Three Hours after Marriage. John Gay
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of the managers its initial vogue had passed. It would have been brought back when they thought patrons were ready to see it again – say, in a couple of months.
The squabble involving Pope, Gay, and Cibber must have begun with the latter's allusion to our play in the revival of The Rehearsal on February 7, a couple of weeks after Three Hours had closed. Cibber's version of how it happened may be read in the Letter (pp. 217-218 below); our female correspondent sympathized with him and deleted a few expressions indicative of animus on his part, but on the whole the quote as she gives it is a reasonable facsimile of what he had said in the Letter to Pope (1742). His disclaimer of an intent to offend is believable in the light of what we have just seen as to how Plotwell should be read in the play; on the other side, Pope's anger at the gag – though not any visit by him to Cibber, that is true – is attested both by Breval and by "Timothy Drub" (A Letter to Mr. John Gay, 1717) who agree that Pope was the one principally offended and that it was he who sent Gay with instructions to trounce "that impudent Dog C – r" (this line from Drub's pamphlet). Why may not Pope have been angry enough to seek out Cibber himself on the impulse of the moment? It seems feeble to doubt Cibber's testimony on the grounds that he had not told the story prior to 1742; he had not previously told the tale of the youthful Pope in a bagnio, either, yet the authorities think there might be something to this – if to the one tale, why not to the other? As to the account the lady gives of the scuffle between Gay and Cibber, it was widely known at the time that there had been some sort of angry meeting between them; her story is highly colored but nonetheless may be substantially true.[7]
[7] She says that the fracas occurred on the fourth evening of The Rehearsal, and at least this revival did have a fourth performance, five in fact: Emmett L. Avery in The London Stage (1960) gives the dates as February 7, 8, 20, March 21, 28. There is a slight difficulty in assigning Gay's visit to the fourth of these, i.e., March 21: this is that the dates on which the two pamphlets that refer to it were advertised ("just before March 1" for Drub's, and March 30 for Breval's – Sherburn, p. 91) seem to rule out a March 21 fracas in the one case and to fall uncomfortably close in the other. But publication (of course) though announced, may have been delayed, and it is perhaps worth noticing that in each pamphlet Gay's visit is mentioned in an inorganic part of the work that could have been added late: the Dedication in Drub's, and, in Breval's, an ironical "congratulatory poem" printed after the epilogue, on the last two pages of the book.
This quarrel, whether with both poets involved with Cibber or only one, doubtless cost the play a revival or two that it would otherwise have had; with such evidence of anger in the authors Cibber could well have wished to have done with them and their work. The use of the crocodile costume on April 2 in a dance at Drury Lane entitled The Shipwreck suggests that so far as the management was concerned the play for which it had been devised would not be acted again. Thereafter, Three Hours had only two revivals (Handlist of Plays in Nicoll, Early Eighteenth-Century Drama) – one in 1737 (two performances) the other in 1746 (three).
A pity! But in any case the play could not have had much of a life on the stage, considering the climate into which the authors chose to introduce it. The type of wit that had flourished in the former age did still hold a place in the theatre in 1717, but only in such comedies as had already won a place in the repertory.[8] The older plays could be "corrected" (that is, the racier lines could be taken out) or the tender-minded could tolerate them as classics or in a pinch stay at home when a play known to be of this sort had been announced. A new play was in a more vulnerable position; it had to conform to what the reformers had for a couple of decades been telling audiences a play should be, or squalls could be expected. Sir Richard Blackmore was continuing the crusade against scapegrace wit – in the Preface to his Essays, 1717, he is explicitly severe upon Three Hours and its authors – and the battle was going his way. Jeremy Collier had published nothing on the theatre for nearly a decade but it is interesting to see his methods applied to the play by Timothy Drub in his Letter to Gay and Drub then clinching his remarks with a quote of two pages from "a very elegant author" whom he does not name but who – not too surprisingly – can be recognized as Collier himself.[9] (Could "Drub" have been, in fact, Collier, thus tempted by Three Hours to return to the fray under this alias?)
[8] During the year prior to the première of Three Hours the following had been seen on the London stage twice each or more (selection only: based on Avery, op. cit.): The Comical Revenge, Man of Mode, Country Wife, Plain-Dealer, London Cuckolds, Old Bachelor, Relapse. City Politicks, a play from which our authors took some hints, was revived in the July after the closure of Three Hours; it ran three performances (i.e., successfully). But it should be recalled that the most recent of the eight plays here mentioned – Vanbrugh's – had been in the repertory twenty years.
[9] The quote is from the Short View, pp. 7-8 in the 1698 edition, from "Obscenity in any Company is a rustick and increditable Talent" to "But here a Man can't be a Sinner without being a Clown."
In any event the authors must have known that they were offering to swim against the tide but counted on their combined brilliance to win anyway. What they wrote happens to conform to the current rules in one respect – to paraphrase the epilogue to Love's Last Shift, no cuckold is made within the limits of its three hours' time span – but this compliance must have been accidental, for in every other respect the play deliberately flouts the regulations as established by Collier and his school. Obviously the authors were out to create a sensation: shock the stodgy and respectable element, jam the play down the throats of the audience, and win the admiration of the minority with whom libertine wit was still in favor.
These aims, which even a friend and well-wisher has to view as a bit on the juvenile side, were far from fully achieved. The description that Breval gives of the behavior of the crowd on the first night (Sherburn quotes it, if the reader can not readily get hold of The Confederates) is suggestive, not of a house packed with enemies of the authors, friends of Dr. Woodward and John Dennis out to damn the play, but of a crowd that had come predisposed to approve – "Silent a while th'attentive Many sate" – but found themselves simply unable to endure the dramatic fare set before them. The murmur that began and then grew to a hiss must have surprised and alarmed the authors: Breval's version of how they reacted must have a grain or two of truth in it. In the account of the second and third nights furnished by our Key one can see matters improving, but it is clear that to quiet the audience took heroic efforts by the cast and there was probably some deletion of offending lines,[10] perhaps some resort to "packing" the house.[11] This last was a measure not infrequently taken in those days – Dr. Johnson's story of Steele's efforts in behalf of Cato will be recalled – but this was not what the authors had anticipated. In the upshot they had dared the unpastured dragon of reform in his den and had got away with it – but barely. They were all right financially – the run should have brought them two "benefits" – and there was the fee from Lintot and an added present of guineas from those three court ladies who wanted the world to know that they were sophisticated enough to take the play in stride. (Pope paid them with "A Court Ballad.") Still, the pride of the authors must have received some damage; perhaps some sensitiveness on Pope's part is understandable.
[10] Drub says that the actors left out "a considerable load of Obscenity and Prophaness." Presumably the authors would have to acquiesce in such bowdlerizing.
[11] Breval, p. 11, and his note.
But what the collaboration produced is truly remarkable; if there is something of a show-off air about it the authors can be forgiven, in view of what they had to exhibit. Though its fast pace (which flags only toward the last) and its emphasis on intrigue may slant it toward farce, Three Hours has the vitality and verve that one finds only in the very best English comic writing. Phoebe Clinket and Sir Tremendous are, to me, endlessly enjoyable, and Dr. Fossile more than merely a caricature of a now forgotten virtuoso or a lifeless counter in an intrigue plot (though in both these respects he meets the requirements of the part beautifully); even he has moments when the humanity shows through – as in his plaintive line to his friends when the mummy and the crocodile spring into movement and speech, "Gentlemen, wonder at nothing within these walls; for ever since I was married, nothing has happened to me in the common course