SOURCE: O'Neill, John H. “Buckingham's Nondramatic Poetry and Prose,” and “Buckingham's Minor Dramatic Works.” In George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham, pp. 21-51; 52-80. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.

[In the first essay below, O'Neill comments on Buckingham's verse elegies, satires, and epigrams, and on his prose works, including political tracts and speeches in Parliament. In the second, O'Neill discusses Buckingham's minor plays, including The Chances, The Country Gentlemen, and The Restauration.]

BUCKINGHAM'S NONDRAMATIC POETRY AND PROSE

The duke of Buckingham was influenced by, and was a part of, a tradition of courtly writers which originated in the Renaissance. Like Sir Thomas Wyatt in the reign of Henry VIII, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and Richard Lovelace and Sir John Suckling in the reign of Charles I, Buckingham thought of himself as a man of affairs first—a politician, a statesman, and a courtier—and a writer second. Because he often wrote to serve his political purposes or to further an intrigue at court, his prose works include speeches delivered in the House of Lords, treatises on policy, and tracts; and most of his nondramatic poems are occasional verse—satires, elegies, complimentary verses, and epigrams, all written in response to particular events.

Buckingham copied much of this occasional verse into his commonplace book. He organized the compositions, both in verse and in prose, under various topics: “Love,” “Tears,” “House,” “Ignoble,” and so on. Although the works were written throughout the course of his life, he may have used the book as a means of organizing them—copying from loose papers into the book under the various headings—during his last years of retirement in Yorkshire, for it was found in his pocket after his death. Some of its contents have been published, but they are not readily available; therefore any poems from the commonplace book which are discussed in this chapter will be quoted in full.¹

EPIGRAMS

An epigram is “a form of writing which makes a satiric, complimentary, or aphoristic observation with wit, extreme condensation, and, above all, brevity.”² The tradition of writing such poems began with the Greeks; flourished in the hands of the Roman poets Martial and Catullus; descended to such Renaissance poets as Wyatt, Davies, Harington, and Ben Jonson; and was passed from them to the wits of Buckingham's time.³ Because the epigram is topical and occasional, it is particularly suited for entry in a commonplace book, and most of the poetry in Buckingham's commonplace book is epigrammatic.

The verse form of the epigram is almost always the couplet, but line lengths vary considerably. Although no topic is considered out of bounds, the ideal epigram, according to the eighteenth-century German critic and dramatist Gotthold Lessing, is one which first creates an expectation by calling our attention to some particular subject, then gratifies the expectation by a revelation or explanation.⁴ Buckingham's commonplace book contains several epigrams which create such an effect. The following couplet, which appears with several other laments and complaints under the heading “Love” in the commonplace book, is one example: “What strange injustice in my fate doth dwell: / 'Tis she that sins, and I that suffer hell” (80). The first line calls our attention by promising to inform us of a “strange injustice”; the second fulfills the promise and surprises us. The woman's “sin” is her rejection of the lover's suit. If she sinned in another way, by consenting to his suit, he would be released from hell. Thus the word “sin” takes on a new meaning. One sins not by having illicit sexual relations, but by refusing to have them. Because the ordinary meaning of “sin” is the one which first occurs to us when we read the poem, we are momentarily shocked at the reversal of our expectations when we see the word used in this new way. That momentary shock is the reason for the epigram. It gives us a brief, startling opportunity to see things as we have not seen them before.

But not every epigram relies upon paradox to produce its effect. The following epigram, also from the commonplace book, uses hyperbole as its dominant figure: “Some eyes so bright, that they through darkness see. / Where e'er hers come, there can no darkness be” (26). To use hyperbole as the mode of wit in this couplet, Buckingham must make the first part of the epigram hyperbolic in itself. Then the second part must exceed the first by revealing a greater, more surprising hyperbole.

One of Buckingham's contemporaries, the French critic Pierre Nicole, argues in his Essay on True and Apparent Beauty against the use of hyperbole in epigram on the grounds that it is inherently false. In his view, to exaggerate matters as hyperbole does is to describe things not as they are, but as we know them not to be.⁵ But Nicole's literalism is simple and narrow. Although hyperbole does not speak the literal truth, it does express a truth of feeling; it says, in effect, that the idea it expresses is felt too deeply for ordinary words to communicate, and that language must be turned against itself, must be pushed to extremes, if the feeling is to be understood. To many seventeenth-century poets, as to the Latin epigrammatists, that truth of feeling is a dominant concern. Donne, for example, in his love lyric “The Relic,” concludes, “These miracles we did; but now, alas, / All measure and all language I should pass, / Should I tell what a miracle she was.”⁶

For Buckingham in particular, hyperbole was more than a literary figure; it was almost a principle of existence. It suggests the unrestrained, almost maniac energy, intensity, and imagination which characterized him. To be a man of wit was, for him, to be able to see and give expression to the extremes of experience—the compelling beauty of a face, the effortless grace of an action, the outrageous stupidity of a statesman, or the criminal hypocrisy of a king—which other people failed to recognize or to appreciate, or which they lacked the courage, honesty, or ability to express. But to those of a different temperament, Buckingham's extreme reactions seemed foolish and unstable. Thus Dryden, in his portrait of Buckingham in Absalom and Achitophel, wrote, “Rayling and praising were his usual theames, / And both (to shew his Judgment) in Extreames.”⁷ Dryden's lack of sympathy is apparent; to have a fairer view we might substitute “wit” for “judgment” in his couplet. But he is correct in identifying what might be called Buckingham's “hyperbolic vision” and in perceiving its central importance in his character.

But although hyperbole occurs frequently in Buckingham's epigrams, some of the most successful among them depend on more complex imagery. Buckingham's response to Dryden's portrait of him, for example, uses two interlocking images. It is a poem which the duke wrote and copied into his commonplace book but showed, as far as we know, to no one else:

“TO DRYDEN”

As witches images of wax invent
To torture those they're bid to represent,
And as the true live substance does decay
Whilst that slight idol melts in flames away,
Such, and no lesser, witchcraft wounds my name;
So thy ill-made resemblance wastes my fame;
So as the charmed brand consumed i' th' fire,
So did Meleager's vital heat expire.
Poor Name! What medicine for thee can I find,
But thus with stronger charms thy charm t' unbind?

(9)

This poem is both a heartfelt expression of personal pain and a well-crafted epigram. It describes the effect of Dryden's lampoon in two closely related and carefully chosen similes, first that of the witch's idol and second that of Meleager and the burning brand. The image of the wax idol is particularly appropriate, because it recalls the ancient origins of satire in the curse and suggests that modern satire retains something of the magical power it had in antiquity.⁸ There may be no logical reason why Dryden's caricature, Zimri, should affect the public perception of Buckingham, any more than there is any logical reason why the witch's victim should sicken and die when the wax image is destroyed—but it happens.

The image of Meleager and the burning brand also alludes to antiquity, to a story from Greek mythology. At Meleager's birth, Atropos, one of the three Fates, prophesied that he would live only as long as the log then burning on the fire was not consumed. His mother, Althaea, snatched the brand from the fire and kept it carefully to insure his life. But years later, after Meleager slew his mother's two brothers, she, in a rage, threw the brand into a fire. As soon as it was consumed, Meleager died. In this simile the brand is not an image of Meleager; it is simply arbitrarily identified with him. But the idea that the destruction of one affects the other reinforces Buckingham's idea, that his reputation is being consumed by the identification of him with Dryden's caricature.

Both images imply that Dryden's language in Absalom and Achitophel possesses a power far beyond its mere denotative significance, a power so great that it is almost magical. This is a point which critical exposition could not have made so succinctly, but which such exposition may illustrate. Dryden's use of the word “Zimri” as a name for Buckingham is taken from Numbers 25. According to the biblical story, “Israel abode in Shittim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab” (25:1). Because of this crime, “the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel,” and God visited a plague upon the Israelites. Moses commanded the judges to appease God's anger by killing the men who joined themselves with the Moabites.

And behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought unto his brethren a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the tabernacle of the congregations.

And when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand;

And he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel. …

Now the name of the Israelite that was slain, even that was slain with the Midianitish woman, was Zimri.

(Num. 25:6-8, 14)

To seventeenth-century readers, familiar with the Bible, Dryden's use of the name “Zimri” for Buckingham could be counted upon to suggest a series of parallels between the two characters. It suggests that Buckingham's adultery with Lady Shrewsbury, like Zimri's adultery, has been an offense to God, that God in His anger may punish England with some terrible misfortune if England does not punish Buckingham. Perhaps a susceptible reader might be led to identify the plague with which God punished Israel, in which “twenty and four thousand” died (Num. 25:9) with the plague which broke out in London in 1665, in which sixty-eight thousand people were killed. The identification might even suggest that to assassinate Buckingham, as Phinehas killed Zimri, would be a godly act. Since Buckingham's father had been assassinated by a religious fanatic, and since he himself had once narrowly escaped a similar attempt on his life, he could not view such a suggestion as an empty threat.⁹

Of course, all these suggestions hold only insofar as readers identify the biblical Zimri with the contemporary Buckingham. The power of Dryden's image inheres in that identification, just as the power of the witch's spell inheres in her “binding” of the charm, her creation of a magic link between her wax figure and her victim. Therefore Buckingham seeks to “unbind” the charm—to break the magic spell which links him to the evil image. Throughout the poem he has identified poetry with witchcraft, so it is logical that in the concluding couplet he attempts to turn his own charm against the original charm, his poem against Dryden's. This last couplet completes the charm. As the word “thus” in the final line suggests, this poem, the very poem we are reading, is Buckingham's countercharm.

The rhetorical structure of the poem is founded upon the words “as” and “so,” which are the logical links of the two similes. These words are used in two slightly different senses. In lines 1 and 3, “as” means “in the same way.” That is, the action of Dryden's lampoon on Buckingham's name resembles the action of the witch's fire upon her victim. These instances of “as” correlate with “so” in line 6 to complete the first simile. But in line 7, “as” means “at the same time.” Thus as the brand was consumed, Meleager was also consumed. Buckingham merges the two senses of the word, to suggest that a resemblance in effect and simultaneity in time are themselves similar. The phrase “so as” in line 7 adds another link of similarity: the story of Meleager resembles the action of the witch, and both resemble Dryden's lampoon on Buckingham. Dryden's ill-will toward Buckingham resembles the malevolence of the witch, or of Atropos in the classical myth. This complex merging of linkages is Buckingham's own charm. It shows how he could construct an apparently simple epigram to contain a concentrated and relatively sophisticated meaning.

As the image of Meleager suggests, Buckingham used references to classical myth as a means of concentrating meaning. The following complimentary poem demonstrates the degree of concentration which such an allusion can achieve within a limited space:

“BREASTS”

Such were the breasts at which, when earth was young,
The shining twins of fair Latona hung.
Upon such milk their growing godheads fed;
With such a white their beams were nourished.

(3)

Latona, the daughter of a Titan, was impregnated by Zeus and gave birth to Apollo, the god of the sun, and Artemis, the goddess of the moon. If this poem was written to the countess of Shrewsbury in 1670, during her pregnancy with Buckingham's illegitimate child, it compresses into four lines a hyperbolic compliment to his mistress and a hope for a brilliant child.

Among Buckingham's epigrams are several intended to attack his enemies in court intrigue and others whom for any reason he disliked. The following epigram is one example:

“ON THE LATE LORD CHANCELLOR”

          To ale, and toasts, and the mirth of a catch,
And all thy witty disputes with the watch;
To meat without napkins, and trenchers of bread
Which in many a quarrel has been flung at thy head;
To a sack by thy side, and a knife in thy pocket
In an old sheath that stinks like a candle i' th' socket;
To thy pleasant walks to Westminster Hall
In a dirty term, and thy justlings for the wall;
To thy breakfast in Hell, with black pots by the Tally,
Thy return in a sculler, and dinner in Ram Alley;
To the glorious court of the Prince d' Amour,
Where if thou pretendest to be a Counsellor,
Thou wouldst even there be but weight and a clog,
Return, return, thou now State Pettifog.(10)

(7)

This poem describes its object, Heneage Finch, as having the low habits and pleasures of an ordinary attorney. The repetition of the word “to,” and especially its association in the first line with “ale, and toasts, and the mirth of a catch,” lead the reader to believe that he will be reading a toast. Although he soon becomes aware that the praise is ironic (“Thy witty disputes,” “Thy pleasant walks”), he can easily assimilate that recognition to the idea of a toast by assuming that the encomium he is reading is an ironic one. The witty surprise of the epigram comes, therefore, in the final line. Instead of being told to raise his glass to his origins, Finch is ordered to return to them—to go back where he came from.

A few of Buckingham's epigrams reflect his interest in science. These tend to be somewhat more general in application than most of the others. Science could serve as a source of imagery, as in this example: “Love's flame kept in, as dangerous does become / As charcoal fires closed in a narrow room” (31). A charcoal fire indoors is dangerous both because it emits carbon monoxide and because it can, if the room is not ventilated, consume so much of the oxygen in the room that the occupants may suffocate. The simile suggests that love, when suppressed, may both consume and poison whoever conceals it.

Science could also provide the basis for a hyperbolic insult:

Nature ne'er leaps but mounts up by degrees:
So by plant animals she joins beasts and trees.
This well-linked chain of ordered entity
Would have been broke, had nature not made thee.
Thou makest the chain complete, for until then
There nothing was betwixt a beast and man.

(52)

This epigram uses the concept of the Chain of Being, familiar to scholars of the intellectual history of the Renaissance through the eighteenth century, as a source of wit. One characteristic of the chain is continuity, the idea that there are no gaps in the chain, that each species is adjacent to another species which varies from it only in the minutest degree.¹¹ The person who is the object of satire in this epigram assures continuity between animals and men: he is the “missing link.”

Science could also provide the basis for moral reflection:

Earth, air, and water we depopulate:
Wonder not then, man's life's so swiftly fled,
When by so many deaths he's daily fed.

(70)

The epigram suggests a kind of poetic justice in the fact that man, who kills so many other species in order to live, dies so quickly. Knowing what we know today about the relationship between life expectancy and a diet high in animal fat, we may find even more truth in this poem than Buckingham's contemporaries could.

Because of its high degree of concentration and its subjection to the natural cadences of the language, the epigram is one of the most restricted and demanding of English verse forms. Even its greatest masters, such as Herrick, Prior, and Landor, have produced work of uneven quality, and there are many poets whose reputation for epigram must rest upon a single excellent example. Judged by these standards, Buckingham stands not in the first rank of English epigrammatists, but among those whose work continues to deserve reading. The epigram was a form which he found congenial, and when, as in “To Dryden,” he concentrates complexity of meaning in a few lines; or when, as in “On the Late Lord Chancellor,” he first awakens and then surpasses an expectation, he fulfills the promise of the form and justifies his reputation as a man of wit.

BUCKINGHAM'S LONGER POEMS

The distinction between epigrams and longer poems can be made only approximately, for there is little difference between the longest of the former and the shortest of the latter. Buckingham's longer poems, like his epigrams, are often occasional, and his choice of subjects for longer poems ranges as widely as for epigrams. In general, however, the longer poems are less concentrated; a single poem may treat several ideas or examine a single idea from more than one perspective. And unlike the epigrams, the longer poems often respond to or play off against the requirements of a formal genre.

THE ELEGY FOR LORD GENERAL FAIRFAX.

Thomas, third baron Fairfax, was commander in chief of the Parliamentary armies from 1645 to 1650. In June 1650, once the civil wars had ended, he resigned his commission and retired to Nun Appleton House, his estate in Yorkshire. There, in accordance with the ideal of Cincinnatus so much admired in his time, he lived the quiet life of a rural landowner, enjoying the companionship of his wife, Anne; his daughter, Mary; and Mary's tutor, the poet Andrew Marvell.

When Buckingham came to Nun Appleton to court Mary Fairfax in 1657, he contracted an admiration for the retired general which continued throughout his life. No doubt one of the qualities he most admired was Fairfax's willingness to resist the temptations of money, power, and glory—temptations to which Buckingham himself was extremely vulnerable. Not only had the general given up his command at the conclusion of the civil wars, but he also refused any reward for his contribution to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.¹² He returned once again to Nun Appleton, where he lived quietly for the rest of his life.

After Fairfax died in November 1671, Buckingham wrote an elegy for his father-in-law in the form of an irregular ode—called a “Pindaric” in the title of some of the published versions—of five strophes with a total of 61 lines.¹³ The style of the poem is likely to surprise a reader whose expectations are created by the form of the ode or by the word “Pindaric” in its title, for its diction has none of the formality or grandeur which is usually associated with the ode. Rather, the style is plain throughout the poem and descends in some places to homely words or even to slang. The use of such words and phrases as spy'd (l. 14), bragg'd (l. 19), polls and braves (l. 30), and pudder (l. 32) takes the style down to the level of ordinary conversation—or below it.¹⁴

Such a contrast between the formality of the genre and the informality of the style is often a characteristic of burlesque poetry, but this poem is not a burlesque; it is a sincere tribute. In this case, the contrast between style and form awakens our attention to many other contrasts in the poem. For the epitaph on Lord Fairfax is a poem about contrast: it uses contrast as a rhetorical technique to treat its subject, which is contrast as a principle of character.

According to the poem, General Fairfax united in his personality several contrasting qualities. He combined extremes of courage and aggressiveness with extremes of gentleness and modesty: “Both sexes virtues were in him combin'd, / He had the fierceness of the manliest mind, / And yet the meekness too of woman-kind” (ll. 5-7). A second contrast exists between Fairfax and baser men, who lack both his courage and his humility. Whereas they boast of their courage and ferocity even in defeat, Fairfax blushed at the mention of his successes (ll. 19-22). Whereas other men put on the appearance of greatness even if they cannot attain the substance of it, Fairfax achieved the reality of greatness while retaining the plainness, simplicity, and unselfishness of his life.

A third contrast is only partly explicit. It is the contrast between Fairfax, who could have had power but renounced it, and the many men who spend their lives struggling for power. Many of the seekers after power are simply fools or knaves, “Who such a pudder make / Through dulness and mistake / In seeking after pow'r, and get it not” (ll. 32-34). These men may be irritating, but they are not dangerous. A more serious threat is posed by those who have the ability to gain power combined with the lust to achieve it. Here Buckingham creates an implicit contrast between Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, Fairfax's associate in the command of the Parliamentary armies, who, when Fairfax retired in 1650, assumed full command and went on to become the conqueror of Scotland, to dismiss the Parliament, and to rule England as a dictator. The power which Cromwell seized, Buckingham tells us, could have belonged to Fairfax:

          He might have been a king,
But that he understood
          How much it was a meaner thing
To be unjustly great, than honourably good.

(ll. 49-52)

The poem shows that Fairfax's simplicity and modesty were and are not simply a matter of personal taste and private ethics, but a political principle.¹⁵

A pivotal element in Buckingham's exposition of this theme is the word great, which is used in the poem in two distinct senses. In the phrase “unjustly great,” quoted above, great means “eminent,” “important,” or “powerful.” In the following lines, however, the word moves to quite a different meaning:

Through his whole life, the part he bore
          Was wonderful and great,
And yet it so appear'd in nothing more,
          Than in his private last retreat;

(ll. 23-26)

In line 24, great means “critical”—important in its significance. But in lines 25-26 great takes on a new meaning; it now means “magnanimous” or “noble”—having a lofty soul. Fairfax's nobility of mind, concealed by the simplicity and modesty of his personal character, is seen to be of a far greater quality than the emptiness or ruthlessness of other men, concealed by the external splendor of their titles and honors.

Thus what at first seems to be a confusion or misalignment of style and form is in fact a resolution of such a confusion. Buckingham's elegy teaches us to call things by their proper names and to distrust the grandeur of conventional forms. Those whom we are accustomed to thinking of as “great men” because they have the adulation of the multitude and the trappings of power may in fact be “mean” (l. 51) if their greatness is founded on injustice. And not only is nobility compatible with plainness, but plainness may be, in itself, the highest kind of nobility when plainness is chosen consciously by one who has the power to choose.

Similarly, we are accustomed to thinking of the Pindaric ode as “great” (it is sometimes called the “great ode”) because of the heroic style in which it is written. The diction applied to Fairfax throughout this poem is unremarkable either for elevation or the lack of it; like the man, it is simple and plain but rich in hidden meaning. The words cited above as low or slang all occur in descriptions of the vainglorious men to whom Fairfax is contrasted. Thus Buckingham aligns his style not with the genre but with the subject—the plain with the plain, the low with the low—and achieves a true nobility of theme.

SOME LOVE POETRY.

Only a few of Buckingham's longer poems deserve the title of love poems. They include poems entitled “Love” and “Epithalamium” in the commonplace book and poems entitled “To His Mistress” and “The Lost Mistress: A Complaint against the Countess of———” in his published works.¹⁶

As their titles indicate, these are fairly conventional poems. “The Lost Mistress” records the complaint of a shepherd who, deserted by the woman he loves, is torn between his desire to give voice to his pain and his reluctance to speak ill of the woman whom he still loves, despite the injury she has done him. “To His Mistress” is addressed by the speaker to the woman he loves; he tells her that he never could have loved her if it were not for her superior mind and noble soul, but he is also racked with desire for her body. “Love” describes the pain of one who loves unrequitedly and who sees all around him in nature the fulfillment of love. And the “Epithalamium” is the celebration of a marriage, the fulfillment of love.

Perhaps the most noticeable characteristic of Buckingham's love poetry is his awareness of nature and the degree to which it shares the lover's mood. As noted above, one of the poems is devoted entirely to that idea:

“LOVE”

Season of joy, and of delight,
                    To all the world but me;
          I only am excluded quite
From Nature's universal jollity.
The plants and flowers look upwards and admire
          The sun their beauteous sire;
                    The sun does every day
With his green smiling infants love to play.
Hark, how the birds now tune their wondrous throats;
          Nature needs more to hear
          Music's most ravishing notes,
For every bough does his own Orpheus bear.
Well may the birds sing and rejoice,
          Since all have made their happy choice.
          Since of all birds that be,
There's not one false or one disdainful she.

The first four lines of the poem inform us that the speaker does not share the universal happiness of spring, but we do not discover why until we reach the final line—though we may well guess, since poems with this theme are fairly common. One less conventional element in the poem is that the rejoicing and adoration which the speaker sees in nature are not, for most of the length of the poem, those of mating. The plants and flowers adore not one another, but “the sun their beauteous sire,” and the birds seem to be enjoying a relationship not with one another, but with the tree branches. It is only in the last three lines that the mutuality of the love of birds is contrasted with the disappointments of human love.

A slightly more complex treatment of the same theme can be seen in “The Lost Mistress,” where nature seems to share the unhappy lover's pain:

          Forsaken Strephon in a lonesome glade,
By nature for despairing sorrows made,
Beneath a blasted oak had laid him down,
By light'ning that, as he by love o'erthrown.
Upon a mossy root he lean'd his head,
While at his feet a murmuring current lead
Her streams, that sympathiz'd with his sad moans;
The neighb'ring echoes answer'd all his groans.
Then as the dewy morn restor'd the day,
Whilst stretch'd on earth the silent mourner lay,
At last into these doleful sounds he broke,
Obdurate rocks dissolving whilst he spoke.

Whereas the conventionality of “Love” makes its statements about nature somewhat unexciting, the use of the third-person narrator in these lines creates a greater problem. In “Love” it is the perception of the scorned lover that all of nature enjoys loving interrelationships. Readers need not believe that nature really does participate in such relationships; we need believe only that a man who has been scorned by the woman he loves may think so. In “The Lost Mistress,” however, the narrative (at least in the opening and closing sections) is in the third person, and we are implicitly asked to believe that the sympathy between Strephon and nature is perceived not just by Strephon himself, but by the narrator.

At first the relationship seems merely fortuitous; Strephon happens to have chosen for his repose a spot which seems to be in sympathy with him. The place is “By nature for despairing sorrows made” because it contains a tree overthrown by lightning, a mossy root, a murmuring stream, and an echo. All these things occur naturally enough and may reasonably be supposed to coexist in many places; only in the human mind does any connection between them and Strephon's state of mind exist. But when we are told in line 10 that “Obdurate rocks dissolv[ed] whilst he spoke,” we have a new situation. Now we are told of something which cannot possibly happen—and we are told it as if it were fact. Occurring where it does, surrounded by statements of fact, this statement is impossible for a reader to accept; consequently it is a flaw in the poem.

Buckingham's most successful treatment of the imaginative interaction between nature and the perceptions of the lover occurs in his “Epithalamium,” where the eye of the narrator in the opening strophe sees the dawn, Aurora, as a beautiful bride being dressed by her attendants. The entire poem follows:

          By her the gentle hours attending stand
And dress the bridal morn with skilful hand.
Her fairest robes of silver light she wears;
With comely art they comb her golden hairs.
An orient pendant Hesper she puts on,
With beauty all, and beauteous riches shown
Never so bright and gay, since she was led
By the kind hours to loved Tithonus' bed.
          Ah, cruel youth, who fiercely dost invade,
And from her parents snatch the trembling maid!
Thou like a tyrant with a conqueror's claim
Dost give new laws, and change her very name,
Riflest her beauties and her virgin store:
In cities took by storm they do no more.
          Kind youth, whose love swells to so large a space,
It fills the brother's, father's, mother's place!
          I saw his years like trees well ranged stand
In a long row, and hers on th' other hand;
With comely kindness their fair tops they twined,
Beauty and pleasure in their shades combined.
A thousand winged Cupids, bright and young,
Like swarms of bees upon the branches hung.
Both sides did to an equal length extend;
Both sides were green and flourishing to the end.

The classical personifications of Aurora, Tithonus, and Hesper which Buckingham uses in his first strophe are a particularly effective way of suggesting union between man and nature. Tithonus, according to Greek myth, was a mortal youth beloved by Aurora, goddess of the dawn. To make him her lover, the goddess secured for him eternal life, but she neglected to ask for eternal youth, so that Tithonus becomes perpetually older while the goddess remains forever young. Hesperus, the evening star, is the planet Venus. Edmund Spenser, in his Epithalamion (1595), had used the same classical personifications.¹⁷ But Buckingham's combining the images into a beautiful and consistent metaphor is original with him, and it is one of the most successful images anywhere in his poetry. Here, as in Spenser's poem, we are asked to see the natural world in a kind of marriage with the mind and mood of the lover—not to see impossible sights, as in “The Lost Mistress,” but to see reality through the eye of metaphor.

The final strophe, in which the years of the bridal couple's future are seen as two parallel rows of trees with their branches joined to form an arch, reverses the imagery of the opening section. In the opening lines nature is personified; here human life is shown as a natural scene. Unlike Aurora and Tithonus, whose inequality must increase with each new day, this wedding couple will be equally long-lived, equally fresh and flourishing. It is a beautiful image, and the addition of the cupids as bees is a happy piece of baroque detail.

The two central strophes, in which the bridegroom is first called “cruel” because he takes his bride from her family and then “kind” because he replaces their love with his own, turn on verbal conceits rather than natural imagery. They are not as satisfying as the opening and closing sections. But it is clear that Buckingham planned the poem as a symmetrical whole, as the following outline illustrates: strophe 1: nature as human; strophe 2: bridegroom as cruel; strophe 3: bridegroom as kind; strophe 4: man's life as nature. The poem thus completes its own circle, even more effectively than “To Dryden” does. Despite the weakness of the central section, this is one of Buckingham's best and most moving poems.

The least successful of Buckingham's love poems is “To His Mistress.” Written in forty-four lines of varying lengths and rhyme schemes, it turns on the same kind of rhetorical contrasts which work so well in the elegy for lord general Fairfax. The mistress is contrasted in the first twelve lines with the speaker's previous loves—women whom, he now realizes, he never really loved. In the second section (ll. 13-27), the speaker explains why he has never loved until now: he lists the criteria for a woman who is to create true love in a man with “a discerning eye.” These requirements, of course, compliment not only the mistress, who has met them, but also the speaker himself, who must be assumed to have the “discerning eye” which can appreciate them. Not only must the lady have “looks and shape,” but she must have “wit and judgment,” “greatness of thought and worth,” “plainness and truth” (ll. 19-20, 26). If she has all these qualities, she will “beget a passion for her mind”—that is, cause a man to fall in love with her mind rather than her body. Having listed these qualities and their effects, the speaker discovers that only the lady addressed can meet the requirements:

She must be—what said I? she must be you,
None but yourself that miracle can do;
At least, I'm sure, thus much I plainly see,
None but yourself e'er did it upon me:

(ll. 28-31)

The broken construction in line 28 and the qualification in line 30 seem intended to give the effect of present thought—that is, to show the mind of the speaker as he interrupts one thought to amend it with another. The most striking instance of such an interruption comes in line 37, where, having spent twenty-four lines explaining the importance of a noble mind to true love, the speaker bursts into an eruption of passion for the woman's body:

But oh! your body too is divine,
I kill myself with wishing you all mine.
In pain and anguish, night and day,
I faint, and melt away:

(ll. 37-40)

In its theme, therefore, “To His Mistress” is somewhat similar to Donne's “The Ecstasy.” In both works an attraction of mind and soul is the basis for love, but the attraction of the body is acknowledged to be powerful, to be the basis of the higher passion, and to be valuable in itself. In both poems dramatic immediacy is created by the interruption of one absolute statement with another. Yet whereas “The Ecstasy” is one of the greatest love poems of the seventeenth century, “To His Mistress” is a failure and a disappointment.

There are two main reasons for this failure. One is the fact that the speaker's listing his requirements for a perfect love makes him seem self-satisfied and superior. Instead of being overcome with passion, the speaker seems to be making out a shopping list. Instead of describing the mutuality of attraction which is necessary to love, he seems to be interested primarily in himself, and in the woman only as someone who can meet his requirements:

She, that would raise a noble love, must find
Ways to beget a passion for her mind;
She must be that, which she to be would seem;
For all true Love is grounded on esteem:

(ll. 22-25)

The other problem with the poem is that its ideas seem so fixed and its expressions so conventional that the impression of dramatic immediacy is not really created. Phrases like “I kill myself with wishing you all mine,” and “I faint and melt away,” and even the exclamation, “But oh!” are all drawn from the battery of conventional expressions used by most amatory poets. Consequently the poem lacks the freshness and sincerity that it labors to create.

And yet it is possible that Buckingham actually wrote this poem to his mistress, Lady Shrewsbury, and that it is completely sincere. The qualities of nobility of mind and of plainness and truth which the speaker values in his mistress are the same qualities which Buckingham celebrated in Lord Fairfax. But however unsteady Buckingham's wit may have been, however many times it may have missed fire, it was a more reliable source of poetic excellence than his ideas and feelings plainly stated.

PERSONAL SATIRES.

The poetry of personal attack has existed at least since ancient Greece, and several Elizabethan poets produced effective examples of it. But in the Restoration personal satires became both more numerous and more virulent than ever before, at least in English. Some of the writers may have been moved, as they claimed, by moral or political principle, but many others wrote with simple malice, or destroyed a reputation to promote an intrigue. No one, from King Charles to the most ordinary prostitute, was free from attack. The poems circulated in manuscript and were published, if at all, many years after the events which prompted them.

Buckingham's personal satires avoid the most unethical practices of his contemporaries. Whereas many of the anonymous satires are gossipy “shotgun lampoons,” besmirching the reputation of one person after another, his libels are almost always directed primarily against single individuals; subsidiary characters are included only because of their association with the primary target. Whereas many contemporary satirists attacked easy targets like the “court ladies” and ascribed to them real or fancied deviant sexual practices, Buckingham attacked only those he believed had injured him or his friends, and he never mentioned the sexual behavior of his victims.¹⁸

As the epigram on Heneage Finch, discussed earlier, illustrates, Buckingham's personal satires concentrate on the physical characteristics and personal habits of the person under attack. He seems most to be offended by an association with sordid or ignoble persons, places, or habits, and by a lack of savoir-faire.

For example, in his “Advice to a Painter to Draw my Lord Arlington, Grand Minister of State,” Buckingham suggests that Arlington's physical characteristics can show us the qualities of his mind:

          First draw an arrant fop, from top to toe,
Whose very looks at first dash shew him so:
Give him a mean proud garb, a dapper face,
A pert dull grin, a black patch cross his face;
Two goggle-eyes, so clear, tho' very dead,
That one may see, thro' them, quite thro' his head.

(ll. 1-6)

And in his “Familiar Epistle to Mr. Julian, Secretary to the Muses,” he suggests that Sir Carr Scroope's red face somehow indicates an exclusion from human fellowship:

Of his unfinished face what shall I say,
But that 'twas made of Adam's own red clay,
That much, much ochre was on it bestow'd:
God's image 'tis not, but some Indian god.

(ll. 30-33)¹⁹

Like most lampooners, Buckingham constructs a caricature of his victim, a portrait enough like him to be recognizable but sufficiently exaggerated and ridiculous to be insulting. As part of the caricature, he attributes to the victim extravagant characteristic actions. In the “Epistle to Julian” Buckingham describes Scroope as an incorrigible poet, unable to restrain himself from writing verse:

For when his passion has been bubbling long,
The scum at last boils up into a song,
And sure no mortal creature at one time
Was e'er so far o'ergone with love and rhyme.
To his dear self of poetry he talks:
His hands and feet are scanning as he walks.

(ll. 51-56)

In the lampoon on Arlington, Buckingham attacks both Arlington's gravity of manner and the folly which lies under that gravity by describing the minister playing with his daughter:

          Next all his implements of folly draw,
His iv'ry-staff, his snuff-box, and Tatta,(20)
That pretty babe, that makes his lordship glad,
And all the company besides so sad;
She who in state is brought, to smoothe his brow,
When he has rul'd the roast, the Lord knows how,
For tho' to us he's stately like a king,
He'll joke and droll with her like any thing.

(ll. 11-18)

The most imaginative of Buckingham's personal satires is the one entitled “Upon the Installment of Sir [Thomas] Os[bor]n, and the late Duke of Newcastle.” The event which the poem commemorates is the installation of the two title characters as members of the Order of the Garter at Windsor Castle on 19 April 1677. Although Buckingham was a member of the Order, he was not present at the ceremony; at the instigation of Osborne (the lord treasurer, now properly called the earl of Danby) he and three other Whig leaders had been imprisoned in the Tower of London. Since Buckingham had sponsored Osborne's rise to power, he deeply resented the ingratitude of his former protégé.

Like Buckingham's other lampoons, this one describes the personal characteristics of the victim: Osborne is thin and pale and has a foul breath. He is subject to the control of his eccentric wife. But whereas in most of the personal satires the tone is coolly detached or archly amused, calling our attention to the victim as a mere curiosity, this poem has at its core a passage of pure invective in which we recognize the tone of saeva indignatio (“savage indignation”) which is the emotional pitch of the most powerful satire.

That tone is introduced to the poem by the appearance of a new speaker, St. George, the patron saint of the Order of the Garter. The saint appears at the ceremony in disguise, inquires what is going on, and passes judgment on the candidates for installation. He recognizes that Newcastle is “an ass, / But for his father's sake, he let him pass.” (Newcastle's father, who had fought many battles and made great financial sacrifices for the crown during the civil wars, was known as “The Loyal Duke.”) But St. George angrily rebuffs Osborne:

How dare you in this chapel keep a quarter,
With your blue lips, bluer than robes or garter?
Go get a shroud to match your face and breath,
Be drest, as well as look and smell, like death.

(ll. 60-63)

This is the only one of Buckingham's personal satires in which a visionary or allegorical character appears. St. George is to this poem what the images of witchcraft are to “To Dryden” and the natural imagery is to “Epithalamium”: an imaginative means of compressing meaning and achieving elevation of tone.

Taken together as the work of a lifetime, Buckingham's poems are not very numerous. They are the productions of a man of wit, learning, and taste who sometimes wrote poetry, not of a professional poet. Several of his poems, like “To His Mistress” or the “Epistle to Julian,” are merely conventional. But when, as in the elegy for Fairfax, he brings us to a new understanding of what we thought we knew, or when, as in “To Dryden” or “Epithalamium,” he creates images which surprise and move us, we recognize that he was not limited to the conventional. If Buckingham was an amateur in poetry, he was a gifted amateur.

MAJOR PROSE WORKS

A LETTER TO SIR THOMAS OSHORN ON READING A BOOK CALLED THE PRESENT INTEREST OF ENGLAND STATED (1672).

In 1672, England declared war on Holland, as it had promised to do in the Treaty of Dover, signed with France in 1670. Buckingham, as a member of the Cabal ministry and as the chief negotiator of the public version of that treaty, supported the war. But the war was not popular with the English public, to whom the Dutch seemed not enemies but natural allies. Like England, Holland was a small Protestant country, threatened by the power of France; and like England, Holland was dependent on international trade for its prosperity. England, moreover, had pledged itself in the Triple Alliance, signed in 1668 by England, Sweden, and Holland, to aid the Dutch if they were attacked by the French, so that the declaration of war seemed a breach of faith.

Arguments against the war were made everywhere—in the press, in Parliament, and in the streets. Among many other publications against the war was a pamphlet, anonymously published, entitled The Present Interest of England Stated. Buckingham, looking for a way to state the ministry's side of the case, decided to write a private letter, addressed to Sir Thomas Osborne, who in 1672 was still his protégé in the government, in which he could argue against the pamphlet. His letter could then be published.

The Letter has a three-part organization. In the first section Buckingham argues that England should look after her own interests. It might be true that England and Holland have much in common, but England should not let feelings of kinship or solidarity blind her to her own interests. In the second section Buckingham considers the terms of the Triple Alliance, trying to show that the alliance does not bar England from joining forces with France to make war on Holland. In the third section he attempts to demonstrate that Holland poses a threat to England.

Buckingham's point that England's interest leads inevitably to conflict with Holland has as its premise the idea that the two nations are rivals in trade. “Had the author [of the anonymous pamphlet] been a lover, instead of a politician, he would have known, that rivals are the things in this world, which men commonly do, and ought most to hate,” he wrote.²¹ His analogy between rivalries in love and those in trade is witty and effective; it suggests that whereas the author of the Present Interest is a narrow student of statecraft, Buckingham is a man of the world. But the analogy may not necessarily hold. Rivals in love contend for the love of one woman. When she accepts one, she must spurn the other. But rivals in trade may create more trade for both, since a thriving international trade enriches all who participate in it.

Although Buckingham does not extend his analogy, the kind of thinking that produces it appears everywhere in the Letter. Thus just as a jealous lover might fear and resent the virtues of his rival as threats to his success, Buckingham suggests that the English ought to fear the virtues of the Dutch: “The true aim of every Englishman should be the good and prosperity of England; for that reason, industry and parsimony are to be wished for in the inhabitants of England, because they are qualities advantageous for us, and useful to our trade: but for the same reason, they ought not by us to be wished for in the inhabitants of Holland, because those qualities in them are prejudicial to England, and destructive to our trade” (166). However logical these arguments may be, they strike us today as mean-spirited. In either love or trade, a magnanimous suitor would rather succeed by virtue of his own good qualities than by wishing away those of his rival.

To the argument that the Triple Alliance forbids an attack on Holland, Buckingham opposes a legalistic analysis of the occasion and terms of that alliance. The Alliance had been set up in 1668 to counter the advance of the French armies into the Spanish Netherlands. The parties to the alliance pledged not only to oppose France, but to come to the aid of one another if France attacked them. Now France had attacked Holland—but England had joined France. In Buckingham's view this change of policy was justified by a change in England's interest: “self-preservation ought to be looked after a little in these kind of affairs: and … if the consequence of the loss of Flanders did not somewhat concern us, we should be no more in pain about it than we were for the conquest of Granada” (170). Splitting hairs very precisely, Buckingham argues that although the Triple Alliance binds England to protect Flanders from France, it does not bind England not to attack Holland. He heaps ridicule on the suggestion that the first of these propositions implies the second:

This, under favour, is an absurdity yet greater than the former, there being no one thing you can allege as a consequence to any other thing whatsover, that will not make every whit as sensible a conclusion as this. For example, to say, you ought not to go to bed to night, because the King of Spain did not go yesterday a hunting; or that I must not dine to morrow because Monsieur de Wit loves dancing, is not a more incoherent discourse, than that, because we have promised with the Dutch to save Flanders from the French, therefore what injuries soever the Dutch shall offer us, we cannot defend ourselves against them. The argument, if you mark it, is just thus, that because I agree with William to save Thomas, therefore I am bound to let William cut my throat.

(170)

Of course, the argument is not so ridiculous as Buckingham pretends. England had promised not only to protect Flanders, but to aid Holland if she were attacked by France. But Buckingham insists that the Triple Alliance requires England to aid Holland only if she is attacked by France as a consequence of her having joined the Triple Alliance (168), and not if she is attacked on any other pretext whatsoever. Although his reading of the terms of the alliance may be legally correct, certainly he is one of the first statesmen ever to argue that a declaration of war upon an ally is not a breach of the alliance!

A key phrase buried in the quotation above is “what injuries soever the Dutch shall offer us.” England might be justified in making war on Holland despite the Triple Alliance if the Dutch have in some way injured the English. In the third section of the Letter Buckingham asserts three types of injury. First, he writes, “it has been their constant practice to massacre and make slaves of our countrymen in the East Indies” (166). This allegation is a reference to the Massacre of Amboyna (1623), in which the Dutch East India Company in the Spice Islands (modern Indonesia) drove out the English East India Company. Second, Buckingham asserts that the Dutch “rob us of our trade” (175). This statement takes for granted that the trade routes are the property of the English, which the Dutch are stealing from them, rather than that the two countries have equal right to the freedom of the seas. Finally, Buckingham argues, in a far-fetched scenario, that the Dutch might combine forces with the French to conquer England (171-74). To support this idea requires particularly strained reasoning: “To this it is objected, that it can never be the interest of Holland to join with France in the conquest of England; but for aught we know they may mistake their interest; and certainly it is not wisdom in any nation, to have its safety depend upon the prudence of another” (172). Of these three reasons, only the first will stand even the most casual scrutiny by any disinterested observer. The Amboyna massacre was real. But although the trading wars between the English and Dutch East India Companies were conducted without much compassion on either side, there had been no provocation from the Dutch in fifty years.

The Letter to Sir Thomas Osborn is not a rhetorical success. Its arguments are so strained that they could appeal only to a reader who was predisposed to agree with them, and in the political climate of the time, such readers were not very numerous. It displays, in its analogies, a little of Buckingham's characteristic wit and energy, but in general it is unworthy of its author.

THE SHORT DISCOURSE UPON THE REASONABLENESS OF MEN'S HAVING A RELIGION, OR WORSHIP OF GOD (1685).

Buckingham's Short Discourse must have been written fairly early in 1685, probably in the early spring.²² Although it appears at first to be a philosophical or theological treatise, it is primarily a political tract, an attempt to win adherents to the idea of religious toleration, the political principle to which Buckingham was most constantly faithful.

To see Buckingham's Discourse in its context, we must begin by recognizing that in the seventeenth century every religious idea was a political idea. England contained three major Christian groups: Roman Catholics, members of the Church of England, and Protestants outside the Church of England (including Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, and many others), broadly called Dissenters. For over a century these three groups had struggled to control the faith of their countrymen and the government of the nation. To the Anglicans, Roman Catholicism was identified with the reign of “Bloody Mary” Tudor in the 1550s and the martyrdom of Anglican bishops, with the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes and his accomplices to blow up Parliament and seize control of the government in 1605, and with the French tyranny of Louis XIV in their own time. The Dissenters were associated in the Anglican mind with the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, with the execution of King Charles I in 1649, and with the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell. The Test Act (1673), which prohibited anyone except a member of the Church of England from holding any office in the government or universities, suggests the prevailing level of religious tolerance. It was nearly impossible for most seventeenth-century Englishmen to imagine a commonwealth in which each person was free to worship as he pleased, without interference from others and without interfering with the rights of others himself.

But for Buckingham, such a commonwealth was the natural extension of British liberty. In 1675, in a speech in the House of Lords to prepare the way for a Bill of Indulgence (i.e., a bill to grant religious freedom) for Protestant dissenters, he reasoned that religious persecution was a serious political mistake because “it makes every man's safety depend upon the wrong place, not upon the Governors, or man's living well towards the Civil Government, established by Law; but upon his being transported with Zeal for every opinion that's held by those that have power in the Church that's in fashion.”²³ The sarcastic tone of “transported with Zeal” and “the Church that's in fashion” could have done his cause little good. The bill was defeated.

In 1674, in a letter to his friend and secretary, Martin Clifford, Buckingham expressed himself in much franker terms. Almost as if he were an antireligious polemicist, he asserts here that the behavior of religious zealots can make religion itself an evil:

This has made each party such enemies to moderation and liberty of conscience, when it got to the helm; which if once justly and firmly established, would open the door to that peace, which the gospel was bestowed on us to introduce into the world. Lucretius, from his reflection on the sacrificing of Iphigenia for a wind at Aulis, forms his celebrated epiphonema:

Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum.(24)

But what would he have said, if he had lived after the establishment of the Christian religion, and seen the heats and animosities betwixt the Arians and Orthodox, or the several opinions that started up amongst them, when once the heathen folly was sunk and removed, and power had debauched the principle, which Christ gave as the characteristic of his disciples, “the love of one another.” If he had seen how many millions of men lost their lives, in the contests about the supremacy of the popes; and the quarrels betwixt the emperors, and the bishops of Rome; or the one and twenty millions destroyed by the Spaniards in the reduction of the West-Indies. … If he had known the noble methods of the inquisition of the romanists, and the penal laws of the reformed, by which in our nation alone, in a few years, three-score thousand families were ruined, he would have been no longer amazed at the sacrificing one poor green-sickness girl.²⁵

The rhetorical force of these sentences anticipates some of the greatest effects produced by Swift. The rising energy of the successive clauses, the suspension of the “If” clause to build anticipation, the statistics of millions of lives lost, the scornful irony of “noble methods,” and the crowning contemptuous phrase, “one poor green-sickness girl”—each contributes to the power of the whole. Buckingham's indignation here at the wickedness and stupidity of the human race is the saeva indignatio of the true satirist.

The decade following the letter to Martin Clifford was filled with political crises in which religious controversy played a prominent part—the Exclusion Crisis, the Rye House Plot, and others—and in the spring of 1685, there was a new threat to freedom of conscience. With the accession of King James II to the throne after his brother's death, England had an openly Catholic king for the first time since Mary Tudor. The possibility that James would ally himself with the High-Church Tories to persecute the Dissenters seemed very strong. And Buckingham, now living in retirement in Yorkshire, no longer exercised any political power, even in opposition. If he were to influence public affairs, it must be by persuading public opinion.

But the means of persuasion could not be rational argument. After years of failure to advance the cause of religious toleration by means of reason, Buckingham had lost faith in its power, at least in religious controversy: “The world is made up for the most part of fools and knaves, both irreconcilable foes to truth: the first being slaves to a blind credulity, which we may properly call biggotry: the last are too jealous of that power, they have usurp'd over the folly and ignorance of the others, which the establishment of the empire of reason would destroy” (“Letter to Martin Clifford,” 176). In the Short Discourse, therefore, Buckingham proceeds by means of a kind of rhetorical entrapment of his reader. Although the essay is, at its core, a plea for religious toleration, it begins, or at least pretends to begin, as a rational defense of Christianity against atheism. And although it pretends to be a series of logical deductions, each leading inevitably from the previous one, it actually uses the appearance of logic to confuse its reader and to entrap him into assent.

In the message entitled “To the Reader” which prefaces the Discourse, Buckingham puts his reader off guard by confounding a probable expectation: “When I began to write upon this Subject, it was out of a Curiosity I had to try, what I could say, in reason, against the bold Assertions of those Men, who think it a witty thing to defame Religion.” A reader aware of Buckingham's reputation as a witty and irreligious man²⁶ might be led by the full title of the Discourse to expect logical arguments against religion. Instead he finds Buckingham allying himself with the religious against the witty and profane. In addition, however, Buckingham tells his reader that the train of reasoning in the work has taken an inevitable direction: “By the nature of this Discourse, I was forced to Conclude with an Opinion, which I have been long convinced of; That nothing can be more Anti-Christian, nor more contrary to Sense and Reason, than to Trouble and Molest our Fellow-Christians, because they cannot be exactly of our Minds, in all the things relating to the Worship of God.” That is, the logic of the discourse, operating with a kind of life of its own, forced the conclusion. The suggestion is that a tolerance of religious differences is the necessary consequence of any reasonable discussion of the nature of religion itself.

To understand the way the Discourse affects its reader, we need to keep in mind the fact that literature is a kinetic art—that it influences the ideas and feelings of its readers in time, as they progress through the work.²⁷ Thus the lengthy opening sentence, which seems only to delay the main subject of the work, in fact promotes its most important effect:

There is nothing that gives Men a greater dissatisfaction, than to find themselves disappointed in their Expectations; especially of those things in which they think themselves most concern'd; and therefore all, who go about to give Demonstrations, in Matters of Religion, and fail in the attempt, do not only leave Men less Devout than they were before, but also, with great pains and industry, lay in their Minds the very Grounds and Foundations of Atheism: For the generality of Mankind, either out of laziness, or a diffidence of their being able to judge aright in Points that are not very clear, are apt rather to take things upon trust than to give themselves the trouble to examine whether they be true or no.

(1-2)²⁸

The ostensible purpose of the opening sentence is to explain why Buckingham intends to rely upon probabilities, rather than to attempt to demonstrate his ideas with absolute certainty. But that explanation is not completed until the next paragraph. The immediate effect of the sentence is subtly to plant doubt about the idea of certainty in religion, for it suggests that most religious beliefs are founded on habit, laziness, and ignorance, and that an examination of them more often raises doubt than provides confirmation. In the second paragraph, apparently still commenting upon his methods, Buckingham says that he will content himself with establishing probability “Because, if I can convince a Man, that the Notions I maintain are more likely to be True than False, it is not in his power not to believe them; no Man believing any thing because he has a mind to believe it, but because his Judgment is convinc'd, and he cannot choose but believe it, whether he will nor no” (3). By pointing out that belief is not an act of will, Buckingham again anticipates his conclusion and undermines a reader's belief that he is in possession of truth and has the right to force others to accept it.

After more comments on the nature of belief and conviction and more stipulations on his mode of procedure, Buckingham appears to get to the start of his central argument: “The first main Question, upon the clearing of which I shall endeavour to ground the Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion, or Worship of God, is this, Whether it is more probable that the World has ordered itself to be in the Form it now is, or was contriv'd to be so by some other Being of a more perfect, and more designing nature?” (5). But a reader who expects now to settle down to a smoothly developing argument is immediately disappointed, for in the act of dismissing a secondary question, Buckingham follows it: “For whether or no the World has been Created out of nothing, is not material to our purpose. … Yet because this latter Question ought not to be totally pass'd by, I shall take the liberty to offer some Conceptions of mine upon it” (5). There then follow four pages of argument on that question. When Buckingham returns to his original question, he restates it in a somewhat altered form: “Whether it be more probable, that the World, or that God Almighty has been from all Eternity?” (9).

Now Buckingham's reasoning begins to move more quickly. Because the world changes constantly, he reasons that God, who is unchanging, must be more likely to be eternal than the world. Obviously he has begged the question: in an argument intended to establish whether or not God exists, he has used an alleged attribute of God as evidence of His existence. If God does not exist, He is not eternally unchanging.

Next, Buckingham asks whether God cares more for human beings than for other animals. Unsurprisingly, his answer is that God prefers humans. The reason for God's preference establishes the next link in Buckingham's chain of reasoning: “There is something nearer a-kin to the Nature of God in Men, than there is in any other Animals whatsoever” (11-12). This godly element in human nature is the soul and the reasoning faculty or will. As Buckingham sees it, the two are one: “an Eternal Being, and Free-will, are things in their Nature inseparable one from the other.”

This “Instinct of God,” another name Buckingham gives to this godly element, must tell us how to behave toward God—in other words, must be our guide to religious truth. “That Religion is probably the best, whose Doctrine does most recommend to us those Things, which, by that Instinct, we are prompted to believe are Vertues, and good Qualities: And that, I think, without exceeding the Bounds of Modesty, I may take upon me to affirm, Is the Christian Religion” (18). Here there is hardly even the pretense of logical argument. By the standard of belief Buckingham proposes, a case could be made for any major organized religion. But this deficiency of logic is no fault from the point of view of the real purpose of the Discourse. The reader is being told that his own beliefs are those which most perfectly suit the nature of God and man. To the degree that he believes what he is told, he will accept the idea that he is following a logical argument, and he will be disposed to accept the conclusion that Buckingham has already foreshadowed in his foreword—that the necessity of religious toleration follows inevitably from logical reasoning about religion. To the degree that the reader doubts Buckingham's assertions or feels uncomfortable with them, he is led to question the certainty of his own religious beliefs; therefore he may be weakened in his willingness to persecute those who do not share those beliefs.

Having arbitrarily nominated Christianity the best religion, Buckingham refuses to choose among the various sects of Christian belief. “And here, I must leave every Man to take pains, in seeking out, and chusing for himself; he only being answerable to God Almighty for his own Soul” (18). If each Christian is responsible only to God, no Christian may be forced by other men to alter his beliefs. Here Buckingham reaches the climax and real point of his discourse. He asks a series of rhetorical questions directed at “those … who are pleas'd to call themselves Christians:

First, Whether there be any thing more directly opposite to the Doctrine and Practice of Jesus Christ, than to use any kind of Force upon Men, in Matters of Religion? And consequently, Whether all those that practice it, (Let them be of what Church, or Sect, they please) ought not justly to be call'd Anti-christians?

Further questions suggest that the use of force in religious disputes is not only anti-Christian, but also childish and impolitic. Buckingham concludes with a word of “Friendly Advice” to his Christian readers: “Let them endeavour, by their good Counsel, and good Example, to perswade others to lead such Lives, as may save their Souls: And not be perpetually quarrelling amongst themselves, and cutting one another's Throats” (19-21). None of Buckingham's leading questions or the conclusion drawn from them really depends upon the preceding train of reasoning. Nor has that train of reasoning taken the inevitable direction which Buckingham has claimed for it in his foreword. The questions with which the Discourse began were cosmological. They were confusingly stated and so interrupted by digressions that it was nearly impossible to follow them. The questions with which it ends are social, practical, and political. They are clearly stated, easy to understand—and loaded.

If we examine the Discourse as a work of kinetic art, asking not what it means, but what it does to its reader as he makes his way through it, we can see that the reader is likely to be distracted and uncertain when he thinks that he is considering fundamental theological issues, but that he is allowed to think clearly when he is reading of the consequences of persecution and the value of toleration. He may conclude the Discourse, therefore, feeling that basic theological issues are vague at best, but that every man ought to be his own guide, and that if we know anything with certainty, it is that religious persecution is wrong. A reader who responds this way, of course, vindicates Buckingham's renunciation of logic as a persuasive tool in matters of religion.

The Short Discourse is to Buckingham's nondramatic prose what The Rehearsal is to his dramatic works: his most complex and most polished production, operating on more than one level, manipulating its audience and diverting them. But whereas The Rehearsal attempts to influence its audience's attitude toward the theater by raising the level of their awareness, the Short Discourse attempts to change its readers' minds by deceiving and confusing them.²⁹ It would be satisfying to be able to report that the Discourse had the effect that Buckingham intended. But in fact, the period immediately after its publication was one of sharply increased persecution, largely as a result of the failure of Monmouth's Rebellion, crushed in July 1685, which was seen by High-Church Tories as one more attempt by the Dissenters to seize power. Some measure of religious toleration came later in the reign of King James, when both the king and Parliament found it useful to woo the support of the Dissenters by making concessions to them—but by then the duke was dead.

Buckingham was a member of the circle of talented and noble amateur writers and critics whom we now call the Restoration court wits.³⁰ If we keep in mind that the court wits generally wrote not to publish, but to amuse themselves and their friends, and the fact that they considered “ease” in writing a stylistic characteristic of the highest value, we can see that Buckingham's work represents both his own mind and the milieu in which it was produced. He has not the genius of a Rochester, but his nondramatic works can be compared with those of any of the other court wits. And throughout his writing, in prose and verse, we see evidence of his intelligence, his talent for mockery, and that energy and imagination which, to both friend and foe, were the identifying characteristics of George Villiers. If today we still find the qualities of his mind appealing, certainly that fact should be no surprise.

BUCKINGHAM'S MINOR DRAMATIC WORKS

Buckingham's fame as a dramatist rests today entirely upon The Rehearsal. Few scholars have read any of his other plays, and probably no living person has ever seen a performance of any of them. Yet at least one play among them is good enough to deserve continued interest, and all of them can help us to understand the development of Buckingham's talent leading up to and following his best-known work. The duke's minor dramatic works include two revisions of plays by Beaumont and Fletcher, an intrigue comedy written in collaboration with Sir Robert Howard but never performed, a comic sketch, and an unfinished heroic drama in blank verse.

THE CHANCES

Buckingham's first dramatic work to be performed was his revision of the comedy The Chances, written by John Fletcher probably about 1617, an adaptation for the stage of La Senora Cornelia, a novella by Cervantes first published in 1613. The subject of the play is the attempted elopement of the duke of Ferrara with a noblewoman named Constantia, the sister of Petruchio, the governor of Bologna. The “chances” of the title are coincidences, which at first frustrate the elopement. At the end of the play, Constantia and the duke are reunited, largely through the efforts of Don John and Don Frederick, two Spanish gentleman students, who shelter Constantia and her infant son in their flight from Petruchio, effect a reconciliation between Petruchio and the duke, and eventually bring all the parties together.

One of the coincidences indicated by the title is the appearance in the play of another character named Constantia, a whore, mistress to Antonio, one of Petruchio's attendants. When Antonio is wounded, this second Constantia steals his gold and flees. At about the same time, the first Constantia leaves Don John's and Don Frederick's lodgings with her infant and Gillian, the two students' landlady. Petruchio, the duke, and the two students, seeking to find the first Constantia, are led by mistake to seize the second. Eventually the men go to the house of Peter Vechio, a supposed conjuror, to ask for information about Constantia and Gillian. Vechio, pretending to raise spirits, presents Constantia to them, and the play ends happily.

Petruchio and the duke are fairly standard heroic characters, the first concerned primarily with his honor, the second with his love. Constantia is charming in her beauty and appealing in her distress. Don Frederick, though somewhat more realistically drawn, is equally heroic. His treatment of Constantia is gracious, courageous, and unselfish. The comic characters in the play are old Antonio, the fierce fighter, whoremaster, and toper; Gillian, the sharp-tongued and somewhat hysterical old landlady; and Don John, the extravagant rake. Except for Don John, the most important characters are too noble to be truly comic.

As written by Fletcher, The Chances has one serious defect: the plot runs out of energy after the third act. Although the flight of Constantia and the landlady and the confusion of her with Antonio's whore offered an opportunity for repeated complications, Fletcher did not exploit it. The second Constantia, the whore, appears onstage only briefly, and she and her bawd are stock comic characters. The final scene at the house of Peter Vechio contains little more than spectacle. Since there is no particular reason why Gillian and the first Constantia should have taken shelter there, the scene is less a resolution of the complications of the plot than simply an end to them.

Buckingham's revision of the play, first performed in 1667, supplies an entirely new fourth and fifth act. He lessens the importance of Gillian, the landlady, by depriving her of some of her richest lines, and he alters the character of Antonio. But he creates an entirely new comic character, the mother of the second Constantia, whose presence compensates the audience for whatever it has lost from those two characters. Most importantly, he greatly enriches the character of the second Constantia, turning her from a crude, insolent whore into an appealingly witty, self-possessed woman. In her cheerful, direct libertinism, she is a perfect comic partner to Don John:

2 CONSTANTIA.
This sinning without pleasure I cannot endure; to have always a remorse, and ne'er do anything that should cause it, is intolerable. … Well, I'll no more on 't; for to be frighted with Death and Damnation both at once is a little too hard. I do here vow I'll live forever chast, or find out some handsome young fellow I can love; I think that's the better.

(4. 1, p. 45)³¹

Buckingham improves the plot of Fletcher's play by means of a fairly simple but very effective device. Instead of having Don John, Don Frederick, the duke, and Petruchio go together to seek the first Constantia and the landlady, he separates them. Now he can have Don John meet the second Constantia when the others have not, and then have the arrival of the others precipitate new misunderstandings. As the first Constantia flees her brother and the second flees from Antonio, each discovery leads to a new flight and new discoveries. But when, in act 5, scene 3, Don Frederick discovers from the mother of the second Constantia that there are two women named Constantia, the resolution of the plot proceeds quickly and naturally to its conclusion.

In addition, Buckingham's new plot devices create a kind of second plot, which runs roughly parallel to the first and serves as an illuminating contrast to it. The idea of contrast, of course, existed in Fletcher's version of the play. The fact that the whore, the most inconstant of women, shares the name Constantia with the heroine is obviously a comic irony. (Cervantes's novella also has two women with the same name, but their name is Cornelia, rather than Constantia.) But Buckingham develops the idea much farther. He creates, in the characters of Don John and the second Constantia, two anti-Platonic lovers whose carnal urgency becomes a comic foil to the nobility and unselfishness of the first Constantia and Don Frederick.

For example, in the scene where the first Constantia and Don Frederick meet, Frederick's immediate response to Constantia's appeal shows his susceptibility to the claims of honor:

CONSTANTIA.
As ever you lov'd honour,
As ever your desires may gain their ends,
Do a poor wretched Woman but this Benefit,
For I am forc't to trust ye.
FREDERICK.
Y' 'ave charm'd me,
Humanity and Honour bids me help ye;
And if I fail your trust———
CONSTANTIA.
The time's too dangerous
To stay your protestations. I believe ye,
Alas, I must believe ye. …

.....

FREDERICK.
Come be hearty,
He must strike through my life that takes
You from me.

(1. 7, pp. 8-9)

Much later in the play, Don John is in frantic pursuit of the second Constantia when by chance he runs into the first, who seeks his aid. Don John's indifference to her appeal contrasts sharply with Don Frederick's earlier response:

1 CONSTANTIA.
Hold, Don John, hold.
JOHN.
Ha? is it you my Dear?
1 CONSTANTIA.
For Heaven's sake Sir, carry me from hence, or I'm utterly undone.
JOHN.
Phoo pox, this is th' other: now could I almost beat her, for making me the Proposition: Madam, there are some a coming that will do it a great deal better; but I am in such haste, that I vow to Gad Madam—

.....

1 CONSTANTIA.
Good Sir, be not so cruel, as to leave me in this distress.
JOHN.
No, no, no; I'm only going a little way, and will be back presently.
1 CONSTANTIA.
But pray Sir hear me; I'm in that danger—
JOHN.
No, no, no, I vow to Gad Madam, no danger i' the World, let me alone, I warrant you.

(5. 2, pp. 54-55)

Don Frederick, acting as a man of honor, treats Constantia with respect and consideration, though he has never met her before. Don John, driven by what he thinks of as love, neglects the duty that humanity and honor set before him. In the second scene, the first Constantia and Don John seem almost to be characters from two different worlds. We have something of the same feeling we have in watching Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: that a person from our own world has somehow wandered into the sublime world of tragedy, where every word, action or gesture is invested with superhuman significance. But whereas Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can neither understand nor control what happens to them in the world of Hamlet, in this play the world is Don John's and it is the heroic characters who have wandered into it. It is their blunders, after all, which keep frustrating his efforts to arrange a tryst with the second Constantia. And in the scene above, it is the first Constantia who is helpless; to Don John at this point she is merely a nuisance.

A similar contrast occurs in two revelation scenes, one chaste, the other sexual. After rescuing the first Constantia, Don Frederick asks that she draw aside her veil and reveal herself to him:

FREDERICK.
Draw but that Cloud aside, to satisfie me
For what good Angel I am engag'd.
CONSTANTIA.
It shall be.
For I am truly confident ye are honest:
The piece is scarce worth looking on.
FREDERICK.
Trust me,
The abstract of all beauty, soul of sweetness,
Defend me honest thoughts, I shall grow wild else.
What eyes are there, rather what little Heavens,
To stir mens contemplations? what a Paradise
Runs through each part she has? Good Blood be temper-ate:
I must look off: too excellent an object
Confounds the Sense that sees it.

In a corresponding scene, the face of the second Constantia inspires quite different thoughts in Don John:

JOHN.
Come, pray unmasque.
2 CONSTANTIA.
Then turn away your face; for I'm resolved you shall not see a bit of mine till I have set it in order, and then—
JOHN.
What?
2 CONSTANTIA.
I'll strike you dead.
JOHN.
A mettled Whore, I warrant her; come if she be now but young, and have but a nose on her face, she'll be as good as her word: I'm e'en panting for breath already.
2 CONSTANTIA.
Now stand your ground if you dare.
JOHN.
By this light a rare creature! ten thousand times handsomer than her we seek for! this can be sure no common one: pray Heaven she be a Whore.

(4. 2, p. 47)

The first Constantia's beauty is evidence of her pure soul. Don Frederick, recognizing that fact, calls her a “good Angel” and uses the words “Heavens” and “Paradise” to describe her. He sees her as so excellent a sight, both physically and morally, that she confounds his senses. Don John's senses, on the other hand, far from being confounded, are stimulated to the last degree. The second Constantia, rather than seeing herself as “scarce worth looking on,” is confident that with the help of her makeup she can “strike [Don John] dead.” Whereas the first Constantia and Don Frederick are drawn together by the sublime nobility of both their souls, the second Constantia sees that she will have to rely upon her beauty and her arts to gain Don John's favor. And just as Heaven has sent Don Frederick to the aid of the first Constantia in her distress, so both members of the second couple see in one another the answer to their prayers: she recognizes in Don John the “handsome young fellow” she has been seeking, and Don John's prayer to heaven that the second Constantia be a whore will be answered. In each of the pairs of scenes we have just examined, the first was written by Fletcher and retained in Buckingham's version of the play, the second added by Buckingham. In this heightened contrast between the nobility of Don Frederick and the first Constantia on the one hand and the frank sexuality of Don John and the second Constantia on the other lies Buckingham's chief contribution to the meaning of the play.

The scenes between Don John and the second Constantia provide opportunities for bawdy wit:

2 CONSTANTIA.
Hark ye Sir, I ought now to use you very scurvily, but I can't find it in my heart to do it.
JOHN.
Then God's blessing on thy heart for it.
2 CONSTANTIA.
But a—
JOHN.
What?
2 CONSTANTIA.
I would fain—
JOHN.
I, so would I: come let's go.
2 CONSTANTIA.
I would fain know whether you can be kind to me.
JOHN.
That thou shalt presently; come away.
2 CONSTANTIA.
And will you always?
JOHN.
Always? I can't say so; but I will as often as I can.
2 CONSTANTIA.
Phoo! I mean love me.
JOHN.
Well, I mean that too.

(5. 4, p. 59)

The urgency of Don John's sexual desires is highly comic, and the double meaning of the phrases used by both lovers parodies the vows of the conventional lovers in heroic drama. But Don John's statement to the second Constantia that he means to “love” her as often as he can is more than merely double entendre; it tells us something important about his way of thinking. Apparently, to him the word “love” means simply sex. When he next sees the first Constantia, he apologizes to her for his earlier neglect in these words:

JOHN.
I was before distracted, and 'tis not strange the love of her should hinder me from remembering what was due to you, since it made me forget my self.
1 CONSTANTIA.
Sir, I do know too well the power of Love, by my own experience, not to pardon all the effects of it in another.

(5. 4, p. 60)

When the first Constantia speaks of the power of love, she speaks heroically, of the force which has led her to alienate her family, risk her life, and bear a child out of wedlock, all for love of the duke. By comparison, Don John's use of the word is comically trivial. Thus the contrast in this exchange suggests the limitations of Don John's view of life and love. He may move easily through the world, but he moves lightly, too, skimming along its surface and knowing nothing of its depths. He cannot experience life as profoundly as someone like the first Constantia.

In the character of the mother of the second Constantia, Buckingham created a highly amusing character, a pretentious, affected, and self-deceived hypocrite who, though she has sold her daughter to Antonio and has later stolen more gold from him, insists that she guides herself by the highest principles of honor:

2 CONSTANTIA.
Dear Mother, let us go a little faster to secure ourselves from Antonio; for my part I am in that terrible fright, that I can neither think, speak, nor stand still, till we are safe a Shipboard, and out of sight of the Shore.
MOTHER.
Out of sight o' the Shore? why, do ye think I'll depatriate?
2 CONSTANTIA.
Depatriate? what's that?
MOTHER.
Why, ye Fool you, leave my Country: what will you never learn to speak out of the vulgar road?
2 CONSTANTIA.
O Lord, this hard word will undo us.
MOTHER.
As I'm a Christian, if it were to save my honour (which is ten thousand times dearer to me than my life) I would not be guilty of so odious a thought.
2 CONSTANTIA.
Pray Mother, since your honour is so dear to ye, consider that if we are taken, both it and we are lost for ever.
MOTHER.
Ay Girle, but what will the world say, if they should hear so odious a thing of us, as that we should depatriate?

(4. 1, pp. 44-45)

Buckingham invested the mother of the second Constantia with two qualities which always make a comic character memorable on the stage: she has a predominant passion (in this case, for social climbing) and a style of speaking (in this case her inappropriately elevated diction) which makes that passion instantly recognizable.

Although his most important changes are in the fourth and fifth acts of the play, which he completely rewrote, Buckingham made a number of smaller changes in the first three acts in order to eliminate some small inconsistencies and to prepare for his later changes. For example, he changed the scene of the play from Bologna to Naples, because the second Constantia and her accomplice are said in act 4, scene 2 (act 3, scene 5 of Buckingham's version) to have fled “to the port.” Bologna is an inland city, so Naples fits the line better. Since Naples is not a university town, he changed Don John and Don Frederick from students to young gentlemen on their travels. In act 3, scene 5 (scene 4 in Buckingham's version), Fletcher had Don John and Don Frederick overhear a soliloquy by Francisco, in which Francisco mentions the flight of the second Constantia; it is this episode which leads each of the two young men to suspect the other of concealing the first Constantia. But one of the conventions of Renaissance and Jacobean drama is that a soliloquy represents the thoughts of a character and is unheard by the other characters on the stage. Therefore Buckingham added another character (“a Man”) and turned the soliloquy into a dialogue, which Don John and Don Frederick could overhear with dramatic propriety.

At several points throughout the first three acts, Buckingham cut lines of exposition which tended to delay the action of the play. The scene in which Antonio is treated by his surgeon (3. 2), for example, was cut to about half the length it had in Fletcher, necessarily omitting some good comic lines, but speeding the action. Since Buckingham wished to make Antonio impotent and to make his impotence crucial to the resolution of the plot (see the exchange between him and the second Constantia [5. 4, p. 60] and her lament [4. 1, p. 45]), he changed Antonio's line, “Will it please you sir / To let me have a wench?” (3.2, 17-18) in Fletcher's play to “Will't please you, Sir, to give me a brimmer?” (35).³²

The most important changes Buckingham made in the first three acts were those which served to differentiate more fully the characters of Don John and Don Frederick and to make them more consistent. For example, in order to make the two Constantias more distinct, Buckingham got rid of some suggestions of erotic attraction between Don John and the first Constantia; thus in the scene in which they first meet, when Don John says to the first Constantia, “Nay, 'tis certaine, / Thou art the sweetest woman I e'er looked on: / I hope thou art not honest” (2.3, 20-22), Buckingham cut “I hope thou art not honest.” Later in the same scene, at the urging of Frederick, Don John kisses Constantia in greeting, then remarks out of earshot of the other two,

Now 'tis impossible I should be honest;
She kisses with a conjuration
Would make the devill dance: what points she at?
My leg I warrant, or my well knit body:
Sit fast Don Frederick.

(2.3, 58-62)

Buckingham cut “She kisses with a conjuration / Would make the devill dance.” These changes eliminate the faint possibility that the chaste first Constantia might attract, deliberately or otherwise, Don John's sexual attentions. In fact, in Buckingham's version of the play she is the only woman to whom he is sexually indifferent; even Gillian, the aged landlady, is the object of a few passing leers. These changes are important because Buckingham wished to make the two Constantias touchstones for the contrasting characters of the two young men.

For a related reason, he cut one of the few scenes whose loss in any way harms the play. In act 3, scene 1, Don John teases Gillian, the landlady, mercilessly with sexual, sometimes obscene, taunts:

Worshipful Lady,
How does thy Velvet Scabbard? by this hand
Thou lookest most amiably: now could I willingly
(And 'twere not for abusing thy Geneva print there,)
Venture my Body with thee.

(3.1, 74-78)

In Fletcher's play, Gillian finally replies, predicting that John will sing another tune after his whoring has gained him a few venereal diseases. Her mockery of Don John is satisfying and poetically just, and its absence from Buckingham's play is a real loss of comedy, but for his purposes it was unsuitable to her character. Since he intended her to stand in something of the same relationship to the first Constantia as the mother does to the second (that is, as protector and advisor), it was important that no bawdy pass her lips.

Almost all readers and critics have acknowledged that Buckingham's changes in The Chances improved the play. Dryden wrote in 1672, “Fletcher's Don John is our only bugbear; and yet I may affirm, without suspicion of flattery, that he now speaks better, and that his character is maintained with much more vigour in the fourth and fifth acts than it was by Fletcher in the three former. I have always acknowledged the wit of our predecesors, with all the veneration which becomes me; but, I am sure, their wit was not that of gentlemen; there was ever somewhat that was ill-bred and clownish in it, and which confessed the conversation of the authors.”³³ It is not easy to see how Dryden might have thought that Buckingham had made Don John less ill-bred; the duke retained most of his obscene and double entendre speeches from Fletcher's play and even added to them. But certainly Dryden is correct that the character of Don John, which is the mainspring of the play, has more vigor in the two final acts as Buckingham has revised them. A. C. Sprague, with the perspective of two hundred fifty years, has written, “In short, Fletcher's comedy has been genuinely improved by its Restoration adapter—a somewhat extraordinary thing in itself. And the improvement has been gained by entering fully into the spirit of the original and applying a simple technical device by which that spirit might be maintained at its best.”³⁴

Buckingham's adaptation of The Chances is one of his most successful works, and it was an immediate hit. Displacing Fletcher's original from the stage, it was performed regularly throughout the Restoration and well into the second half of the eighteenth century. It is no wonder that the success of this play encouraged the duke to try his hand again at writing for the stage.

THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN

For more than three hundred years, the play The Country Gentleman was known only in the story of the political controversy it provoked, for the play itself had been suppressed. In 1976 the full text of the play was published by Arthur H. Scouten and Robert D. Hume, who found a manuscript copy of it in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.³⁵

The play, which was scheduled for performance on 27 February 1669, was suppressed because it became the occasion for a crisis which rocked the government of England. The cause of the crisis was the fact that the play included two characters which were clearly recognizable caricatures of Sir William Coventry and Sir John Duncomb, Coventry's friend and ally on the Privy Council. Both men were supporters of the duke of York, King Charles's brother and heir apparent to the throne, whom Buckingham always opposed when he could. The two characters, Sir Cautious Trouble-all and Sir Gravity Empty, are portrayed in several scenes as grave, foolish, self-important “men of business”; Empty, a sycophant, simply repeats the thoughts of Trouble-all in slightly different words:

CAUTIOUS.
For counsell you shall not want it, and in the first place have a care of your Landlady.
LUCY.
Why Sir?
EMPTY.
Why the reason is plain, I say as Sir Cautious said, have a care of your Landlady by all means.
CAUTIOUS.
Ladies she is a woman of contrivances.
EMPTY.
That is of tricks.
KATE.
A most admirable explanation.
CAUTIOUS.
And of small credit with her neighbors.
EMPTY.
Of little or none at all.

(2.1. 176-85)

What made the identification of Sir Cautious Trouble-all with Sir William Coventry unmistakable was the inclusion in the play of a scene in which Sir Cautious explains to Sir Gravity his use of a round table with a round hole in its middle, in which he can sit on a swivel-stool and turn himself. His idea is to arrange his papers on the table in a circle about him, according to their topics, and then to turn himself from one to another as he moves from one topic to another. As members of the Privy Council all knew, Sir William had invented just such a table, which he used in his study at home, and he had very proudly displayed it to curious visitors. (Samuel Pepys, for example, had seen the table on 4 July 1668.)³⁶

As Coventry himself told the story to Pepys, when he heard of the plan to present the play, “he told Tom. Killigrew [the manager of the Theatre Royal, where the play was to be presented] that he should tell his actors, whoever they were, that did offer at anything like representing him, that he would not complain to my Lord Chamberlain, which was too weak, nor get him beaten, as Sir. Ch. Sidly is said to do, but that he would cause his nose to be cut.”³⁷ And he sent his nephew, Henry Saville, to carry to Buckingham a challenge to a duel.

Although Buckingham was an excellent swordsman and Coventry was not, the duke did not want to fight the duel. It had been only a little more than a year since the infamous duel at Barn Elms, when Buckingham had killed the earl of Shrewsbury. If he were now to kill Coventry, especially after having provoked the quarrel, the scandal might destroy his political career. Fortunately for him, the duel could easily be prevented. He had only to allow word of it to leak out before it could take place, and it would be officially stopped. According to Pepys, King Charles asked both men at a meeting of the Privy Council whether it was true that Coventry had sent a challenge to Buckingham. Buckingham admitted that he had received it. Coventry declined to answer, but the king took his silence as an admission of guilt, and he issued a warrant for the commitment of Coventry to the Tower of London.³⁸ The king's lawyers had found an old law, from the time of King Henry VII, which made it a felony to conspire the death of a member of the king's Privy Council. Since Buckingham (like Coventry himself) was a privy counsellor, the law applied in this case. Coventry was dismissed from all his official positions, though he was released from the Tower and pardoned on 21 March and the play was forbidden to be performed or published.

By means of this maneuver, Buckingham had scored an important victory. He had deprived his enemy, the duke of York, of an able and highly placed ally. He had driven a wedge between York and the king. And in addition, he had pleased the king, who wrote of Coventry to his sister, “The truth of it is, he has been a troublesome man. …, and I am well rid of him.”³⁹

Because at least one contemporary report said that Buckingham had “inserted a scene” into a play already written by Howard, Scouten and Hume have thought it most likely that only the “oyster-table scene” was the work of Buckingham.⁴⁰ But the precise extent of any collaboration is difficult for outsiders—even when they are contemporaries—to ascertain. There is some internal evidence that Buckingham may have had a hand in the fabric of the entire play.

The most interesting piece of such evidence is the resemblance between the character of Mistress Finical Fart, the affected, scheming landlady in The Country Gentleman, and that of the mother of the second Constantia in Buckingham's revision of The Chances, which had been performed for the first time only two years earlier. Both Mistress Finical and the mother are loquacious, both imagine themselves to be well-bred, and both affect French diction. There is a striking similarity, for example, between this complaint by Mrs. Finical: “I cannot express myself with a bonne mine, but they fall upon me with a most unbred audaciousness” (Country Gentleman, 1. 1. 37-40)—and this remark by the mother of the second Constantia: “Besides, with all her wit, Constantia is but a Fool, and calls all the Meniarderies of a bonne mine, affectation” (Chances, 5. 3, p. 56).⁴¹ Although Frenchified fops are standard figures of fun on the Restoration stage (see, for example, Sir Fopling Flutter in Etherege's The Man of Mode and Melantha in Dryden's Marriage à la Mode), such characters are usually upper-class figures. Indeed, Hume and Scouten, apparently forgetting about the mother in The Chances, call Mrs. Finical “a figure almost without parallel in seventeenth century comedy.”⁴² For Howard to have borrowed the use of this figure from Buckingham's play would have been a most uncharacteristic act, but for Buckingham to use the same kind of character twice, particularly when the first had met with success, would be natural.

Another parallel with The Chances, though a slighter one, occurs in act 1, scene 1, where Worthy, arriving somewhat drunk at Mrs. Finical's house, calls her “my belov'd” and pretends to make her a sexual proposition. Presumably he is only teasing her, for she is past middle age and no beauty, and he is one of the young wits who are the heroes of the play. The scene has a parallel in The Chances, act 3, scene 1, where Don John teases Gillian, his landlady, in much the same way. The scene in The Chances was written by Fletcher, not by Buckingham, but Buckingham had retained it, with modifications, when he revised the play, and it would have been fresh in his mind in 1669 if he had wished to draw upon it for The Country Gentleman.

The dialogue between Sir Cautious and Sir Gravity quoted above (2. 1. 172-200) is very much like one which appeared in 1671 in The Rehearsal, act 2, scene 4, in which the two politicians, the Physician and the Gentleman-Usher, “lay their heads together” to discuss the knotty point of whether the two kings of Brentford overheard their whisper (pp. 22-23 in the Crane edition). Indeed, some unknown annotator has written in a contemporary hand in a 1683 folio copy of The Rehearsal, “S^r W^m Couentry S^r John Duncomb.”⁴³ Of course, Buckingham might well have copied the scene from The Country Gentleman even if Howard had written it. But taken together, these three similarities between The Country Gentleman and other works of Buckingham's are persuasive, though not conclusive, evidence that the duke collaborated with Howard in the composition of the whole play.

The plot of The Country Gentleman involves Isabella and Philadelphia, the two daughters of Sir Richard Plainbred, the country gentleman of the title, and their three pairs of suitors. The suitors are Worthy and Lovetruth, two young men who, like the girls and their father, are from the country but are living temporarily in London; Vapor and Slander, two London fops, elaborate in their dress and speech but completely without honor; and Sir Cautious Trouble-all and Sir Gravity Empty, the self-important, grave “men of business” already mentioned. The fops and the politicians are interested not in the young ladies' persons (which when the play begins they have not seen), but in their fortunes, of which they have heard enough. Mistress Finical plots to support the interest of Vapor and Slander, for she is impressed by their foppish manner. Trim, a clever barber and former servant of Sir Richard's, pretends to be supporting the interest of Sir Cautious and Sir Gravity, but in fact he hopes to arrange a marriage between them and his own daughters, Lucy and Kate, as a means of making his own fortune. In the end, as a result of several complicated schemes, Trim succeeds in marrying the politicians to his daughters, and Isabella and Philadelphia are married to Worthy and Lovetruth, respectively. Vapor and Slander are “married” to two footboys, servants to Sir Richard, who have appeared in disguise at the ceremony, and whom the fops have been led to believe are the two heiresses.

The Country Gentleman is an amusing, though not an outstanding, comedy. Like many Restoration comedies, it has an intrigue plot and witty “love duels” between the male and female leads. But neither the witty banter nor the intrigues are dramatically important elements. Because the fops and the politicians pose no serious threat to the heroes' prospects with the heroines, all the plotting of Mrs. Finical is in vain. And whereas the love debates in the “gay couple” tradition derive their spirit from the participants' feeling themselves impelled by love toward marriage and their struggling against the loss of freedom which marriage implies,⁴⁴ in The Country Gentleman we have no real sense that either the women or the men are really reluctant to marry. The ladies tease the gentlemen, but except when they pretend to believe the fops' account of the abortive duel (4. 1, p. 127) and when they pretend to back out at the last minute before the marriage (5. 1, pp. 145-46), the men know they are being teased, and they relish the interplay as much as the ladies. The audience can enjoy the comic action without ever having to worry about the outcome of the plot.

In several important respects The Country Gentleman is atypical of the comedies of its time. One of the chief of these is that all the sensible characters despise the environment and values of London. They denounce urban fashions as nonsense, urban amusements as trivial and useless, and urban dealing as duplicity. Sir Richard, who is in London to transact legal business, hates the city and hopes to return to his home in the West Country as soon as possible. And whereas in most Restoration comedies a country squire who hated the city and longed for the days of Queen Elizabeth would be a fool, in this play Sir Richard's sentiments are echoed by his beautiful and clever daughters and by their witty suitors, Worthy and Lovetruth. Only the fools, led by Mrs. Finical, love the city.

Of the principal characters' objections to the city, the one which carries the most weight is the idea that it is a place of deception. Thus Trim says of Sir Richard, “He swears he lives here in ignorance, and the plainest dealing he us'd to find was among the Lyons, for he knew when they were angry by their roaring; he never understood what fine people meant, either by what they said or did” (52). And Lovetruth, when he hears Vapor and Slander attempting to court the pretended heiresses by boasting of their supposed attractiveness and courage, says in an aside, “How I kindle at these lyes—” (104). Fancy speeches are invariably undercut, even when the intelligent characters make them. For example, when Worthy and Lovetruth first approach the heroines, Worthy begins with a conventional compliment, “Save you Ladies, this [that is, the pleasure of their company] is a happiness above our merits.” Isabella replies, “Why truly if you speak as you think, you deserve very little” (84). In another scene, all four lovers mock the conventional Petrarchan formulas:

WORTHY.
And shall we part thus?
LOVETRUTH.
But one kind word.
WORTHY.
Or a speaking look.
ISABELLA.
Nay, if you are so reasonable, have at you, come Sister, lets give 'em looks apeece. (They look at 'em.)
WORTHY.
Umh, so it goes through and through; Lovetruth, prithee look behind me and see where the look comes out.
LOVETRUTH.
No man, tis but got to thy heart yet—

(3.1, p. 113)

In scenes of banter like these, Worthy and Lovetruth show that they deserve the love of the two witty ladies, in part because they do not expect them to believe the common cant.

However, since the play assigns a high value to truth and plain-dealing, it is hard for an audience to accept the fact that all the supposedly moral characters in the play—Worthy, Lovetruth, Isabella, Philadelphia, Kate, and Lucy—participate in deceptions of their own, designed to trick the fools. Sir Richard, who never takes an active part in the action but is always told of it afterward, invariably applauds these deceptions. Tricky plots are the stuff of which comedies are made, but to have all the heroes and heroines of the play engage in behavior which violates the play's highest values is confusing or worse.

Another problem concerns the fact that the play's action takes place in a single setting, Mrs. Finical's boardinghouse, and within a single day. This observance of the classical “unities” (which, interestingly enough, Howard had attacked as a critical dogma a year or two before),⁴⁵ gives the play a tight structure, but it puts a strain on credibility. An audience can hardly believe that two intelligent young ladies like Isabella and Philadelphia would be willing to marry on the same day they have come to London and have met their suitors, particularly in the light of their dryly amused manner toward the young men. To partly overset that objection, Howard and Buckingham plant the idea that Worthy and Lovetruth have known the two girls before. Lovetruth tells Worthy after the scene of meeting, “To see the luck on't, that our first loves should be brought after us, tis a good omen,” and Isabella and Philadelphia acknowledge having received some attentions from the men at their father's house in the country (84). Still, the action happens too fast. Even though Sir Cautious and Sir Gravity are too stupid to pay attention to the girls' reactions and Vapor and Slander are too blinded by greed, it is hard to believe that they could be led to expect the girls to marry them on the day they have just met.

Another critical problem is raised by the authors' use of characters in pairs. Both Buckingham and Howard had previously used this device, a common formula on the Restoration comic stage.⁴⁶ In this play the formula is carried to an extreme, for there are two heiresses, Isabella and Philadelphia; two barbers' daughters, Kate and Lucy; two wits, Worthy and Lovetruth; two fops, Vapor and Slander; two men of business, Sir Cautious and Sir Gravity; two plotters, Trim and Mrs. Finical; and even two footboys, Ned and Will. The only character who does not appear as part of a pair is Sir Richard Plainbred, the Country Gentleman, and his appearing alone certainly makes him stand out in the play, as does his not participating in the intrigues of the plot. But that singularity is not exploited.

The fact that all the major characters except Sir Richard are doubled makes possible some of the intrigues involved in the plots: for example, the marriage trick could not be played on Vapor and Slander without the participation of one sister in the fooling of each. However, the doubled characters are, in most cases, insufficiently differentiated. We have no trouble telling Trim from Mrs. Finical, of course, and Sir Cautious can be distinguished from his echo, Sir Gravity, if only by his always speaking any given idea first. But the members of the other pairs are nearly indistinguishable. Isabella and Philadelphia are both witty and independent; Vapor and Slander are both foolish and underhanded. The lines assigned to either member of any pair might as easily be given to the other. Thus, many scenes, not only those of the fools, but even those of the intelligent characters, become a kind of litany in which one character finishes the thoughts of another. This problem probably shows the effect of Howard's hand, for Buckingham's treatment of Don John and Don Frederick, in his revision of The Chances, suggests that he preferred to emphasize the differences between paired characters.

For all these reasons, The Country Gentleman is a flawed play. Both Buckingham and Howard had written better comedies before this one, and Buckingham was to write a much better one later in The Rehearsal. Ironically, the king's suppression of this play prevented the public from knowing of a comedy that would have diminished its authors' reputations.

THE RESTAURATION: OR, RIGHT WILL TAKE PLACE

Buckingham's The Restauration is a revision of Philaster: Or, Love Lies a-Bleeding, written by Beaumont and Fletcher in 1610. Although the evidence that Buckingham was the author of the revision is inconclusive, it has been persuasive enough to convince most authoritative scholars and editors.⁴⁷

The plot of Beaumont's and Fletcher's tragicomedy focuses on Philaster, son of the late king of Sicily, and his beloved, Arathusa, the daughter of the king of Calabria. Because Arathusa's father has usurped the Sicilian throne from Philaster's father, the couple must communicate in secret; therefore Philaster orders his page, Bellario, to enter the service of the princess.

The king plans a marriage between Arathusa and Pharamond, a Spanish prince. To defeat the plan, Arathusa informs her father of an assignation between Pharamond and Megra, a lascivious court lady. The king, outraged, orders both Pharamond and Megra to leave Sicily, but Megra, to mitigate her guilt, accuses Arathusa of a sexual involvement with Bellario. For some reason the king and his court believe the accusation. Dion, a respected Sicilian lord, passes the story on to Philaster, saying that he himself caught the pair in the act.

Philaster parts angrily with both his mistress and his page and flees to the forest to be alone. Arathusa and Bellario, separately, take to the forest, too. Eventually Arathusa faints, Bellario happens upon her and attempts to aid her, and Philaster, coming upon the two together, wounds Arathusa. Eventually he wounds Bellario, too, but both the lady and the boy remain loyal to him.

When Philaster is captured and held for execution by the king on the charge of attacking the princess, Arathusa arranges to have Philaster placed in her custody, and they are secretly married. The townspeople, hearing that Philaster is under sentence of death, rise up in rebellion and seize Pharamond. The king promises to release Philaster and recognize his marriage to Arathusa if he will quell the uprising. He does so, order is restored, and Bellario reveals that “he” is really a woman, Euphrasia, daughter of Dion, who has secretly loved Philaster and has disguised herself as a boy in order to serve him.

Buckingham's revisions of the play were prompted by a consciousness that the earlier version lacked what Restoration audiences considered “refinement.” Buckingham's contemporaries were troubled when in Renaissance dramas, including this one, lords and ladies sometimes exchanged bawdy jokes. Still more troublesome was the fact that the heroic characters did not always behave heroically. Dryden, for example, in his Defense of the Epilogue (1672), had complained that “Philaster wound[s] his mistress, and afterwards his boy, to save himself.”⁴⁸ As we know from having examined Buckingham's revisions of The Chances, the duke felt it important to separate the comic plot and characters from the heroic ones as clearly as possible.

To correct these faults, Buckingham made his most important changes in the fourth act, which takes place in the forest. Whereas Beaumont and Fletcher had Philaster wound Arathusa deliberately and in cold blood, as an act of justice, Buckingham changed the action so that Philander (the counterpart of Philaster in his version) attacks Endymion (Bellario) and wounds Araminta (Arathusa) accidentally.⁴⁹ Philaster wounds Bellario while the latter is asleep, but in The Restauration Philander wounds Endymion only after Endymion rejects his repeated entreaties to leave him. Both these changes help to rescue the hero of the piece from the imputations of cowardice and cruelty.

Several of Buckingham's changes were intended to produce a sharper separation between the characters. Pharamond in the original play is already somewhat pompous and conceited; in Buckingham's version he (now named “Thrasamond”) is a complete fool, unable to speak in public without his governor's prompting. Araminta in Buckingham's version lacks some of the vigor of Arathusa in Beaumont's and Fletcher's; Buckingham cut out the section of her initial interview with Philaster in which she tells him imperiously that she will not relinquish her claim to the two kingdoms of Calabria and Sicily. Buckingham seems to have tried to make her more like Shakespeare's Desdemona, in order to make Philander's wounding her in act 4 more evocative of pity.

Although Buckingham had a gift for comedy, he seems to have believed, as did many of his contemporaries, that the comic and heroic modes could not coexist in a single character or scene. In his revision of Philaster he repeatedly cut scenes and lines in which the noble characters engage in humor, particularly if the humor has an obscene cast. For example, he removed scene 1 of act 4, in which the courtiers, preparing for the hunt, laugh and joke about the rumors about Arathusa and about Megra's having been caught the previous evening in Pharamond's chambers. He also removed, perhaps for the same reason, scene 2 of act 2, in which Pharamond and Megra, overheard by Gallatea, arrange their assignation. That cut does particularly serious damage to the play, however, because it removes emphasis from one of the most important complications of the plot. When, in The Restauration, Thrasamond is found in Alga's (i.e., Megra's) bedchamber, she seems almost a completely new character, and her accusation against Araminta seems without motive.

In addition to the changes of plot and structure already indicated, Buckingham made small changes in the lines everywhere in the play. Many of these changes are so apparently profitless as to seem meddlesome, and when the scene is in verse, Buckingham's revisions are particularly unfortunate. For example, in act 1, scene 1 of Beaumont's and Fletcher's version of the play, when Philaster first confronts Pharamond, he speaks as follows:

PHILASTER.
Then thus I turne
My language to you Prince, you forraign man:
Ne'er stare, nor put on wonder, for you must
Indure me, and you shall.(50)

In Buckingham's version the same speech begins as follows:

PHILANDER.
Thus then—
I turn myself to you, big foreign man,
Ne'er stare, nor put on wonder, for you must
Endure me, and you shall.(51)

The speech in Beaumont and Fletcher is not very good. But in Buckingham's version it is unintentionally comic; the phrase “big foreign man” makes Philander sound like a child. What could Buckingham have hoped to gain by changing “I turne / My language to you” to “I turn myself to you”? The latter represents a slight loss of precision and no apparent gain.

When Arathusa reveals to Philaster that she loves him in Beaumont's and Fletcher's play (1. 2), he replies,

Madam, you are too full of noble thoughts,
To lay a traine for this contemned life,
Which you may have for asking: to suspect
Were base, where I deserve no ill; love you,
By all my hopes I doe, above my life. …

Buckingham makes Philander more reluctant to believe that Araminta loves him, more hesitant to trust her:

Oh heavens!
What is't she means! it cannot sure be love;
And yet she is too full of noble thoughts
To lay a train for this contemned life,
Which she might have for asking: Madam, you
Perplex my mind so much with what you say,
I know not what to think. …

By making some of Philander's remarks an aside, Buckingham invests him with greater modesty, but he also slows the movement of the play. “I know not what to think,” like “big foreign man,” seems composed by a writer almost deaf to the decorum of heroic drama—and yet it was certainly composed in an effort to suit the style of the play to that decorum.

When Buckingham began the revision of Philaster, he may have had in mind a plan to enrich it with references to the current political scene. His changing its title to The Restauration was, of course, one such reference. The epilogue spoken by the Governor, with its references to plots and to Shaftesbury's death, is another. The prologue archly criticizes Buckingham himself for having put his public trust above personal profit when he held his Privy Council posts:

He, for the publick, needs would play a game,
For which he has been trounc'd by publick fame;
And to speak truth, so he deserv'd to be
For his dull clownish singularity:
For when the fashion is to break one's trust,
'Tis rudeness then to offer to be just.

(ll. 21-26)

And in the first scene Buckingham added the following exchange:

AGREMONT.
Who is this Prince's father?
CLEON.
A person of mean extraction, but by wiles and arts obtaining power, usurp'd the kingdom where he reigns, and keeps it under by a standing army, which our King intends to copy.

The English public had, ever since the Restoration, regarded a standing army in peacetime as an instrument of tyranny. It was deliberately kept to a few small regiments, except in time of war, and in November of 1673 the Parliament had resolved that a standing army was a grievance against the crown.⁵²

All these political references are typical of Buckingham's practice, as we have seen in our discussion of The Country Gentleman and will see in The Rehearsal. But as in those other cases, Buckingham did not develop his innuendoes into a full-fledged satire. Where an opportunity to make a political reference presented itself, he took it, but he did not go to the trouble of seeking such opportunities.

The Restauration has never been performed, and in all probability it never will be. The original play by Beaumont and Fletcher was undistinguished, and Buckingham's revisions, though they removed some of the most objectionable elements in the original, add enough of their own to make it worse. By heightening the distinction between the heroic and the comic, Buckingham succeeded only in making some parts of the play overblown and others trivial. Of all his dramatic works, The Restauration is the least successful.

THE BATTLE OF SEDGMOOR REHEARSED AT WHITEHALL: A FARCE

The Battle of Sedgmoor Rehearsed is a short farce written to satirize Louis de Duras, earl of Feversham. Feversham, a loyal adherent of King James since the latter was duke of York, had been born in France and was the nephew of the famous Marshal Turenne, the greatest of Louis XIV's generals. When the duke of Monmouth led his rebellion against King James in June of 1685, Feversham was assigned the command of the royal forces sent to the west of England to defend against the attack.

The Battle of Sedgmoor, in which the royal army destroyed the rebel force, was fought on the night of 5-6 July 1685. After a campaign of several days, in which the two armies had not made significant contact, Feversham encamped on Sedgmoor, outside of Weston Zoyland, a small town a few miles from Bridgewater. There he separated his forces, leaving the foot soldiers in tents on the ground, while he, his officers, and his cavalry were quartered in the village of Weston. The foot, under the command of Colonel John Churchill (the future duke of Marlborough), were protected from an attack over the moor only by a dry ditch, called the Bussex Rine.

Monmouth, who had good intelligence of the size of Feversham's army and its disposition, attempted a surprise attack at night across the moor. Aided by a knowledgeable guide, he managed to slip his army of five thousand men, both infantry and cavalry, across the moor in silence, so that they arrived at the ditch without disclosing their movements. However, at the Rine, the cavalry, under the command of Monmouth's friend Lord Grey, failed to find the plungeon, or ford, and in the confusion the advantage of surprise was lost. Churchill, certainly the greatest military genius of his time, deployed his forces rapidly. Feversham's cannon, which had been guarding the Bridgewater road, were brought up to overlook the ditch, where they raked the rebel troops. Monmouth's army, cut to pieces, never succeeded in crossing the ditch.

As a Frenchman, suspected of Roman Catholicism, and an adherent of King James, Feversham represented to Buckingham all the elements which, in his view, had been brought to power by James's accession to the throne. The fact that King James had used his royal favor to promote an incompetent general must have seemed inevitable to Buckingham, who always regarded James as a stupid man.⁵³ But Buckingham was not alone in his contempt for Feversham. In January of 1680, the House of Commons had petitioned King Charles II “to remove Lewis, Earl of Feversham, from all military offices and commands, as a promoter of Popery and of the Popish interests.”⁵⁴ In “A Poem on the Deponents” (1688), an anonymous poet wrote,

          Then in comes Feversham, that haughty beau,
And tells a tale of “den” and “dat” and “how,”
Though he's no more believ'd than all the rest;
Only, poor man, he fain would do his best
And be rewarded, as when come from th' West.(55)

Buckingham's farce was obviously written soon after the events which it describes, for it mentions details of the battle which audiences might soon forget. Buckingham charges Feversham with having encamped his forces in an indefensible position:

LORD.
I suppose, my Lord, that your Lordship was posted in a very strong place.
GENERAL.
O' begarra, very strong, vid de great river between me and de rebella, calla, de Brooka de Gutter.
LADY.
But they say, my Lord, there was no water in that brook of the gutter.
GENERAL.
Begar, Madama, but dat no be my faulta; begar me no hander de water from coma; if no will rain, begar me no can make de rain.(56)

He points out that the cavalry was separated from the foot soldiers, and that Feversham, as a French nobleman, regarded the common soldiers as rabble:

LADY.
But pray, my Lord, why did you not stay with the foot?
GENERAL.
Begarra, Madama, because dere be great differentia between de gentlemen-officera, and de rogua de sogiera; begarra, de rogua de sogiera lye upon de grounda; but begar, de gentleman-officer go to bedda.

Finally, he makes Feversham in every way an uncomprehending fool:

GENERAL.
But, my lore, begar me tella you one historia, will make you laffa: Begar de nit o' de battalla me be in bed vid one very pretty womans; begar, my lore, de taut o' de occasione, o' de musketa, o' de cannona, o' de pika, de bullet, an de sworda, so run in my heada, dat begar me could do no tinga.
LORD.
Ay, my Lord, I don't doubt of that. Your Lordship's most humble servant. [Exit Lord.
GENERAL.
Begar, now dis be one very pretty tinga. Me beata de enemy like de great Generalla, like de man o' de conducta, an begar because me no born in Englanda, begar, de Englishman laff at me. Odsoona, de be de straingia natioon in de varld. [Exit

The basis of the humor in the farce, as the above quotations illustrate, is Buckingham's talent for personal ridicule. Grammont wrote, “His particular talent consisted in turning into ridicule whatever was ridiculous in other people, and in taking them off, even in their presence, without their perceiving it.”⁵⁷ The contemporary accounts of Feversham from other sources confirm Buckingham's version of his speech and personality, but Buckingham's eye for specific detail is particularly sharp. And, of course, Buckingham exaggerated these qualities for humorous effect. Buckingham's irony in the farce is severe—more so than in most of his nondramatic personal satires. The addition of the allegation of sexual impotence at the end is uncharacteristically savage, and the dramatic form permits Buckingham to exploit the possibilities for irony more effectively than in his non-dramatic pieces: here he can make Feversham condemn himself out of his own mouth.

BLANK-VERSE HEROIC FRAGMENT

The last of Buckingham's dramatic works is an incomplete heroic play which covers the first thirty-seven pages of his commonplace book, and which exists nowhere else. The fragment includes all of the first act of the play and the first scene of the second. It seems fairly certain that Buckingham was working on this play at the time of his death and that his death prevented his completing it.⁵⁸

The hero of the play is Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths (454-526), who in the years 488-93 invaded Italy and established a Gothic monarchy with its capital at Ravenna. The play is set just before the invasion; Theodoric's father, Theomirus, is attempting to unite all the Gothic nations in Gaul to take part on his side. The army of the Ostrogoths has besieged Euric, king of the Visigoths, in his capital city (probably Toulouse, but unnamed in the fragment) near Narbonne.

Before the play begins, Theodoric has managed to slip into the besieged city and to meet the beautiful Princess Amalzonta, daughter of King Euric, and he has fallen in love with her. Returning home, he has proposed to his father that he marry Amalzonta and unite the two Gothic nations, but Theomirus has refused.⁵⁹

The play opens with Theodoric, disguised as a Roman and accompanied by his servant, Totilas, in the house of Liberius, a Visigoth nobleman who was captured by the Ostrogoths but has now been released. When Liberius goes to inform the king of his release, Theodoric explains to Totilas that a few days before, in the confusion of a night attack, he became lost. Knowing that he would be thought dead, he has disguised himself and has now managed to return to the city in the company of Liberius, hoping to see Amalzonta again and

To tell her who I am, and what my busines
To cast my fortune liberty and life franckly into her hands
And as befits one totally subdued
To yield myselfe to mercy, & not stand in composition

(16)

Now a Visigoth gentleman enters, and, in response to a question from Theodoric, tells him that Amalzonta is betrothed to Torrismond, the son of Count Liberius, Theodoric's host. The news so discomposes Theodoric that he is barely able to preserve his disguise. The three men exit separately.

Next King Euric, Count Liberius, and the Lady Eudoxia, a friend of the princess's, enter. Liberius begins to tell the king about his release from Theomirus when a Visigoth captain enters to report a new Ostrogoth attack. The king acknowledges with alarm that he has sent the princess, guarded by a troop of cavalry under the command of Torrismond, to Narbonne for safety until the siege is lifted. Another captain enters to report that the Ostrogothic invaders have attacked the princess's party, causing heavy casualties. The remnant of the troop, still under Torrismond's command, is holding off the enemy until help can be sent.

Act 2 opens in the camp of Theomirus. The king, his queen, and his nobles are in the royal tent, gathered around an empty bier which represents Theodoric, supposed dead. Theomirus swears on the soul of Theodoric that if Euric or any member of his family falls into his hands, he will sacrifice them that very day upon the tomb of Theodoric. He requires his wife, Fredegonda, and all his nobles to swear to execute the oath if he himself dies before it can be carried out.

Here the fragment ends. Although we can never know the outcome Buckingham had planned or what the overall success of the play might have been, we can see that suspense has been nicely built into the existing fragment. It seems likely that both Amalzonta and Torrismond would have fallen into the hands of Theomirus. How Theodoric would hear of their capture and his efforts to return to his father's camp and free the princess would have formed the substance, or part of it, of the remaining unwritten acts.

The first act is given over entirely to exposition: first Theodoric's explaining to Totilas (and, of course, to the audience) how he got where he is, and second the reports to Euric and his court about the situation of the princess. Such exposition is necessary to nearly all Restoration heroic drama, which often takes its plots from obscure histories and romances. In this play Buckingham accomplishes the exposition with grace, brevity, and interest.

One possible logical flaw in the fragmentary plot involves the character of Arsames, the courtier and diplomat who accompanied the disguised Theodoric into Euric's capital the first time. Theodoric's story as told to Totilas implies that he has revealed his identity and plans since the night attack to Arsames:

Him you know how I persuaded, or how
rather forced t' obtayne the Count Liberius
His freedom
(Which waighty grounds of state made very reasonable)
And recommended mee to him at his parting
as a considerable Roman gentleman
and bound for Italy to passe along with him

(15)

But if Arsames knows that Theodoric is alive, how could he keep that information from the sorrowing king and queen? How could he take part in the oath to avenge Theodoric's death on Euric and any member of his family, knowing that Theodoric is alive and loves Amalzonta?

Knowing the generally flat quality of Buckingham's blank verse in his emendations to Beaumont's and Fletcher's Philaster, we might expect that the weakest quality of this heroic play would be its style. In fact, however, the style of the play is respectable, given the fact that it is unfinished. Naturally, it contains many passages of exposition. But even in such passages the naturalness of the dialogue and the freedom from the kind of meticulous counting of syllables which sometimes mars The Restauration are welcome.

There is also some of the bombast which, to twentieth-century readers, at least, is the characteristic fault of most Restoration heroic drama:

TOTILAS.
The sequel I can easily conceive
You fell in love with her.
THEODORIC.
So far thou mayest
But how in love thou canst no more
conceive, then you conceivest the nature
of infinity, there's nothing but negations can
expresse it, that 'twas a love unlike all
love before.

(7)

This fault Buckingham shares with many contemporary playwrights. But it is surprising to see such empty heroics in the work of the man who mocked them so thoroughly in The Rehearsal.

In several places in the fragment Buckingham's imagery provides both compression of expression and elevation of tone. Some of the best figurative language occurs in the speeches assigned to Theomirus, whom Buckingham endows with great force as he struggles to divert into revenge his grief for the supposed death of Theodoric. The metaphor of a damned stream in the following lines is characteristically vigorous: “Since Euric has thus rashly stopt the current / of my revenge on cruell Odoacer / It shall overflow, and drowne Him and his Country” (33). And the use of a knife or sword as the implicit vehicle of the following metaphor, reinforced by the implicit pun on “mettle,” is suitable for a warrior-king:

Fredegond, no more
The heat of this affliction has enough
Softened the noble metall of our courage,
Tis time to strike it into forme and edge,
And harden it again, lets to the business.

(34)

Thus the style is sometimes quite good. If the play had been completed, it might have amplified its author's reputation.

As we have seen repeatedly in our examination of Buckingham's writings, comedy was the literary mode to which his talents naturally led him. Even such a slight and limited piece as Sedgmoor Rehearsed demonstrates how readily he could create ridiculous characters and comic dialogue. The Country Gentleman, insofar as it is his work, shows the same ability with greater range. In his revision of The Chances he designed, in Don John and the second Constantia, a pair of more complex comic characters and some witty dialogue better than that in many Restoration comedies. In serious drama, on the other hand, Buckingham always worked at a disadvantage. He seems not to have known how to be serious without being inflexibly so—or being unintentionally comic, as he sometimes was in The Restauration. Because it suggests that at the end of his life Buckingham was still developing his talents and might have been learning to write a more believable heroic style, the untitled fragment is particularly interesting.

Notes

1. The duke of Buckingham's commonplace book is in the possession of the earl of Jersey; quotations from it are used with his permission. Selections from the book have been published in the Quarterly Review 187 (1898):86-112, and in the three biographies of Buckingham published by Burghclere, Chapman, and Wilson. I have normalized the spelling, punctuation, and other accidentals of poems quoted from the commonplace book in this chapter.

2. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger, Frank J. Warnke, and O. B. Hardison, Jr. (Princeton, 1965), p. 247.

3. See Hoyt H. Hudson, The Epigram in the English Renaissance (New York, 1966).

4. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Fables and Epigrams: with Essays on Fable and Epigram, trans. J. and H. L. Hunt (London, 1825).

5. Pierre Nicole, An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles Is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams (Paris, 1659), trans. J. V. Cunningham, Augustan Reprint Society, no. 24 (Los Angeles, 1950), pp. 16-17.

6. John Donne's Poetry, ed. A. L. Clements (New York, 1966), p. 38.

7. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, ll. 355-56. [The Works of John Dryden, ed. H. T. Swedenberg and Vinton A. Dearing, 20 vols. (Berkeley, 1956-).]

8. Robert C. Elliott, The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art (Princeton, 1960), pp. 3-48.

9. The attempt on Buckingham's life was made by Abraham Goodman, a servant, in 1663. See Wilson, A Rake and His Times, p. 23.

10. This poem is almost certainly aimed at Heneage Finch (1621-82), who was lord chancellor of England from 1675 until his death, rather than at Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon (1609-74), who was lord chancellor from 1660-1667. The practices ascribed to the subject are completely out of character for Clarendon, who was known for his formal dignity and gravity, and the neighborhood mentioned in the poem fits Finch, who lived in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but not Clarendon, whose house was in St. James's Street, Picadilly.

11. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study in the History of an Idea (New York, 1960). “Plant animals,” mentioned in line 2, are zoophytes such as coral or sponges.

12. Burghclere, George Villiers, p. 113.

13. No printed edition of this poem appeared in Buckingham's lifetime. In A Third Collection of … Poems, Satires, Songs, &c. against Popery and Tyranny (1689), the first published edition, the poem is entitled “An Epitaph on Thomas, third Lord Fairfax.” In Buckingham's Miscellaneous Works, 1704, and subsequent editions, it carries the title, “A Pindaric Poem on the Death of the Lord Fairfax, Father to the Duchess Dowager of Buckingham.” The term “Pindaric” was loosely used in the Restoration for any ode except the Horatian. See William F. Thrall, Addison Hibbard, and C. Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature (New York, 1960), pp. 327-28.

    No reliable edition of Buckingham's nondramatic works is readily available. Unless otherwise specified, quotations in this chapter from Buckingham's published poems are taken from The Genuine Works of His Grace George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (Glasgow, 1752).

14. “Braves” are “bravoes”—bullies or hired assassins. A “pudder” (or “pother”) is a commotion or fuss. The first word is street slang, the second homely and conversational. “Polls” may be Buckingham's own coinage; it means “hack politicians.”

15. William R. Orwen, in “Marvell and Buckingham,” Notes and Queries 196 (1951):10-11, suggests that Buckingham's ode echoes words and phrases in Marvell's Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650) in order to heighten the contrast between Fairfax and Cromwell. On possible relations between Buckingham and Marvell, see chapter 5, below.

16. An epithalamion is a poem in celebration of a marriage; it is a separate genre from the love lyric. But Buckingham's epithalamion has enough in common with his love poems to make it worthwhile to consider them together.

17. Aurora and Tithonus appear in lines 74-76, Hesperus in line 95, of Spenser's poem.

18. See John Harold Wilson, Court Satires of the Restoration (Columbus, 1976), and my own “Sexuality, Deviance, and Moral Character in the Personal Satire of the Restoration,” Eighteenth-Century Life 2 (1975):16-19.

19. “A Familiar Epistle to Mr. Julian,” like all the published poems in this chapter, is quoted from the 1752 edition of Buckingham's works. However, there is an edition of the poem in the Poems on Affairs of State, 7 vols., ed. George deF. Lord (New Haven, 1963), 1:387-91, with full commentary and footnotes.

20. The ivory staff is the symbol of high office carried by several of the king's ministers. “Tatta” is Arlington's daughter Isabella, who was born in 1667.

21. “The Works of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham,” ed. Thomas Percy, 2 vols. (1809), 1:165. In the absence of a readily available edition of Buckingham's miscellaneous prose, I have relied whenever necessary on this authoritative but unpublished edition. There is a copy in the British Library.

22. A reply to it (A Short Answer to His Grace the Duke of Buckingham's Paper) and Buckingham's brief reply to the reply (The Duke of Buckingham his Grace's Letter to the Unknown Author) make oblique references to King James's pledge, made to Parliament in May 1685, to uphold the constitution and the Church of England. See David Ogg, England in the Reigns of James II and William III (Oxford, 1955), p. 143.

23. Two Speeches (Amsterdam, 1675), p. 12.

24. “So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds” (De Rerum Natura [On the Nature of Things], bk. 1, l. 101).

25. “Works of Buckingham,” ed. Percy, 2:177-78.

26. On Buckingham's reputation, see Wilson, A Rake and His Times, pp. 218-19.

27. See Stanley Fish, Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature (Berkeley, 1972), particularly pp. 400-401.

28. A Short Discourse upon the Reasonableness of Men's Having a Religion, or Worship of God (London, 1685).

29. Of course, critics may argue that the illogic in the Short Discourse is inadvertent. To support that view, however, these critics must be prepared to explain why Buckingham, eleven years after renouncing, in the letter to Martin Clifford, the use of reason to persuade the public of religious truth, would set out to write a genuinely logical treatise on religion.

30. See John Harold Wilson, The Court Wits of the Restoration: An Introduction (Princeton, 1948).

31. All references to Buckingham's version of The Chances in this chapter are to The Chances, A Comedy: As It Was Acted at the Theater Royal. Corrected and Altered by a Person of Honour. (London, 1682).

32. References in this chapter to Fletcher's version of The Chances are to the edition by George Walton Williams in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, ed. Fredson Bowers, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1966-79), 4:541-645.

33. Dryden, “Defense of the Epilogue: or, an Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age,” in Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, ed. George Watson, 2 vols. (New York, 1962), 1:180.

34. Arthur Colby Sprague, Beaumont and Fletcher on the Restoration Stage (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), p. 223.

35. Sir Robert Howard and George Villiers, The Country Gentleman: A “Lost” Play and Its Background, ed. Arthur H. Scouten and Robert D. Hume (Philadelphia, 1976). All quotations from The Country Gentleman in this chapter are taken from this edition.

36. Pepys, Diary, 9:225.

37. Ibid., pp. 471-72. On the night of 31 January of the same year, Edward Kynaston, an actor who had played the part of Sir Charles Sedley in the play The Heiress, was assaulted in St. James's Park by hired thugs and severely beaten.

38. Ibid., pp. 467-68.

39. Burghclere, George Villiers, p. 209.

40. Country Gentleman, p. 26.

41. Bonne mine: literally, “good air,” elegant manner.

42. Country Gentleman, p. 30.

43. Ibid., p. 89.

44. See John Harrington Smith, The Gay Couple in Restoration Comedy (Cambridge, 1948), pp. 77-78.

45. Howard's attack on the unities appeared in his preface to his last performed play, The Duke of Lerma (1668). See Country Gentleman, p. 21.

46. See Howard's The Committee (1662) and Buckingham's The Chances. On the appearance of this formula in Restoration comedy, see Robert D. Hume, The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1976), pp. 130-31.

47. The revision was accepted as Buckingham's work by Bishop Percy in his unpublished late eighteenth-century edition, by A. C. Sprague in Beaumont and Fletcher on the Restoration Stage, and by Arthur Mizener in “George Villiers” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1934).

48. Of Dramatic Poesy, ed. Watson London: J. M. Dents New York: Dutton, 1962, 1:172.

49. Buckingham changes the names of all the characters in the play, being careful to keep the names metrically equivalent for the sake of his versification. In addition to the changes just mentioned there are these: Dion = Cleon; Pharamond = Thrasomond; Thrasilene = Agremont; Cleremont = Adelard; Megra = Alga; Galatea = Melisinda.

50. Quotations from Philaster are taken from the edition by Robert K. Turner in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon (Cambridge, 1966-79), 1:367-504.

51. References to The Restauration are to Bishop Percy's edition of Buckingham's works, 1:229-346.

52. [David] Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, [2 vols. (Oxford, 1934)] 1:379.

53. Opinion is divided on the question of Feversham's incompetence. See Winston Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, 6 vols. (New York, 1933), 1:217-18; and G. J. Wolseley, The Life of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, 2 vols. (London, 1894), 1:281, 307-8.

54. Wolseley, Life of John Churchill, 1:281. Feversham was, in fact, a French Protestant, who had exiled himself to England to avoid religious persecution in his native land.

55. Poems on Affairs of State, vol. 4, ed. Galbraith M. Crump (New Haven, 1968), 270. The reward to which the satirist alludes is the Order of the Garter, conferred upon Feversham on 30 July 1685 as a reward for his having defeated Monmouth.

56. References to The Battle of Sedgmoor are to Percy's edition of Buckingham's works, 2:39-46.

57. Grammont, Memoirs, [Anthony Hamilton. The Memoirs of Count Grammont, ed. Gordon Goodwin, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1908)] 1:137.

58. As in chapter 2, all references to and quotations from the duke of Buckingham's commonplace book are by permission of the earl of Jersey.

59. Buckingham (or his source) made no attempt to be faithful to the details of history. See Thomas Hodgkin, Theodoric the Goth (New York, 1891).

Selected Bibliography

Primary Sources

1. Plays

The Chances, A Comedy: As It Was Acted at The Theater Royal. Corrected and Altered by a Person of Honour. London, 1682. Subsequent editions in 1692, 1711, 1735, 1791, 1817, and 1826.

The Country Gentleman: A “Lost” Play and Its Background. Edited by Arthur H. Scouten and Robert D. Hume. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976. By Sir Robert Howard and George Villiers, duke of Buckingham.

2. Separate Prose Works

A Short Discourse of the Reasonableness of Men's Having a Religion, or Worship of God. London, 1685. Two more editions, both 1685.

3. Collected Works

Miscellaneous Works, Written by His Grace, George, Late Duke of Buckingham. London, 1704.

The Works of his Grace, George Villiers, Late Duke of Buckingham, 2 vols. London, 1715. Three more editions in 1752, 1754, 1775.

“The Works of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.” Edited by Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore. [1806].

Secondary Sources

1. Books

Burghclere, Winifred. George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham, 1628-1687: A Study in the History of the Restoration. London: John Murray, 1903.

Chapman, Hester W. Great Villiers: A Study of George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham, 1628-1687. London: Secker and Warburg, 1949.

Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews. 11 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970-83.

Wilson, John Harold. A Rake and His Times: George Villiers Second Duke of Buckingham. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young, 1954.

2. Articles

Avery, Emmett L. “The Stage Popularity of The Rehearsal, 1671-1777.” Research Studies, State College of Washington 7 (1939): 201-4.

Baker, Sheridan. “Buckingham's Permanent Rehearsal.” Michigan Quarterly Review 12 (1973): 160-71.

Elias, Richard. “‘Bayes’ in Buckingham's The Rehearsal.” English Language Notes 15 (1978): 178-81.

Emery, John P. “Restoration Dualism of the Court Writers.” Revue des langues vivantes 32 (1966): 238-65.

Lewis, Peter. “The Rehearsal: A Study of Its Satirical Methods.” Durham University Journal, n.s. 31 (1970): 96-113.

Macey, Samuel L. “Fielding's Tom Thumb as the Heir to Buckingham's Rehearsal.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 10 (1968): 405-14. Tom Thumb in the Rehearsal tradition.

McFadden, George. “Political Satire in The Rehearsal.” Yearbook of English Studies 4 (1974): 120-28.