Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 13, 2025
Possibly autobiographical in the matter of the first play. Charles Lamb's first play was the opera "Artaxerxes;" Mary's may quite well have been Congreve's "Mourning Bride." The book-shop at the corner of St. Leicester's School was published and sold.
He was as much out of his element with such a character as any of the French lovers in Marmontel's Tales would be tete-a-tete with a Roman or a Grecian matron as much at a loss as one of the fine gentlemen in Congreve's plays might find himself, if condemned to hold parley with a heroine of Sophocles or of Euripides.
Presently I was indeed to number character itself among the abstractions, encouraged by Congreve's saying that 'passions are too powerful in the fair sex to let humour, or as we say character, 'have its course. Nor have we fared better under the common daylight, for pure reason has notoriously made but light of practical reason, and has been made but light of in its turn, from that morning when Descartes discovered that he could think better in his bed than out of it; nor needed I original thought to discover, being so late of the school of Morris, that machinery had not separated from handicraft wholly for the world's good; nor to notice that the distinction of classes had become their isolation.
He declared that a description of a temple in Congreve's Mourning Bride was the finest he knew finer than anything in Shakspeare. Garrick vainly protested; but Johnson was inexorable. He compared Congreve to a man who had only ten guineas in the world, but all in one coin; whereas Shakspeare might have ten thousand separate guineas. The principle of the criticism is rather curious.
The lines from Congreve are bald and utterly commonplace; they have no positive quality; and when some of us think of such gems as "When daisies pied and violets blue," or, "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," or even the description of the Dover cliff, not to mention the thousands of other gems in Shakspere's great dramas, we feel inclined to be angry when we are asked to admire Congreve's stilted nonsense.
The kissing of one another by grown-up men as a salutation was abandoned in this country as late as the eighteenth century. "'Tis not the fashion here," says a London gentleman to his country-bred friend in Congreve's "Way of the World." But we have, most of us, witnessed it abroad, and perhaps been unexpectedly subjected to the process, as I once was by an affectionate scientific colleague.
Your father was threatened, plead with, and sworn at; but while he remained firm to his intention of marrying me, he really loved his fiery uncle, and disliked to come out in open rebellion; but a final move of Mr. Congreve's was more than he could bear. He locked him up.
Congreve's Way of the World is an exception to our other comedies, his own among them, by virtue of the remarkable brilliancy of the writing, and the figure of Millamant. The comedy has no idea in it, beyond the stale one, that so the world goes; and it concludes with the jaded discovery of a document at a convenient season for the descent of the curtain. A plot was an afterthought with Congreve.
Miss Sophie Larkin would play the part, and it would be intended to be a comic one. There is more suggestiveness in the conventional stage figure of the amorous old maid than in all Congreve's comedies. And yet what figure is more certain to please, in the whole gallery of puppets?
Congreve's comedies are the most witty and regular, those of Sir John Vanbrugh most gay and humorous, and those of Mr. Wycherley have the greatest force and spirit. It may be proper to observe that these fine geniuses never spoke disadvantageously of Moliere; and that none but the contemptible writers among the English have endeavoured to lessen the character of that great comic poet.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking