Three Hours after Marriage Part 8

_Clink._ With what delight I embrace--

Sir _Trem._ With what pleasure I enter into--

_Clink._ Your ideas, most learned Sir Tremendous!

Sir _Trem._ Your sentiments, most divine Mrs. Clinket.

2d _Play._ The play, for heaven's sake, the play.

[_A tea-table brought in._]

_Clink._ This finish'd drama is too good for an age like this.

_Plotw._ The Universal Deluge, or the tragedy of Deucalion and Pyrrha.

[_Reads_

_Clink._ Mr. Plotwell, I will not be deny'd the pleasure of reading it, you will pardon me.

1st _Play._ The deluge! the subject seems to be too recherche.

_Clink._ A subject untouch'd either by ancients or moderns, in which are terror and pity in perfection.

1st _Play._ The stage will never bear it. Can you suppose, Sir, that a box of ladies will sit three hours to see a rainy day, and a feather in a storm; make your best of it, I know it can be nothing else.

2d _Play._ If you please, madam, let us hear how it opens.

_Clink._ [_reads._] The scene opens and discovers the heavens cloudy. A prodigious shower of rain. At a distance appears the top of the mountain Parna.s.sus; all the fields beneath are over-flowed; there are seen cattle and men swimming. The tops of steeples rise above the flood, with men and women perching on their weatherc.o.c.ks----

Sir _Trem._ Begging your pardon, Sir, I believe it can be proved, that weather-c.o.c.ks are of a modern invention. Besides, if stones were dissolved, as a late philosopher hath proved, how could steeples stand?

_Plot._ I don't insist upon trifles. Strike it out.

_Clink._ Strike it out! consider what you do. In this they strike at the very foundation of the drama. Don't almost all the persons of your second act start out of stones that Deucalion and Pyrrha threw behind them? This cavil is levell'd at the whole system of the reparation of human race.

1st _Play._ Then the shower is absurd.

_Clink._ Why should not this gentleman rain, as well as other authors snow and thunder?---- ---- [_reads._] Enter Deucalion in a sort of waterman's habit, leading his wife Pyrrha to a boat--Her first distress is about her going back to fetch a casket of jewels. Mind, how he imitates your great authors. The first speech has all the fire of Lee.

Tho' heav'n wrings all the sponges of the sky, And pours down clouds, at once each cloud a sea.

Not the spring tides----

Sir _Trem._ There were no spring tides in the Mediteranean, and consequently Deucalion could not make that simile.

_Clink._ A man of Deucalion's quality might have travelled beyond the Mediteranean, and so your objection is answered. Observe, Sir Tremendous, the tenderness of Otway, in this answer of Pyrrha.

--------------------Why do the stays Taper my waist, but for thy circling arms?

Sir _Trem._ Ah! Anachronisms! Stays are a modern habit, and the whole scene is monstrous, and against the rules of tragedy.

_Plot._ I submit Sir,--out with it.

_Clink._ Were the play mine, you should gash my flesh, mangle my face, any thing sooner than scratch my play.

_Plot._ Blot and insert wherever you please----I submit myself to your judgment.

_Plotwell rises and discourses apart with Townley._

Sir _Trem._ Madam, nonsense and I have been at variance from my cradle, it sets my understanding on edge.

2d _Play._ Indeed, madam, with submission, and I think I have some experience of the stage, this play will hardly take.

_Clink._ The worst lines of it would be sufficiently clapt, if it had been writ by a known author, or recommended by one.

Sir _Trem._ Between you and I, madam, who understand better things, this gentleman knows nothing of poetry.

1st _Play._ The gentleman may be an honest man, but he is a d.a.m.n'd writer, and it neither can take, nor ought to take.

Sir _Trem._ If you are the gentleman's friend, and value his reputation, advise him to burn it.

_Clink._ What struggles has an unknown author to vanquish prejudice!

Suppose this play acts but six nights, his next may play twenty.

Encourage a young author, I know it will be your interest.

2d _Play._ I would sooner give five hundred pounds than bring some plays on the stage; an audience little considers whether 'tis the author or the actor that is hiss'd, our character suffers.

1st _Play._ d.a.m.n our character--We shall lose money by it.

_Clink._ I'll deposit a sum myself upon the success of it. Well, since it is to be play'd--I will prevail upon him to strike out some few things.--Take the play, Sir Tremendous.

_Sir Tremendous reads in a muttering tone._

Sir _Trem._ Absurd to the last degree [_strikes out._] palpable nonsense! [_strikes out._]

_Clink._ What all those lines! spare those for a lady's sake, for those indeed, I gave him.

Sir _Trem._ Such stuff! [_strikes out._] abominable! [_strikes out._]

most execrable!

1st _Play._ This thought must out.

2d _Play._ Madam, with submission, this metaphor.

1st _Play._ This whole speech.