The formal
characteristics, without the immorality, of the Restoration comedy
re-appeared briefly in Goldsmith's _She Stoops to Conquer_, 1772, and
Sheridan's _Rivals_, _School for Scandal_, and _Critic_, 1775-9; our
last strictly "classical" comedies. None of this school of English
comedians approached their model, Moliere. He excelled his imitators not
only in his French urbanity--the polished wit and delicate grace of his
style--but in the dexterous unfolding of his plot, and in the wisdom and
truth of his criticism of life, and his insight into character. It is a
symptom of the false taste of the age that Shakspere's plays were
rewritten for the Restoration stage. Davenant made new versions of
_Macbeth_ and _Julius Caesar_, substituting rime for blank verse. In
conjunction with Dryden, he altered the _Tempest_, complicating the
intrigue by the introduction of a male counterpart to Miranda--a youth
who had never seen a woman. Shadwell "improved" _Timon of Athens_, and
Nahum Tate furnished a new fifth act to _King Lear_, which turned the
play into a comedy! In the prologue to his doctored version of _Troilus
and Cressida_, Dryden made the ghost of Shakspere speak of himself as
Untaught, unpracticed in a barbarous age.
Thomas Rymer, whom Pope pronounced a good critic, was very severe upon
Shakspere in his _Remarks on the Tragedies of the Last Age_; and in his
_Short View of Tragedy_, 1693, he said, "In the neighing of a horse or
in the growling of a mastiff, there is more humanity than, many times,
in the tragical flights of Shakspere.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187