Vanbrugh and Farquhar by John Bull (review)

80 characteristic ‘‘Restoration’’ groupings. This sampling of (versified) historywriting includes Oldham, Dryden, Shadwell, Katherine Philips, and others. Slimly represented, though, is writing precipitated by three related crises which shook the Stuart administration: the Popish Plot, the Exclusion Crisis, and the Monmouth Rebellion. And it is here that Mr. Love exposes but a passing familiarity with Restoration women writers, especially their political work. Where is Behn’s sensational epilogue against Monmouth in Romulus and Hersillia? Where are the bold broadsides to Charles II and to Monmouth by the most highlyplaced woman writer at the Stuart court, ‘‘Ephelia’’ (Mary Villiers, later Stuart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, 1622–1685)? These omissions misrepresent the culture’s literary response to civic crises and also diminish women writers’ contribution to English political writing. But the editor vindicates himself handsomely in ‘‘Reasons Of Love,’’ the book’s core section, on the sweets and torments of Eros. In some fiftyselections, we have a balanced representation of amorous verse at this time from Oldham, D’Avenant, Dryden, the Court Wits, Katherine Philips, Behn, Jane Barker, Lady Chudleigh, Elizabeth Montagu,and others. But missing are other, equally suitable choices from Anne Wharton, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Killigrew, Anne Finch, and ‘‘Ephelia.’’ Mr. Love also might have included some homoerotic selections, as well as Behn’s sapphic verse. ‘‘The Translators’’ includes verse translations by Oldham, Fane, Dryden, Rochester, Creech, Sedley, Buckingham, and Congreve. But were women writers also not accomplished translators? Why exclude Lucy Hutchinson’s work on Lucretius, Behn’s on Ovid, Katherine Philips’s French translations, and Finch’s work on Tasso and Deshoulières? While there is much to recommendthis imaginative collection, foremost its inclusion of minor and uncanonicalfigures, as well as its enterprising thematic arrangements , women are disproportionately represented: a mere 13 selections; men, 166. In view of women’s prominence in Restoration literary culture as producers, consumers, patronesses, and subjects of literature, this gap is unacceptable . With no present competitor in view, Mr Love’s anthology will run on happily until it is superseded by a new product, one ideally embracing many of his volume’s themes, but also representing Restoration verse from a more gender -balanced vantage point. Maureen E. Mulvihill Princeton Research Forum JOHN BULL. Vanbrugh and Farquhar. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998. Pp. xviii ⫹ 158. $55. In an ostensibly historical framework, the twin themes are why plays and audiences changed during Vanbrugh’s and Farquhar’s ascendancy, 1696 to 1707, and what implications those changes hold. Yet the focus on the shifting topics of the major plays is confined to the playhouse , with emphasis on unresolved plots, dramatic structure, and interplay of character, but hardly any on the substance of the Collier controversy, the emergence of contract issues, or the turmoil of continental war. The financial settlements that increasingly tie money to sex in plays around 1700 are posited rather than proven . Connections between thetextsandthe changing order of the outside world do appear, but with an understated sense of 81 the intrinsic relationship between character and audience, much less between political and theatrical cultures. Not that there is anything inherently wrong or objectionable about Mr. Bull’s commentaries on familiar texts. It is just that they do not go far or say much. The unforgettable Lord Foppington’s dialog with ‘‘the virtuous Amanda and the very unvirtuous Berinthea is wonderful in its depiction of a confrontation of two completely different moral codes.’’ Wonderful ? That is both the strength of this introductory survey and its fatal weakness. Unless a teacher desires to work thisbook into the fabric of discussion of the plays, it simply will not stand on its own— except as a feeble prop for late-night term papers. Mr. Bull performs an introducer’s duties : he identifies major themes, shows how characters express them, and notes the ludicrousness (for example) of the paper -thin paean to married life in Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift. In commenting that ‘‘money really turns the wheels of the plot,’’ Mr. Bull prepares for his reading of The Relapse, ‘‘interesting and innovatory in its own right, ‘‘ as ‘‘actually a step back’’ to a pre-reform Restoration theatrical culture. This typifies an approach that will see...