[In the excerpt below, Reich provides a broad introduction to Claricilla, surveying such subjects as its date of composition, its performance history, and its genre. He also offers a critical appraisal of the work's literary merit.]

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Traditional misconceptions of the character and ability of Thomas Killigrew long prevented realization of his significant contributions to English dramatic history. However, studies by Nicoll, Hotson, and Harbage in the 1920's and 1930's¹ established his importance as manager of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane during the two decades following the Restoration of Charles II. It is now generally accepted that Killigrew's King's Men exceeded in both talent and prestige the Duke's Men of William Davenant, his co-patentee and rival. Killigrew's company boasted such names as those of the veterans Mohun and Hart, Kynaston (who deserted Davenant's company to join the King's Men), Mrs. Hughes, Anne Marshall, Mrs. Knipp, and Nell Gwyn. The preference of the King and the Court for the King's Men is evidenced by the granting to Killigrew of exclusive rights to the most popular plays of Jonson, Shirley, and Beaumont and Fletcher, by his command of the services of Wycherley and Dryden (who became a shareholder in the company), and by the fact that the King's Men were more often chosen for Court performances than their rivals.²

However, the favor of the Court and the reputation of his company do not constitute the sole bases of Killigrew's importance in the Restoration Theatre. The studies of Hotson and Harbage also emphasized his deep interest in the improvement of the stage. Both the record of actual productions of his company and contemporary testimony attest to his innovations and refinements. Killigrew appears to have been responsible for the introduction of professional actresses to the English stage.³ He was certainly responsible for spectacular productions at the Theatre Royal. The extravagance of scenery and costume may be seen in the fact that the fire which destroyed the theater in 1672 caused damage of almost £20,000, although the theater itself had been constructed for only £2,400 a few years earlier.⁴ Samuel Pepys, who was “ravished” by stage effects in Killigrew's production of the Virgin Martyr, alludes to many of his production improvements.⁵

Although Killigrew's importance as a theatrical manager has been conceded, recent scholarship unfortunately has not reexamined the traditional attitudes towards his dramatic writings. Of his eleven plays only one, The Parson's Wedding, has been rescued from obscurity by reprinting since his death.⁶ Since The Parson's Wedding has remained the only readily available sample of his efforts, this bawdy comedy may be largely responsible for his reputation as a dissolute Cavalier rake who dabbled in playmaking.

Careful study of Killigrew's eleven plays leads to recognition of his importance as a serious dramatist, representative of his age. Apart from the question of intrinsic literary significance is a variety of considerations which make it surprising that his plays have not been edited. Killigrew is of great importance as a contributor to the body of dramatic writing which formed the bridge between the Caroline and Restoration Theater. Three or possibly four of his plays were produced on the Caroline stage;⁷ all eleven were written before the Restoration. Since he himself revised several of his plays a few years after the Restoration, Killigrew also provides us with a basis for comparison and contrast of the dramatic techniques and conventions of the two periods. Further, his early tragi-comedies, two of which were produced in Caroline and Restoration England, contribute in the same way as the better known plays of Davenant to an understanding of the source and growth of the Restoration heroic play.

Several twentieth-century discoveries have also given greater significance to Killigrew as a playwright. One of these has been the unearthing of no fewer than three manuscripts of individual plays of his, each antedating the earliest printing of the play.⁸ These alone, it would seem, suggest the desirability of modern editions of the plays. Also, and probably most important, there is reason to believe that although until recently only four of his eleven plays were known to have seen the stage, all of them may have been produced. Evidence of this possibility is found in Killigrew's own copy of the 1664 folio edition of his works, in which he made cuts and revisions in the texts of most of the plays, gave directions to his copyist to prepare scripts for the actors, and partially cast several of the plays for production. The possible addition of seven of his plays to the acted drama of the Restoration certainly gives Killigrew increased importance as a dramatist. Since several of the plays prepared for presentation have long been passed over as unactable closet-drama, it is interesting that they appear to have been within the range of early Restoration stageability. The fact that plays which “would daunt even the intrepid producers of German Opera”⁹ could be produced in the sixteen-sixties might well call for some alteration of existing notions of seventeenth-century production.

With the possible exception of The Parson's Wedding, Claricilla is the most interesting of Killigrew's plays. It had an extensive stage history during the Caroline period, the Interregnum, and the Restoration. There is an unpublished manuscript version of it several years earlier than the first printed edition of 1641, and the two printed texts as well as the manuscript offer interesting information about Killigrew's techniques in composition and revision. Claricilla further serves as a typical specimen of its genre. Although not a great play, it is representative of the Cavalier heroic plays of the Caroline era in content, tone, and dramatic value. The “precious” sentiment insisted upon by Queen Henrietta and her court was enough to inhibit really creative output, but within the limits of that demand and of his own talent Killigrew produced a play which must have been theatrically effective and which achieves in certain passages a high level of dramatic power. …

DATE OF COMPOSITION

The evidence of the title-pages of the two printed editions of Claricilla, corroborated in part by other evidence, establishes the date of composition and initial production of the play with some degree of probability. The title page of Claricilla in the 1664 folio edition of Killigrew's Comedies and Tragedies announces that the play was written “in Rome.” It was performed, according to the first printed edition (1641), “at the Phoenix in Drury Lane, by her Majesties Servants.”

Killigrew's first recorded visit to Italy occurred in the fall and winter of 1635-6, his second in 1640.¹⁰ Since the latter trip was certainly made after the writing and production of Claricilla, it is with the details of the 1635-6 visit that we are concerned. Killigrew, then twenty-three years of age and a “well-beloved Servant” at the court of King Charles,¹¹ accompanied Walter Montagu, the diplomat, Roman Catholic prelate, and scholar, on a trip to Rome. The two men left England October 15, 1635.¹² By December 7 they were in Orleans, whence Killigrew sent home a detailed account of a visit to a convent of “possessed” Ursuline nuns.¹³ On January 17, 1636, he wrote from Vercelli, Italy, that he was on his way to Rome for a stay of two months, his friend Montagu having preceded him there.¹⁴ Presumably, he continued to Rome, although his arrival and departure are not recorded. Montagu is known to have been back in Vercelli by May 11, and a letter concerning him at this time mentions a Mr. Magdevall who was with him.¹⁵ It has been conjectured by Harbage (Killigrew, p.65) that this may have been Killigrew, incognito. Killigrew certainly returned to England alone (Montagu remaining in Italy) sometime before June 29, 1636, when he married Cecilia Crofts, a lady-in-waiting at the court of Henrietta.¹⁶ Killigrew's stay in Rome could not, therefore, have covered more than the months of February, March, April, and May, 1636, and if the evidence of the title-pages is dependable, Claricilla was written during those months.¹⁷

The assertion of the 1641 title-page that Claricilla was produced at the Phoenix by the Queen's Company, taken in conjunction with the argument above, permits an even closer dating. All theaters in London were closed by the plague May 12, 1636, and remained closed for approximately seventeen months.¹⁸ During this period the Queen's Company disbanded, and when the theaters opened again in September, 1637, a new company, Beeston's Boys, was at the Phoenix.¹⁹ Since the latest possible date of production of Claricilla by the Queen's Company at the Phoenix theater is May 12, 1636, and since the company must have had the play a few weeks earlier for the preparation of books, licensing, and rehearsals, Claricilla must have been completed no later than the end of March, 1636, allowing a minimum of time—one month—for the return of the play to London (either in Killigrew's hands or by friend or post) and the necessary production steps. Without further evidence there is no way of knowing whether Killigrew cut short his stay in Italy or sent his play ahead from Rome. Although Killigrew was a young and relatively obscure courtier, the possibility that the Queen's Company was expecting his play to be sent from Rome is not as far-fetched as it might seem. The Queen's Company had already produced Killigrew's The Prisoners (as its title-page informs us) and, although there is no record as to its success, that event might well have secured advance acceptance of his next work.

There is some substantiation of the general time of composition and production in a contemporary reference to Claricilla. In a prologue to the tragi-comedy Rosania (The Doubtful Heir), written for presentation of the play on the Dublin stage, James Shirley mentioned Claricilla and Suckling's Aglaura:

Rosania? Meethinks I hear
one say,
What's that? 'Tis a strange title to a Play.
One asks his friend, who late from travell came,
What 'tis, supposing it some Countries name;
Who rather than acknowledge ignorance,
Perhaps sayes, 'Tis some pretty town in France
Or Italy, and wittily discloses,
’Twas call’d Rosania,
for the store of roses.
A witty Comment: others that have seen,
And fashionably observ’d the English Scene,
Say, (but with lesse hope to be understood)
Such titles unto Playes are now the mood,
Aglaura, Claricilla, names that may
(Being Ladies) grace, and bring guests to the play.(20)

When the Rosania prologue was written, the two plays lumped together as “now the mood” were obviously popular and sufficiently new to warrant the comment. Rosania, licensed in England June 1, 1640,²¹ and published with a new prologue in 1652, was produced in Dublin after Shirley's arrival there in November, 1636.²² The initial performance could not have been earlier than the latter part of 1637, for Aglaura certainly was presented for the first time about Christmas, 1637.²³ Shirley is not known to have returned to England at this time, but he would, of course, have maintained close contact with the London stage for which he had been writing. It may be objected that Claricilla would not have been a new play at that time if it had been produced early in 1636, but since it was probably introduced to the stage very shortly before the closing of the theaters by the plague in May and could not have had many performances until after the theaters re-opened in September, 1637, it could logically have been mentioned with Aglaura as of the same period, the winter season of 1637-38. The evidence of the Rosania prologue certainly strengthens the likelihood of a date of initial presentation just before the closing of the theaters by the plague and a date of composition about February or March, 1636.

STAGE HISTORY

Although no direct references have been found to performances of Claricilla during Caroline times except for the Rosania prologue, that reference alone would indicate that the play was performed successfully. Since Claricilla was produced by the Queen's Company at the Phoenix, it probably remained in the possession of the manager of that company and theatre, Christopher Beeston, whose boys’ company followed the Queen's Men at the Phoenix. Many of the plays of the Queen's Company seem to have been retained by Beeston when he organized the “King and Queen's Young Company” in 1637. Although a new Queen's Company was formed shortly after and acted at Salisbury Court until the closing of the theatres in 1642, it seems to have had few or none of the plays of the earlier Queen's Company in its repertory.²⁴ Beeston's son William, however, who succeeded his father in 1638 as manager to Beeston's Boys, was able to have many of the former Queen's Company plays protected for his boys’ company in August, 1639, by order of the Lord Chamberlain.²⁵ Since Claricilla is not listed as one of Beeston's “protected” plays, it could—in theory—have passed to the new Queen's Company or even to the dominant King's Men, but there is no evidence to support either of these possibilities. The evidence of later years, a Commonwealth performance of Claricilla with which Will Beeston may have interfered (see below) and the linking of Claricilla in 1660 with plays which did pass from the Queen's Company to Beeston's Boys,²⁶ supports the possibility of Christopher Beeston's possession of the play after 1636. In any event, the production of Claricilla during the Interregnum and immediately following the Restoration would suggest that the play was a stock play of the Caroline era. Certainly the Shirley prologue affirms this, since it links Claricilla with Aglaura at the end of 1637 or in 1638 and thus indicates that it was at least not dropped after an unsuccessful debut.

The fact that Claricilla was produced during the Commonwealth period should occasion no surprise; the continued although precarious existence of the London stage throughout the period of Puritan control is now acknowledged. The account of the performance of Claricilla is, however, not only one of the most interesting, but also one of the most important records of Interregnum productions. The case for the use of Gibbons’ Tennis Court for Commonwealth acting rests upon no other evidence than a single production there of Claricilla.²⁷ The source of information is an account found in a newsbook, Mercurius Democritus, dated March 2-9, 1653 (repeated the week following), which was discovered by Hotson. The author's sympathetic treatment of the actors’ problems is interesting, but the importance of the document lies in its evidence that there was an active professional theatre in London in 1653 and its mention of the specific play and theatre involved.

The poor Comoedians, (whose sad condition ought to be look’d upon with a pittying Eye, as being debarr’d of that livelyhood, to which they were bred up) adventuring not long since to Act a Play called Claracilla at one Mr. Gibbions his Tennis Court: an ill Beest, or rather Bird (because the rest denyed him a share of their profits) be——t his own nest, causing the poor Actors to be routed by the Souldiery, though he himself hath since the prohibition of Playes, had divers Tragedies and Comedies acted in his own house; a deed so base, that it were a pitty but all Persons of Honor would take Notice of him.

How powerfull's Lucre, that can make one brother, Basely betray, and ruine one another?²⁸

Hotson speculates that the “ill Beest” who betrayed the actors was W[ill] [Beest]on, mentioned above as his father's successor with the King and Queen's Young Company and during this period lessee of the Salisbury Court playhouse.²⁹ Beeston might well have had an interest in Claricilla as a result of its production by his father's company, if not by his own, and would have regarded this performance by a competitive company as an infringment on his rights of ownership. Unable legally to obtain redress because of the extra-legal nature of the performance, he might vindictively have resorted to informing. The identification by Hotson is possibly to be preferred to an alternate surmise of my own which would identify the “ill Beest or rather Bird” with Theophilus Bird, Beeston's son-in-law, who had been a leading figure in the King's Company immediately preceding the closing of the theatres and who had personally leased the Salisbury Court playhouse as agent for his father-in-law.³⁰ The reference to the villain's “own house” could therefore have referred to either man. The fact that the author amended “Beest” to “Bird” when the figure of an animal befouling its own den would have been as clear (and as conventional) might, I think, support my identification. Which was meant by the author of the newsbook would actually make little difference, since Beeston and Bird worked together throughout the Interregnum in theatrical enterprises. It would be tempting to suggest that the author cleverly aimed his darts at both men by including the two in a single phrase, but the use of the singular throughout subtracts from this possibility. Perhaps he was uncertain which of the two did the “deed so base.”

This account contains the only reference to Claricilla during the Commonwealth. In view of the modern neglect of this play, it is interesting that Claricilla could have been so highly regarded that a surreptitious performance—certainly dangerous for both audience and company—should have been undertaken. Killigrew's position in Restoration times, as manager-owner of a company and theatre, has been regarded as the cause of Claricilla's long period of “success”; in 1653, however, Killigrew could have had nothing at all to do with the performance. He was, in fact, living in some disgrace on the continent at this time, having been dismissed from his post as Charles II's resident in Venice a few months earlier.³¹

The first decade following the Restoration is the period in which the stage history of Claricilla can be followed most readily. It was one of the plays produced by the company—headed by Michael Mohun—that sprang into existence at the Red Bull playhouse in 1660, as soon as Charles returned to England. Sir Henry Herbert listed it as one of the twenty plays in the company's repertoire.³²Claricilla was in a goodly fellowship here, for among the twenty were three of Shakespeare's (Othello, Henry IV, and The Merry Wives of Windsor), nine of Beaumont and Fletcher's, and others by Shirley, Jonson, Chapman, and Davenant. Fifteen of the twenty had been King's Company plays before the closing of the theatres; all of the remaining five were formerly Queen's Company plays, and all but Claricilla are known to have belonged to Beeston's Boys after the dissolution of the Queen's Company.³³

Killigrew's own company was organized by the fall of 1660, and there is a daily calendar of performances by his King's Company beginning November 5, 1660. The entry for December 1, a Saturday, is Claricilla.³⁴ The King's Company had just removed (November 18) from the Red Bull to Gibbons’ Tennis Court, so that it was in this “new” house that the play was produced, and it continued to be played there until the company moved, in May, 1663, to a theatre built for them in Drury Lane, the Theatre Royal.

Samuel Pepys, avid play-goer though he was, did not see Claricilla until it had been playing almost a year. On July 4, 1661, he recorded his first visit.

At home all the morning; in the afternoon I went to the Theater, and there I saw “Claracilla” (the first time I ever saw it), well acted.

On January 5, 1663, Pepys went again to see the play.

After a game or two at cards, to the Cockpitt, where we saw “Claracilla,” a poor play, done by the King's house (but neither the King nor the Queen were there. …)

Despite the “poorness” of the play, Pepys saw it at least once more; on March 9, 1669, he visited the Theatre Royal.

… so my wife and I towards the King's Playhouse, and by the way met Betty, and Bab, and Betty Pepys staying for us; and took them all to see “Claracilla,” which did not please me almost at all, though there are some good things in it.

Pepys’ dislike of the play cannot be accepted as the reaction of a typical playgoer; his comments on much greater plays were often harsher. In fact, his phraseology in reference to Claricilla, on this third viewing, is similar to and much less harsh than that which he had used not long before (Aug. 15, 1667) about The Merry Wives of Windsor which, he wrote, “did not please me at all, in no part of it.”

There are no further records of performances of Claricilla. Presumably it continued to hold the stage for a few years, perhaps fading before the rimed “heroic” plays of the late sixteen-sixties, but possibly lasting in at least occasional performances as long as its aging author remained with the theatre and company. By the time Killigrew retired, in 1677, even the best of the Cavalier plays were dead.

TYPE AND SOURCE

The general dramatic group or type to which Claricilla belongs has discussed fully in several other studies, most notably by Harbage in his Cavalier Drama, and a brief sketch of the genre will suffice here. Claricilla was one of a large group of plays written, chiefly in the sixteen-thirties, by gentlemen of Queen Henrietta's Court. These plays naturally have many qualities in common: they employ a highly artificial mode of expression, their plots are involved and generally improbable, the themes usually concern some aspect of “love and honor,” and the sentiment and tone are “precious.” They hark back to the romantic, sentimental tragicomedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, but differ from Fletcherian romance in a heightening of artifice and sentimentality and—though this was hardly Fletcher's strongest point—a lessening of dramatic coherence. Their sprawling plots and other-worldly sentiments derive from the romances of the Greek decadence, Heliodorus’ Aetheopica, Tatius’ Erotica, and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, from the immensely popular French romances of the day (themselves derivatives of Greek romance), and from the influence of the French court of Henrietta with its Platonic attitudes and preciosite. Contributing with Killigrew to this group of plays were, of course, Sir William Davenant, Sir John Suckling, Lodowick Carlell, and many other courtiers who tried their hands at the general type but with less success.

With most of the plays of this group it is a difficult task to establish definite sources; the courtier playwright had a wide variety of plot and character possibilities to choose from, and he generally selected from stock at random. All the French romances resemble one another—and the Greek sources—so closely that it is perilous to assign specific plot sources for these plays. The tendency towards the stereotyped in character, idea, and tone hinders the recognition of specific borrowing from contemporary dramas.

In his biography of Killigrew, Harbage attempted to establish the French romance Ariane, by Armand Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, as the source of Claricilla—and of Killigrew's other early plays as well.³⁵ Harbage was able to marshal a formidable array of parallel ideas and situations, but it is evident to the reader, as it later became evident to Harbage, that the situations were sufficiently common for Killigrew merely to have drawn his material from the same sources as Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, or, indeed, to have paralleled them by mere identity of purpose. In his Cavalier Drama, published six years later, Harbage wrote with good humor and acuteness about the source-hunter and his chase:

It is often the practice of the source-hunter in following the spoor of a plot to give tongue as soon as he has found a similarity in an older work; the latter is hailed as The Source, and clairvoyance soon extricates a column of verbal parallels, never very convincing to anyone but the huntsman himself.³⁶

A note to this passage contains Harbage's admission that he had made just that error in assigning the role of “The Source” of Killigrew's early plays to Ariane. Actually, when all commonplaces are subtracted from Harbage's original argument, the sole fact remains that the heroes of both works are named Melintus.³⁷ This obviously is not sufficient to support any contention that Ariane was “The Source” of Claricilla.

A study of Killigrew's other plays shows that in most of them the author did derive at least parts—scenes, songs, speeches—from literary or dramatic works of the age. Entire scenes of Cicilia and Clorinda are founded on Mme. de Scudery's Le Grand Cyrus, a relation first pointed out by Langbaine;³⁸ a comic plot device of The Parson's Wedding was used earlier by Lording Barry in Ram-Alley (1609) and by Shackerley Marmion in The Antiquary (1636).³⁹ For borrowing of a slighter nature, we have the use by Killigrew in Part One of Thomaso, or the Wanderer (II.iii) of a song from Act IV of Fletcher's The Captain as well as of the mountebank monologue of “Scoto Mantuano” in Jonson's Volpone (II.ii), delivered in Thomaso (IV.iii) by a character named Lupe; Cicilia and Clorinda, Part II, ends with a song of Thomas Carew's, although in this instance Killigrew acknowledged the debt in the text of the play and assured the readers that if they were not satisfied the author would “give them a worse one of mine own.” The names of two characters in The Prisoners, Theagines and Memnon, appear to have been taken from Heliodorus’ Aetheopica.⁴⁰

This partial listing of Killigrew's use of borrowed material is not intended as a survey of his debt to other dramatists and to the romances. It does indicate, however, that certain borrowing and indebtedness can be expected in a study of Claricilla. In addition to the possible debt to Ariane for the name Melintus, there is a possible debt to Heliodorus’ Aetheopica; the name of its heroine, Chariclea, may have suggested Claricilla. Beyond these, however, there appears to be little of Killigrew's usual indebtedness to specific contemporary plays and romances.

CRITICAL APPRAISAL

The group of plays to which Claricilla belongs contains few to which the modern reader would turn by choice. Harbage prefaces his careful study of the genre with an evaluation which, while probably too harsh, is (unfortunately) basically sound:

Nearly all Cavalier plays are inferior in quality, … and their artistic weakness is so manifest that it is hard to concede the point with play after play without subjecting all to a monotonous drizzle of sarcasm. It is equally hard to convey impressions of merit in certain plays without seeming totally to have lost one's sense of proportion.⁴¹

The apparent loss of sense of proportion to which Harbage refers need not exist if the proper critical frame of reference is kept clear. It is not that of our own time, and it is properly that of an age and a segment of society with which we have little in common. In view of the fact that our interest in the Cavalier play lies in its revelation of the character of its age and in the evolution of English drama—both apart from questions of literary value—the most pleasant solution might seem to be the simple eschewal of the task of making any critical evaluation. There remains, however, a de facto situation which cannot be ignored: these plays were popular, and in varying degrees, in their times, and the qualities that maintained Killigrew's Claricilla on Caroline, Interregnum, and Restoration stages while his Princess died “on second sight” must be examined, if for no other reason than the furtherance of our knowledge of works more important than either Claricilla or its genre.

Before turning critical attention to Claricilla specifically, it seems worth while to examine briefly Killigrew's other plays. Most of these were written during the twenty-year period following the composition of Claricilla. Among Killigrew's last plays are two two-part tragicomedies, Bellamira her Dream and Cecilia and Clorinda, written in the 1650's, which seem to have been composed as closet dramas. Both of these follow the digressive French romances so closely in design that they are completely undramatic. They could scarcely have been considered actable even after extensive revision and cutting, and Bellamira, which Killigrew did prune at one time (cutting about a thousand lines from the play), remains almost as chaotic as its unrevised sister.⁴² The third of Killigrew's two-part plays, perhaps his final dramatic effort, was Thomaso, or the Wanderer, an adventure-filled farce, autobiographical in part, which contains many interesting plot devices and single scenes but little continuity and a plethora of extraneous material. That Thomaso contains good material is attested by the fact that one of Aphra Behn's most popular plays, The Rover, is in actuality a revision of Thomaso. Killigrew himself revised both parts of Thomaso, cutting about a thousand lines from the second part alone, and may have produced the play in the 1660's although there is no record of a performance.⁴³The Pilgrim, a tragedy, and The Parson's Wedding are plays too different from Claricilla to allow close comparison, but these two, with Claricilla, are probably Killigrew's best. The Parson's Wedding was a completely successful comedy on the Restoration stage; The Pilgrim, according to Genest, needed only “judicious alterations” to make it a good tragedy, and Killigrew at one time did make revisions in the play and may have produced it (although again there is no record of a performance).⁴⁴

Closest to Claricilla are the two tragicomedies, The Prisoners and The Princess, written during the late Caroline era. The Prisoners was probably composed in 1635 (and was therefore Killigrew's first play) and The Princess was possibly written as early as 1635-36, on Killigrew's first trip to the continent, but may have been written about 1640, during his second and more extended sojourn in Italy.

The three plays have enough in common to have led Harbage to the mistaken suggestion of a single source for all of them. Their common scene is the Mediterranean (Sardinia in The Prisoners, Sicily in the others), and although Claricilla is completely void of historical reference, it could well fit the general time (that of a non-existent reign in the late Roman empire) in which the other two plays are set. The plots of the three have many similarities—the use of a pirate band in each play as an important plot element, the frequent use of disguise, etc. The style and tone of all three are basically the same, and certain phrases echo through more than one play. It is doubtful that The Prisoners was at any time a successful play, and Killigrew did not attempt to revive it during the Restoration. Although short, the play is far too complex and confusing. Three pairs of lovers are alternately separated and united by chance, in battle and shipwreck, and the satisfactory conclusion is a triple union (the king of Sicily is paired with one of two princesses temporarily ruling Sardinia; Hipparchus, revealed to be the brother of this princess and an heir to the Sardinian throne, is united with the other ruling princess; and his dear friend Pausanes, who is discovered to be the co-heir to Sardinia's throne, marries the sister of the king of Sicily). All this is too weakly managed to be effective, although in this first effort Killigrew does reveal his outstanding talent, the ability to write effective scenes of action.

The Princess was apparently somewhat successful on the Caroline stage; at least its author was prompted to produce it again in 1661. According to Pepys (Diary Nov. 29, 1661), “great expectation there was,” but the play failed, playing only twice.⁴⁵The Princess does show Killigrew's increased understanding of dramatic problems, but its weaknesses are those of The Prisoners: confusion of action and a nonchalant disposal of all problems by the coupling of characters in the final scene. The Princess has a subplot—and an amusing, although unoriginal, one—relating the efforts of two pirates to talk one of their comrades into dying so that they can inherit his wealth. This theme is rather sporadically worked into the course of the play, the main plot of which is a double romance matching the prince of Rome with the captured princess of Sicily and her brother with the prince's sister. Both women are separately captured by the same pirate band; there are disguises for almost all the principal characters and for some of the minor ones; and Rome and Sicily are of course united by a double wedding at the conclusion of the play.

According to Montague Summers “the most popular of these three plays was Claricilla, and it is easy to see why, for the situations are more dramatic, the movement swifter, the surprises more theatrically effective … the play has the merit of vigour; it never falters, and it is not dull.”⁴⁶ In contrast to both The Prisoners and The Princess, Claricilla is a tightly-knit and well-constructed play. Instead of a series of parallel plot threads we find the single romance of Melintus and Claricilla, with the sole subsidiary action involving Philemon. The clarity this gives the play and the even flow of action appear to have been the result of greater care in planning, but whatever the cause, the result is obviously a dramatically superior play. The opening moment of the play is well chosen: the King's attack upon Silvander's stronghold is dramatic in itself and enables the author to employ the necessary exposition and introduce his characters without loss of time or interest. The danger of the sort of initialaction utilized here by Killigrew is of course that the resolution of this prelimary, and almost unincorporated, complication may seem too conclusive and bring the play to a premature halt, from which it must be roused again. Killigrew skillfully avoids this by the introduction of the chief plot complications in the course of the first act; the death of Silvander is therefore followed promptly by the short-lived reunion of Melintus and Claricilla, by the introduction of the preferred claimant for Claricilla's hand, Prince Appius, and by the conflict between Melintus and Seleucus. Act II, scene i, introduces the subordinate theme of the fortunes of Philemon, a theme continued in scene iv of Act III, then welded to the main plot in the one-scene Act IV. In Act II the forces of good and evil remain in conflict as Seleucus plots to advance his villainous desire for Claricilla. In Act III he succeeds, despite efforts to circumvent him, in exposing the lovers to the King and having Melintus banned the kingdom. At the end of Act III we reach the nadir in the fortunes of the forces of good, as Melintus is pursued by the King's soldiers and Claricilla remains in disgrace at the court. The fourth act contains the series of incidents which unite Philemon and Melintus and bring the pirates, who function as the external force so often found in melodrama, to their assistance. The final act contains the “device,” the scheme to undo Seleucus and regain Claricilla. This is quickly advanced, although somewhat naively arranged, and the denouement, bringing Seleucus’ death, the King's repentance, and the union of the lovers, is entirely acceptable.

The plot structure is, as I believe its outline reveals, basically a sound one. Its one potential weakness, the use of the “preliminary” villain (Silvander), is neatly kept in check, and the transition from that to the major complications of the play is dexterously accomplished. There is also—and this is not true of either of Killigrew's other early tragicomedies—at least nominal motivation for all the important action of the play, and no significant complication is left unresolved at the conclusion. Another element of the play that preserves its unity is the substitution for a comic underplot of a comic character who is integral to the principal action. Timillus further serves to balance the hyperbole of the romantic plot by his realistic comments. All in all, the plan of Claricilla is effective and adequate. While the quality of dramatic coherence is rare in Cavalier drama, it is a major strength in Claricilla.

In company with most Cavalier dramatists, Killingrew violates the Fletcherian definition of tragicomedy. For a play in a genre that “wants deaths,” Claricilla is exceptionally bloody. In addition to the stage deaths of Silvander and Seleucus, Melintus kills Carillus in Act III, as well as the soldier who pursues him in Act IV. Faithless Olinda is rather casually drowned offstage in the last act. Even if Killigrew had not revealed to Pepys that he had been a devotee of the Red Bull theatre in his childhood,⁴⁷ his affection for the blood-soaked scene would indicate as much.

In the course of filling his scenes with action, Killigrew has not ignored unity of time, and there is no confusion at any point regarding the few lapses of time between scenes. The entire play occupies but forty-eight hours. It opens at night and the action of Act I is continuous. The events of Act II take place the following morning and the action is continuous (or, with the Philemon plot, simultaneous) until the end of III.iv. The betrayal of the lovers (III.v) takes place that evening, and again the action is continuous until the end of Act IV, when the newly-united Melintus and Philemon agree to “repose until tomorrow” before planning their recovery of Claricilla. The first scenes of Act V occur during the following morning; V.viii., the “escape” of Claricilla, takes place late that evening and the play is concluded shortly afterwards. The careful references by characters to the time of future and past meetings show clearly that the compact sequence of scenes was intentional.

Killigrew's concern with plot development and sentiment in Claricilla leads him generally to ignore character development, and the deficiency of characterization is indeed a major weakness of the play. Claricilla herself emerges occasionally from stereotype—and distinguishes herself thereby from most of Killigrew's heroines and from most of the heroines of the Cavalier tragicomedies—but few of the other characters can be distinguished in speech from each other. Melintus, Prince Appius, and Philemon, when placed in similar circumstances, react alike. Timillus differs from them, of course, but he is merely a different stereotype, although from our point of view a more bearable one. Seleucus avoids stereotype, but chiefly because of a structural defect in his characterization. Initially he is a man of honour led to wrongdoing by his infatuation for Claricilla. Melintus confidently turns his back during their quarrel, certain that a treacherous blow will not be struck. But by the last act Seleucus is planning to murder the King, rape Claricilla in the presence of Melintus, and then murder Melintus, Philemon, and—apparently—Claricilla.

Claricilla, then, is the sole character of the play who is really individualized. She is too often put to the task of rivalling Melintus's flights of sentiment, but in the course of several scenes she reveals feminine weakness and an anxiety for her lover that is charming and unusual. Her discovery in Act V, scene iii, that Melintus is safe and nearby prompts an outburst uncommon to the heroines of Cavalier drama. Instead of the academic discourse on virtue customary in moments of stress, Claricilla shows emotion:

Oh noble Manlius, where is Melintus, where is the Galley, where is Philemon? why do I stay, cannot you guide me, will not you guide me, will not Prince Appius go? I am resolv’d I will, and be miserable no longer here, … say, shall we go?

She is again passionate in V.v.36ff., and elsewhere.

The language of Claricilla is probably adequate for the action, but little more than that. Killigrew's vocabulary is extensive and his rhetoric, while erratic, is usually clear enough. But the poetic charm and force which were occasionally redeeming features of Cavalier tragicomedy are missing almost entirely from Claricilla. Only rarely does a phrase or figure impress the reader, and most of the figurative language is obviously derivative. The artificiality of the diction is the fault of the genre, not Killigrew, for he reveals competence in the employment of dialogue in The Parson's Wedding, where he was not limited to the language affected by Queen Henrietta's court.

Viewing Claricilla in relation to other Cavalier dramas one must conclude, I think, that it ranks with the better plays of the group. Certainly it was one of the most successful theatrically; only a few Caroline “heroic” plays, among them Suckling's,⁴⁸ survived to be played on the Restoration stage. If Killigrew's managership of the theatre and company is argued as the cause of the appearance of his plays on that stage, the fate of his Princess may be contrasted to Claricilla's performance over a period of at least eight years. The qualities that set Claricilla above many of its fellows were chiefly, as we have seen, its effective situations and plan, and its wealth of action without loss of continuity. Its deficiencies, aside from those of type, can be explained by the simple truth that Killigrew, although a competent craftsman, was not a great playwright.

Notes

1. Allardyce Nicoll, A History of Restoration Drama: 1660-1700 (Cambridge, 1923); Leslie Hoston, The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage (Cambridge, Mass., 1928); Alfred Harbage, Thomas Killigrew (Philadelphia, 1930), and Cavalier Drama (New York, 1936).

2. Nicoll, Rest. Drama, pp. 348-76.

3. See Montague Summers, The Playhouse of Pepys (New York, 1935), pp. 83-86.

4. Hotson, Commonwealth and Rest. Stage, p. 249.

5. See Diary (Feb. 12, 1667) for his account of an extended conversation with Killigrew about Restoration stage improvements and K.'s own efforts to improve the music of the theater.

6. Dodsley, 1774, IX, 329-456; Dodsley, 1780, XI, 367-536; Ancient British Drama, 1810, III, 354-404; Dodsley, 1827, XI, 446-585; Dodsley, 1875 (Hazlitt's edition), XIV, 369-535; Restoration Comedies, ed. Montague Summers (London, 1921), pp. 3-151; Six Caroline Plays, ed. A.S. Knowland (London, 1962), pp. 433-553.

7. The Prisoners and Claricilla were printed in 1641 “as acted”; Pepys saw The Princess on November 21, 1661, “the first time that it hath been acted since before the troubles”; and The Parson's Wedding, popular in Restoration times, contains allusions to sessions of Parliament, etc., that fix its date of composition c. 1641, but no positive evidence exists of its production before the closing of the theaters in 1642.

8. The Claricilla manuscript is discussed below, pp. 48-56. There are also manuscripts of Cicilia and Clorinda, Parts I and II, dating from approximately 1652, in the Folger Shakespeare Library. These last plays were first printed in the collected edition of Killigrew's plays, 1664. The unpublished manuscript versions differ in many respects from the printed edition.

9. Harbage, Killigrew, p.203.

10. Killigrew's second trip to the continent, not known to Harbage, is the subject of an article by J.W. Stoye, “The Whereabouts of Thomas Killigrew, 1639-41” RES XXV (1949), 245-248. Drawn chiefly from correspondence in the Lismore Papers (ed. Grosart, 1886, 1888), it reveals Killigrew to have been in Paris in Nov., 1639, in Geneva and Basel in March, 1640, and in Italy before March, 1641.

11. Thomas Rymer, Foedera (London, 1732), XIX, 383.

12. A report by Sir John Pennington to the Lords of the Admiralty records their departure on the Vanguard (Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1635, 438.)

13. Copies of this letter are preserved in Additional MS 27402, f.70, in the British Museum; Ashmolean MS 800, 3, ff.21-27 (Bod. Lib.); Pepys MS 8383 (Magdalene Coll., Camb.); MSS of Trinity College, Dublin, 1644.

14. Letter to Lord Feilding (MSS of Earl Denbigh), Historical MSS Commission, Part V (1911), 18.

15. Letter from P.Morton to Lord Feilding. Ibid., 27.

16. The Killigrew Family Bible, as cited by R.N.Worth and printed in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, New Series, I, 370.

17. Although there is no reason to question the 1664 place-ascription of Claricilla, several of the other plays of that printing have title-page place-ascriptions that have been challenged. (Harbage, Killigrew, pp.191-2, p. 178, and p. 288, questions the title-page place or date for The Parson's Wedding, The Pilgrim, and Thomaso I and II.) On the other hand, there is confirmation of some of the other title-pages—of The Prisoners, Cecilia and Clorinda I and II, and Bellamira her Dream I and II—by further evidence, and the few supplementary facts that have been uncovered since Harbage's biography support the 1664 ascriptions.

18. Gerald Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage (Oxford, 1941), pp. 661-5. For Herbert's order closing the theaters see Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, ed. Joseph Quincy Adams (New Haven, 1917), p. 65.

19. Bentley, Jacob. Stage, pp. 236-9.

20. Narcissus, or the Self Lover (London, 1646),pp. 48-49 (numbered 148 and 149).

21. Herbert, ed. Adams, p. 39.

22. Allan H. Stevenson, “Shirley's Years in Ireland,” RES XX (1944).

23. Bentley, Jacob. Stage, pp. 57-8.

24. Bentley, Jacob. Stage, p. 331.

25. Ibid.

26. Herbert, p. 82.

27. See Hotson, pp. 114-20.

28. Quoted by Hotson, pp. 49-50, from B.M. E689.15.

29. Hotson, p. 50

30. Ibid., pp. 92, 103.

31. His prosecution by the Venetian government on charges of smuggling was carefully reviewed by Harbage (Killigrew, pp. 95-101). More recent publications of Venetian state papers confirm that the Venetian government used the charges as a pretext for getting rid of the Royalist emissary so it could welcome Cromwell's. At the time, of course, Killigrew was brought into disfavor at the Court of Charles by the affair.

32. Herbert, p. 82

33. Bentley, Jacob. Stage, pp. 330-1.

34. Herbert, p. 82.

35. Killigrew, pp. 149-60.

36. Cavalier Drama, p.31.

37. The name is hardly a complete invention even if not derived from Ariane or other foreign sources. Melitus, in The Laws of Candy, or Melantius, in The Maid's Tragedy, are two names from contemporary British drama that Melintus might have derived from.

38. Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford, 1691), p. 312.

39. This device, employed in the Parson's Wedding by two young suitors, enables the perpetrators to win their mistresses. By appearing publicly at the window of the girls’ bedroom, the gallants force the women to consent to a match—for the sake of honor. Use of this device from the earlier plays was recorded by Langbaine, p. 313.

40. Theagines and Cnemon in Heliodorus.

41. Cavalier Drama, pp. 2-3.

42. Cut in his copy of the folio, cutting not dated. A note to Cicilia and Clorinda indicates that Killigrew wanted copies made of that play, possibly for a contemplated production.

43. Cut in his copy November, 1664. In addition to lines excised, Killigrew partially cast the play, wrote new act divisions, and made scattered textual changes.

44. Revised May 25, 1668. An alteration that has been suggested by Montague Summers (elimination of the comic sub plot) was made here by Killigrew.

45. A contemporary poem records its failure in doggerel couplets. (Quoted by Hotson, pp. 246-247.)

46. Playhouse of Pepys, pp. 70-71.

47. Diary, Oct. 30, 1662.

48. Aglaura, The Goblins, and Brennoralt. All were successful Restoration revivals.