Congreve and Farquhar : A Contrast
The Works of Congreve. Edited by F. W. Bateson. (Peter Davies. 7 6d. ) The Complete Works of Farquhar. Edited by Charles Stonehill. (Nonesuch Press. 45s.)
MANI- people, referring to the comedy writers of the Restora_ tion, lump them cheerfully together, as though they were nmell of a muchness, varying in flavour, perhaps, as one apple may from another, but no more. It is implied that they were all sparks, with the same outlook on life, who turned out, as from a machine, the same kind of plays. A similar uncritical indistinetion is currently made in marrying Dryden and Pope in one breath ; or, to come nearer to our own time, Dickens and Thackeray. Yet, as an instance, two writers could scarcely be more different than Congreve and Farquhar. It is true that they both wrote comedies for the stage, and that their people speak the idiom and wear the costume of much the same period. Sir Nigel Playfair, for example, has discovered that they all said " obleeged," and wore the same preposterous wigs. It is true also that Farquhar was Irish, that Congreve had grown up in Ireland, and that all Irishmen are the same. Yet, if we take the trouble to read their plays, we see that they are as different in form and feeling as roses are from rasp- berries.
The two men were radically as unlike as possible, in social ambit and outlook ; in character and philosophy ; in intention in writing ; and in the audiences they wrote for. It would be strange if. their work were the same. One has only to look at the men, even casually, to see this. First Congreve, a man of the " quality," with all that that implied in those days, secure of the patronage of the Boyles, with the entrée almost anywhere that he liked, and who soon became the petted darling of a society in which he felt himself altogether at home. He accepted the world in which he moved ; he could not conceive it otherwise formed, though he would have refined upon it. Out of it he wove the exquisite tapestry of life which was in the end to drift away like gossamer over the heads of his audience. Then Farquhar, battling in vain to become part of this society of wits and gentlemen, ever- lastingly sore that he could not become a member of the Kit-Cat Club, of which Congreve was one of the three best- natured men, and in revulsion refusing to accept this world, forever gibing bitterly and effectively at the factitious idea of gentleman," doing his best to break down the assump- tions upon which the whole of Congreve's existence was built. He never saw from within the flashing society which Congreve handled so easily and distorted so brilliantly : his richest ore was not mined, as Congreve's was, in London drawing-rooms, but from the people, healthier perhaps, Certainly more various, whom he met in the country as recruiting officer.
As regards character and philosophy the two writers were as far apart as the fortunes of their lives would suggest. Congreve had all he could want of material things (though Swift complained that his wine was bad), and all he could wish for of intellectual society. He was widely and curiously, if not deeply, read in philosophy ; he had a respect for traditions of culture and of style ; he was essentially a poet, of the sort that is a little aloof from life. He was wistful after delicacies of mind and feeling that were almost too ethereal : he avoided struggle, as he was so well able, by his luck, to do. Farquhar's life, on the other hand, was a crude struggle for existence itself ; he had to fight for bread, and he became a casualty at the age of twenty-nine. Even if he had been so minded he could not have striven for those
last refinements of sensitiveness which were all that his abundance left Congreve to strive for. He despised school philosophy, that idle toy fashioned in the universities to which he had not been, and his advanced rationalism was shallow though brisk. He did not give a fig for tradition ; he was a reformer. He was hardly a poet at all in the sense that Congreve was ; he could not be aloof : there was no question with him of trying to construct an exquisite appear- ance of life : he was too close to brutal realities.
Both the impulse to write and the object in writing were different in the two men, except, of course, that they were both attracted by the dramatic form. Congreve wrote because he was dissatisfied with life, hungry for a finer quality ; Farquhar from exuberance : which is not a paradox, a contradiction with what has already been said, for this difference lies more profoundly than social chances or acci- dental reactions. Congreve laboured, he " wrought with care and pains," because he wanted to construct an object ; Farquhar dashed into words because he had something to say, something that lie wanted very urgently to say. Con- greve cared so little for what he had to impart that when he found the ear of the people who came to listen to him too crass to catch his music he stopped writing : the impulse to make the object failed. Indeed, to say that Congreve was making music and that Farquhar was making vehement speeches would help to define their difference all along the line. Congreve cared greatly for form, for words, for the echo and cadence of phrases, for moulding as people had modelled before, but for doing it better. Farquhar was impatient of form, as revealed by his often quoted remark that plays were to be judged not by the compass of Aristotle but by the opinion held of them by pit, box and gallery : he was for catching nature as she Ilew--erratically.
And finally, their audiences were different. Congreve dipped his pen for the remnant of the old Court audiences which had thronged the playhouses before the Revolution ; he was writing, if you like, for the judgment of a saran clique. Farquhar was bidding for the plaudits of an audience coming to be composed ever more largely of people from the City; for, as we should say, a bourgeois audience. But, beyond this again, Congreve cared only for the approbation of subtle critics, critics who knew what the job was. He was writing for highbrows, and to please Dryden was reward in plenty. Farquhar was a popular author ; the approval he wanted was box-office approval, not for the money only, but for the response it implies from the many-headed monster of the pit, for which Congreve did not care a rap. How could their work be even remotely the same ?
It is not. Congreve's plays are the last fine perfect flower of a tradition ; they breathe an aroma of finished civilization. Farquhar was an innovator ; he broke into and smashed the old tradition, partly by veering back to the intoxicated Elizabethan planner, partly by going forward into the then incipent domestic drama. His happy combination of spirited Irish wit and clear Irish logic, by which he defied misfortune in a torrent of gaiety, is oceans removed from Congreve's classical culture, his sense of a tragic undercurrent of things which has nothing to do with personal tragedy. Indeed, these two writers (the reissue of their works at almost the same time offers an apt occasion for contrasting them) belong to two different worlds ; on the one hand the bright lucid world of fancy, on the other the spinning bright world of every day ; nor is this less true because Congreve is realistic, and Farquhar often fantastic in the extreme. Both worlds have-their virtue and their value, both are necessary to the
fullness of life. Thus, though different as two writers can be, there is no reason why the same reader should not enjoy them both with refreshment.
The Farquhar edition is complete, with a certain amount of unfamiliar material, printed as was done in the best old texts. The Congreve edition has a modernized text and does not pretend to completion, so that we do not get a full view of the man; no letters are included, his answer to Collier is absent, and, most important of all, his prefaces and dedica- tions are omitted. It is a gallant attempt to make Congreve popular, and one can but hope that it will succeed.
BONAMY DOBREE.
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