Ethical Design in Restoration Drama

REVIEWS ETHICAL DESIGN IN RESTORATION DRAMA' It seems to be the fate of Restoration drama to have its morals scrutinized. Critics find the plays moral, immoral, or amoral; rarely are they seen in terms not of the political or religious tract, but of the theatre. Miss Barbeau in her book on Dryden's heroic plays concentrates, once again, on the ethical content. 'Beneath the surface of a conventional plot, a love story which purposely does not involve his audience emotionally, Dryden sets to work to dramatize sets of highly complex opinions concerning the obligations of man within his sociery. All of the characters are designed to exemplify various attitudes concerning the obligations of a son to his parents, of a subject to his sovereign, and of a man to his own conscience.' Seen in these tenns the plays demonstrate Dryden's moderate political views. Influenced by Hobbes, Dryden did not fall victim to his material determinism; he is influenced, too, by Filmer, but he allows the individual a much greater degree of freedom from political coercion. Dryden's political beliefs have been analysed often enough before; their determining influence upon his heroic plays has not before been so clearly demonstrated. Mr Schneider uses the same 'ethical approach' in his book on Restoration comedy. The crucial error in judging Restoration comedy, he suggests, is that of Charles Lamb and of the 'manners' critics who followed after him, who would 'deny Restoration comedy any morality whatsoever.' Like Miss Barbeau, Mr Schneider believes that the plays he writes about demonstrate a coherent ethical position, and he sets out to describe it for us. While it seems that the heroic play is mainly about politics, Restoration comedy concentrates on the moral problems implicit in personal relationships. In analysing these relationships, Mr Schneider establishes that the protagonists in Restoration comedy are generous, liberal, courageous, plain-dealing, and loving. His conclusions are hopelessly simplistic - at a stroke all complexities are un· ravelled and ambiguities dissolved. Nevertheless when Mr Schneider's book is set beside Miss Barbeau's, which takes the same sober approach to the plays, certain similarities emerge between the two most important dramatic forms of the period - comedy and the heroic play - which, to many readers, have seemed totally unrelated. Miss Barbeau has chosen her title carefully. Design, she tells us, is an essential aspect of Dryden'S heroic plays and of his dramatic theory. 'For Aristotle, the essence, the '1ife and soul" of a tragedy, is the plot; for Dryden, If. Anne T. Barbeau, The Intellectual Design of John Dryden's Heroic Plays. Yale University Press 1970. Pp. 272 $8.50; Ben Ross Schneider, The Ethos of Restoration Comedy. University of Illinois Press 1971. Pp. 201. $8.50. UTQ, Volume XLII, Number 2, Winter 1973 ETHICAL DESIGN IN RESTORATION DRAMA 171 it is the design, the interrelation of fable, character, thoughts, manners, and words.' Ultimately the design of the play can be identified with 'an abstract plan behind the workings of history.... Overreachers and rebels sink into oblivion, impatient men of virtue despair and fall by the wayside, but patient men see the deliverance.' This is fair enough, but the emphasis on design tempts Miss Barbeau into a relentless schemalization that ends by making discrimination impossible. Her technique is unable to comprehend the elusiveness and complexity that in the first sentence of her book she attributes to Dryden. In play after play characters are categorized in terms of their ethical connotations and so dismissed. Aureng-Zebe, the most subtle of Dryden's heroic plays, suffers most. Miss Barbeau's categories cannot contain the reservations we might feel about Aureng-Zebe, our impatience with Melesinda , our admiration and even sympathy for Morat and Nourmahal. Inevitably , perhaps, she looks at the heroic plays as if they constituted some sort of unity. There is very little sense of the individuality of the plays, and of the development in Dryden's political thought between the acting of The Indian Queen in 1663/4 and of Aureng-Zebe in 1675. But this over-schematization is the result of a further limitation, implicit this time in Miss Barbeau's larger approach to her subject. It is a limitation that...