Essays on the Stage

Essays on the Stage

Project Gutenberg's Essays on the Stage, by Thomas D'Urfey and
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Title: Essays on the Stage Preface to the Campaigners (1689) and
Preface to the Translation of Bossuet's Maxims and Reflections on
Plays (1699)
Author: Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
Commentator: Joseph Wood Krutch
Release Date: July 20, 2005 [EBook #16335]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ON THE STAGE ***

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Series Three: Essays on the Stage No. 4
Thomas D'Urfey, Preface to The Campaigners (1698)
and

Anonymous, Preface to the Translation of Bossuet's Maxims and
Reflections upon Plays (1699)
With an Introduction by Joseph Wood Krutch

The Augustan Reprint Society March, 1948 Price: $1.00
* * * * *
GENERAL EDITORS
RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan EDWARD NILES
HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles H.T.
SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles
ASSISTANT EDITOR
W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS
EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington BENJAMIN
BOYCE, University of Nebraska LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, University of
Michigan CLEANTH BROOKS, Yale University JAMES L.
CLIFFORD, Columbia University ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University
of Chicago SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota ERNEST
MOSSNER, University of Texas JAMES SUTHERLAND, Queen
Mary College, London

Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author by Edwards Brothers, Inc.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. 1948
* * * * *
Introduction

The three parts of D'Urfey's "The Comical History of Don Quixote"
were performed between 1694 and (probably) the end of 1696. Some of
the songs included were conspicuously "smutty"--to use a word which
D'Urfey ridiculed--but the fact that the plays were fresh in the public
mind was probably the most effective reason for Jeremy Collier's
decision to include the not very highly respected author among the still
living playwrights to be singled out for attack in "A Short View of the
Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage", which appeared at
Easter time 1698. In July of the same year D'Urfey replied with the
preface to his "smutty" play "The Campaigners". It is this preface
which is given as the first item of the present reprint.
Pope's contemptuous prologue, written many years later and apparently
for a benefit performance of one of D'Urfey's plays, is sufficient
evidence that the playwright was not highly regarded; but he was
reputed to be a good natured man and, by the standards of the time, his
twitting of Collier--whom he accused of having a better nose for smut
than a clergyman should have--is not conspicuously vituperative. Even
his attack on the political character of the notorious Non-Juror is bitter
without being really scurrilous. But like his betters Congreve and
Vanbrugh, D'Urfey both missed the opportunity to grapple with the real
issues of the controversy and misjudged the temper of the public. Had
that public been, as all the playwrights seem to have assumed, ready to
side with them against Collier, there might have been some justification
in resting content as he and Congreve did with the scoring of a few
debater's points. But the public, even "the town", was less interested in
mere sally and rejoinder than it was in the serious question of the
relation of comedy to morality, and hence Collier was allowed to win
the victory almost by default.
Collier's own argument was either confused or deliberately
disingenuous, since he shifts his ground several times. On occasion he
argues merely in the role of a moderate man who is shocked by the
extravagances of the playwrights, and on other occasions as an ascetic
to whom all worldly diversion, however innocent of any obvious
offence, is wicked. At one time, moreover, he accuses the playwrights
of recommending the vices which they should satirize and at other

times denies that even the most sincere satiric intention can justify the
lively representation of wickedness. But none of his opponents actually
seized the opportunity to completely clarify the issues. Vanbrugh, it is
true, makes some real points in his "A Short Vindication of The
Relapse and The Provok'd Wife", and John Dennis, in his heavy handed
way, showed some realization of what the issues were both in "The
Usefulness of the Stage to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government
and to Religion" (1698) and, much later, In "The Stage Defended"
(1726). But, Vanbrugh is casual, Dennis is slow witted, and it is only
by comparison with the triviality of D'Urfey or the contemptuous
disingenuity of Congreve's "Amendments of Mr. Collier's