Cato: A Tragedy, and Selected Essays

Introduction

Introduction Joseph Addison’s Cato, A Tragedy captured the imaginations of eighteenth-century theatergoers throughout Great Britain, North America, and much of Europe. From its original performance on April 14, 1713, the play was a resounding success. Embraced by an audience whose opinions spanned the political spectrum, Cato was a popular and critical triumph that had tremendous appeal both as a performance and as a published text. In the second half of 1713, the play was staged more than twenty times in London alone, and before the century’s end, twenty-six English editions of Addison’s tragedy had appeared. Cato’s popularity continued to spread throughout the eighteenth century, and the play appeared in performance and published translation in countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Holland , and Poland. With its themes of liberty, virtue, and resistance to tyranny, Addison’s Cato inserted itself into eighteenth-century consciousness , providing many of the words and images that informed republican sensibilities during this period in Britain, Europe, and the British colonies in North America. Despite the play’s enormous influence, Addison’s reputation was not exclusively as a playwright; indeed, he was best known to contemporaries and succeeding generations as the master of the essay form. Samuel Johnson, while not completely without criticism of Cato, singled out Addison’s writings as a model of expression. In his Lives of the Poets, Johnson declared, “Whoever wishes to attain an English style familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.”1 A 1. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets. In Johnson: Prose and Poetry, selected by Mona Wilson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), 881. creative force behind coffeehouse periodicals such as the Spectator, the Guardian, and the Freeholder, Addison wrote more than 400 essays on matters such as taste, manners, literature, theater, politics, and the observation of daily life in London. With readerships of several thousand, these periodicals were powerful tools in shaping public mores, sensibilities, and discourse in the eighteenth century. In his work as an essayist, Addison further explored and developed many of the themes that were raised in his Cato. This volume presents Addison’s Cato with a brief selection of some of his essays that further develop themes announced in the play. The Life of Joseph Addison Addison was born in 1672 in the Wiltshire hamlet of Milston, where his father was the church rector. In 1687, he matriculated at Oxford, studying first at Queen’s College before being elected to Magdalen College. At Oxford, he acquired a reputation for poetry and criticism ; his studies focused on the classics, with an orientation more to Latin than to Greek. The early acts of Cato can be traced to Addison ’s days as a student. After leaving Oxford in 1699, Addison traveled for four years through France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany , and Holland. Upon his return to Britain, he soon came to the attention of key Whig political figures such as John, Lord Somers, and was commissioned to write The Campaign, a long poem commemorating Marlborough’s 1704 victory over the French at Blenheim . Addison quickly rose through the Whig political ranks, holding government positions including the position of Commissioner of Appeals (recently vacated by John Locke), Under-Secretary of State, Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Chief Secretary for Ireland , and eventually Member of Parliament for Malmesbury. During this period, Addison began his career as a popular essayist , ultimately becoming the acknowledged master of what was then a relatively new form. He contributed to the Whig Examiner (1710), which responded to the Tory paper Examiner, and worked with his boyhood friend Richard Steele on the Tatler (1709–11). From there, Addison and Steele joined forces on the paper that truly cemented xii introduction Addison’s reputation, the Spectator (1711–1712, 1714). After his run with the Spectator, Addison penned the final act to the four acts he had already written for Cato, A Tragedy; during Cato’s initial London staging, Addison continued producing essays, working with Steele on the Guardian (1713) and composing several pieces that dealt explicitly with themes from Cato. Addison struck out on his own for the Freeholder (1715–16) essays, which took a decidedly more political tone. His last set of essays, in The Old Whig (1718), was marred by a personal break with his longtime collaborator Steele over matters...