even Sir Benjamin. Lady Teazle belongs to the scandal group, yet is not wholly of it. Maria is perhaps the most vaguely developed of those having any importance in the final scene. Joseph Surface is an embodied satire of sentimentalism, the dramatic style then falling off because of Sheridan's popularity. In this case the satire is centralized in one person, whereas the attacks on political corruption, social affectation, and slander are to be found pervading the speeches of several characters. The meaning of the various persons to Sheridan himself, his reasons for including so many elements in a single play-these are some of the refreshing topics still to be examined with the acuteness that has characterized past criticism of the dialogue and situations. Anstey's Bath Guide (1766) and Humphrey Clinker give other descriptions of eighteenth-century Bath, and contemporary journals show how the play was received during the author's lifetime.

802 A portrait. These stanzas have many phrases and poetic formulæ reminiscent of Pope. 802 Mrs. Crewe: daughter of Fulke Greville, a famous beauty. She was very intimate with the Sheridans and their circle of friends.

802 36 Reynolds, Sir Joshua (1723-1792): the portrait painter, one of Sheridan's intimate companions.

803 99 Millar (or Miller), Anna. She held literary court at Batheaston. Those attending her assemblies tossed their verses into a Roman vase decked with garlands, after the fashion of Renaissance poetic contests, and the judges later crowned the chosen lords and ladies with myrtle. Horace Walpole wrote a satirical sketch of the group.

805 26 the Town and Country Magazine. Appeared monthly with sketches of fashionable intrigues in London society, usually with the persons concerned clearly identified.

809 482 Irish tontine. As a means of meeting the Irish national debt, annuities were sold after the manner of tontine insurance. The plan gave life annuities to the contributors, the principal finally going to the Treasury.

821 164 the Annuity Bill. Passed in 1777. It hindered the purchase of annuities when minors would thereby be injured.

828 Act IV, Scene I. Matthews notes that the picture scene was possibly a source of Victor Hugo's Hernani.

829 67 Kneller (1646-1723). Painted the portraits of English royalty and nobility. The description here hits at the style of setting popular in England about 1700.

842 132 Salthill: a mound on the Bath Road, every third year the scene of the Eton "Montem." Then, on the day set, the boys exacted fees from all passers-by for the support of their senior scholar. This custom, stopped in 1847, is described in Disraeli's "Coningsby."

849 Epilogue. George Colman, the elder, who wrote these lines, was proprietor of the Haymarket Theatre and a playwright. Among his works is Polly Honeycomb, whose title character is listed as one source of Sheridan's Lydia Languish. Colman's conception of Lady Teazle is not in keeping with the spirit of her last speeches, as the eighteenth-century epilogue was inclined toward striking effects rather than harmony with the play.

THE CRITIC

Sheridan staged The Critic at Drury Lane on October 30, 1779, as an afterpiece to Hamlet. His place in dramatic circles was then unassailable by reason of his success as both playwright and manager; it is natural, therefore, that the play should ridicule mildly those writers who had shown hostility because of his earlier attacks on sentimental comedy. The Critic was Sheridan's triumph song as well as his last noteworthy piece of drama.

He found the framework of his farce on dramatic conventionalities ready at hand in The Rehearsal and in the plays of Fielding, Churchill, and Foote. Some similar phrases exist in his college work Jupiter. The play within a play had long been a standard form of satire; Sheridan merely extended it to include everything relating to theatrical conditions. Act I ridicules the petty tricks of patronage and the plagiarizing dramatist, with direct thrusts at Robert Cumberland as Sir Fretful and presumably at Thomas Vaughan through the rôle of Dangle. Don Whiskerandos has been taken by early critics as a hit at John James Hamilton. The act also has some very modern commentaries on newspaper "puffing." In Act II comes the paraphrase of passages from contemporary tragedy, with attention to its tautology, inflated diction and groans, and its tedious use of artificial situation lacking action. As for sentimental comedy, the entire field of its mannerisms is raked over in a fashion more entertaining to contemporaries than to modern readers. Important additions to these old topics of satire are Sheridan's ridicule of the charge that he plagiarized from manuscripts submitted

to him as manager of Drury Lane1 and his praise of the leading actors in his own company. The Critic was unquestionably an excellent advertisement of Drury Lane,

Of less importance are the outcroppings of Sheridan's own political attachments in the references to bad conduct of the naval war against France and Spain, although this material makes the play a reflection of all his thinking and feeling at an interesting point in his career. This farce lacks the gay liveliness of his preceding comedy, but it has an attractive maturity of opinion. The Critic is Sheridan himself at the height of his popularity and before misfortune had turned him toward introspection and away from that quick perception of the ridiculous in human nature.

851 Dramatis Personæ. The first edition gives the names of the actors in order as follows: Messrs. Dodd, Palmer, Parsons, Delpini, Baddeley, Phillimore, King, Mrs. Hopkins, Miss Field, and Miss Abrams; Messrs. Moody, Wrighten, Farren, Burton, Waldron, Kenny, Wright, Packer, Lamash, Fawcett, Gawdry, Bannister, Jr., Miss Collet, Miss Kirby, Mrs. Johnston, Mrs. Bradshaw, and Miss Pope.

851 Mrs. Greville: mother of Mrs. Crewe, to whom Sheridan dedicated the preceding play. She was the author of several light poems.

852 Richard Fitzpatrick (1747-1813). Intimate with Fox and Sheridan. A soldier, politician, and wit of their sort, he held various state employments and was part author of The Rolliad.

8521 Lord North (1732-1792): First Lord of the Treasury. He drove England on toward the Revolutionary War.

8523 the first L- of the A-: the corrupt John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, who failed to develop England's naval power properly.

8525 St. Kitt's. Of interest then as being the naval base of Vice-Admiral Byron, grandfather of the poet; he was operating against the French from the West Indies.

852 5 Coxheath: near Maidstone; it had a large militia encampment during the summer of 1779.

8527 Sir Charles Hardy: in command of the Channel Fleet; he suffered abuse for prudently avoiding battle with the superior French and Spanish fleets.

1 The basic idea of The Critic Anticipated (1779), a farce ostensibly by Sheridan in which he and his parents are given ridiculous rôles in a discussion of their individual merits as dramatists.

852 10 the Morning Chronicle. It had William Woodfall as its dramatic critic.

853 43 certainty of an invasion. This danger was fairly passed by October, when the Critic appeared.

853 96 the manager has monopolised the Opera-house. This is Sheridan's mild ridicule of the bitterly satirical attacks on his control of Drury Lane and his close understanding with the manager of Covent Garden.

855 216 a comedy on a very new plan. In the Prologue the author shows his distaste for both Restoration and eighteenth-century standards in comedy; here sentimental comedy is analyzed in its relation to domestic tragedy.

863 420 Junius: the pseudonym of an undiscovered writer against the ministry of Sir William Draper and the Duke of Grafton. His brilliant letters, now usually attributed to Sir Philip Francis, appeared in the Public Advertiser from November 21, 1768, until January 21, 1772. 863 424 Paul Jones (1747-1792): of Scotch ancestry. His famous naval victories were won between 1775 and 1778 under the American flag; then during the war between France and England he defeated, on August 14, 1779, the British Serapis with his Bonhomme Richard. After further adventures in the French and Russian navies he died in Paris and was buried there; in 1905 the leaden casket containing his body was found after persistent search and was brought to Annapolis for interment.

864 431 Charles Fox (1749-1806): a celebrated orator and statesman. With Burke he championed the cause of the Colonies; though his personality was far from attractive and his habits most erratic, he made a courageous stand with Sheridan and the other opponents of Lord North's policies.

864 10 The Spanish Armada. A fitting title inasmuch as circumstances then vividly resembled those of 1588.

865 35 Christopher Hatton (1540-1591): Lord Chancellor under Queen Elizabeth. His dancing at court first brought him to the queen's attention.

873 122 Lord Burleigh, William Cecil (15201598): chief minister to Elizabeth for some forty years.

876 348 Händel's water music. Played behind the royal barge in the fall of 1715, it won the composer a renewal of royal favor.

GEORGE VILLIERS, the second Duke of Buckingham, was born on January 30, 1628, in Westminster. His father was murdered during a time of popular excitement following English naval reverses, and the young Duke with his brother came under the protection of Charles I; he was reared with the royal children and, in company with Prince Charles, entered Trinity College, Cambridge. During his years in college the Duke of Buckingham made close friends of Martin Clifford and the poet Cowley. Having been admitted to his master's degree in 1642, he was ready for activities more to his taste than those of a sequestered college life, and until his death on April 16, 1687, was thereafter constantly engaged in political machinations. The chief assets of this consummate intriguer were a quick under-. standing of popular feeling, great personal charm, and an intellectual curiosity which brought him into contact with persons from every walk of life. Failure of the Royalist cause led to the forfeiture of the great Buckingham estate. The Duke sought safety in France, but before the restoration of Charles II he was again living in England. After 1660 his estates were restored, and his court influence became very great. An income of over twenty thousand pounds yearly permitted him to live in the most extravagant and profligate manner and to carry on whatever scientific experimentation took his fancy. From 1662 to 1667 Buckingham was a member of the privy council. The following years were filled with self-seeking intrigues against Clarendon, the Duke of Ormonde, and all others who stood in his light. His greatest prominence, and most unsavory, was attained after the year 1670, when a few politicians about the king sold out the interests of England to Louis XIV. Though only a subordinate in these plots, Buckingham richly deserved the punishment inflicted in 1674 through the withdrawal of all his state employments.

The political significance of Buckingham thereafter steadily became less. His pleas for religious toleration were intended to win favor with the city tradesmen and with dissenters of all sorts, but all to no avail. The Popish Plot of 1678 seemed for a time to threaten the stability of the

government, but before long that danger disappeared. In 1680 Shaftesbury almost succeeded in inciting a Protestant rebellion in behalf of the illegitimate Duke of Monmouth, but again Buckingham's hopes were doomed to fail. At length he was satisfied to regain court favor without the usual accompaniments in the way of employments; in 1685, at the accession of James II, he went into retirement and died in 1687.

His appreciation of literature was of the formal sort then fashionable among men of station. He gladly patronized Wycherley, Sprat, Cowley, and Clifford for the sake of popular esteem. Custom required of the aristocracy such tribute to the fine arts; no writer was presumably too insignificant to deserve such protection. Buckingham, however, showed some personal aptitude in writing, particularly of pindarics, satires, and lampoons. A collection of such pieces from his hand was printed in 1705. He also wrote several pamphlets on religious topics, and one replying to Dryden's satirical character sketch. This last appeared in 1682 as "Some Reflections on a Late Poem entitled 'Absalom and Achitophel,' by a Person of Honor." His plays, aside from The Rehearsal, have suffered the same fate as these occasional pieces.

On February 5, 1667, Pepys saw Buckingham's The Chances, an adaptation of Fletcher's work of the same name. It was printed in 1682. The Restoration, or Right Will Take Place, taken from Philaster, seems never to have been acted, but was printed in 1714. A third piece, The Battle of Sedgmoor, was written against the Earl of Feversham. It was published with a dialogue, The Militant Couple, in 1705, but the dates of composition or of production of these works are not known. The Rehearsal, staged December 7,

1 The tables of plays by each author give abbreviations for the theatres where they were produced, dates of first productions, of first editions, and of entries as found in the Stationers' Register. Abbreviations used for the names of London theatres are as follows: C. G., Covent Garden; D. G., Dorset Gardens; D. L., Drury Lane; G. F., Goodman's Fields; Hay., Haymarket; L. I. F., Lincoln's Inn Fields; T. R., Theatre Royal (i.e., Drury Lane).

1671, at the Theatre Royal, was licensed for printing on June 19, 1672; the enlarged version, in 1675.

Since Tom Brown's 1705 edition of Buckingham's works only one attempt has been made to collect all his writings into a complete edition. In 1761 Bishop Percy made a good beginning, but gave up his plan after seeing part of the work through the press. With the exception of a unique copy, now in the British Museum, this unfinished impression was destroyed by fire in 1808.

SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE, born of an old Oxfordshire family in 1634 or 1635, is said to have studied for a time at Cambridge. Very early, however, he journeyed to France, where he gained his knowledge of life by a pleasurable indulgence that unfitted him for any serious effort. Having returned to England some time after the Restoration, he fruitlessly set himself to the study of law. It was then that his understanding of French stage fashions led him into playwriting. His first and his second comedies brought popularity and presumably led to the appointment in 1668 as secretary to Sir Daniel Harvey, ambassador to Constantinople. Thence Etherege returned to London at an unknown date and wrote his most successful comedy and a few trivial verses. This closed his literary career.

Etherege took advantage of his dramatic reputation to win the hand of a rich widow, whom he henceforth neglected disgracefully in behalf of the actress Mrs Barry. He continued to capitalize his social value until he gained a knighthood and finally, in March, 1685, the post of English envoy at Regensburg. This state appointment came through Mary of Modena, queen to James II, who for many years had been Etherege's chief patroness. After this date the dramatist seems from his own letter book to have done no literary work; now and then amid the record of official duties appear comments upon new works arriving from England, but no mention of fresh projects of his own. Following his loss of place at the Revolution, in the spring of 1689 Etherege left for Paris to pass his remaining years in obscurity. The year of his death is conjecturally set as 1691.

His three plays are written in the vein of Molière. No other English dramatist of the period made such profitable use of the noteworthy comedies then appearing on the French stage. In wit and niceness of phrase the plays of Etherege are clearly inferior to his master's,

and his dialogue has less spirit. The similarity to Molière lies in the urban satire and in the type characters. With these foreign qualities appears much realistic material from the social encounters of Pall Mall and St. James Street, from Hyde Park and the Exchange. This casting of English manners in French character molds affected all high comedy written for the London stage during the next hundred years. Sheridan may be considered as a direct descendant of Etherege through Congreve and Farquhar, even though the evidence of lineage is merely general in most respects. To Etherege belongs the credit of adding to the traditions of English comedy of manners something needed to give sprightliness to the elements developed before the closing of the theatres.

All of Etherege's plays were produced at the Duke's Theatre and were promptly printed. The dates were: The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub, 1664; 1664 (S. R., July 8, 1664): She Would if She Could, 1668; November, 1668 (S.R., June 24, 1668): The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter, 1676; November, 1676 (S.R., June 15, 1676).

JOHN DRYDEN was born on August 9, 1631, in the village of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, of Puritan stock. After studying under Busby at Westminster school, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1650, and gained his bachelor's degree in 1654. Three years later he was in London acting as secretary to his cousin, Gilbert Pickering, and in 1660 he began his quest of court favor by writing Astræa Redux in praise of Charles II.

Favor at court was won through Sir Robert Howard, whose sister Dryden married in 1663. A succession of noble patrons assumed the hereditary duty of their class until in 1670 the poet was made historiographer-royal and poet laureate. From Charles II came also, in 1683, a place in the Customs office, and from James II a hundredpound pension. All these sources of income were stopped in 1688, whereupon Dryden was forced to write and translate with new vigor. He died on May 1, 1700, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Dryden's remarkably active life falls into three uneven divisions. From 1663 until 1680 he wrote twenty of his twenty-eight plays (including adaptations). An agreement made near the end of this period, to write three plays a year for the King's Theatre, was not kept. In 1681 and 1682