Page:The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets.djvu/164

144 Paris almot e’ry one goes to the Theatre, here not the tenth part, for Hypocriie and Buines here, divide the greater part to their everal and different Offices: Another Reaon is, That the Governours of the Houe were unwilling to wear it out, and o balk’d the Run of it.

I am not ignorant of the everal Objections made againt this Play by the Criticks, viz. that the Scenes are looe, and not at all akin to the Plot, and may be cut out and alter’d in perpetuum, without the leat Injury or Advantage to the thin and frail Deign of the Play; that in Lydia, before the time of Alexander the Great, they talk of Jutices of the Peace, Fox Hunting, Flanders Hores, and other things which are entirely Modern; but at the ame time that thee Accuations must be confes’d not to be ill grounded; it mut be own’d, that without thee Faults we mut have lot Beauties of greater Conequence. This I’m ure, there has never been on the Stage, a Play of more general Satyr ince the Plain Dealer; and there are uch Publick and ueful Morals recommended to the Audience, that will be as beneficial to the Common-weal, as diverting to the immediate Spectators.

The Provok’d Wife, a Comedy, 4 to. Acted at the Theatre in Little Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, by his Majety’s Servants, 1697. To peak of this Play as I ought, I hou’d have the Pen of the Author who Writ it, and the recommending the Reader to a Perual of it, is the greatet Praie I can give it. But I cannot omit the Objections I have heard made to it, by ome of our Criticks, viz. That it is a looe Play, without Deign, or if there be a Deign, ’tis uch a one as the jut Rules of Comedy exclude, ince it teaches the Wives how they ought to return the Brutality of their Husbands. I cannot by any means allow this Objection; for the Deign eems to me as jut as the Reflections and Wit of it are poinantpoignant [sic], the Converation lively and genteel; for it rather teaches Husbands how they ought to expect their Wives hou’d make them a Return, if they ue them as Sir John Brute did his; uch Husbands may learn, that lighted and abued Virtue and Beauty, may be provoked to hearken to the prevailing Motives of Revenge. I can never think any reaonable Man hou’d uppoe a Woman entirely diveted of a ene of Humanity, or inenible either of the Power of an agreeable Temptation, or of the Pleaure it yields: and as mot of our Vices are the uret Guard, if not ource of our Virtues, I’m confident, when the Husbands ill Uage of his wife deprives himelf of her Love, he dimies the uret Guard of their common Honour; and the other, that is her Pride and Care of her Reputation will not be of force enough againt Revenge; and the trong ollicitations of an agreeable Peron, that demontrates a value for what the Poeor lights: So that it cannot be deny’d, that this Moral is of admirable Ue; and offers a Truth to our