[In the following excerpt from a work originally published in 1936, Harbage surveys Killigrew's plays, judging them “entertaining for their sheer bravura and unabashed excess.”]

Despite his traffic with drama, [Lodowick] Carlell was an old-fashioned courtier governing his life with a decorum befitting his elegant calling. Other courtly dramatists were younger men, modelled upon a newer ideal of gallantry, matching more nearly the popular conception of the Cavalier. In this younger set moved Thomas Killigrew (1612-83)¹ who has become, not with entire justice, traditional as a roisterer and roué. Killigrew belonged to a somewhat improvident younger branch of an old Cornish family, which ever since the accession of Elizabeth had been filling minor places in the court. His father was vice-chamberlain to Queen Henrietta Maria, and as a young boy Thomas became a court page, to the detriment of his formal education as well, perhaps, as to a saner modelling of his character. He was handsome, witty, volatile; and after travels abroad, he returned to the court, wedded a maid of honor, and proceeded to immerse himself in debts by his extravagance as a man of fashion. Almost as prompt an exile as Montague, he served severally the Stuarts on the continent, as fiscal agent, amateur diplomatist, and groom of the chamber, until he managed to repair his fortunes in the Low Countries by a fairly remunerative second marriage. At the Restoration he returned to England, where he secured a patent as manager of the King's Players and many royal favors besides, until age and infirmities debarred him from his beloved rôle of man of affairs and merry wag. In old age he was estranged from all his family save the ne’er-do-well son of his first wife, his necessities relieved only fitfully by his royal master Charles II. Killigrew was a coarse and theatrical swaggerer, none too trustworthy either in his conversation or his claims upon the treasury, but he had his romantic ideals and personal loyalties, and lived an active enterprising life in no wise degraded for all his inveterate yearning to cut a dashing figure. Like other gallants of his generation, he was a more wholesome personality than the wits and beaux of the Restoration, who were softer and more cynical if no more debauched than their Cavalier elders.

One of Killigrew's sisters, as well as his fiancée, acted a part in The Shepherd's Paradise, and he himself was an actor in court theatricals; this hobby, together with a craving to be in the mode, and a friendship with Walter Montague, no doubt led him to authorship. The plays with which we are concerned chiefly here, The Prisoners, Claricilla and The Princess, were written just before and during a journey with Montague into France and Italy during the winter of 1635-36, and were acted by the Queen's Company at the Phœnix before plague closed the theatres in May, 1636.²Claricilla was revived in a clandestine performance of 1653, and several times during the Restoration (as was The Princess also on one lamentable occasion) by a playhouse manager not averse from passing his own wares on somewhat reluctant audiences.

Killigrew's plays are entertaining for their sheer bravura and unabashed excess. Here we have Cavalier drama with its heroic tones unmuted by restraint. The first of them, The Prisoners, tells of two noble youths, Hipparchus and Pausanes, who rebel against their pirate chieftain, Gallippus, to prevent the ravishing of Lysimella, sister of the King of Sicily, to whom they surrender themselves as prisoners. Pausanes falls in love with Lysimella, and she is not unaffected, despite her chagrin at weakness for a nameless wanderer. When the two prisoners participate in a Sicilian attack upon Sardinia, the enemy proves to be ruled by two lovely maidens, Eucratia and Leucanthe. Hipparchus falls in love with one of these, the King of Sicily with the other. Lysimella, following Pausanes to the front, is kidnapped by Gallippus, who thus climaxes a series of spectacular villainies. (We learn, by the way, that he has been persecuting her ever since Pausanes was a child, so she must be a woman of fairly advanced years.) There follow pursuit, storm, shipwreck, the death of Gallippus, and the discovery that the two prisoners are Sardinian princes stolen by the pirate as babes. They are, of course, the brothers respectively of Eucratia and Leucanthe, so that in the usual fashion a triple marriage is arranged among the three sets of brothers and sisters, linking Sicily and Sardinia in a marital alliance well-nigh indissoluble.

The scene of Claricilla is again an indeterminate Sicily. Claricilla, daughter of the true King, is rescued from a usurper largely through the prowess of her cousin Melintus, who for some obscure reason is serving her father in disguise. The love of this pair is opposed by the restored King, who has his own choice for her hand, and by the King's lustful favorite Seleucus. Melintus is considerably battered in body, reputation, and, as he tremulously conceives, in honor, by the forces pitted against him, but he finds unexpected allies in a friendly band of pirates with whom his brother Philemon is attached as a slave incognito. Seleucus is revealed to the King of Sicily in his true colors and the obstacles are removed to the marriage of Melintus and Claricilla—but not before Philemon has been revealed also as a lover of Claricilla but heroically willing to relinquish her to his friend and brother.

In The Princess there are more crossed loves, more wars, more pirates, more Sicilians. Rome has conquered Sicily, but since there is a Roman Prince and Princess, Virgilius and Sophia, and a Sicilian Prince and Princess, Facertes and Cicilia, the experienced reader draws immediate comfort from the prospect of another politico-matrimonial amnesty. Before such an amnesty may occur, however, both princesses are captured by pirates, Cicilia must be rescued from a Neapolitan slave-mart by Virgilius and Facertes (fast friends despite their national enmity), and Sophia must withstand the ardent wooing of the pirate leader Cilius. After all have been properly jostled through many militant encounters up and down many storm-racked coasts, they are brought miraculously together for a climactic conflict followed by a climactic reconciliation. Cilius proves to be no true pirate at all, but another Sicilian Prince, long lost brother of Facertes and Cicilia. He relinquishes Sophia in deference to his brother's claims, and while sacrifices are in order, ethical Cicilia forgives her country's wounds and consents to wed Virgilius. Even the pirates seem ready to become good citizens.

Reviewed thus briefly these plays seem pretty much alike—as indeed they are in their main ingredients—, yet each has its own chaotic diversity of incidents and intrigues. All are involved, mysterious, full of surprises—perfect examples of the dramatic type defined in a preceding chapter. The characters are loquacious and sensitive, with minds thoroughly addled by the doctrines of the salons, yet Killigrew was most interested after all in plot, action, adventure, and high heroism. Utterly unselfconscious, he disguises his handsome personages by clapping black patches over their eyes, and displays their valour by puncturing them with wounds and sustaining their heroism during vast drainage of blood. Oddly enough we can perceive through the ludicrousness of all this his genuine ability. He is naïf and fantastic, but not dull. His scenes at times have verve, and his gusty rhetoric vivacity and color. Inexperienced as a writer and unschooled save by romance-reading and the social intercourse of the court, he relied on a native fluency which never failed.

Like other cavalier plays Killigrew's are inaccessible, and despite the limitations of space a brief sample must be quoted. There follows a fragment of one of the numerous discovery scenes, that in Claricilla where Melintus finds his brother Philemon a slave in the pirate band of Manlius. The reader may wish to exercise himself by trying to restore these speeches to the blank verse of the first edition:

Melintus. To what strange fate am I reserv’d, or by what sin have I pull’d down this curse of a general hate upon me that all paths I tread are arm’d against me? Ha! more enemies? Nay then, Melintus, yield, for ’tis visible thou war'st with heaven. (He spies 'em.)

Manlius. What art thou that with such pains hast to this place hunted thy ruin, and thus with injurious wounds in the dead of night awak’d our anger?

Melintus. Prithee go forward with thy injury; such another charm will call back my anger and then I shall be safe, for it hath ever yet been prosperous though that success made me unfortunate.

Manlius. Leave thus vaingloriously to urge your former success, for 'twill be no ground now to build a future conquest on. And therefore yield thy sword, and quickly, before I command it and thy head. Know my power here rules even thy fate.

Melintus. Yield my Sword? By what other privileges do I hold my life among my enemies? Prithee look upon me, and if thou canst read these characters, they’ll tell thee I was not born to yield, and though thou art the glorious master of the sport, and I, unfortunate by a cross fate, am hunted into the toil where danger on all sides begirt my innocence, yet with the lion I dare be angry with my bonds, and although I may become thy prey, yet I will not be thy scorn.

[At this point Manlius orders the slave Philemon to seize Melintus, but the slave recognizes Melintus as his brother, joins forces with him, and the two vanquish the pirates.]

Manlius. My wonder waits upon this fellow's acts.

Melintus. What art thou that thus in less than a man hides more than a god?

Philemon. What am I? A soul with her old clothes on, a slave with wounds and crosses torn; and yet in better fortunes I have known your face.

Melintus. If thou hast mercy in thee, tell me who thou art.

Philemon. Mark me well, dost thou not see thyself here? Not yet? (He weeps.) Now I am sure thou do'st in these crystal drops; friendship will guide Melintus to know Philemon.

Melintus. Philemon! Oh ye gods! New weights to sink me!

Philemon. Oh! 'tis a powerful rod that Melintus’ friendship strikes with. A thousand miseries have smote upon this rock, but never any that made water issue through till now.

Melintus. Oh Philemon, Philemon, what cannot friendship do? 'Tis from her living springs this dew falls.

Manlius. Melintus and Philemon! What change hath begot this misery? (He kneels to Melintus and Philemon.) Oh noble Princes, upon my knees I beg, when your surprised joys are over, you’ll shower a pardon upon unfortunate Manlius.³

It may be remarked by the way that Killigrew's romances, providing his rakish tendencies had early buds, are a tribute to the platonic fashion at court—they are tremendously elevated. This is not true of his comedies, written under other than courtly influences; in fact these, The Parson's Wedding, c. 1641, and Thomaso, or The Wanderer, 1654, present a truly startling contrast. His additional romantic plays, loyally produced as closet drama during the Commonwealth period, may be disposed of briefly.

The Pilgrim, possibly written for the strolling players serving Prince Charles in Paris in 1646, is a tragedy, and more nearly approaches the Fletcherian type of drama than Killigrew's other works. In fact its theme is much like that of Shirley's The Politician. It turns upon the discovery by Prince Cosmo that his mother, Julia, is an adultress and a traitor to her magnanimous second husband, the Duke of Milan; and the play ends with the son unknowingly slaying his own father, and the mother unknowingly slaying her own son. Corrupt elders are contrasted with their virtuous children, the story developing love affairs between the son and daughter of Julia, and the son and daughter of Milan, noble passions harrowed by fate from the beginning and predestined to end in sorrow. From the absolute standard, if one should venture to apply such to Killigrew's work, The Pilgrim is his best play with the possible exception of The Parson's Wedding. Though it is needlessly complicated, often ill-adapted for acting, and too extravagantly emotional, it contains scenes effectively developed and passages of sincere feeling.

When our dramatist was sent as Royalist ambassador to the states of northern Italy, he occupied his unlimited leisure by composing two huge dramatic romances, Cicilia and Clorinda and Bellamira her Dream, each in ten acts after the manner of Carlell, and each a perfect depository for all the plot materials, heroics, and sentiments of the Cavalier mode. These surpass in their extravagance anything else in the tradition. In Cicilia and Clorinda, 1649-50, the background is the conquest of Savoy by the Romans. Two noble Savoyards, Amadeo and his sister Clorinda, provoke a series of passionate love rivalries when they go to conclude a peace with their enemies. It appears that they shall be matched with Otho and Cicilia, the children of the Roman governor; but Manlius, a Roman general, Lucius, his feverishly temperamental brother, and Orante, a degenerate Lombard lord, have each looked upon Cicilia and Clorinda with the eye of desire, honorable and otherwise; and the resulting tangle of conflicts, the alarms and excursions, are a miracle to contemplate. Pages would be necessary if one were to retell this story in detail; suffice it to say that lustful Orante is slain at last; a third heroine is developed as a mate for Manlius; and the rest are paired off, only Amadeo being left unmated—his matchless excellences of character being left him as consolation for his lonely state.

If such is possible, Bellamira her Dream, 1650-52, is even more involved and more fantastic than its companion. An old fratricidal war has placed on the throne of Sicily the brother of the true king. This usurper has two noble children, Leopoldo and Bellamira; while in the neighboring wood there dwell as foresters (unaware of their true identity) the two children of the former king, under the names Pollidor and Phillora. The object of the story, of course, is to unite in marriage these pairs of royal cousins. A civil war, the intrusion into the realm of Spanish Prince Almanzor, and the passion of the noble Sicilian Palantus for Bellamira are merely the beginning of the sequence of aids and obstacles to this consummation. Bellamira falls in love with Pollidor by seeing his image in a dream, and Pollidor with Bellamira by looking upon her picture,—circumstances giving the play its subsidiary title, The Love of Shadows. Hurdling a universal history of romantic adventures, let us be content to add that the appropriate matches are made at last, and peace is restored to Sicily. Thomas Killigrew wrote these two plays for his own amusement! No better illustration could be offered of a Cavalier's predilections when in serious or sentimental mood.

Notes

1. For a life and critical study, see the present author's Thomas Killigrew Cavalier Dramatist (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1930).

2. Ibid., pp. 145, 172.—The author has erred in stating that these plays were acted at the Phoenix after the plague.

3. Act IV, Scene i. Quoted from folio Works, 1664.