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Of the moral character of Wycherley it can hardly be necessary for us to say more. His fame as a writer rests wholly on his comedies, and chiefly on the last two. Even as a comic writer, he was neither of the best school, nor highest in his school. He was in truth a worse Congreve. His chief merit, like Congreve's, lies in the style of his dialogue.
In his later comedies the names are admirably chosen: they are characteristic without eccentricity or punning. One feels that Eccles in Caste could not possibly have borne any other name. How much less living would he be had he been called Mr. Soaker or Mr. Tosspot! Characteristic without eccentricity that is what a name ought to be.
The henpecked husband who is afraid of offending his wealthy wife is a not uncommon figure in the comedies of Plautus and Terence; and Cato the Censor growled in his usual amiable manner at the fact that wives even in his day controlled completely their own property. The attitude of the Roman law on the subject is clearly expressed.
After all the vaudevilles, tragedies, and comedies which had been played under the worthy man's eyes for twelve long years, he could not detect the insincerity and grimaces of social comedy, no doubt because he had seen too much of it.
He told wicked anecdotes of the reign of His Majesty Louis XV.; he glorified the manners and customs of the year 1750; he told of the orgies in petites maisons, the follies of courtesans, the capital tricks played on creditors, the manners, in short, which furnished forth Dancourt's comedies and Beaumarchais' epigrams.
But the actors who were to perform the Greek comedies in Rome were not supplied with the masks beyond doubt much more artificial that were necessary for them; a circumstance which, apart from all else in connection with the defective acoustic arrangements of the stage, not only compelled the actor to exert his voice unduly, but drove Livius to the highly inartistic but inevitable expedient of having the portions which were to be sung performed by a singer not belonging to the staff of actors, and accompanied by the mere dumb show of the actor within whose part they fell.
Born in Cisalpine Gaul in the district of Mediolanum, he was brought among the Insubrian prisoners of war to Rome, and earned a livelihood, first as a slave, afterwards as a freedman, by remodelling Greek comedies for the theatre down to his probably early death . His language was not pure, as was to be expected from his origin; on the other hand, he directed his efforts, as we have already said, to a more artistic construction of the plot.
A mournful little smile came upon Mademoiselle Lecouvreur's reddened lips, and she answered: "You do not need me, Monsieur, to prove that you can write comedies or tragedies or anything else. All the muses adopted you at your birth, and if ever Adrienne Lecouvreur is remembered it will be because she was chosen by you sometimes to play the immortal parts you created."
"The poets call it love we doctors give it another name," says a kindly old character in one of Echegaray's comedies: "How is it cured? This very day with the aid of the priest; and so excellent a specific is this, that after a month's appliance, neither of the wedded pair retains a vestige of remembrance of the fatal sickness."
All countries seem to have been awakened to this social danger. The time when unsavory French comedies poisoned youth lies behind us. A strong reaction has set in and the leading companies among the photoplay producers fight everywhere in the first rank for suppression of the unclean.
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