



Produced by Oliver Walden





THE FEMALE GAMESTER

A TRAGEDY


By Gorges Edmond Howard


  Et quando uberior vitiorum copia? quando
  Major avaritiae patuit sinus? alea quando
  Hos animos? neq; enim loculis comitantibus itur,
  Ad casum tabulae, posita sed luditur arca.
                                     Juv. Sat. I.

  Sure none in crimes could erst beyond us go!
  None such a lust for sordid avarice show!
  Was e'er the Die so worn in ages past?
  Purses, nay Chests, are now stak'd on a cast.



  To the
  Countess of Charlemont,
  the Lady Viscountess Southwell,
  and Lady Lifford.


As the example of Persons of rank and quality, must ever have
a powerful influence upon all others in society, and as I know
none among the many eminently virtuous characters of your sex,
(for which this kingdom is above all others distinguished) with
whom I have the honour of being acquainted, more conspicuous
than your Ladyships, for excellence of conduct in every female
department in life, I, therefore, thus presume in taking the
liberty of presenting the following DRAMATIC ESSAY to your
patronage, and am, with the highest respect,

    Your Ladyships'

    Most obedient servant, &c.
    The Author.




To the Reader.


I have always been of the same opinion with the Author of
the Preface to the translation of Brumoy's Greek Theatre;
in which, speaking of Tragedy, he hath expressed himself
in the following lines: "In England, the subject is frequently
too much exalted, and the Scenes are too often laid too high.
We deal almost solely in the fate of Kings and Princes, as if
misfortunes were chiefly peculiar to the great.  But our Poets
might consider, that we feel not so intensely the sorrows of
higher powers, as we feel the miseries of those who are nearer
upon a level with ourselves.  The revolution and fall of empires
affect us less, than the distresses of a private family.  Homer
himself had wandered like Ulysses, and although by the force
of imagination he so nobly described the din of battle, and
the echoing contests of fiery princes, yet his heart still
sensibly felt the indigence of the wandering Ithacan, and
the contemptuous treatment shewn to the beggar, whose soul
and genius deserved a better fate."

This having confirmed me in my opinion, I set about the following
dramatic attempt upon that horrid vice of Gaming, of all others
the most pernicious to society, and growing every day more and
more predominant amongst all ranks of people, so that even the
examples of a Prince, and Princess, pious, virtuous, and every way
excellent, as ever a people were blessed with, contrary to the
well-known axiom,

  Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis,
  have had but small effect.


I finished it, part in prose, and part in blank verse, in about six
weeks, and having shewn it to several of my literary acquaintance,
the far greater part were of opinion, that it should be entirely
one, or the other; but, as the scene was laid in private life, and
chiefly among those of middling rank, it ought to be entirely prose;
and that, not much exalted; and accordingly, with no small labour,
I turned it all into prose.  But in some short time after, having
communicated this to Dr. Samuel Johnson, his words (as well as I
remember) were, "That he could hardly consider a prose Tragedy as
dramatic; that it was difficult for the Performers to speak it;
that let it be either in the middling or in low life, it may,
though in metre and spirited, be properly familiar and colloquial;
that, many in the middling rank are not without erudition;
that they have the feelings and sensations of nature, and every
emotion in consequence thereof, as well as the great, and that
even the lowest, when impassioned, raise their language; that
the writing of prose is generally the plea and excuse of poverty
of Genius."  And some others being of the same opinion, I have
now chang'd it all into metre.


  Fired is the Muse! and let the Muse be fired.
  Who's not inflam'd, when what he speaks he feels?
                                             Young.


The introduction by the moderns of confidents, those friends
in Tragedy, to whom the chief personages discover their secrets
and situation, has been also objected to by critics.  The discovery
is indeed purposely made to the audience, and supplies the want of
a chorus.  But to speak in Monsieur Brumos's own stile: "If Homer,
in his Epic poem, found a Patroclus necessary to his Achilles, and
Virgil an Achates to Aeneas, such examples may well justify the
Dramatic Poets in calling in the assistance of associates, who
generally appear of more use than ornament to the piece."  Besides,
were it not for them, long and disgusting soliloquies must be
innumerable, especially if there be any plot in the piece of
either love, ambition, or conspiracy.  In short, as he again says,
"they are the mortar which forms the proper cement to fix the
corner stones of the building."

But I declare, that the avoiding on the one hand, a style too high,
as on the other, too mean and vulgar for the subject, or the persons
concerned therein, has been a talk far more difficult to me than
any of the best formed lines in either of my other Tragedies,
so that I