[The Sullen Lovers (1668)]
From the preface. The dedication to the Duke of Newcastle is dated 1 September.
The comic dramatist Shadwell (1641-92) succeeded Dryden as poet laureate in 1688. He identified himself as a follower of Jonson throughout his career, as here and in Literary Record 99. In his Diary , Pepys reports Shadwell's admiration for The Silent Woman . The dramatis personae of The Sullen Lovers includes Sir Positive At-All, a caricature of Sir Robert Howard, and the poet Ninny, a caricature of the Hon. Edward Howard, brother of Sir Robert, and a frequent commentator on Jonson. In Act I, Sir Positive is reported as confiding to the hero Stanford his discovery of 'two Plays, that betwixt you and I have a great deal of Wit in e'm; Those are, the Silent Woman, and the Scornful Lady -- And if I understand any thing in the World, there's Wit enough, in both those, to make one good Play, If I had the management of e'm' (p. 6 ). In Act V, Sir Positive quotes Catiline to Ninny: 'I'le plow up rocks steep as the Alps in dust, and lave the Tyrrhene Waters into Clouds (as my friend Cateline sayes)'; Ninny responds by quoting Hotspur from Henry IV, Part I : 'Ile pluck bright honour from the pale fac'd Moon (as my friend Hot-spur sayes)' p. 72 (really p. 80).
*****************************************I have endeavour'd to represent variety of Humours (most of the persons of the Play differing in their Characters from one another) which was the practise of Ben Johnson, whom I think all Drammatick Poets ought to imitate, though none are like to come near; he being the onely person that appears to me to have made perfect Representations of Humane Life: most other Authors that I ever read, either have wilde Romantick Tales, wherein they strein Love and Honour to that Ridiculous height, that it becomes Burlesque: or in their lower Comœdies content themselves with one or two Humours at most, and those not near so perfect Characters as the admirable Johnson alwayes made, who never wrote Comedy without seven or eight considerable Humours. I never saw one except that of Falstaffe that was in my judgment comparable to any of Johnson's considerable Humours: You will pardon this digression when I tell you he is the man, of all the World, I most passionately admire for his Excellency in Drammatick Poetry.
Though I have known some of late so Insolent to say, that Ben Johnson, wrote his best Playes without Wit; imagining, that all the Wit in Playes consisted in bringing two persons upon the Stage to break Jests, and to bob one another, which they call Repartie, not considering that there is more wit and invention requir'd in the finding out good Humor, and Matter proper for it, then in all their smart reparties. For, in the Writing of a Humor, a Man is confin'd not to swerve from the Character, and oblig'd to say nothing but what is proper to it: but in the Playes which have been wrote of late, there is no such thing as perfect Character, but the two chief persons are most commonly a Swearing, Drinking, Whoring, Ruffian for a Lover, and an impudent ill-bred tomrig for a Mistress, and these are the fine people of the Play; and there is that Latitude in this, that almost any thing is proper for them to say; but their chief Subject is bawdy, and profaness, which they call brisk writing, when the most dissolute of Men, that rellish those things well enough in private, are chok'd at e'm in publick: and, methinks, if there were nothing but the ill Manners of it, it should make Poets avoid that Indecent way of Writing.
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