We have noticed, in the introduction, that the birth of a Prince of Wales, at a time of such critical importance to the Catholic faith, was looked upon, by the Papists, as little less than miraculous. Some talked of the petition of the Duchess of Modena to Our Lady of Loretto; and Burnet affirms, that, in that famous chapel, there is actually a register of the queen's conception, in consequence of her mother's vow. But, in that case, the good duchess's intercession must have been posthumous; for she died upon the 19th July, and the queen's time run from the 6th of October. Others ascribed the event to the king's pilgrimage to St Winifred's Well; and others, among whom was the Earl of Melfort, suffered their zeal to hurry them into profaneness, and spoke of the angel of the Lord moving the Bath waters, like the Pool of Bethsaida. But the Jesuits claimed to their own prayers the principal merit of procuring this blessing, which, indeed, they had ventured to prophecy; for, among other devices which that order exhibited to the English ambassador from James to the Pope, there was, according to Mr Misson, one of a lily, from whose leaves distilled some drops of water, which were once supposed, by naturalists, to become the seed of new lilies: the motto was—Lachrimor in prolem—"I weep for children." Beneath which was the following distich:
"And the dragon stood before the woman, who was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child, as soon as it was born,"—Revel. xii. 4. Dryden is at pains, by an original marginal note, which, with others, is restored in this edition, to explain, that, by this allusion here, and in other parts of the poem, he meant "the commonwealth's party." The acquittal of the bishops, on the 17th of June, two days before the poem was licensed, must have excited a prudential reverence for the church of England in the moment of her triumph. The poet fixes upon this commonwealth party therefore, exclusively, the common reports which had been circulated during the queen's pregnancy, and which are thus noticed in the (supposititious) letter to Father La Chaise: "As to the queen's being with child, that great concern goes as well as we could wish, notwithstanding all the satirical discourses of the heretics, who content themselves to vent their poison in libels, which, by night, they disperse in the street, or fix upon the walls. There was one lately found upon a pillar of a church, that imported, that such a day thanks should be given to God for the queen's being great with a cushion. If one of these pasquil-makers could be discovered, he would but have an ill time on't, and should be made to take his last farewell at Tyburn."
The usual topics of wit, during the queen's pregnancy, were, allusions to a cushion, a tympany, &c. &c.; and Partridge, the Protestant almanack-maker, utters the following predictions:—"That there was some bawdy project on foot, either about buying, selling, or procuring, a child or children, for some pious uses." And, again, "Some child is to be topped upon the lawful heirs, to cheat them out of their right and estate."—"God preserve the kingdom of England from invasion! for about this time I fear it in earnest, and keep the Protestants there from being dragooned."
One single circumstance is sufficient to rout all suspicions thus carefully infused into the people. It is well known, and is noticed in one of L'Estrange's papers at the time, that a similar outcry was raised during a former pregnancy of the queen; but the child proving a female, there was no use for pushing the calumny any further upon that occasion.
The public exercise of the Catholic religion in England is compared to the miraculous display of the cross, with the motto, In hoc signo vinces; which is said to have appeared to Constantine on the eve of his great victory.
The war against the Turks, which was now raging in Hungary, seems to have occupied much of James's attention. He amused himself with anxiety about the fate of this holy warfare, as he probably thought it, while his own crown was tottering on his head. In all his letters to the Prince of Orange, he expresses his wishes for the peace of Christendom, that the emperor and the Venetians might have leisure to prosecute the war against the Turks; and conjectures about the taking of Belgrade, and the progress of the Duke of Lorraine, are very gravely sent, as interesting matter to the prince, who was anticipating the conquest of England, and the dethronement of his father-in-law. There may be something of affectation in this; but, as Dryden takes up the same tone, it may be supposed to have forwarded James's general conversation, as well as his letters to the Prince of Orange.—See Dalrymple's Memoirs. Appendix to Book V.
Dryden talks of the Pope with the respect of a good Catholic. Nevertheless it happened, by a very odd chance, that, while the throne of England was held by a Catholic, for the first time during the course of a century, the chair of St Peter was occupied by Innocent XI. who acquired the uncommon epithet of the Protestant Pope. He received, with great coldness, the Earl of Castlemain, whom James sent to Rome as his ambassador, and refused the only two requests which a king of England had made to Rome since the days of Henry VIII., although they were only a dispensation to Petre the king's confessor, to hold a bishopric, and another to the Mareschal D'Humier's daughter to marry within the prohibited degrees. Nay, the Pope is said to have privately admitted the Prince of Orange's envoy to his confidence, while he treated Castlemaine with so much contempt. The cause of this coldness was the Pope's quarrel with James's ally, Louis, and his dislike to the order of Jesuits, by whom the king of England was entirely ruled. In truth, Innocent XI. was much more anxious to maintain the privileges of the Roman see against those princes who retained her communion, than to add England to a flock which was become so mutinous and untractable. He was, besides, a man of no extended views, and chiefly concerned himself with managing the papal revenue, involved in debt by a succession of wasteful pontificates. To this the conversion of England promised no immediate addition, and, with the narrowness of view natural to his pursuits, Innocent XI. thought it better to employ his exertions in realizing an immediate income, than in endeavouring to extend the faith and authority of the church, by embarking in a design of great doubt and hazard. He was, therefore, but a very poor representative of Pope Sylvester. As for the last two lines, they contain, what we seldom meet with in Dryden's poetry, a compliment not only bombastic, but unappropriate, and even unmeaning.
In these lines, and the following, where the poet, with indecent freedom, compares the suspicions entertained of a spurious birth to the devil's doubts concerning our Saviour's godhead, he alludes to those circumstances of publicity, which one would have supposed might have rendered the birth of the prince indisputable. It took place at ten o'clock in the morning; and eighteen privy counsellors, besides a number of ladies, were present at the delivery. But the party violence of the period was so extravagant, as to receive and circulate a variety of reports, inconsistent with each other, and agreeing only in the general conclusion, that the child was an imposition upon the nation. The reasoning of the Bishop of Salisbury, on this point, is admirably summed up by Smollet.
"On the 10th of June, 1688, the queen was suddenly seized with labour-pains, and delivered of a son, who was baptized by the name of James, and declared Prince of Wales. All the Catholics and friends of James were transported with the most extravagant joy at the birth of this child; while great part of the nation consoled themselves with the notion, that it was altogether supposititious. They carefully collected a variety of circumstances, upon which this conjecture was founded; and though they were inconsistent, contradictory, and inconclusive, the inference was so agreeable to the views and passions of the people, that it made an impression which, in all probability, will never be totally effaced. Dr Burnet, who seems to have been at uncommon pains to establish this belief, and to have consulted all the Whig nurses in England upon the subject, first pretends to demonstrate, that the queen was not with child; secondly, that she was with child, but miscarried; thirdly, that a child was brought into the queen's apartment in a warming-pan; fourthly, that there was no child at all in the room; fifthly, that the queen actually bore a child, but it died that same day; sixthly, that it had the fits, of which it died at Richmond; therefore, the Chevalier de St George must be the fruit of four different impostures."
During the five months preceding the birth of the Chevalier de St George, James was wholly engaged by those feuds and dissensions which tended to render irreparable the breach between him and his subjects. The arbitrary attacks upon the privileges of Magdalen College, and of the Charter-House, fell nearly within this period. Above all, the petition of the seven bishops against reading the Declaration of Indulgence, their imprisonment, their memorable trial and acquittal, had all taken place since the month of April; and it is well known to what a state of violent opposition the nation had been urged by a train of arbitrary acts of violence, so imprudently commenced, and perversely insisted in. Dryden, like other men of sense, probably began to foresee the consequences of so violent and general irritation; and expresses himself in moderate and soothing language, both as to the past and future. Nothing is therefore dropt which can offend the church of England. Perhaps they may have been spared by the royal command; for it seems, as is hinted by a letter from Halifax to the Prince of Orange, that, not finding his expectations answered by the dissenters, whom he had so greatly favoured of late, James entertained thoughts of returning to his old friends, the High-churchmen; "but the truth is," his lordship adds, "the Papists have of late been so hard and fierce upon them, that the very species of those formerly mistaking men is destroyed; they have so broken that loom in pieces, that they cannot now set it up again to work upon it."—Dalrymple's Memoirs. Appendix to Book V.
There was, Dryden informs us, a report of the prince's death, to which he alludes. James, in a letter to the Prince of Orange, dated June 12, mentions the birth of his son on the Sunday preceding, and adds, "the child was somewhat ill this last night, of the wind, and some gripes, but is now, blessed be God, very well, and like to have no returns of it, and is a strong boy." About this illness, Burnet tells the following gossipping story: "That night, one Hemings, a very worthy man, an apothecary by his trade, who lived in St Martin's Lane, the very next door to a family of an eminent Papist, (Brown, brother to the Viscount Montacute, lived there;) the wall between his parlour and their's being so thin, that he could easily hear any thing that was said with a louder voice, he (Hemings) was reading in his parlour late at night, when he heard one come into the neighbouring parlour, and say, with a doleful voice, the Prince of Wales is dead: Upon which a great many that lived in the house came down stairs very quick. Upon this confusion he could not hear any thing more; but it was plain they were in a great consternation. He went with the news next morning to the bishops in the Tower. The Countess of Clarendon came thither soon after, and told them, she had been at the young prince's door, but was denied access: she was amazed at it; and asked, if they knew her: they said, they did; but that the queen had ordered, that no person whatsoever should be suffered to come in to him. This gave credit to Hemings' story; and looked as if all was ordered to be kept shut up close, till another child was found. One, that saw the child two days after, said to me, that he looked strong, and not like a child so newly born."
The poem of Dryden plainly proves, that such a report was so far from being confined among the Catholics, that it was spread over all the town; and what the worthy Mr Hemings over-heard in his next neighbour's, the Papist's, might probably have been heard in any company in London that evening, although the mode of communication would doubtless have been doleful or joyous, according to the party and religion of the news-bearer.
PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES.
The prologue of the English drama was originally, like that of the ancients, merely a kind of argument of the play, instructing the audience concerning those particulars of the plot, which were necessary in order to understand the opening of the piece. That this might be done more artificially, it was often spoken in the character of some person connected with the preceding history of the intrigue, though not properly one of the dramatis personæ. But when increasing refinement introduced the present mode of opening the action in the course of the play itself, the prologue became a preliminary address to the audience, bespeaking their attention and favour for the piece. The epilogue had always borne this last character, being merely an extension of the ancient "valete et plaudite;" an opportunity seized by the performers, after resigning their mimic characters, to pay their respects to the public in their own, and to solicit its approbation of their exertions. By degrees it assumed a more important shape, and was indulged in descanting upon such popular topics as were likely to interest the audience, even though less immediately connected with the actor's address of thanks, or the piece they had been performing. Both the prologue and epilogue had assumed their present character so early as the days of Shakespeare and Jonson.
With the revival of dramatic entertainments, after the Restoration, these addresses were revived also; and a degree of consequence seems to have been attached to them in that witty age, which they did not possess before, and which has not since been given to them. They were not only used to propitiate the audience; to apologize for the players, or poet; or to satirize the follies of the day, which is now their chief purpose; but they became, during the collision of contending factions, vehicles of political tenets and political sarcasm, which could, at no time, be insinuated with more success, than when clothed in nervous verse, and delivered with all the advantages of elocution to an audience, whose numbers rendered the impression of poetry and eloquence more contagious.
It is not surprising that Dryden soon obtained a complete and absolute superiority in this style of composition over all who pretended to compete with him. While the harmony of his verse gave that advantage to the speaker, which was wanting in the harsh, coarse, broken measure of his contemporaries, his powers of reasoning and of satire left them as far behind in sense as in sound. This superiority, and the great influence which he had in the management of the theatre, made it usual to invoke his assistance in the case of new plays; many of which he accordingly furnished either with prologues or epilogues. The players also had recourse to him upon any remarkable occasion; as, when a new house was opened; when the theatre was honoured by a visit from the king or duke; when they played at Oxford, during the public acts; or, in short, in all cases when an occasional prologue was thought necessary to grace their performance.
The collection of these pieces, which follows, is far from being the least valuable part of our author's labours. The variety and richness of fancy which they indicate, is one of Dryden's most remarkable poetical attributes. Whether the theme be, the youth and inexperience or the age and past services, of the author; the plainness or magnificence of a new theatre; the superiority of ancient authors, or the exaltation of the moderns; the censure of political faction, or of fashionable follies; the praise of the monarch, or the ridicule of the administration; the poet never fails to treat it with the liveliness appropriate to verses intended to be spoken, and spoken before a numerous assembly. The manner which Dryden assumes, varies also with the nature of his audience. The prologues and epilogues, intended for the London stage, are written in a tone of superiority, as if the poet, conscious of the justice of his own laws of criticism, rather imposed them upon the public as absolute and undeniable, than as standing in need of their ratification. And if he sometimes condescends to solicit, in a more humble style, the approbation of the audience, and to state circumstances of apology, and pleas of favour, it is only in the case of other poets; for, in the prologues of his own plays, he always rather demands than begs their applause; and if he acknowledges any defects in the piece, he takes care to intimate, that they are introduced in compliance with the evil taste of the age; and that the audience must take the blame to themselves, instead of throwing it upon the writer. This bold, style of address, although it occasionally drew upon our author the charge of presumption, was, nevertheless, so well supported by his perception of what was just in criticism, and his powers of defending even what was actually wrong, that a miscellaneous audience was, in general, fain to submit to a domination, as successfully supported as boldly claimed. In the Oxford prologues, on the other hand, the audience furnished by that seat of the Muses, as of more competent judgment, are addressed with more respectful deference by the poet.[330] He seems, in these, to lay down his rules of criticism, as it were under correction of superior judges; and intermingles them with such compliments to the taste and learning of the members of the university, as he disdains to bestow upon the motley audience of the metropolis. In one style, the author seems dictating to scholars, whose conceit and presumption must be lowered by censure, to make them sensible of their own deficiencies, and induce them to receive the offered instruction; in the other, he seems to deliver his opinions before men, whom he acknowledges as his equals, if not his superiors, in the arts of which he is treating. And although Brown has very grossly charged Dryden with having affected, for the university, an esteem and respect, which he was far from really feeling; and with having exposed its members, in their turn, to the ridicule of the London audience, whom he had stigmatized in his Oxford prologues as void of taste and judgment; it is but fair to state, that nothing can be produced in proof of such an accusation.[331] In another respect, the reader may remark a pleasing difference between the London prologues and epilogues, and those spoken at Oxford. The licence of the times permitted, and even exacted from an author, in these compositions, the indulgence of an indelicate vein of humour; which, however humiliating, is, in general, successful in a vulgar or mixed audience, as turning upon subjects adapted to the meanest capacity. This continued even down to our times; for, till very lately, it was expected by the mobbish part of the audience, that they should be indemnified for the patience with which they had listened to the moral lessons of a tragedy, by the indecency of the epilogue. In Dryden's time, this coarse raillery was carried to great excess; but our author, however culpable in other compositions, is, generally speaking, more correct than his contemporaries in his prologues and epilogues. In the Oxford pieces, particularly, where the decorum of manners, suited to that mother of learning, required him to abstain from all licentious allusion, Dryden has given some excellent specimens of how little he needed to rely upon this obvious and vulgar aid, for the amusement of his audience. Upon the whole, it will be difficult to find pieces of this occasional nature so interesting and unexceptionable as those spoken at Oxford. They are, as they ought to be, by far the most laboured and correct which our author gave to the stage. It may not be improper to add, that the players were only permitted to visit Oxford during the Public Acts, which were frequently celebrated on occasions of public rejoicing. They acted, it would appear, in a Tennis-court, fitted up as an occasional theatre; and the prologues and epilogues of Dryden tended doubtless greatly to conciliate the favour of an audience, consisting of all that was learned in the generation then mature, and all that was hopeful in that which was rising to succeed it.
The more miscellaneous prologues and epilogues of Dryden are not without interest. In ridiculing the vices or follies of the age, they often touch upon circumstances illustrative of manners; and certainly, though the modern theatres of the metropolis are so ill regulated, as nearly to exclude modest females from all the house, except the private boxes, their decorum is superior to that of their predecessors. If we conceive the boxes filled with women, whose masks levelled all distinction between the woman of fashion and the courtezan; the galleries crowded with a rabble, more ferocious and ignorant than its present inmates; the pit occupied by drunken bullies, whose quarrels perpetually interrupted the performers, and often ended in bloodshed, and even murder, upon the spot; we shall have occasion to congratulate ourselves upon being at least in the way of reformation. These enormities of his time, Dryden has pointed out, and censured in his strong and nervous satire. It is to be regretted, that his painting is often coarse, and sometimes intentionally licentious; although, as has been already observed, more seldom so than that of most of his contemporaries. The historical antiquary may also glean some observations on the state of parties, from those pieces which turn upon the politics of the day; and there occur numerous hints, which may be useful to an historian of the drama. Thus the Prologues and Epilogues form no improper supplement to Dryden's historical poetry.
It remains to say, that all these prologues and epilogues were, according to the custom of that time, printed on single leaves, or broadsides, as they are called, and sold by the hawkers at the door of the theatres. Some of these, but very few, have been preserved by Mr Luttrell, in the collection belonging to Mr Bindley. If a set of them existed, I think it probable they would be found to contain many variations from those editions, which the more mature reflection of the author gave to the world in the Miscellanies. But the loss is the less to be lamented, as, in general, the original editions which I have seen are not only more inaccurate, but coarser and more licentious, than those which Dryden finally adopted. In the original prologue of Circe, which is printed in this edition, for example, the reader will find, that, in place of the well-known apology for an author's first production, by an appeal to those of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson, his youth is only made the subject of some commonplace raillery. Indeed, so little value did Dryden himself set upon these occasional effusions before they were collected, and so little did he consider them as entitled to live in the recollection of the public, that, on one occasion at least, but probably upon several, he actually transferred the same prologue from one new play to another. Thus he reclaimed, from his adversary Shadwell's play of "The True Widow," the prologue which he had furnished, and affixed it to the "Widow Ranter" of Mrs Behn. Sometimes also he laid under contribution former publications of his own, which he supposed to be forgotten, in order to furnish out one of these theatrical prefaces. Thus the satire against the Dutch furnishes the principal part of the prologue and epilogue to "Amboyna."
Inaccurate as they seem to have been, the original editions might have proved useful in arranging the prologues and epilogues according to their exact dates, which, where they are not attached to any particular play, can now only be assigned from internal evidence. But absolute accuracy in this point, though no doubt desirable if it can be obtained, does not appear to be a point of any serious moment; and, after having bestowed considerable pains, the Editor will neither be much ashamed, nor inconsolably sorry, to find, that some of the prologues and epilogues have been misplaced in the order which he has adopted.
THE FIRST DAY OF THE KING'S HOUSE ACTING AFTER THE FIRE.
In January, 1671-2, the play-house in Drury-Lane, occupied by the King's company, took fire, and was entirely destroyed, with fifty or sixty adjoining houses, which were either involved in the conflagration, or blown up to stop its progress. During the rebuilding of this theatre, the King's servants acted in the old house in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. The following Prologue announces the distressed situation of the company on their retreat to this temporary asylum. The sixth couplet alludes to the recent desertion of the Lincoln's-Inn theatre, by the rival company, called the Duke's, who were now acting at one in Dorset Gardens, splendidly fitted up under the direction of Sir William D'Avenant.
Female performers were first introduced after the Restoration. They became speedily acceptable to the court and the public. The dramatic poets were in so many ways indebted to them, that occasional exertions, dedicated to their benefit, as I presume the following to have been, were but a suitable return for various favours received. Our author's intimacy with the beautiful Mrs Reeves particularly called forth his talents in behalf of these damsels, distressed as they must have been by the unlucky burning of the theatre in Drury-Lane. The Prologue occurs in the Miscellanies; but is, I know not why, omitted by Derrick in his edition of Dryden's poems.
The Drury-Lane theatre, after being burned in 1671-2, was rebuilt upon a plan furnished by Sir Christopher Wren, who superintended the execution. It is said to have been most admirably planned, but spoiled by some injudicious alterations in the course of building. The following Prologue informs us, that the exterior decorations were plain and simple in comparison to those of the rival house in Dorset Gardens, which, as repeatedly noticed, had been splendidly fitted up under the direction of D'Avenant, noted for his attachment to stage pomp and shew. It appears that Charles II., who was possessed of considerable taste, and did not disdain to interest himself in the affairs of the drama, had himself recommended to the King's company, the simplicity and frugality of scenery and ornament to which the poet alludes. The other house were not unapt to boast of the superior splendour which is here conceded to them. In the epilogue to "Psyche" the actors boast,
D'Avenant, by whom the Duke's company were long directed, was the first who introduced regular scenery upon a public stage. His drama of the "Siege of Rhodes" seems to have been the first exhibited with these decorations.—See Malone's Account of the English Stage."
Hart, who had been a captain in the civil wars, belonged to the King's company. He was an excellent actor, and particularly celebrated in the character of Othello. He left the stage, according to Cibber, on the union of the companies in 1686. But it appears from a paper published in a note on the article "Betterton" in the Biographia, that he retired in 1681, upon receiving a pension from Dr D'Avenant, then manager of the Duke's company, who in this manner bought off both Hart and Kynaston, and greatly weakened the opposite set.