A COMEDY, IN FIVE ACTS; BY BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. AS PERFORMED AT THE THEATRES ROYAL, DRURY LANE AND COVENT GARDEN. PRINTED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE MANAGERS FROM THE PROMPT BOOK. WITH REMARKS BY MRS. INCHBALD. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND ORME, PATERNOSTER ROW, REMARKS. The reader of this comedy will scarcely conceive the great entertainment which it can bestow in representation. But it requires peculiar powers of comic acting to make it please even on the stage, and therefore it is seldom performed. Don John is the character, which, most of any in the piece, must be assisted with the actor's skill, or the whole drama sinks into insipidity. The second Constantia ranks as a first comic character, but is too little seen to be of any high importance. The Landlady to Don John is most excellently portrayed, but is one of those characters, however admirable, not sufficiently pleasing to be impressive. Old women, however well described by an author, or performed by an actress, have seldom more attractions on the stage than in real life. The continual bustle, the contrivances, the hurry of intrigue, and the mistakes, in this comedy, are its best claims to the attention of an audience-in these occurrences a reader cannot so well partake; and, as humour is more its quality than wit, of that, again, the reader is denied his equal share with an auditor. Wit is ster ling coin, that passes for its genuine value in a book, as well as in a theatre; whilst humour depends upon a hundred accidents to make it current. Garrick was perfectly humorous in Don John, and made the play a favourite, when he performed the part. So did Henderson. Elliston can do the same at present. "The Chances" was the production of the noted friends, Beaumont and Fletcher, and was brought forth in the year 1643-its fable was taken from a novel, by Cervantes, called "Lady Cornelia."-Becoming, in about forty years, somewhat old fashioned, the Duke of Buckingham undertook its alteration and improvement. Again, outliving the mode, Garrick, in 1773, new dressed it for the public, and, most efficacious service of all, performed the first character himself. The task which Garrick had in his alteration of this comedy, was, no doubt, to curtail its wit; for never dramatists had greater fame for being witty, than both Fletcher and Buckingham, though, chiefly, in all the ancient indecorum of comic genius. That Garrick, to the delicacy of improved taste, was compelled to sacrifice much of their libertine dialogue, may be well suspected, by the remainder which he spared. As, in a former preface to "Rule a Wife and have a Wife," some account has been given of the lives and friendship of Beaumont and Fletcher, the biographical article before this play must be assigned to the noble peer, who, having altered and amended "The Chances," published it under his own name. |