Menu Expand

The Neglected Answers to Jeremy Collier as an Aid for a Reassessment of the Controversy about the Immorality of Restoration Comedies

  1. Journals
  2. Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch
  3. Vol. 65, Issue 1
  4. pp. 153–185

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Cite JOURNAL ARTICLE

Style
Auberlen, E. The Neglected Answers to Jeremy Collier as an Aid for a Reassessment of the Controversy about the Immorality of Restoration Comedies. Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, 65(1), 153-185. https://doi.org/10.3790/ljb.2024.1445306
Auberlen, Eckhard "The Neglected Answers to Jeremy Collier as an Aid for a Reassessment of the Controversy about the Immorality of Restoration Comedies" Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 65.1, 2024, 153-185. https://doi.org/10.3790/ljb.2024.1445306
Auberlen, Eckhard (2024): The Neglected Answers to Jeremy Collier as an Aid for a Reassessment of the Controversy about the Immorality of Restoration Comedies, in: Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, vol. 65, iss. 1, 153-185, [online] https://doi.org/10.3790/ljb.2024.1445306
Format
Download

The Neglected Answers to Jeremy Collier as an Aid for a Reassessment of the Controversy about the Immorality of Restoration Comedies

Auberlen, Eckhard

Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, Vol. 65 (2024), Iss. 1 : pp. 153–185

Preview Login to order (PDF)

Additional Information

Article Details

Publisher Name
Duncker & Humblot
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3790/ljb.2024.1445306
Language
Multiple languages
Pages
33

Pricing

Individual
€ 19.50 (incl. local VAT if applicable)

Auberlen, Eckhard

References

  1. Cibber, Colley: An Apology of the Life of Colley Cibber, Written by Himself, ed. Robert W. Lowe, 2 vols., rpt. New York 1966, vol. 1.  Google Scholar
  2. Collier, Jeremy: A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage, London 1698. https://quod.lib.umich.edu.  Google Scholar
  3. – A Defence of A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, London 1699. https://quod.lib.umich.edu.  Google Scholar
  4. – A Second Defence of A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, London 1700. https://quod.lib.umich.edu.  Google Scholar
  5. – A Farther Vindication of the Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, London 1708. English Eighteenth Century Collection Online. https://welcomecollection.org.  Google Scholar
  6. Congreve, William: The Works, ed. D. F. McKenzie, prep. for publ. by C. Y. Ferdinand, 3 vols., Oxford 2011, vol. 1.  Google Scholar
  7. Dennis, John: The Usefulness of the Stage, to the happiness of mankind, to government, and to religion occasioned by the late book written by Jeremy Collier, London 1698. https://quod.lib.umich.edu.  Google Scholar
  8. Drake, James: The Ancient and Modern Stages survey’d, Or Mr. Collier’s View of the immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage Set in a True Light, London 1699. https://quod.lib.umich.edu.  Google Scholar
  9. Dryden, John: Troilus and Cressida, or, Truth found too late a tragedy, to which is Prefix’d, a preface containing the Grounds of Criticism in tragedy, London 1679. https://quod.lib.umich.edu.  Google Scholar
  10. Farquhar, George: The Works, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny, Oxford 1988.  Google Scholar
  11. Gildon, Charles: Preface to Phaeton or, The Fatal Divorce. A Tragedy as it is Acted at the Theatre Royal. In Imitation of the Ancients, London 1698.  Google Scholar
  12. – Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare, in: The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. Nicholas Rowe, 7 vols., London 1710, vol. 7.  Google Scholar
  13. – Measure for Measure, Or Beauty the Best Advocate. A Critical Edition, ed. Edward A. Cairns, New York/London 1987.  Google Scholar
  14. Hobbes, Thomas: Leviathan, introd. A.D. Lindsay (Everyman’s Library), rpt. London/New York 1959.  Google Scholar
  15. Johnson, Samuel: The Lives of the English Poets, 2 vols., rpt. London 1912, vol. 2.  Google Scholar
  16. Locke, John: A Letter concerning Toleration. Latin and English Texts, ed. Mario Montuori, The Hague 1963.  Google Scholar
  17. Oldmixon, John: Reflections on the Stage, and Mr. Collyer’s Defence of the short view in four dialogues, London 1699. https://quod.lib.umich.edu.  Google Scholar
  18. Settle, Elkanah: Defence of Dramatick Poetry; being a review of Collier’s View of the immorality and profaneness of the stage, London 1698. https://quod.lib.umich.edu.  Google Scholar
  19. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of: An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit, ed. David Walford, Manchester 1977.  Google Scholar
  20. Barish, Jonas: The Antitheatrical Prejudice, Berkeley 1981.  Google Scholar
  21. Berger, Peter L./Luckmann, Thomas: Die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit, 5th ed., Frankfurt a.M. 1994.  Google Scholar
  22. Blumenberg, Hans: Legitimität der Neuzeit, 2nd ed., Frankfurt a.M. 1988.  Google Scholar
  23. Bull, John: Vanbrugh and Farquhar, New York 1998.  Google Scholar
  24. Canfield, J. Douglas: Tricksters and Estates. On the Ideology of Restoration Comedy, Lexington, KEN 1997.  Google Scholar
  25. Cannan, Paul D.: The Parson turn’d Critick. Jeremy Collier and his Antagonists, in: The Emergence of Dramatic Criticism in England, New York 2006.  Google Scholar
  26. Cordner, Michael: »Playwright versus Priest: Profanity and the Wit of Restoration Comedy«, in: Fisk, Deborah Payne (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, Cambridge 2000, 209–225.  Google Scholar
  27. Fishelov, David: Poetic (In-)Justice in Comedy, in: Connotations 25.2 (2015/2016), 175–197.  Google Scholar
  28. Fisk, Deborah Payne: Introduction to Four Restoration Libertine Plays (Oxford World’s Classics), Oxford/New York 2005.  Google Scholar
  29. Freeman, Lisa: Antitheatricality and the Body Politic, Philadelphia 2017.  Google Scholar
  30. Fujimura, Thomas: The Restoration Comedy of Wit, 1952 rept. New York 1968.  Google Scholar
  31. Gregory, Tullio: Charron’s ›Scandalous Book‹, in: Hunter, Michael/Wootton, David (eds.): Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, Oxford 1992.  Google Scholar
  32. Hume, Robert D.: The Development of Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century, Oxford 1976.  Google Scholar
  33. – Jeremy Collier and the Future of the London Theatre in 1698, in: Studies in Philology 96.4 (1999), 480–511.  Google Scholar
  34. Kaye, Françoise: Charron et Montaigne: Du plagiat à l’originalité, Ottawa 1982.  Google Scholar
  35. Knights, L. C.: Restoration Comedy. The Reality and the Myth, in: Explorations, New York 1946, 149–168.  Google Scholar
  36. Krutch, Joseph Wood: Comedy and Conscience after the Restoration, 1924; rpt. New York 1949.  Google Scholar
  37. Lindsay, Alexander/Erskine-Hill, Howard (eds.): William Coleridge. The Critical Heritage, rpt. London 1996.  Google Scholar
  38. Lytton Strachey, Giles: Congreve, Collier, Macaulay, and Mr. Summers, in: Literary Essays 1923; rpt. London 1961, 53–57.  Google Scholar
  39. Niederhoff, Burkhard: »The Rule of Contrary«. Das Paradox in der englischen Komödie der Restaurationszeit und des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts, Trier 2001.  Google Scholar
  40. – »When Mercy Seasons Justice«. Poetic Justice in Comedy, in: Connotations 25.2 (2015/2016), 152–173.  Google Scholar
  41. Novak, Maximillian E.: The Artist and the Clergyman. Congreve, Collier and the World of the Play, in: College English 30.7 (1969), 555–561.  Google Scholar
  42. – William Congreve, New York 1971.  Google Scholar
  43. Robertson, Randy: Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England, University Park, PA 2009.  Google Scholar
  44. Suckling, Norman: Molière and English Restoration Comedy, in: Restoration Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 6 (1965), 93–108.  Google Scholar
  45. Tuck, Richard: The ›Christian Atheism‹ of Thomas Locke, in: Hunter, Michael/Wootton, David (eds.): Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, Oxford 1992, 111–130.  Google Scholar
  46. Tyre, Richard H.: Versions of Poetic Justice in the early Eighteenth Century, in: Studies in Philology 54.1 (1957), 29–44.  Google Scholar
  47. Underwood, Dale: Etherege and the Seventeenth-Century Comedy of Manners, New Haven 1957.  Google Scholar
  48. Vickers, Brian (ed.): Shakespeare. The Critical Heritage, 6 vols. London 1974–1979, vol. 2: 1692–1733, London, 1974. Williams, Aubrey: No Cloistered Virtue or Playwright versus Priest in 1698, in: PMLA 90.2 (1975), 234–246.  Google Scholar
  49. – An Approach to Congreve, New Haven 1979.  Google Scholar
  50. Zimansky, Curt A.: Introduction to The Critical Works of Thomas Rymer, New Haven 1956.  Google Scholar
  51. Zirker, Angelika: Poetic Justice. A few Reflections on the Interplay of Poetry and Justice, in: Connotations 25.2 (2015/2016), 135–151.  Google Scholar

Abstract

While the Collier controversy is remembered as a heated debate on the morality or immorality of Restoration comedies, which marked a turning point in the history of English drama, the answers to Collier are largely forgotten or considered as inadequate. Collier himself, often regarded as a bigot, has recently even been rehabilitated because of his wide reading in the classics in the original languages as well as in contemporary literary criticism and because of his commitment to the defence of »the ethos of Christian society«. But what after closer scrutiny of his devastating comments on passages in a multitude of plays needs above all to be explained is his categorical refusal to consider the larger dramatic context. No wonder that the attacked playwrights perceived the Reformers’ demands as a threat to the foundations of drama as an art form. The arguments against Collier, presented unsystematically in scattered passages in pamphlets by Vanbrugh, Congreve, Elkanah Settle, James Drake, and John Oldmixon converge in emphasizing that the characteristic feature – and indeed the special value – of dramatic presentation consists in the active involvement of the audience in a step-by-step exploration of moral issues, dramatized in quasi real-life situations while the playwright‘s own moral standpoint is indirectly inscribed into the progress of the fable. Whereas Collier lumps Restoration comedies together as irredeemably immoral, the exploratory approach of the defenders of the stage allows for a differentiation between a variety of ways in which these plays responded to the challenge of libertinism.

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Eckhard Auberlen: The Neglected Answers to Jeremy Collier as an Aid for a Reassessment of the Controversy about the Immorality of Restoration Comedies 153
Abstract 153
I. Reformers versus Playwrights: Their Mutual Anxieties 155
II. The Later Reception of the Answers to Collier 160
III. Collier’s Refusal to Consider Dramatic Context 162
IV. Religion and the Church Challenged by Philosophers of the Enlightenment 163
V. Vanbrugh’s Quarrel with the »College of Divines« 167
VI. The Rakes and Whores of Plays, No ›Closet Darlings‹ of Spectators 171
VII. Congreve’s Answer to the Charge of Blasphemy and the Abuse of the Clergy 172
VIII. Teaching Obedience versus Invitation to Experimental Inquiry 176
IX. The Study of the Fable as the Key to the Author’s Moral Standpoint 180
Primary Sources 182
Secondary Sources 183

Contact

Duncker & Humblot GmbH Carl-Heinrich-Becker-Weg 9 12165 Berlin, Deutschland T: +49 30 790006-0

Quick Navigation

2024 Duncker & Humblot GmbH

Powered by CloudPublish

We use cookies to ensure that you get the best experience on our website. Learn more about how we use cookies.