THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE.-Conducted by the Students of Yale University. This Magazine established February, 1836, is the oldest college periodical in America; entering upon its Sixty-Fourth Volume with the number for October, 1898. It is published by a board of Editors, annually chosen from each successive Senior Class. It thus may be fairly said to represent in its general articles the average literary culture of the university. In the Notabilia college topics are thoroughly discussed, and in the Memorabilia it is intended to make a complete record of the current events of college life; while in the Book Notices and Editor's Table, contemporary publications and exchanges receive careful attention.

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THE COMEDY OF MANNERS.

FAR back among the memories of the English stage,

following the overthrow of the Puritans and preceding, even culminating in, the brilliantly dashing comedies of Sheridan, there comes to our view a strange phenomenon-a vaguely defined structure, whose foundations are laid upon sand, and whose chief characteristics are different from those of life among most of the real people of its time. On this structure there move a number of puppets, some lifelike, others mere dolls of the play-house; all are quaintly picturesque in their gay plumage, and seem a veritable doll's house in color and effect. The wires controlling these puppets are well played; sometimes so well, indeed, that the wires themselves are invisible, and we are apt, in our later day fashion, to become interested in the characters, and even to grow sentimental-which would be unfortunate. The dialogue is marvelous in its brilliancy; so much so, indeed, that it seems largely for the purpose of exploiting this brilliancy that the puppets are created. The structure is the English stage of the Restoration; the puppets are

the characters of the Comedy of Manners, the most conspicuous and brilliant exponents of which are Wycherly and Congreve.

To say that the Comedy of Manners was acted upon a stage which did not reflect the life of its time is perhaps not literally true. The life of the Court of the profligate Charles II it did most unquestionably mirror, but on the life of the average Englishman of the time it had no effect or meaning whatsoever. It was merely the outcome of that strange and imperceptible struggle by which the gay Court of Charles II gained, for a time, the mastery of English comedy, making it little more than a reflection of its own airy fancies, entirely disregarding in the meantime the staid and rather colorless life of the mass of the people. The ideals of this Court are well described by Bellmour in "The Old Bachelor"; "Come, come," he says, "leave business to idlers and wisdom to fools; they have need of 'em. Wit be my faculty and pleasure my occupation; and let Father Time shake his glass." Such sentiments naturally had little meaning for the steady, empire-building mass of Englishmen of the time, and therefore, with their morals and every-day life, the Comedy of Manners could have very little to do.

In thinking of this strange school of comedy, and its connection with the people of the time, it is impossible that the mind should not ramble back to that brilliant prototype of Congreve, George Etheredge. His plays, following close upon the restoration of the Stuarts, had proclaimed at once, and in no uncertain tone, the beginning of a new class of comedy. The old Comedy of Humors, produced under the school of Jonson, had, before its downfall, been unquestionably a comedy for all the people; now, however, it lay helpless amidst the frivolities of the Anglo-French Court of Charles II. What was to take its place? Was the Court, in all the arrogance of its new power, to overcome the nation in the control of the drama, or vice versa? In answer to the query a new author sprang out of the

gloom, a young man in whose first play were mirrored all the reactive joy of life felt by the Court, all its pleasure in power and love, long suppressed under the black-gowned rule of Cromwell. His plays are the faintest of pastelles; and the coloring for the first time was that of the Court, not of the people in general. Without the keen insight of the later Congreve, without even the brutal strength of Wycherly, Etheredge had all of their fancy, their brilliancy, their artificiality. The same Molière and the same gay Paris that had left such a permanent impression on Charles II, had also left unmistakable traces of their influence upon Etheredge. The life of the boulevards, the piquancy of their people, the satirical power of the great French master, lent to the comedies "She Could if She Would" and "The Man of Mode" an atmosphere no less truly their own than that which they had given to the life of the courtiers of the King; it was an atmosphere, moreover, that Etheredge, with all his natural wit and good nature, could never have inhaled in the heavy twilight of the sand-dunes and forests of old England.

We find this French influence, to which the Court was so friendly, to an even more marked degree in Congreve's immediate predecessor, William Wycherly. Not only does the plot of his "Country Wife" bear many marks of intimacy with Molière's "L'Ecole des Femmes," but the main characters of the "Plain Dealer," his masterpiece, are taken almost entirely from the great Frenchman's "Le Misanthrope." The plot of the "Plain Dealer" is stronger and clearer than that of any of Congreve's plays, while its dialogue is almost as brilliant-and that is saying much. In this play the foibles of the time are satirized with a grim brutality, a merciless force that gave to its author the title, so oft applied, and later in life so ridiculous, "The Manly Wycherly."

Congreve's first comedy, the "Old Bachelor," was a very considerable advance over even the greatest of Wycherly's plays. The needle had swung still further in

that great arc, only ending with "The Way of the World," in moving through which the Court was to gain complete control of English comedy. Without Wycherly's clearness of plot and keenness of character-drawing, lacking the easy confidence of the elder dramatist, the directness and apt phrasing of Congreve's play at once gave him a position unequalled since the days of Beaumount and Fletcher. Wycherly had been good, but Congreve was better, as even that stout friend of the elder author, Dryden, was forced to acknowledge. Congreve had used with one exception the puppets employed in the Comedy of Manners since its very beginning; his plot had given these puppets no great opportunity for showing themselves extraordinarily entertaining, but still he conquered-absolutely.

"Love for Love," the most popular of Congreve's comedies, marks another advance in that course of evolution which had begun with the comedies of Etheredge. In it there is less of Wycherly, and more of Congreve. The Comedy of Manners could go thus far in its devotion to the Court and still be a success-it was soon to be shown that it could go no further. With the clearest plot its author had ever invented, with more of the "farcical"-that sop to the pit-than is to be found in "The Way of the World," as well as more of that type of life which was conceivable, and therefore interesting to its auditors, it is not strange that "Love for Love" was popular with the crowd. There was none of that dainty satire-albeit of too light a touch to be understood by all-that distinguishes the "Way of the World"; there were no Petulants to puzzle the stupid; no Millamants to amaze the audience with their pretty vagaries and laughing conceits. There was only the ridiculously overdrawn character, Tattle, the commonplace cruel father, Legend, and the typical Mrs. Frail, and the audience heard, understood and applauded "to the echo."

It is with no confident air that Congreve approaches that great masterpiece that was to be at once his greatest success and his only failure. It almost seems that in writing the