Читать книгу Thomas Otway - Thomas Otway - Страница 4

Patience! preach it to the winds,

To roaring seas, or raging fires; the knaves

That teach it laugh at ye when ye believe them. * * *

Now all I beg is, lay me in one grave,

Thus with my love! Farewell, I now am—nothing.

And Chamfort's, the last in the play:

'Tis thus that Heaven its empire does maintain;

It may afflict, but man must not complain.

The scenes in Don Carlos, where Carlos and the Queen meet, are admirably right in their abrupt, interrupted utterance, and must have been most effective on the stage. On the whole, no better opportunity exists for comparing the classical and romantic manners than in the examples afforded by these three plays on the reign of Philip. Don John's soliloquy about bastardy and free love is exceptionally good as a purple patch of poetry in Otway, though not without a reminiscence of Shakespeare's Edmund. There are likewise two splendid lines uttered by the King when Gomez is tempting him to suspect his son and queen. Gomez says:

'Tis true they gazed, but 'twas not very long.

King. Lie still, my heart. Not long was't that you said?

Gomez. No longer than they in your presence stayed.

King. No longer? Why a soul in less time flies To Heaven, and they have changed theirs at their eyes.

The Orphan I do not myself like so much as Don Carlos, but it is full of Otway's peculiar power, and has a greater reputation. The plot is repulsive, with a flavour of Elizabethan unsoundness. All the mischief and misery arise from a want of moral courage shown by Castalio, the passionate, but weak and irresolute hero, in concealing—partly from a kind of dastardly, rakish, bravado, and partly from fear of his father's disapproval, as well as a certain misplaced deference to fraternal affection—his own ardent and honourable affection for the orphan girl to whom he is secretly married. The character of Castalio is similar to that of Jaffier, Carlos, and of Otway himself, judging from what we know of his relations with Mrs. Barry. Monimia is another Belvidera, though less powerfully conceived. They are exquisite types of womanhood, own sisters to Cordelia, Imogen, Desdemona. There is no local colour in the play, but we miss that in Don Carlos and Venice Preserved more particularly. Otway's scenes might be in abstract space. The poetry of the period of Charles II., William, and Anne, was singularly blind to the face of external nature, a very serious defect; not even Greek or Latin poetry was thus blind.

I have drawn a distinction between two kinds of poetry in drama—that of movement or crisis, and that of repose or contemplation. The poetry appropriate to the one condition must necessarily be different from that appropriate to the other, and he is so far a bad poet who confounds the species. It will be the second kind that can be transplanted to books of beautiful extracts, and lends itself to quotation, because that is more germane to many similar circumstances; whereas the former belongs especially to the particular event or crisis. In the former species I have allowed that Otway is not rich. We look in vain for the poetry of Hamlet, of brooding, irresolute, melancholy; for the poetry of Lorenzo, that of music; or Portia, which is that of mercy; for any lovely words like those of Perdita, the very breath and symphony of flowers; for any accents like those of heart-stricken Aspatia, in her swan-song of desertion; or visionary anthem of Helen's ideal beauty, as in Marlowe. No Claudio out of Shakespeare has uttered a final word concerning physical death equal to this: "To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot"; no Cæsar has fixed for us the visible tokens of a born conspirator; no Jaques summed for us the seasons of human life. Nor are these mere "purple patches"; far from it, they are of the seamless garment's very warp and woof.

But, if we consider, we shall find that much of the poetry we love best in that earlier drama is the poetry of movement or supreme event; and this we do find in Otway, as the passages which I have already quoted, or mentioned, are sufficient to prove. We do find in him poetry parallel to that of mad Lear's heart-quaking utterance in presence of Cordelia, which commences—

Pray do not mock me;

I am a very foolish fond old man,

and ends—

Do not laugh at me;

For as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia.

or to her answer—

And so I am, I am!

She has some cause to be angry with him, but her sisters none, he says; and she answers "No cause! no cause!" That, which is, perhaps, the finest passage in all literature, has not one metaphor, one trope, one "precious" phrase; but any old injured madman might speak just so. When poor, laughable, dissolute old Falstaff, dying, "babbles o' green fields"; when Lear at the last apostrophises his dead Cordelia—

Thou'lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never! * * *

Pray you, undo this button. Thank you, sir! * * *

Do you see this? Look on her—look—her lips—

we can hardly bear to hear them. It is so much finer, because so much truer to nature than when those ingeniously poetical ladies, entreating the sepulture of their best beloved, urge that they are "rinsing their holy begging in their eyes." But Tourneur's Castiza takes our breath away when she adjures the trusted and reverenced mother, who has suffered her own better nature to be warped and darkened, and invites her daughter to suffer moral degradation, in the words—

Mother, come from that poisonous woman there!

It is a gleam of heavenly light blinding us out of the gloom. And when the Duchess of Malfi in her last struggle entreats—

I pray thee look thou givest my little boy

Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl

Say her prayers ere she sleep. Now what you please

[Pg xxxvii]

we are reminded of the equally touching words of Belvidera about her child, and the last words of dying Monimia:

When I am laid low in the grave, and quite forgotten,

May'st thou be happy in a fairer bride!

But none can ever love thee like Monimia. * * *

I'm here; who calls me? Methought I heard a voice

Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains

When all his little flock's at feed before him * * *

How my head swims. 'Tis very dark. Good night.

It is true that the poet, since he takes the liberty to translate into verse men's ordinary language, may also interpret and mould his story, together with the speech it may involve, artistically, according to his own genius. But then the turn of thought, of feeling and of phraseology must have verisimilitude, that is to say, must seem related, not only to the event as it might appear to the poet personally, but as it ought to appear to him when he has imagined himself into the character and circumstances represented. Thus the strange figure made use of by Jaffier in addressing Pierre, who is about to be tortured on the rack, is felt to be absolutely fitting. For anger, despair, remorse, will sometimes burst forth in hyperbole. Wisdom is justified of her children.

And now perhaps we may hardly be surprised to hear the consenting voice of great authorities place Otway very high among the masters of English tragedy. Dryden, though, when "fearing a rival near the throne," he had called Otway "a barren illiterate man," said afterwards: "The motions which are studied are never so natural as[Pg xxxviii] those which break out in the height of a real passion. Mr. Otway possessed this part as thoroughly as any of the ancients or moderns." And again:

Charming his face and charming was his verse.

Addison says: "Otway has followed nature in the language of his tragedy, and therefore shines in the passionate parts more than any of our English poets." Goldsmith again: "The English language owes very little to Otway, though next to Shakespeare the greatest genius England has ever produced in tragedy." Then let us remember the beautiful lines of Collins:

But wherefore need I wander wide

To old Ilissus' distant side,

Deserted stream and mute!

Wild Arun too has heard thy strains,

And echo 'midst my native plains

Been soothed by Pity's lute.

There first the wren thy myrtles shed

On gentlest Otway's infant head,

To him thy cell was shown,

And while he sung the female heart,

With youth's soft notes unspoiled by art,

Thy turtles mixed their own.

And Coleridge, musing upon "mighty poets in their misery dead," in his "Monody on the death of Chatterton" sang:

Is this the land of song-ennobled line?

Is this the land where genius ne'er in vain

Poured forth his lofty strain?

Ah me, yet Spenser, gentlest bard divine,

Beneath chill disappointment's shade

His weary limbs in lonely anguish laid,

And o'er her darling dead,

Pity, hopeless, hung her head;

While 'mid the pelting of that merciless storm

Sunk to the cold earth Otway's famished form.

Respecting Otway's scenes of passionate affection, Sir Walter Scott says that they "rival and sometimes excel those of Shakespeare; more tears have been shed probably for the sorrows of Belvidera and Monimia than for those of Juliet and Desdemona."

Thomas Otway[3] was born March 3rd, 1651, at Trotton near Midhurst in Sussex, and was the only son of the Rev. Humphrey Otway, Rector of Wolbeding in the same county. He was educated at Wickeham School, Winchester, and at eighteen was entered a commoner of Christ Church College, Oxford, early in 1669. He does not display much learning, and probably did not study very hard, but preferred amusing himself with his friends, among whom was young Lord Falkland. He had been intended for the Church; but the death of his father, who, as he tells us, "left him no other patrimony than his faith and loyalty," probably obliged him to leave Oxford without taking a degree. In 1671 he went to London to seek his fortune there. At the theatre in Dorset Garden, Salisbury Court, all Otway's plays, except the last, were performed by the Duke of York's company; and here Otway himself made his first and only appearance as an actor, taking the part of the King in Mrs. Behn's Forced Marriage. This attempt was eminently unsuccessful. He seems now to have cultivated the society of men of rank and fashion, who tolerated him as a boon companion for the sake of his agreeable social qualities, but who, while they helped him to get rid of his money in many foolish ways, left him in the lurch when he needed them most. The young Earl of Plymouth, however, a natural son of the king, and a college friend, did befriend him. His premature death at Tangier, aged twenty-two, was a serious loss to Otway.

The dramatist's earliest play was Alcibiades, first printed in 1675. It is a poor production, though there are scenes in it of distinct promise. Don Carlos appeared in the year after, and won extraordinary favour, partly owing to the patronage of Rochester, who dropped an author as soon as he acquired, by merit or popularity, some independent standing, fancying that his own literary dictatorship might be thereby imperilled. Thus he had dropped Dryden, taken up Elkanah Settle, the "City poet," dropped him, and elevated Crowne. But Crowne's Calisto becoming too popular for the malignant wit, he transferred his patronage to Otway. In 1677 Otway produced two translations from the French, Titus and Berenice, from Racine, and The Cheats of Scapin, from Molière. All these were rhyming, so-called "heroic" plays, our playwrights herein following the French example. But Dryden, in the Prologue to Aurungzebe, having announced that he would henceforth abandon the use of rhyme in tragedy, other writers soon followed his lead. The success of Don Carlos was the occasion of a coolness between Otway and Dryden, who, with the proverbial amiability of literary rivals, said some sharp things about one another; but we have seen how generously Dryden afterwards gave Otway his due meed of praise. To this period, says Thornton, we may probably assign a duel between Otway and Settle ("Doeg"), in which Settle is said to have misbehaved.

With the fine actress, Mrs. Barry, a daughter of Colonel Barry, who had sacrificed his fortune in the service of Charles I., Otway fell desperately in love. She had taken a part in his Alcibiades, and became famous by her representations of Belvidera and Monimia. To this affection, with all the depth of his character, Otway remained constant; but Mrs. Barry did not return it; at any rate, she deemed the attractions of Lord Rochester superior. Possibly Mr. Gosse may be right in thinking that she was a cold and calculating woman, who would reject a penniless lover, yet keep him dangling attendance upon her if he wrote parts that suited her as an actress. In this case, however, it seems odd that such parts should have suited her; and it would be touching to note how Otway must have idealized his lady in writing them for her. But she may honestly have preferred the witty and 5 peer to the tragic and penniless poet—though Otway was a goodlooking man with very fine eyes, and Rochester, according to Otway (a prejudiced witness), looked like an owl. Yet, judging by Rochester's portraits, he was distinguished, though rather feminine in appearance. However, Rochester was as sincerely attached to Mrs. Barry as such a rake could be, and she really owed him much, for he personally educated her in the duties of her profession. Otway loved "not wisely, but too well," as we know from the remarkable love letters, reprinted in the appendix to the present volume. With characteristic hotheadedness and weakness combined he could not resolve to renounce her, even though he knew she was Rochester's mistress. Hence the insolent bitterness of Rochester's attack upon him in his "Session of the Poets," in which he alludes to Otway's pitiable condition on his return from Flanders.[4] For even Otway's human nature had to yield at last, and he could no longer bear to hang about the Duke's Theatre, as had been his wont, in order to get a glimpse of his lady. He therefore obtained from the Earl of Plymouth a cornet's commission in a new regiment of horse, which was sent out at this time (1678) to join the army under Monmouth in Flanders—not, surely, as Mr. Gosse says, in the service of France, but, on the contrary, to relieve Mons in the Dutch interest. Very shortly after, however, the troops were disbanded and recalled, while the money voted by the Commons for their payment was shamefully misappropriated, they being paid only by debentures, the credit of which was so low that they were hardly saleable. This is why the poet came home in so miserable a plight, and not on account of any want of courage.

It was like Rochester to reproach him on this score—the man who showed the white feather to Lord Mulgrave, and made lackeys cudgel Dryden in Rose Alley. But Otway gave him as good as he got in the "Poet's Complaint." The matter is explained in the Epilogue to Caius Marius, which he produced in 1680, having written most of it in camp abroad. It is a barefaced, and indeed avowed plagiarism from Romeo and Juliet, though one or two scenes are his own, and have some merit. Marius, at all events, was a rather more dignified representative of Shaftesbury than old Antonio in Venice Preserved. This play occupied the place of Romeo and Juliet on our stage for seventy years. With a more avowed party motive he likewise published in the same year "The Poet's Complaint of his Muse." When we think of "Absalom and Achitophel," the contrast is woeful indeed. All Otway's poems are bad, except the Epistle to Duke, his friend. The blunted insipidity of his conventional diction is worthy of Pope's followers. Before leaving England he had written his first comedy, Friendship in Fashion, which appeared in 1678.

In the year 1680 Otway's second great play, The Orphan, appeared. Voltaire attacked it furiously, and will allow no merit to le tendre Otway. Tenderness anywhere was not likely to find favour with the tigre-singe, whose fascinating wit was of an icy brilliance. But Jeremy Collier also attacked the play on other grounds, in his "Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage." Mrs. Barry has recorded that in the character of Monimia she could never pronounce the words "Poor Castalio!" without tears. May she not have been thinking of another Castalio? Let us believe it! Ah! if only Mrs. Barry had been the Belvidera of her poet's dream, she might have saved him from his evil genius, from his selfish patrons, and from himself.

In 1681 Otway produced The Soldier's Fortune, a comedy which contains allusions to his own adventures abroad, and is the only contemporary play not dedicated to a person of quality, being dedicated to Bentley, the publisher. Depressed by his hopeless passion, "alternately elevated with promises and dejected by scorn and neglect, caressed for his wit, despised for his poverty, and exposed to all those attendant ills, which a generous spirit feels more acutely than actual privation, neglect, wrongs real and imaginary, the altered eye of friends," we can hardly wonder at the gloomy tone which he assumed in the Epilogue to this play. Can we not picture him with those large, limpid, wistful eyes looking for the face he most wanted among the crowds, preoccupied or listless, that passed in the gathering twilight of that afternoon, which he mentions in the last of those letters to Mrs. Barry, lingering among strange faces of promenaders under the trees of the gay Mall, looking long for her who never came, never fulfilled her promise to meet him? This seems to have been the turning point in Otway's career. Failing in this last attempt to win his lady's love, and sinking under accumulated debt, he, like how many others, surrendered himself to those habits of inebriety, which insidiously promised him consolation. And yet his creative powers were maturing daily, for his greatest work, Venice Preserved, was brought upon the stage in 1682.

Since Otway's plays were well received, it may seem strange that he should have remained so poor. But, in the first place, he was evidently one of those generous, reckless good fellows like "Goldy," and Sheridan, who spend all they have, and more too. And, in the second place, the profits of the playhouse were very small. Theatrical amusements were not the general resort of the people—a serious disadvantage, as Scott observes, to the art, as well as to the purse, of the playwright. Religious scruples still withheld many, as in Commonwealth days; and others were kept away by the indecency then in vogue. The most popular play did not remain long on the boards. In Otway's time, moreover, an author had only one benefit from the representation, which was on the third night. Southerne was the first to have two benefits, and it was not until 1729 that the profits of three representations became the right of the author. Gildon says that Otway got a hundred pounds a piece for The Orphan and Venice Preserved, while old Jacob Tonson bought the copyright of Venice Preserved for fifteen pounds. The poet was sometimes in such straits that he had to pawn his third day for fifty pounds. He could not have made much by his few prologues and occasional poems.

Otway's last play was a comedy called The Atheist, a continuation of The Soldier's Fortune, represented in 1683, or the following year, at the Theatre Royal by the united companies, who had amalgamated in 1682, and removed to Drury Lane. Charles II. died in February, 1685, and Otway thereupon published a poem called "Windsor Castle," in which he praised the late king, and exulted over the accession of James. His praises of Charles were probably not much more sincere than those which he, and other writers of the day, lavished upon people of rank in their dedications for the sake of a few guineas. More guineas are to be had now-a-days by flattering the whims and tastes of that "many-headed" monarch, under whose reign we have the honour to live. In the so-called Augustan age, literary merit was systematically neglected. Witness Butler and Cowley. Yet Otway was the son of a loyalist, and ever faithful to the Court. Nor was Charles incapable of appreciating talent. But Otway, to use his own words, only got the "pension of a prince's praise"; and a gracious command to lampoon the greatest statesman of the time, which he did accordingly. Praise of one who cannot be a rival is an inexpensive form of present. It appears, however, that two of the royal mistresses were more generous—Nell Gwynne and the Duchess of Portsmouth, whose bounty, "extended to him in his last extremity," he extols in the dedication of Venice Preserved.

Otway had withdrawn from the importunate clamour of creditors to an obscure public-house, the sign of the Bull, on Tower Hill; and here, on the 14th of April, 1685, at the premature age of thirty-four, he died. His body was conveyed thence to the Church of St. Clement Danes, and there deposited in a vault. About the circumstances of his death there is a conflict of evidence. The story that has gained currency is probably not the true one; only one early biographer is our authority for it. He states that, having long been insufficiently fed, Otway one day sallied forth in a starving state, and begged a shilling from a gentleman in a coffee house, saying, "I am the[Pg xlviii] poet Otway." This person, surprised and distressed, gave him a guinea. With it he bought a roll of bread, and began to devour it with the rage of hunger; but, incapable of swallowing from long abstinence, he was choked with the first mouthful. Other writers make no mention of this incident, and Wood is not only silent on the subject, but states that in his "sickness" (implying gradual decay) he composed a congratulatory poem on the inauguration of James II. Spence, moreover, who had the anecdote from Dennis the critic, tells quite a different story. He relates that Otway had an intimate friend named Blakiston, who was murdered in the street, and that, to revenge the deed, Otway pursued the assassin on foot as far as Dover, where he was seized with a fever, occasioned by fatigue, privation, and excitement. On his return to London, being heated, he drank water, which was the immediate occasion of his death. Yet undoubtedly insufficient nourishment must have accelerated his end. It is quite possible, therefore, that the anecdote about the guinea and the roll may be substantially true, although this circumstance may not have been the actual cause of death.

The ardour and constancy of Otway's personal attachments are very notable all through his career—witness his friendship with Shadwell (though Mr. Gosse strangely calls Shadwell his enemy), with an unknown person whom he names Senander, and especially with Duke, whose expressions of fondness for him were very warm. And it now appears that he fell a victim to this devoted comradeship, which he has so forcibly delineated in his tragedy. "Whom the gods love die young." Otway is with Shelley, Keats and Byron, with Marlowe and with Chatterton.

Roden Noel.

⁂ Otway made some translations from Ovid and Horace. He also wrote prologues to Lee's Constantine and Mrs. Behn's City Heiress, with an epistle to Creech on his translation of Lucretius, besides a few miscellaneous poems, prologues, and epilogues. A translation from the French, the History of Triumvirates, was published a year after his decease. Moreover, it was reported that he had been engaged on an original tragedy at the time of his death; Betterton, the actor and manager, advertised for this play, but it was never found. All authorities, except Mr. Gosse, agree in rejecting as a forgery the play named Heroic Friendship, which a bookseller long afterwards (in 1719) attempted to palm off upon the public as the lost tragedy of Otway. While destitute of all external evidence for genuineness, it is usually regarded as a contemptible production, equally destitute of internal evidence. Mr. Gosse indeed urges a similarity in the principal character to the heroes of Otway. But of course to produce such a similarity would be the obvious resort of any forger. It was printed, though never acted. Gildon relates that Otway was very fond of punch, and that the last thing he wrote was a song in praise of it.

William Oldys, in his famous annotated copy of Langbaine's Dramatic Poets, in the British Museum, thus writes of Otway: "There is an excellent and beautiful picture of Mr. Otway, who was a fine, portly, graceful man, now among the poetical collection of Lord Chesterfield (I think it was painted by John Ryley), in a full bottom wig, and nothing like that quakerish figure which Knapton has impost upon the world." Interlined is the following: "He was of middle size, about 5 ft. 7 in., inclinable to corpulency, had thoughtful, yet lively, and, as it were, speaking eyes."

I am indebted to Dr. Grosart for the foregoing quotation, and have to express my thanks to Mr. S. W. Orson for numerous textual suggestions and emendations.