The Female Wits.

by Anonymous.

INTRODUCTION

_The Female Wits; Or, The Triumvirate of Poets at Rehearsal_, published anonymously in 1704 with "written by Mr. W. M." on the t.i.tlepage, was played at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane around October, 1696. [1] A devastating satire in the manner of Buckingham's _The Rehearsal_, it attacks all plays by women playwrights but Mary de la Riviere Manley's blood and thunder female tragedy, _The Royal Mischief_ (1696), in particular. _The Female Wits_ resembles _The Rehearsal_ in that the satire is directed not only at the subject matter and style of a particular type of drama but supplies searing portrayals of recognizable persons--in this case, of Mrs. Manley herself, and to a lesser degree, of Mary Pix and Catherine Trotter (later c.o.c.kburn). It also follows Buckingham's satire in that the actors play double roles--that of the characters a.s.signed to them and their own--and in so doing, reveal their own personalities with astonishing clarity.

Colley Cibber tells the best stories of the chaos that ensued after the secession of Betterton and most of the veteran actors in 1695 from the dominance of Christopher Rich at Drury Lane. [2] Since Betterton had been virtual dictator in London since 1682, he was able to command the efforts, at least at first, of most of the well-known playwrights who had written for the company before the establishment of his theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Young playwrights scrambled to ingratiate themselves with one or the other of the two London managements. Among them, there had been three women with four plays in less than a year.

When Mrs. Manley arrived upon the dramatic scene with her first play, _The Lost Lover; Or, The Jealous Husband_, in March, 1696, she bore the brunt of a growing criticism against a surfeit of female plays. But when she protested in the preface of the printed version that "I think my Treatment much severer than I deserv'd; I am satisfied the bare Name of being a Woman's Play d.a.m.n'd it beyond its own want of Merit," she took upon herself the combined animus of the masculine critics. In the same preface, she challenged them boldly with "Once more, my Offended Judges, I am to appear before you, once more in possibility of giving you the like d.a.m.ning Satisfaction; there is a Tragedy of mine Rehearsing, which 'tis too late to recall, I consent it meet with the same Fortune." The other play was _The Royal Mischief_.

One learns from _The Female Wits_ that Mrs. Manley considered herself privileged at Drury Lane, that _The Royal Mischief_ had gone into rehearsal, but that her imperious manner had alienated the actors who laughed at her dramatic pretentions; and that she had stormed out of the Theatre Royal vowing never again to honor them with her works. After much bickering among patrons, patentees, players, and playwright, _The Royal Mischief_ was finally presented by the newly formed Betterton company at Lincoln's Inn Fields in May, 1696, instead of by the company of actors led by George Powell at the rival Drury Lane Theatre. At least, this is what is represented in _The Female Wits_, and although highly exaggerated, it is essentially true. The time: March or April, 1696.

_The Female Wits_ is correctly compared in its preface to the satiric masterpiece which had been written as a corrective to the bombastic tragedy supplied by Dryden, Howard, and others in the early years of the Restoration. With _The Rehearsal_, Buckingham and his fellow wits had supposedly succeeded in laughing heroic tragedy into oblivion in the 1670's. By the 1690's, another type of heroic drama, equally unrealistic but tinged with sentimentality, was enjoying a certain success. The chief purveyors of this new drama which pleased the Ladies were a group of women who seemed impervious to masculine criticism. In the 1690's, therefore, another set of self-appointed critics evidently dedicated itself to laughing the female authors off the stage. _A Comparison between the Two Stages_, an anonymous satirical summary of drama from 1695 to 1702, echoes the att.i.tude of the author of _The Female Wits_ toward women playwrights. When _The Lost Lover_, Mrs. Manley's first play, is brought up for discussion, Critick demands

What occasion had you to name a Lady in the confounded Work you're about?

Sullen: Here's a Play of hers.

Critick: The Devil there is: I wonder in my Heart we are so lost to all Sense and Reason: What a Pox have the Women to do with the Muses? I grant you the Poets call the Nine Muses by the Names of Women, but why so? not because the s.e.x had any thing to do with Poetry, but because in the s.e.x they're much fitter for prost.i.tution.

Rambler: Abusive, now you're abusive, Mr. Critick.

Critick: Sir, I tell you we are abus'd: I hate these Petticoat-Authors; 'tis false Grammar, there's no Feminine for the Latin word, 'tis entirely of the Masculine Gender.... Let 'em scribble on, till they can serve all the Pastry-cooks in Town, the Tobacconists and Grocers with Waste-paper[3].

Although _The Royal Mischief_ was the immediate pretext for _The Female Wits_, the true cause of the attack was the surprising success of the women playwrights with the Ladies in the boxes who were beginning to enjoy the "Solace of Tears" and to dominate theatrical taste in the middle 1690's. After Aphra Behn's death in 1689, a shattering blow to rising feminism, women had not ventured thus far to write for the stage.

Mrs. Behn, however, was still a powerful influence, and her name was invoked by every woman who put pen to paper.

Mrs. Manley openly aspired to be a second Astrea. Certainly there are striking similarities. As in Aphra Behn's case, nothing Mrs. Manley ever wrote as drama or fiction could equal the events of her own life[4]. Her father died when she was fourteen, leaving her in the care of a cousin who took her inheritance, went through a sham marriage with her, abandoned her before their child was born, and left her to starve before she was sixteen. She was befriended by Barbara Castlemaine, d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland, the notorious former mistress of Charles II, whose character Mrs. Manley draws as Hillaria in _The Adventures of Rivella_ (1714), and whose lineaments are certainly to be seen in the character of Homais in the warmer pa.s.sages of _The Royal Mischief_. After Mrs. Manley's cruel dismissal by the d.u.c.h.ess, by her own account she spent two years wandering unknown from place to place in England, and during this time, she wrote plays for her diversion.

During the 1690's, despite the supposition of some modern critics that heroic tragedy was out of style, the great cla.s.sics of the three preceding decades continued to be played by the Betterton company in whose stock repertory they had been since their inception: Lee's _The Rival Queens_, Banks' _The Unhappy_ _Favourite_, Otway's _Venice Preserv'd_, and many of Dryden's (_The Indian Emperour_, _The Conquest of Granada_, _All for Love_). In fact, Dryden was still writing and pleasing audiences with tragicomedies that contained the ingredients of the old heroic tragedy. Since the same company of actors was presenting the old plays (indeed, most of the actors were still playing their original roles), the histrionic magic of the early tragic hero could still lift an audience to the empyrean heights reached in the heady first years of the restoration of Charles II. If there is anything strange in Mrs. Manley's _The Royal Mischief_ in 1696, it is not that it was an heroic play but that the leading character was a woman, Homais, who out-hectors and out-loves all of the Restoration Alexanders, Montezumas, and Drawcansirs written for and by men.

If her own account of _The Royal Mischief_ is true, Mrs. Manley wrote it after she left the household of the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland, some time between 1692 and 1694. Since there was only one theatre in London from 1682 to 1695, she wrote for Thomas Betterton, Elizabeth Barry, Anne Bracegirdle, Edward Kynaston, and other veterans in the Betterton company, who were the prototypes for the characters in the early heroic plays. She could have known no others. When Betterton seceded from the Theatre Royal in 1695 and set up the independent theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mrs. Manley, already committed to Drury Lane because of her first play, gave Drury Lane _The Royal Mischief_ even though it had been written for the Betterton company. Circ.u.mstances, then, dictated that _The Royal Mischief_ was finally played by the actors for whom it had been written originally.

It is likely, however, that _The Female Wits_ would never have been written if Thomas Betterton had not aggravated the situation by producing _The Royal Mischief_ as quickly as possible after Mrs. Manley had withdrawn it from Drury Lane under such provocative circ.u.mstances.

It was played immediately at Lincoln's Inn Fields in April or May, 1696, seemingly at the insistence of the Duke of Devonshire to whom Mrs.

Manley dedicated it. When it was published in June, the author was supported by her sister playwrights in commendatory verses included with the play. Catherine Trotter possibly earned her inclusion in _The Female Wits_ when she wrote,

You were our Champion, and the Glory ours.

Well you've maintain'd our equal right in Fame, To which vain Man had quite engrost the claim:

Mary Pix confirmed her place in the satire with her panegyric:

You the unequal'd wonder of the Age, Pride of our s.e.x, and Glory of the Age, Like Sappho Charming, like Afra Eloquent, Like Chast Orinda, sweetly Innocent.

Mrs. Manley minced no words in the printed version in answer to the flurry of criticism that had greeted _The Royal Mischief_ when it was played: "I should not have given my self and the Town the trouble of a Preface if the aspersions of my Enemies had not made it necessary."

According to her, in spite of "ill nature, Envy, and Detraction," _The Royal Mischief_ was successful (it had a run of six nights) even though some of the ladies professed to be shocked at "the warmth of it, as they are pleas'd to call it.... I do not doubt when the Ladies have given themselves the trouble of reading, and comparing it with others, they'll find the prejudice against our s.e.x, and not refuse me the satisfaction of entertaining them...." Everything Mrs. Manley wrote, however, simply added to the ridicule that had been mounting against women playwrights, and _The Female Wits_ is merely the distillation of the general att.i.tude of the self-appointed critics and wits at the Rose and the Grecian, at Maynwaring's and at Will's.

In defending _The Royal Mischief_ and its reception, she said of the actress who played the unbelievably wicked Homais: "... Mrs. Barry, who by all that saw her, is concluded to have exceeded that perfection which before she was justly thought to have arrived at; my Obligations to her were the greater, since against her own approbation, she excell'd and made the part of an ill Woman, not only entertaining, but admirable."

Years later in _The Adventures of Rivella_, she was to say, "Mrs. Barry distinguish'd herself as much as in any Part that ever she play'd. I have since heard Rivella laugh and wonder that a Man of Mr. Betterton's grave Sense and Judgment should think well enough of the Productions of a Woman of Eighteen, to bring it upon the Stage in so handsome a Manner as he did...." [5]

It is easy to believe Mrs. Manley's high commendation of the actress but difficult to credit Mrs. Barry's objection to playing a part that was a natural sequel to all the heroic and sometimes wicked women she had played throughout her career. Her audience identified her with Lee's Roxana in _The Rival Queens_, Dryden's Cleopatra in _All for Love_, and his recent Ca.s.sandra in _Cleomenes_. Every playwright since 1680 had written expressly for her: Otway's Monimia in _The Orphan_ was her first great part in 1680, followed two years later by Belvidera in _Venice Preserv'd_. Southerne had given her Isabella in _The Fatal Marriage_ in 1694, Congreve was still to write for her his Zara in _The Mourning Bride_ in 1697, and Rowe his Calista in _The Fair Penitent_ in 1703.

Cibber, in 1740, remembered her "Presence of elevated Dignity ... her Voice full, clear, and strong, so that no Violence of Pa.s.sion could be too much for her." He emphasized that in "Scenes of Anger, Defiance, or Resentment, while she was impetuous, and terrible, she pour'd out the Sentiment with an enchanting Harmony." [6]

Mrs. Barry's ability and her strength of voice in expressing the pa.s.sions led to the full development of the rant, which was the test of the dramatic actress as the aria is the test of the opera singer.

Ordinarily in a tragedy, there were two: one, the melodious expression of unattainable love in the first part of the play, and the second in the death scene, usually of raving madness. In _The Royal Mischief_, there are at least six major rants, each more powerful and surprising than the one preceding it. If Mrs. Barry's ability was ever tested, it was with Mrs. Manley's Homais.

The story is that of another Messalina. Homais, married to the unloved Prince of Libardian, had had many lovers in her progress to the throne of Phasia: among them, Ismael, who had remained her creature and is willing to kill the Prince for one more night's favors. Even her eunuch Acmat is more than a mere pander to her desire for her husband's nephew, Levan Dadian, whom she has never seen but for whom she writhes nightly upon her bed in erotic desire, stimulated only by his life size picture and secondhand descriptions of him. She conspires with Acmat to inflame Levan Dadian with desire for her (her portrait was enough) and to bring about a meeting even though that prince was bringing home with him his virtuous bride, Ba.s.sima, princess of Colchis. Her proposal to enslave Levan Dadian might have been difficult if it had not been for the fact that years before, during a war between Phasia and Colchis, Osman, great general and now Chief Vizier to the Prince of Libardian, had captured Ba.s.sima, fallen in love with her (and she with him), but without a word on either side before and after he had freed her, they had remained platonically true to each other in spite of the pa.s.sage of years, Osman's marriage to Selima, sister of his Prince, the offer (and rejection) of Homais' love, and of Ba.s.sima's recent marriage to Levan Dadian. When Levan Dadian brings Ba.s.sima to court, the recognition between Osman and Ba.s.sima is endured in silence, but the trusting Osman bares his heart to Homais' creature Ismael, who inflames the hitherto platonic Osman with unholy desire for the pure Ba.s.sima. The wily Acmat insinuates distrust for Ba.s.sima into Levan Dadian's heart at the same time that he inspires l.u.s.t for Homais and brings about the promised meeting. Homais immediately sets about disposing of everyone who stands in her way. The Prince of Libardian is to be dispatched by Ismael. Osman is to be accused of infidelity with Ba.s.sima, who is to be poisoned by Ismael. Word of this gets to Osman, who urges Ba.s.sima to flee with or without him, but she refuses because her virtue would be called into question in either case. But plans go awry, the Prince is not dispatched, and while Levan Dadian is absent, Homais is seized by her husband and given the choice of drinking poison or submitting to death by the bow-string. She charms him out of killing her, and he, overcome by her beauty, weakly believes her promises and sets her free to pursue her wickedness.

Ba.s.sima, however, has been poisoned and is dying when Osman comes to her, urging the consumation of their pa.s.sion then and there, before it is too late. Her gentle refusal to stray from virtue on her deathbed awakens him from his unplatonic spell, and he begs forgiveness but is interrupted in the middle of his contrite speech, led away, crammed alive into a cannon, and shot off. The soldiers, led by Ismael, revolt in favor of Homais and declare her queen. For a heady moment, she has attained her every desire as she stands exulting over the dying Ba.s.sima, whose husband is somewhat disturbed by the turn of events but whose attention is diverted when Homais takes him in her arms. But at the height of her triumph, the Prince burst in, sword in hand, and runs Homais through before she can change his mind. Unrepenting to the end, she goes to her death and into her final rant with defiance on her lovely l.u.s.ty lips as she ticks off the men in her life one by one. In the last three minutes, Osman's faithful but jealous wife gathers his smoking remains, Levan Dadian falls on his sword, and the Prince of Libardian ends the play with

O horrour, horrour, horrour!

What Mischief two fair Guilty Eyes have wrought; Let Lovers all look here, and shun the Dotage.

To Heaven my dismal Thoughts shall straight be turn'd, And all these sad Dissasters truly mourn'd.

There is no need to point out that _The Royal Mischief_ invited parody.

Everything was in excess. No woman had ever been so l.u.s.tfully wicked as Homais (played by Elizabeth Barry), no heroine so pure as Ba.s.sima (Anne Bracegirdle), no hero so faithfully platonic (Thomas Betterton), no husband so duped as the Prince of Libardian (Edward Kynaston), no wife so weakly jealous as Selima (Elizabeth Bowman), no man so easily a prey to l.u.s.t as Levan Dadian (John Bowman), so much a creature as Ismael (John Hodgson), so vile a tool as Acmat (John Freeman). Each character was a stick figure for a single quality. Incidents happened so rapidly that continual surprise is the predominant emotion if one discounts the miasma of hot surging s.e.x that hovers over the entire production. But it must have been effective when played by the greatest actors in London.

After reading both plays, one can believe that immediately after the presentation of _The Royal Mischief_, someone began putting together the parodies of obviously over-written scenes and high-flown language, burlesques of heroic acting by the acknowledged past-masters of the art, Thomas Betterton and Elizabeth Barry, as well as the mincing pasquinade of Anne Bracegirdle, who was as virtuous as the pure role she played.

Since _The Royal Mischief_ was played in May, near the end of the season, there was ample time to gloat over its absurdities during the summer months and have _The Female Wits_ ready for the delectation of the Town early the following season. Like all satires, it had its day while the original was still fresh in the minds of the theatre-going public but was immediately forgotten because _The Royal Mischief_ did not become a stock play.

_The Female Wits_ is a continuous hilarious romp of scenes from _The Royal Mischief_ and an entire gallery of burlesqued portraits of the famous actors who were as much under fire as Mrs. Manley herself.

Elizabeth Barry's histrionic style of acting is held up to derision when Frances Maria Knight, who was playing the character satirizing Homais as well as a caricature of Mrs. Barry, is told to "stamp like Queen Statira does ... that always gets a Clap. No Stamp, and Hug yourself: Oh the strong Exstasie!" When Homais is stabbed, Marsilia gives the order, "D'ye hear, Property Man, be sure some red Ink is handsomely convey'd to Mrs. Knight." Penkethman, a short, slap-stick comedian mimicking six-foot Betterton as the faithful Osman is told to "Fetch long Strides; walk thus; your Arms strutting, your voice big, and your Eyes terrible"; and later, "Louder ... strain your Voice: I tell you, Mr. Pinkethman, this speaking Loud gets the Clap." Mrs. Bracegirdle's famous "pathetic"

style of acting is parodied when Marsilia instructs Miss Cross how to speak a line: "Give me leave to instruct you in a moving Cry. Oh!

there's a great deal of Art in crying: Hold your Handkerchief thus; let it meet your Eyes, thus; your Head declin'd, thus; now, in a perfect whine, crying out these words,

By these Tears, which never cease to Flow."

Reverse situations are used as comic devices. Possibly the climax of absurdity is reached when Miss Cross and Penkethman, instead of dying horrible deaths, find themselves on the roof-top (instead of in the dungeon) climbing into a celestial chariot that the Prince had been building for fifty years. They escape their pursuing enemies, thus making merry with the tragic conclusion of _The Royal Mischief_ and using the same theatrical machinery that was being employed in _Brutus of Alba_. Marsilia caps this scene by describing in detail the events which were played seriously in _The Royal Mischief_:

You must know, my Lord, at first I design'd this for a Tragedy; and they were both taken; She was Poyson'd, and dy'd, like an Innocent Lamb, as she was indeed: I was studying a Death for him; once I thought Boys shou'd shoot him to Death with Pot-Guns; ... and that wou'd have been Disgrace enough, you know: But at length I resolv'd to ram him into a great Gun, and scatter him o're the st.u.r.dy Plain: This, I say, was my first resolve. But I consider'd, 'twou'd break the Lady's Heart; so there is nothing in their Parts Tragical; but as your Lordship shall see miraculously I turn'd it into an Opera.

The continual interruptions in the rehearsal by Marsilia giving orders to the increasingly irritated actors, their hostile asides as they come out of their roles to ask bewildered questions, object to her directions, or attempt to resign their parts keep the stage in an uproar. The asinine remarks of her sycophantic followers, her own erratic behavior which culminates in her rage and her stalking out, vowing to take her play to Lincoln's Inn Fields, while George Powell, Mrs. Knight, and Miss Cross double up with laughter--all make _The Female Wits_ an hilarious piece of dramatic satire as well as a valuable theatrical doc.u.ment.

All but forgotten, as it was when it was published in 1704, the played version of _The Female Wits_ had its impact on women playwrights in 1696. Mrs. Manley did not produce another play until _Almyna_ was acted in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1706, ten years later. As a result of the unjustified attack upon her, Mrs. Pix thereafter wrote for Lincoln's Inn Fields, and at the beginning of the 1697-98 season was engaged in a name-calling dispute with Drury Lane over the flagrant plagiarism of one of her plays by George Powell, the actor who figures prominently in _The Female Wits_. Mrs. Trotter gave her plays to the Betterton group until 1700 when a new management regulated affairs at Drury Lane.

Whether Mrs. Manley was driven from the stage for ten years by the jeers of the Town is a matter of debate. She became one of the leading Tory pamphleteers, political editors, and literary hacks in London, employed for years and respected in an odd way by such people as Richard Steele and Dean Swift. Her most famous work, _The Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality ... by the New Atalanta_ (1709) and her semi-autobiographical _The Adventures of Rivella_ (1714) caused government inquiries, and she never ceased to be a controversial figure.

Up to the present time, no one has ventured to say who wrote _The Female Wits_. The t.i.tlepage gives "Mr. W. M." as the author, but this information is immediately refuted by the preface signed "W. M." which gives most of the facts of composition, performance, and publication.

According to the preface, the satire was written by a friend (now dead), and the "Quality" had insisted it be played at Drury Lane, where it had enjoyed a run of six nights and could have continued longer "had the Company thought fit to oblige the Taste of the Town in General rather than that of some particular Persons." _The Female Wits_ was published in 1704 even though "the Town has almost lost the Remembrance of it,"

but unless the taste of the critics today is different from what it was in 1696, readers cannot fail to have as much satisfaction as the earlier audience had in seeing it. W. M.'s identification of Mrs. Manley as Marsilia, Mrs. Pix as Mrs. Wellfed, and Mrs. Trotter as Calista as well as his commendation of the acting of Mr. and Mrs. Powell, and his praise of Mrs. Verbruggen (now deceased also) are expressions of nostalgia from a man whose duty to his dead friend is now accomplished. He ends his laconic preface with a reference to the reformers led by Jeremy Collier, "a Fig for their Censures, which can neither affect him that Wrote this Play, nor him that Publishes it." [7]

It is evident that the anonymous author knew all of the actors at Drury Lane intimately: "honest" George Powell, who "regards neither Times nor Seasons in Drinking," Mrs. Lucas, the dancer, and her coffee habit, hoydenish Let.i.tia Cross with her sa.s.sy aside of "now have I such a mind to kick him i'th'chops" about some show-off fop who wished to kiss the strap of her shoe in homage, Frances Marie Knight's haughty withdrawal from any complication with Mrs. Manley or the other playwrights. His knowledge of Mrs. Manley's colossal arrogance, of Mrs. Pix's easy-going acceptance of her great bulk and lack of charm, of beautiful Mrs.

Trotter's considerable learning in the cla.s.sics and her early tendency toward critical writing--all are sharply etched from observation and intimate knowledge.