SOURCE: Lewis, Peter. “‘The Rehearsal’: A Study of Its Satirical Methods.” In Die Englische Satire, edited by Wolfgang Weiss, pp. 284-314. Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1970, Lewis explores the methods used by Buckingham in satirizing Dryden, D'Avenant, and others in The Rehearsal.]

The Rehearsal is the archetype of most later Restoration and Augustan dramatic burlesques. A few pre-Commonwealth plays such as The Knight of the Burning Pestle might be regarded as burlesques, and, to judge from Jonson's satirical portraits of his contemporaries in Every Man out of his Humour and Poetaster and Dekker's equally incisive reply in Satiromastix, scurrilous caricature on the stage did not begin with the presentation of Dryden as Bayes in The Rehearsal; but in its total organization, the Duke of Buckingham's play was a highly original contribution to English drama.¹ It was also extremely influential, initiating the flow of Augustan dramatic satires and burlesques; the titles of some of these, like Gildon's A New Rehearsal, or Bays the Younger (1714) and D'Urfey's The Two Queens of Brentford: or, Bayes no Poetaster (1721), proclaim their debt to The Rehearsal. Although Sheridan's The Critic is sometimes praised as the culmination of the eighteenth century tradition of dramatic burlesque, it is closely modelled on Buckingham's exceptionally popular play, which it refurbishes in order to bring the dramatic and personal satire of The Rehearsal up to date. In The Critic, pseudo-Shakespearean historical tragedy like Cumberland's The Battle of Hastings, and not heroic drama as in The Rehearsal, is the dramatic target, and Cumberland in the form of Sir Fretful Plagiary replaces Dryden as the author abused. Nevertheless, Sheridan's methods of burlesquing Georgian drama and many of his satirical jibes are almost identical to Buckingham's. The conversation of the Puff, Sneer, Dangle trio in The Critic are obviously derived from those of the Bayes, Smith, Johnson trio in The Rehearsal, and Puff's interjections during his mock-play The Spanish Armada echo those of Bayes. Buckingham's example undoubtedly moulded the pattern of much subsequent dramatic burlesque and remained powerful for over a hundred years.

Most commentators on The Rehearsal have concerned themselves with the following issues: the problem of the play's multiple authorship (Martin Clifford, Samuel Butler, Thomas Sprat and others are said to have aided Buckingham); the eccentric pre-stage history of the play between its initial conception in 1663 and its eventual stage production at the Theatre Royal on December 7, 1671; the changing identity of the Bayes-figure from Sir Robert Howard (Bilboa) in 1665 to Dryden (Bayes) in 1671; the elucidation of those satirical strokes aimed at D'Avenant, such as the broken nose incident (II, 5), that are incorporated in the main attack on Dryden; the discovery of the passages parodied and the plays alluded to in The Rehearsal. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was considerable disagreement among critics of the play, such as Dr. Johnson,² Edmond Malone,³ Genest⁴ and A. W. Ward,⁵ but most of the points of contention were solved by Montague Summers in his useful critical edition of 1914.⁶ Since Summers, the most considerable contribution to the study of the play has come from D. F. Smith who has compiled a comprehensive catalogue of forty-four different ways employed to ridicule Bayes and of fifty-nine aspects of heroic drama and Restoration stage presentation burlesqued in The Rehearsal.⁷ Yet in spite of all the controversy surrounding The Rehearsal and all the attention it has received, very little attempt has been made to examine closely the various satirical methods used by Buckingham. Smith's study is a pioneering step in this direction, but although detailed and thorough it is by no means exhaustive. In particular, Smith does not analyse the burlesque techniques employed in the actual mock-play, Bayes's play within the play. Buckingham's professed aim, as stated in the Prologue, was to expose current dramatic trends, notably heroic drama, for the literary and dramatic nonsense they were; it is surprising that the numerous critics of The Rehearsal have not concerned themselves more with exactly how Buckingham accomplished his purpose.

The structure of The Rehearsal, derived from Molières L'Impromptu de Versailles (1663), is ideally adapted to its burlesque function, allowing for ample satire and comment on plot, characterization, style and diction, stage settings, scenic devices and theatrical effects. Apart from the direct parodies of heroic drama and the burlesques of its conventions that constitute Bayes's play, the rehearsal structure permits a commentary on the mock-play by two representatives of practical commonsense and sanity, Johnson and Smith, discussions between them and the author, Bayes, who exposes himself to ridicule with almost every word he utters, occasional mordant asides by the actors, and a satirical display of the theatrical deceptions and tricks which are always in evidence during actual rehearsals. The chief danger in using a rehearsal as the vehicle of satirical comedy is that the commonsense critics might have it all their own way: criticism might be too explicitly stated and not parodically enacted. Buckingham's success in avoiding this danger and achieving an admirable balance between the mock-play and the surrounding commentary is particularly laudable when it is remembered that no tradition of dramatic burlesque existed to guide him when he was writing The Rehearsal. Before analysing the burlesque devices used in the mock-play, the satirical methods employed in the surrounding commentary will be examined.

The dialogue of Bayes, Johnson and Smith serves to ridicule the most eminent authors of the genre, especially Dryden, to attack heroic drama directly, and to heighten the passages of parody and burlesque.⁸ In spite of Dr. Johnson's refusal to believe that Bayes is a satirical portrait of Dryden⁹ and A. W. Ward's ingenuous claim that Buckingham did not intend a crushing attack on Dryden as a dramatist,¹⁰ all the evidence now available is quite unequivocal about the identification of Dryden with Bayes. Edmond Malone's account of the presentation of The Rehearsal proves beyond doubt that the name Bayes does indicate, as it obviously appears to, the Poet Laureate of the day, Dryden:¹¹

Much of the success, doubtless, was owing to the mimickry employed. Dryden's dress, and manner, and usual expressions, were all minutely copied, and the Duke of Buckingham took incredible pains in teaching Lacy, the original performer of Bayes, to speak some passages of that part: in these he probably imitated our author's [Dryden] mode of recitation, which was by no means excellent.¹²

Robert Bell's development of Malone's final point is further evidence of Buckingham's determination to make Lacy's Bayes as accurate a depiction of Dryden as possible within the limits of satire:

Dryden was notoriously a bad reader, and had a hesitating and tedious delivery, which, skilfully imitated in lines of surpassing fury and extravagance, must have produced an irresistible effect upon the audience.¹³

There are also numerous allusions to Dryden in The Rehearsal itself, especially in Bayes's speeches:

If I am to write familiar things, as Sonnets to Armida, and the like, I make use of Stew'd Prunes only; but when I have a grand design in hand, I ever take Phisic, and let blood: for, when you would have pure swiftness of thought, and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part. In fine, you must purge the Belly.

(II, 1)

This might appear to be vulgar caricature, but when Dryden “was about any considerable Work, he used to purge his Body, and clear his Head, by a Dose of Physick”,¹⁴ and his love of stewed prunes was extremely well-known. Unfortunately for Dryden, a number of his personal characteristics made him a sitting-duck for a satirist, and Buckingham did not fail to make the most of them. Because he employs the usual satirical methods of exaggeration and distortion, Buckingham is obviously unfair to Dryden in many ways, but Bayes in nevertheless an extremely effective caricature and a brilliant stage-creation. In A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire¹⁵ and in his conversation,¹⁶ Dryden acknowledged the personal attack made on him in The Rehearsal; he obtained his revenge by reserving an honoured place for Buckingham as Zimri in Absalom and Achitophel.

Ridicule of Bayes is continuous throughout Buckingham's play, but the first act, which introduces the rehearsal of Bayes's play in the later acts, is a particularly relentless attack on Bayes. At his first appearance, Bayes is revoltingly sycophantic;¹⁷ he is also boastful about his new play, but unable to explain to Johnson the meaning, which he confuses with the plot, of his last play. He can, however, expatiate on his imbecilic rules for play-writing, including his rule of transversion (“changing Verse into Prose, or Prose into Verse”) and his view of invention—a mixture of witty aphorisms overheard in coffeehouses and sheer plagiarism:¹⁸

Why, Sir, when I have any thing to invent, I never trouble my head about it, as other men do; but presently turn over this Book, and there I have, at one view, all that Perseus, Montaigne, Seneca's Tragedies, Horace, Juvenal, Claudian, Pliny, Plutarch's lives, and the rest, have ever thought upon this subject: and so, in a trice, by leaving out a few words, or putting in others of my own, the business is done.

(I, 1)

Bayes reveals himself as stupid, proud, contemptuous and mentally blind in many other ways. He mistakes his own silly paranomasias, such as “I make 'em call her Armarillis, because of her Armor”, for wit, and confesses that he wrote a part just for his mistress.¹⁹ He comments that his Prologue and Epilogue are interchangeable and just as appropriate for any other play as his own. He plans to ensure applause at the performance of his play by arranging for “two or three dozen of my friends, to be ready in the Pit, who, I'm sure, will clap, and so the rest, you know, must follow”. He also launches into a diatribe against critics, which parades his lack of self-awareness until the speech is ironically inverted into a diatribe against himself:

for let a man write never so well, there are, now-a-days, a sort of persons, they call Critiques, that, I gad, have no more wit in them than so many Hobby-horses; but they'll laugh you, Sir, and find fault, and censure things, that, I gad, I'm sure, they are not able to do themselves. A sort of envious persons, that emulate the glories of persons of parts, and think to build their fame, by calumniating of persons, that, I gad, to my knowledge, of all persons in the world are, in nature, the persons that do as much despise all that as—a—In fine, I'll say no more of 'em.

(I, 2)

Smith and Johnson do occasionally state directly what they think of Bayes:

SMITH:
What a plague, does this Fop mean by his snip snap, hit for hit, and dash?
JOHNSON:
Mean! why, he never meant any thing in's life: what dost talk of meaning for?

(III, 1)

SMITH:
Well, I can hold no longer, I must gag this rogue; there's no enduring him.

(V, 1)

But the ridicule of Bayes is so successful because most of it comes from his own mouth. In his presentation of Bayes, Buckingham provides the qualities he wishes to mock with dramatic actuality and, like all good satirists, does not rely to any great extent on explicit comments about those qualities.

In the other four acts, during which parody and burlesque assume increasing importance, the ridicule of Bayes is frequently integrated into the satire on heroic drama. By presenting the mock-play within The Rehearsal as a serious example of heroic drama written by a typical Restoration dramatist (Bayes), Buckingham intensifies his attack on the genre and at the same time creates many opportunities for abusing Bayes. Several passages in the mock-play exposing the clichés of heroic drama are interrupted by self-congratulatory exclamations from Bayes at what he believes to be instances of his originality and artistic brilliance:

VOLSCIUS:
But thou to love dost Pretty-man, incline: Yet love in thy breast is not love in mine?
BAYES:
Antithesis! Thine and mine.
PRETTY-MAN:
Since love it self's the same, why should it be Diff'ring in you from what it is in me?
BAYES:
Reasoning! I gad, I love reasoning in verse.
VOLSCIUS:
Love takes Cameleon-like, a various dye From every Plant on which is self does lye.
BAYES:
Simile!

(IV, 2)

Bayes's interjections of spell-bound approval at these trite tropes, which parody a dialogue between Zanger and Achmat in Orrery's Mustapha (1665), emphasize the imaginative poverty of heroic drama, as does his similar enthusiasm for the Physician's banal outburst of bewildered sorrow at the news of an unexpected death:

PHYSICIAN:
O ye Gods!
BAYES:
There's a smart expression of a passion; O ye Gods! That's one of my bold strokes, I gad.

(III, 2)

In the context of the mock-play, the commonplace expression, “O ye Gods!”, very frequently used as an “expression of passion” by Killigrew, Settle and other Restoration dramatists, is transformed into a satirical lunge at the empty rhetoric of heroic drama.

In Bayes, Buckingham is, in fact, employing a standard Augustan satirical device, later adopted by Swift for his “personae”.²⁰ Buckingham makes Bayes put the case for heroic drama, but in a slightly exaggerated form that reduces the case to absurdity. While expounding on the poetic “merits” and dramatic “subtleties” of heroic drama, Bayes unwittingly reveals all the flaws of the genre as well as his own pompous inanity. Bayes's self-satisfied description of his interminable “conquest”, an allusion to The Conquest of Granada, is simultaneously Buckingham's condemnation of the unwieldy structure of Dryden's play:

And then, Sir, this contrivance of mine has something of the reason of a Play in it too; for as every one makes you five Acts to one Play, what do me I, but make five Playes to one Plot: by which means the Auditors have every day a new thing.

(IV, 1)

Similar speeches, in which Buckingham projects his satire through the “mask” of Bayes, abound. When Johnson inquires about the identity of Drawcansir, Bayes proudly outlines his hero's characteristics, but in such a way that Buckingham speaks through him to sum up the absurdities of Almanzor and his like:

Why, Sir, a fierce Hero, that frights his Mistress, snubs up Kings, baffles Armies, and does what he will, without regard to numbers, good manners, or justice.

(IV, 1)

Some of Bayes's pronouncements, like the above, occur during extended discussions with Johnson and Smith, whereas others are more closely related to actual parodies and burlesques. The scene in which Bayes complacently explains that he contrived the ludicrous meeting between the Gentleman-Usher and the Physician “for the better carrying on of the Plot” exposes both Bayes and the awkward expositions of some heroic plays to ridicule:

PHYSICIAN:
Sir, by your habit, I should ghess you to be the Gentleman-Usher of this sumptuous place.
USHER:
And, by your gait and fashion, I should almost suspect you rule the healths of both our noble Kings, under the notion of Physician.
PHYSICIAN:
You hit my Function right.
USHER:
And you, mine.
PHYSICIAN:
Then let's embrace.
USHER:
Come.
PHYSICIAN:
Come.
JOHNSON:
Pray, Sir, who are those so very civil persons?
BAYES:
Why, Sir, the Gentleman-Usher, and Physician of the two Kings of Brentford.
JOHNSON:
But, pray then, how comes it to pass, that they know one another no better?
BAYES:
Phoo! that's for the better carrying on of the Plot.

(II, 1)

The subsequent dialogue between the Physician and the Gentleman-Usher parodies the excessive use of “asides” and the whispering scenes in Orrery's Mustapha and Aphra Behn's The Amorous Prince (1671) and burlesques all such dramatic chicanery employed to establish mystery, suspense and tension.²¹ In his attempt to justify the whispering between the two men, Bayes idiotically fails to distinguish between life and literature:

PHYSICIAN:
But yet some rumours great are stirring; and if Lorenzo should prove false (which none but the great Gods can tell) you then perhaps would find that—[Whispers]
BAYES:
Now he whispers.
USHER:
Alone, do you say?
PHYSICIAN:
No; attended with the noble—[Whispers]
BAYES:
Again.
USHER:
Who, he in gray?
PHYSICIAN:
Yes; and at the head of—[Whispers]
BAYES:
Pray mark.
USHER:
Then, Sir, most certain, 'twill in time appear. These are the reasons that have mov'd him to't; First, he—[Whispers]
BAYES:
Now the other whispers.
USHER:
Secondly, they—[Whispers]
BAYES:
At it still.
USHER:
Thirdly, and lastly, both he, and they—[Whispers]
BAYES:
Now they both whisper. [Exeunt Whispering]
[…]
SMITH:
Well, Sir, but pray why all this whispering?
BAYES:
Why, Sir, (besides that it is new, as I told you before) because thay are suppos'd to be Politicians; and matters of State ought not to be divulg'd.

(II, 1)

As is clear from this quotation and the previous one, Johnson and Smith's persistent interrogation of Bayes about the absurdities of his play forces Bayes to make numerous inane defences of his dramatic incompetence and at the same time mediates between the mock-play and the audience to point up the burlesque. In the bustle of a Restoration theatre, the subtle burlesque of The Rehearsal cannot have been easy to apprehend without the attendant commentary of Johnson and Smith, whose main dramatic function is therefore to drive home Buckingham's satire:

USHER:
But what's become of Volscius the great?
His presence has not grac'd our Courts of late.
PHYSICIAN:
I fear some ill, from emulation sprung,
Has from us that Illustrious Hero wrung.
BAYES:
Is not that Majestical?
SMITH:
Yes, but who a Devil is that Volscius?
BAYES:
Why, that's a Prince I make in love with Parthenope.
SMITH:
I think you Sir.
Enter CORDELIO.
CORDELIO:
My Lieges, news from Volscius the Prince.
USHER:
His news is welcome, whatso'er it be.
SMITH:
How, Sir, do you mean whether it be good or bad?
BAYES:
Nay, pray, Sir, have a little patience: Godsookers you'l spoil all my Play. Why, Sir, 'tis impossible to answer every impertinent question you ask.

(III, 2)

Smith's questioning about this parody of some lines in Aphra Behn's The Amorous Prince elucidates the more general burlesque of those “majestically written” heroic plays that communicate insufficient information about the characters and actions to be intelligible. Johnson and Smith's questions also elicit some of Bayes's finest self-deprecatory speeches, such as his dismissal of Smith's intelligent curiosity about the totally unexplained meaning of Prince Pretty-man's baffling declamation, “It is resolv'd”, as both ignorance of contemporary fashions and failure to appreciate original writing:

BAYES:
Why, I must confess, that question is well enough ask'd, for one that is not acquainted with this new way of writing. But you must know, Sir, that, to out-do all my fellow-Writers, whereas they keep their Intrigo secret, till the very last Scene before the Dance; I now, Sir, (do you mark me)—a—
SMITH:
Begin the Play, and end it, without ever opening the Plot at all?
BAYES:
I do so, that's the very plain troth on't; ha, ha, ha; I do, I gad.

(II, 3)

Smith's severely critical comment is sufficiently two-edged to be regarded as complimentary by Bayes, who is repeatedly duped by Johnson and Smith's irony.²²

Deceived into believing that Johnson and Smith's ironic astonishment at the actors' refusal to perform his plays is genuine, Bayes rushes into a confession that reflects his own lack of judgment and not that of the actors, as he believes. His self-righteous laughter at the actors' “stupidity” also redounds upon himself:

BAYES:
It was I, you must know, that have written a whole Play just in this very same stile; but it was never Acted yet.
JOHNSON:
How so?
BAYES:
I gad, I can hardly tell you, for laughing (ha, ha, ha) it is so pleasant a story: ha, ha, ha.
SMITH:
What is't?
BAYES:
I gad, the Players refus'd to act it, Ha, ha, ha.
SMITH:
That's impossible.
BAYES:
I gad they did it, Sir, point blank refus'd it, I gad, Ha, ha, ha.
JOHNSON:
Fie, that was rude.
BAYES:
Rude! Ay, I gad, they are the rudest, uncivilest persons, and all that, in the whole world, I gad: I gad, there's no living with 'em, I have written, Mr. Johnson, I do verily believe, a whole cart-load of things, every whit as good as this, and yet, I vow to gad, these insolent Raskals have turned 'em all back upon my hands again.
JOHNSON:
Strange fellows indeed!

(II, 2)

Johnson and Smith's frequent ironic praise of Bayes's verbal and formal monstrosities is another method of underscoring the satire. In the following passage, the Physician's “Allegory” burlesques all pseudo-poetic claptrap (a web of mixed metaphors in this case) that aspires to the status of true poetry:

PHYSICIAN:
Sir, to conclude, the place you fill, has more than amply exacted the Talents of a wary Pilot, and all these threatning storms, which, like impregnate Clouds, hover o'er our heads, will (when they once are grasp'd but by the eye of reason) melt into fruitful showers of blessings on the people.
BAYES:
Pray mark that Allegory. Is not that good?
JOHNSON:
Yes; that grasping of a storm, with the eye, is admirable.

(II, 1)

Johnson and Smith usually undermine the pretensions of heroic drama by the oblique method of irony, but when they do express their views overtly, they reveal themselves as upholders of Augustan sanity and reason who invoke the neoclassical yardstick of Nature as a measure of reproof:

JOHNSON:
… and sometimes see a Play: where there are such things (Frank) such hideous, monstrous things, that it has almost made me forswear the Stage, and resolve to apply my self to the solid nonsense of your Men of Business, as the more ingenious pastime.
SMITH:
I have heard, indeed, you have had lately many new Plays; and our Country-wits commend 'em.
JOHNSON:
I, so do some of our City-wits too; but they are of the new kind of Wits.
SMITH:
New kind! what kind is that?
JOHNSON:
Why, your Virtuosi, your civil persons, your Drolls: fellows that scorns to imitate Nature; but are given altogether to elevate and surprise.
SMITH:
Elevate, and surprise! pr'ythee make me understand the meaning of that.
JOHNSON:
Nay, by my troth, that's a hard matter: I don't understand that my self. 'Tis a phrase they have got among them, to express their no-meaning by. I'l tell you, as near as I can, what it is. Let me see: 'tis Fighting, Loving, Sleeping, Rhyming, Dying, Dancing, Singing. Crying; and every thing, but thinking and Sence.

(I, 1)

Johnson, Buckingham's spokesman for the norm of “sence”, openly derides the current dramatic pursuit of novelty and specious originality at the expense of art and reason. Bayes, on the other hand, blandly deceives himself about the virtues of “the new way of writing” (“That's a general Rule, you must ever make a simile, when you are surpris'd; 'tis the new way of writing”), and unquestioningly equates “new” with “good” when trying to justify the irrationalities of his play:

JOHNSON:
But why two Kings of the same place?
BAYES:
Why? because it's new; and that's it I aim at. I despise your Johnson and Beaumont, that borrow'd all they writ from Nature: I am for fetching it purely out of my own fancy, I.

(II, 1)

Shortly after this confession, Johnson rightly censures what Bayes calls “good language” as “very fantastical, most abominably dull, and not one word to the purpose”, and complains, again in the name of Nature, that no scene in heroic drama is “like any thing thou canst imagine has ever been the practice of the World”.²³

At the opening and again at the end of The Rehearsal, Buckingham uses the actors of the mock-play to contribute to the cumulative satire of heroic drama and its authors. When discussing the play they have to perform, two of the actors are full of scornful incomprehension while another (the First Player) succeeds in clarifying Buckingham's objections to the indefensible practices of the Restoration stage by ostensibly defending them:

FIRST Player:
Have you your part perfect?
SECOND Player:
Yes, I have it without book; but I don't understand how it is to be spoken.
THIRD Player:
And mine is such a one, as I can't guess for my life what humour I'm to be in: whether angry, melancholy, merry, or in love. I don't know what to make on't.
FIRST Player:
Phoo! the Author will be here presently, and he'l tell us all. You must know, this is the new way of writing; and these hard things please forty times better than the old plain way. For, look you, Sir, the grand design upon the Stage is to keep the Auditors in suspence; for to guess presently at the plot, and the sence, tires 'em before the end of the first Act: now, here, every line surprises you, and brings in new matter. And, then, for Scenes, Cloaths and Dances we put 'em quiet down, all that ever went before us: and those are the things, you know, that are essential to a Play.
SECOND Player:
Well, I am not of thy mind; but, so it gets us money, 'tis no great matter.

(I, 2)

The actors' criticism in the concluding scene is less direct than this but nonetheless valuable. After Johnson and Smith make their final protest against Bayes and his play by leaving the theatre before the rehearsal is over, one of the actors discovers and reads “a foul piece of papyr” outlining the final act of Bayes's play. This “Argument of the Fifth Act”, which alludes specifically to Aphra Behn's The Amorous Prince, ridicules the sensational dénouements of many heroic plays with their culminating eruptions of love and honour:

THIRD Player:
Cloris at length, being sensible of Prince Pretty-man's passion, consents to marry him; but, just as they are going to Church, Prince Pretty-man meeting, by chance, with old Joan the Chandlers widdow, and remembring it was she that first brought him acquainted with Cloris: out of a high point of honour, brake off his match with Cloris, and marries old Joan. Upon which, Cloris, in despair, drowns her self: and Prince Pretty-man, discontentedly, walkes by the River side. This will never do: 'tis just like the rest. Come, let's begone.

(V, 1)

Like Johnson and Smith, the actors cannot endure unlimited nonsense and abandon Bayes's play with unanimous relief. Bayes's response to the departure of Johnson and Smith—“A couple of senceless raskals … such dull rogues”—strangely anticipates Dryden's own view “that Smith and Johnson are two of the coolest and most insignificant fellows I ever met with on the stage”.²⁴ Dryden's peevish comment about these two characters is a clear measure of their satirical effectiveness, as are his even more petulant and Bayes-like remarks in A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire:

I answered not The Rehearsal, because I knew the author sat to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own farce: because also I knew, that my betters were more concerned than I was in that satire: and, lastly, because Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnson, the main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation, that I could liken them to nothing but to their own relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about the town.²⁵

In Dryden's defence, it must be acknowledged that he was virtually the only Restoration dramatist to achieve anything of any lasting interest in the notoriously intractable form of the rhymed heroic play. He himself abandoned the genre only a few years after The Rehearsal appeared.

II

The above study of the ways in which the commentary by Bayes, Johnson, Smith and the actors satirizes heroic drama cannot hope to do justice to the comprehensiveness of their criticism; only a reading of The Rehearsal can do that. But before considering the mock-play itself closely than has yet been done, it is worth adding that the discussion interwoven with Bayes's play is particularly successful in ridiculing all those ingenious contrivances,²⁶ improbable events²⁷ and miraculous discoveries²⁸ that mar heroic drama. Nevertheless, the true burlesquer like Buckingham cannot depend on barbed strictures and witty denunciations, but must organize his criticism as imaginative enactment as well as explicit statement. Indeed, good burlesque comes primarily from imitations of the poetic style, stock situations and dramatic clichés to be ridiculed that exaggerate the originals just enough to elucidate their absurdities and banalities. If the imitations are overexaggerated, they will depart too far from their targets to be effective as burlesque and will fall to the level of farce even if the burlesque intention is recognizable. In the following analysis of Buckingham's satirical methods, verbal burlesque (parodic, non-parodic and mock-heroic), situational burlesque and visual burlesque are considered separately for the sake of convenience: in The Rehearsal they are, of course, closely interwoven.

Despite V. C. Clinton-Baddeley's protestations throughout The Burlesque Tradition in the English Theatre after 1660 that “unwinking nonsense, which owes nothing to direct parody, is the very marrow of burlesque”,²⁹ direct parody is a vital ingredient of Augustan burlesque drama, particularly of The Rehearsal. Several instances have already been cited in connection with the Bayes, Smith and Johnson dialogue, but without comparing the parodies with the originals. By being placed in a context of burlesque, the parodies in The Rehearsal ridicule not only particular speeches from heroic plays but also all similar attitudinizing throughout the genre. The specific parody of Almahide's grotesque expression of tender commiseration and loyalty in Dryden's The Conquest of Granada is also a general burlesque of all such vapid love-attitudes and precious writing in heroic drama:

ALMAHIDE:
So, two kind turtles, when a storm is nigh,
Look up, and see it gathering in the sky:
Each calls his mate, to shelter in the groves,
Leaving, in murmur, their unfinished loves:
Perched on some drooping branch, they sit alone,
And coo, and hearken to each other's moan.

(Part II, I, 2)

BAYES:
So Boar and Sow, when any storm is nigh,
Snuff up, and smell it gath'ring in the sky;
Boar beckons Sow to trot in Chestnut Groves,
And there consummate their unfinish'd Loves:
Pensive in mud they wallow all alone,
And snore and gruntle to each others moan.

(I, 2)

The replacement of “turtle” by “boar and sow” actually evaluates imaginatively the strained similes and conceits responsible for the feebleness of love poetry in heroic drama. Very similar is Cloris's speech, “As some tall Pine, which we, on Aetna, find’ (II, 3), which parodies Boabdelin's “delicate” lines to Almahide, “As some fair tulip, by a storm oppressed” (The Conquest of Granada, Part I, V, 2), by substituting a tree for a flower and developing the original simile in a consistently magnified way.

Ridicule of the hero is also achieved by means of parody. Many of Drawcansir's lines, which imaginatively define the huffing, puffing boastfulness and self-regard of the typical hero, are very closely modelled on some of Almanzor's most notorious speeches in The Conquest of Granada:

ALMANZOR:
He, who dares love, and for that love must die,
And, knowing this, dares yet love on, am I.

(Part II, IV, 3)

DRAWCANSIR:
He that dares drink, and for that drink dares dye,
And, knowing this, dares yet drink on, am I.

(IV, 1)

and:

ALMANZOR:
And in that scene,
Which all thy hopes and wishes should content,
The thought of me shall make thee impotent.

(Part I, V, 2)

DRAWCANSIR:
Who e'er to gulp one drop of this dares think
I'l stare away his very pow'r to drink.

(IV, 1)

The parodic substitution of drink for love in Drawcansir's couplets unveils the petulant pomposity, bullying egomania and self-righteous swagger that pass for “heroism” and “fidelity” in Almanzor's solemn bombast about love and honour. The first of Drawcansir's couplets also ridicules the false rhetoric that expresses simple ideas in unnecessarily complex syntactical forms. For the critic not prepared to accept heroic drama on its own terms, Almanzor's frequent use of “dare” is indicative of puerile foolhardiness rather than proof of heroic stature. Buckingham seizes on heroic “daring” as being particularly vulnerable to mockery in the following magnificent parody:

ALMANZOR:
Spite of myself I'll stay, fight, love, despair;
And I can do all this, because I dare.

(Part II, II, 3)

DRAWCANSIR:
I drink I huff, I strut, look big and stare;
And all this I can do, because I dare.

(IV, 1)

Very similar to such direct parodies of heroic poetry are Buckingham's non-parodic burlesques of the unendurable dilemmas, stock poses and static debates of heroic drama. Trapped between love and fate, Prince Pretty-man soliloquises about his “unendurable dilemma” in lines that expose the incongruity between the rigid unimpassioned couplets of heroic drama and the stupendous emotions they purport to convey:

PRETTY-MAN:
How strange a captive am I grown of late!
Shall I accuse my Love, or blame my Fate?
My Love, I cannot; that is to Divine:
And, against Fate, what mortal dares repine?
Enter CLORIS.
But here she comes.
Sure 'tis some blazing Comet is it not? [Lyes down.]
[…]
But I am so surpris'd with sleep, I cannot speak the rest. [Sleeps.]

(II, 3)

This speech mocks a conventional heroic argument by deliberate exaggeration so that Pretty-man's dilemma is virtually analysed out of existence. In this context, Pretty-man's description of Cloris as “some blazing Comet” deflates all such far-fetched and hackneyed hyperboles generously scattered throughout Restoration tragedy. Pretty-man's collapse into sleep at the sight of Cloris, whom he has been adulating in his speech, greatly enhances the verbal burlesque of love scenes in heroic drama.

A similar rhetorical device of over-inflating the already inflated yields an even more memorable burlesque of a stereotyped heroic stance in Drawcansir's final speech:

Others may bost a single man to kill;
But I, the blood of thousands daily spill,
Let petty Kings the names of Parties know:
Where e'er I come, I slay both friend and foe.
The swiftest Horsmen my swift rage controuls,
And from their Bodies drives their trembling souls.
If they had wings, and to the Gods could flie,
I would pursue and beat 'em through the skie:
And make proud Jove, with all his Thunder, see
This single Arm more dreadful is, than he.

(V, 1)

By amplifying the usual boasts of the semi-divine hero about his invulnerability, prowess and capabilities, this speech articulates the absurdities inherent in the braggadocio of the hero, whose “honour” is here implied to be an excuse for disdainful pride and blood-thirsty violence.

Buckingham's non-parodic burlesques ridicule not only the soliloquies of heroes, as in the above examples, but also certain kinds of dialogue that appear fairly frequently in heroic drama. Dryden's penchant for extended argument in verse³⁰—Bayes admits, “I love reasoning in verse” (IV, 2)—is burlesqued by the scholastic quibbling and logic-chopping of the Physician and Gentleman-Usher which begins, “The grand question is, whether they heard us whisper? which I divide thus … into when they heard, what they heard, and whether they heard or no” (II, 4). Even finer is the following passage, which burlesques both the cut and thrust dialogue of interrogations in heroic drama and the poetic treatment accorded by Restoration tragedians to minds deranged by guilt:

AMARILLIS:
Villain, what Monster did corrupt thy mind.
T'attaque the noblest soul of humane kind?
Tell me who set thee on.
FISHER-MAN:
Prince Pretty-man.
AMARILLIS:
To kill whom?
AMARILLIS:
What, did Prince Pretty-man hire you to kill Prince Pretty-man?
FISHER-MAN:
No; Prince Volscius.
AMARILLIS:
To kill whom?
FISHER-MAN:
Prince Volscius.
AMARILLIS:
What did Prince Volscius hire you to kill Prince Volscius?
FISHER-MAN:
Prince Pretty-man.
FISHER-MAN:
No: Prince Pretty-man.
AMARILLIS:
So drag him hence,
Till torture of the Rack produce his Sense.

(III, 3)

Leo Hughes's remark about the resemblances between burlesque and farce being so great “that it is often difficult to distinguish between the two forms”³¹ is applicable to these lines, which appear to be farce but actually burlesque such exchanges as Decio's cross-questioning of Pyramena in Stapylton's The Slighted Maid (1663) and Polydamas's examination of Hermogenes in Dryden's Marriage A-la-Mode (1671).

Deflation of heroic pretence and pretentiousness is also achieved in The Rehearsal by the mock-heroic device of introducing into a potentially heroic passage some trivial commonplace or unelevated object:

PRETTY-MAN:
The blackest Ink of Fate, sure, was my Lot,
And, when she writ my Name, she made a blot.

(III, 4)

The incongruous linking of “blot”, a product of human clumsiness, with “Fate”, an imponderable and ineluctable non-human force, is responsible for the mock-heroic debasement of the typical hero's affected contemplation of his destiny. Buckingham employs the same mock-heroic method, a means of attack to which heroic drama is particularly vulnerable, in the most famous burlesque scene in the play, Volscius's debate between love and honour; this closely resembles many such monologues in heroic drama, especially Palladius's soul-searching disquisition, “I stand between two minds! what's best to do?”, from Quarles's The Virgin Widow (1649). In this case, the mock-heroic disparity is between the lofty, idealistic debate, usually couched in sonorous abstractions, and the metaphorical terms in which it is conducted here—Volscius compares his mental and spiritual struggles with the putting on and removing of his boots. The injection of these mundane and “low” objects into the otherwise “elevated” and high-pitched poetry ridicules the exquisite and essentially narcissistic self-torturings of heroes by bringing them into contact with concrete reality. In any good metaphor, either serious or mock-heroic, the vehicle and tenor stand in an illuminating relationship with each other; Buckingham makes the vehicle of his metaphor so incompatible with the tenor that it illuminates very clearly the glib, mechanical way in which heroic drama deals with the love-honour dilemma:

How has my passion made me Cupid's scoff!
This hasty Boot is on, the other off,
And sullen lies, with amorous design
To quit loud fame, and make that Beauty mine.
.....My Legs, the Emblem of my various thought,
Shew to what sad distraction I am brought.
Sometimes with stubborn Honour, like this Boot,
My mind is guarded, and resolv'd: to do't:
Sometimes, again, that very mind, by Love
Disarmed, like this other Leg does prove.
Shall I to Honour or to Love give way?
Go on, cries Honour; tender Love saies, nay:
Honour, aloud, commands, pluck both Boots on;
But softer Love does whisper put on none.
What shall I do? what conduct shall I find
To lead me through this twy-light of my mind?
For as bright Day with black approach of Night
Contending, makes a doubtful puzling light;
So does my Honour and my Love together
Puzzle me so, I can resolve for neither.
[Goes out hopping with one Boot on, and the other off.]

(III, 5)

The isolation of certain passages, such as the above speech, from The Rehearsal to illustrate the particular satiric device of mock-heroic might seem superfluous considering the mock-heroic nature of the entire play; but although The Rehearsal mocks heroic drama, its burlesques only occasionally involve mock-heroic metaphors or substitutions. The parodies and, more conspicuously, the non-parodic burlesques in The Rehearsal usually function by exaggeration, although some parodies, such as Bayes's “So Boar and Sow, when any storm is nigh”, are truly mock-heroic. Exaggeration is not the hallmark of mock-heroic satire, which substitutes the commonplace and the familiar for the supposedly exotic and the supposedly sublime to dispel the mirage of spurious wonder they evoke. Buckingham's mock-heroic substitution of London place-names for the remote cities and lands, with their miasma of romantic associations, that are inescapable in heroic drama ridicules the way in which dramatists attempted to create “excitement” and “atmosphere” by incorporating magic-sounding names into otherwise drab and unremarkable poetry:

LIEUTENANT General:
Villain, thou lyest.
GENERAL:
Arm, arm, Gonsalvo, arm; what ho?
The lye no flesh can brook I trow.
LIEUTENANT General:
Advance, from Acton with the Musquetiers.
GENERAL:
Draw down the Chelsey Curiasiers.
LIEUTENANT General:
The Band you boast of, Chelsey Curiasiers,
Shall, in my Putney Pikes, now meet their Peers.
GENERAL:
Chiswickians, aged, and renown'd in fight,
Join with the Hammersmith Brigade.
LIEUTENANT General:
You'l find my Mortlake Boys will do them right,
Unless by Fulham numbers over-laid.
GENERAL:
Let the left-wing of Twick'nam Foot advance,
And line that Eastern hedge.

(V, 1)

Before turning from verbal burlesque to consider situational burlesque, it is worth mentioning that the General's first two lines above, with their perfunctory rhymes “ho” and “trow”, burlesque the silly rhymes and distortions of normal word order that heroic dramatists were often forced into making by their need to find sufficient rhymes for plays of about three thousand lines.³²

In the satirical texture of The Rehearsal, it is hard to separate the various kinds of burlesque. There is certainly no clear dividing line between verbal, situational and visual burlesque, and it should be emphasized that these categories, abstracted from the imaginative actuality of The Rehearsal, are critical conveniences. The exchange, quoted above, between the Lieutenant General and the General, contains both verbal and situational burlesque. As already pointed out, its language illustrates mock-heroic ridicule of verbal extravagances, but its action, or lack of it, burlesques the “recitativo” method of representing battles in Restoration drama, especially as exemplified in D'Avenant's The Siege of Rhodes.³³ It is nevertheless justifiable to isolate for critical examination the different kinds of burlesque that interlock and overlap in The Rehearsal as long as these isolated elements are not presented as existing independently of one another in the play. All the situational burlesque is, in a sense, mock-heroic, but it is usually achieved by satirical exaggeration of particular incidents and stock situations in heroic drama. Buckingham bases his burlesque of the ease with which kings are deposed, governments overthrown and peripeteia effected in Restoration drama on Leonidas's changes of fortune at the end of Dryden's Marriage A-la-Mode, but his satire is equally relevant to all similar “topsie-turvy” scenes in heroic drama and tragicomedy:

PHYSICIAN:
Let's then no more our selves in vain bemoan:
We are not safe until we them unthrone.
USHER:
'Tis right:
And, since occasion now seems debonair,
I'l seize on this, and you shall take that chair.
They draw their Swords, and sit down in the two great Chairs upon the Stage
BAYES:
There's now an odd surprise; the whole State's turn'd quite topsie-turvy, without any puther or stir in the whole world, I gad.
JOHNSON:
A very silent change of a Government, truly, as ever I heard of.

(II, 4)

The scene following this usurpation of the Brentford thrones contains a burlesque of “resurrections” in Restauration drama. During a foray concerned with the deposition, a group of soldiers kill one another, but are immediately brought back to life when Bayes sounds a musical note, and shortly afterwards join in a dance.

The final reversal that restores the rightful Kings of Brentford to their thrones and drives out the usurpers is executed with the aplomb and dead-pan humour characteristic of Buckingham's best situational burlesques. This scene satirises the tragicomic method of extricating heroes and heroines from inescapable difficulties and of resolving irresolvable dramatic actions by unexpectedly introducing a deus ex machina, who chastises the wicked, rewards the good, reinstates order, and brings happiness to the deserving:

KING Usher:
But stay, what sound is this invades our ears?
KING Physician:
Sure 'tis the Musick of the moving Spheres.
PRETTY-MAN:
Behold, with wonder, yonder comes from far
A God-like Cloud, and a triumphant Carr:
In which, our two right Kings sit one by one,
With Virgins Vests, and Laurel Garlands on.
KING Usher:
Then, Brother Phys 'tis time we should begon.
The two Usurpers steal out of the Throne, and go away.
BAYES:
Look you now, did not I tell you that this would be as easie a change as the other?

(V, 1)

The funeral scene, the most extended situational burlesque in The Rehearsal, is a condensed and slightly heightened rendering of “serious” tragicomic dénouements. At the extremely dramatic crisis when Lardella's two royal lovers, believing her to be dead and unable to live without her, are about to commit suicide, Pallas, a supernatural spirit and a herald of destiny, arrives just in time to announce that Lardella is in fact alive:

KING Physician:
Come sword, come sheath thy self within this breast.
Which only in Lardella's Tomb can rest.
KING Usher:
Come, dagger, come, and penetrate this heart,
Which cannot from Lardella's Love depart.
Enter PALLAS.
PALLAS:
Hold, stop your murd'ring hands
At Pallases commands:
For the supposed dead, O Kings,
Forbear to act such deadly things.
Lardella lives; I did but try
If Princes for their Loves could dye.
Such Celestial constancy
Shall, by the Gods, rewarded be:
And from these Funeral Obsequies
A Nuptial Banquet shall arise.
[The Coffin opens, and a Banquet is discover'd.]

(IV, 1)

The peremptory authority of spirits and the deus ex machina, the sudden, unbelievable revelations, the abrupt changes of fortune from imminent death to expectations of bliss, and the miraculous transformations of things (a funeral into a wedding feast) are features of tragicomedy and heroic drama compendiously burlesqued in this scene.

Although many other excellent examples of situational burlesque exist in The Rehearsal,³⁴ the incidents examined above are sufficient to demonstrate the satirical device. Very closely related to situational burlesque is visual burlesque, which, unlike the other forms of burlesque, can exist only in a theatrical presentation of The Rehearsal. The presentation of the entire mock-play is, in a sense, a visual burlesque of dramatic performances during the Restoration, but the term “visual burlesque” as used here has a more limited range of reference. Through the comments made by Johnson, Smith and Bayes about the staging of the mock-play they are witnessing, Buckingham is able to criticize overtly certain aspects of Restoration stage presentation,³⁵ but he employs visual burlesque to actually recreate, in burlesque terms of course, those scenic devices and theatrical effects he wishes to censure. In the last two acts of The Rehearsal, a series of visual burlesques accompanies the situational burlesques. At the end of the funeral scene when Lardella's “restoration” to life is celebrated by a banquet, visual burlesque of ludicrous stage properties is fused with parodic burlesque of the long-winded scene in Porter's The Villain (1662) in which the host provides his guests with food stored in various parts of his attire:

PALLAS:
Lo, from this conquering Lance,
Does flow the purest Wine of France:
[Fills the Boles out of her Lance.]
And to appease your hunger, I
Have, in my Helmet, brought a Pye:
Lastly, to bear a part with these,
Behold a Buckler made of Cheese.

(IV, 1)

An equally fruitful integration of visual burlesque and situational burlesque occurs in the last act. When the genuine Kings of Brentford return to reclaim their thrones, they do not appear at the head of an army. Dressed in white and singing a parody of the Nakar and Damilcar duologue from Dryden's Tyrannick Love to an accompaniment by “three Fidlers sitting before them, in green”, the kings descend from the heavens in a “triumphant Carr”. This entrance simultaneously ridicules the arbitrary inclusion of dramatically irrelevant songs in many Restoration plays,³⁶ the use of stage machines to obtain sensational effects at the cost of dramatic sense (visual burlesque), and those miraculous reversals in heroic drama accomplished by a deus ex machina (situational burlesque). In the Thunder and Lightning Prologue (I, 2) and again in the staging of the Eclipse (V, 1), in which the Sun, Moon and Earth perform a dance symbolizing the movements of celestial bodies, Buckingham visually burlesques the allegorical presentation of natural phenomena, a popular dramatic device in the Restauration theatre, by parodying scenes from Stapylton's The Slighted Maid; the Prologue is based on the “Song in Dialogue” between Evening and Jack-with-the-Lantern, and the Eclipse on another “Song in Dialogue”, this time between Aurora and Phoebus.

Buckingham's visual burlesques are not always linked with verbal or situational burlesques. The various dances indicated in the mock-play, such as the chaotic dance of the resurrected soldiers (II, 5), the funeral-banquet dance (IV, 1), and the “grand Dance” immediately following the miraculous return of the Kings of Brentford (V, 1), are intended as visual burlesques of the many dances incorporated in Restoration plays, very frequently without any dramatic justification. Buckingham introduces these dances in an extremely capricious way; Bayes justifies the funeral-banquet dance by a flimsy argument—“we must first have a Dance, for joy that Lardella is not dead”—and the “grand Dance” begins even more unexpectedly:

FIRST King:
Come, now to serious counsel we'l advance.
SECOND King:
I do agree; but first, let's have a Dance.

(V, 1)

In addition to actually ridiculing the dances in contemporary plays, Buckingham's burlesque dances make it clear that dramatic sense and artistic cohesion were being sacrificed for the sake of stupendous stage displays. The stage-direction for the mock-play at the beginning of the last act demands a sumptuous set-piece that is obviously intended to burlesque by exaggeration those scenes in heroic drama in which the stage is crowded with kings, princes, lords, ladies and guards:³⁷

The Curtain is drawn up, the two usurping Kings appear in State, with the four Cardinals, Prince Pretty-man, Prince Volscius, Amarillis, Cloris, Parthenope, &c. before them, Heralds and Serjeants at Arms with Maces.

(V, 1)

Bayes's words about this spectacle, “I'l shew you the greatest Scene that ever England saw: I mean not for words, for those I do not value; but for state, shew, and magnificence”, show that Buckingham is ridiculing the heroic dramatists' dependence on theatrical sensations rather than on literary art. The stage-direction for the battle sequence near the end of The Rehearsal is an invitation for the producer to design a purely visual burlesque of the way in which battles were presented on the Restoration stage:

A battel is fought between foot and great Hobby horses. At last, Drawcansir comes in and kills 'em all on both sides.

(V, 1)

This study of The Rehearsal has concentrated on the satirical devices employed by Buckingham, an aspect of the play that has not been closely examined in the past, but an attempt has also been made to demonstrate the comprehensiveness of Buckingham's satire. Despite its immediate popularity, The Rehearsal did not bring to an end the flow of heroic plays or even diminish their success. Even Charles Gildon, who seems to have thought that Buckingham's burlesque did eventually make the rhymed rant of heroic plays unendurable to Restoration audiences,³⁸ admits (through the mouthpiece of Laudon in Dialogue IV of The Complete Art of Poetry) that a widely acclaimed run of The Rehearsal could be immediately followed by “Plays not less throng'd, on which that [The Rehearsal] was either written, or at least which are guilty of all the Absurdities exploded in that pleasant Criticism”.³⁹ Gildon goes on to draw the conclusion

that our Audience is extremely stupid, and give their Approbation not by Judgment or their own good Taste, as being on contradictory Foundations, and that therefore to fix the Value of a Piece, we must have recourse to the better tho' fewer Judges, who understand Nature and Art. For either the Rehearsal, or the Authors were in the wrong; chuse which you will, their promiscuous Applause proves that the Audience must be in the wrong.⁴⁰

The failure of The Rehearsal to drive heroic drama from the stage does not mean that it is an unsatisfactory satire, as A. W. Ward implies.⁴¹ Literary satire must be judged by aesthetic criteria, as Gildon insists, and not by whether it produces any socially observable effects. Ward's determination to project Dryden's “gorgeous armour” from any “shafts of ridicule” blinds him to the artistic merits of The Rehearsal and to Buckingham's shrewed insights into the condition of Restoration drama.

Although the criticism of heroic drama contained in The Rehearsal is essentially destructive, Buckingham's ridicule has a vital positive function and is certainly not arbitrary. Buckingham attacked Restoration drama because it departed so far from the neoclassical aesthetic and ethical values of Nature and “Sence” that he wished to keep alive. In the Epilogue to The Rehearsal, Buckingham makes a connection between art and life, arguing that a society producing such artistic perversions as heroic drama must itself be in danger of abandoning reason and sanity for their opposites. The plea for an aesthetic revering classical lucidity and simplicity is also a plea for the establishment of social and moral standards based on Reason:

If it be true, that Monstrous births presage
The following mischiefs that afflict the Age,
And sad disasters to the State proclaim;
Plays without head or tail, may do the same.
Wherefore, for ours, and for the Kingdomes peace,
May this prodigious way of writing cease.
Let's have, at least, once in our lives, a time
When we may hear some reason, not all Rhyme:
We have these ten years felt it's Influence;
Pray let this prove a year of Prose and Scence.

Notes

1. George Kitchin argues convincingly that although a number of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays contain burlesque elements, the only play “which may claim to be a real burlesque” is The Knight of the Burning Pestle; see A Survey of Burlesque and Parody in English (Edinburgh and London, 1931), pp. 38-67.

2. See Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1905), I, 368-370. See also J. Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1934), II, 168 and IV, 320.

3. See “Some Account of the Life and Writings of John Dryden”, in The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden, ed. E. Malone (London, 1800), I (Part I), 94-106.

4. See Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830 Bath, 1832), I, 112-119.

5. See A History of English Dramatic Literature (London, 1899), III, 362-365.

6. See The Rehearsal, ed. M. Summers (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1914). All quotations are taken from this edition, a reprint of the third edition (1675) containing all of Buckingham's revisions and amplifications.

7. See Plays about the Theatre in England from The Rehearsal in 1671 to the Licensing Act in 1737 (London and New York, 1936), pp. 9-37. (In future this book will be referred to simply as Plays about the Theatre.)

8. Matthew Prior and Charles Montague modelled The Hind and the Panther Transvers'd to the Story of The Country Mouse and the City-Mouse (1687), their parody of Dryden's poem, on The Rehearsal. They apply a similar framework of conversation between Bayes (Dryden), Johnson and Smith to the passages of parody.

9. See J. Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1934), II, 168.

10. See A History of English Dramatic Literature (London, 1899), III, 363.

11. Dryden succeeded D'Avenant in the Laureateship in 1669.

12. “Some Account of the Life and Writings of John Dryden”, in The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden, ed. E. Malone (London, 1800), I (Part I), 99-100.

13. “John Dryden”, in Poetical Works of John Dryden, ed. R. Bell (London, 1854), I, 41.

14. Charles Lamotte, An Essay upon Poetry and Painting (London, 1730), p. 103 n.

15. See Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1926), II, 21.

16. See E. Malone, “Some Account of the Life and Writings of John Dryden”, in The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden, ed. E. Malone (London, 1800), I (Part I), 104.

17. Puff's initial entrance in Sheridan's The Critic (I, 2) is almost identical to Bayes's in this respect.

18. During his onslaught on Sir Fretful Plagiary in The Critic, Sneer accuses the playwright of an identical creative method:

    That as to comedy, you have not one idea of your own … even in your commonplace-book—where stray jokes and pilfered witticisms are kept with as much method as the ledger of the lost and stolen office. … Nay, that you are so unlucky as not to have the skill even to steal with taste:—but that you glean from the refuse of obscure volumes, where more judicious plagiarists have been before you; so that the body of your work is a composition of dregs and sediments—like a bad tavern's worst wine.

    (I, 1)

    Buckingham's satire is more effective than Sheridan's because it is voiced through the accused (Bayes) himself.

19. Bayes's words “bel esperansa de ma vie” refer to Dryden's mistress, Anne Reeve, who as a member of Killigrew's company played Esperanza in The Conquest of Granada.

20. D. F. Smith's study of The Rehearsal in Plays about the Theatre contains a list of the specific attacks against Bayes, but makes no attempt to describe the significant role played by Bayes in furthering Buckingham's satire of heroic drama.

21. A close parallel to this scene between the Physician and the Gentleman-Usher, exists in The Critic (II, 2). The dialogue between Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Christopher Hatton, with its unlikely questions and incredible exchanges, burlesques the simple-minded methods used by eighteenth century tragedians to introduce characters and provide information about the action.

22. Very similar and equally telling is Bayes's reply when Smith complains that the plot of the mock-play is static:

    BAYES:

    Plot stand still! why, what a Devil is the Plot good for, but to bring in fine things?

    SMITH:

    O, I did not know that before.

    BAYES:

    No, I think you did not: nor many things more, that I am Master of. Now, Sir, I gad, this is the bane of all us Writers: let us soar but never so little above the common pitch, I gad, all's spoil'd; for the vulgar never understand it, they can never conceive you, Sir, the excellency of these things.

    (III, 1)

23. In The Critic, Sneer and Dangle perform the function of Smith and Johnson by making ironical comments and asking questions about Puff's The Spanish Armada.

24. Quoted by E. Malone, “Some Account of the Life and Writings of John Dryden”, in The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden, ed. E. Malone (London, 1800), I (Part I), 104.

25. Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1926), II, 21-22.

26. See the discussion between Smith and Bayes about Volscius's behaviour (III, 5).

27. See the discussion between Smith and Bayes about the eclipse (V, 1).

28. See the discussion between Johnson and Bayes about Pretty-man's kinship with the Fisherman (III, 4).

29. The Burlesque Tradition (London, 1952), p. 31.

30. Good examples can be found in The Conquest of Granada: see the discussions between Ozmyn and Benzayda (Part II, III, 2) and between Almanzor and Lyndaraxa (Part II, III, 3).

31. A Century of English Farce (London and Princeton, 1956), p. 119.

32. Buckingham's most crushing blow against the poetic impotence resulting from non-sensical rhymes also ridicules the Restoration dramatic practice of giving lines in French to certain high-born characters “to shew their breeding”:

    FIRST King.

    I'l lug 'em by the ears

    Until I make 'em crack.

    SECOND King:

    And so will I, i'fack.

    FIRST King:

    You must begin, Mon foy.

    SECOND King:

    Sweet, Sir, Pardonnes moy.

    BAYES:

    Mark that: I makes 'em both speak French, to shew their breed-ing.

    (II, 2)

33. Buckingham also ridicules the “battel in Recitativo” through Bayes's delighted description of the device to Smith and Johnson: fight a Battle? … Can you think it a decent thing, in a Battle before Ladies, to have men run their Swords through one another? … I sum up my whole Battle in the representation of two persons only, no more: and yet so lively, that, I vow to gad, you would swear ten thousand men were at it really engag'd. … I make 'em both come out in Armor Cap-a-pea, with their Swords drawn, and hung, with a scarlet Ribbon at their wrists, (which you know, represents, fighting enough.) … And here's the conceipt. Just at the very same instant that one sings, the other, Sir, recovers you his Sword, and puts himself in a warlike posture: so that you have at once your ear entertained with Music and good Language; and your eye satisfied with the garb, and accoutrements of war. (V, 1)

34. The arrival of the disguised army (V, 1) and the stopping of the battle by an eclipse (V, 1) deserve mention.

35. Johnson's ironic remark about fighting on the stage makes fun of the extended duel or battle:

    But Mr. Bayes, might not we have a little fighting? for I love those playes, where they cut and slash one another upon the Stage, for a whole hour together.

    (V, 1)

36. See also the song, “In swords, Pikes, and Bullets, 'tis safer to be”, sung to the tune of Dryden's “Farewel, fair Armida”, and the ensuing comments:

    SMITH:

    But Mr. Bayes, how comes this song in here? for, methinks, there is no great occasion for it.

    BAYES:

    Alack, Sir, you know nothing: you must ever interlard your Playes with Songs, Ghosts, and Dances, if you mean to—a—

    JOHNSON:

    Pit, Box, and Gallery, Mr. Bayes.

    (III, 1)

    Incidentally, Buckingham's parodic song is the most important addition in the revised and expanded third edition of The Rehearsal; it parodies Dryden's lament for Captain Digby, killed on 28 May, 1672 during a battle between the English and the Dutch fleets.

37. Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery was extremely fond of these lavish scenes; his stage-directions are frequently elaborate but some of those for The Black Prince are almost unbelievably profuse.

38. See The Laws of Poetry (London, 1721), p. 65.

39. The Complete Art of Poetry (London, 1718), I, 203.

40. The Complete Art of Poetry (London, 1718), I, 203.

41. See A History of English Dramatic Literature (London, 1899), III, 362.