George Farquhar, 1678–1707. Born, in Londonderry, 1678. Educated at Londonderry. To Trinity Coll., Dublin, as sizar, 17 July 1694. Left college, 1695 [?]; appeared soon after on Dublin stage. To London, 1697 [?]. First play, “Love and a Bottle,” produced at Drury Lane, 1699; “The Constant Couple,” in 1700; “Sir Harry Wildair,” in 1701. Presented by Earl of Orrery with lieutenant’s commission, 1700 [?]. In Holland, 1700. Married, 1703 [?]. Visit to Dublin, 1704; continued to produce plays. Sold commission to pay debts. Died, April 1707. Works: “Love and a Bottle,” 1699; “Sir Harry Wildair,” 1701; “The Inconstant,” 1702; “The Twin Rivals,” 1702; “The Stage-coach” (with Motteux; anon.), 1705; “The Recruiting Officer” [1706]; “The Beaux Stratagem” [1707]; “Love’s Catechism” (anon.; compiled by Farquhar from preceding), 1707. Posthumous: “The Constant Couple,” 1710. Collected Works: “Comedies,” 1710; “Works” (in 2 vols.), 1718–36; in 2 vols., 1892. Life: by Wilkes, in 1775 edn. of “Works;” by A. C. Ewald, in 1892 edn.

Personal

  DEAR BOB, I have not anything to leave thee, to perpetuate my memory, but two helpless girls. Look upon them sometimes, and think of him that was, to the last moment of his life, thine.

  Mr. Farquhar had now been about a twelve-month married, and it was at first reported, to a great fortune; which indeed he expected, but was miserably disappointed. The lady had fallen in love with him, and so violent was her passion, that she resolved to have him at any rate; and as she knew Farquhar was too much dissipated in life to fall in love, or to think of matrimony unless advantage was annexed to it, she fell upon the stratagem of giving herself out for a great fortune, and then took an opportunity of letting our poet know that she was in love with him. Vanity and interest both uniting to persuade Farquhar to marry, he did not long delay it, and, to his immortal honour let it be spoken, though he found himself deceived, his circumstances embarrassed, and his family growing upon him, he never once upbraided her for the cheat, but behaved to her with all the delicacy, and tenderness of an indulgent husband…. If he was not a man of the highest genius, he seems to have had excellent moral qualities.

  The time is at the close of the seventeenth century; the scene is at the Mitre Tavern, in St. James’s Market, kept by one Mrs. Voss…. On the threshold of the open door stand a couple of guests…. The one is a gay, rollicking young fellow, smartly dressed, a semi-military look about him, good humor rippling on his face, combined with an air of astonishment and delight…. His sight and hearing are wholly concentrated on that enchanted and enchanting girl who, unmindful of aught but the “Scornful Lady,” continues still reading aloud that rattling comedy by Beaumont and Fletcher…. Captain Farquhar, at whatever passage in the play, betrayed his presence by his involuntary applause. The girl looks towards him more pleased than abashed; and when the captain pronounced that there was in her stuff for an exquisite actress, the fluttered thing clasped her hands, glowed at the prophecy, and protested in her turn, that of all conditions it was the one she wished most ardently to fulfil.

  Through his influence, Anne Oldfield became an actress, and was for years one of the queens of the stage. Farquhar seems to have been seriously in love with her; but, perhaps fortunately for them both, she preferred a richer and more illustrious lover. As for Farquhar, he married a woman who, having lost her heart to him, caused the report to be carried to his ears that a lady of great fortune was dying of an unrequited attachment to him. Impelled either by pity or by self-interest, or both together, he married her to discover that she was as penniless as himself. Yet it is told to his credit that he never reproached her for the deceit about her fortune, but made her a kind and devoted husband as long as she lived.

  We can follow him pretty closely through his day. He is a queer mixture of profanity and piety, of coarseness and loyalty, of cleverness and density; we do not breed this kind of beau nowadays, and yet we might do worse, for this specimen is, with all his faults, a man. He dresses carefully in the morning, in his uniform or else in his black suit. When he wants to be specially smart, as, for instance, when he designs a conquest at a birthday-party, he has to ferret among the pawnbrokers for scraps of finery, or secure on loan a fair, full-bottom wig. But he is not so impoverished that he cannot on these occasions give his valet and his barber plenty of work to do preparing his face with razors, perfumes and washes. He would like to be Sir Fopling Flutter, if he could afford it, and gazes a little enviously at that noble creature in his French clothes, as he lounges luxuriantly past him in his coach with six before and six behind.

Love and a Bottle, 1699

  Is fluent rather than sparkling in its dialogue.

The Constant Couple, 1700

  As I freely submit to the criticisms of the judicious, so I cannot call this an ill play, since the town has allowed it such success. When they have pardoned my faults ’twere very ill manners to condemn their indulgence. Some may think (my acquaintance in town being too slender to make a party for the play) that the success must be derived from the pure merits of the cause. I am of another opinion: I have not been long enough in town to raise enemies against me; and the English are still kind to strangers. I am below the envy of great wits, and above the malice of little ones. I have not displeased the ladies, nor offended the clergy; both which are now pleased to say, that a comedy may be diverting without smut and profaneness.

  Sir Harry Wildair, a character in George Farquhar’s comedy “The Constant Couple,” is supposed to be a portrait of the author himself.

Sir Henry Wildair, 1701

  The character of Wildair appears to me to be one of the most naturally buoyant pieces of delineation that ever was written—buoyant without inanity; reckless, wanton, careless, irrepressibly vivacious and out-pouring, without being obstreperous and oppressive, and all the while totally free from a tinge of vulgarity in the composition.

The Inconstant, 1702

  The romantic interest and impressive catastrophe of this play, I thought, had been borrowed from the more poetical and tragedy-practised muse of Beaumont and Fletcher; but I find they are taken from an actual circumstance which took place in the author’s knowledge, at Paris.

  Unlike the “Provoked Wife” and nearly all of its contemporaries, “The Inconstant” has survived to the present day, and was re-produced only a few seasons ago by Augustin Daly, with John Drew and Ada Rehan in the cast.

The Twin Rivals, 1702

  The most material objection against this play is the importance of the subject, which necessarily leads into sentiments too grave for diversion, and supposes vices too great for comedy to punish. ’Tis said, I must own, that the business of comedy is chiefly to ridicule folly; and that the punishment of vice falls rather into the province of tragedy; but if there be a middle sort of wickedness, too high for the sock, and too low for the buskin, is there any reason that it should go unpunished? What are more obnoxious to human society, than the villainies exposed in this play, the frauds, plots and contrivances upon the fortunes of men, and the virtue of women? But the persons are too mean for the heroic: then what must we do with them? Why, they must of necessity drop into comedy; for it is unreasonable to imagine that the lawgivers in poetry would tie themselves up from executing that justice which is the foundation of their constitution; or to say, that exposing vice is the business of the drama, and yet make rules to screen it from persecution.

The Recruiting Officer, 1706

  In the “Recruiting Officer” Farquhar took his revenge. He threw himself entirely upon his animal spirits, and produced accordingly one of his very best plays. In everything connected with it he was fortunate; for he went only upon grounds of truth and observation, and his own impulses. The humours were drawn from what he had seen while he was on the recruiting party to which we have alluded; his hospitable friends “round the Wrekin,” to whom it was dedicated, furnished some of the characters.

The Beaux Stratagem, 1707

  The reader may find some faults in this play, which my illness prevented the amending of; but there is great amends made in the representation, which cannot be matched, no more than the friendly and indefatigable care of Mr. Wilks, to whom I chiefly owe the success of the play.

  It is an honour to the morality of the present age, that this most entertaining comedy is but seldom performed; and never, except some new pantomime, or other gaudy spectacle, be added, as an afterpiece, for the attraction of an audience. The well-drawn characters, happy incidents, and excellent dialogue, in “The Beaux’ Stratagem,” are but poor atonement for that unrestrained contempt of principle which pervades every scene.

  “The Beaux’ Stratagem” is the best of his plays as a whole; infinitely lively, bustling, and full of point and interest.

  Its plot is new, simple, and interesting; the characters various, without confusing it; the dialogue sprightly and characteristic; the moral bold, healthy, admirable, and doubly needed in those times, when sottishness was a fashion. Archer and Aimwell who set out as mere intriguers, prove in the end true gentlemen, candid, conscientious, and generous. Scrub and Boniface, though but a servant and an innkeeper, are quotable fellows both, and have made themselves prominent in theatrical recollection,—the former especially, for his quaint ignorance and sordid cunning. And Mrs. Sullen is the more touching in her distress, from the cheerfulness with which she wipes away her tears. Sullen is an awful brute, yet not thoroughly inhuman; for he feels, after all, that he has no right to such a wife.

  It was fortunate for his fame, in every view, that his expiring effort should have proved, in all its points, his most successful one; for the “Beaux’ Stratagem” has retained possession of the stage to the present day, and it is always attractive when there is a company of performers ready to sustain its delightful variety of characters. That of Archer, the hero of the piece, is the refined version of the author’s former gallants. He is gay, without boisterousness, rallying and imprudent without a tinge of coarseness: and, that which is best of all, his love-making and his intrigues have no participation in that absorbing indifference to others that distinguish the gallants of his immediate predecessors, and even of his own contemporaries.

  In “The Beaux’ Stratagem” (1707) Farquhar achieved his masterpiece. This comedy, justly the most celebrated of his plays and destined to an enduring life on the stage, deserved its success in the first instance by the cleverness of the plot, which is ingenious without being improbable. Some of the incidents, indeed, are of dubious import, including one at the close,—a separation by mutual consent,—which throws a glaring light on the view taken by the author and his age of the sanctity of the marriage-tie. But the comedy is also an excellent picture of manners. The inn with its rascally landlord and highwaymen-guests and the country-house into which the Beau is carried in a fainting-fit, stand before us as scenes from real life; and some of the characters are drawn with much humour and spirit. The most successful conception is that of Archer, who pretends to be the valet of his friend the Beau, but carries on adventures on his own account. This became one of Garrick’s most famous parts; and indeed the easy volubility of the pretended servant furnishes an admirable opportunity for a fine actor of light comedy. Altogether this play is written in the happiest of veins; and may be regarded as the prototype of Goldsmith’s “She Stoops to Conquer,” like which it hovers rather doubtfully on the borders—not always easy to determine—of comedy and farce.

  This is not a review of the dramatists of this era, but the figure of the jovial humorous Farquhar—Captain Farquhar—is conspicuous, and cannot be passed over. His comedy, “The Beaux’s Stratagem,” is full of the freshest humour, and if acted at all respectably, must entertain. There is nothing more exhilarating, and the characters and incidents come back on us with a perpetual pleasure. We find ourselves thinking with a smile of Scrub, and the presumed London servant whom he so admires. It is extraordinary how Goldsmith later caught the same freshness of handling in “She Stoops to Conquer.” Such broad treatment is essential in true comedy, and will be found in all the great writers from Molière downwards. Nowadays a more trifling local treatment is in vogue, and the other style is scarcely appreciated.

  That “The Beaux Stratagem” is the best of our author’s comedies, there can be no question. Decenter in language, its plot is comparatively inoffensive, and it has given to literature types of character of which universal acceptance proves the truth. The gracious figure of Lady Bountiful has flitted across many a page, whose reader knew not whence she came; and Boniface has baptized half the innkeepers of Christendom with his dishonest name…. Archer and Aimwell, Dorinda and Mrs. Sullen, were in London only two years ago.

General

  He seems to have been a man of a genius rather sprightly than great, rather flow’ry than solid; his comedies are diverting, because his characters are natural, and such as we frequently meet with; but he has used no art in drawing them, nor does there appear any force of thinking in his performances, or any deep penetration into nature; but rather a superficial view, pleasant enough to the eye, though capable of leaving no great impression on the mind. He drew his observations chiefly from those he conversed with, and has seldom given any additional heightening, or indelible marks to his characters; which was the peculiar excellence of Shakespear, Johnson, and Congreve…. He had certainly a lively imagination, but then it was capable of no great compass; he had wit, but it was of so peculiar a sort, as not to gain ground upon consideration; and it is certainly true, that his comedies in general owe their success full as much to the player, as to any thing intrinsically excellent in themselves.

  Farquhar is a light and gay writer, less correct and less sparkling than Congreve; but he has more ease; and perhaps fully as great a share of the vis comica. The two best and least exceptionable of his plays, are the “Recruiting Officer,” and the “Beaux’ Stratagem.” I say, the least exceptionable; for, in general, the tendency of both Congreve and Farquhar’s plays is immoral. Throughout them all, the rake, the loose intrigue, and the life of licentiousness, are the objects continually held up to view; as if the assemblies of a great and polished nation could be amused with none but vicious objects.

  He makes us laugh from pleasure oftener than from malice. He somewhere prides himself in having introduced on the stage the class of comic heroes here spoken of, which has since become a standard character, and which represents the warm-hearted, rattle-brained, thoughtless, high-spirited young fellow, who floats on the back of his misfortunes without repining, who forfeits appearances, but saves his honour—and he gives us to understand that it was his own. He did not need to be ashamed of it. Indeed there is internal evidence that this sort of character is his own, for it pervades his works generally, and is the moving spirit that informs them. His comedies have on this account probably a greater appearance of truth and nature than almost any others. His incidents succeed one another with rapidity, but without premeditation; his wit is easy and spontaneous; his style animated, unembarrassed, and flowing; his characters full of life and spirit, and never overstrained so as to “o’erstep the modesty of nature,” though they sometimes, from haste and carelessness, seem left in a crude, unfinished state. There is a constant ebullition of gay, laughing invention, cordial good humour, and fine animal spirits, in his writings. Of the four writers here classed together, we should perhaps have courted Congreve’s acquaintance most, for his wit and the elegance of his manners; Wycherley’s, for his sense and observation on human nature; Vanbrugh’s, for his power of farcical description and telling a story; Farquhar’s, for the pleasure of his society, and the love of good fellowship.

  The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is quite extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquhar show their heads once in seven years only, to be exploded and put down instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is it for a few wild speeches, an occasional licence of dialogue? I think not altogether. The business of their dramatic characters will not stand the moral test.

  The thoughtless and volatile, but good-natured and generous, character of Farquhar is reflected in his comedies, which, with less sparkle, have more natural life and airiness, and are animated by a finer spirit of whim, than those of either Vanbrugh or Congreve. His morality, like theirs, is abundantly free and easy; but there is much more heart about his profligacy than in theirs, as well as much less grossness or hardness.

  He extended the list of the comic dramatic personages of the day, and his Captain Plume, the fine gentleman officer, Boniface, the innkeeper, Cherry, his lively daughter, Scrub, the country servant who guesses they are talking of him, “for they laughed consumedly,” and above all the inimitable recruiting officer, Sergeant Pike—are all invaluable additions to our stock of comedy characters. His plots are simpler and better than those of his brother playwrights, they have more life and movement, and the episodes succeed each other in an unforced way which must have made his pieces very pleasant to audiences.

  Borne down with trouble and debts, he secured his place among the greatest of writers of English comedy in a life which did not reach to thirty years.

  Without the keen wit or the sardonic force of his rivals, he has more genuine high spirits and good nature.

  He was a smart, soldier-like Irishman, of “a splenetic and amorous complexion,” half an actor, a quarter a poet, and altogether a very honest and gallant gentleman. He had taken to the stage kindly enough, and at twenty, had written “Love and a Bottle.” Since then, two other plays, “The Constant Couple” and “Sir Harry Wildair,” had proved that he had wit and fancy, and knew how to knit them together into a rattling comedy. But he was poor, always in pursuit of that timid wild-fowl, the occasional guinea, and with no sort of disposition to settle down into a heavy citizen. In order to bring down a few brace of golden game, he shovels into Lintott’s hands his stray verses of all kinds, a bundle of letters he wrote from Holland, a dignified essay or discourse upon Comedy, and, with questionable taste perhaps, a set of copies of the love-letters he had addressed to the lady who became his wife. All this is not very praiseworthy, and as a contribution to literature it is slight indeed; but, then, how genuine and sincere, how guileless and picturesque is the self-revelation of it! There is no attempt to make things better than they are, nor any pandering to a cynical taste by making them worse. Why should he conceal or falsify? The town knows what sort of a fellow George Farquhar is. Here are some letters and some verses; the beaux at White’s may read them if they will, and then throw them away.

  It is fortunate for Farquhar that he could not emulate the exquisitely civilized depravities of Congreve’s urban Muse. But his dialogue is not “low” to modern tastes; it has, in general, a simple, natural zest, infinitely preferable to the Persian apparatus of the early eighteenth century. Even he, however, can rant and deviate into rhetoric, as soon as his lovers drop upon one knee. More plainly in Farquhar’s work than in that of any contemporary, we mark the glamour of the Caroline literature fading, and the breath of life blowing in…. His mind was a Medea’s kettle, out of which everything issued cleaner and more wholesome…. Though Farquhar did not live, like Vanbrugh and the magnanimous Dryden, to admit the abuse of a gift, and to deplore it, he alone, of the minor dramatists, seems all along to have had a negative sort of conscience better than none. His instincts continually get the better not only of his environment, but of his practice. Some uneasiness, some misgiving, are at the bottom of his homely materialism. He thinks it best, on the whole, to forswear the temptation to be sublime, and to keep to his cakes and ale; and for cakes and ale he had an eminent and inborn talent.