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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
Charges by Jeremy Collier and others in the controversy generated by A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage have been widely accepted while the replies by Congreve, Vanbrugh, and many other stage defenders have been generally neglected or depreciated. The critical tenets of Collier's opponents are examined in the framework of four postulates Congreve presents in his own defense. Along with others sharing his views, Congreve the “Aristotelian” argues that the drama must represent vice and folly in strongly mimetic terms in order to shame offenders and divert and warn others, and also that the virtue portrayed on stage must be uncloistered and subjected to trials and temptations of a most pressing and realistic nature. Collier the “Platonist,” on the other hand, is shown to believe that such realistic examples are corruptive rather than corrective, and that therefore vice and folly must be represented only “in Generals.”
1 Johnson says, e.g., that Congreve and Vanbrugh “attempted” answers to Collier, but that “The cause of Congreve was not tenable” and that “Collier lived to see the reward of his labour in the reformation of the theatre,” in Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford : Clarendon, 1905), ii, 222–23. Leaving aside 19th-century writers who would have agreed with Johnson, the following critics who consider Collier to be more or less triumphant may be listed (no attempt is made to note the various reprintings of many of their works): Richard Garnett and Edmund Gosse, English Literature: An Illustrated Record (London: Macmillan, 1903), iii, 166–67; Richard Garnett, The Age of Dryden (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1895), pp. 126, 153; Frank Fowell and Frank Palmer, Censorship in England (London: Frank Palmer, 1913), pp. 106–11; John Palmer, The Comedy of Manners (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1913), pp. 275–90; G. H. Nettleton, English Drama of the Restoration and 18th Century (New York: Macmillan, 1914), pp. 141–42; Joseph Wood Krutch, Comedy and Conscience after the Restoration (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1924), pp. 124–27; Henry T. E. Perry, The Comic Spirit in Restoration Drama (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1925), p. 107; D. Crane Taylor, William Congreve (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1931), pp. 106–07; Sister Rose Anthony, The Jeremy Collier Stage Controversy 1698–1726 (Milwaukee: Marquette Univ. Press, 1937), p. 112; J. H. Wilson, The Court Wits of the Restoration (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1948), pp. 172–73; A. C. Ward, Illustrated History of English Literature (London: Longmans, Green, 1953–55), ii, 70; R. C. Sharma, Themes and Conventions in the Comedy of Manners (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1965), p. 324; George Sampson, The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1941), p. 423. In a recent article (“The Artist and the Clergyman : Congreve, Collier and the World of the Play,” College English, 30, 1969, 555–61), Maximillian E. Novak states that the “victory” in the battle between Collier and Congreve “has invariably been given to Jeremy Collier.”
2 A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage, Together with the Sense of Antiquity upon This Argument (London, 1698), pp. 54–55, 287.
3 Microcosmos (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1965). See pp. 179–80.
4 Novak, “The Artist and the Clergyman,” p. 556. Novak treats the conflict between Collier and Congreve more at large in his William Congreve (New York: Twayne, 1971).
5 Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations, & c. (London, 1698), pp. 7–9.
6 The Antient and Modern Stages Survey'd (London, 1699), p. 97.
7 A Second Defence of the Short View of the Prophaneness and Immorality of the English Stage (London, 1700), pp. 103–04.
8 A Defence of the Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage (London, 1699), p. 10.
9 The Stage Condemn'd (London, 1698), p. 80. Horneck's “Scheme” appeared in Delight and Judgment: Or, a Prospect of the Great Day of Judgment, and Its Power to Damp and Embitter Sensual Delights, Sports, and Recreations (London, 1684), p. 210.
10 See A Short View, p. 220.
11 See A Short View, pp. 124, 139, 175.
12 A Defence of Dramatick Poetry: Being a Review of Mr. Collier's View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage (London, 1698), pp. 1–2. Once ascribed to Edward Filmer, this work is apparently by Elkanah Settle. See The Critical Works of Thomas Rymer, ed. Curt A. Zimansky (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1956), p. 287.
13 Cf. Dryden's terms in his poem To My Friend, the Author [Peter Motteux]:
The Muses Foes
Wou'd sink their Maker's Praises into Prose.
Were they content to prune the lavish Vine
Of straggling Branches, and improve the Wine,
Who but a mad Man wou'd his Faults defend ? (11. 5–9)
Cf. also Congreve, Amendments, p. 103.
14 Maxims and Reflections upon Plays (London, 1699), pp. 55–56. Collier welcomed this work in an Advertisement in the volume.
15 Anonymous, The Stage Acquitted (London, 1699), pp. 81–82.
16 A Short Vindication of the Relapse and the Provok'd Wife (London, 1698), p. 46.
17 A Defence of Plays (London, 1707), pp. 69–70.
18 The Usefulness of the Stage (London, 1698), pp. 109–10.
19 See also Drake, pp. 114–15.
20 A Letter to A. H. Esq; concerning the Stage (London, 1698), pp. 16–17.
21 Dryden normally uses “lively” in this way in his dramatic criticism.
22 A Vindication of the Stage (London, 1698), pp. 25–26.
23 A Farther Defence of Dramatick Poetry: Being the Second Part of the Review of Mr. Collier's View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage (London, 1698), p. 64.
24 Reflections on the Stage (London, 1699), pp. 11–12.
25 Settle (A Farther Defence of Dramatick Poetry, p. 42) judged that Collier's “Work is not so much to find the Devils upon the Stage, as to raise 'em there,” and Charles Gildon thought Collier to have conjured up “Ten Thousand Devils” of his own and then laid them “at the Expence of the Theatre” (Preface to Phaeton, London, 1698).
26 Preface to Fables Ancient and Modern (1700), passim.
27 Cf. Oldmixon, p. 43.
28 The “Modern Author” is apparently Pierre Nicole. In the 3rd vol. of his Moral Essays (London, 1680), his thought is translated thus: “ ‘Tis needless to say in justification of Plays and Romances, that therein is only represented law-full Passions, and which have Marriage as the end they aim at. For tho Marriage may make good use of Concupiscence, ‘tis nevertheless in it self always ill, and it is not lawful to excite it, neither in our selves nor in others” (p. 222).
29 See The Jeremy Collier Stage Controversy 1698–1726, pp. 53–57, 157–62, 293–94.
30 Cf. this comment by the anonymous author of Some Remarks upon Mr. Collier's Defence of His Short View of the English Stage (London, 1698), pp. 6–7: “Mr. Collier's Reproofs to me seem inveterate; he writes with Animosity, as if he had an Aversion to the Man as well as his Faults, and appears only pleas'd when he has found a Miscarriage. Who, but Mr. Collier wou'd have ransack'd the Mourning Bride, to charge it with Smut and Prophaneness, when he might have sate down with so many Scenes where in even his malicious Chymistry cou'd have extracted neither ? But against this Play, as if the Spirit of Contradiction were his delight, he musters all his Forces; and having passed Sentence as the Divine, commences Critick, and brings the Poetry to his severe Scrutiny, transcribes half Speeches, puts the beginning and end together. …”
31 Preface to Phaeton.
32 “The ‘Utmost Tryal’ of Virtue and Congreve's Love for Love,” Tennessee Studies in Literature, 17 (1972), 1–18.
33 The evidence for this can be found in Emmett L. Avery's Congreve's Plays on the Eighteenth-Century Stage (New York: MLA, 1951) and also in the 3 vols, comprising Pt. ii of The London Stage, ed. Emmett L. Avery and Arthur H. Scouten (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1960–61).
34 The Evil and Danger of Stage Plays (London, 1706).
35 A Serious Remonstrance in Behalf of the Christian Religion (London, 1719).
