The Fine Ladys Airs

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The Fine Lady's Airs

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Title: The Fine Lady's Airs (1709)
Author: Thomas Baker
Release Date: December 25, 2004 [EBook #14467]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The Augustan Reprint Society
Thomas Baker

THE FINE LADY'S AIRS
(1709)
With an Introduction by John Harrington Smith
Publication Number 25
Los Angeles
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California
1950

GENERAL EDITORS H. RICHARD ARCHER, Clark Memorial
Library RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan EDWARD
NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_ JOHN
LOFTIS, _University of California, Los Angeles_
ASSISTANT EDITOR W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of
Washington BENJAMIN BOYCE, Duke University 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_ H.T.
SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_

INTRODUCTION
In the first decade of the eighteenth century, with comedy in train to be
altered out of recognition to please the reformers and the ladies, one of
the two talented writers who attempted to keep the comic muse alive in
something like her "Restoration" form was Thomas Baker.[1] Of
Baker's four plays which reached the stage, none has been reprinted

since the eighteenth century and three exist only as originally published.
Of these three the best is _The Fine Lady's Airs_; hence its selection
for the Reprints.
Baker's career in the theatre was as successful as should have been
expected by any young man who after his first play attempted to swim
against rather than with the current of taste. His first effort, entitled The
Humour of the Age, was produced at D.L. c. February 1701, and
published March 22,[2] the author having then but reached his "Twenty
First Year" (Dedication). It must have been well received, for Baker
speaks of "the extraordinary Reception this Rough Draught met with."
Indeed, it has in it, despite some "satire," a number of motifs which
would recommend it to the audience. Railton, the antimatrimonialist
and libertine of the piece, is given the wittiest lines, but his attempt to
seduce Tremilia, a grave Quaker-clad beauty, is frowned on by
everyone, including the author; and when the rake attempts to force the
lady, Freeman, a man of sense, intervenes with sword drawn and gives
him a stern lecture. In the end, when Tremilia, giving her hand to
Freeman, turns out to be an heiress who had assumed the Quaker garb
to make sure of getting a disinterested husband, the error of Railton's
ways becomes apparent. At the same time his cast mistress, whom he
had succeeded in marrying off to a ridiculous old Justice, is impressed
by Tremilia's "great Example." "How conspicuous a thing is Virtue!"
says she, in an aside; and she resolves to make the Justice a model wife.
Despite much wit the play is thus, in its main drift, exemplary.
Baker followed with _Tunbridge-Walks: Or, The Yeoman of Kent_,
D.L. Jan. 1703, a play good enough to pass into the repertory and to be
revived many times in the course of the century. The variety of
company and the holiday atmosphere of the English watering-place had
inspired good comedies of intrigue, manners, and character
eccentricities before this date (e.g. Shadwell's Epsom Wells and
Rawlins' _Tunbridge-Wells_). Baker decorates his scene with such
"humours" as Maiden, "a Nice Fellow that values himself upon all
Effeminacies;" Squib, a bogus captain; Mrs. Goodfellow, "a Lady that
loves her Bottle;" her niece Penelope, "an Heroic Trapes;" and
Woodcock, the Yeoman, a rich, sharp, forthright, crusty old fellow with

a pretty daughter, Belinda, whom he is determined never to marry but
to a substantial farmer of her own class: her suitor, a clever
ne'er-do-well named Reynard, of course tricks the old gentleman by an
intrigue and a disguise. It is Reynard's sister Hillaria, however, "a
Railing, Mimicking Lady" with no money and no admitted scruples,
but enough beauty and wit to match when and with whom she chooses,
who dominates the play; and though Loveworth, whom she finally
permits to win her, is rather substantial than gay, she is gay enough for
them both. The action,