1768. that there are three couples in search of themselves throughout the five acts, and enveloped in such a haze or mist of Et. 40. False Delicacy (the title of the piece) that they do not, till the last, succeed in finding themselves. There is a Lord who has been refused, for no reason on earth, by a Lady Betty who loves him; and who, with as little reason and as much delicacy on his own side, transfers his proposals to a friend of Lady Betty's whom he does not love, and selects her ladyship to convey the transfer. There is Lady Betty's friend, who, being in love elsewhere, is shocked to receive his lordship's proposals; but, being under great obligations to Lady Betty, cannot in delicacy think of opposing what she fancies her ladyship has set her heart upon. There is a mild young gentleman, who is knocked hither and thither like a shuttlecock; now engaged to this young lady whom he does not love, now dismissed by that whom he does; and made at last the convenient means of restoring, with all proper delicacy, Lady Betty to his lordship. There is a young lady who in delicacy ought to marry the mild young gentleman, but indelicately prefers instead to run away with a certain Sir Harry. There is Sally her maid, who tells her mistress that she has transported her poor Sally "by that noble resolution" (to run away). And there is the delicate old Colonel her father, who plays eaves-dropper to her plan of flight; intercepts her in the act of it; gives her, in the midst of her wickedness, £20,000 (which he pulls out of a pocket-book), because he had promised it when she was good; and tells her to banish his name entirely from her remembrance, and be as happy as she can with the consciousness of having broken an old father's heart. There are only two people in the play with a glimmering of common sense or 1768. Et. 40. character, an eccentric widow, and a slovenly old bachelor; who are there to do for the rest what the rest have no power to do for themselves; and, though not without large infusions of silly sentimentality and squeamish charity, to bring back enough common sense to furnish forth a catastrophe. It is the most mechanical of contrivances: yet it is the proof, if any were wanting, that such a piece has no life in itself; and it is the distinguishing quality, which, thanks to Mr. Kelly's example, in proportion as reality or character is absent from a modern comedy, will still be found its chief resource. Examples need not be cited. Mr. Kelly's style will never want admirers. While it saves great trouble and wit to both actor and author, it exacts of an audience neither judgment nor discrimination; and, with an easy indolent indulgence of such productions, there will always be mixed up a sort of secret satisfaction in their mouthing morals, and lip-professions of humanity. Let us not be so hard on our grandfathers and grandmothers for having taken so mightily to Mr. Kelly's False Delicacy, as not to admit thus much. It had every advantage, too, in its production. Garrick not only wrote a prologue and epilogue, and was said to have heightened the old bachelor played by King, but went out of his way to induce Mrs. Dancer to forgive the abuse she had received in Mr. Kelly's Thespis, and act the widow. Produced on Saturday the 23rd of January, it was received with such singular favour, that, though the management was under a solemn pledge "not for “the future to run any new piece nine nights successively," it was played eight nights without intermission, and in the course of the season repeated more than twenty times. The publisher announced, the morning after its publication, that three thousand copies of it had been sold before two o'clock; so unabated did its interest continue, that it had sold ten thousand before the season closed, Kelly had received a public breakfast at the Chapter-coffee-house, and its publisher had expended twenty pounds upon a piece of plate as a tribute to his genius; it was translated into German, and (by order of the Marquis de Pombal) into Portuguese, while its French translation, by Garrick's lively friend Madame Riccoboni, had quite a run in Paris;—and to sum up all in a word, False Delicacy became the rage. Poor Goldsmith may be forgiven if the sudden start of such success a little dashed his hopes at the last rehearsals of his Good-natured Man. Colman had lost what little faith he ever had in it; Powell protested he could do nothing with Honeywood; Harris and Rutherford had from the first taken little part in it;* nor, with the exception of Shuter, were the actors more hopeful than the management. Goldsmith always remembered this timely good opinion of the excellent comedian, as well as the praise proffered him by a pretty actress (Miss Wilford, just become Mrs. Bulkley, of whom more hereafter) who played Miss Richland. What stood him most in stead, however, was the unwavering kindness of Johnson, who not only wrote the prologue he had promised, but went to see the comedy rehearsed; and as, some halfcentury before, Swift had stood by Addison's side at the rehearsal of his tragedy, wondering to hear the drab that played Cato's daughter laughing in the midst of her passionate part, and crying out What's next?t one may * It is just to add, however, to what has already been stated on this subject (ante 65), that, in his account of his quarrel with his fellow-proprietors, Colman expressly states that they "afterwards declared their entire approbation" of his acceptance of Goldsmith's comedy. A True State of the Difference, &c, 18. "I was this morning at ten at the rehearsal of Mr. Addison's play, called Cato, which is to be acted on Friday. There were not above half-a-score of us "to see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough to see the actors 1768. Æt. 40. Æt. 40. 1768. imagine the equal wonder with which the kind-hearted sage by Goldsmith's side heard the mirth he so heartily admired, and had himself so loudly laughed at, rehearsed with doleful anticipations. The managerial face appears to have lengthened in exact proportion as the fun became broad; and when, against the strongest remonstrance, it was finally determined to retain the scene of the bailiffs, Colman afterwards told his friends that he had lost all hope. * The eventful night arrived at last; Friday the 29th of January. It was not a club night, though the evening of meeting was ultimately altered from Monday to this later day to suit a general convenience; but a majority of the members, following Johnson's and Burke's example, attended the theatre, and agreed to close the evening in Gerrard-street. Cooke, now Goldsmith's neighbour in the Temple, and whom he had lately introduced to his Wednesday-club, was also present; and has spoken of what befell. Mr. Bensley, a stage lover of portentous delivery, seems to have thrown into the heavy opening of Johnson's prologue, Prest by the load of life, the weary mind Surveys the general toil of human kind, a ponderous gloom, which, at the outset, dashed the spirits "prompted every moment, and the poet directing them; and the drab" [Mrs. Old- "no opportunity of displaying his abilities;" and this it now became his care to make manifest. Uniform tameness, not to say insipidity," was his contribution to the illustration of Honeywood. "He seemed, from the beginning to "the end, to be a perfect disciple of Zeno." Shuter, on the other hand, going to work with Croaker after a different fashion, soon warmed the audience into his own enjoyment, and shocked the sentimentalists among them with the boisterous laughter he sent ringing through the house; nor was he ill seconded by the Lofty of Woodward, another excellent comedian, the effect of whose "contemptuous "patronage" of Honeywood was long remembered.* But then came the bailiffs; on whom, being poorly acted, and presenting no resistance that way, the disaffected party were able to take full revenge for what they thought the indelicacy of all such farcical mirth. Accordingly, when good Mr. Twitch described his love for humanity, and Little Flanigan cursed the French for having made the beer threepence half-penny a pot, Cooke tells us that he heard people in the pit cry out this was "low" ("language uncommonly "low," said the worthy London Chronicle in its criticism), * I am here quoting lines, and expressions, from the notices of the acting of the comedy in the papers of the week when it appeared. "The bailiff and his blackguard followers appeared intolerable on the stage, 66 yet we are not disgusted with them in the perusal" is the admission even of the Monthly Review (xxx. 160. February 1768); its notice of the Good Natured Man as "an agreeable play to read," immediately following its notice of False Delicacy as "a very agreeable play to see. "This whole scene in which those fellows perpetually joined conversation, in "language uncommonly low, gave some offence, and it is hoped the author will "for the future wholly omit it." London Chronicle for Jan. 28-30, 1768. I need hardly remind the reader of the pleasant use which Goldsmith made of this experience in his second comedy, or of the criticism called forth by Squire Lumpkin's song from the delicate frequenters of the Three Jolly Pigeons. "FIRST FELLOW. "The squire has got spunk in him. SECOND FELLOW. I loves to hear him sing, "bekeays he never gives us nothing that's low. THIRD FELLOW. O damn anything "that's low, I cannot bear it. FOURTH FELLOW. The genteel thing, is the genteel 1768. Æt. 40. |