persecution to those playwrights and actors who skirted too close to the edge of what was permissible. A distinguished lineage of playwrights in Tudor and Stuart times fell afoul of the law, including Ben Jonson (1572–1637), Thomas Nashe (1567–1601), Thomas Middleton (1580–1627), and Philip Massinger (1583–1640). Ben Jonson, the greatest London dramatist in the years after Shakespeare's retirement from writing for the theater, was imprisoned on a number of occasions; his association with the ill-fated production of The Isle of the Dogs (1597) landed Jonson in jail, and London's theaters were subsequently closed for a number of months. While Jonson was later released for his role in the \"seditious\" play, his partner in the enterprise, Thomas Nashe, fled to the Continent and died in exile. The whims of royal fancy and displeasure, which continued to blow hot and cold during the reign of the Stuarts, made play writing and acting hazardous, and the profession was often financially untenable. Once successful on the London stage, William Shakespeare invested in a CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 209 brewery and other country enterprises to ensure that he had a safe and sustained income. He likely did so to prevent the very same problems suffered by his fellow professionals Jonson and Nashe, and to protect himself against any future theatrical closures. Other Practical Considerations By the time of James I's accession as king of England in 1603, the city of London's major commercial theaters were well established landmarks on the capital's scene, and despite sporadic problems with censorship and the imprisonment of playwrights, theater was flourishing quite vigorously. The first of London's commercial playhouses had been built in 1576 by a partnership of John Brayne and the actor James Burbage and was called merely the \"Theater.\" Located in suburban Whitechapel, its stage consisted of three galleries superimposed on top of each other, an attempt to imitate the ancient Roman styles of stages that were becoming better known throughout Europe at the time as a result of humanistic research. Besides its covered stage, however, the Theater, like most of London's public playhouses, was exposed to the open air. Performances were thus held during daylight hours. The success of the Theater was soon followed by a string of new playhouses, including the Curtain founded one year later on a site close by the Theater, the Rose, the Swan, and finally, the famous Globe, a theater that was, in fact, moved from an earlier location north of the river Thames. These last three institutions were built, not to the northeast of the city of London in Whitechapel, but on the south bank of the River Thames, establishing a small theater district that persisted there for a number of years. At this early stage in the theater's development in England, men and young boys performed all roles since women were not allowed on the stage. London had several \"boy troupes\" at this time which were particularly popular among the audiences who visited London's \"private theaters\"—more expensive venues that were enclosed to the elements and consequently provided a smaller and more intimate setting for drama. These stages were candlelit, and thus performances could be held at night. There were eight of these private theaters in London before Puritan measures enacted in 1642 forced all the capital's theaters to close. The evidence suggests that, despite their higher price of admission, the private theaters became more popular and profitable than the large open- air public facilities throughout the reign of James I and Charles I. Although their patrons may have initially been drawn from higher echelons of society, the private theaters of London in this

210 British Drama - I period were anything but luxurious. Poorly ventilated, and filled with bleacher-style seating, they afforded each patron a space only about eighteen inches wide on which to sit. The presence of hundreds of patrons in these cramped spaces, too, must have been particularly uncomfortable in the summer months when the atmosphere within the private theaters was quite close and the ventilation inadequate. Despite these hardships, many seem to have preferred the smaller houses, and the old arena-styled theaters became associated in many people's minds with lower-class disorderliness. Like most theatrical venues in Europe, all of London's theaters at the time continued to be subject to periodic closures when epidemics struck or during periods of royal mourning. Troupes and Playwrights. The new theaters were thoroughly commercial ventures, although many of the troupes augmented their incomes by performing at court. Actors founded some of the city's playhouses after receiving backing from an investor. In this type of arrangement, the profits of the venture were split between commercial backers and the actors of the troupe. In other arrangements the troupe owned its own props and venue, and the profits of a production were split between the troupe members. And in still a third kind of arrangement, many troupes took up residence in theaters that were owned by others, splitting the profits of their productions between the house and the performers. Licensing regulations in effect in England since the 1570s insisted that a troupe of actors had to be supervised by and affiliated with a member of the nobility, and the titles that acting troupes adopted thus honored their noble patrons. The patron of the Chamberlain's Men, the troupe of which Shakespeare was a member, was Queen Elizabeth's Lord Chamberlain Henry Carey. When the company came under the patronage of King James I in 1603, the troupe renamed itself the King's Men. In this way the titles of many troupes changed over time. Perhaps no company ever changed its name so frequently as that which began as the Lord Howard's Men around 1576. As Lord Howard was elevated to the position of Lord Admiral, the company became the \"Lord Admiral's Men.\" But later in the early seventeenth century as the group came under different patrons, it became known as \"Nottingham's Men,\" \"Prince Henry's Men,\" and \"Palsgrave's Men.\" Many of these troupes retained their own playwrights, who crafted the dramas and sometimes doubled as actors in the troupe itself. In this regard William Shakespeare's path to CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 211 becoming a successful playwright was not unusual. He began as an actor in the company before beginning to write plays for the Chamberlain's Men around 1590. Thereafter, his success elevated him in the company until he had become its director in the early seventeenth century. While great milestones of English literature survive from the Tudor and Stuart period, most of the dramas that were produced at this time were considered ephemeral, that is, they were staged for a time and then put aside. The popularity of the theater meant that audiences craved new works, and playwrights often obliged by dramatizing incidents that had recently occurred in London and around Europe. The great works of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare continue to fascinate audiences today with the depths of their psychological insight and their examination of characters' strengths and weaknesses, although it must be remembered that few of the hundreds of plays performed in London at this time rose to this level of greatness. Many were topical works, hurriedly written to take advantage of the interests of the day and then discarded when fashions shifted. London troupes were also jealous of their properties. Plays were not usually printed until well after they had been performed so that other troupes working in the capital could not pirate their productions. Such was the secrecy surrounding the script that most actors did not even receive an entire copy of the play they were performing, but were only given their own lines with appropriate cues so that they could not sell the play to another troupe. While plagiarism and artistic theft was a consistent problem between theaters, playwrights who wrote for the London scene were enthusiastic theatergoers, and they visited the plays written by their rivals for other houses. In his early days as a playwright, even William Shakespeare received accusations that he had plagiarized the works of other London writers. In truth, the practice of imitating successful works was as common then as it is among film producers in the modern world. Playwrights and troupes longed to exploit the themes and plots that had already proven to be successful with audiences, and over time plays treating similar themes and subjects were produced until the appetite for them was exhausted. William Shakespeare. Despite commercial considerations and censorship, the achievements of early seventeenth- century drama in England still manages to astound modern observers. During the first years of the reign of James I (r. 1603–1625), the writing of William Shakespeare and a group of other

212 British Drama - I accomplished playwrights reached a new level of maturity and finesse. During the 1590s, Shakespeare's plays had most often treated historical or comic themes, but in the first part of the seventeenth century, he conducted a number of experiments in genres that undermined and extended the traditional confines of popular Elizabethan forms, producing works that refashioned comedy, tragedy, and romance. The first signs of the author's growing mastery over his craft came in the series of \"problem\" plays that he produced just after 1600. In these works—Measure for Measure, All's Well that Ends Well, and Troilus andCressida—Shakespeare extended the boundaries of comedy by resolving his works in unexpected ways that undermined the neat moralistic formulas the genre had traditionally served. Characters in these dramas are forgiven their foibles and shortcomings even when they do not deserve to be forgiven, or the heroes of these dramas achieve success despite significant moral failings and personality flaws. Shakespeare continued in this vein of experimentation in the series of tragedies and historical dramas in the years that followed. In his Othello (1603), for instance, the author explored the psychological consequences of racism. The central character, Othello, is a Moor (a black African) who is married to a much younger and white Desdemona. When driven mad by the adulterous accusations brought against her by his treacherous friend, Iago, Othello murders her, and then realizes afterward that he must live with the consequences of his rush to judgment. Thus Othello is a fatally flawed tragic figure, but his flaw is curiously inexplicable given his status as the very model of propriety and good judgment prior to his rash act of murder. His willingness to believe the false accusations of Iago, though, results from his doubt about his interracial marriage. Iago, in other words, has been able to play upon Othello's own fears that a black man's marriage to a white woman is unnatural. In his King Lear (c. 1605), Shakespeare continued to examine his characters with great psychological insight. Like Othello, Lear is a flawed character who has unjustly banished his daughter Cordelia from his presence, but who is subsequently driven insane by the even greater injustice and monumental ingratitude of his two remaining daughters, Goneril and Regan. In his mad ravings he contemplates the nature of justice and the order of the universe, observations that are made more chillingly forceful because a seeming madman utters them. In the final of these late tragedies, Macbeth, Shakespeare explored the consequences of incivility, and, as in both Othello and King Lear, he brought major insights to bear on the dark emotions that produce enormous crimes. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 213 Historical Plays and Later Comedies Even as the great dramatist was at work on these masterpieces, he continued to produce historical plays and a series of brilliant romances. In contrast to the histories of comparatively recent English kings he had produced during the 1590s, the author turned to ancient Roman and Greek figures in the seventeenth century, finding in the relative obscurity and distance of Antiquity a vehicle for producing some of his great late masterworks, including his Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1606), perhaps his greatest historical work. Shakespeare produced some of his most insightful portraits of kingship and political power, not by concentrating on the kings of the near English past, but by examining the more remote universe of Antiquity. In this way the playwright circumvented the draconian censorship that James I's officials sometimes practiced in the theater. While these later ancient historical plays show a development of Shakespeare's art to a level of dramatic ease and fluency — a level that most critics agree has never been surpassed — the later comedies of this period also show a similar experimental spirit. These plays — The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest — are alternately termed \"romances\" or \"comedies.\" All three works are full of various kinds of entertainments, complex plots, and sub-plots, and their meanings have proven difficult to ascertain over the years. This favoring of a complex and highly sophisticated art may likely have been caused by commercial factors. In 1608, Shakespeare's troupe, the King's Men, took up winter quarters in the Blackfriars Theatre, a private theater located in an ancient London monastery that had been dissolved during the Reformation. The audience who frequented the Blackfriars was likely better educated and craved the elaborate concoctions that Shakespeare supplied them with in the years between 1608 and his retirement from the troupe after 1611. These productions were filled with dancing, singing, and \"masques\" that imitated the customs of courtly society, and their complex allusions and sophisticated poetry are very different from the world of the author's youth. Some critics have detected a strain of increasing self-doubt and critical self-examination in these works, a strain they have connected with the approach of the author's old age. Yet in 1611, when Shakespeare went into semi-retirement from his troupe, he was not yet fifty, and with his fortunes relatively established, he seems to have hoped to play the role of a country gentleman in his native Stratford-Upon-Avon. Although he probably returned to assist on one or several occasions, his increasing isolation meant that his company, the King's

214 British Drama - I Men, turned to his associate John Fletcher for dramas. Fletcher ruled for many years as one of the most prolific of Jacobean playwrights, although the quality of authors who wrote for the stage in these years was generally very high. Ben Jonson. While many of the details concerning the life of William Shakespeare continue to be debated, scholars are on far firmer ground in exploring the life and career of Ben Jonson (1572–1637), the figure who is today considered the second towering genius of the early seventeenth-century English stage. Jonson was probably a native Londoner, although his family hailed originally from Scotland. Educated at Westminster School and later for a time at St. John's College in Cambridge, he first pursued a career as a bricklayer before becoming an English soldier in forces that were then helping the Dutch achieve their independence from Spain. When he returned to England, he became an actor, performing as a character in the Tudor dramatist Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. This was one of the most popular plays of the late Elizabethan period, and it was frequently revived in the decades that followed. Jonson eventually wrote additional dialogue for the play, as he seems to have done for other works performed during the 1590s. By 1594, Jonson was successful enough to marry, and he seems to have worked as an actor in several London theaters, although he eventually joined the troupe known as \"Pembroke's Men.\" In 1597, he wrote his first play for the group, and soon afterwards he took part in the ill-fated The Isle of Dogs, the production that landed him in jail. The play was considered so seditious at the time that all copies of it were seized and destroyed, and thus historians have long debated about what its contents must have included. The title refers to an island situated in the Thames just across from the former site of the royal palace at Greenwich, but the drama itself apparently mocked the intrigues of court. Jonson was imprisoned for several months, and when the London theaters reopened in 1598, he achieved his first great success with the play Every Man in His Humour, a sophisticated comedy set in the urban world. It made use of the notion of the then-reigning scientific theory of the \"four humors,\" the forces that were believed to govern health and the human psyche. During 1598, Jonson again fell afoul of the law when he killed a fellow actor. While in prison for this offense, the playwright repented and converted to Catholicism, a decision that dogged him for the rest of his life. Upon his release, Jonson returned to write for the theater, but by 1603, he had CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 215 again fallen under suspicion, this time for Catholicism and also for the treason that members of Elizabeth I's Privy Council felt littered his recent play Sejanus His Fall. In the years that followed, Jonson labored to rehabilitate himself with King James I. At the same time suspicions continued to hover around him, and he was frequently detained for questioning because of his Catholic beliefs and the fear that he was secretly practicing his religion. He was imprisoned again in 1605, this time for a play that seemed to mock the manners of James I and his Scottish nobles, but he soon attained his release. During the crisis of the Gunpowder Plot in the same year — a foiled scheme to blow up the Houses of Parliament in Westminster — Jonson again fell under suspicion, although he acquitted himself by giving evidence against the conspirators. Jonson 's Rising Success Despite lingering suspicions about his loyalties, Jonson's career flourished in the years after 1605. In that year he began producing masques for the Stuart court in partnership with the accomplished designer and architect Inigo Jones (1573–1652). These imaginative productions were widely admired, and the partnership spread across several decades before the two parted company. In 1605, he also wrote perhaps his most biting and satirical comedy Volpone, a work that showed little of his associate Shakespeare's propensity for happy endings. Volpone bristles with the firsthand knowledge that he had acquired of the corruption that reposed in royal courts. Prudently, though, Jonson set the play in Republican Venice, but the deceit and trickery that he related might just as easily have occurred in the Stuart halls of power. In 1610, James I enacted a series of new measures directed at English Recusants, that is, those that espoused and practiced the Catholic religion, and in the wake of these measures, Jonson renounced his Catholicism and returned to the Church of England. Successes continued, and in the years that followed, the great playwright entertained ever-greater notions of his success as a scholar. For his efforts in entertaining the king, and his achievements in the theater, he was granted a royal pension in 1616, the same year that William Shakespeare died. With Shakespeare's death, Jonson reaped even greater praise as England's greatest living writer. A folio edition of his work appeared in 1616, and by 1619, he was granted an honorary degree from the University of Oxford. This increasing fame, though, exacted a toll on his writing, and between 1616 and 1626 he produced no major works, although he did continue to produce masques for the court. One year following James I's

216 British Drama - I death, Jonson produced his first play in a decade, The Staple of News, a work that, like several of the play-wright's earlier pieces, satirized the growing tendency for trust to be generated in the business world and society merely by deceit and fast talking. The play was topical, since it was staged merely a year after the death of James I and seemed to mock the controversial Stuart practice of granting monopolies to trade in certain industries as well as problems in the new King Charles I's court. A few years following its production, Jonson suffered a stroke, although he was granted an office as London city historian soon afterwards. The king increased his pension, and he continued to write, completing an additional three comedies before his death in 1637. None of these, though, matched the success of his earlier works. Other Playwrights Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare were the great geniuses of early seventeenth-century English theater. Critics have long debated about the relative merits of each figure's works, some advocating that Jonson's plays show a greater range of learning and depth of examination than do those of the more famous Shakespeare. Certainly, Jonson was a more varied artist than Shakespeare. In addition to the dramas and poetry that he wrote, he also made significant contributions to English prose, and his interests were more wide-ranging and philosophical in nature than those of Shakespeare. It remains, however, a matter of taste as to which artist one prefers, and even if these two admittedly brilliant figures had never lived, the theatrical writing of the reign of King James I and Charles I might still appear particularly brilliant. Of the many capable dramatists who wrote in this period, Thomas Middleton (c. 1580–1627), Thomas Heywood (1573–1641), Thomas Dekker (c. 1570–1632), Francis Beaumont (c. 1584–1616), and John Fletcher (1579–1625) rank among the most prolific and accomplished, and they kept audiences entertained with a considerable out-pouring of high-quality works. Thomas Middleton, for example, excelled in the genre of \"city comedy\" that was then very much in vogue. These witty and sophisticated comedies concentrated on the problems of court and city life. Middleton achieved dubious notoriety for one of these productions, A Game at Chess (1624), a biting satire that mocked the attempt by James I's son, Charles, to conclude a marital alliance with Spain. In particular, the work's most penetrating barbs were reserved for the then-serving Spanish ambassador to England. The work caused a sensation in London, earning an extraordinary sum of CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 217 £1,000 in its nine consecutive days of performances, and inducing crowds to stand in long lines to purchase tickets. Middleton and his troupe recognized that the production was going to cause controversy, and they carefully timed their staging of A Game at Chess to coincide with the royal court's absence from London. But James I soon learned of the production and banned all future performances. In performing the work, Middleton and his actors played on popular anti-Spanish sentiment that had seethed below the surface of English society since the late sixteenth century. At the same time, the writer's attempts to capitalize on these sentiments helped to shape royal policy, as Charles turned eventually to France, and not to Spain, in search of a royal bride. This work also affected other plays, as most playwrights became more guarded, practicing self- censorship in the wake of the famous suppression. Middleton may be best known for his part in this famous scandal, but more recently, the structure of his poetry has been studied with the aid of digital technology. This research has shown that he collaborated with a number of early seventeenth-century authors and that the stamp of his prose is considerable in some of Shakespeare's works, including Macbeth. Such research reminds us that the concept of \"authorship\" was very different in the seventeenth-century world, and that many plays that we have long thought of as the works of a solitary genius like Shakespeare were actually hammered together from the efforts of more than one author. Thomas Dekker and Thomas Heywood were two such figures who produced their own works, but who also collaborated with a number of other playwrights. Heywood claimed to have written or have participated in the writing of more than 200 plays. Unfortunately, only a small portion of them — about thirty — survive. Thomas Dekker's stamp appears in about 50 works from the period, and the author was notable among playwrights of the time for his populist perspective as well as for the openly Puritan position he took in some of his plays. In contrast to the common stamp evident in Thomas Dekker's works, the theatrical writing team of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher produced many dramas that focused on the values of the nobility and gentry. Their works were long thought to be merely an apology for the Stuart's political theory of the \"divine right of kings.\" More recent inspection, though, has shown that they worked a fairly sophisticated analysis of the concepts of kingship into their plays, and that they were even suspected of treason at one point in their careers for depicting the assassination of a monarch. After Beaumont's death in 1616, Fletcher continued to produce a number of works with other Jacobean-era authors.

218 British Drama - I 6.4 A Royal Investigation Introduction The staging of Thomas Middleton's play, A Game at Chess, was notable for the great furor it caused in London when performed in August of 1624. The play mocked the royal family and high-ranking officials, so the company known as the King's Players had timed their performance of it to occur when King James I was out of town. Word of the spectacle, however, soon came to the king, and he suppressed the performances of it. He also demanded that his officials conduct an investigation, the progress of which is reported in the following letter. A key point in the investigation hinged on just why the royal censor, the Master of Revels as he was known, had allowed the play to be performed in the first place. According to His Majesty's pleasure signified to this Board by your letter of the 12th of August touching the suppressing of a scandalous comedy, acting by the King's Players, we have called before us some of the principal actors and demanded of them by what licence and authority they have presumed to act the same: in answer whereunto they produced a book, being an original and perfect copy thereof (as they affirmed) seen and allowed by Sir Henry Herbert, Knight, Master of the Revels, under his own hand, and subscribed in the last page of the said book. We, demanding further whether there were no other parts or passages represented on the stage than those expressly contained in the book, they confidently protested they added or varied from the same nothing at all. The poet, they tell us, is one Middleton who, shifting out of the way, and not attending the Board with the rest as we expected we have given Warrant to a messenger for the apprehending of him. To those that were before us we gave sound and sharp reproof, making them sensible of His Majesty's high displeasure therein, giving them straight charge and command that they presume not to act the said comedy any more, nor that they suffer any play or enterlude whatsoever to be acted by them, or any of their company, until His Majesty's pleasure be further known … As for our certifying to His Majesty (as was intimated by your letter) what passages in the said comedy we should find to be offensive and scandalous, we have thought it our duties for His CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 219 Majesty's clearer information to send herewithal the book itself, subscribed as aforesaid by the Master of the Revels, that so, either yourself, or some other whom His Majesty shall appoint to peruse the same, may see the passages themselves out of the original, and call Sir Henry Herbert before you to know a reason of his licensing thereof who (as we are given to understand) is now attending at court. So, having done as much as we conceived agreeable with our duties in conformity with His Majesty's royal commandments, and that which we hope shall give him full satisfaction, we shall continue our humble prayers to Almighty God for his health and safety. The Closing of the Theaters During the first quarter of the seventeenth century the popularity of the theater had been great in London. In the 1630s, however, the capital's theatrical landscape began to alter. At this time Puritans began to redouble their long-standing efforts to eradicate theatrical performances, and they engaged the Crown in a number of disputes over the religious policies the country should pursue. In 1633, William Prynne, a prominent Puritan lawyer in London, published one of the most vociferous of the movement's many attacks on the theater, his Histrio Mastix. The almost 1,000 pages of this volume derided the stage and criticized the Crown for its support of the \"popish\" rituals of the theater. Although Prynne was soon imprisoned for his words, his example emboldened others, and the rising tide of Puritan sentiments in and around London meant that by the 1640 attendance was falling at London's theaters and the quality of their productions was in decline. In the years that followed, few great playwrights continued to write for the London stage, and when Puritan forces gained control of Parliament in the early 1640s, they soon outlawed the theater altogether. Their first measures of 1642 forced the capital's theaters to close, but clandestine performances continued to be mounted, prompting Parliament to pass an even tougher measure against all forms of drama in 1647. Those who participated in or who watched any performance were now threatened with stiff penalties. The course of the English civil wars made these measures possible. In 1642, King Charles I had abandoned London altogether, as the capital had become too dangerous a place in which to reside. He retreated to the west of England and there raised a force that engaged with Puritan forces on battlefields throughout the British Isles. By 1647, royalist forces were in retreat, although the king continued to scheme against the rising

220 British Drama - I power of Parliament. In August of 1648, Charles was finally captured, tried, and executed, thus giving rise to the period of the Puritan Commonwealth, which lasted until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. During this period the theater largely ceased to exist in England, and when Charles I's son, Charles II, returned to England and soon restored the theater, very few of the great playwrights that had flourished on the London scene in the first half of the seventeenth century were still alive. Only two notable playwrights from Charles I's age — James Shirley (1596–1666) and William Davenant (1606–1668) — 6.5 Parliament Closes the Theaters Introduction In 1642, a Puritan-controlled Parliament issued an ordinance that ordered all stages closed in London on moral grounds. Although these measures were relatively clear, players continued to ignore them on occasion. In 1647, Parliament reiterated its demands that theaters be closed in England's capital, and in no uncertain terms it outlawed all attempts to evade the statute. The act notably termed those who defied it (i.e., actors who continued to perform) \"rogues\" and insisted that they and those who watched them would face swift punishments for defiance. Whereas the Acts of Stage-Plays, Interludes, and common Plays, condemned by ancient Heathens, and much less to be tolerated amongst Professors of the Christian Religion, is the occasion of many and sundry great vices and disorders, tending to the high provocation of God's wrath and displeasure, which lies heavy upon this Kingdom, and to the disturbance of the peace thereof; in regard whereof the same hath been prohibited by Ordinance of this present Parliament, and yet is presumed to be practiced by divers in contempt thereof. Therefore for the better suppression of the said Stage-Plays, Interludes, and common Players, It is Ordered and Ordained by the Lords and Commons in this present Parliament Assembled, and by Authority of the same, That all Stage-Players, and Players of Interludes, and common Plays, are hereby declared to be, and are, and shall be taken to be Rogues, and punishable within the Statutes of the thirty-ninth year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, and the seventh year of the Reign of King James, and liable unto the pains and penalties therein contained, and proceeded against according to the said CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 221 Statutes, whether they be wanderers or no, and notwithstanding any license whatsoever from the King or any person or persons to that purpose. It is further Ordered and Ordained by the Authority aforesaid, That the Lord Mayor, Justices of the peace, and Sheriffs of the City of London and Westminster, and of the Counties of Middlesex and Surrey, or any two or more of them, shall, and may, and are hereby authorized and required to pull down and demolish, or cause or procure to be pulled down and demolished all Stage-Galleries, Seats, and Boxes, erected or used, or which shall be erected and used for the acting, or playing, or seeing acted or played, such Stage-Plays, Interludes, and Plays aforesaid, within the said City of London and Liberties thereof, and other places within their respective jurisdictions; and all such common Players, and Actors of such Plays and Interludes, as upon view of them, or any one of them, or by Oath of two Witnesses (which they are hereby authorized to administer) shall be proved before them, or any two of them to have Acted, or played such Plays and Interludes as aforesaid at any time hereafter, or within the space of two Months before the time of the said Conviction, by their Warrant or Warrants under their hands and seals, to cause to be apprehended, and openly and publicly whipped in some Market Town within their several Jurisdictions during the time of the said Market, and also to cause such Offender and Offenders to enter into Recognizance, or Recognizances, with two sufficient Sureties never to Act or play any Plays or Interludes any more, and shall return in the said Recognizance, or Recognizances, into the Sizes or Sessions to be then next beholden for the said Counties and Cities respectively; and to commit to the common Jail any such person and persons as aforesaid, as shall refuse to be bound, and find such Sureties as aforesaid, until he or they shall so become bound. And in case any such person or persons so Convicted of the said offence, shall after again offend in the same kind, that then the said person or persons so offending, shall be, and is hereby Declared to be, and be taken as an incorrigible Rogue, and shall be punished and dealt with as an incorrigible Rogue ought to be by the said Statutes.

222 British Drama - I 6.6 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) A. Descriptive Types Questions 1. Write in detail about the Seventeenth Century drama. 2. What were the Court Masques? 3. What was the impact on the theatres after the civil war broke out in 1642? 4. Write in brief about the Restoration drama? 5. Explain the role of women in theatre. 6. Write a critical note on the commercial theatre of the seventeenth century. 7. Write a note on the Religious legacy and the legacy of the Renaissance. 8. Describe the condition of the theatres in the 17th century. 9. Critically comment on the troupes and playwrights of that time. 10. Shakespeares’s writing reached a new level of maturity. Comment. 11. Throw light on the historical plays and later comedies of that time. 12. Why is Ben Jonson considered the second towering genius of the early seventeenth- century English stage? B. Multiple Choice/Objective Type Questions 1. ‘Restoration’ refers to the period following the restoration of ______________to the throne of the United Kingdom in 1660 (a) Cromwell (b) Charles I (c) Charles II (d) Queen Elizabeth 2. The first woman to appear on the professional stage was (a) Elizabeth Barry (b) Margaret Hughes (c) Nell Gwyn (d) Aphra Behn CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Seventeenth Century Theatre 223 3. The famous troupes of the 16 century does not include________________ (a) Nottingham’s Men (b) Palsgrave’s Men (c) Prince Henry’s Men (d) James I’s Men 4. ______________opposed theatrical performances (a) Queen Henrietta Maria (b) King James I (c) Oliver Cromwell (d) William Prynne 5. _____________________ opened Duke’s theatre and staged the plays of Sakespeare. (a) William Davenant (b) Thomas Killigrew (c) Christopher Wren (d) Thomas Betterton Answers: 1. (c), 2. (b), 3. (d), 4. (c), 5. (a). 6.7 Reference 1. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/0-9/17th century-theatre/ 2. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/culture-magazines/commercial-theater-early- seventeenth-century-england 3. Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Playing Companies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 4. George K. Hunter, English Drama, 1586–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 5. Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry, and William Ingram, eds., English Professional Theatre, 1530–1660 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 6. Louis B. Wright, Shakespeare's Theater and the Dramatic Tradition (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1963).

224 British Drama - I UNIT 7 THE SCHOOL OF SCANDAL ―Richard Sheridan Structure: 7.0 Learning Objective 7.1 About the Playwright- Richard Sheridan 7.2 The School for Scandal Summary 7.3 The School for Scandal Themes 7.4 Rumors, Wit, and Cruelty 7.5 The Man of Sentiment 7.6 Family Honor and Money 7.7 The School for Scandal Characters 7.8 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) 7.9 References 7.0 Learning Objective In this unit the students will learn about the playwright Richard Sheridan and his dramatic techniques. After studying The School For Scandal,they will get to understand what a comedy of manners is. They will learn how the plot unfolds, the role of different characters, the dialogues, the settings, the theme and the message conveyed through the play. 7.1 About the Playwright- Richard Sheridan Richard Brinsley Sheridan, in full Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan, (baptized November 4, 1751, Dublin, Ireland—died July 7, 1816, London, England), Irish-born playwright, CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The School of Scandal 225 impresario, orator, and Whig politician. His plays, notably The School for Scandal (1777), form a link in the history of the comedy of manners between the end of the 17th century and Oscar Wilde in the 19th century. Formative Years Sheridan was the third son of Thomas and Frances Sheridan. His grandfather Thomas Sheridan had been a companion and confidant of Jonathan Swift; his father was the author of a pronouncing dictionary and the advocate of a scheme of public education that gave a prominent place to elocution; and his mother gained some fame as a playwright. The family moved to London, and Sheridan never returned to Ireland. He was educated (1762–68) at Harrow, and in 1770 he moved with his family to Bath. There Sheridan fell in love with Elizabeth Ann Linley (1754–92), whose fine soprano voice delighted audiences at the concerts and festivals conducted by her father, Thomas. In order to avoid the unpleasant attentions of a Welsh squire, Thomas Mathews of Llandaff, she decided to take refuge in a French nunnery. Sheridan accompanied her to Lille in March 1772 but returned to fight two duels that same year with Mathews. Meanwhile, Elizabeth had returned home with her father, and Sheridan was ordered by his father to Waltham Abbey, Essex, to pursue his studies. He was entered at the Middle Temple in April 1773 but after a week broke with his father, gave up a legal career, and married Elizabeth at Marylebone Church, London. Theatrical Career After his marriage Sheridan turned to the theatre for a livelihood. His comedy The Rivals opened at Covent Garden Theatre, London, in January 1775. It ran an hour longer than was usual, and, because of the offensive nature and poor acting of the character of Sir Lucius O’Trigger, it was hardly a success. Drastically revised and with a new actor as Sir Lucius, its second performance 11 days later won immediate applause. The situations and characters were not entirely new, but Sheridan gave them freshness by his rich wit, and the whole play reveals Sheridan’s remarkable sense of theatrical effect. The play is characteristic of Sheridan’s work in its genial mockery of the affectation displayed by some of the characters. Even the malapropisms that slow down the play give a proper sense of caricature to the character of Mrs. Malaprop.

226 British Drama - I Some of the play’s success was due to the acting of Lawrence Clinch as Sir Lucius. Sheridan showed his gratitude by writing the amusing little farce St. Patrick’s Day; Or, The Scheming Lieutenant for the benefit performance given for Clinch in May 1775. Another example of his ability to weave an interesting plot from well-worn materials is seen in The Duenna, produced the following November. The characters are generally undeveloped, but the intrigue of the plot and charming lyrics and the music by his father-in-law, Thomas Linley, and his son gave this ballad opera great popularity. Its 75 performances exceeded the 62, a record for that time, credited to John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728), and it is still revived. Thus, in less than a year Sheridan had brought himself to the forefront of contemporary dramatists. David Garrick, looking for someone to succeed him as manager and proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre, saw in Sheridan a young man with energy, shrewdness, and a real sense of theatre. A successful physician, James Ford, agreed with Garrick’s estimate and increased his investment in the playhouse. In 1776, Sheridan and Linley became partners with Ford in a half- share of Drury Lane Theatre. Two years later they bought the other half from Willoughby Lacy, Garrick’s partner. In fact, Sheridan’s interest in his theatre soon began to seem rather fitful. Nevertheless, he was responsible for the renewed appreciation of Restoration comedy that followed the revival of the plays of William Congreve at Drury Lane. In February 1777 he brought out his version of Sir John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse (1696) as A Trip to Scarborough, again showing his talent for revision. He gave the rambling plot a neater shape and removed much indelicacy from the dialogue, but the result was disappointing, probably because of the loss of much of the earlier play’s gusto. What Sheridan learned from the Restoration dramatists can be seen in The School for Scandal, produced at Drury Lane in May 1777. That play earned him the title of “the modern Congreve.” Although resembling Congreve in that its satirical wit is so brilliant and so general that it does not always distinguish one character from another, The School for Scandal does contain two subtle portraits in Joseph Surface and Lady Teazle. There were several Restoration models (e.g. Mrs. Pinchwife in William Wycherley’s The Country-Wife and Miss Hoyden in Vanbrugh’s The Relapse) for the portrayal of a country girl amazed and delighted by the sexual CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The School of Scandal 227 freedom of high society. Sheridan softened his Lady Teazle, however, to suit the more refined taste of his day. The part combined innocence and sophistication and was incomparably acted. The other parts were written with equal care to suit the members of the company, and the whole work was a triumph of intelligence and imaginative calculation. With its spirited ridicule of affectation and pretentiousness, it is often considered the greatest comedy of manners in English. Sheridan’s flair for stage effect, exquisitely demonstrated in scenes in The School for Scandal, was again demonstrated in his delightful satire on stage conventions, The Critic, which since its first performance in October 1779 has been thought much funnier than its model, The Rehearsal (1671), by George Villiers, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Sheridan himself considered the first act to be his finest piece of writing. Although Puff is little more than a type, Sir Fretful Plagiary is not only a caricature of the dramatist Richard Cumberland but also an epitome of the vanity of authors in every age. Political Career Sheridan continued to adapt plays and to improvise spectacular shows at Drury Lane, but as a succession of acting managers took over the burden of direction his time was increasingly given to politics. His only full-length later play was the artistically worthless but popular patriotic melodrama Pizarro (1799), based on a German play on the conquest of Peru. Sheridan had become member of Parliament for Stafford in September 1780 and was undersecretary for foreign affairs (1782) and secretary to the treasury (1783). Later he was treasurer of the navy (1806–07) and a privy councillor. The rest of his 32 years in Parliament were spent as a member of the minority Whig party in opposition to the governing Tories. Sheridan’s critical acumen and command over language had full scope in his oratory and were seen at their best in his speeches as manager of the unsuccessful impeachment of Warren Hastings, governor general of India. Sheridan was recognized as one of the most persuasive orators of his time but never achieved greater political influence in Parliament because he was thought to be an unreliable intriguer. Some support for this view is to be found in his behaviour during the regency crisis (1788–89) following the temporary insanity of George III, when Sheridan acted as adviser to the unpopular, self-indulgent prince of Wales (later George IV). He encouraged the prince to think that there would be a great majority for his being regent with all

228 British Drama - I the royal powers simply because he was heir apparent. In the country at large this was seen as a move by Charles James Fox and his friends to take over the government and drive out Prime Minister William Pitt. Sheridan was also distrusted because of his part in the Whigs’ internecine squabbles (1791–93) with Edmund Burke over the latter’s implacable hostility to the French Revolution. He was one of the few members courageous enough openly to defend those who suffered for their support of the French Revolution. Indeed, Sheridan liked taking an individual stand, and, although he supported Fox in urging that the French had a right to choose their own way of government, he broke with Fox once the French became warlike and threatened the security of England. He also came out on the side of the Tory administration when he condemned mutineers who had rebelled against living conditions in the British Navy (1797). Much to Fox’s disgust, Sheridan, although a Whig, gave some support to the Tory administration of Prime Minister Henry Addington, later 1st Viscount Sidmouth (1801–04). In November 1806, Sheridan succeeded Charles James Fox as member for Westminster— although not, as he had hoped, as leader of the Whigs—but he lost the seat in May 1807. The prince of Wales then returned him as member for the “pocket borough” of Ilchester, but his dependence on the prince’s favour rankled with Sheridan, for they differed in their attitude on Catholic emancipation. Sheridan, who was determined to support emancipation, stood for election as member from Stafford again in 1812, but he could not pay those who had previously supported him as much as they expected and, as a result, was defeated. Last Years Sheridan’s financial difficulties were largely brought about by his own extravagance and procrastination, as well as by the destruction of Drury Lane Theatre by fire in February 1809. With the loss of his parliamentary seat and his income from the theatre, he became a prey to his many creditors. His last years were beset by these and other worries—his circulatory complaints and the cancer that afflicted his second wife, Esther Jane Ogle. She was the daughter of the dean of Winchester and was married to Sheridan in April 1795, three years after Elizabeth’s death. Pestered by bailiffs to the end, Sheridan made a strong impression on the poet Lord Byron, who wrote a Monody on the Death of the Right Honourable R.B. Sheridan (1816), to be spoken at the rebuilt Drury Lane Theatre. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The School of Scandal 229 Assessment. Though best remembered as the author of brilliant comedies of manners, Sheridan was also a significant politician and orator. His genius both as dramatist and politician lay in humorous criticism and the ability to size up situations and relate them effectively. These gifts were often exercised in the House of Commons on other men’s speeches and at Drury Lane Theatre in the revision of other men’s plays. They are seen at their best in The School for Scandal, in which he shaped a plot and dialogue of unusual brilliance from two mediocre draft plays of his own. In person Sheridan was often drunken, moody, and indiscreet, but he possessed great charm and powers of persuasion. As a wit he delivered his sallies against the follies of society with a polish that makes him the natural link in the history of the British comedy of manners between Congreve and Wilde. 7.2 The School for Scandal Summary The School for Scandal begins in the dressing room of Lady Sneerwell, a wealthy widow with a penchant for plotting and spreading rumors. Lady Sneerwell has hired Snake to forge letters for her and place false stories in the gossip columns. They discuss her plot to stop Charles Surface, whom she loves, from becoming engaged to the heiress Maria. Lady Sneerwell is conspiring with Charles’s older brother Joseph, who has a reputation for goodness, but is really a selfish hypocrite and liar, and who wants to marry Maria for her money. Snake departs and a group of gossipmongers, including Joseph, Mrs. Candour, Sir Benjamin Backbite, and Mr. Crabtree congregate at Lady Sneerwell’s house. Maria is also there, but she rushes from the room in distress when the others gossip about Charles’s enormous debts and financial misfortunes. The next scene introduces Sir Peter Teazle and his confidante Mr. Rowley. Sir Peter has lived all his life as a bachelor, but seven months ago married a much younger woman. He and Lady Teazle fight all the time and Sir Peter is sure his wife is always to blame. He complains of the bad influence that Lady Sneerwell has on his wife. He is also upset because Maria, who is his ward, does not want to marry Joseph. Sir Peter, who served for some time as a guardian to the Surface brothers, is convinced that Joseph is an exemplary young man with strong morals, and he believes that Charles is not only badly behaved, but also bad deep down. Rowley disagrees: he thinks Charles is wild, but will grow up into a good man. Rowley delivers the news that Sir

230 British Drama - I Peter’s old friend Sir Oliver Surface has arrived back in England after sixteen years in the East Indies. The second act begins with a quarrel between the Teazles in their home. Lady Teazle wants large sums of money to buy luxury goods. Sir Peter reminds her that she grew up simply and lived with none of the things she now says she needs. Lady Teazle says she remembers that boring life well. After his wife leaves, Sir Peter marvels at how attractive she is when she argues with him. At Lady Sneerwell’s the gossipmongers (now including the Teazles) are laughing at their acquaintances’ appearances and misfortunes. Maria and Sir Peter find this gossip appalling, while Lady Teazle joins in with the others in making jokes at others’ expenses. Away from the others, Joseph tries to convince Maria to consider him as a potential husband, but she refuses. Although she says she knows from all she has heard that Charles is not fit to marry her, she will not consider marrying his brother. Lady Teazle, who has been considering taking Joseph as a lover, enters the room to find Joseph on his knees in front of Maria. He makes an excuse and, after Lady Teazle sends Maria from the room, begins to try to seduce Lady Teazle, but she is not sure whether to trust his explanation of what she saw. Rowley brings Sir Oliver to see Sir Peter’s house. They rejoice at being reunited, and Sir Peter gives Sir Oliver his impressions of the Joseph and Charles (who are his nephews and potential heirs). Sir Oliver thinks that the description of Joseph that Sir Peter gives is too good to be true. Sir Oliver hatches a plot to test his nephews’ characters and choose an heir. When Sir Oliver left the country Charles and Joseph were too young to now remember what he looks like, and Sir Oliver plans to use this fact to test them. He plans to go to Charles disguised as a moneylender named “Mr. Premium,” to see how extravagant Charles really is. To test Joseph’s alleged morality, he plans to visit his older nephew in the guise of a poor relative who needs charity named “Mr. Stanley.” Rowley introduces Sir Oliver to Moses, a Jewish moneylender who will accompany him to see Charles, and the two men leave to call on Charles. Left alone, Sir Peter immediately gets into CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The School of Scandal 231 an argument with Maria, who says she will not obey his command to marry Joseph. Maria runs from the room and Lady Teazle enters. Sir Peter proposes that they should stop their quarrelling and his wife agrees, but when he tells her that she was always the one to start their fights in the past, they begin to fight again. Sir Peter accuses Lady Teazle of having an affair with Charles Surface, a rumor that Snake and Lady Sneerwell have been spreading. She indignantly denies this and leaves. Sir Peter is infuriated, especially because Lady Teazle never loses her temper when they fight. Sir Oliver, pretending to be Mr. Premium, arrives with Moses at Charles’s house, where Charles is drinking and playing cards with friends. Charles appeals to Mr. Premium for money, explaining that although he has sold off all his property, he expects to be the heir of the fabulously wealthy Sir Oliver. Charles suggests that Mr. Premium can collect the debt when Sir Oliver dies. Mr. Premium presses Charles for other collateral, and Charles suggests that he can sell him the family portraits. Inwardly, Sir Oliver is shocked at the disrespect this shows to family tradition, but he bids for the portraits in an auction. As the auction nears its end, Sir Oliver asks if Charles will sell him a specific portrait. Charles refuses, saying that it is the portrait of his generous benefactor Sir Oliver. Touched, Sir Oliver inwardly forgives Charles for being so extravagant. In the next scene, Lady Teazle arrives late for a date with Joseph at his house. She complains about her fights with Sir Peter, but is still unsure whether she wants to commit adultery with Joseph. Sir Peter arrives and, terrified of being discovered, Lady Teazle hides behind a screen in Joseph’s room as Sir Peter makes his way up the stairs. Sir Peter confides in Joseph that he is worried his wife is having an affair with Charles, but that he plans to soon give her financial independence from him, which he hopes will ease their fights. Sir Peter begins to talk to Joseph about his desire to marry Maria, but Joseph tries to stop him, not wanting Lady Teazle to learn that he is courting Maria too. At that moment, Charles arrives. Sir Peter says he will eavesdrop on the brothers to discover the truth about Charles and his wife. Sir Peter tries to hide behind the screen, but Joseph stops him, explaining that he already has a lover hiding there. Sir Peter hides in a closet instead. Charles enters and Joseph asks him about Lady Teazle. Charles denies any involvement with Lady Teazle and begins to say that he believed Joseph and Lady Teazle were

232 British Drama - I the ones having the affair. Joseph stops Charles by telling him Sir Peter is listening. Sir Peter comes out and tells Charles he is very relieved. Joseph leaves the room for a moment and Sir Peter tells Charles that his brother has a woman hidden in the room. As Joseph returns to the room, the screen is pulled down to reveal Lady Teazle. Although Joseph tries to explain Lady Teazle’s presence there, Lady Teazle tells her husband the truth: she was considering having an affair with Joseph, who she now understands is a liar and hypocrite. She says that, even if she had not been discovered, she would have changed her treatment of Sir Peter after hearing how kindly he spoke about her. Soon after the Teazles leave, Joseph is visited by Sir Oliver, who pretends to be a poor relative named Mr. Stanley. Joseph speaks politely and eloquently about charity, but he tells Mr. Stanley that he has no money to give and that the rumors that his uncle sends him large sums of money are false. Under his breath, Sir Oliver says that Charles will be his heir. After Sir Oliver leaves, Rowley arrives to tell Joseph that his uncle has returned from the Indies and that he will bring him to Joseph’s house soon to see him. Joseph curses the bad timing of his uncle’s arrival. At Sir Peter’s house, the gossipmongers have gathered to try to find out what really happened between the Teazles. The servant refuses them entry so they stand in an anteroom arguing about what the real story is. Some believe that Sir Peter caught Lady Teazle with Charles, while others allege that it was Joseph. They also report that Sir Peter was wounded in a duel fought with the wife-stealing Surface brother, but there is no consensus about whether swords or pistols were used in the fight. Sir Peter then walks in unharmed and shouts for the ridiculous gossips to leave his house. Rowley and Sir Oliver arrive to tell Sir Peter to come to Joseph’s house for the meeting between the Surface brothers and Sir Oliver. Rowley pleads Lady Teazle’s case, saying that he spoke to her and she feels terrible for the pain and embarrassment she caused him. Upon Rowley’s urging, Sir Peter decides to reconcile with Lady Teazle. At Joseph’s house, Lady Sneerwell complains that Joseph ruined her chance to disrupt Charles and Maria’s engagement by getting caught pursuing Lady Teazle. Joseph tells Lady Sneerwell she may still have a chance with Charles because Snake has forged letters that suggest Charles has pledged to marry Lady Sneerwell, which should also ruin Charles’s chances with Maria. Sir Oliver and Charles arrive, and Lady Sneerwell hides in the next room. The brothers CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The School of Scandal 233 wish to make a good impression on Sir Oliver and try to force the man they believe to be Mr. Premium or Mr. Stanley from the room, fearing what he will say to their uncle about their behavior. Sir Peter, Lady Teazle, Rowley, and Maria arrive, and the Teazles reveal to the Surface brothers that the man they are throwing out of the house is their Uncle Oliver. Joseph tries to make excuses for his behavior, but Charles only apologizes for having disrespected the family by selling the portraits. Sir Oliver tells Charles he forgives him everything and Joseph that he sees through his hypocrisy. Lady Teazle suggests that Charles may also be interested in gaining Maria’s forgiveness, but Maria says that she knows he is already engaged to another. Charles is dumbfounded. Lady Sneerwell emerges from hiding to claim that Charles is engaged to her, but Rowley summons Snake, who reveals that he was paid to forge letters for Lady Sneerwell, but paid double to reveal the truth to Rowley. Lady Sneerwell storms from the room in frustration and Joseph follows. The play ends with an engagement between Maria and Charles, who will be his uncle’s sole heir. Summary The prologue is written in rhymed couplets by an actor, playwright, producer, and theater manager named David Garrick. The prologue questions whether anyone needs any instruction in gossip and rumormongering, saying that society is completely saturated by it. Members of society read about each other in the newspaper’s gossip column and laugh at their friends while becoming indignant when the gossip is about themselves. This play will then attempt to attack scandal in the same way a warrior tries to defeat a monster, although the playwright is unlikely to win in this battle. The School for Scandal Act 1, Scene 1 Summary The play begins in Lady Sneerwell’s home. She is sitting at her dressing table and talking to Snake, a man she pays to insert rumors about people she knows into the gossip columns. The two discuss Lady Sneerwell’s talent for ruining reputations and compare her methods to those of Mrs. Clackitt, whom they say has used gossip to ruin marriages, force couples to elope to save their

234 British Drama - I reputations, and cause sons to lose their inheritances. Snake says that Lady Sneerwell is a subtler gossipmonger who concocts more believable stories. Lady Sneerwell appreciates the compliment. She says causing scandal for others brings her satisfaction, because scandal ruined her own reputation when she was young. Snake then asks Lady Sneerwell to explain her motivations for a certain rumor she has asked him to spread. This rumor concerns a young woman named Maria, her guardian Sir Peter Teazle, and the two Surface brothers, who were also Sir Peter’s wards for a time after their father’s death. Snake says that he knows that Maria and Charles (the younger Surface brother) are in love, although Charles has a reputation for being an extravagant spender and good-for-nothing, while Lady Sneerwell and Mr. Joseph Surface, who has a good reputation, are known to be in love. Why, Snake asks Lady Sneerwell, is she trying to split up Maria and Charles, when she could just marry Joseph and be happy? Lady Sneerwell explains that she is really in love with the bankrupt big-spender Charles, not Joseph. Joseph, meanwhile, wants to marry his brother’s beloved Maria (although only because she is a wealthy heiress), so he and Lady Sneerwell are plotting to break up Maria and Charles. Lady Sneerwell says that Joseph’s reputation for morality is misplaced: he is selfish and malicious, which is why he is happy to conspire with her. Snake remarks that Sir Peter is completely convinced of Joseph’s goodness, and Lady Sneerwell adds that Sir Peter is also prejudiced against Charles and opposes the idea of letting Maria and Charles marry. Joseph Surface is then announced, and enters. Lady Sneerwell tells him that she has informed Snake of their plans and that they can trust Snake to keep their secret. Joseph praises Snake’s trustworthiness. Lady Sneerwell asks after Maria and Charles. Joseph says he has not seen either of them, but he reports that Maria has heard some of Lady Sneerwell’s rumors and has stopped meeting with Charles. Charles, meanwhile, is in so much debt that creditors are coming to seize his belongings. Joseph says he only wishes it were in his power to help his brother, but Lady Sneerwell cuts him off, saying there is no need for him to hypocritically pretend to have pity for his brother around her and Snake. Joseph says she is right, but adds that he really will be doing a good deed CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The School of Scandal 235 by breaking up the romance between Maria and Charles. Charles, he says, could only be tamed by a woman like Lady Sneerwell. Snake leaves and Joseph tells Lady Sneerwell that she was wrong to place her trust in him, because he has seen Snake talking to Mr. Rowley, who was Joseph’s late father’s steward and does not like him. Lady Sneerwell asks Joseph if he thinks Snake will betray their plots to Rowley, and Joseph says that Snake is too much of a villain to be expected to be loyal to one bad deed over another. Maria enters, looking upset. She tells Lady Sneerwell that she slipped away from Sir Peter’s house because Sir Benjamin Backbite and his uncle Crabtree were there, and she hates listening to them gossip about their friends. Joseph agrees, saying that they gossip so much that they even gossip about people they do not know. Lady Sneerwell defends Sir Benjamin, saying he is witty and a poet, but Maria says she does not like wit when it is malicious. She asks Joseph his opinion, and Joseph agrees. Lady Sneerwell says that unkindness is essential to wit, and asks Joseph if he agrees: he says he does. A servant announces that Mrs. Candour’s carriage has arrived. Lady Sneerwell says that Maria will like Mrs. Candour, who has a reputation for being good-natured. Maria, however, says that this is an affectation: Mrs. Candour does even more damage to people’s reputations than Crabtree. Joseph says that there is nothing worse for someone’s reputation than to be defended by Mrs. Candour. Mrs. Candour enters. She asks Joseph what news he’s heard, and says that no one talks about anything but scandal. Mrs. Candour then asks Maria what is going on with her and Charles, and says that the town talks of nothing but his extravagant spending. Maria says she thinks people should find something better to do. Mrs. Candour agrees, but says there is no way to keep people from talking, and that she has also heard that Sir Peter and Lady Teazle have not been getting along. Maria is indignant, but Mrs. Candour continues to gossip. Joseph says it is amazing what stories people will make up, and Maria replies that it is just as bad to repeat lies as to make them up. Mrs. Candour agrees, but says that there is nothing to be done, because people will talk. She continues to gossip about couples eloping, an unmarried woman rumored to have had a baby, and

236 British Drama - I two men dueling. She concludes by saying she would never spread such rumors, and Joseph praises her restraint. Mrs. Candour says she hates when people are attacked behind their backs, and then asks Joseph if it is true that his brother Charles is ruined. Joseph says that his brother’s finances are very bad, and Mrs. Candour names four other men in similar financial straits. Charles, she says, can find consolation in the fact that he will not be the only person in his social circle in this position. Joseph agrees. Sir Benjamin Backbite and his uncle Crabtree enter. Crabtree brags that his nephew is a wonderful poet who comes up with hilarious rhymes about his acquaintances. Lady Sneerwell asks Sir Benjamin why he never publishes his verse. Sir Benjamin explains that, since his work usually mocks people, it circulates quickly around town if he gives it to the friends of those he is mocking, and so he asks them to show it to no one. He would, however, like to publish some love poems about a certain lady, he says, indicating Maria. Crabtree and Sir Benjamin then begin gossiping about an acquaintance named Miss Nicely whom, they say, has gotten pregnant out of wedlock and plans to marry her footman. Mrs. Candour says that this is hard to believe because Miss Nicely is such a prudent lady, and Sir Benjamin responds that that prudence shows she had something to cover up. Mrs. Candour says that those with terrible reputations do seem to get through Mrs. Candour then says that the story about Miss Nicely could, after all, just be a mistake— Crabtree says that this is true, and goes on to tell the story of Miss Letitia Piper. At a party where the difficulty of breeding sheep was being discussed, someone said that Miss Piper had a sheep that bore twins. A deaf old woman misheard this, and in no time at all, a rumor was circulating that Miss Piper had given birth to twins out of wedlock, and people were even spreading rumors about who the father was. Crabtree turns to Joseph and asks if it is true that his uncle, Sir Oliver, is returning soon from the East Indies. Joseph says he has not heard this. Crabtree says Sir Oliver will be sad to see how badly Charles has grown up, but Joseph says he hopes no one has said anything to Sir Oliver to prejudice him against his brother. Crabtree responds that Charles, at least, has an excellent CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The School of Scandal 237 reputation among the Jewish moneylenders. Sir Benjamin says that despite his financial difficulties and the creditors who try to collect their money from him, Charles still gives lavish parties for his friends. Joseph says they are being insensitive in talking about his brother in front him. Maria finds it painful to listen to these things said about Charles. She says she feels sick and leaves. Lady Sneerwell sends Mrs. Candour to follow Maria and make sure she is all right. Lady Sneerwell says it is clear that, despite no longer seeing Charles, Maria still has feelings for him. Sir Benjamin agrees, but Crabtree encourages his nephew, telling him to follow Maria and recite his love poems to her. Sir Benjamin tells Joseph that he is sorry if he upset him, but it’s well- known that his brother is in financial ruin and has had to sell everything except the family portraits, which, he says, are probably framed in the walls. Sir Benjamin and Crabtree leave, still remarking on Charles as they go. Lady Sneerwell laughs at how eager they are to continue gossiping. Joseph says he thinks Lady Sneerwell must have also found it difficult to hear about Charles’s difficulties. Lady Sneerwell says she fears that Maria may be too much in love with Charles to change her mind, but says that the Teazles and Maria will visit that evening, so they will be able to observe their feelings. In the meantime, she says, she will “plot mischief, and you shall study sentiment.” The School for Scandal Act 1, Scene 2 Summary The scene begins in Sir Peter’s house. Sir Peter sits alone, lamenting the troubles in his marriage to himself. He married late in life after living for many years as a bachelor, and says he should have predicted trouble. He had thought that by marrying a woman who grew up without luxury, he would avoid having to spend huge amounts of money on his wife’s fashionable purchases. But although Lady Teazle grew up in the countryside, she now acts the part of a sophisticated lady of fashion. Their marriage is discussed by society and written about in the gossip columns. Not only does she spend all his money, but she also contradicts him in everything. He would never put up with all this, he says, except that he really does love her. He says he will not let her know this, however.

238 British Drama - I Rowley arrives and asks Sir Peter how he is. Sir Peter says he is not well and never will be, as long as he is married to Lady Teazle. Rowley says that he knows Sir Peter loves his wife, although they do not get along. Sir Peter says that it is all his wife’s fault — he is perfectly sweet to her and hates any form of teasing. Further, Lady Teazle is encouraged to be perverse and fight with him by the social set who spend their time at Lady Sneerwell’s house. Sir Peter says he is also upset because his ward Maria will not agree to marry the man he chooses, but is determined to wed his extravagant brother. Rowley says that he has a different opinion than Sir Peter on Charles and Joseph. Rowley says that his late master, the Surface brother’s father, was also badly behaved as a young man, but grew into someone beloved for his goodness. Rowley thinks that Charles will redeem himself in the same way. Sir Peter says he has had a perfect opportunity to judge the two men, since he served as their guardian until they were given fortunes by their uncle Sir Oliver. He continues by saying that Joseph is “a man of sentiment” who speaks and acts morally. Charles, meanwhile, has wasted all his money and probably any virtue he was born with. Sir Peter feels that Sir Oliver will be unhappy to see how the money he sent Charles was wasted. Rowley says he is sorry to hear that Sir Peter has a low opinion of Charles, because the young man’s destiny will soon be determined—Sir Oliver has arrived back in England. Sir Peter is surprised and overjoyed, saying he has not seen his old friend in sixteen years. But Sir Oliver, Rowley says, has asked Rowley and Sir Peter to keep his arrival a secret. Since his nephews will not recognize him, Oliver hopes to test them and discover which one deserves to be his heir. Sir Peter says to Rowley that Sir Oliver will tease him for having married, since they used to make fun of married men and Sir Oliver stuck to his pledge to never marry. Sir Peter says he must prepare for Sir Oliver’s arrival now, but asks Rowley not to tell Sir Oliver that he and Lady Teazle ever fight. Rowley says he will not breathe a word, but Lady Teazle and Sir Peter will need to keep from arguing in front of Sir Oliver to keep their disagreements a secret. Sir Peter says Rowley is right, but that this is clearly impossible. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The School of Scandal 239 The School for Scandal Act 2, Scene 1 Summary Sir Peter and Lady Teazle are at home, quarreling as usual. Lady Teazle says she should have her own way in everything, and that she knows that fashionable London women are accountable to no one. When Sir Peter asks if it is not right for him to have some authority over her, she retorts that he should have adopted her if he wanted authority, since he is old enough. He says that although unkind remarks like that one may make him unhappy, he will still not let her spend all his money extravagantly. She says she only spends what a woman of fashion is expected to. Sir Peter says that to make such demands she must have forgotten the way she was brought up. Lady Teazle, however, says she remembers very well the boring things she had to do before she married him. Sir Peter says he is glad she remembers her simple life, which should make her require fewer fancy possessions now. Sir Peter complains that she wants to have three different kinds of carriages, and says, “I have made you a woman of fashion, of fortune, of rank; in short, I have made you my wife.” Lady Teazle jokes that all that is left for him to “make her” is his widow. She also says he should want his wife to spend money, because this is what she must do to be a fashionable woman of taste. Sir Peter says she was not a woman of taste when he met her, and Lady Teazle quips that she obviously cannot claim to have good taste, since she married him. Lady Teazle then says she is off to Lady Sneerwell’s house. Sir Peter says that he disapproves of his wife spending her time with a group of rumormongers. Lady Teazle counters that Lady Sneerwell’s social set is made up of people with wealth and high social rank. She says that she has learned their ways, but only speaks ill of people in good humor, and hopes that others will not spread rumors about her maliciously. Lady Teazle departs, reminding Sir Peter that he promised to come to Lady Sneerwell’s, too. Left alone, Sir Peter says that he has failed to exert any control over his wife, but he finds it very satisfying to quarrel with her. Although he cannot make her love him, he does find her charming and attractive when she contradicts and teases him.

240 British Drama - I The School for Scandal Act 2, Scene 2 Summary Lady Sneerwell, Mrs. Candour, Crabtree, Sir Benjamin Backbite, and Joseph Surface are drinking tea at Lady Sneerwell’s home. Maria and Lady Teazle arrive, and Lady Sneerwell tells Maria to play cards with Joseph. Maria says she does not like cards, but will do as Lady Sneerwell says. Lady Teazle is surprised that Joseph does not take the opportunity of speaking to her before her husband joins the party. Lady Teazle joins the group’s conversation. Mrs. Candour is saying that her friend Miss Vermilion is beautiful, but Lady Teazle suggests that this is just makeup. Mrs. Candour says Miss Vermilion’s sister Mrs. Evergreen “is, or was, very handsome.” The others begin to mock her, saying she is fifty-six and wears so much makeup that you cannot see her face, while another acquaintance’s face looks young though her body looks old. Mrs. Candour then asks the group’s opinion of Miss Simper. Sir Benjamin says she has pretty teeth, and Lady Teazle says this must be why she never shuts her mouth. Lady Teazle compares Miss Simper to Mrs. Prim, who has lost her teeth and speaks with her mouth tightly shut to hide this. Sir Peter arrives and, seeing that the entire group of gossipmongers is present, immediately concludes that they have been saying terrible things about people they know. The gossips continue to tear people apart, with Mrs. Candour pretending to defend the victims while egging the others on. Sir Peter sticks up for one of their targets and Lady Sneerwell accuses him of being cruel for not allowing them to enjoy their jokes. Sir Peter remarks that “true wit is more nearly allied to good nature” than Lady Sneerwell realizes. The others joke about this: Sir Benjamin says wit and good nature are like a man and wife, so one hardly ever sees them together. Lady Teazle says that Sir Peter would make the spreading of rumors illegal if it were up to him, and he agrees. Mrs. Candour asks if he would ban people from reporting what they hear, and he says he would. A servant then approaches Sir Peter with a message, and he departs. The entire party leaves the room except for Maria and Joseph. Joseph says he can tell that Maria is not having a good time, and she says that she never enjoys watching people laugh at others’ imperfections and misfortunes. If that is wit, she says, she would rather be dull. Joseph says the gossips do not actually mean to be cruel, and appear worse than they are. Maria says that CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The School of Scandal 241 this makes their conduct even worse. Joseph agrees that it is worse to spread gossip for no reason than to do so to seek revenge. Joseph says that Maria worries about everyone’s feelings except his. She says she wishes he would not try to woo her again. Joseph replies that she would not be so closed to his proposal and opposed to Sir Peter’s wishes if she weren’t still in love with Charles. Maria says that no matter what she feels for Charles, seeing that Joseph no longer cares about him won’t help her give Charles up. Joseph kneels in front of Maria to beg her not to leave him on such a bad note, when Lady Teazle enters. Joseph quickly changes what he is saying, confusing Maria, whom Lady Teazle sends into the other room. Lady Teazle asks Joseph what was going on between him and Maria. Joseph explains that Maria suspects the romance between him and Lady Teazle, and threatened to tell Sir Peter. Suspicious, Lady Teazle asks if Joseph always kneels when trying to be convincing. Joseph says he wanted to impress Maria with this dramatic pose, and then changes the subject. Joseph asks Lady Teazle if she will come to look at his library, as she has promised. She replies that she will not come and sees him as a “cicisbeo”: a man who acts like the lover of a married woman, but is not necessarily sexually intimate with her. They decide to rejoin the rest of the party, but Lady Teazle leaves the room first, so that no one will see them together and suspect their intimacy. Left alone, Joseph reflects that he had only meant to gain Lady Teazle’s support for his courtship of Maria, but instead ended up becoming her “lover.” He says that maintaining a reputation for having a good character has led him to manipulate and trick so many people that he fears he will soon be caught in a lie. The School for Scandal Act 2, Scene 3 Summary Sir Oliver and Rowley are at Sir Peter’s house, waiting for Sir Peter to come in. Sir Oliver laughs at Sir Peter for having married a young woman from the countryside after swearing to always remain a bachelor, then asks Rowley about Sir Peter’s negative feelings towards Charles. Rowley explains that Sir Peter is prejudiced against Charles partially because of rumors spread by gossipmongers that Charles and Lady Teazle are having an affair. Rowley believes that if Lady

242 British Drama - I Teazle has feelings for one of the brothers, it is Joseph, not Charles. Sir Oliver says he will not let himself be prejudiced against Charles by rumors and will judge for himself. Rowley says he believes Sir Oliver will approve of Charles’s honesty and good-nature. Sir Oliver recalls that he and his brother were wild as young men, but grew into good men. Rowley predicts the same will happen to Charles. Sir Peter enters and he and Sir Oliver greet each other warmly. Sir Oliver is about to mock Sir Peter for marrying, but Rowley warns him off. Sir Oliver asks after Charles, and Sir Peter says that Charles is a lost cause, but Joseph is exactly as a young man should be and is well spoken of by everyone. Sir Oliver says that he thinks anyone without any enemies must not be honest. Sir Peter says Sir Oliver will see when he meets Joseph, who speaks eloquently about sentiment and morality. Sir Oliver says he does not like it when people moralize, but he also doesn’t mean to defend Charles for all his mistakes. Instead, he plans to test the two brothers and learn their real characters. The three men go to drink a bottle of wine and talk over this plan. As they leave the room, Sir Oliver says he does not like to see too much prudence in young men, as he thinks a bit of wildness is good for their growth. The School for Scandal Act 3, Scene 1 Summary Sir Peter, Sir Oliver, and Rowley sit in Sir Peter’s house and discuss how Sir Oliver can test his nephews’ characters. Rowley says that he knows that Mr. Stanley, a relative of the Surface brothers on their mother’s side, has fallen into ruin and been thrown into debtor’s prison. He has written to both brothers to ask for their help paying his debts, but while Joseph has only vaguely promised to help in the future if he can, Charles is currently trying to raise money for him. Rowley says he will tell the two brothers that Stanley has been given permission to leave prison to ask for their help in person. Since Joseph and Charles have never met Stanley and do not remember Sir Oliver, Sir Oliver can pretend to be Stanley and judge the Surface brothers’ characters based on how they treat their impoverished relative. Rowley predicts that Sir Oliver will find Charles to be generous despite all his extravagant spending, but Sir Peter scoffs at this, saying there is no point in generosity if one has nothing to give. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The School of Scandal 243 Rowley tells Sir Peter and Sir Oliver that he has also arranged for them to meet with a Jewish moneylender, Moses, who can give them a sense of Charles’s financial position. Rowley says that Moses has “done everything in his power to bring your nephew to a proper sense of his extravagance.” Rowley adds that they can trust Moses to tell them the truth, because Moses understands he will never get the money he lent Charles back without Sir Oliver’s help. Additionally, Rowley says he plans to show Sir Peter that he is mistaken in his suspicions about Charles and Lady Teazle by bringing in Snake, whom he has caught forging letters. Sir Peter dismisses this. Moses enters. Sir Oliver says he hears that Moses has done business with his nephew, and Moses says he has, but Charles was ruined before he ever turned to him. Sir Oliver says this meant Moses “had no opportunity of showing your talents.” Moses tells them that he plans on introducing Charles to a broker named “Mr. Premium” who may lend Charles money. Sir Peter suggests that, since Charles has never met Mr. Premium, Sir Oliver can pretend to be the broker and get a sense of his nephew’s character in this way. Sir Oliver likes this idea and says he will go afterwards to visit Joseph in the guise of Mr. Stanley. Rowley says that this may not show Charles in the best light, but agrees. Sir Oliver asks how he will be able to pass for a Jew, but Moses replies that Mr. Premium is Christian. Sir Oliver says that is a shame, and then asks if he is too well dressed to be a moneylender. The others tell him that Charles would not suspect anything even if “Mr. Premium” arrived in a fancy carriage, so long as he asks for huge amounts of interest: at least forty or fifty percent, and as much as double, if Charles seems desperate. Sir Peter suggests that Mr. Premium should complain to Charles about the Annuity Bill, a bill then passing through Parliament which made it illegal to lend money on an annuity to those under 21. Moses and Sir Oliver leave to go see Charles. Rowley leaves to fetch Snake and Sir Peter says to himself that he hopes there is no affair between Charles and Lady Teazle. He plans to speak to Joseph about his suspicions. Maria approaches and Sir Peter asks her if she has changed her mind about marrying Joseph, and she says there is no one she would rather marry less. Sir Peter says he can see that Maria is attracted to Charles’s wickedness. Maria contradicts this, saying she has been convinced that Charles is

244 British Drama - I unworthy of her, but still pities him and will never marry his brother. Sir Peter says that, as her guardian, he can force her to marry Joseph. Maria says she will not let him force her to be miserable and runs from the room. Lady Teazle enters and Sir Peter says to himself that he would be happy if he “could tease her into loving me, though but a little!” Lady Teazle asks Sir Peter to be good-humored and give her two hundred pounds. He exclaims at this, but says that if she is sweet to him, he will refuse her nothing. He also says that he plans to give her an independent source of money, but hopes they will stop fighting. She agrees, so long as he admits that he became tired of fighting before she did. In the future, he says, they will compete to see who is nicest to the other. They reminisce and each says the other is acting as he or she did during their courtship. Sir Peter remembers her kindness to him, and she agrees, saying she always stuck up for him when her acquaintances made fun of him. Sir Peter continues to tell Lady Teazle they will never fight again, but then adds that she always starts their fights. They begin to argue, and she says that she never should have married him. He says she had never been proposed to by such a rich man, and Lady Teazle says that she refused someone who would have been a better match—because he has recently broken his neck and died. Enraged, Sir Peter says that he now believes the reports about her and Charles. Lady Teazle says she will not listen to these groundless accusations. Sir Peter says they should divorce, and Lady Teazle says that, if divorced, they will be very happy. Then, laughing, she leaves. Sir Peter is enraged, and even more so because Lady Teazle did not lose her temper. The School for Scandal Act 3, Scene 2 Summary Sir Oliver, pretending to be “Mr. Premium,” arrives at Charles’s house with Moses. While Charles’s servant Trip is telling Charles that he has a visitor, Sir Oliver recognizes that the house used to belong to his brother. Moses tells him that Joseph sold the house and all its contents to Charles, and that Sir Peter thought this to be an extravagant act by Charles. Sir Oliver says it was more contemptible on Joseph’s part to have sold the house and other heirlooms. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)