George Farquhar: 1677-1707

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Commentary

W. R. Chetwood, General History of the Stage (London 1749): ‘Farquhar was born in the North of Ireland, of Parents that held no mean Rank in that part of the Country: who, having a numerous Issue, could bestow on him no other Forthune than a genteel Education.’ (p.148.)

Joseph Cooper Walker, “Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish”: ‘The Huguenots who followed the fortunes of William III brought with them the fashions of their country. But I cannot find that these fashions were infectious; at least it does not appear that the Irish caught them. / The hat was now shaped in the Ramillie cock. The periwig, which had been of several years’ standing in Ireland, was not yet generally worn: it was confined to the learned professions, or to those who affected gravity. “Our ignorant nation (says Farquhar, in a comedy written in this reign [viz., Love and a Bottle, 1698], our ignorant nation imagine a full wig as infallible a token of wit as the laurel.” / The head-dress which, the Spectator says, “made the women of such an enormous stature, that we appeared as grasshoppers before them,” now prevailed here. This information I owe to the inquisitiveness of Lucinda, in the comedy which I have just quoted. / Lucinda: “Tell us some news of your country; I have heard the strangest stories, that the people wear horns and hoofs.” / Roebuck: “Yes, faith, a great many wear horns; but we have that, among other laudable fashions, from London; I think it came over with your mode of wearing high top-knots; for ever since the men and wives bear their heads exalted alike. They were both fashions that took wonderfully.”’(Extract given in Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature, 1904, p. Vol IX, p.3496f; also available at Library Ireland.com online.)

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Leigh Hunt (Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanburgh, and Farquhar, with biographical and critical notices, 1849): ‘He [Farquhar] was becoming gayer and gayer when death, in the shape of a sore anxiety called him away, as if from a pleasant party, and left the house ringing with his jest’ (quoted in Micheál Ó hAodha, Theatre in Ireland, Oxford: Blackwell 1974, p 5 [no ref.]). Note that H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon accredits Leigh Hunt with basing on argument for divorce on a passage in The Beaux’ Stratagem (Preface to 1898 Edn., infra).

Patrick Kennedy, Modern Irish Anecdotes [... &c.] (London: Routledge & Sons. [1872]), writing on “Irish Pronunciation”: ‘The Irish of our day complain of the treatment of their pronunciation by American and Eng lish writers, who remorselessly drag such words as praste, thafe, and paither out of their mouths to their great disgust. It is probable that they were no better off in the end of the seventeenth century. Their own countryman, poor George Farquhar (1678- 1707), could afford no better pronunciation nor phraseology to Teague in the The Twin Rivals than the following: “Yesh agra, I’m a great thraveller. I did visit France and Shpain agra. I did kish de Pope’s toe: dat ’ill excuse all de sins I commit in dis life, and fen I’m dead Shaint Patrick ’ill excuse de rest.” / Teague is suborned to swear that his own master is the younger of two brothers, but when the trial comes on, and he sees him grieved and surprised at his treachery, he acknowledges before the Court that he has received a bribe, which he offers to share with his dear master. Having, by his good-natured blundering, obtained the victory for him, and being asked what he wished to be done for himself, he answered : “I wish to be made a justice o’ de pashe agra.” - “But Teague, you would not be fit for the place.” - “Oh fait, I will sho. I can make my mark, and take de oats (oaths). I vill be a very honesht man meshelf, and keep a great rogue for a clerk.” In a modern farce Teague would have to say kape. / N.B. - No Irish peasant mispronounces ie or ee.’ (End Intro. [p.5.])

H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon ed., The Beaux’ Strategem (London: J. M. Dent & Co. 1898), Preface: ‘“It is surprising, ” says Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, “how much English Comedy owes to Irishmen.” Nearly fifty years ago Calcraft enumerated eighty-seven Irish dramatists in a by no means exhaustive list, including Congreve, Southerne, Steele, Kelly, Macklin, and Farquhar - the really Irish representative amongst the dramatists of the Restoration, the true prototype of Goldsmith and Sheridan. Thoroughly Irish by birth and education, Captain George Farquhar (1677-1707) had delighted the town with a succession of bright, rattling comedies - Love and a Bottle (1698), The Constant Couple (1699), Sir Harry Wildair (1701), The Inconstant (1702), The Twin Rivals (1702), The Recruiting Officer (1706). In an unlucky moment, when hard pressed by his debts, he sold out of the army on the strength of a promise by the Duke of Ormond to gain him some preferment, which never came. In his misery and poverty, with a wife and two helpless girls to support, Farquhar was not forsaken by his one true friend, Robert Wilks. Seeking out the dramatist in his wretched garret in St Martin’s Lane, the actor advised him no longer to trust to great men’s promises, but to look only to his pen for support, and urged him to write another play. “Write!” said Farquhar, starting from his chair; “is it possible that a man can write with common-sense who is heartless and has not a shilling in his pockets?” “Come, come, George,” said Wilks, “banish melancholy, draw up your drama, and bring your sketch with you to-morrow, for I expect you to dine with me. But as [v] an empty purse may cramp your genius, I desire you to accept my mite; here is twenty guineas.” Farquhar set to work, and brought the plot of his play to Wilks the next day; the later approved the design, and urged him to proceed without delay. Mostly written in bed, the whole was begun, finished, and acted within six weeks. The author designed to dedicate it to Lord Cadogan, but his lordship, for reasons unknown, declined the honour; he gave the dramatist a handsome present, however. Thus was The Beaux-Stratagem written.’ (pp.v-vi.) [Cont.]

H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon ed., The Beaux’ Strategem (London: J. M. Dent & Co. 1898), Preface - cont: ‘Although Farquhar, like Goldsmith, undoubtedly drew his incidents and personages from his own daily associations, there is probably no more truth in these surmises than in the assertion (repeatedly made, though denied in his preface to The Inconstant) that Farquhar depicts himself in his young heroes, his rollicking “men about town,” Roebuck, Mirabel, Wildair, Plume, Archer. Archer [...] is a decided improvement on his predecessors, and is the best of all Farquhar’s creations; he is assuredly the most brilliant footman that ever was, eminently sociable and, with all his easy, rattling volubility, never forgetful of his self-respect and never indifferent to the wishes or welfare of others. As Hunt has pointed out, the characters of Archer and Aimwell improve as the play progresses; they set out as mere intriguers, but prove in the end true gentlemen. [...; x] Marriage retrieves them and turns them into respectable and adoring husbands.’ (p.ix-x.) ‘Strange to say, the only badly drawn character is Foigard, the unscrupulous Irish Jesuit priest. Farquhar is fond of introducing an Irishman into each of his plays, but I cannot say that I think he is generally successful; certainly not in this instance. They are mostly broad caricatures, and speak an outlandish jargon, more like Welsh than Irish, supposed to be the Ulster dialect: anything more unlike it would be difficult to conceive. The early conventional stage Irishman, tracing him from Captain. Macmorris [x] in Henry V.,through Ben Jonson’s Irish Masque and New Inn, Dekker’s Bryan, Ford’s Mayor of Cork, Shadwell’s O’Divelly (probably Farquhar’s model for Foigard), is truly a wondrous savage, chiefly distinguished by his use of the expletives “Dear Joy!” and “By Creesh!” This character naturally rendered the play somewhat unpopular in Ireland, and its repulsiveness is unrelieved (as it is in the case of Teague in The Twin Rivals) by a single touch of humour or native comicality. It is an outrage.’ (pp.x-xi.)

Edmund Gosse, ed., Restoration Plays (London: Dent 1912; new edn. 1932; rep. 1968: ‘[I]n George Farquhar (1671-1757) the line of seventeenth-century dramatists closes in a figure of very pleasing originality. Farquhar was that was then called was “a pretty fellow” - a new type, a sentimental soldier, garrulous and tender, contrasting in a good-natured way with the hard an cynical types of satirist who had preceded him. He lies even further from literature than Vanbrugh, but he has great knowledge of life, and a brisk delivery. In him the step between the play and the novel was fainally taken, and he himself perceived this. “Comedy,” he says in 1702, “Is no more at present than a well-framed tale handsomely told as an agreeable vehicle for counsel and reproof.”’ (p.xv; ending the Introduction.)

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Allardyce Nicoll, in British Drama: an Historical Survey from the Beginnings to the Present Time, Harrap 1925; revised edn. 1962): ‘One particular comedy, The Wild-Goose Chase (1621), suggests what later was to be fashioned out of Fletcher’s example. Although this play is different in many respects from the Restoration comedies of manners, it definitely anticipates them in others; the merry heroine Oriana, who indulges in a series of tricks to win her elusive Mirabel, together with her sisters, Rosalura and Lillia-Bianca, with their lovers, the blunt Belleur and the witty Pinac, clearly suggest the social circle dealt with by Etherege and his companions. It was not by chance that Farquhar selected this comedy as the basis for his own comedy of manners, The Inconstant.’ (p.125.) Cf.: ‘The characteristic style of comedy developed during these years was the comedy of manners, but in thinking of the contributions in this style made by Etherage, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, it is important to remember that the “manners” form was rivalled by many another whcih proved as popular, if not more popular, with contemporary audiences.’ (Ibid., p.153.)

Allardyce Nicoll, in British Drama: an Historical Survey from the Beginnings to the Present Time (revised edn. 1962) - cont.: Of Vanbrugh and Farquhar: ‘The careers of both these men are alike, and, taken together, they indicate the general trend of theatical tastes. Both commenced in the seventeenth century with largely “immoral” comedies, full of wit and striving to capture the fine grace that had distinguished the Stuart Court; both, as they progressed, showed with frequent touches of satire and cynicism a descent to frace and sentmentalism. Not that the two had precisely similar natures. Farquhar is at one and the same time near to the spirit of Congreve and more foppish than Vanbrugh. He has, in The Constant Couple (1699), in The Inconstant (1702), and in The Beaux’ Strategem, caught something of the true “manners” style. His plots are more carefully elaborated than are those of Congreve, but he retains at least a reflection of the Congreve wit. In The Twin Rivals (1702) and The Recruiting Officer (1706), on the other hand, he displays clearly the impress of the newer age. The first is deeply tinged with a hypocritical sentimentalism, and the second has a realistic tough quite alien to the comedy of manners. [...] Like Farquhar, too, Vanbrugh turned to a type of sentimentalism, evidently insincere, in The False Friend (1702). The truth is that the men of Farquhar’s and Vanbrugh’s calibre did not know where to sand. They had lost the fredom of action in the conflicting moods of the time. [...] The efforts at the older style were, therefore, bound to be only half-hearted, or, if indulged in boldly, wre sure to be followed by a succeeding moment of painful reflection.’ (Ibid., p.164.) Cf., ‘In the sphere of tragedy the age’s chief weakness lay in the lack of a clear orientation, and the same may be said for the sphere of comedy.’ (p.182.)

C. G. Duggan, The Stage Irishman (1937), Epilogue to Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle, ‘As travel does the men of mode refine / So our stage heroes did their tour design/To mend their manners and coarse English feeding / They went to Ireland to improve their breeding.’ ALSO, George Farquhar, Love and A Bottle, his first play, contains Roebuck, ‘an Irish gentleman of a wild roving temper, newly come to London’. Roebuck eventually marries Leanthe, the sister of his friend Lovewell, who owns an estate in Ireland, when she employs an immoral ruse to win him. Roebuck wittily defends Ireland in railing conversation with Lucinda, who later marries Lovewell. Trudge, another character, is in London having fled a forced match in Ireland, paying off the would-be bride with £500 from his father; and the play ends with a masque or ‘Irish entertainment of three men and three women dressed after the Fingallian fashion.’ [Cont.]

C. G. Duggan, The Stage Irishman (1937) - cont.: Farquhar, The Twin Rivals (1720), in which the younger son Would-be plots to dispossess his elder Hermes-Would-be from his inheritance and from the hand of Constance, while in a subplot the elder’s friend Capt. Trueman rescues Constance’s cousin Aurelia from the rakish Richmore. Teague is the servant of the elder twin, and it is he who foils and unravels the plot. On London: ‘Fet, dear joy, ‘tis the bravest place I have sheen in my peregrinations exshepting my nown brave shity of Carrickvergus.’ His philosophy, ‘Eating, dear joy, fen I can get it, and sleeping fen I can get none; ‘tish the fashion in Ireland.’; ‘Hanged, dat is nothing, dear joy - we are us’d to ‘t’; ‘By my shoul, dear joy, I am ever out of my ways, for poor Teague has been a wanderer ever since he was born.’ Farquhar’s treatment of Teague shows a respect for his humanity as a stranger in a strange land. ALSO, One recalls how, in Farquhar’s The Twin Rivals, the attorney is prepared to bring over a whole cargo-load of witnesses from Ireland if the wind is blowing from the proper quarter [p.264, infra]. For further comments on Farquhar’s Stage Irishmen, see Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael, 1986, pp.115-120.)

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J. O. Bartley, Teague, Shenkin, and Sawney (1954), on Farquhar’s Irishmen: ‘Although Protestant his treatment of the Catholic Irish comparatively free of bitterness; helped dispel suspicion against Catholics; Roebuck, one of the same light-hearted rakes that throng the pages of Lever; evidently Protestant; Farquhar, who got into trouble for being mixed in an affray at Donnybrook Fair in which a man lost his life [sic. for the more common theatrical story], may not have been guiltless of self-portraiture; Roebuck not at all nationalised in speech [is] sufficiently conscious of his nationality to lay some stress on it; Farquhar makes special point of exaggerated notions held in England about the Irish, as when Lucinda exclaims on learning Roebuck’s nationality, ‘Oh horrible! an Irish-man, a meer Wolf-Dog ... I protest ... I have head the strangest stories that the people wear Horns and Hoofs.’ Roebuck’s whore Trudge is revealed in one sentence: ‘Ah Faith is it you, dear Joy?’ [109]. On The Twin Rivals: Teague, played by Bowen, uses his nationality as a stalking-horse in order to confound and outwit the villain of the piece; he is impish and loyal, and his simplicity ... hides great cunning; [some remarks quoted also appear in Duggan, with var. spellings.] He calls himself ‘a Shentleman bred and born’ and says his ‘Grandfader was an Irish poet - he did write a great Book of Verses concerning the Vars between St Patrick and the wolf-Dogs’; hides his master’s identity under name of Macfadin [190-110.]

J. O. Bartley (Teague, Shenkin, and Sawney, 1954) - cont.: The Stage Coach contains ... Macahone, ‘Torlough Havwer Macahone of the parish oc Curroughabegely, in the Count of Tipperary, Esquire, where is my Mansionhouse, for me and my Predecessors after me, fortune-hunter and not a clever one, accurately described as ‘an Irish booby’; silly farce, rather popular, sop to the public; Macahone shows marked decline in taste and skill from Teague [110]. MORE, in The Beaux’ Strategem, Macshane, alias Father Foigard, priest &c., shows English dramatists’ continuing difficulty in attempting to make a Catholic agreeable, yet there is little trace of venom ... Foigard does not make bulls. [110] Horde’s It was Right at the Last (1787), adaptation of Twin Rivals [126]. The exclamation ‘och’ appears for first time in Twin Rivals [128]; Horde’s It Was &c. (1787) takes its reference to Irishmen bearing false witness from Twin Rivals [189].

J. O. Bartley (Teague, Shenkin, and Sawney, 1954) - cont.: ‘About the close of good King Charles golden days, fathering bulls upon the Irish had evidently become the sort of joke that catches on though the distinction between bulls and blunder may not have been clarified ... when it had been the time was ripe for Farquhar to exploit the situation by putting the bull-making Irishman upon the stage ... W. J. Lawrence thought that The Twin Rivals began it’ [210]; William Bowen the original Teague and the first Foigard [242]; Joe Millar as Teague [243]; also the younger Cibber [244]; also Egan (d.1784/5) [249]. Lists title-page details [260]. “Brogue” (i.e., bróg, Irishman’s footwear) occurs for the first time in English literature as refering to Irish speech in Farquhar’s Twin Rivals (1702) and became frequent in this sense, but possibly connected with barróg, meaning ‘defective accent’ - but cf. Eigse, Vol. III, pp.231-39 [272; phonological notes, 285, phonological note, 287].

William Smith Clarke, Early Irish Theatre (OUP 1955), writes that Farquhar appeared as Othello at Smock Alley in 1696; he returned to Dublin to appear as Sir Harry Wildair in his own Constant Couple in 1704 [pp. 104, 120].

Thomas Kilroy, ‘Anglo-Irish Playwrights and Comic Tradition’, in The Crane Bag, 3 (1979), quotes William Archer on Restoration comedies: ‘Their talk is essentially coterie-talk, keyed up to the pitch of a particular and narrow set. It is Farquhar’s great merit to have released comedy from this circle of malign enchantment. Even in The Constant Couple and Sir Harry Wildair his characters have not quite the coterie stamp. We feel, at any rate, that they are studied from an outside point of view, by one who does not mistake the conventions of the coterie for laws of nature.’ (Archer [q. source], pp.19-27; rep. in The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies, 1982, pp.439-47; p.443) [Query: recte James Kilroy?]

Seamus Deane, A Short History of Irish Literature (Hutchinson 1982), notes that in Farquhar’s satirical plays ‘the chief commentator is a foreigner or an outsider.’ (p.120.)

Roy Foster, reviewing Declan Hughes’s production of Farquhar’s Love and A Bottle at the Tricycle Theatre (TLS, 12 June 1992): ‘Farquhar set the tone for Anglo-Irish drama, playing with stereotypes, reversing conventions, using paradox as wit. His first play, though prentice work, hints at all these qualities. His first play, though prentice work, hints at all these qualities. Declan Hughes’s adaptation makes the most of it by stressing the playwright’s role. “George Lyric”, an Irishman unsuccessfully on the make in London, conjures up and interrogates his characters, who in turn subvert his own intentions - particularly the hero, Roebuck, sexual pirate and nihilistic aphorist. / The play needs this twist, because its bones are shaky enough. Farquhar’s intention, as reflected through Lyric’s self-analysis, is to run athwart the genres of comedy and tragedy and take an Irish revenge on English “wigs and foppery” [...; I]f a moral emerges the farrago of mistaken identities, cross-dressing, fumbling at crotches, randy masters and calculating servants, it is the Augustan truth that a stiff prick hath no conscience. / More novel are the anticipations of Anglo-Irish dramatic subversiveness. The womenly men and many women suggest Wilde, and the reversal of stereotypes, whereby heard-headed Irish manipulate sentimental English, anticipate John Bull’s Other Island. Roebuck expresses a good deal of Farquhar himself, who in his student days was disciplined by Trinity College, for using the story of Christ walking on water as an illustration of the adage that “the man born to be hanged will never be drowned”. [...] Roebuck as “the devil made flesh” [...] the effete Lovewell [...] the raunchy servant Pindress [...] the unlikely subject of Irish sex appeal has been rehabilitated for London’s theatrical agenda.’ (Times Literary Supplement, 12 June 1992)

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“A Discourse on Comedy in reference to the English Stage”: defends the English neglect of the dramatic unities: ‘The scholar calls upon us form decorum and economy; the courtier cries out for wit and purity of style; the divines threaten us for immodesty; and the ladies will have an intrigue.’ ‘An English play is intended or the use and instruction of an English audience, a people ... different from other nations in the complexion and temperament of the natural body as in the constitution of our body politic.’ ‘The rules of English comedy do not lie in the compass of Aristotle or his followers, but in the pit, box and galleries.’ ‘Shakespeare, Jonson and Fletcher ... who by methods much different from the ancients have supported the English stage.’ (Rep. in S. Elledge, ed., Eighteenth-century Critical Essays NY 1961.)

“A Discourse on Comedy [...; &c.]”: ‘Old Aesop must wear the bays as the first and original author ... he had his tyrant lion, his statesman fox, his beau magpie, his coward hare, his bravo ass, and his buffoon ape, with all the characters that crowd our stages every day, with this distinction nevertheless, that Aesop made his characters speak good Greek, and our heroes sometimes can’t talk English ... the first laureate was as just, as prudent, as pious, as reforming, and as ugly as any of (the critics) themselves ... those very tales and fables which they apprehend as obstacles to reformation were the main instruments and machines used by the wise Aesop for its propagation, and as he would improve men by the policy of beasts, so we endeavour to reform brutes with the examples of men.’ (Quoted in Willard Connely, Young George Farquhar, London: Cassell 1949, with remarks: ‘Later in life George Farquhar, who was endowed with an uncommonly tenacious memory, did reveal when he happened to write upon the nature of comedy that he deeply knew his Aesop in Greek. [...] These were the impressions drilled into him, impressions that Farquhar had evidently long pondered’; ibid., p.17-18).

Beaux’ Strategem (1707) - Preface: ‘The reader may find some faults in this play, which my illness prevented the amending of; but there is great amends made in the representation, which cannot be match’d, no more than the friendly and indefatigable care of Mr. Wilks, to whom I chiefly owe the success of the play.’ BONIFACE: ‘[Aimwell] is so much a gentleman in every manner of way ... he must be a highwayman.’ (I. iii, 5-59); Mrs. SULLEN: ‘He came home this morning at the usual hour of four; ... after his man and he had rolled about the room like sick passengers in a storm, he comes flounce into bed, dead as a salmon into a fishmonger’s basket ...O, matrimony.’ (II. I, 59-66); FOIGARD: ‘The gallows! upon my shoul, I hate that saam gallows, for it is a disease dat is fatal to our family.’ (IV. ii, 92-93). (See full-text copy in RICORSO Library, > “Irish Classics” [attached], or longer extracts [attached].)

The Constant Couple (Preface): ‘I have not been long enough in Town to raise enemies against me, and the English are still kind to strangers. I am below the envy of great wits, and above the malice of little ones. I have not displeased the ladies, nor offended the clergy; both which are now pleased to say, that a comedy may be diverting without smut or profaneness.’ (Quoted by Thomas Kilroy, ‘Anglo-Irish Playwrights and Comic Tradition’, in The Crane Bag, 3, 1979, pp.19-27; rep. in The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies, 1982, pp.439-47, p.443.)

The Constant Couple (1699) - Sir Harry: ‘Ay, colonel, for such a woman! I had rather see her ruelle than the palace of Louis le Grand. There’s more glory in her smile, than in the jubilee at Rome! and I would rather kiss her hand than the Pope’s toe.’ (Quoted in Siubhán Ó Dubháin, Mozart in Erin [MS 2021].)

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Notes
Sir John Gilbert, History of Dublin (1854), 1733, New Smock Alley at Aungier St., by architect Edward Lovet Pearce, opens with Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer, acting, 3 Elringtons and Mrs. Bellamy.

Love and a Bottle: Roebuck, described in as ‘an Irish gentleman of a wild, roving temper, newly come to London, a penniless and charming libertine, Wild as Winds, and unconfin’d as Air’ (Dram. Pers.), tells his friend Lovewell that he has left Ireland after his father has attempted to force him to marry the mother of twins (boy and girl) whom he has made pregnant, adding: “Heav’n was pleas’d to lessen my Affliction, by taking away the She-brat.”

The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707) - Plot: Two embarrassed gentlemen (Archer and Aimwell) travel disguised as master and servant aiming to entrap heiresses in the hope of mending their fortune; set in a Lichfield inn held by a rascally landlord Boniface. There Aimwell actually falls in love with their intended victim Dorinda, dg. of Lady Bountiful, while Archer forms a friendship with Dorinda’s sister-in-law Kate who is married to Sullen, a hard-drinking squire who lives off his wife’s fortune and denies her the separation that she wants. In the end, a legal fiction is introduced by Farquhar to effect their divorce by mutual consent (normally disallowed where mutual aversion [incompatibility] is the only grounds. and agree ‘to part’. (V. iv., 232ff.) Aimwell marries Dorinda while Archer takes the money and leaves his both friend and Mrs Sullen behind. Foigard, an Irish priest, actually called MacShane, is a disagreeable example of the stage-Irishman stereotype. Cherry, the innkeeper’s dg., sets her cap at Archer - who was played by David Garrick in one of his most famous roles.

The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707) - Dram. Pers.: Archer, a beau but plays servant to Aimwell; Aimwell, another beau; Count Bellair, a French count; Boniface, a Landlord; Cherry, his daughter; Lady Bountiful, country women, specialises in herbal medicine; Dorinda, her daughter; A countrywoman; Squire Sullen, a country block-head; Scrub, his servant; Mrs Sullen, his, unhappy, wife; Gypsy, her servant; Foigard, a priest and chaplain to the French officers; Gibbet, a highwayman; Hounslow, his associate; Bagshot, another associate; Sir Charles Freeman, brother to Mrs. Sullen.

Augustan allusions: Alexander Pope, The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated incls. remarks on ‘how seldom ev’n the best succeed’ (l.286.) and further, by way of illustration: ‘What pert low Dialogue has Farqu’ar writ!’ (l.288.) Oliver Goldsmith, in She Stoops to Conquer, has Kate Hardcastle asks her maid: ‘Tell me, Pimple, how do you like my present dress? Don’t you think I look something like Cherry in the Beaux Stratagem?’ (Act 3). (Both the foregoing cites in Wikipedia, online.)

Thomas Keneally, Our Country’s Good [q.d.], a novel, is about a group of 18th-century convicts to on Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer, in which the line of Gibbet the highwayman: ‘ ‘twas for the good of my country that I should be abroad - Anything for the good of one’s country - I’m a Roman for that.’ (Act 3, sc. 2) - in events based on the life of George Barrington [infra] . The novel was dramatised by Timberlake Wertenbaker under the same title.

Exeat TCD: Farquhar is said in one place to have left TCD (Dublin Univ.) on account of a profane joke, but reported by Thomas Wilkes to have done so due to the death of his patron. [See Wikipedia.]

Jeremy Taylor (1613-67), who appointed Farquhar’s father to the prebendary of Raphoe, ed. Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (grad. 1626), appt. to Charles I under Laud’s patronage; imprisoned several times after the execution of Laud in 1645; retired to Wales as private chaplain of the Earl of Carbery; appt. bishop of Down and Connor and vice-chancellor of Dublin University (TCD) at restoration. He was famed for his poetic style and sometimes known as the “Shakespeare of Divines”.

Google Books [online] lists as keywords and phrases: Kite, Cher, comedy of manners, Scrub, GEORGE FARQUHAR, Sull, wou’d, Aristotle, Constant Couple, shou’d, Quarto, Restoration comedy, Tummas, Shropshire, begar [sic], Gibbet, Silv, palisado, ANNE OLDFIELD, footman. (Note: begar is Hiberno-English; re. Gibbet, see also hanged and gallows, supra - both with Irish character-contexts.)

Portrait: an engraving of Farquhar by R. Clamp is reproduced in Brian de Breffny, ed., Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London: Thames & Hudson 1982), p.238.

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