Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/98

88 is all villainy, and other leſs miſchievous intentions may be very improper to be communicated to a ſecond perſon. In ſuch a cafe, therefore the audience muſt obſerve, whether the perſon upon the ſtage takes any notice of them at all, or no: for if he ſuppoſes any one to be by, when he talks to himſelf, it is monſtrous and ridiculous to the laſt degree; nay not only in this caſe, but in any part of a play, if there is expreſſed any knowledge of an audience it is inſufferable. But otherwiſe, when a man in a ſoliloquy reaſons with himſelf, and pro’s and con’s, and weighs all his deſigns, we ought not to imagine that this man either talks to us, or to himſelf; he is only thinking, and thinking ſuch matter, as it were inexcuſable folly in him to ſpeak. But, becauſe we are concealed ſpectators of the plot in agitation, and the poet finds it neceſſary to let us know the whole myſtery of his contrivance, he is willing to inform us of this perſon’s thoughts, and to that end is forced to make uſe of the expedient of ſpeech, no other, or better way being yet invented for the communication of thought.’

Towards the cloſe of the ſame year Queen Mary died. Upon that occaſion Mr. Congreve produced an elegiac Paſtoral, a compoſition which the admirers of this poet have extolled in the moſt laviſh terms of admiration, but which ſeems not to merit the incenſe it obtained.

When Mr. Betterton opened the new houſe at Lincoln’s-Inn, Congreve took part with him, and gave him his celebrated comedy of Love for Love, then introduced upon the ſtage, with the moſt