and Art.
Literature
in
399
two parties of rival fcowrers. The more ferious characters in the play
are Mr. Rant, fir William Rant's father, and fir Richard Maggot, "a
fooliih Jacobite alderman" (it mutt be remembered that we are now in
the reign of king William). Sir Richard's wife, lady Maggot, like the
citizen's wives of the comedy of the Reitoration generally, is a lady rather
wanting in virtue, ambitious of mixing with the gay and falhionable
world, and fomewhat of a tyrant over her hufband. She has two hand-
fome daughters, whom the feeks to keep conhned from the world, left
they fhould become her rivals. There are low characters of both fexes,
who need not be enumerated. Much of the play is taken up with ftreet
rows, capital fatirical pictures of London life. The play ends with
marriages, and with the reconciliation of fir William Rant with his
father, the ferious old gentleman of the play. Shadwell excelled in thefe
bufy comedies. One of the neareit approaches to him is Mountfort's
comedy of " Greenwich Park," which is another Itriking fatire on the
loolenefs of London life at that time. As in the others, the plot is {imply
nothing. The play confitts of a number of intrigues, fuch as may be
imagined, at a time when morality was little refpected, in places of
fnihionable refort like Greenwich Park and Deptford Wells.
An element of fatire was now introduced into Englifh comedy which
does not appear to have belonged to it before-this was mimicry.
Although the principal characters in the play bore conventional names,
they appear often to have been intended to reprefent individuals then
well known in fociety, and thefe individuals were caricatured in their
drefs, and mimicked in their language and manners. We are told that
this mimicry contributed greatly to the fuccefs of "The Rehearfal," the
duke of Buckingham having taken incredible pains to make Lacy, who
acted the part of Bayes, perfect in imitating the voice and manner of
Dryden, whofe drefs and gait were minutely copied. This perfonal fatire
was not always performed with impunity. On the Ift of February, I669,
Pepys went to the Theatre Royal to fee the performance of "The
Heirefs," in which it appears that fir Charles Sedley was perfonally
caricatured, and the fecretary of king Charles's admiralty has left in his
diary the following entry 1-" To the king's houfe, thinking to have fecn
the