Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/49

Rh said that Dryden was one of the principal supporters of the King's House, and ere long in one of his new plays a principal character was set apart for the popular comedian. The drama was a tragi-comedy called "Secret Love, or, the Maiden Queen" and an additional interest was attached to its production, from the King having suggested the plot to its author, and calling it "his play." The dramatis personæ consist, curiously enough, of eight female, and only three male parts. Good acting was not wanting to forward its success. Mohun, Hart, and Burt, three of the best performers then on the stage, filled the only male parts—while Mrs. Marshall, Mrs. Knep, "Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn," and Mrs. Corey, sustained the principal female characters. The tragic scenes have little to recommend them; but the reputation of the piece was thought to have been redeemed by the excellence of the alloy of comedy, as Dryden calls it, in which it was generally agreed he was seldom happier. Even here, however, his dialogue wants that easy, brisk, pert character which Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar afterwards brought to such inimitable perfection, and of which Etherege alone affords a satisfactory example in the reign of Charles II.

The first afternoon of the new play was the