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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Writers on the English theatre have noted an interesting paradox in the history of William Congreve's The Mourning Bride. Congreve is remembered today almost exclusively for his series of brilliant comedies, but it was in this, his only tragedy, that he achieved the greatest theatrical triumph of his career, and for the same play he has also been most severely criticized. “Strange as it may seem to us,” wrote Bonamy Dobrée, “the work that most swelled his fame with his contemporaries was his tragedy.” “Congreve's ‘Mourning Bride’ is a melodrama, judged by our standards at present,” asserted Ashley Thorndike, “but for many years it was considered one of the greatest tragedies of the language.” And Crane Taylor, writing of the period following the production of the play at Lincoln's Inn Fields, stated that Congreve “was now the foremost writer of tragedy as well as comedy and, while we are apt to think of him only as a comic dramatist, it is well to remember that he enjoyed the distinction of a premier place in both forms of drama to the end of his life.” Montague Summers summed the matter up: “The Mourning Bride long enjoyed a period of universal eulogy, which may, perhaps, be judged a little extravagant: it was then as generally decried.”
page 977 note 1 Bonamy Dobrée (ed.), The Mourning Bride, Poems, & Miscellanies by William Congreve (Oxford University Press, 1928), p. xi.
page 977 note 2 Ashley Thorndike, Tragedy (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1908), p. 3.
page 977 note 3 D. Crane Taylor, William Congreve, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), p. 102.
page 977 note 4 Montague Summers (ed.), The Complete Works of William Congreve (Soho: The Nonesuch Press, 1923), i, 28.
page 977 note 5 John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, ed. Montague Summers (London: Fortune Press, 1903), p. 44.
page 977 note 6 Charles Gildon, Langbaine's Lives of the English Dramatick Poets (London, [1699]), p. 23.
page 977 note 7 Giles Jacob, The Poetical Register (London, 1724), ii, 43.
page 978 note 8 “William Congreve,” Biographia Britannica, Vol. iii, 1750 edition.
page 978 note 9 Taylor, op. cit., p. 94: “There can be no doubt of its sensational success. If its complete stage history could be traced for the century following its appearance, the number of performances would undoubtedly exceed that of any tragedy outside of Shakespeare.” The large number of performances of The Mourning Bride listed in Dougald MacMillan, Drury Lane Calendar 1747–76 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), and in certain periods by John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage (Bath, 1832), have led other students of Congreve similarly to exaggerate the popularity in the eighteenth century of his single tragedy. Emmett L. Avery, however, in “The Popularity of The Mourning Bride in the London Theaters in the Eighteenth Century,” Research Studies of the Stale College of Washington, ix, 115–116, basing his count chiefly upon theatre advertisements in London newspapers, has shown that the play was performed during the period 1702–76 less often than seven other non-Shakespearean tragedies. The Orphan, he points out, was performed 314 times; Tamerlane, 282 times; Jane Shore, 279; Oroonoko, Til; Venice Preserved, 269; The Fair Penitent, 261; Cato, 226; The Mourning Bride, 205.
page 978 note 10 John Doran, Annals of the English Stage, ed. R. W. Lowe (London: John C. Nimmo, 1885), iii, 1–2.
page 978 note 11 Charles Harold Gray, Theatrical Criticism in London to 1795 (New York: Columbia “university Press, 1931), p. 136.
page 978 note 12 Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ed. Mrs. Alexander Napier (London: George Bell and Sons, 1890), ii, 210. Of Act ii, sc. 3, ll. 1–17 (1710 ed.) Johnson wrote (Ibid., ii, 216): “If I were required to select from the whole mass of English poetry the most poetical paragraph, I know not what I could prefer to [this] exclamation.”
In conversation with Garrick, Davies, and others in 1769, he had been more explicit. “What I mean is,” said he, “that you can shew me no passage where there is simply a description of material objects, without any admixture of moral notions, which produces such an effect.”—James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. George Birbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887), ii, 86.
page 978 note 13 [Francis Gentleman], The Dramatic Censor, or Critical Companion (London: J. Bell and C. Ethrington, 1770), ii, 417.
page 979 note 14 David Erskine Baker, Biographia. Dramatica, or A Companion to the Playhouse, “The Mourning Bride” (London: Printed for Riverton, etc., 1782).
page 979 note 15 Thomas Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies, etc. (London, 1785), iii, 374.
page 979 note 16 Bell's British Theatre (London, 1791), iii, M.B., vi.
page 979 note 17 Mr. Dibdin, A Complete History of the English Stage, & c. (London, [1800]), ii, 277.
page 979 note 18 The British Drama, a Collection of the most Esteemed Dramatic Productions, with Biography of the Respective Authors; and a Critique on Each Play, by R. Cumberland, Esq. (London: C. Cooke, 1817), xii, M.B., v.
page 979 note 19 William Hazlitt, Collected Works, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (London: J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), viii, 75.
page 979 note 20 Leigh Hunt, The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar with Biographical and Critical Notices (London: Edward Moxon, 1851), p. xxxii.
page 979 note 21 A. C. Ewald (ed.) William Congreve, The Mermaid Series (London: T. Fisher Unwin), p. 414.
page 980 note 22 Sir Richard Blackmore, King Arthur, An Heroick Poem in Twelve Books (London, 1697), pp. vii–viii.
page 980 note 23 The idea of Prince Arthur, says Dryden in his preface to the Fables, was appropriated from a plan set forth in Dryden's own preface to the translation of Juvenal.
page 981 note 24 Sir Richard Blackmore, Prince Arthur, An Heroick Poem in Ten Books (London, 1695), p. ii.
page 981 note 25 Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ii, 225.
page 981 note 26 Quoted in Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ii, 226.
page 981 note 27 Quoted in Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ii, 229.
page 981 note 28 Blackmore, Prince Arthur, p. i.
page 981 note 29 Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (3rd edition; London, 1698), p. 32.
page 981 note 30 “Nothing ill is to be spoken of the dead,” says Dryden in his preface to the Fables; “and therefore peace be to the Manes of his Arthurs.”-
page 982 note 31 Blackmore, King Arthur, pp. i–ii.
page 982 note 32 Oh that your Brows my Lawrel had sustain'd,
Well had I been Depos'd if You had Reign'd!
The Father had descended for the Son;
For only You are lineal to the Throne.
Let not th' insulting Foe my Fame pursue;
But shade these Lawrels which descend to You.
—John Dryden, To my Dear Friend
Mr. CONGREVE, On his COMEDY,
call'd The Double-Dealer.
page 982 note 33 Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ii, 227.
page 982 note 34 Gildon, op. cit., pp. 23–24.
page 983 note 35 Summers, Complete Works of Congreve, i, 29.
page 983 note 36 The British Theatre. With Biographical and Critical Remarks, by Mrs. Inchbald. Vol. xiii. The Mourning Bride. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808).
page 983 note 37 Davies, op. cit. (1st ed., London, 1784), iii, 343.
“It was extravagantly praised by Dryden,” states the London Daily Herald of November 23, 1925, drawing its conclusion no doubt from Summers' program notes.
page 984 note 38 Gildon, op. cit., pp. 23–24.
page 984 note 39 Collier, Short View, p. 34.
page 984 note 40 William Congreve, Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations, &c. From the Old Batchelour, Double Dealer, Love for Love, Mourning Bride (London, 1698), p. 31.
page 985 note 41 Animadversions on Mr. Congreve's Late Answer to Mr. Collier (London, 1698).
page 985 note 42 Jeremy Collier, A Defence of the Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, &c. Being a Reply to Mr. Congreve's Amendments, & c. and to the Vindication of the Author of the Relapse (London, 1699). Books published late in the year were then customarily dated as of the following year.
page 985 note 43 Ibid., p. 32.
page 985 note 44 Ibid., p. 94. Congreve tacitly admitted the absurdity of Zara's outburst by deleting all but a part of the first line from the revised version of his collected works of 1710. Though this revision involves a host of textual changes, chiefly in the interest of more regular meter, the author, perhaps with a certain obstinacy, altered only one other single line of the many that Collier had criticized. This is worth mentioning, for there seems to be some confusion regarding the matter in the minds of recent writers. Montague Summers (Complete Works of Congreve, i, xiii), D. Crane Taylor (William Congreve, p. 101), and even the careful John C. Hodges in William Congreve, the Man (New York. Modern Language Association of America, 1941), p. 58, either state or imply that Congreve made more than one revision after the publication of the first edition. “Excisions were at once made in consequence of Collier's attack,” says Summers. Of Zara's noisy tirade, according to Taylor, “only a part of the first line was printed in the second edition, for Congreve revised the play with care soon after it appeared.” And Hodges: “The author continued to revise it for later editions.” As a matter of fact, however, the second edition (1697) and the third (1703) vary from the first only in the matter of certain obvious printer's corrections. Summers, indeed, expresses doubt (Complete Works of Congreve, I, xiii) that the 1710 revision was the work of Congreve. That the work was the author's own seems sufficiently proved by Congreve's letters to Joseph Keally in November and December, 1710, and by his preface to the 1710 edition.
page 986 note 45 [James Drake], The Ancient and Modern Stages survey'd. or, Mr. Collier's view of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage Set in a True Light (London, 1699), p. 215. The British Museum Catalogue and the Cambridge Bibliography name Drake as the author. Crane Taylor, however, attributes the book (without stating his evidence) to Edward Filmer.
page 986 note 46 Jacob, op. cit., pp. 44–45.
page 986 note 47 The apocryphal Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Amours of William Congreve Esq. (London, 1730), published under the pseudonym of Charles Wilson, quotes (pp. xv–xvi) a letter dated from Surry-street, July 7, 1719:
Sir,
I much approve the Usefulness of your Work; any Morning, about Eleven, I shall be very ready to give you the Account of my own poor Trifles and Self, or any thing else that has fallen within the compass of my Knowledge, relating to any of my Poetical Friends.
I am, Sir,
Your Humble Servant,
William Congreve.
It is difficult to suppose that such a letter could have been written to anyone but Jacob, for the only work published in the years immediately following 1719 which could have made use of such material so obtained was The Poetical Register.
page 988 note 48 As quoted in Hodges, William Congreve, the Man, from a letter among the manuscripts of Earl Cowper, Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire.
page 988 note 49 A. E. Ewald, op. cit., p. 414: “It is one of those plays which reads better than it acts.”
page 989 note 50 The critics, of course, found no special virtues in the rôle of Zara. Says The Dramatic Censor, 1770, (ii, 416): “Zara is, beyond dispute, the most indelicate Queen that can well be imagined; she is vicious and mean, gross in sentiment, and vulgar in expression. Had she been more delicate in the former, and more reserved in the latter, she might have attracted some degree of humane concern; but, as she is, good sense and decorum must frown through the first four acts, while ridicule attends her and the headshaking ministers of death in the fifth.” And Richard Cumberland, The British Drama, xii, M.B., viii: “Zara is a lady of remarkably high spirit, and of course has a right to her sublimities, though there may be neither modesty, morality, nor common sense in them.”
page 989 note 51 Quoted in Summers, Complete Works of Congreve, i, 30 fn.
page 989 note 52 Quoted in Montague Summers, The Restoration Theatre (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1934), p. 319.
page 990 note 53 Though of course Walpole's expressed opinions or Garrick are not to be taken too seriously.
page 990 note 54 Davies, op. cit., (ed., 1784), iii, 466.
page 990 note 55 Doran (Annals) mentions a tour of the British Isles conducted by Anthony Aston as early as 1726, in the course of which his theatrical company performed The Mourning Bride in Edinburgh.
page 990 note 56 The Mourning Bride had been performed at Covent Garden April 10, 1742, at Drury Lane October 15, 1743.
page 991 note 57 “The natural and easy dialogue of Pritchard so captivated the public, that poor Horton was soon deprived of that influence which she possessed, and was stripped of her characters one by one.” Davies, op. cit., (ed., 1784), i. 186.
page 992 note 58 Charles Churchill, The Rosciad and the Apology, ed. Robert W. Lowe (London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1891), containing facsimile of 1761 edition, p. 43.
page 992 note 59 Davies, op. cit., (ed., 1784), iii, 353.
page 992 note 60 Beville S. Penley, The Bath Stage (London and Bath: William Lewis and Son, 1892), p. 61. M. E. Board, The Story of the Bristol Stage (London: The Fountain Press, 1925), p. 20.
page 992 note 61 ii, 416.
page 993 note 62 Genest, op. cit., vi, 338.
page 993 note 63 Davies, op. cit. (ed., 1784), iii, 350–351.
page 993 note 64 Thomas Campbell, Life of Mrs. Siddons (London: Effingham Wilson, 1834), i, 190.
page 993 note 65 John William Cole, The Life and, Theatrical Times of Charles Kean (London: Richard Bentley, 1859), pp. 34–35.
page 994 note 66 Dates for performances of The Mourning Bride in 1808–09 are October 25, November 4 (“for the benefit of the families of those who unfortunately suffered by the late fire in Covent Garden”), and April 8. Only the second of these dates appears in Genest. I am indebted for the other two to Mr. Emmett L. Avery of the State College of Washington, who found all three listed in British Museum Additional Manuscript 31975.
page 994 note 67 Eola Willis, The Charleston Stage in the XVIII Century (Columbia, S. C.: State Company, 1924), p. 44.
page 994 note 68 Southwark Theatre, Philadelphia, 1st perf. January 26, 1767. George O. Seilhamer, History of the American Theatre (Philadelphia: Globe Printing House, 1888), i, 162. Thomas Clark Pollock, The Philadelphia Stage in the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933), p. 89.
John Street Theatre, New York, 1st perf. December 30, 1767. Seilhamer, op. cit. George Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), i, 121.
page 994 note 69 Pollock, op. cit. See pp. 54–55.
page 994 note 70 Rees D. James, Old Drury of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Ph.D. Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1932).
page 995 note 71 Davies, op. cit. (ed., 1784), iii, 343.
page 995 note 72 The British Theatre. Ed. by Mrs. Inchbald. xiii.
page 995 note 73 The Spectator, No. 40.
page 995 note 74 Thorndike, op. cit., p. 275.
page 996 note 75 Particularly outspoken are Sir Robert Howard's Preface to The Great Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma (1668) and Charles Gildon's Essay at a Vindication of the Love-Verses of Cowley and Waller (1694). The latter, by the way, was “Directed to Mr. Congreve. Against Mr. Rymer's Short view of Tragedy.”
page 996 note 76 See Addison in The Spectator, Nos. 40 and 592, and Johnson in The Rambler, No. 156, and in his Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare.
page 996 note 77 “The theatre is a school of morality or it is nothing.” Dibdin, op. cit., v, 375. “Having thus given a general delineation of the plot and arrangement of scenes, it becomes necessary to enquire for the moral, without which no dramatic piece can have intrinsic worth.” The Dramatic Censor (1770), i, 9.
page 996 note 78 The list of adaptations (not all different) follows:
New English Theatre (London: T. Lowndes, T. Caslon, S. Bladon, and W. Nicoli, 1776), iv.
Bell's British Drama (London: J. Bell, 1776), iii.
The Mourning Bride. A Tragedy. Taken from the Manager's Book, at the Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden (London: Printed for the Proprietors, 1787).
Bell's British Theatre (London: J. Bell, 1791), iii. (A reprint places M.B. in Vol. iv.)
Bell's British Theatre (London: G. Cawthorne, 1796), xix.
Sharpe's British Theatre (London: John Sharpe, 1805), xii.
Inchbald's British Theatre (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808), xiii.
Dibdin's London Theatre (London: Whittingham and Arliss, 1815), xi.
Cooke's British Drama. With critique by R. Cumberland. (London: C. Cooke, 1817), xii.
British Drama (London: Jones and Company, 1824), i.
The London Stage (London: Sherwood and Co., 1827), iva.
page 998 note 79 See fn. 36 supra.
page 998 note 80 The Jones (British Drama, 1824) and Sherwood (The London Stage, 1827) versions are mere copies of earlier adaptations. The Cooke version (Cooke's British Drama, 1817), though unlike any other, is probably a reprint of an earlier edition, now lost. It should be noted that Richard Cumberland, who wrote the critiques for this series, died in 1811.
page 999 note 81 Davies, op. cit., (ed., 1784), iii, 347.