THE ASSIGNATION.

THIS play was unfortunate in the representation. It is needless, at the distance of more than a century, to investigate the grounds of the dislike of an audience, who, perhaps, could at the very time have given no good reason for their capricious condemnation of a play, not worse than many others which they received with applause. The author, in the dedication, hints at the "lameness of the action;" but, as the poet and performers are nearly equally involved in the disgrace of a condemned piece, it is a very natural desire on either side to assign the cause of its failure to the imperfections of the other; of which there is a ludicrous representation in a dialogue betwixt the player and the poet in "Joseph Andrews." Another cause of its unfavourable reception seems to have been, its second title of "Love in a Nunnery." Dryden certainly could, least of any man, have been justly suspected of an intention to ridicule the Duke of York and the Catholic religion; yet, as he fell under the same censure for the "Spanish Friar," it seems probable that such suspicions were actually entertained. The play certainly contains, in the present instance, nothing to justify them. In point of merit, "The Assignation" seems pretty much on a level with Dryden's other comedies; and certainly the spectators, who had received the blunders of Sir Martin Mar-all with such unbounded applause, might have taken some interest in those of poor Benito. Perhaps the absurd and vulgar scene, in which the prince pretends a fit of the cholic, had some share in occasioning the fall of the piece. This inelegant jeu de theatre is severely ridiculed in the "Rehearsal."

To one person, the damnation of this play seems to have afforded exquisite pleasure: This was Edward Ravenscroft, once a member of the Middle Temple,-an ingenious gentleman, of whose taste it may be held a satisfactory instance, that he deemed the tragedy of " Titus Andronicus" too mild for representation, and generously added a few more murders, rapes, and parricides, to that charnel-house of horrors.* His turn for comedy

In the prologue to this beautiful edition, Ravenscroft modestly tell us :

Like other poets, he'll not proudly scorn

To own, that he but winnow'd Shakespeare's corn;
So far was he from robbing him of's treasure,
That he did add his own, to make full measure.

being at least equal to his success in the blood-stained buskin, Mr Ravenscroft translated and mangled several of the more farcical French comedies, which he decorated with the lustre of his own great name. Amongst others which he thus appropriated, were the most extravagant and buffoon scenes in Moliere's "Bourgeois Gentilhomme;" in which Monsieur Jourdain is, with much absurd ceremony, created a Turkish Paladin; and where Moliere took the opportunity to introduce an entrée de ballet, danced and sung by the Mufti, dervises, and others, in eastern habits. Ravenscroft's translation, entitled, "The Citizen turned Gentleman," was acted in 1672, and printed in the same year; the jargon of the songs, like similar nonsense of our own day, seems to have been well received on the stage. Dryden, who was not always above feeling indignation at the bad taste and unjust preferences of the age, attacked Ravenscroft in the prologue to "The Assignation," as he had before, though less directly, in that of "Marriage-a-la-Mode." Hence the exuberant and unrepressed joy of that miserable scribbler broke forth upon the damnation of Dryden's performance, in the following passage of a prologue to another of his pilfered performances, called "The Careless Lovers," acted, according to Langbaine, in the vacation succeeding the fall of " The Assignation," in 1673:

An author did, to please you, let his wit run,
Of late, much on a serving-man and cittern;
And yet, you would not like the serenade,
Nay, and you damn'd his nuns in masquerade:
You did his Spanish sing-song too abhor;
Ah! que locura con tanto rigor!

In fine, the whole by you so much was blamed,
To act their parts, the players were ashamed.
Ah, how severe your malice was that day!
To damn, at once, the poet and his play :+
But why was your rage just at that time shown,
When what the author writ was all his own?

Till then, he borrow'd from romance, and did translate;‡
And those plays found a more indulgent fate.

Ravenscroft, however, seems to have given the first offence; for, in the prologue to "The Citizen turned Gentleman,” licensed 9th

• This looks as if there had been some ground for Dryden's censure upon the

actors.

† A flat parody on the lines in Dryden's prologue, referring to Mamamouchi:

Grimace and habit sent you pleased away:

You damn'd the poet, but cried up the play.

It is somewhat remarkable, that the censure contained in what is above printed like verses, recoils upon the head of the author, who never wrote a

August 1672, we find the following lines, obviously levelled at "The Conquest of Granada," and other heroic dramas of our author:

Then shall the knight, that had a knock in's cradle,
Such as Sir Martin and Sir Arthur Addle,*

Be flock'd unto, as the great heroes now

In plays of rhyme and noise, with wondrous show :-
Then shall the house, to see these Hectors kill and slay,
That bravely fight out the whole plot of the play,
Be for at least six months full every day.

Langbaine, who quotes the lines from the prologue to Ravenscroft's "Careless Lovers," is of opinion, that he paid Dryden too great a compliment in admitting the originality of " The Assig nation," and labours to shew, that the characters are imitated from the "Romance Comique" of Scarron, and other novels of the time. But Langbaine seems to have been unable to comprehend, that originality consists in the mode of treating a subject, more than in the subject itself.

" The Assignation" was acted in 1672, and printed in 1673.

single original performance. Langbaine, the persecutor of all plagiarism, though he did not know very well in what it consisted, threatens to pull off Ravenscroft's disguise, and discover the politic plagiary that lurks under it. I know," continues the biographer," he has endeavoured to shew himself master of the art of swift writing, and would persuade the world, that what he writes is extempore wit, and written currente calamo. But I doubt not to shew, that though he would be thought to imitate the silk-worm, that spins its web from its own bowels, yet I shall make him appear like the leech, that lives upon the blood of other men, drawn from the gums; and, when he is rubbed with salt, spews it up again."

Sir Martin Mar-all we are acquainted with. Sir Arthur Addle is a similar character, in a play called "Sir Solomon, or, The Cautious Coxcomb," attributed to one John Caryll.