In The Old Batchelour of Congreve we find the attitude of the aristocracy toward marriage brought out as neatly and strikingly as in the quotation from Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife which we cited in a previous paragraph of this chapter: HEARTWELL: Marry you? No, no, I'll love you. SYLVIA: Nay, but if you love me, you must marry me; what, don't I know my Father lov'd my Mother and was married to her? HEARTWELL: Away, in the old days people married where they lov'd; but that fashion is changed, Child. SYLVIA: Never tell me that, I know it is not changed by myself; for I love you and would marry you. HEARTWELL: Every man plays the fool once in his life; but to marry is playing the fool all one's life long.9 In Act I of the same play we discover Bellamour supplementing the same attitude: Why, faith, I think it will so well enough. If the husband be out of the way, for the wife to show her fondness and impatience of his absence, by choosing a lover as like him as she can; and what is unlike she may help with her own fancy. • Act III. The same attitude toward marriage is to be found in Wycherly's The Country Wife: HORNER: So then you only marry'd to keep a whore to yourself; well, but let me tell you, women, as you say, are like soldiers, made constant and loyal by good pay, rather than by oaths and convenants, therefore, I'd advise my friends to keep rather than to marry. And in Bellamira, or the Mistress, adapted from The Eunuch of Terence by Sir Charles Sedley, the same sentiment is again voiced: BELLAMIRA: Get money enough, and you can never want a husband. A husband is a good bit to close one's stomach with, when love's feast is Who wou'd begin a meal with cheese? over. But if the Elizabethans were bold and Dryden were bolder, this play of Sedley's can be counted among the boldest in expressing the candor of aristocratic drama. Imagine such passages as these strewn through bourgeois literature, and the height of the ridiculous and the climax of the impossible have been achieved: DANGERFIELD: I am in a fever; I have not had woman these two days. . . DANGERFIELD: If I had this eunuch alone he would find I were none. MERRYMAN (after proposing to Thisbe): I have some provisoes to offer, too, in order to our future peace and quiet; I will have none of your gaming ladies to keep you up at cards till I am ready to go out in the morning, so that we have scarce time for the great end of matrimony. No meetings at the China-Houses, where under pretence of raffling for a piece of plate, or so, you get acquainted with all the young fellows in town; three such meetings go to visit, and three visits to something that shall be nameless. No Epsome nor Tunbridge Waters, where ladies and gentlemen walk and prate up acquaintance so fast as if it were in a tavern. THISBE: You must either get me with child the first year, or give me leave to use the lawful means.1 10 The end of the play is not repentant: KEEPWELL: My Bell and I will lead a marry'd life, It was an age of super-sophistication, and when Lady Brute in The Provoked Wife declared "virtue is an ass," she but uttered the sentiment of her class 10 Act III. Bellamira or The Mistress, adapted from The Eunuch. by Terence, by Sir Charles Sedley. 11 Act. V. but not of her age! An age, as we stated, is often infused with the ideas and sentiments of several classes. Lady Brute expressed the sentiment of the ruling class of her age. The Restoration period, then, concluded an epoch in English literature. After it the leadership of feudal aristocracies was to pass and perish. No dramatists were again to exalt the wild, careless, exuberant spirit of the times of Shakespeare and Dryden. Collier's attack had announced the threatening triumph of a new psychology. Prynne and Gosson had been premature harbingers of the new age that the eighteenth century was to introduce. The bourgeoisie was to survive feudalism and supplant the aristocracy as the controlling class of the new society. Society was to change. Ideas were to change. Ethics were to change. Literature and art were to change. CHAPTER IV SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE COMEDY SENTIMENTAL HE political changes that followed the Restora TH tion were rapid and decisive. Religions clashed in struggle for supremacy. Society was rent with fear and dissension. Charles' successor, his brother James, was a Papist. Catholicism threatened an oppressive and prolonged continuance of feudal custom and rule. The aspirations of the bourgeoisie would have been further thwarted under a Catholic hierarchy. The birth of a son to the royal family merely precipitated open expression of a hostility that had been smoldering for several generations. That religious differences were important factors in the white revolution of 1688 no historian would deny. These religious differences, however, were distinct outgrowths of economic causes, group psychologies shaped by the material conditions of social life. The coronation of William III and Mary in 1688 marked a revolutionary change in English society. The dominancy of the crown, the conquering decision of nobility, were ended. Royal control was eclipsed by the rise of the House of Commons. The Bill of Rights had |