CONGREVE AS A MODERNIST .sx CONGREVE has surely had as chequered a history as any dramatist .sx In his lifetime the praise of some writers , Dryden among them , must have more than compensated him for the failure of one or two important plays .sx His name was then buried , for the better part of two hundred years , under the tomes of critical literature .sx With the other playwrights of his time , he was extolled by Charles Lamb for his true qualities as an artificial writer .sx He was sponsored by Leigh Hunt , and later George Meredith praised the beauties of his dialogue , `at once precise and voluble' , and rebuked the coarseness of his intrigue as much as the brilliant sameness of his characterization .sx By this time it seemed that Congreve had been definitely 'placed' among the two or three writers of English comedy who might be mentioned in the same breath with Moliere , although they were derivative and of secondary importance .sx It appeared on the face of it unlikely that this estimate of his merits would be revised , and even more unlikely that he would ever regain a position on the regular stage .sx If there was any writer destined to be piously revived by some literary society every decade or two , and then almost as piously forgotten , that writer seemed to be William Congreve .sx It was an accident of critical comparison that brought his name once more to the notice of the play-going public as distinct from the world of letters .sx The artificial plays .sx of Wilde , with their wealth of wit and epigram , were inevitably compared with his comedies .sx Not that they themselves were comedies , with the honourable exception of The Importance of Being Earnest ; indeed they were rather wooden drawing-room pieces with a lively verbal accompaniment ; but there were some obvious affinities between Wilde and the older dramatist .sx Both had some degree of dilettantism in their nature .sx It was Congreve who expressed the wish , on receiving a visit from Voltaire , to be regarded as a mere gentleman and not as an author , to the astonishment of the Frenchman , who declared roundly that had Monsieur Congreve been so unfortunate as to be nothing but a gentleman , he would not have given himself the trouble to call upon him .sx The pose , of course , was that of Congreve's time , when dramatic authorship was not incompatible with active soldiering or passive Civil Service or gallantry at Court .sx But it was not difficult to imagine Wilde , in the flush of his success as a lion of the late-Victorian drawing-room , taking up some similar attitude .sx `Never sneer at Society ; only the people who cannot get into it do that' was a line not inexpressive of his philosophy .sx Both he and Congreve were masters of the cadence of stage dialogue ; their speeches could be accurately read aloud at sight and as accurately spoken .sx Both displayed the exuberance of wit that envelops all the characters , from the great lady to the footman , in an equal shimmer of radiance .sx The reputation of each rested upon a slight foundation of productivity .sx Wilde's career was unhappily cut short while he was still in the prime ; but we suspect that he , like Congreve , would have preferred an early retirement on his laurels .sx The success of Wilde thus reawakened theatrical interest in his distinguished predecessor .sx It was only a matter of time before Congreve should be revived .sx It was noted that he was the most decent ( or perhaps the least indecent ) of the Restoration playwrights ; and this was another point in his favour , for no late Victorian was willing to contemplate a revival of The Country Wife of Wycherley .sx The obvious choice was Congreve's most famous comedy , The Way of the World , and this piece made several tentative appearances on the London stage , under the auspices of the Mermaid Society and others , in the years before the war .sx The Stage Society , which had discovered as early as 1914 that the school of Bernard Shaw was neither prolific nor particularly talented , was casting about for old plays to revive by way of strengthening the English side of its production .sx It hit upon Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer in that year , and shortly afterwards presented Congreve's The Double-Dealer , followed by his Love for Love .sx From this minor conflagration of interest in the Old Comedy , most aptly sprang the Phoenix , a society destined to explore the field more thoroughly than any of its predecessors .sx Not only the Restoration playwrights , but the Elizabethans and Jacobeans , were revived .sx The Duchess of Malfi once more sailed like a three-decker , incredible and majestic , across a sea of bloody murders .sx Dryden , Heywood , Ben Jonson , Otway , Marlowe , Fletcher took their turn .sx After a few seasons the .sx art of presentation flagged , the public tired of what was largely an affair of fashionable curiosity , and the Phoenix was no more .sx Its work was probably ended , for the mine of Old English drama , though rich , is by no means inexhaustible .sx There will be another Phoenix in due course ; this particular bird is always destined to rise from its ashes .sx But by this time the larger public , which had no opportunity of attending the Phoenix revivals , had heard of the old plays and was beginning to be curious to see them .sx It must be confessed that their success of scandal had something to do with this desire .sx Another stimulus was the success of The Beggar's Opera and the association of Mr. Nigel Playfair's theatre in Hammersmith with `the eighteenth century' in general .sx Congreve himself had lived into the eighteenth century , and some of his plays dated from its earliest years .sx His Way of the World , treated in a not-too-literary manner and furnished with an actress of style , drew the town far more vigorously in 1925 than in 1700 , the year of its appearance .sx It may now be regarded , not as a museum piece fit for the repertory of a National Theatre , but as a popular piece of the old school , which any manager can revive with a prospect of success if the right players are available .sx It will be noted that an interest originally inspired by literary criticism has here expanded into a generally theatrical interest .sx It is not Congreve's language that appeals most to the playgoer , although every play in which good English is spoken enjoys some measure of credit by contrast with the garrulity of drawing-room comedy and the dumbness of the film .sx Nor is it his impropriety , to give the playgoer his due of moral sensibility ; the sexual allusions of Congreve , except perhaps in the Old Bachelor , are so modishly dressed and so palpably artificial that they scarcely offend .sx We shall more probably find the explanation of Congreve's appeal in his modernity in the fact that his men and women converse on terms of delightful equality , such as were unknown in the comedies of the Victorian theatre .sx They display their essential cultivation , not with the precious and conceited airs that we must suppose to have been current in other ages of courtliness and social equality of the sexes , the age of the French salons , for example , but with a good-humoured , well-mannered , indifferent egoism that is attractive in its own way .sx There is scarcely one of the motives of modern comedy , from clandestine adultery to the revolt of the younger generation against the prejudice of its elders , that is not more intelligently , more honestly , nay more contemporaneously treated by Congreve than by the generality of playwrights of our own day .sx Perhaps these very qualities are the more conspicuous in the setting of Congreve's preposterous and intricate plots .sx Reality shines here by comparison with artifice .sx The plots of Congreve are accepted at their true value , as conventional symbols of his day .sx The playgoer looks behind them , and even behind the agreeable pattern of dialogue that is woven about them , to discover images of character , rather than characters in the realist sense , which he admires and understands .sx This spirit in Congreve requires a sensitive interpretation like all other subtleties of drama .sx The handling of verbal wit in a playwright is simple enough .sx Every actor worth his salt can obtain the effect of a 'good line' .sx Congreve's epigrams are as easy as his cadences , and they are numerous enough to animate the poorest performance of one of his plays .sx Actor and stage director alike are tempted to reduce the affair to a display of verbal fireworks ; if the lines be well spoken , they trust the comedy to take care of itself .sx But this is the literary theatre in its most impotent shape .sx The spirit of these Mellefonts and Cynthias , Mirabels and Millamants , is not to be captured by the most accurate of recitation .sx If Congreve were nothing more than he was thought to be by those critics who compared him with Wilde , if he were nothing more than a wit and a man of letters , then assuredly he would not be worth revival at the present day , and it is doubtful whether any audience would be persuaded to listen to his vapourings .sx It is his modernity that counts .sx May we not say that he is modern enough not to be a realist modern enough to present his characters in a certain reflective style ?sx We may call his puppets artificial if we will but is not the theatre itself artificial ?sx Beneath the pattern of words and plot we shall discover the true Congreve in the mannered portrayal of a group of heartless but cultivated characters .sx His comedy is fine-drawn because it is the deliberate outcome of a logical process .sx 'Those characters' , the author declares , 'which are meant to be ridiculed in most of our comedies , are of fools so gross , that in my humble opinion they should rather disturb than divert the well-natured and reflecting part of an audience ; they are rather objects of charity than contempt ; and instead of moving our mirth , they ought very often to excite our compassion .sx This reflection moved me to design some characters which should appear ridiculous , not so much through a natural folly ( which is incorrigible , and therefore not proper for the stage ) as through an affected wit , which , at the same time that it is affected , is also false .sx ' Let us not be impatient with the much-abused word `wit' in such a passage ; at any rate let not our impatience cloud our perception of the author's wisdom .sx Congreve was looking into the fundamentals of his playwright's craft , and this dedication to The Way of the World is as revolutionary in its way as one of Bernard Shaw's prefaces .sx The allusion to a natural folly 'which is incorrigible and therefore not proper for the stage' sums up the case against the realistic drama in a form most calculated to exasperate the realists .sx And his appeal to `the well-natured and reflecting part of an audience' is modern too .sx Let us grant that his people are mostly heartless , and then protest that it is better to be heartless with Mirabel and Millamant than hearty or sentimental with the personages of contemporary comedy .sx But before the real Congreve can thus be appreciated he must first be presented aright .sx The quality that underlies the brilliance of these artificial puppets their dullness , if you like must be understood and composed .sx The .sx traditional grand manner in the acting of such work , perhaps fortunately , is no longer with us .sx An excellent substitute is the actor's intellectual comprehension of his subject .sx Before Mellefont or Cynthia of The Double-Dealer can live , the player must possess something like Charles Lamb's critical sympathy :sx that is to say , he must enjoy the task of creation precisely because it is an artificial task , and he must not attempt to give his own solidity to the figure he animates .sx Then there is hope of modernizing such a passage as this :sx This is typical Congreve , typically modern also in thought and expression .sx Although most readable , the dialogue is truly made for the theatre , and only in the theatre can it be savoured to the full .sx The task of presentation is not easy .sx