



Produced by David Widger





THE BEAUX-STRATAGEM

By George Farquhar


     'He was a delightful writer, and one to whom
     I should sooner recur for relaxation and
     entertainment and without after-cloying and disgust,
     than any of the school of which he may be said
     to have been the last The Beaux-Stratagem
     reads quite as well as it acts: it has life,
     movement, wit, humour, sweet nature and sweet
     temper from beginning to end.'
     CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE




PREFACE

_The Author_. 'It is surprising,' says Mr. Percy Fitzgerald,
'how much English Comedy owes to Irishmen.' Nearly fifty
years ago Calcraft enumerated eighty-seven Irish dramatists in
a by no means exhaustive list, including Congreve, Southerne,
Steele, Kelly, Macklin, and Farquhar--the really Irish
representative amongst the dramatists of the Restoration, the true
prototype of Goldsmith and Sheridan. Thoroughly Irish by
birth and education, Captain George Farquhar (1677-1707)
had delighted the town with a succession of bright, rattling
comedies--Love and a Bottle (1698), The Constant Couple
(1699), Sir Harry Wildair (1701), The Inconstant (1702),
The Twin Rivals (1702), The Recruiting Officer (1706). In
an unlucky moment, when hard pressed by his debts, he sold
out of the army on the strength of a promise by the Duke of
Ormond to gain him some preferment, which never came. In
his misery and poverty, with a wife and two helpless girls to
support, Farquhar was not forsaken by his one true friend,
Robert Wilks. Seeking out the dramatist in his wretched
garret in St Martin's Lane, the actor advised him no longer to
trust to great men's promises, but to look only to his pen for
support, and urged him to write another play. 'Write!' said
Farquhar, starting from his chair; 'is it possible that a man
can write with common-sense who is heartless and has not a
shilling in his pockets?' 'Come, come, George,' said Wilks,
'banish melancholy, draw up your drama, and bring your sketch
with you to-morrow, for I expect you to dine with me. But as
an empty purse may cramp your genius, I desire you to accept
my mite; here is twenty guineas.' Farquhar set to work, and
brought the plot of his play to Wilks the next day; the later
approved the design, and urged him to proceed without
delay. Mostly written in bed, the whole was begun, finished,
and acted within six weeks. The author designed to dedicate
it to Lord Cadogan, but his lordship, for reasons unknown,
declined the honour; he gave the dramatist a handsome present,
however. Thus was _The Beaux-Stratagem_ written. Farquhar
is said to have felt the approaches of death ere he finished the
second act. On the night of the first performance Wilks
came to tell him of his great success, but mentioned that
Mrs. Oldfield wished that he could have thought of some more
legitimate divorce in order to secure the honour of Mrs. Sullen.
'Oh,' said Farquhar, 'I will, if she pleases, solve that
immediately, by getting a real divorce; marrying her myself, and
giving her my bond that she shall be a widow in less than a
fortnight' Subsequent events practically fulfilled this prediction,
for Farquhar died during the run of the play: on the
day of his extra benefit, Tuesday, 29th April 1707, the plaudits
of the audience resounding in his ears, the destitute,
broken-hearted dramatist passed to that bourne where stratagems
avail not any longer.

_Criticism of The Beaux-Stratagem_. Each play that
Farquhar produced was an improvement on its predecessors,
and all critics have been unanimous in pronouncing _The Beaux-Stratagem_
his best, both in the study and on the stage, of which
it retained possession much the longest. Except _The Recruiting
Officer_ and _The Inconstant_, revived at Covent Garden in 1825,
and also by Daly in America in 1885, non of Farquhar's other
plays has been put on the stage for upwards of a century.
Hallam says: 'Never has Congreve equalled _The Beaux-Stratagem_
in vivacity, in originality of contrivance, or in clear
and rapid development of intrigue'; and Hazlitt considers it
'sprightly lively, bustling, and full of point and interest:
the assumed disguise of Archer and Aimwell is a perpetual
amusement to the mind.' The action--which commences,
remarkably briskly, in the evening and ends about midnight
the next day--never flags for an instant. The well-contrived
plot is original and simple (all Farquhar's plots are excellent),
giving rise to a rapid succession of amusing and sensational
incidents; though by no means extravagant or improbable, save
possibly the mutual separation of Squire Sullen and his wife in
the last scene--the weak point of the whole. Farquhar was a
master in stage-effect. Aimwell's stratagem of passing himself
off as the wealthy nobleman, his brother (a device previously
adopted by Vanbrugh in _The Relapse_ and subsequently by
Sheridan in his _Trip to Scarborough_), may perhaps be a
covert allusion to the romantic story of the dramatist's own
deception by the penniless lady who gave herself out to be
possessed of a large fortune, and who thus induced him to
marry her.

The style adopted is highly dramatic, the dialogue being
natural and flowing; trenchant and sprightly, but not too witty
for a truthful reflex of actual conversation. The humour is
genial and unforced; there is no smell of the lamp about it,
no premeditated effort at dragging in jests, as in Congreve.
As typical examples of Farquhar's _vis comica_ I Would cite the
description of Squire Sullen's home-coming, and his 'pot of
ale' speech, Aimwell's speech respecting conduct at church, the
scene between Cherry and Archer about the L2000, and the
final separation scene--which affords a curious view of the
marriage tie and on which Leigh Hunt has founded an argument
for divorce. This play contains several examples of Farquhar's
curious habit of breaking out into a kind of broken blank verse
occasionally for a few lines in the more serious passages.
Partaking as it does of the elements of both comedy and force,
it is the prototype of Goldsmith's _She Stoops to Conquer_, which
it resembles in many respects. It will be remembered that
Miss Hardcastle compares herself to Cherry (Act III.), and
young Marlow and Hastings much resemble Archer and
Aimwell. Goldsmith was a great admirer of the works of his
fellow-countryman, especially _The Beaux-Stratagem_, and refers
to them several times (Citizen of the World, letter 93; History
of England, letter 16; Vicar of Wakefield, ch. 18), and in the
Literary Magazine for 1758 he drew up a curious poetical scale
in which he classes the Restoration dramatists thus:--
Congreve--Genius 15, Judgment 16, Learning 14, Versification 14;
Vanbrugh--14, 15,14,10; Farquhar--15, 15, 10, io. Unlike
Goldsmith, unhappily, Farquhar's moral tone is not high;
sensuality is confounded with love, ribaldry mistaken for wit
The best that can be said of him that he contrasts favourably
with his contemporary dramatists; Virtue is not _always_
uninteresting in his pages. He is free from their heartlessness,
malignity, and cruelty. The plot of _The Beaux-Stratagem_ is
comparatively inoffensive, and the moral of the whole is
healthy. Although a wit rather than a thinker, Farquhar in
this play shows himself capable of serious feelings. It is
remarkable how much Farquhar repeats himself. Hardly an
allusion or idea occurs in this play that is not to be found
elsewhere in his works. In the Notes I have pointed out many of
these coincidences.

_The Characters_. This play has added several distinct
original personages to our stock of comedy characters, and it
affords an excellent and lifelike picture of a peculiar and
perishing phase of the manners of the time, especially those
obtaining in the country house, and the village inn frequented
by highwaymen. The sly, rascally landlord, Boniface (who
has given his name to the class), is said to have been drawn
from life, and his portrait, we are told, was still to be seen
at Lichfield in 1775. The inimitable 'brother Scrub,' that
'indispensable appendage to a country gentleman's kitchen'
(Hazlitt), with his ignorance and shrewd eye to the main
chance, is likewise said to have been a well-known personage
who survived till 1759, one Thomas Bond, servant to Sir
Theophilus Biddulph; others say he died at Salisbury in 1744.
Although Farquhar, like Goldsmith, undoubtedly drew his
incidents and personages from his own daily associations,
there is probably no more