Again, the response of the prisoner in Puff's tragedy to the Justice, "My name's John Wilkins-Alias have I none"may be specific parody of young Norval's most famous speech, long a favorite declamation, "My name is Norval." 1 It may be hazarded, too, that Tilburina's "confidant" is a burlesque sister to Anna, Lady Randolph's confidante. Yet it should be remembered also that the confidante was a familiar convenience of tragedy. Finally, it may be added that Douglas had attained a popularity on the stage which renders it probable that the audience of The Critic might have caught the necessarily somewhat subtle allusion of specific parody of individual lines. Despite such direct parodies as have here been tentatively suggested, the contention that, as compared with The Rehearsal, The Critic is strikingly free from specific parody of individual passages in contemporary drama, is not only possible, but probable. It is improbable that the manager of Drury Lane would have gone far out of his way to ridicule in unmistakable fashion a multitude of direct passages from playwrights who supplied much of the drama for his own stage. It may be noted, too, that the Tragedy Rehearsed in The Critic is far shorter than the play of Bayes in The Rehearsal. Puff's tragedy appears only in the last two acts of The Critic: the tragedy of Bayes appears in all the five acts of The Rehearsal. Furthermore, even this comparatively limited extent of text is still further restricted, in its possibilities for definite parody, by the numerous passages which cannot possibly be interpreted save as general hits at the absurdities of the stage. A definite illustration of this is the very opening of Puff's tragedy with the striking of a clock, "to beget an awful attention in the audience- it also marks the time, which is four o'clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemis -- 1 See note, p. 312. phere." It is at once apparent that Sheridan burlesques the tediousness of opening scenes and the ornateness and verbosity of descriptive passages. So numerous are the contemporary plays which would meet the requirements of the burlesque that a dozen different keys to the passage could be readily supplied. This is general burlesque, not specific parody of a particular play. It would be profitless to continue the discussion with the great number of similar instances in Puff's tragedy. Futile must be the effort to give to these passages a local habitation and the name of a particular dramatist. Even if Holcroft could have supplied some key to The Critic, a modern key would inevitably encounter the pitfalls which proved disastrous to the key to The Rehearsal attempted by Bishop Percy some hundred years after the first production of The Rehearsal. Arber's words may be most pertinently applied to The Critic: "A real Key should confine itself to the identical plays and dramatists satirized, nothing more nor less. Bp. Percy searching through all the antecedent dramatic literature, may find, did find, many parallel passages, but he could adduce nothing to prove these were in the minds of the authors in writing The Rehearsal. Indeed it is improbable that they had in view the 40 or 60 plays to which he refers. His references but illustrate the extent of the mock heroic drama." 1 The extended discussion here given has been necessitated in large measure by the unanimity with which Sheridan's commentators have allowed Holcroft's chance remark to pass unchallenged as proof that The Critic is full of direct parody readily recognizable in the contemporary drama. Dogmatic assertion is dangerous, but the contention seems amply supported that The Critic cannot be regarded as abounding in passages of specific parody similar to those in The Rehearsal. A passage from the critique in The Public Advertiser of Lon 1 Reprint of The Rehearsal, p. 48. don, November 2, 1779, on the first performance of The Critic, may show fittingly how fully, even in its own day, it was held to be not so much a series of individual parodies, as a general burlesque of stage absurdities: "The tedious and unartificial Commencements of modern Tragedies, the inflated Diction, the figurative Tautology, the Feu de Theatre of Embraces and Groans, Vows and Prayers, florid Pathos, whining Heroism, and, above all, the Trick of Stage Situation, are ridiculed with a Burlesque which may be thought rather too refined for the Multitude, but certainly is perfect in its Stile." 5. THE ELEMENT OF ACTUAL HISTORY IN THE CRITIC So zealously has attention been focused upon some of the more obvious burlesque features of The Critic that scant heed has been paid to the marked basis of real history which furnishes to The Critic much of its setting. Sheridan's text alludes frequently to events of current history which have, for the most part, been allowed to pass, if not unnoticed, at least unexplained. Accordingly, the detailed explanation of these individual allusions given in the Notes to the text should here be prefaced with a brief connected account of the general political situation in England in 1779. For many months before the production of The Critic public attention had been directed with increasing disfavor to the administration of English naval affairs. Contemporary newspapers, periodicals, the Journals of the House of Commonsall bear abundant testimony to widespread discontent. John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, the First Lord of the. Admiralty, was a scandalously corrupt partisan. Though the governmental party gave him the doubtful sanction of support, the minority votes in the House of Commons against the conduct of the Admiralty voiced public indignation. One motion, lost by a vote of 118 to 224, on April 19, 1779, reads: "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, that He will be graciously pleased to remove from His Presence and Councils John Earl of Sandwich, on Account of the general ill State of the Navy under his Administration at the most critical Seasons." When Keppel, who had commanded the English Fleet in an indecisive engagement in the Channel with the French, was acquitted by the court martial, a mob had attacked Sandwich's official residence at the Admiralty. In a word, Sandwich was the constant target of righteous wrath, a man who debauched public honor as fully as he did private morality. The immediate political situation which confronted the First Lord of the Admiralty in 1779 was hostility between England and the allied forces of France and Spain. On the retirement of Keppel, the command of the Channel Fleet had been eventually assumed by Sir Charles Hardy, long retired from active service. By the middle of the year the French and Spanish fleets threatened an invasion of England. In mid-August the London newspapers announced the appearance of the fleet off Plymouth. Hardy, with a fleet smaller than that of the allies, did not hazard an attack. Before the appearance of The Critic, however, public apprehension had been largely allayed by the withdrawal of the hostile fleet. Lloyd's Evening Post, October 27-29, gives an “Extract of a Letter from a Lady at Plymouth, dated Oct. 21, 1779. After the terrors of an invasion from the combined fleets, we begin once more to resume our usual gaiete de coeur. Our assemblies and suppers are as gay and lively as the Officers of ten thousand brave troops, now in our environs, can possibly promote." Ten days before The Critic appeared at Drury Lane, was produced at Covent Garden "a new musical farce entitled Plymouth in an Uproar." Commenting on this, The London Chronicle (October 19-21) says: "This entertainment is founded on the well-known circumstances of the combined 1 The Journal of the House of Commons, vol. 37, p. 334. fleets appearing off Plymouth last summer, and the consternation occasioned in that part of the world in consequence thereof." Lloyd's Evening Post (October 20-22) discusses the same farce as follows: "The business of the French and Spanish fleets appearing off Plymouth was a matter of too serious and alarming a nature to be the subject of wit or humour. The formidable strength of our enemies naturally excites resolutions of opposing them with determined courage, but a truly brave people feel the impropriety of treating them with contempt and ridicule." Such was the general political situation when Dangle picked up his newspaper in the opening scene of The Critic and read in its head-lines "nothing but about the fleet and the nation." Only study of the historical setting of The Critic reveals the significance of naming Puff's tragedy The Spanish Armada, or the appeal to patriotic pride of Puff's final "magnificence, battle, and procession" when the stage-direction1 details the destruction of the Spanish Armada by the English Fleet. Flourish of drums trumpets cannon, &c., &c. Scene changes to the sea the musick plays 'Britons strike home.'Spanish fleet destroyed by fire-ships, &c. - English fleet ad As given in the first printed edition of The Critic, 1781, p. 98. |