Richard Steel as the founder of Sentimental Comedy

Name:- Hetal Dabh
Roll no:-11
Cass :- Sem -1
Paper no:- 2
Year:-2018-19

Richard Steel as the founder of sentimental Coedy



Steele was an Irish writer and politician, remembered mainly for co-founding the magazine The Spectator. ... Scholars argue whether a more important writer of the genre was Colley Cibber, an actor-manager, writer, and poet laureate who wrote the first sentimental comedy, Love's Last Shift, in order to give himself a role.

The best known work of this genre is Sir Richard Steele's The Conscious Lovers (1722), in which the penniless heroine Indiana faces various tests until the discovery that she is an heiress leads to the necessary happy ending. Steele wished his plays to bring the audience, "a pleasure too exquisite for laughter." Steele was an Irish writer and politician, remembered mainly for co-founding the magazine The Spectator. While he wrote a few notable sentimental comedies, he was criticized for being a hypocrite as he wrote moral plays, booklets, and articles but enjoyed drinking, occasional dueling, and debauchery around town.
Sentimental comedies
  Love's Last Shift by Colley Cibber
  The Constant Couple by George Farquhar
  The Lying Lover by Richard Steele
  The Tender Husband by Richard Steele
  The Conscious Lovers by Richard Steele
  The Foundling by Edward Moore

  The School for Lovers by William Whitehead

The Conscious Lovers
The Conscious Lovers is a sentimental comedy written in five acts by the Irish author Richard Steele. The Conscious Lovers appeared on stage on 7 November 1722, at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and was an immediate success, with an initial run of eighteen consecutive nights.
Men
Sir John Bevil
Mr. Sealand
Bevil Junior, in love with Indiana but betrothed to Lucinda
Myrtle, in love with Lucinda
Cimberton, a coxcomb
Humphrey, an old servant to Sir John
Tom, servant to Bevil Junior
Daniel, a country boy, servant to Indiana
Women
Mrs. Sealand, second wife to Sealand
Isabella, sister to Sealand
Indiana, Sealand's daughter by his first wife
Lucinda, Sealand's daughter by his second wife
Phillis, maid to Lucinda
Young Bevil, a gentleman of some fortune, is engaged to marry the daughter of Mr. Sealand. Although he is not in love with the woman, he agrees to marry her at his father’s request. On the day of the marriage, however, there is some doubt that the marriage will take place, for the bride’s father discovers that Bevil is paying the bills of a young woman he brought back from France. Fearing that the young woman, called Indiana, is Bevil’s mistress, Mr.
Sealand does not want his daughter to marry a man who keeps another woman.
The father does not know that Bevil sent a letter to Lucinda Sealand that gives her his permission to break off the marriage at that late date. Bevil did so because he knows that Lucinda is really in love with his friend, Mr. Myrtle, and because he himself wants to marry Indiana. After the letter is sent, Sir John’s valet tells young Bevil that the marriage will probably be broken by Mr. Sealand. Bevil then confides in the servant that Indiana is the daughter of the British merchant named Danvers, who disappeared in the Indies soon after the ship in which Indiana, her mother, and her aunt were traveling to join him was captured by French privateers.
Sentimental comedy in brief………

Sentimental comedy is an 18th century dramatic genre which resulted as a reaction to the immoral tone of English Restoration Plays. Sentimental comedies stressed the philosophical conception of humans as good at heart but got misled or astray by bad examples.these plays produce tears rather than laughter  i.e it evoke emotions or feelings that is why  The argument behind such effects was ‘by appealing to the noble sentiments of fellow we can reform him and can bring him back on the path of virtue’.
‘Guilt is punished ,virtue is rewarded’.The law of poetic justice  was used as an important technique. We  can say that it is a passionate expression of faith in the deep innate  goodness of man.The plays had  mostly middle.
Sentimental comedy had its roots in early 18th century tragedy , which had a vein of morality as that of sentimental comedy but had loftier characters and subject matter than sentimental comedy.  Though sentimental comedy  was a reaction against immoral tone of restoration plays but critics were very angry with such puppet type dramatic genre in which protagonist was made to act as the author thinks he should act. The comedy is full of arbitrary goodness ,exaggerated wickedness,forced conversions and untimely preachings. It was blamed that in the hands of sentimentalists  ‘comedy’ had lost its realistic characters. Sir Richard Steele’s The conscious Lovers     is  regarded as best known sentimental comedy. It deals with life of  its penniless heroine Indiana.

The characters in sentimental comedy are either strictly good or bad. Heroes have no faults or bad habits, villains are thoroughly evil or morally degraded. The authors' purpose was to show the audience the innate goodness of people and that through morality people who have been led astray can find the path of righteousness.
The plot usually centered on the domestic trials of middle-class couples and included romantic love scenes. Their private woes are exhibited with much emotional stress intended to arouse the spectator’s pity and suspense in advance of the approaching happy ending. Lovers are often shown separated from each other by socioeconomic factors at the beginning, but brought together in the end by a discovery about the identity of the lower class lover. Plots also contained an element of mystery to be solved. Verse was not used in order to create a closer illusion of reality. It was thought that rhyme would obscure the true meaning of the words and make the truth disappear.
The playwrights of this genre aimed to bring the audience to tears, not laughter, as the name sentimental comedy might suggest. They believed that noisy laughter inhibited the silent sympathy and thought of the audience. Playwrights strove to touch the feelings of the spectators so that they could learn from the play and relate the events they witnessed on stage to their own lives, causing them to live more virtuously.
Other sentimental comedies work by Colley Cibber
Love's Last Shift, or The Fool in Fashion is an English Restoration comedy by Colley Cibber from 1696.
The play is regarded as an early herald of a shift in audience tastes away from the intellectualism and sexual frankness of Restoration comedy and towards the conservative certainties and gender role backlash of sentimental comedy. It is often described as "opportunistic" (Hume), containing as it does something for everybody: daring Restoration comedy sex scenes, sentimental reconciliations, and broad farce.
Love's Last Shift is the story of a last "shift" or trick that a virtuous wife, Amanda, is driven to, in order to reform and retain her out-of-control rakish husband Loveless. Loveless has been away for ten years, dividing his time between the brothel and the bottle, and no longer recognizes his wife when he returns to London. Acting the part of a high-class prostitute, Amanda invites Loveless into her luxurious house and treats him to the night of his dreams, confessing her true identity in the morning. Loveless is so impressed by her faithfulness that he immediately becomes a reformed character. A minor part which was a great success with the première audience is the fop Sir Novelty Fashion, written by Cibber for himself to play. Sir Novelty flirts with all the women, but is more interested in his own exquisite appearance and witticisms, and, writes Cibber modestly in his autobiography 45 years later, "was thought a good portrait of the foppery then in fashion".
The play was a great box office hit at the première run but has not stood the test of time. Theatre historians today remember it, if at all, because of John Vanbrugh's sequel The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger, still a stage favourite, where the husband returns to polygamy.

Spenser's major works

Name:- Hetal Dabhi
Paper no:-1

Assignment
                       Spenser’s Major Work

About Spenser:- Life    ----( Of Spenser’s early life and parentage we know little, except that he was born in East Smithfield , near the Tower of London and was poor . His education began at the Merchant Tailor’s ‘School of London’ and was continued in Cambridge , Where as a poor sizar and fag for wealthy students he earned a scant living, here in the glorious world that only a poor scholar knows how to create for himself he read the classics, made acquaintance with the great Italian poets, and wrote numberless little poems of his own. Though Chaucer was his beloved master, his ambition was not to rival the  -Canterbury Tales- , but rather to express the dream of English chivalry , much as Aristotle had done for Italy in ‘ Orlando Furioso’  After leaving Cambridge (1576) Spenser went to the north of England , on some unknown work or quest . Here his chief occupation was to fail in love and to record his melancholy over the lost Rosalind in the ‘ Shepherd’s Calendar ‘ upon his friend Harvey’s advice he came to London , bringing his poems; and here he met Leicester , then at the height of royal favor and the latter took him to live at Leicester house. Here he finished the ‘Shepherd’s Calendar’ and here he met Sidney and all the queen’s favourites. The court was full of intrigues , lying and flattery , and Spenser’s opinion of his own uncomfortable position is best expressed in a few lines from “Mother Hubbard’s Tale”
“ Full Little knowest thou, that has not tried,
What hell it is , in suing long to bide :
To lose good days, that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent ;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch , to want, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.”
In 1580, through Leicester’s influence, Spenser, who was utterly weary of his dependent position, was made secretary to Lord Grey, the queen’s deputy in Ireland, and the third period of his life began. He accompanied his chief through one campaign of savage brutality in putting down an irish rebellion, and bee confiscated from Earl Desmond, one of the irish leaders . His life here, where according to the terms of his grant he must reside as an English settler, he must reside as an English settler, he regarded as lonely exile.
*Spenser’s Works-*
‘The Faery Queen’ is the great work upon which the poet’s fame chiefly rests. The original plan of the poem included twenty-four books, each of which was to recount the adventure and triumph of a knight who represent sented a moral virtue. Spenser’s purpose , as indicated in a letter to Raleigh which introduces the poem, is as follows:
To pourtaict in Arthure , before he was king , the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private Morall Vertues, as Aristotle hath devised; which is the purpose of these first twelve books: which W. J.Long finde to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encouraged to frame the other part of polloticke vertues in his person, after that hee came to be king.
Each of the

Virtues appears as a knight, fighting his opposing Vice and the poem tells the story of the opposing vise ,and the poem tells the story of the conflicts. It is therefore purely allegorical, not only in its personified virtues but also in its representation of life as a sruggle between good and evil. In its srong moral elements the poem differs radically from ‘Oelando Furioso’ upon which it was modelled. Spenser completed only six books. Celebrating Holiness , temperance, Chasticy , Friendship , Justice and Courtesy. We have also a fragment of the seventh, treating of constancy ; but the rest of this book was not written ,or else was list in the fire at kilolman . The first three books are by far the best ; and judging by the way the interest lags and the allegory geows incomprehensible , it is perhaps as well for Spenser’s reputation that the other eighteenth books remaind a dream.
Argument of The Faery Queen.-->
From the introductory latter we learn that the hero visits the queen’s court in fairy land , while she is holding a twelve days festival . one each day some distred person appears unexpectedly tells a woful story of dragons, of enchantresses, or of distressed beuty or virtue, and ask for a champion to rights the wrong and to let the oppressed go free. Sometimes a knight volunteers or begs for the dangerous mission; again the duty is assigned by the queen; and the journeys and adventures these knights are the objects of reprasentive Holiness and the lady una, representivereligioun. Srugl between virtue and faithone of the virtue and faith on the one hand , and sin and heresy on the other. The second books tells the story of Sir Guyon, or Temperance ; the third of Bristomartis , representing Chastity; the fourth , fifth, and sixth, of Cambel and Triamond (Friensheep) Artegall  and sir Calidore. Spencer’s plan was a very elastic one and he filled up the measure of his narrative with everything that caught his fancy- historical events and personages under allegorical masks , beautiful ladies , chivalrous knights, giants , monsters , dragons, sirens enchanters, and adventures enough to stock a liberty of fiction . If you read Homer or Virgil, you know his subject in the first srong line; Homer or Virgil , you know his subject in the first srong line; if you read caedmo’s parapharase or Milton’s epic, the introduction gives you the theme; but Spensor’s great poem with the exception of a single line in the prologue, “ Fierce warres and fathfull loves shall moralize my song –gives hardliy a hint of what is commimg.
As to the meaning of the allegorical figures , one is generally in doubt . In the first three books the shadowy Faery Queen sometimes represents the glory of God and sometimes Elizabeth. The Redcross Knight is Sidney , the model Englishmen . Arthur , who always appears to rescue the oppressed, is Leicester , which is another outrageous flattery. Una is sometimes religion and sometimes the protestant Church; while Duessa represents Mary Queen of Scots ,or general Catholicism . In the last three books Elizabeth appears again as Mercilla; Henry-4 of France as Bourbon ; the war in the Netherland as s story of Lady Belge; Raleigh as Timias ; the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland as Blandamour and pridell; and so on through the wide range of Northumberland and westoreland so on through the wide range of contemporary characters and events , till the allegory becomes as difficult to follow as the second part of Gothe’s Faust.
Poetical Form..=( For the Faery Queen Spenser invented a new verse form, which has been called since his day ; the Spenserian stanza. Because of its rare beauty it has been much used by nearly all our poets in their best work . The new stanza was an improved from of Aristo’s ottava rima and bears a close resemblance to one of Chaucer’s stanza “ is an most musical verse form “Monk’s Tale .” Spenser’s stanza is an nine lines , eight , are of five feet each and the last of six feet, riming ababbcbc. A few selections from the first book , which is best worth reading , are reproduce here to show the style  and melody of the verse.
Next to his masterpiece the Shephered Calender (1579) is the best known for Spenser’s poems trough the first work ,it is below many others in melody. In consist pasroral poemd below many years . The  themes are generally rular life.