Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/95

 information from a lady in Paris to the effect that he was travelling without a passport. His arrest was approved by the authorities, who held out hopes of an early exchange. In May 1691 he was transferred to Vincennes, where his treatment appears to have undergone a change for the worse. About the same time Sir Dudley North made a proposal to the effect that his brother Montagu and Vanbrugh, who were both prisoners in France, should be exchanged against M. Bertelier, a French agent of some importance who was detained in Newgate, but nothing came of this suggestion. In January 1692, with a view of silencing complaints, Louis XIV ordered Vanbrugh to be transferred to the Bastille. He was put in the fourth chamber of the ‘Tour de Liberté,’ and was allowed to take exercise at will and to receive his friends. Many years afterwards he gave the name of Bastille to a house which he built for himself at Greenwich. Voltaire repeats a saying of his that he had not the slightest idea what gained him the distinction of detention in such a fortress (, Lettres sur les Anglais, No. xix.). It was not until 22 Nov. 1692 that he was set at liberty, M. de Lagny, fermier général, standing surety for him to a large amount (‘Corresp. of Pontchartrain’ and ‘Journal of Du Junca,’ dep. governor, ap., Archives de la Bastille, ix. 338–46; cf. ). Vanbrugh is said to have employed some of his enforced leisure in drafting a comedy, the nucleus as it proved of his famous ‘Provok'd Wife.’

For a time Vanbrugh seems to have resumed his military duties; on 31 Jan. 1695–6 he was, as ‘John Brooke,’ granted a captain's commission in Berkeley's marine regiment of foot, and henceforth until he was knighted was known to the town as ‘Captain Vanbrugh.’

The production of Cibber's ‘Love's Last Shift’ at the Theatre Royal in January 1695–6 inspired Vanbrugh to give a comedy to the stage. He thought that it would be interesting to develop the situation upon which Cibber had rung down the curtain, and the result was the ‘Relapse,’ ‘got, conceived, and born in six weeks' space’ (Prologue). It was not, however, until Boxing-day 1696 that the ‘Relapse’ was given at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane with Cibber as Lord Foppington. This was Vanbrugh's inimitable enlargement of Cibber's original conception of a typical fop, known before his elevation to the peerage as Sir Novelty Fashion. Sir Fopling Flutter in Etherege's ‘Man of Mode’ suggests a faint outline of the part, but Foppington is vastly superior. The performance was an unqualified success, and well within the normal limit of eight days was published the ‘Relapse, or Vertue in Danger, being the sequel of the Fool in Fashion: a Comedy’ (1697, 4to; a second quarto appeared in 1698; again 1708; 1711, 12mo; 1735, 12mo; 1770, 8vo).

The play remained a prime favourite with the public throughout the eighteenth century, and has passed through several transformations. A three-act farce, called ‘The Man of Quality,’ was carved out of it by Lee and given at Covent Garden in 1776; and in the following year Sheridan, reflecting that it was ‘a pity to exclude the productions of our best writers for want of a little wholesome pruning,’ recast it as ‘A Trip to Scarborough.’ The original play was seen at the Olympic in 1846, and at the Strand as late as 1850. A version by Mr. John Hollingshead, also called ‘The Man of Quality,’ was produced at the Gaiety on 7 May 1870 with Miss Nellie Farren as Miss Hoyden, a part in which Mrs. Jordan had excelled; and another, called ‘Miss Tomboy,’ by Mr. Robert Buchanan, at the Vaudeville on 20 March 1890 (cf. Theatre, 1 May 1890).

The ‘Relapse’ was followed at a very short interval by ‘Æsop,’ a free version of the first part of Edmond Boursault's ‘Les Fables d'Ésope,’ a favourite piece in Paris in 1690. Vanbrugh's superiority in wit and humour to his original is shown as decisively as his inferiority in the matter of sentiment. It seems to have been produced at Drury Lane about 15 Jan. 1697, and was published anonymously in quarto in the same month (the second part, forming a translation of ‘Ésope à la Cour,’ the best of Boursault's pieces—produced in 1701, but then prohibited by Louis XIV—does not appear to have been acted in England; it was appended to a second quarto of 1697; again in 8vo 1711, and Dublin 1725).

‘Æsop’ hardly sustained Vanbrugh's reputation, but by May 1697 he had another play ready. This was his well-known comedy, ‘The Provok'd Wife,’ a piece the indecencies of which, according to Dr. Blair, ‘ought to explode it out of all reputable society.’ The same comedy, in the mind of Charles James Fox, entitled Vanbrugh to be called ‘almost as great a genius as ever lived’ (, Recollections, 1859, p. 32). Originally, it is said, planned in the Bastille, this pre-eminently strong play was produced by Betterton at Lincoln's Inn Fields about 20 May 1697, the great actor himself playing Sir John Brute, while Lady Brute was sustained by Mrs. Barry, and Belinda by Bracegirdle (it was simultaneously published