[In the following chapter from his full-length study of Killigrew, Harbage considers several of the playwright's late works as “closet dramas,” pieces that were meant to be read rather than performed. Indeed, the critic judges them impossible to stage.]

It has been implied from time to time in preceding chapters that Thomas Killigrew was a dramatist with ulterior motives, that he began to write plays as a means of attracting attention to his polite accomplishments and later became interested in the stage for its financial or professional possibilities. These implications are quite justified; we have, nevertheless, evidence that Killigrew was sincerely interested in literary endeavor, and derived pleasure from writing plays. As Oliver Cromwell wound the reins of the English government more and more firmly about his hands, and as the Exile wore on and threatened to be interminable, the dramatist began to write for his own amusement. His plays were no longer written with a stage in view, and Cicilia and Clorinda, Bellamira her Dream, and Thomaso or the Wanderer, the last of his plays, were designed to be read and not acted: to stage any one of them would daunt even the intrepid producers of German opera. Each of these plays is divided into two parts consisting of five acts each, but since there is absolutely nothing in the nature of a dénouement at the end of the first part, each of them in effect is (and will here be considered as) a ten-act play. Any one of the ten acts may contain as many as ten or more scenes. In spite of their monumental length, and in spite of the fact that in two of them the dramatist relapsed into his old mode of ultra-romantic tragi-comedy, these “closet dramas” are not without interest to the student of literature.

Killigrew began to write these plays in order to occupy his leisure while he was serving as ambassador to the states of northern Italy. We know from the title pages of Cicilia and Clorinda, or Love in Arms that Part I was written in Turin,¹ and Part II in Florence. The play therefore must have been written from November to January, 1649-50, during the early part of the author's embassy.² Just before Killigrew had left Paris, there had been launched upon the world that leviathan, Artamène ou Le Grand Cyrus by Mademoiselle de Scudéry,³ and the ambassador found a means of stowing the first part of the romance among the equipment for his journey. The length of Cicilia and Clorinda is more understandable when we realize that Killigrew found its source in Le Grand Cyrus; that is, in a four-hundred page fraction of it, The History of Aglatidas and Amestris,⁴ in Part I, Book 3. In this portion of Scudéry's romance, Aglatidas tells of meeting, and falling in love with, Amestris, the universally beloved. When the hero describes his first sight of Amestris, and says, “… le premiere instant de cette fatale veuë, fut le premiere de ma passion,”⁵ Killigrew must have recognized congenial material. Scudéry deals with the irreproachable propriety of Amestris during the attentions of Aglatidas and the brothers, Megabise and Arbate. In Killigrew's play the peerless Cicilia corresponds to Amestris, the magnanimous Amadeo to Aglatidas, and the brothers—jealous Lucius and warlike Manlius—to Megabise and Arbate. Killigrew's villain, Orante, was obviously suggested by “le plus méprise & le plus hai” Otane of Scudéry. The relations of the drama and its source will be discussed more fully below; at this point it might be best to make the reader acquainted with the plot of Killigrew's play:

Marius, Rome's lieutenant-governor of Lombardy, has sent another army to try once more to effect the conquest of the neighboring domain of Savoy. The people of Savoy are simple shepherd folk, not without their rustic nobility. In the long struggle against Roman conquest all of their princes have been slain except Amadeo and his sister, Clorinda. Amadeo has recently escaped from Lombardy, where he was held prisoner by the Romans, and where he fell in love with the daughter of the enemy governor, the fair Cicilia. His love seems not to have been altogether unrequited, although Cicilia at the opening of the play has yielded her heart to another. Cicilia's choice is Lucius, a general in the Roman army now invading Savoy. Lucius takes a personal interest in the invasion because of his animosity to his recent rival Amadeo, who rules Savoy and leads its army. All the other Romans including the Governor and Manlius, a brother of Lucius, like him a general in the army (and like him beloved of a Roman maiden—Calis, companion of Cicilia), seem rather to admire the brave Savoyards. This is especially true of Otho, son of the Roman Governor and brother of Cicilia. Otho seems to be interested in commanding the Roman army chiefly because the invasion will bring him nearer to the lovely Amazonian enemy, Clorinda. These in general are the relationships, and this in general is the situation when the play opens.

The war in Savoy is prosecuted with shifting success, but with uniform chivalry marking the actions of both armies. Finally Amadeo, by a display of politic magnanimity to Manlius, whom he has captured, succeeds in accomplishing that which even his great courage might have failed to accomplish. An honorable peace is concluded, and Amadeo and his sister proceed to Lombardy with the Roman army to effect a ratification with the resident dignitaries.

During the journey, and after the arrival in Lombardy, the affair between Otho and the Savoyard princess makes rapid progress so that everything seems to indicate that Clorinda will soon be the daughter-in-law of the Roman Governor. But since heroes of romance cannot resist their predilection for double weddings, Otho will not be satisfied until he urges upon his sister Cicilia a match with Amadeo. In doing this he disregards the wishes of Amadeo, who is different of his merits but who prefers to urge his own suit. Otho also disregards the claims of Lucius, and receives the news of Cicilia's secret betrothal to him with high indignation. Cicilia already has one difficult young man upon her hands. Lucius has been a jealous lover, so much so that Cicilia has constantly questioned the merits of his passion for her in long involved disputations with her friend Calis. Since Amadeo's return to Lombardy, Lucius has become so inflamed that Otho's anger promises to meet with more than its return in his. In order to circumvent a conflict between lover and brother, Cicilia succeeds in having her father confine both young men to their chambers. But Lucius escapes, and gives a written challenge to Amadeo, who is at large and may thus satisfy the jealous lover's appetite for an immediate fight. The challenge, by a series of accidents, comes into the hands of Cicilia, and proves to contain an impeachment of her faithfulness. She is prostrated at the lengths to which the jealousy of Lucius has carried him, and everything seems to point at this time to the ultimate success of Amadeo's suit. Officers are dispatched, of course, to prevent the duel.

While the challenge letter has been changing hands, Amadeo has gone to meet Lucius, the latter's animadversions upon Cicilia giving him a just cause for combat. The place appointed is Juno's grove, and the duel is complicated by the fact that the brother of Lucius is hovering in the vicinity. This brother, the martial Manlius, has recently experienced some radical changes of heart. Ever cold to love in the past, and especially cold to the advances of the enamored Calis, he has of late been violently smitten, first with Clorinda, betrothed to Otho, and secondly with Cicilia, betrothed to his own brother. He realizes the enormity of his offense, but he has been reckless enough to disclose his passion to Cicilia, and her noble rebuff has made him so much the more conscious of his degradation that he is ready to sink to still lower depths. When he finds Amadeo and Lucius about to fight, he runs amuck and fights with both. This strange triangular combat comparises the opening scene of Part II of the play. The officers appear before fatal injury is done. Manlius is taken in charge, and under the solicitous attentions of Calis he recovers his senses so that in a short time he is reconciled to bestowing himself upon this preternaturally constant maiden. Lucius escapes the officers and takes shelter in the cave of a local hermit. Advances are made by Calis and a friend of his, Dyon, so that a reconciliation may be attempted with Cicilia. Lucius is finally won over and Cicilia seems inclined to hear his pleas for forgiveness. But while these secret negotiations are on the point of bearing fruit, Lucius suffers so many jealous relapses that Cicilia is finally incensed to the point of wishing to do him a real injury. She decides that she shall be revenged upon him by offering herself to another. This other is not to be Amadeo, the uniform nobility of whose behavior has been such that she could not marry him without suspecting a mixture in her own motives. She decides to accept someone she hates.

It will have been noticed that the story as it has been outlined thus far has failed to bring into play a real villain. Those who have transgressed have done so while crazed by the extremities of their love, and love works such havoc among these characters that all allowances must be made. There is a villain in the play, however, and one with every adjunct and appurtenance. This is Orante, a hunchbacked and degenerate Lombard prince, who has been proscribed for the disagreeable advances he has made to Cicilia. He has only appeared as a potential force in the first part of the play, but now he assumes active importance, and is at this very time haunting the neighborhood of the court disguised as an old woman and prepared to kill his two rivals and to carry off Cicilia. Cicilia, unaware of his proximity, hits upon this very Orante as the one to whom she shall offer herself in order to punish Lucius and, for some obscure reason, to castigate herself. Calis is horrified at the proposal, but she agrees to squire her friend in the undertaking, hoping that she may somehow prevent the sacrifice. During a hunt which is planned for the morrow, the two friends plan to disguise themselves as boys and set out on a journey to find Orante.

Orante has hit upon this very hunt as the occasion to commit his murders and to carry off the Princess. He succeeds in wounding Manlius (as a sort of preliminary exercise) and his victim is taken in charge by the Hermit so that by this means he and his brother Lucius are brought together in friendship for the first time since the duel over Cicilia. They soon find a common cause in which to employ their swords. Orante and his followers, coming upon Cicilia and Calis in their boys’ disguise, attack them without waiting to commit the preliminary murders. The maidens defend themselves bravely, and when Lucius and Manlius come to their aid, the struggle becomes truly titanic. All of Orante's followers are slain, but the two brothers are so seriously wounded that Orante is left possessor of the field. Cicilia turns her dagger upon herself, but Orante's designs upon her threaten nevertheless to be consummated. At this point Calis, who has escaped just after the general fighting, returns with Amadeo, and the latter promptly ends the career of the Lombard Prince. Just before his end, Orante learns that Cicilia might have been his without force, and his final speeches are not lacking in passionate grandeur. Our attention is now turned to the wounded. If Lucius would considerately die at this point, Amadeo might be rewarded with the hand of Cicilia, who, in spite of her wounds, could certainly be revived. The reader expects this conclusion, but the dramatist has chosen another. In spite of his querulous jealousy, Lucius has been such an intense lover that he deserves consideration. Furthermore, he now lies wounded upon the field of battle, with Cicilia, whose constancy he can nevermore suspect, lying wounded beside him. It would almost seem that the author could not resist the temptation. The two break out into such fervid protestations of love that it would be impossible to dispose of them except to each other. The Hermit arrives with a healing balm and Lucius is saved. Amadeo steps forward to consecrate the lovers to each other. The matches which conclude the play, then, are between Lucius and Cicilia, Otho and Clorinda, and Manlius and Calis.

It will be noticed that in giving Amadeo a sister, Clorinda, and Cicilia a brother, Otho, and in developing a love affair between Clorinda and Otho as well as between Cicilia and Amadeo, Killigrew has employed the same plot materials he had previously used in his tragi-comedies and in The Pilgrim. The material he took from the History of Aglatidas and Amestris was introduced with numerous alterations and interpolations. Scudéry's narrative is, in fact, so remarkably deficient in action and in what we ordinarily term plot that it would have been impossible to use it in any other way. What Killigrew has done has been to take the characters and the theme of the romance and to supply incident and action. His borrowings are unmistakable. Manlius precisely duplicates Arbate, who, until love finds him, “… aimoit assez la solitude, & n’aimoit guere la conversation des Dames.”⁶ Arbate, just like Manlius, is overpowered by his love although he is painfully conscious that that love involves treachery to a brother and a friend. Scudéry's History resembles drama in the single point that it progresses almost entirely through conversations; and there are several scenes in Cicilia and Clorinda which parallel what we may call the “scenes” of Scudéry. But in each instance Killigrew has added something in the nature of dramatic tension. In the scene in which Manlius reveals his passion to Cicilia and is roundly rebuked (Part I, Act V, Scene 1), Killigrew is following Scudéry rather closely, but he introduces the device, familiar in drama, of making Manlius blurt out the secret of his love only after he has taken encouragement from a false interpretation of the kind words of Cicilia. It would be interesting to set down side by side the parallel passages in the play and in the romance,⁷ but the incredible loquacity of Scudéry's characters makes extensive quotation impractical. In the romance the dialogue is cold, formal, pallid; in the play it is forceful and passionate. Amestris, when she detects Arbate's purpose, goes so far as to tell him he is likely to make her prefer “la solitude à la conversation,” and the tepid indignation of her later speeches reaches its climax in her suggestion to him “… chercher le repos dans vostre Cabinet.” We may compare this with Cicilia's:

Go hide thy self, false man, till thou can'st repent the injury thou hast done thy Brother; and if there be any spark of that honour left in thy heart which the world took fire at, let shame kindle that flame again; Go repent, sleep and forget this treacherous act, and wake again worthy of thy Brother and thy friend:

Whatever we may say of Killigrew's play, we can insist that it improves upon its source. Although Cicilia and Clorinda is often verbose, artificial, and highly inflated, it contains realistic touches, and some whole scenes which are dramatically effective. The chief characters are the unreal, sentimental creatures of heroic romance, but there are minor characters who are quite sensible and human. When we consider this production not as a stage play, but as a dramatic tale, we must concede Killigrew credit for having written a rather graceful, and (according to the standards of its kind) a rather successful story. It is long, but when compared to the fiction of its day, with which it must in fairness be compared, it is the soul of brevity.

Although Killigrew's next play, Bellamira her Dream or the Love of Shadows is precisely of the same type of composition as Cicilia and Clorinda, it is not nearly so successful. Cicilia and Clorinda is by no means free from absurdities, but Bellamira her Dream is inundated with them. The author had worked out the vein of this type of writing, and nothing remained but to deal in strange extravagances. Title pages inform us that both parts of the play were written in Venice, so the ambassador must have been occupied with this play during scattered intervals from 1650 to the spring of 1652. The material here is largely that of the dramatist's older plays. Again we have scenes of civil strife, with reconciliation brought about through interlocking love affairs between a brother and sister of one faction and a brother and sister of another. The incidents of the play comprise a sort of compilation of the incidents of heroic fiction. There is the dream prophetic of impending occurrences, the hero who falls in love with the heroine's portrait, the faithful retainer who proves to be an exiled prince, etc. Not only Scudéry, but La Calprenède and others were pouring forth their romances by 1650, and their volumes must frequently have been the companions of Killigrew in his pergola at San Cassano. The play is reminiscent not only of French heroic romance but of older prose fiction, including the pastorals.⁸ Among older romantic dramas Cymbeline can certainly be reckoned as a source. Shakespeare's Guiderius and Arviragus, the exiled sons of Cymbeline leading a sylvan existence in the cave of the banished lord, Belarius, are imitated by Killigrew in the characters of “Pollidor” and “Phillora,” who are placed in an identical situation in the cave of the banished lord, Ravack. Even one of the names has been borrowed. In Cymbeline Guiderius is reared by Belarius under the name of “Polydore,” and in Bellamira her Dream “Pollidor” is again the alias, employed by Ravack instead of his ward's real name, Prince Genorio.

Since few in these days are likely to read Bellamira her Dream, a synopsis of the play may be acceptable:

A number of years before the time of the opening events of this play, the King of Sicily and his brother, the King of Naples, engaged in a fratricidal war. In this war the King of Naples was slain and his brother came to rule over both states. The two brothers had each a son and a daughter. The children of the surviving brother have now reached maturity: they are the beautiful Bellamira and the gallant Leopoldo, popular with the subjects of both domains. The King their father does not share this popularity, and the play opens with him preparing to defend his crown in a civil war. The populace is rising in the name of Genorio, son of the slain King of Naples. The whereabouts of this Prince and his sister is not known, but Almanzor, a prince of Spain, has promised to produce him. Almanzor is taking part in the offensive against the King of Sicily from interested motives. His advances to Bellamira have been rebuffed, and he hopes to win by war what he was unable to win by the gentler forms of courtship. Clytus, Governor of the Fort of Naples, is the leader of the native enemies of the King. Between Clytus and his ally, Almanzor, strained relations soon develop because the latter delays in fulfilling his promise to produce Genorio.

The truth is that Almanzor knows nothing of Genorio, and has only claimed a knowledge in order to foment this quarrel and have a pretext for engaging in it. Genorio, unaware of his princely heritage, is actually living in the forest not far from the King's court. He and his sister, under the names of Pollidor and Phillora (by which we shall henceforth call them), are being reared as simple foresters,⁹ and live in a cave attended only by a tame satyr. Living with them is their supposed father, Ravack, a lord who was banished by the King of Sicily for adherence to the cause of the enemy in the old war. Ravack does not contradict the claims of Almanzor, because any enemy of the present ruler is welcome to him in his desire to restore the nephew and niece of that ruler to their right. Into this complex political situation comes love to produce more formidable complexities. The Princess Bellamira is beloved by Palantus, general in the royal army, and Palantus in return is beloved not by Bellamira but by Bellamira's friend, Fidelia. Bellamira herself loves a “Shadow”—that is, she loves the figure of a noble woodsman or shepherd that has appeared to her in a dream. This dream, incidentally, contained other elements, which have been interpreted, and prove to forecast the outcome of the impending war. It requires no feat of the reader's imagination to discern at this point that the dream-lover of Bellamira is her cousin Pollidor. It only remains for Pollidor to fall in love with Bellamira, and for his sister, Phillora, and her brother, Leopoldo, to fall in love with each other: then no matter what the outcome of this war may be (so long as the intruder Almanzor is disposed of) marriages may unite the conflicting royal households, and a happy ending may be anticipated. We have not long to wait for the inception of a love affairs between Phillora and Leopoldo. Leopoldo, coming to the aid of his father with his army, is resting near the forest when Phillora comes upon him. She is in angry pursuit of her tame satyr, whose two weaknesses, those of being enamored of her and given to secret tippling, have combined to make him steal a kiss. In the presence of Leopoldo she forgets her recent animosity, and falls in love at first sight, while the Prince, moved by her beauty and the noble bearing which pierces through her rustic garb, promptly returns the compliment. Phillora is so smitten that she will not rest until she wins her brother and even Ravack to fight on the royal side in the threatening war.

This war breaks out, and is presented to us in a series of battle scenes, which conclude at the defeat of the royal army. The King is badly wounded and, after giving a picture of his daughter Bellamira to Palantus, who has been a faithful officer throughout the conflict, he is carried off to be cared for by Ravack, who seems to have a somewhat different design now upon his old enemy. Palantus is taken prisoner of war and is robbed of the picture of his loved one. The same soldiers who have robbed him attempt also to rob Leopoldo, who has likewise been taken prisoner. But Leopoldo kills his aggressors and disguises himself in the clothes of one of them. As he does so the picture of Bellamira falls from the pocket of the uniform and remains unnoticed on the ground. Later it is found by Pollidor, who is immediately smitten by the face portrayed, so that by this complex means he too is now in love with a “Shadow”—happily with precisely the proper one. There is now a series of escapes and recaptures until Bellamira, her hopeless lover Palantus, her lover Pollidor (who is also hopeless but with less cause), and Phillora are all imprisoned in the same cave by Almanzor. Phillora employs this opportunity to chide her love-sick brother who, while he was heart-free, had little sympathy for her love for Leopoldo. Leopoldo, meanwhile, in his disguise as a Spanish soldier has gained the confidence of Almanzor and has been placed as a guard over these prisoners. He comes to them, of course, to prepare them for an escape.

The long scene in which Leopoldo reveals his identity to the prisoners and aids them to straighten out their interrelations is probably unsurpassed for its turns and convolutions in the whole range of drama. The upshot is that Palantus is made to realize that if he is to win a wife, it is not to be Bellamira but her friend Fidelia; while Bellamira and Pollidor, the shadow-lovers, and Phillora and Leopoldo, the victims of love-at-first-sight, are all rejoiced to discover that their several passions are reciprocated. It only remains to prove that Pollidor and Phillora are gentle-born before matches may be arranged. Of course an escape from the clutches of Almanzor is first necessary, and this is achieved when the prisoners, going to the aid of some Moorish comrades in captivity,¹⁰ find that these Moors have been pestered by foxes almost as much as they themselves have been pestered by love. Where the foxes got in, the prisoners get out, a subterranean exit conveying them to the seaside, where Fidelia, Phillora's satyr, and another retainer who has remained outside of Almanzor's pale, are preparing to escape to sea. Almanzor himself is seriously considering escape at this time, for the threatened break with his ally, Clytus, has taken place. In fact the opposing sides in the war into which he has intruded have become reconciled through Ravack's disclosure of the probable marriage alliance between the two royal houses. Almanzor wishes at least to make sure of his prize, Bellamira, and upon discovering the escape of the prisoners, he pursues them to the seashore. His retainers are defeated in a pitched battle with the escaped prisoners, and he himself is slain—a victim of the folly of interfering in family quarrels. Other characters arrive upon the scene at the end of the conflict, and Pollidor and Phillora learn their true identity, while Leopoldo and Bellamira learn that no obstacles of birth debar them from their loved ones. To round out the number of marriages, Palantus and Fidelia join hands, while two of the Moors also yield themselves to Hymen—thus demonstrating that to effect the multiple matches at the end of his romance, an author will tolerate no prejudices against race or color.

When Genest in mentioning this play spoke of its “strange jumbles,”¹¹ he was entirely justified: although in synopsis it may not seem much different from Cicilia and Clorinda, it is in reality distinctly inferior. Neither as a play nor as a story has it much to recommend it except occasional passages of felicitous language. One interesting feature of the play, however, is the manner in which the dramatist has framed some of his scenes. The play was not written for the stage, and like Cicilia and Clorinda it has no stage history, but the author was writing in the dramatic form, and he included stage directions which, considering their date, are rather enlightening. A few illustrations will suffice:

The Scene must be a fine Land-skip, and a Cave must be in the Scene.

(Part I, Act I, Scene 4.)

Leopoldo, solus: … Here they are within this place; the darkness will assist my Design, in hearing what they say; and when I will I can by the benefit of this light discover my self. [He turns his dark Lanthorne] The Scene opens and discovers a Prison, where Pollidor and Phillora appear next the Stage chained to a Ring fastened to the ground; upon the other side of the Prison, and in a darker part of the Scene lies Palantus chained; behind them in the dark, Bellamira chained, and afar off in prospective other Prisoners and dead Carcases.

(Part II, Act III, Scene 1)

The Scene of the Prison shuts. Enter as out of a Cave, by the Seaside, frighted, the Satyr and Fidelia, Arcus and Philemon. … They no sooner enter the Grot, (which must be made in Prospective to present a Cave by the Seaside,) but they hear one knock within.

(Part II, Act V, Scene 1)

Killigrew was not writing for the theatre, but he was writing in the dramatic form, and was dealing, in his imagination at least, with a type of stage which is frequently, if incorrectly, considered a Restoration innovation. His stage directions could not have been added later, when the play was about to be printed in 1663, because they are connected organically with the play itself and, in order to add them, whole scenes would have had to be rewritten.¹² The future manager of the Theatre Royal (who was not a writer of court masques) was making use of the perspective scenes and mechanical arrangements of the “Restoration” stage eight years before the termination of the Exile.

It is unfortunate, of course, when a play must offer its chief interest in its stage directions. This need not be said of the dramatist's next, and concluding, play. After writing Bellamira her Dream, Killigrew allowed several years to elapse before he again took up his pen. The refining influence of Scudéry and her kind had apparently been removed by this time, for the dramatist, while persisting in writing “closet drama,” terminated his literary efforts in a roistering comedy, Thomaso or the Wanderer. The date of this play is closely fixed by internal evidence. The bitter allusion to the Dutch, “whose Mist of ignorance hangs upon them still, and though the English Olivers rod be over them, yet their hearts are hardened against poor Cavaliers,”¹³ sets an anterior limit in the early spring of 1654, at which time Admiral Tromp's fleet had been defeated, and the Dutch had made peace with Cromwell, agreeing that “that they should not suffer any of the King's party … to reside in their dominions.”¹⁴ A posterior limit for the date of composition is set by another passage:

Johan. Hot-spur's grown old too, his Gout requires ease; and from head Ostler of the Court is become Chamberlain with staff and keys.

Carlo. Yes, for the young Prince is from the Indies come; and though his brave Sea-horse founder’d in his journey home, yet the poor Jades are now become his cares; he's no more Admiral, but Palatine Polyxander, great Master of the Mares.¹⁵

The allusion is to Prince Rupert's appointment as master of the horse after his return from his disappointing naval expeditions; he replaced Lord Percy (“Hotspur”) who was mollified with the appointment to the office of lord chamberlain.¹⁶ But since Rupert resigned the office of master of the horse by June, 1654, it is unlikely that the above allusion, and others like it in the play, would have been written after that time. Thomaso or the Wanderer belongs then approximately to April and May of 1654.

As was his custom in writing comedy, Killigrew went for his sources to older plays. When Aphra Behn was accused of stealing the plot of Killigrew's comedy after the Restoration,¹⁷ she defended herself by saying that her accusers might just as well have claimed that she had stolen it from Brome's Play of the Novella. It is true that Killigrew had drawn upon. Brome's play. Brome had caused his Novella to pose as a courtesan and create consternation in Venice by offering her charms at the price of 2000 ducats a month; Killigrew's Venetian courtesan, Angelica Bianca, creates a disturbance in Madrid by the same means: in both plays the charmers sing at their windows, while appraising listeners of various nationalities pass below.¹⁸ But Killigrew's play was influenced still more by Thomas Middleton's Blurt Master Constable (1601), from which it followed suggestions both in its main plot and in one of its under-plots. In Middleton's play, Hippolito, who has recently returned from the wars, favors his friend Camillo's suit to his sister, Violetta. But Violetta falls in love with a gallant soldier of another nationality, Fontinelle, and allies herself with him against his aggressors, Hippolito, Camillo, and their party. Violetta finds a rival for the heart of Fontinelle in the élite courtesan, Imperia. In Thomaso or the Wanderer we have a variation of this situation and a rough correspondence of Thomaso to Fontinelle, Serulina to Violetta, Don Pedro to Hippolito, and Angelica Bianca to Imperia. It must be said for Killgrew's hero that, unlike Middleton's, his affair with the courtesan takes place before marriage rather than after it.¹⁹ The subplot of Middleton's play concerns the misadventures of the Spaniard, Lazarillo de Tormes, who is cozened and abused in the house of the courtesan; and this finds its counterpart in the unhappy experiences of Edwardo in Killigrew's play.²⁰ One situation in Thomaso, that in which Don Pedro pursues his own sister whose identity is concealed by a disguise, may derive directly or indirectly from the Spanish source, Calderón's La Dama Duende.²¹ Other situations belong so much to common stock that they need not be commented upon, and still others are so robustious in their nature that they probably have no literary antecedents. Two rather remarkable verbal borrowings in the play have been noted by the early commentator, Gerard Langbaine. Angelica's song in Part I, Act II, Scene 3, “Come hither, you that Love, and hear me sing of joys still growing,” is taken from Act IV of Fletcher's The Captain; and the long quack-medical monologue of the mountebank Lopus in Part I, Act IV, Scene 2 is a piecing together of Volpone's speeches in imitation of Scoto Mantuano in Act II, Scene 2, of Ben Jonson's comedy.²² In each of these cases Killigrew's borrowings were from such well-known plays that he is not open to the charge of sneak-thievery. “Come hither, ye that Love,” was simply a song which he remembered and considered appropriate in his scene, while Volpone's discourse, being of the kind an amateur comedian would add to his private repertory, he may merely have set down from memory, recognizing that Jonson had done this thing better than he could do it. In tracing Killigrew's sources, the present writer has noticed how the dramatist's inventiveness always made him depart from them; Killigrew was not a plagiarist.

Perhaps too much time has been spent on the sources of what is after all not a very remarkable plot. Briefly, the story of Thomaso or the Wanderer is as follows:

Thomaso, an English cavalier, handsome, gallant, and a general favorite with women, has come to Madrid to see his friend Harrigo, attendant on the English ambassador; and to woo Serulina, a sister of the wealthy Don Pedro. Some years in the past Thomaso won Serulina's love and her brother's gratitude when he protected her virtue from assault during a military encounter. At present, however, Don Pedro has other plans for his sister, wishing her either to marry a wealthy country don, Alphonso (whom she detests), or to enter a nunnery. Accompanying Thomaso in his invasion of Madrid are two other English exiles, Edwardo and Ferdinando, both country gentlemen who can approach their leader neither in gallantry nor worldly wisdom.

Thomaso's method of wooing is rather unique, his first step being to neglect Serulina entirely and to form liaisons with as many ladies of pleasure as he meets. Two Spanish courtesans, Paulina and her supposed sister Saretta, are old acquaintances of his, but these he leaves for a time to Harrigo and Ferdinando while he seeks further afield. His comrade Edwardo also seeks further afield, and since Edwardo's adventures occupy quite a number of the earlier scenes of this play, they may be reviewed at once. Edwardo meets with Lucetta, a courtesan whose beauty and fine establishment so dazzle him that he gives her a diamond for a brass chain in an exchange of love tokens, and then gets drunk to celebrate the excellence of his bargain. He manages to find Lucetta's house in the evening, and there, with Matthias, another patron of hers, he is victimized by his mistress and her establishment by being turned into the streets without his money, his clothes, or even the recollection of the names of his cozeners. He goes home to nurse his grievances, and there we must leave him in deshabille until he shall again cross the fates of the figures in this history.

In Madrid at this time resides Angelica Bianca, a beautiful Venetian courtesan who until recently has been the mistress of a Spanish dignitary, and who now amuses herself by having her picture hung outside her dwelling together with a notice that her allurements may be purchased at the rate of a thousand crowns a month. Thomaso's prospective brother-in-law, Don Pedro, is one of the few Spaniards who can afford so large an expenditure, and he is even now hovering in disguise outside her spacious house considering the proposition, when Thomaso approaches and stands, enamored, before the picture. Thomaso, to whom a thousand crowns is simply legendary wealth, consoles himself for the inaccessibility of the original by taking the picture. Don Pedro resents this, but Thomaso's party beats Don Pedro's party from the field, and Angelica, having witnessed the conflict from her window, rewards the cavalier's gallantry by bating her price in his case to nothing. In fact she finds herself truly in love for the first time, so much so that when Don Pedro returns with his thousand crowns, she turns it over in a lump sum to his rival.

Although through Angelica's mediations and Thomaso's diplomacy, a sort of peace is patched up between the latter and Don Pedro, Serulina gets wind of a plot of her brother's friends to take revenge upon the Englishman, and she ventures out in disguise to warn him. (Until rather late in the play, Thomaso never approaches Serulina except through an envoy, Harrigo, who urges his friend's suit with yeoman vigor.) While abroad, Serulina attracts the attention of her brother, who is not too much absorbed in Angelica to lack interest in other women. Fearing his wrath if he discover her identity, she takes refuge in the first open door, only to be confronted by Edwardo, who is still so angry at his recent mishap that he is prepared to enact reprisals upon the whole sex. Serulina is rescued, however, both from discovery by her brother and from attack by Edwardo by the timely arrival home of Thomaso. From this point on Thomaso is somewhat more diligent in his attentions, and with the co-operation of his friends he arranges an elopement with Serulina.

About this time the numerous courtesans with whom Thomaso has been trafficking (to the utter indifference of his sweetheart!) being to play a serious part in his affairs. Saretta, who has been mentioned as the supposed sister of the more amiable courtesan Paulina—she is actually unrelated to her—having once professed a dislike for him, Thomaso has disguised himself and gained her favors, thus adding her to the list which already included Paulina and Angelica. This has so incensed her that she vows revenge, and Lucetta, upon whom Edwardo has by this time found a way to pay off his score, is so angry at all Englishmen that she is willing to join in a plot. Angelica, while not so violent as these two, is passionately desirous to prevent Thomaso's marriage, so her bad offices are also pitted against the prospective bridegroom. Only Paulina is now well disposed toward him, and she can do little against the savagery of Saretta and Lucetta. Thomaso is saved by an accident. Assassins whom the courtesans have hired to kill him attack another Englishman by mistake. Their victim is an acquaintance of Thomaso, whom he has picked up in Madrid and with whom he has temporarily changed clothes. Cornelius, for that is the name of this masquerader, deserves his misfortune because he has been doubledealing; and, fortunately for the comedy, he is not injured mortally. Most of the characters in the play are in the vicinity when the attack occurs, and Thomaso uses the excitement of the occasion to carry off Serulina to her wedding.

The later acts of this play have been interrupted by a farcical under-plot, which for sheer grotesquery probably lacks a parallel. Edwardo and Ferdinando have made use of the love potions of a mountebank, Lopus, in order to win as brides two wealthy Jewish monsters, the one a dwarf and the other a giantess. The magic baths of this same mountebank are employed to alter these brides to somewhat more uniform size, but owing to an error in the application, the monsters become more monstrous still. Then the members of the mountebank's household run afoul of the baths until a perfect nest of monsters is created. Edwardo and Ferdinando are in danger of falling prey to the Inquisition for their connection with these transactions, but luckily the whole blame for the affair is placed on the shoulders of the guardian of the Jewesses. The escape of the two Englishmen is made the occasion of celebration, which is linked to the celebration over the successful conclusion of Thomaso's courtship. At the end of the play Thomaso and Don Pedro are friends, and Paulina, the gentle courtesan, is graciously received by Thomaso's wife. Serulina is not very successful, however, in her attempt to win Paulina from her life of sin. The courtesan, distrusting her own power to reform (and morally shocked at the suggestion of entering a nunnery!), goes off to Venice in the company of Angelica. Don Pedro, Edwardo, and Ferdinando go with them, leaving Thomaso and Serulina to their domestic felicity.

The preponderance of courtesans in the dramatis personae is startling, but as one reads the play, he realizes that these courtesans have been marshalled together as a means of introducing intrigue, adventures and comic escapades. The play is not sensual, but it is coarse to the point of painfulness. It is such a rough-and-ready production as might have been designed to entertain troopers in barracks, and the interest it offers is not a literary one. The synopsis scarcely indicates the complexity of the play, for many of the minor characters are involved in their own small adventures. This strange, mad world of mishaps and monsters, of aimless running about, is distressing: upwards of forty characters are herded through seventy-three scenes. The play is a literary curiosity, for in its fantastical course, the reader will come upon allusions to actual conditions of the Exile, and will find himself at the heart of history.²³ The play is also unique in that it is semi-autobiographical. The plot as a whole is fictitious; but Killigrew was writing at the time of his courtship of Charlotte de Hesse,²⁴ and he made his play an envoy to his comrades of single life.In the character of his hero, Thomaso, he painted a fancy-portrait of himself. That Thomaso is intended as Killigrew is unmistakable, and the author's contemporaries recognized the fact.²⁵ The name Thomaso is a sufficient clue, for in Italy Killigrew had used this name for his own;²⁶ evidence of the identity of Thomaso runs throughout the play. Saretta says she dislikes the Englishman because “… there is too much of the Curd and Dutch man in him; he's too white for my eyes”;²⁷ and that Killigrew was conspicuously blond we know from the portraits which have come down to us.²⁸ When Serulina says, “There’s the great Musick tomorrow, and we shall certainly meet him at the Vespers; He was always a devote to the fair Cecilia, and Dona Francisca; Musick was ever his delight,”²⁹ we have another allusion to a cherished personal trait. Killigrew's conception of himself as an amorous gallant is not an attractive one, but it simply represents a favorite pose among the cavaliers. Thomaso at least intends to be reformed by marriage; here and in other plays Killigrew's theory is the common one, that the wildest bachelors make the tamest and most faithful husbands.

Not only the hero, but other characters in the play were probably caricatured from life. Ferdinando, a sheriff in his native county of Surrey, and Edwardo, “a lost English boy of thirty,” “an Essex Calf with two legs, posses’d with a Colliar of Croyden,”³⁰ must have represented actual people. Harrigo, Thomaso's particular friend, certainly did. Harrigo is Henry Proger, who acted as steward to Hyde and Cottington during their embassy to Madrid in 1649-50. Not only is Harrigo or “Hal” described as “attending the English Embassadour” in the dramatis personae, but in Part I, Act I, Scene 2, of the play there occurs this informing colloquy:

Ferd. Prithee what Countryman art thou, that put'st so many R's into thy English?

Porter [Servant of Harrigo]. A Britain, Sir, Glamorgan-shire, Sire and Dam.

Thomaso. Take heed, dost know what thou hast done, to ask a Welshman what Country man he is? By this light, 'tis ten to one but he falls into a fit of Heraldry or Genealogy.

It was from Werndee, Glamorganshire, that Henry Proger and his brothers, several of whom were conspicuous in the Royalist cause, originally came.³¹ This friend of Killigrew had been the ringleader of those Royalists in Madrid who thought they were exacting reprisal for the execution of Charles I when they assassinated Antony Ascham, the Commonwealth envoy to Spain.³² In this connection the following passage in Killigrew's play is of interest. Saretta, instructing her assassins, says:

At the corner of the Piazza we’l expect you, where from the Carmelites we may stand and see which way he takes; and when 'tis done [i.e. the murder] 'tis but stepping in and we are safe, or pass through the Venetian Embassadours which is but three doors off.³³

Ascham's assassins took sanctuary in a church, while their leader, Proger, actually did find refuge in the house of the Venetian ambassador.³⁴ Such human and historical contacts as this make a study of even Thomaso or the Wanderer worth while.

Killigrew's comedy was itself never acted, but an adaptation of it, called The Rover or the Banished Cavaliers, written by Aphra Behn, was brought out at the Duke's House in 1677. Considering the utter unfitness of Killigrew's play for the stage, it is curious that Mrs. Behn's adaptation should have become a favorite acting comedy, a revival of it occurring as late as 1790, when Kemble brought it out at Drury Lane in a deodorized version called Love in Many Masques.³⁵ The author of The Rover found it necessary to add a postscript to the printed version of her play:

This Play had been sooner in Print, but for a Report about the town (made by some either very Malitious or very Ignorant) that 'twas Thomaso alter’d; which made the Book-sellers fear some trouble from the Proprietor of that Admirable Play, which indeed has Wit enough to stock a Poet, and is not to be piec’t or mended by any but the Excellent Author himself. That I have stol’n some hints from it may be a proof, that I valu’d it more than to pretend to alter it: …³⁶

The lady continues to protest in the same disingenuous strain, but the fact remains that the “hints” she confesses to have stolen consist of nothing less than the plot, the characters (some with their original names), and the gist of many of the speeches of the older play.³⁷ There is no question, however, but that she has improved upon Thomaso or the Wanderer, and her play is a tribute to her literary dexterity if not to her taste in choosing subject-matter.

Since so much opprobrium has attached to Thomas Killigrew for writing The Parson's Wedding, it is unfortunate that a survey of his works must conclude with a consideration of the same kind of play.³⁸ Again one must introduce the reminder that such plays comprise the minor portion of his works. For the superfluity of courtesans in his comedies he compensates with the many chaste maidens of his more serious plays. For him there were two kinds of women: angelic women, and courtesans, with the latter class subdivided into good courtesans and bad courtesans. He was capable of railing against women, but he was also capable of saying in all sincerity, “’Tis as rare to find a Constant man, as a faulty Woman.”³⁹ There are some passages of pleasant and spontaneous wit in Thomaso or the Wanderer, but there are more passages of unadulterated obscenity. With these we may contrast the pure idealism of Lucius’ speech as he describes his courtship of Cicilia:

… thus in silent secretness we in friendship past our days, undiscerned or envied; the fish that glides in the silent stream, the Parthian arrow, nor Birds that gently cut the air, make not less noise, nor leave less pathes nor stains behind, than our love …⁴⁰

Like the age in which he lived and the circle in which he moved, Thomas Killigrew was full of strange contradictions. He had been born before Shakespeare had died, and he had breathed the air of an older London. Perhaps this explains why we can sometimes detect a spark of insight in the smoke of his scurrility; or can glimpse, through the haze of his rhetoric, the foothills of poetry.

Notes

1. It is interesting that this play begun in Turin should deal with the more ancient and more idyllic Savoy and Savoyards.

2. See above, Chap. III. … Bellamira was also written in Italy, so that Denham's allusion to “six plays” by Killigrew (see Chap. III.) must indicate the four parts of these two tragi-comedies, and the two plays, still in manuscript at the time, which have been discussed in Chapter VI.

3. For the date of publication see W. Von Wurzbach, Geschicte des Französischen Romans, Heidelberg, 1912, p. 280.

4. Since the sources for only two of Killigrew's plays have been previously suggested, it is curious that Cicilia and Clorinda should be one of them. Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, Oxford, 1691, p. 312, says “The first scene between Amadeo, Lucius, and Manlius seems copied from the characters of Aglatidas, Artabes, and Megabises in the Grand Cyrus”; and not the first scene only but the main theme of the play derives from the romance. In the edition of the romance which has been used in the present study, the name Arbate occurs instead of Artabas; the name may have been Artabas in English editions.

5. Artamène ou Le Grand Cyrus … Par M^r de Scudery … Troisiesme Edition … Paris … M. DC. LIII, 10 vols., I, 732.

6. Artamène ou Le Grand Cyrus, I, 758.

7. See I, 824 et seq. in the romance.

8. The allusion in this play to a character in Montemayor's Diana has already been mentioned: see above, Chap. V, note 15.

9. In betraying the identity of these “foresters” at this point I confess to applying the knife to the tangle of this plot. We are not told who these foresters are until nearly the end of this long play. Even the dramatis personae holds back the information.

10. The royal party has had a faithful Moorish retainer throughout the play. This is Arcus, who is really a Prince in his own country, but whom exile and misfortune compel to conceal his true rank. For a time he secretly loves Bellamira, but one of the Moors who has fallen into Almanzor's hands and is released by Leopoldo and his party is Cadess, an old sweetheart of his, and Arcus wisely returns to his early love.

11. John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, 1660-1830, 10 vols., I, 391.

12. Killigrew was not the type of author who revises his work. Such revision as was necessary (in the spelling for instance) was probably left to the printer.

13. Part II, Act V, Scene 7, Folio, 1664, p. 455.

14. Edward, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, 7 vols., Oxford, 1849, V, 319.

15. Part I, Act III, Scene 2, Folio, 1664, p. 344.

16. Edward, Earl of Clarendon, op. cit., V, 373.

17. See below. …

18. The Play of the Novella, Act II, Scene 2: see The Works of Richard Brome, I, 129; Thomaso or the Wanderer, Part I, Act II, Scene 3.

19. We can never be sure in this play how many of the incidents relate to actual experience. Thomaso's pursuit of Angelica, a courtesan par excellence, reminds us of a passage in a letter written by Sir Alexander Gordon, a friend of Killigrew (see above, Chap. II, p. 64), to Lord Feilding when both Gordon and the dramatist were touring Italy: “I found so mutch suspision in all the Spaniards at Millan that I durst not adventur to stay abov tuo nichtis ther … I haid all the tym of my stay tuo spyis that folued me up and down the town. They found the most pairt of my bisiness to consist in waiting upon the braiv Julia, quo is the most teaking curtisan that evir I sau in my Lyf tym. Scho hes more knowledge in evry bisiness, both stait and galantry, then could be expected in any sutch creatur. (Historical MSS Commission, MSS of the Earl of Denbigh, Part V (1911), p. 23.)

20. Blurt Master Constable or The Spaniard's Night-Walke, Act III, Scene 3; IV, 1, 2, 3 (see The Works of Thomas Middleton, Alexander Dyce, Ed., 5 vols., London, 1840, 1, 223-308).

21. In Calderón's play the episode involves Don Luis and Doña Angela in Act I, Scenes 1, 2, 3: see Teatro Selecto de Calderón de la Barca, 4 vols., Madrid, 1917, III, 120-23. The resemblance is very slight, and Killigrew may only have been familiar with some imitation of La Dama Duende; one such imitation was produced in Paris in 1641—L’Esprit Folet by Antoine le Metel. (See M. Summers, Restoration Comedies, p. xxiv.)

22. Langbaine, op. cit., pp. 313-314, defends Killigrew warmly, on the basis of the fact that he had shown a willingness to admit indebtedness for the less-known song in Cicilia and Clorinda (see Chap. II, note 39); and because “he is not the only Poet that has imp’d his Wings with Mr. Johnson's Feathers, and if every Poet that borrows, knew as well as Mr. Killigrew how to dispose of it, 'twould certainly be very excusable.”

23. A few of these allusions have been quoted above; see [Chap. III].

24. A definite allusion to the courtship of the Dutch wife occurs in Part II, Act V, Scene 7, Folio, 1664, pp. 455-6.

25. [Richard Flecknoe, in The Life of Tomaso the Wanderer, 1667] referred to Killigrew as Tomaso the Wanderer: see above, Chap. IV. …

26. See the superscription to his letter to Duke Emmanuel, British Museum Additional MSS, 20032, f. 18.

27. Part I, Act I, Scene 4, Folio, 1664, p. 324.

28. The National Portrait Gallery painting of Killigrew, a shrewd, aristocratic looking youth of twenty-six, gorgeously dressed, has recently been reproduced by L. Hotson as the frontispiece to his Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, Harvard University Press, 1928. There is also the Hollar engraving (see Chap. IV, note 57) and other pictures; besides Faithorne's famous engraving of the handsome substantial-looking middle-aged Killigrew, which is prefixed to the folio of 1664.

29. Part I, Act III, Scene 4. For Killigrew as a music-lover see above, p. 132.

30. Part I, Act I, Scene 5 (p. 325); Part II, Act III, Scene 3 (p. 419).

31. G. T. Clark, Limbus Patrum Morganiae et Glamorganiae, London, 1886, p. 253.

32. Edward, Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, V, 151-52; Cal. State Papers Venetian, 1647-52, pp. 147-48.

33. Part II, Act IV, Scene 5, Folio, 1664, p. 439.

34. Of course Ascham's assassination took place some years before this play was written, and Henry Proger or “Harrigo” was not attending the English ambassador in Madrid in 1654. This fact makes one doubt if Killigrew's play were actually written in Madrid as its title pages claim. Usually the statements on the title pages concerning the place of composition of plays can be corroborated from other sources, but certain discrepancies occur. (See Chap. VI.) Killigrew had written to one of the Proger brothers before going up to Paris (see Chap. III, note 55), and he may not have left Paris to go to Madrid but simply have talked to Henry Proger about Madrid before writing his Thomaso.

35. For the stage history of the two parts of Aphra Behn's play, see M. Summers, The Works of Aphra Behn, 6 vols., London, 1915, I, 5, 112.

36. Ibid., I, 107.

37. The Rover like Thomaso consists of two parts, but unlike Thomaso its parts are mutually independent. In her first part Mrs. Behn used the account of the cavalier's love affair with the señorita and his intrigue with the courtesan, and that of Edwardo's adventures; in her second part (which did not prove successful upon the stage) she gleaned what was left, even using the unpromising material of the Jewish monsters.

38. With the writing of Thomaso or the Wanderer, Killigrew brought his career as a dramatist to an end. His plays, as we have seen, were not very successful upon the Restoration stage, and he seems to have taken formal farewell of authorship when he collected his works in folio in 1663-64. Among the titles lettered upon the books representing his plays in Faithhorne's engraving occurs “The Revenge,” but this may have been an alternate title for one of the two plays not represented in the picture. A play called The Revenge, actually an alteration of Marston's Dutch Courtesan, was acted at the Duke's House in 1680 and has generally been accredited to Betterton. (See T. E. Baker, Biographia Dramatica, 3 vols., London, 1812, III, 203.) It is quite possible that Killigrew had his hand in a few revisions of this kind, but it is not likely that he had anything to do with The Revenge, considering its date and the date the title was listed among his works.

39. Cicilia and Clorinda, Part I, Act IV, Scene 3, Folio, 1664, p. 250.

40. Cicilia and Clorinda, Part II, Act II, Scene 1, Folio, 1664, pp. 274-75.