CHARLES LAMB 
 
 IN HIS 
 
 RELATIONS TO THE STAGE 
 
 BY 
 
 IDA BELLE DAVIS 
 A. B. University of Illinois, 1911 
 
 THESIS 
 
 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the 
 
 Degree of 
 
 MASTER OF ARTS 
 
 IN ENGLISH 
 
 IN 
 
 THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 1921 
 

 
 
\ r b2-\ 
 
 23 ~°\ 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 
 
 Jim&— 1 .... 1-9E3 192 
 
 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY 
 
 SUPERVISION BY Ida JS&llgL .Davis 
 
 ENTITLED Gh^rles L^mb in his d e lations to 
 
 the Stage 
 
 BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 
 THE DEGREE OF Master Of Arts 
 
 In Charge of Thesis 
 
 
 Head of Department 
 
 Recommendation concurred in* 
 
 ^Required for doctor’s degree but not for master’s 
 
 4 : * 
 
 g— : XVJ s~\ Sj ' 
 
 O C o-JL 
 
 Committee 
 
 on 
 
 Final Examination* 
 

 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/charleslambinhisOOdavi 
 
CHARLES LAMB IN HIS RELATION TO THE STAGE 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Page 
 
 1 
 
 CHAPTER ONE: THE LIFE OF LAMB 
 
 CHAPTER TWO: LAMB AS A CRITIC 
 
 I ACTORS 
 II SPECIMENS 
 III SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS 
 IV ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 CHAPTER THREE: LAMB AS A DRAMATIST 
 I TRAGEDY, JOHN WOODVIL 
 II FARCE, MR. H 
 
 III TRAGI -COMEDY, THE WIFE'S TRIAL 
 IV FARCE, THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
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INTRODUCTION 
 
 Charles Lamb played his part on the stage of English 
 Literature in the latter part of the eighteenth and the first half 
 of the nineteenth centuries. He lived in that period of great 
 revolution which affected not only government, but religion, 
 society, and literature as well. The leaders of the Classicists 
 of the eighteenth century had made their exits from the stage of 
 literature and the curtain rose at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century upon a group of enthusiastic Romanticists. William Blake 
 was imitating the Shakespearian lyrics; Wordsworth was worshipping 
 nature; Scott was depicting medieval life; Coleridge was lecturing 
 on Shakespeare; and Lamb was delving in the musty manuscripts of the 
 British museum for the plays of the old Elizabethan dramatists. 
 
 In this period the intellectual horizon was broadening, 
 thanks partly to the newspapers and magazines that were established. 
 The Times and the Morning Post were founded during the last quarter 
 of the eighteenth century. The Edinburgh Review was started in 
 1802; the London Quarterly in 1809; Blackwood* s Magazine in 181?; 
 and the Spectator in 1828. These magazines were supported by the 
 best literary writers of the day. Their contributions included 
 criticisms on books, current literature, plays, and the stage; so 
 that the time may well be called a period of criticism. Charles 
 Lamb contributed to several of these magazines, and it is prin- 
 cipally through these contributions that we have learned of his 
 relation to the stage. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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2 
 
 The purpose of this thesis is to show this relation to 
 be that of a thorough-going romanticist. We shall endeavor to prove 
 our case by reviewing Lamb's life, and noting his romantic nature; 
 by showing his dramatic criticisms to be those of an impressionist; 
 and by analyzing his plays, and pointing out the causes of his 
 failure as a dramatist. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER ONE 
 
 THE LIFE OF LAMB 
 
 Charles Lamb, the "most lovable" figure in English 
 literature, was born February 10, 1775, at the Inner Temple, London, 
 which was his home for the first seventeen years of his life. His 
 father John Lamb was a clerk and servant of Samuel Salt, a bencher, 
 who depended upon his clerk to despatch his business. While Salt 
 lived he provided for John Lamb and his family, but after his death 
 they experienced financial troubles. 
 
 From the description of the father, represented as Lovel 
 in the essay "Old Benchers," Charles must have inherited some of his 
 father's characteristics. "Lovel was a man of incorrigible and 
 losing honesty. . . In the cause of the oppressed he never consid- 
 ered inequalities, or calculated the number of his opponents. . . 
 
 He was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as 
 Garrick's, . . .possessed a fine turn for humorous poetry, moulded 
 heads in clay to admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely; 
 turned cribbage boards, . . .had the merriest quips and conceits, 
 and was altogether asbrimful of rogueries and inventions as you 
 could desire." The father had written poetical pieces for certain 
 occasions, and it was from him that the three children, John, Mary, 
 and Charles, inherited their literary taste. But they inherited 
 from him another characteristic, a taint of insanity, which made 
 their lives a tragedy. 
 
 Through the essays of Lamb we learn something of his 
 childhood. When quite young, he and Mary spent some time with their 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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4 
 
 grandmother, Mrs. Field, who was the housekeeper in an old country 
 place at Blakesware in Hertfordshire. In the essay "Blakesmoore in 
 
 H shire," he gives us a glimpse of his wonderful imagination as 
 
 a child. The pictures and tapestries of the old house had "magic" 
 in them. He studied them until he was familiar with all the 
 different scenes and characters. When in his bed, he would shift 
 the coverlids to peep at the tapestries, but after catching sight 
 of some "stern visage," he would quickly cover his head. In "The 
 Y/itch Aunt" one of the stories included in Mrs. Leicester 1 s School 
 he refers to Glanvil's witch stories and Salmon 1 s Modern History 
 with its Chinese gods and great hooded serpents, as the favorite 
 books of his childhood. After reading these stories, "One night," 
 he says, "I became terrified in my sleep, I got out of bed and 
 crept to an adjoining room, where my aunt usually sat. The old 
 lady was sitting with her eyes half open, half closed, her 
 spectacles tottering on her nose; her head nodding over her prayer 
 book; her lips mumbling the words she read; all this with the dead 
 of night joined to produce a wicked fancy in me, that the form I 
 beheld was not my aunt but some witch." 1 He tells how, when morning 
 came, the fancy passed away, but when night returned he could not 
 quite determine whether the woman he saw was his aunt or a witch. 
 
 He says he labored for weeks under the illusion, "it was my aunt, 
 and it was not my aunt." 1 
 
 When he was seven years of age he entered Christ's 
 Hospital, through the influence of his benefactor Samuel Salt. In 
 the essay, "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," he de- 
 
 1 Lucas, The Life of Charles Lamb, vol. 1, p.5. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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5 
 
 scribes the school as "an institution to assist those who are the 
 most willing, but not always the most able to help themselves." 
 
 Here he met Coleridge, his life-long friend. In this school the 
 students became familiar with the classics. Their severe master 
 moulded their taste for Demosthenes, Homer, and Virgil. They were 
 taught to compare Greek and Homan poets, "and on grounds of plain 
 sense and universal logic to see and assert the superiority of the 
 former in the truth of nativeness both of their thoughts and 
 diction." 1 Coleridge says, "At the same time that we were studying 
 the Greek tragic poets, he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as 
 lessons; and they were the lessons, too, which required most time 
 and trouble to bring up, so as to escape his censure. . . In the 
 truly great poets, he would say, there is a reason assignable, not 
 only for every word, but for the position of every word." 1 This 
 training prepared Coleridge and Lamb for the criticisms in which 
 they later engaged. Lamb attended the school from 1782 to 1789. 
 
 He did not enter the highest class called the Grecians, as they 
 were supposed to take holy orders in the church. An impediment in 
 Lamb's speech prevented him from qualifying for this class, although 
 he had the reputation of being a good classic scholar. 
 
 Preparation for Lamb's literary career was not obtained 
 entirely at school. Samuel Salt had a library into which Charles 
 and Mary Lamb, "tumbled by accident or design, a spacious closet of 
 good old English reading without much selection or prohibition," 
 and here these young people "browsed at will upon that fair and 
 
 ^Coleridge, Biographia Literaria , vol. 1, p.4. 
 

 
 
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6 
 
 wholesome pasturage . " ^ Here Lamb first became acquainted not only 
 
 with Shakespeare, but with Beaumont and Fletcher, whom, as early as 
 
 1796, he quotes with enthusiasm. 2 
 
 Lamb's acquaintance with the theater began when he was 
 
 six years of age. His godfather Francis Fielde associated with 
 
 some of the actors of Drury Lane Theater, and at his pleasure 
 
 received tickets for their performances. It was due to this favor 
 
 that Charles Lamb, in company with his parents, attended his first 
 
 play, which really was an opera entitled Artaxerxe3 . composed by 
 
 3 
 
 Thomas A. Arne. The boy of six years was enchanted by its 
 oriental splendor. In the essay "My First Play" he says, "I had 
 dabbled a little in Universal History — the ancient part of it — 
 and here was the court of Persia. — I took no proper interest in 
 the action going on, for I understood not its import — but I heard 
 the word Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel . All feeling was 
 absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, 
 passed before me. I knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the 
 time, and the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me 
 into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those significa- 
 tions to be something more than elemental fires." The second play 
 
 A 
 
 he attended was The Lady of the Manor , a comic opera by Dr.Kenrick. 
 Of this play Lamb had faint recollections. The third play of the 
 season of 1781 and 1782 which he witnessed was The Wav of the World 
 by Congreve. During this play Lamb sat "grave as a judge" thinking 
 
 j ^ssavs of Elia . " Macke ry End. " 
 
 ^Ainger, English Men of Letters , vol. 5, p.36. 
 
 Baker, Biograohla Dramat ica , vol. 2, p.38. 
 
 4 Ibid. p. 361. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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7 
 
 "the hysteric affectations of Lady Wishfort were solemn tragic 
 passions . " 1 
 
 All play -going was forbidden during the school period at 
 Christ's Hospital. After a lapse of seven years Lamb again 
 attended the theater. He had never forgotten the thrill of his 
 first play, when he "felt all, loved all, wondered all." He 
 expected to experience the same feeling, but something had hap- 
 pened. Lamb says, "I had left the temple a devotee, and I returned 
 a rationalist . . . The green curtain was no longer a veil drawn 
 between two worlds . . . but a quantity of green baize, which was 
 to separate the audience for a given time from their fellow men 
 who were to come forward and pretend those parts." 1 The thrill 
 did not come! Would it come again? 
 
 Soon after leaving school Charles Lamb entered the South 
 Sea House as a clerk, but in April 1792 he changed to the East 
 India House with which he was employed as an accountant for thirty 
 years. He was retired in 1822 with a pension. 
 
 During the first years of Lamb’s employment the family was 
 in poor financial circumstances, Samuel Salt having died in 1792. 
 Charles did not receive a salary until he had served three yeara 
 in probation. Mary Lamb helped to meet expenses by taking in 
 sewing. 
 
 With poverty came another great sorrow. Mary, tired out 
 from her labor, became enraged at one of her apprentices. Mrs. 
 
 Lamb interfered to rescue the girl, when Mary in a fit of insanity 
 stabbed her mother. From this time Charles Lamb who was then 
 
 Assays of Elia, "My First Play." 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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8 
 
 twenty-one years of age assumed, the responsibility of the home. In 
 a letter to his friend Coleridge he wrote, "God has preserved me 
 in my senses ... I am left to take care of my poor father and 
 aunt . . . Thank God, I am calm and composed, and able to do the 
 best that remains to do. Write , as religious a letter as possible 
 . . .1 charge you don't think of coming to see me. Write. I will 
 not see you if you come."-*- Coleridge in a letter which Lamb 
 termed "an inestimable treasure" replied, "I look upon you as a 
 man called by sorrow and anguish and a strange desolation of hopes 
 into quietness, and a soul set apart and made peculiar to God; we 
 cannot arive at any portion of heavenly bliss without in some 
 measure imitating Christ. And they arrive at the largest inherit- 
 ance who imitate the most difficult parts of his character, and 
 bowed down and crushed under foot, cry in fullness of faith, 
 
 'Father, thy will be done.' You are a temporary sharer in human 
 miseries that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine nature." 
 Charles' tender love for his sister, and his great sympathy for 
 humanity in general, manifested throughout his whole life, proved 
 Coleridge's words to be a true prophecy. It may be noted here that 
 Charles Lamb had spent six weeks in an asylum at Hoxton during the 
 last part of 1795 and the first part of 1796. After the father's 
 death Charles brought Mary home when her condition permitted, but 
 the periods of her insanity frequently returned. "A friend of 
 Lambs has related how on one occasion he met the brother and sister 
 at such a season, walking hand in hand across the fields to the old 
 
 pAinger, Works of Charles Lamb, vol. 1, p.44. 
 
 ^Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb, vol. 1, p.95. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
9 
 
 asylum, bathed in tears." 
 
 But "between the acts" Mary was intelligent and her 
 interest in literature made her very companionable for her brother. 
 They read, studied, and wrote together. The pleasure he enjoyed in 
 the home with his sister may be guessed from these words of Lamb. 
 "She has left me very lonely and very miserable . . . There is no 
 rest but at one’s fireside, and there is no rest for me there now. 
 
 . . . It cuts great slices out of the time, the little time we shall 
 have to live together." 2 How like the words of a devoted husband! 
 
 Lamb found relief from the burdens of sorrow and labor 
 in the theater. During the thirty years of employment at the East 
 India House Lamb always felt the restraint, and wished for a few 
 years between the "grave and the desk." He says, "I sit like 
 Philomel all day (but not singing) with my breast against this 
 
 * 7 . 
 
 thorn of a desk." But in the theater he forgot his troubles. His 
 disillusion of the stage after his return from Christ's Hospital 
 did not destroy for all time his enjoyment of the theater. Soon 
 after his disillusion he saw Mrs. Siddon in Isabella, and exper- 
 ienced genuine emotions again. From this time the theater became 
 a favorite recreation. After 1789 he was a good theater goer. He 
 said, if it had not been for his stuttering he might have become an 
 actor. Although it is probable that he received complimentary 
 tickets through the influence of hi3 godfather Fielde, yet he refers 
 to the economy he and his sister practiced in order to "squeeze out 
 
 ^Ainger, English Men of Letters . vol. 5, p.33. 
 
 «Ibid. p. 95. 
 
 ^Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb, vol. 2, p.86. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
10 
 
 a few shillings” that they might sit in the gallery three or four 
 times each season. In the essay on "Old China," Cousin Bridget, 
 who was in truth his sister Mary, tells how he was ashamed for 
 bringing her to the gallery, but, says she, "when the curtain went 
 up, what cared we for our place in the house, when our thoughts 
 were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the court of 
 Illyria?" Then she refers to his pride saying, "now we can only 
 pay our money and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the 
 galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then -- 
 but sight, and all, I think is gone with our poverty." 
 
 At different times Lamb's salary had been increased, until 
 he could maintain a comfortable home. By this time his literary 
 reputation had made a place for him in the social life of London, 
 particularly with literary men and players. He refers to the honor 
 of having been admitted to the tea table of Miss Kelly; of having 
 chatted with Mrs. Charles Kemble, and conversed as friend to friend 
 with her accomplished husband; of having been indulged with a 
 classical conference with Macready; of having been entertained in 
 the Player-picture gallery at Mr. Matthews'. No doubt Lamb had 
 other friends among the stage folk, as he seemed well acquainted 
 with personal characteristics of John Kemble, Dickey Sscett, John 
 Palmer, Elliston, Liston and Munden. 
 
 In 1882 the Lambs visited Paris and were entertained by 
 James Kenny the dramatist, who was at that time living in Paris. 
 
 He introduced Lamb to Talma the tragedian, who was playing in 
 Regulus . It was arranged that Lamb should attend the theater and 
 afterward sup with Talma at the Hotel de l'Europa. During the 
 evening Lamb having paid no compliment to the tragedian. Talma asked 
 

 
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 his opinion of the performance, hut Lamb only smiled. "Ah!" said 
 Talma, "I was not happy tonight; you must see me in Sylla. — 
 
 " ' Incidit in Scyllara,'" said Lamb, " ' qui vult vitare Charybdim. ' " 
 
 " Ah! you are a rogue; you are a great rogue," said Talma, shaking 
 him cordially by the hand as they parted. 1 
 
 Of all the actresses Lamb was partial to Fanny Kelly. His 
 admiration ended in love. This was his second romance, the first 
 having taken place before 1795, while visiting at Blakesware. After 
 seeing Miss Kelly play Rachel in The Jovial Crew he went home and 
 wrote her a letter of proposal. She may have been prepared for 
 this letter by his favorable criticism in The Examiner in which he 
 said, "What a lass that were to go gypsying through the world with." 
 In the letter he first complimented her on "a most consummate piece 
 of acting," then after expressing his sympathy for some sorrow, he 
 continued, "Would to God you were released from this way of life; 
 that you could bring your mind to consent to take your lot with us, 
 and throw off forever the whole burden of your profession? He 
 asked her to consider it at leisure, then referred to his income, 
 and in a modest way continued: "I am not so foolish as not to know 
 that I am most unworthy for such a one as you, but you have for 
 years been a principal object in my mind. In many a sweet assumed 
 character I have learned to love you, but simply as F. M. Kelly. 
 
 I love you better than them all. Can you quit these shadows of 
 existence and come and be a reality to us? As plainly and frankly 
 as I have seen you give or refuse assent in some feigned scene, so 
 frankly do me the justice to answer me." 
 
 jLucas, Life of Charles Lamb , vol. 2, p.88. 
 
 ^Ibid. vol. 2, p. 15. 
 

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13 
 
 Kenny with a tremulous pleasure, announces that there is a crowd 
 to the ninth representation of his new comedy, of which Lamb lays 
 down his cards to inquire; or Ayrton, mildly radiant whispers the 
 continued triumph of Don Giovanni, for which Lamb, incapable of 
 opera, is happy to take his word. Now and then an actor glances at 
 us from 'the rich Cathay* of the world behind the scenes — Liston, 
 grave beneath the weight of the town's regards — or Miss Kelly 
 unexhausted in spirit by alternating the drolleries of high farce 
 with the terrible pathos of melodrama, or Charles Kemble mirrors the 
 chivalry of thought, and ennobles the party by bending on them looks 
 beaming with the aristocracy of nature. On these occasions, 
 Talfourd says: "Becky lays the cloth on the side table, under the 
 direction of the most quiet, sensible, and kind of women — who soon 
 compels the younger and more hungry of the guests to partake largely 
 of the cold roast lamb or boiled beef, the heaps of smoking roasted 
 potatoes, and the vast jug of porter ... As the hot water and its 
 accompaniments appear, and the severities of whist relax, the light 
 of conversation thickens: Hazlitt catching the influence of the 
 spirit from which he has lately begun to abstain, utters some fine 
 criticism with struggling emphasis; emphasis; Lamb stammers out 
 puns suggestive of wisdom; while Mary Lamb moves gently about to see 
 that each modest stranger is duly served." These evenings were very 
 informal, the guests rose and helped themselves when it suited them. 
 Often, when Lamb became quite jubilant, he would run to Mary and 
 slap her on the back. Hazlitt in his essay "On the Conversation of 
 Authors" says, "How we got into the heart of controversy! How we 
 
 ^Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb , vol. 1, p.374. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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 Miss Kelly's "divine plain face" had won other suitors and 
 twice in her career, she was fired at on the stage by some mad 
 lover. Miss Kelly returned an answer, the same day she received it, 
 declining his proposal, but showing her respect in the following 
 words, " I am not insensible to the high honor which the preference 
 of such a mind as yours confers upon me." 1 After another short, 
 humorous letter in which Lamb asked that they might remain friends, 
 the curtain descended upon this short love scene, and the romance 
 of his life was ended. Yet, it might be interesting to relate that 
 Miss Kelly continued her visits to the Lambs' and she died unmarried 
 at the age of ninety-two. 
 
 The Lambs had many friends and received invitations where 
 they met people of social rank as well as literary friends. Besides 
 this social life, Charles Lamb was a member of a club composed of 
 contributors to the London Magazine . Among the members were Southey, 
 Hazlitt, Hunt, Charles and Robert Lloyd. If Coleridge or Wordsworth 
 were in town they were present. The evenings were spent in 
 criticism and discussions of current literature, books, and authors. 
 Not infrequently Lamb, who was susceptible to intoxicants imbibed 
 too much on these occasions. The stimulant enabled him to talk more 
 easily, but affected his sensitive nerves. 
 
 But most delightful of all such companionship was the open 
 house kept by Lamb on Wednesday nights, after he became financially 
 able to entertain his friends. Talfourd gives an interesting picture 
 of one of these evenings held at No. 4 Inner Temple. The room 
 decorated with Hogarth prints is set with whist-tables. Charles is 
 sitting intently playing, when about ten o'clock the room begins to 
 fill. Talfourd says, "In slouches Hazlitt from the theater . . . 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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14 
 
 skimmed the cream of criticism! How we picked the marrow of 
 
 1 
 
 authors ! " 
 
 Lamb did not permit the illusion of the theater, or com- 
 panionship of his friends to occupy all his hours of recreation. As 
 we have already noted, he enjoyed the quiet fireside, his book, and 
 the companionship of his sister. In the essay "Mackery End in 
 Hertfordshire" he says, "We are both great readers in different 
 directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some 
 passage in old Burton or one of his strange contemporaries, she is 
 abstracted in some modern tale or adventure . . . Out-of-the-way 
 humours and opinions — heads with 6ome diverting twist in them — 
 the oddities of authorship, please me most." He was delighted with 
 Walton's Complete Angler and fascinated by the Confessions of 
 Rousseau . For a time he was under the influence of the sentimental- 
 ists Richardson and Sterne, 2 but most of all he enjoyed the old 
 Elizabethan dramatists. 
 
 He spent vacation hours in picture galleries, or browsed 
 about old book stalls seeking this rare literature. During his 
 life he collected a library of some size and value. The brother 
 and sister made sacrifices when they were poor in order to purchase 
 books. Charles wore an "old brown suit until his friends cried 
 shame" in order to buy a folio of Beaumont and Fletcher for fifteen 
 or sixteen shillings. Again Cousin Bridget, in the essay "Old 
 China", says: "Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we 
 could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to the 
 determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, 
 
 ^Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb , vol. 1, p.378. 
 
 2 Ainger, English Men of Letters . vol. 5, p.36. 
 

 
 
 
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15 
 
 when you set off from Islington fearing you should be too late.” 
 Charles Lamb wakened the book-seller and secured the coveted volume. 
 After returning home he insisted, in his boyish impatience, that 
 Mary should repair some loose leaves that night, he could not wait 
 till morning. 
 
 In personal appearance Lamb was somewhat odd and antiquated. 
 In dress he looked like a minister. The French critic, Philarete 
 Chasles, has given an interesting description of him. He says: "I 
 was at James Valpy's one evening in June, 1818 . . . when a little, 
 dark, old fellow came in; one could only distinguish a head, then 
 big shoulders, then a delicate body, and finally two artistically 
 slender legs, which were almost imperceptible. Under his arm was 
 a green umbrella, and over his eyes a very old hat. Wit, sweetness, 
 melancholy, and gaiety gushed forth in torrents from this extra- 
 ordinary physiognomy . . . There was neither health, nor strength 
 and scarcely sufficient anatomical reality on those poor spindles, 
 clothed in stockings of Chinese silk, ending in impossible feet, 
 encased in large shoes, which placed flatly on the ground advanced 
 slowly in the manner of a web-footed creature. But one did not 
 notice these singularities one saw only the magnif iciently developed 
 forehead, on which his lustrous black hair curled naturally, the 
 great, sad eyes . . . the excessively fine nostrils . . . the 
 curves of the nose very like that of Jean Jaques in his portraits. 
 
 . . .The pose of the head lent dignity — intellectual dignity to 
 this weakly and disproportioned organization.”' 1 
 
 ^Lucas, The Life of Charles Lamb, vol. 3, p. 8. 
 

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16 
 
 Lamb was affectionate and sympathetic. The epithets 
 "lovable'' and "gentle-hearted" are frequently used to characterize 
 him. His devotion to his sister was extraordinary. He bestowed 
 paternal affections upon Emma Isola, an orphan, whom he adopted. 
 Lamb, early in life assumed the responsibilities of a man, yet he 
 was always a "boy", never having lost the fancies and imagination 
 of his childhood. He was highly emotional, and passed from moods 
 of melancholy to joyous hilarity. His environment played upon his 
 emotions as the wind upon a lyre. At times he was perverse and 
 blunt, especially in the presence of those who disliked him. He was 
 humorous. He loved jokes and puns. He remarked to Macready, "that 
 the last breath he drew in, he wished might be through a pipe, and 
 exhaled in a pun."- 2 - He was whimsical in his writings, and his 
 dearest friends were sometimes the victims of his jokes. He said, 
 "of all lies" he ever "put off" he valued the biographies of 
 Liston and Munden, as they were all "pure invention and has passed 
 for gospel." It was his sympathetic nature and his frolicsome dis- 
 position, together with natural refinement and good sense that drew 
 so many friends to his Wednesday evenings. 
 
 Lamb was a romanticist. He turned away from modern litera- 
 ture and sought the old romantic literature in old book stalls. He 
 was an antiquarian in belles lettres . He loved old London. It was 
 as romantic to him, as the Lake Region was to Wordsworth. Yet, in 
 the essay "Dream Children," Lamb sees nature as a romanticist. He 
 says: "I had more pleasure in strolling about among old melancholy 
 looking yew trees, or lying about upon the fresh grass with all the 
 
 -^-Lucas, Life of Char le s Lamb, vol. 2, p.260. 
 

 
 
 
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17 
 
 garden smells, or basking in the orangery till I could fancy myself 
 ripening along with the oranges and limes in their grateful warmth. " 
 Yet he has more fascination for the nature of man, and it is this 
 that he is seeking in the old English literature. He is original, 
 his Lambisms are inimitable. He is subjective, his biography may 
 be read in his works for he expresses himself in all his writings. 
 But one of the most interesting of his romantic characteristics 
 is the enjoyment of emotion. He says, "I would scarce now have any 
 of those untoward accidents and events of my life reversed . . . 
 Methinks it is better that I should have pined away seven of my 
 goldenest years when I was thrall to the fair hair and fairer eyes 
 of Alice W. than that so passionate a love adventure should be 
 lost.” 1 In writing to Coleridge of his experience in the asylum he 
 says, ”1 look back on it at times with a glowing kind of envy; for 
 while it lasted, I had many hours of pure happiness. Dream not 
 Coleridge of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy 
 till you have gone mad."^ 
 
 Lamb's greatest desire was to become a dramatist, but, he 
 won his fame in English literature as an essayist. The Essays of 
 Elia alone would rank him high among essayists. He has written 
 about twenty dramatic essays which we purpose to discuss in the 
 second chapter. 
 
 In 1796 Lamb began what proved to be an extensive letter 
 writing of literary importance. Coleridge and Wordsworth were his 
 first literary correspondents. His letters contain criticisms of 
 
 ^ Elia Essays. "New Year's Eve” 
 
 Ainger, Works of Charles Lamb , Letters , vol. 1, p.22. 
 

 
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18 
 
 their poems. He kept in touch with many of his friends through 
 letters. Among these friends were Hunt, Robert and Charles Lloyd, 
 Hazlitt, Talfourd, whom Lamb introduced as "my only admirer," Payne, 
 and Godwin. 
 
 In 1807, The Tales of Shakespeare were published. Charles 
 Lamb i3 responsible for Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet, and 
 Othello, but Mary Lamb did the rest with some assistance from her 
 brother. In these stories the authors have interwoven phrases of 
 Shakespeare which in beauty and imagination had appealed to them in 
 childhood. These stories made Shakespeare a more familiar and 
 popular author. This collection was "one of the most conspicuous 
 landmarks in the history of the romantic movement."' 1 
 
 Through the friendship of Coleridge, Lamb became interested 
 in writing poetry, but few of his poems, however, are well known. 
 
 His early poems were published in a collection with those of 
 Coleridge and Charles Lloyd. Coleridge sometimes made changes in 
 Lamb's poems, to which Lamb objected. He wrote to Coleridge saying, 
 "I love my sonnets because they are the reflected images of my own 
 feelings at different times ... I love my own feelings: they are 
 dear to memory, though they now and then wake a sigh or a tear. 
 'Thinking on divers things foredone,’ I charge you, Coleridge, spare 
 my ewe lambs; ... in a sonnet, a personal poem, I do not 'ask my 
 friend the aiding verse.’ I would not wrong your feelings by pro- 
 posing any improvements in such personal poems." 6 One of these 
 sonnets in which Lamb has expressed his own feelings, is to Miss 
 
 ^ Cambridge History of English Literature , vol. 12, p.209. 
 
 2 
 
 Ainger, Works of Charles Lamb , vol. 1, p.25. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 • ' . 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 ; 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
19 
 
 Kelly. 
 
 ’’You are not Kelly of the common strain, 
 
 That stoop their pride and female honour down 
 To please that many headed beast the town. 
 
 And vend their lavish smiles and tricks for gain; 
 By fortune thrown amid the actor's train, 
 
 You keep your native dignity of thought; 
 
 The plaudits that attend you come unsought, 
 
 As tributes due unto your natural vein. 
 
 Your tears have passion in them and a grace 
 Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow; 
 
 Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, 
 And vanish and return we know not how — 
 
 And please the better from a pensive face 
 And thoughtful eye, and a reflecting brow.” 
 
 But essays, letters and poetry were not the goal of 
 Lamb's ambition. He wanted most of all to become a disciple of 
 Shakespeare. When he was twenty-five years of age he began to 
 write his first drama, John Woodvil a tragedy. His next attempt was 
 a farce entitled Mr. EL_, the only one of his plays presented on the 
 stage. After several years he added two more plays to his list, a 
 tragi-comedy called The Wife ' s Trial and a farce called The 
 Pawnbroker ' s Daughter . Each of ihese plays will be discussed in the 
 third chapter. 
 
 We may conclude this chapter by saying that Lamb's life is 
 one of the most interesting of English writers. His life was 
 beautiful and it was tragical. He had the disadvantages of physical 
 weakness from childhood. He inherited a strain of insanity. He 
 
 I 
 
 experienced a tragedy in his own family. He struggled for a time 
 with poverty as well as sorrow. He was twice disappointed in love. 
 
 He suffered the loss of his dearest friend, Coleridge. But in spite 
 of all his disappointments and sorrow Lamb met the situation with 
 fortitude. His sense of humor afforded a mental balance. From 
 some broken fragments he pieced together a home which he enjoyed 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 ; 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 , 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
20 
 
 with his friends. He lived to see his genius recognized. He could 
 smile at the world though his smile was tinged with sadness. What 
 a delightful comedian he might have been, if it had not been for 
 his stammering tongue. It may be truthfully said, his life was a 
 tragi -comedy. 
 

 ' " "" varo* 
 
 . 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER TWO 
 LAMB AS A CRITIC 
 
 When the Romanticists of the nineteenth century played an 
 important role in English literature, they had in their group 
 critics who were representative of the romantic movement. These 
 critics sought to express their imagination and emotion as well as 
 the poets. They were impressionists who depended not on their 
 judgment but on their sensibility. "Their business with a work of 
 art was to feel keenly its charm, to describe accurately the 
 impression that it made upon them, and so to transmit their pleas- 
 ure to the reader."' 1 In England this method originated with the 
 revival of interest in Medieval life and in the Elizabethan poetry. 
 These works were "indefensible before a literal interpretation of 
 the Aristotelian law. . . . The method "rose in response to a 
 demand for some one who would dare to be pleased without giving a 
 reason why." 1 
 
 Charles Lamb was one who dared. He with Hazlitt and Hunt 
 
 r-7 
 
 formed "the most winsome group of English impressionists." 0 They 
 were all lovers of the stage and possessed knowledge, insight, and 
 imagination, but Lamb was a general favorite. Brander Matthews 
 says, "Coleridge bids us 'compare Charles Lamb's exquisite criti- 
 cisms on Shakespeare with Hazlitt 's round and round imitation of 
 
 ^Sherman, Matthew Arnold, How to Know Him. p.152. 
 
 flbid. P . tbt: 
 
 "Ibid. p.152. 
 

 
 
32 
 
 them; and to Leigh Hunt such a comparison would be less favorable.” 1 
 As a critic of Shakespeare and his followers. Lamb had no 
 predecessor for his master. He was original in his work. However, 
 in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, Colley Cibber had 
 skillfully portrayed a gallery of English actors, and it is with 
 him that Lamb seems to vie in his portrayal of the Old Actors. "It 
 is not easy to say which is the more artful, as a painter of players 
 Colley Cibber or Charles Lamb. Beside the full length portraits of 
 Betterton, Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracebridge — speaking likeness 
 every one of them, soundly drawn and mellow in color, — may be 
 placed the group from Twelfth Night, which we find in the ’Essays 
 of Elia, ' — Mrs. Jordan as Viola, Bensley as Malvolio, Dodd as Sir 
 Andrew, and Dicky Suett as the clown. And Cibber of course was 
 wholly without the boundless humour that has depicted for us a few 
 of the five hundred faces of Munden."^ 
 
 Among the English critics none is entitled to speak with 
 more authority on the Old English Dramatists than Charles Lamb. His 
 letters and essays show that he was devoted to Shakespeare, and that 
 he spent many happy hours in reading the plays of the Elizabethan 
 dramatists. "He lived in communion with this older literature. It 
 was to him inexhaustible in amount and excellence and he was 
 impatient with what sought to turn his attention from it." But 
 Lamb did not confine himself to the old literature, he read exten- 
 sively; and boasted that he could read anything he called a book, 
 that Shaftesbury was not too genteel nor Jonathan Wild too low. He 
 
 ^Matthews, The Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb . p.13. 
 
 glbid. p . 13 . 
 
 Ainger, English Men of Letters . Voi. 5, p.185. 
 
I 
 
not only read extensively but he criticised "deeply and discur- 
 sively," a habit that resulted from his training at Christ's 
 Hospital. 
 
 23 
 
 Besides his knowledge of literature and his artistic 
 taste, his play-going habit prepared him for the work of a critic. 
 
 As David Garrick, in the eighteenth century, had revived a new 
 interest in the acting of Shakespeare's plays, which had not abated 
 in Lamb's day, he was privileged to see the great master-pieces 
 again and again, with different actors appearing in the same role. 
 
 Besides these acquirements Lamb possessed native quali- 
 ties for a critic. Arnold says, "The critic who rightly appreciates 
 a great man or a great work, and who can tell us faithfully what 
 we may expect from their study and what they can do for us; he is 
 the critic we want, by whatever method, intuitive or historical, he 
 may have managed to get his knowledge." 1 ' Lamb's intelligence, his 
 powerful imagination and emotion enabled him to appreciate a "great 
 work." It was the divine gift of imagination which enabled him to 
 reproduce the spirit of the dramatist and to transmit his pleasure 
 to the reader. The tragic experiences of his life cultivated a 
 native affection and sympathy to a high degree. He sympathized with 
 humanity in general, but particularly with those whose hearts were 
 burdened with sorrow. As Coleridge says, he was "A man called by 
 sorrow and a strange desolation of hopes . . . set apart and made 
 peculiar to God." His sense of humor seemed akin to pathos, as if 
 it were an outlet for deeper emotions. These native qualities of 
 the man enabled him to enter the world of illusion or make-believe 
 
 Works 
 
 of Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Vol . 
 
 10, p. 245. 
 

 
 < 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
24 
 
 of the stage. He could sense the situation of the characters of a 
 play, and his keen poetic insight passed judgment on the excellence 
 of the poet or actor. 
 
 A good critic, Arnold says, should be well informed, 
 intelligent, disinterested, open-minded, sympathetic, elastic in 
 mind, and cheerful.^ Lamb possessed most of these qualifications, 
 but he was not disinterested, or always open-minded. He was 
 affected by his environment, and biased by his likes and dislikes. 
 What he disliked he ignored, and what he liked he had a tendency to 
 exaggerate. In a whimsical way he mixed fact and fiction. He was 
 fond of the paradox. Eecause of his whimsical writing he has been 
 called the "Ariel of Criticism.” 
 
 As an impressionist his excellence was due to his 
 sensibility. The thing he liked best was his standard of criticism. 
 He was charmed with the Old Actors and the plays of Shakespeare. 
 
 He compared all acting with that of his favorite Old Actors, and all 
 plays with those of Shakespeare. 
 
 Lamb's criticisms have an informal note about them. They 
 seem written for the benefit of the reader and not to gain prom- 
 inence for the author. Some are contained in letters written to 
 his friends. Godwin and Robert Lloyd were two of his correspondents 
 who received letters containing interesting dramatic ideas. Godwin 
 
 sought Lamb's help on his tragedies and received some valuable 
 
 2 
 
 hints from. him. Brander Matthews says, ”These two letters of Lamb 
 to Godwin should be studied by all who seek for success on the stage 
 
 j wprks of Matthew Arnold . Vol. 10, p.245. 
 
 Ainger, Works of Charles Lamb , Letters. Vol. 1, p.52. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
25 
 
 They are full not only of that criticism of life which is the only 
 true criticism of Literature, but of a knowledge of stage devices, 
 and of the means whereby an audience may be taken captive, very 
 remarkable in one who could not apply his own precepts."^ In a 
 
 p 
 
 letter to Robert Lloyd we read Lamb's interpretation of 
 Shakespeare's villain Richard the Third, and his criticism of 
 Cook's impersonation of that character, but we shall refer to 
 these later in this chapter. 
 
 But most of Lamb's criticisms are included in essays which 
 ■were published in the magazines. The most valuable of these essays 
 from the dramatic standpoint are: "On Some of the Old Actors," in 
 which he gives portraits of the characters in Twelfth Night : "The 
 
 Tragedies of Shakespeare," in which he discusses their fitness for 
 the stage; "The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," in which 
 he upholds Congreve and Wycherley's plays; and "Stage Illusions," in 
 which he gives some valuable ideas for actors. The most important 
 of his criticisms in its influence on English literature is 
 Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare . 
 published in 1808. From these Specimens Lamb made a selection which 
 was published in 1818 with his collected works. 
 
 After Lamb had assumed the responsibilities of a man he 
 sought in the theater his world of illusion, and here he found 
 solace from the tragedy of real life. To him the dramatis personae 
 seemed to belong to another realm; they were "fictitious and half- 
 believed personages" who were not to be judged by the courts of 
 
 ^Matthews, Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb . p.19. 
 
 3 See note 2, p. 24. Ibid. p.43. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
36 
 
 common law, but "in proportion to the illusion they produced.” 
 
 The principle of illusion was the basis of Lamb's criticism of the 
 theater as opposed to realism. Lamb attended the theater to forget 
 the reality of life, not to confirm it. He did not wish to see his 
 brothers, aunts, and kinsfolk on the stage. 
 
 I 
 
 The degree of illusion, however, must depend upon the 
 character and play. "Comedians may be too natural ." 1 A comedy does 
 not require the same degree of credibility as serious play. "Macbeth 
 must see the dagger . . . but an old fool in a farce may think he 
 sees something and by conscious words and looks express it, as 
 plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and gallery."'" Lamb's sensi- 
 bility passes judgment against any notion that is "repugnant to the 
 moral sense." He says the actor would show artistic skill by taking 
 the audience partly into his confidence when playing certain parts. 
 For instance, "to see a coward done to the life upon a stage would 
 produce anything but mirth. Yet," he says, "we most of us remember 
 Jack Bannister's cowards. Could anything be more agreeable, more 
 pleasant? We loved the rogues. How was this affected but by the 
 exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub insinuation to us, the 
 spectators, even in the extremity of the shaking fit that he was 
 not half such a coward as we took him for ?" 1 A real miser is also 
 repugnant to Lamb's sensibility, but this character may be made 
 endurable to the audience when the actor "disarms the character of a 
 
 1 „ 
 
 "Stage Illusions." 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
27 
 
 great deal of its odiousness by seeming to engage our compassion 
 for the insecure tenure by which he holds his money bags and parch- 
 ment .” 1 Likewise, in acting an old man the actor "should be a 
 "pleasant counterfeit just enough of a likeness to recognize with- 
 out pressing upon us the uneasy sense of reality ."- 1 This illusion 
 may be manifested by different tricks. Jack Palmer's villains had 
 two voices, one for the audience and one for the dramat i s personae . 
 
 Lamb's mind was alert to the artist's skill and his 
 sensitive soul^ registered all the degrees and varieties of emotion. 
 He saw the facial expression, he heard the melody of the voice and 
 detected its note of mirth or of sorrow. His soul was stirred by 
 nobility and greatness of character. According to the depths to 
 which his soul was stirred, and to the amount of enjoyment received, 
 he measured the artistic skill of the players. 
 
 Lamb points out that the purpose of acting is "to arrest the 
 spectator’s eye upon form and gesture so as to gain a more favorable 
 hearing ." 1 He gives a most illuminating description of the facial 
 expression of Dodd in Aguecheek. He says, "You could see the first 
 dawn of an idea stealing slowly over his countenance, climbing up 
 
 little by little, with a painful process, till it cleared up at last 
 
 . 
 
 to the fulness of a twilight conception — its highest meridian. ... 
 A glimmer of understanding would appear in the corner of his eye, 
 and for lack of fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would 
 catch a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it 
 to the remainder. Lamb has used superlatives in describing 
 Munden's faces, the "strange combinations" which he "shot his proper 
 
 In 
 
 2 Tf 
 
 Stage Illusions." 
 
 On Some of the Old Actors." 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
28 
 
 countenance into." He was "not one but legion"; not so much a 
 "comedian, as a company." He says, they should have been preserved 
 in a "Munden gallery."- 1 
 
 Lamb had a sensitive ear for melody. He distinguished 
 the stately declamation of Kemble in Shakespearian role; the 
 triumphant note of Bensley in Iago; Dicky Suett's "0 La.’" which was 
 "richer than a cuckoo." In Mrs. Jordan's acting he detected the 
 coarseness of her voice as compared with her early days when it 
 "sank into the heart." He distinguished Jack Palmer's two voices 
 "both plausible, hypocritical and insinuating, his secondary or 
 supplemental voice still more decisively histronic than his common 
 one"; and Dowton's "childish treble" still piped in his ears. 
 
 Some of these criticisms of actors are in fact criticisms 
 of life. In them Lamb reflects his own high ideals. He says of 
 Mrs. Jordan's Giovanni that "she has taken the sting from the evil 
 thing." 2 While he supported Congreve's and Wycherley's plays, yet 
 he never left any doubt of his attitude toward morality, for he says 
 "translated into real life" the characters of these plays are 
 "profligates and strumpets." He loved Jack Bannister off the stage 
 for his sweet good natured pretensions, and when he played the 
 Children of the Wood Lamb's "whole conscience" was stirred. He 
 declared Miss Kelly's Yarico was "one of the most afflicting lessons 
 
 I 
 
 of the yearnings of the human heart and its mistakes that was ever 
 read upon the stage. 
 
 But for an actor to be great he must have not only high 
 
 i"0n the Acting of Munden." 
 
 "Theatrical Criticisms." 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 “■ ! 
 
 
 
 . » ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
29 
 
 ideale but poetic imagination. Lamb loved the gymnastics of the 
 imagination that Munden aroused when he played in the Cobbler of 
 Preston , and kept "the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment 
 as if some Arabian Night were being acted before him." 1 He 
 declared, "a table or a joint stool in his conception rises into a 
 dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia’s Chair" and "a tub of butter con- 
 templated by him amounts to a Platonic idea." 2 
 
 But a play however great may be leveled to mediocrity by 
 lack of judgment and intelligence on the part of the player. 
 
 Lamb’s idea of acting was "to hold the mirror up to nature." The 
 actor must distinguish the difference between a man pushed to the 
 extremity, and a wild tiger. A bloody character is not necessarily 
 a monster. He objected to Cook's caricature of Richard III, which 
 represented him as a bloody monster, and failed to impress the 
 audience with "the awe and deep admiration of his witty parts, his 
 consummate hypocrisy, and indefatigable prosecution of purpose." 
 
 Lamb's ideas of artistic acting are summed up in his dis- 
 cussion of three favorites: Bensley, Dicky Suett, and Miss Kelly. 
 
 He states in the essay "On Some of the Old Actors" that, "of all 
 the actors who flourished in my time Bensley had the greatest swell 
 of soul. . . He had the true poetical enthusiasm, the rarest 
 faculty among players . . . His voice had the dissonance and at 
 times the inspiriting effect of the trumpet. His gait was uncouth 
 and stiff, but in no way embarrassed by affectation; and the 
 thoroughbred gentleman was uppermost in every movement. He seized 
 
 ^’’Acting of Munden." 
 flbid. 
 
 ^Ainger, Works of Charles Lamb , "Letters" . Vol. 1, p.43. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
30 
 
 the moment of passion with greatest truth; like a faithful clock, 
 never striking before the time ... He was totally destitute of 
 trick or artifice.” Bensley seemed to reach this high ideal of 
 impersonation in the characters of Hotspur, Iago, and Malvolio. His 
 Hotspur showed a "fine madness"; his Iago was "a consummate villain 
 entrapping a noble nature"; and his Malvolio was not a ludicrous 
 fool but a cold, austere, repelling but dignified Puritan, "comic 
 but by accident." 
 
 Dicky Suett was the ideal clown. There was a daintiness 
 about him that Lamb admired. "He was the Robin Goodfellow of the 
 stage. He came in to trouble all things with a welcomed perplexity. 
 He was known like Puck, by his note — Ha! Ha! Ha! sometimes deepen- 
 ing to Ho! Ho! Ho! with an irresistible accession of 0 La! . . . 
 Care, that troubles all the world was forgotten in his composition. 
 Had he had but two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he could never 
 have supported himself upon those two spider’s strings, which served 
 him as legs. A doubt or a scruple must have made him totter, a 
 sigh have puffed him down; the weight of a frown had staggered him, 
 a wrinkle made him lose hie balance. But on he went scrambling upon 
 those airy stilts of his with Robin Goodfellow. . . Shakespeare 
 foresaw him when he framed his fools and jesters. They have all the 
 Suett Stamp, a loose shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last 
 the ready midwife to a without-pain-de live red jest, in words, light 
 as air; with idlest rhymes tagging conceit when busiest, singing 
 with Lear in tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch . . . Dicky 
 seemed like a thing, as Shakespeare says of Love, too young to know 
 what conscience is. Evil fled from him, not as from an antagonist 
 but because it could not touch him any more than a cannon ball a 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 ' 
 
 
 $ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
31 
 
 1 
 
 fly." 
 
 Lamb was accused of flattering Miss Kelly on her acting. 
 
 He says when she played the part of a brother of seventeen she made 
 "the prettiest unalarming Platonic approaches, without going too 
 far." She put so much "good sense and intelligence into every part." 
 Her Yarico was "the mo9t intense piece of acting, and the most 
 heart-rending spectacle," he had ever witnessed and it was due to 
 
 p 
 
 nothing more than her "wonderful imagination." But it was, as 
 Rachel, in Richard Brome's Jovial Crew that she won his heart. "She 
 was Princess of Mumpers and Lady Paramount, with her gabbling 
 lachrymose petitions; her tones such as we have heard by the side of 
 old woods when an irresistible face has come peeping on one of a 
 sudden; with her full black locks, and a voice — how shall we 
 describe it? a voice that was by nature meant to convey nothing 
 but truth and goodness but warped by circumstance into an assurance 
 that she is telling us a lie, that catching twitch of her thievish 
 irreprovable finger — those ballad singer notes, so vulgar, yet so 
 un vulgar; that assurance so like impudence, and yet so many count- 
 less leagues removed from it; her jeers which we had rather stand 
 than be caressed with other ladies' compliments a summer's day long - 
 her face with a wild out-of-doors grace upon it . . . What a lass 
 that were," he says, "to go gypsying through the world with." Miss 
 Kelly's acting illustrates Lamb's ideal of illusion in comedy 
 characters. As a spectator how did Lamb respond to these artists of 
 the stage? 
 
 ^"On Some of the Old Actors." 
 
 2 "Theatrical Criticisms." 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
32 
 
 He lived the scenes in his imagination as he did in his 
 first play, but now with a keen insight of human nature. At times 
 he was unable to throw off the illusion after leaving the theater. 
 Miss Kelly as Rachel stirred his passion of love, and he sent her 
 a letter of proposal the following day. Dowton shook his ribs 
 ’’most incontinently,” and his lungs "crowed chanticleer.” Dodd 
 cleared his cloudy face of its furrows." He enjoyed Bensley's 
 illusion in Malvolio and "did not wish that it whould be removed. 
 Lamb had "no room for laughter," for his deep sense of pity was 
 stirred by the "infirmity of man's nature." Munden's Cockletop 
 "stuck" by him in "a manner as to threaten sleep ," 1 2 and no sooner 
 had he fallen into slumber than five hundred of Munden's faces were 
 dancing before him. 
 
 II 
 
 Lamb's criticism of plays represents him in another 
 relation to the stage. The Specimens established his reputation as 
 a critic. This collection was the result of his searching in the 
 British Museum, for the old manuscripts of the early dramatists, 
 including those from the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign to the 
 close of the reign of Charles I. What was this antiquarian seeking 
 in these old plays? He says the purpose of the Specimens was "to 
 illustrate what may be called the moral sense of our ancestors. To 
 shew in what manner they felt, when they placed themselves by the 
 
 1 
 
 o" Some of the Old Actors." 
 "On the Acting of Munden." 
 
' 
 
 
 **■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 * 
 
 
 . 
 
 I 
 
33 
 
 power of imagination in trying circumstances, in the conflicts of 
 duty and passion, or the strife of contending duties; how their 
 griefs were tempered, and their full-swoln joys abated; how much 
 of Shakespeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and how 
 far in his divine mind and manners he surpassed them and all man- 
 kind ." 1 In searching to find what were the emotions and imaginations 
 of man, Lamb was playing his part in the romantic movement, "return 
 to nature." Since the plays of Lamb's period had degenerated in 
 vigor of passion and imagination in which Lamb delighted, he sought 
 these human elements of a great soul in the old dramas. His 
 Specimens called attention to the excellent features of these 
 plays, and were of value to the stage in awakening not only a new 
 interest in these old poets, but in giving new inspiration to the 
 dramatists for a truer representation of life. 
 
 The plays that treated of human life and manners were 
 
 chosen rather than the artificial plays. He selected "scenes of 
 
 passion, sometimes of deepest quality, interesting situations, 
 
 serious descriptions, that which is more allied to poetry than to 
 
 2 
 
 wit, and to tragic rather than to common poetry." 
 
 The passions chosen are various. The more terrible the 
 scene the more fascinated is the critic. The fear of death is 
 represented by the "growing horrors of Faustus" when the hours and 
 half hours "bring him nearer to the enactment of his dire compact." 
 
 He points out the skill and dignity of the horrors which John 
 Webster presents in the Duchess of Malf i and enumerates the terrors 
 
 ^-"Characters of Dramatic Writers Contemporary with Shakespeare." 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
. 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 • • 
 
 
 
 
34 
 
 which the Duchess passed through before her death sentence. He 
 refers to the wild, and terrible scene in Ford’s Broken Heart in 
 
 which Calantha showed more fortitude than the Spartan lad who let 
 the beast gnaw out his bowels without a groan. He could not find 
 comparisons sublime enough for this grand catastrophe and he says, 
 "It almost bears us in imagination to Calvary and the Cross." 
 Another heroic character that he greatly admires is Fletcher's 
 Ordella, whom he pronounces "a piece of sainted nature," because 
 "she offers her life as a sacrifice that the king of France may not 
 be childless." Yet he criticises Fletcher for his unnatural and 
 violent situations. Lamb refers to a character in Decker's 
 Honest Whore which would shock the audience of his time, but he 
 maintains that "where Bellafont, a reclaimed harlot, recounts some 
 of the miseries of her profession, a simple picture of honor and 
 shame contrasted without violence and expressed without immodesty 
 is worth all the strong lines against the harlot's profession." 
 
 In Decker's Old Fortunatus he finds Orleans to be a 
 second Romeo, "only less poetical and a little madder." The Merry 
 Devil of Edmonton he says, is intended to make the reader happy, 
 and nothing is finer, more gentleman-like and nobler than the con- 
 versation of the young men. 
 
 Lamb's poetic taste was gratified by the dialogue of 
 these old masters. He refers to the bold allegory of Marston's 
 Antonio and Mellida ; to the reality and life in the dialogue of 
 Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy . It passes any scenical illusion 
 he ever felt. The words of Vindici and Hippolito to their mother 
 are "more keen and dagger-like than those which Hamlet speaks to 
 his mother." 
 
1 
 
35 
 
 He is delighted with the poetical fancy api elegance of 
 the mind of Ben Jonson in the Poetaster in which he "has revived 
 the whole court of Augustus." Lamb's imagination find3 play in 
 the "torrent of images," which overcomes the judgment. "The 
 assemblage of them all produces a result equal to the grandest 
 poetry." He fancies the grace and charm with which Beaumont and 
 Fletcher mask women as pages to follow unfaithful lovers. 
 
 Throughout the Specimens he measures characters, scenes, 
 poetry, and dialogue with those of Shakespeare's plays. Heywood 
 is a "sort of prose Shakespeare"; Beaumont and Fletcher were but 
 "an inferior sort of Shakespeare"; the full and heightened style 
 of the descriptive and didactic passages of Chapman "approaches 
 nearest Shakespeare"; Marlowe's Edward II is compared with 
 Richard II . and his Jew of Malta with the Merchant of Venice : 
 but his master does not raise ideal female characters higher than 
 Lord Brooke's Caelica and Camena; and Tourneur's dialogue is more 
 dagger like than Hamlet's. 
 
 But the comparison of Middleton's witches with those in 
 Macbeth is perhaps the finest, as it shows Lamb's poetic imagina- 
 tion and keen discrimination. He says that the witches of 
 Shakespeare "are distinguished from the witches of Middleton by 
 essential differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman, 
 plotting dire mischief, might resort for occasional consultation. 
 Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to men. From 
 the moment that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's he is spell- 
 bound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the 
 fascination. These witches can hurt the body, those have power over 
 the soul. Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low buffoon; the hags of 
 

 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
36 
 
 Shakespeare have neither child of their ovm, nor seem to be 
 descended from any parent ... As they are without human passions, 
 so they seem to be without human relations. They came with thunder 
 and lightning and vanish to airy music . . . Except Hecate, they 
 have no names, which heightens their mysteriousness. The names and 
 some of the properties, which the other author has given his hags 
 excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things; their 
 presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But, in a lesser degree, the 
 witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too. is in 
 some measure over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, 
 like a thick scurf over life." 
 
 Throughout the Specimens Lamb points out the poetical 
 excellencies, giving particular stress to the heroic characters of 
 tragedy. He shows most interest in those scenes which lay bare the 
 human soul. The scenes of greatest horror reach the greatest 
 sublimity which recalls Calvary. He responds to the plays in a 
 manner similar to the theater. His heart throbs in sympathy. At 
 times his "ears tingle," his cheeks flush" and his "eyes gush 
 tears of delight." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting and artistic of the dramatic 
 essays is "Tragedies of Shakespeare" considered with reference to 
 their fitness for the stage. Lamb has interpreted the greatness of 
 the mind and soul of Shakespeare. He thinks no actor can portray 
 objectively the wonderful conception of Shakespeare's imagination. 
 Only the imagination can conceive the Othello, Hamlet, Lear, and 
 
' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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37 
 
 Macbeth of Shakespeare, since they are representatives not of 
 physical action, but of mind and soul undergoing great passions. 
 
 We are not to believe that Lamb objected to the acting of 
 Shakespeare's plays, since he expresses so much pleasure in the 
 theater. What was his purpose then in writing this essay? 
 
 He seems to have a threefold purpose in mind, which he 
 presents in a paradoxical fashion. First, he expresses an unfriend- 
 ly feeling toward Garrick, who, in the eighteenth century had 
 revived an interest in the acting of Shakespeare's plays. This 
 feeling was partly due to an epitaph he saw in the Abbey, which 
 aroused jealousy. The epitaph contained this line: "Shakespeare 
 and Garrick like twin stars shall shine." Lamb never had sat under 
 the spell of Garrick's acting, and his enmity was aroused that an 
 actor should be placed on a level with his master. Lamb considered 
 the power to create poetical images and conceptions far surpassed 
 the power to recite the same when put into words, and there 
 Shakespeare in nobility of mind and soul was far superior to Garrick 
 But Lamb's ire was aroused even more by the marring of Shakespeare's 
 plays by Tate and Cibber, in which Garrick connived by using their 
 acting editions. Lamb says, "I am almost disposed to deny Garrick 
 the merits of being an admirer of Shakespeare. A true lover of his 
 excellencies he certainly was not, for would any true lover of them 
 have admitted into hi3 matchless scenes such ribald trash . . . 
 
 I believe it impossible that he could have had a proper reverence 
 for Shakespeare, and have condescended to go through that inter- 
 polated scene in Richard the Third , in which Richard tries to break 
 his wife's heart by telling her he loves another woman and says. 
 

 
 
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38 
 
 'If she survives this she is immortal.' Yet I doubt not that he 
 delivered this vulgar stuff with as much anxiety of emphasis as any 
 of the genuine parts; and for acting, it is as well calculated as 
 any." He was particularly enraged that King Lear should have been 
 so marred by a happy ending, "as if at his years, and with his 
 experience, anything was left but to die!" 
 
 Another aim in this essay is to show the subjective side 
 of the tragical characters. "There is so much in them which comes 
 not under the province of acting, with which eye and tone and 
 gesture have nothing to do." For instance, the anger of a vulgar 
 character and of Othello might be portrayed by expression of 
 countenance and action which were very similar, while the motives 
 were very dissimilar. The struggle in the mind of Othello which is 
 the great tragic struggle can not be portrayed. 
 
 Lamb does not argue that Hamlet should not be acted, but 
 he wishes to show how Hamlet is made another thing by being acted. 
 "Nine parts in ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions between 
 himself and his moral sense," which is not to be represented 
 objectively. Most actors in their efforts to show Hamlet's state 
 of mind toward his mother and Ophelia rant in a mad way which quite 
 destroys the princely conception of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Again 
 the objective representation of the character may quite destroy the 
 ideal side because of our race prejudices and customs. The audience 
 shudders when the black Othello loves Desdemona. It is repulsive. 
 The ncbility of his mind is quite forgotten. The same is true in 
 King Lear . The sight of a tottering old man turned out in the 
 storm has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting . . . 
 
 The greatness of Lear is not in corporeal dimensions, but in 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 1 
 
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39 
 
 intellectual. It is his mind which is laid bare. . . What has 
 voice or eye to do with such things?" 
 
 If some of the princely conceptions of Shakespeare's 
 imagination, which belong to the natural world, cannot be fully 
 portrayed on the stage, how much more does the acting fall short, 
 in an effort to portray creatures of the unreal world, as ghosts, 
 spirits and fairies. They are creatures too ethereal for material 
 form, and their proper realm is in the imagination only. Thus 
 Lamb aims to show that the characters of Shakespeare have a sub- 
 jective side which only the imagination can conceive, and it is 
 this great intelligence and spirituality of his characters which 
 make his plays superior. 
 
 As a third aim in his essay he shows the lack of intellect 
 in the audience. He says, "The more coarse and palpable the passion 
 is, the more hold upon the eyes and ears of the spectators the per- 
 former obviously possesses." He further states that they do not 
 see the difference between the characters of George Barnwell who 
 was a murderer and Othello. "They say that both are natural, but 
 the odds are that ninety-nine out of a hundred would willingly 
 behold the same catastrophe happen to both heroes and have thought 
 the rope more due to Othello than Barnwell. For the texture of 
 Othello's mind . . . its heroic confidences and its human mis- 
 givings, its agonies of hate springing from the depths of love, 
 they see no more than the spectators at a cheaper rate, who pay 
 their pennies apiece, to look through the man's telescope in 
 
 Leicester Fields, see into the inward plot and topography of the 
 moon." He shows that the audience has no conception of the great- 
 ness of a heroic and tragic character. The essay, then, has 
 

 : 
 
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40 
 
 expressed Lamb's attitude toward Garrick; has shown the subjective 
 side of Shakespeare's tragical character; and has revealed the lack 
 of dramatic sense of the spectators; but it has not argued that 
 Shakespeare's plays should not be acted. 
 
 IV 
 
 Perhaps the essay on the "Artificial Comedy of the Last 
 Century" aroused more adverse criticism of Lamb than any other of 
 his productions. This essay is another illustration of the 
 influence of illusion upon his criticism. Lamb was severely 
 criticised for upholding the plays of Congreve and Wycherley. This 
 essay does not indicate a moral degeneration of the critic, for his 
 principle of illusion puts the characters of these plays in a dif- 
 ferent world; they were not of "Christendom" but of "the land of 
 cuckoldry." They were not to be judged by the law courts of real 
 people. From the standpoint of poetical justice, Lamb argues, that 
 no good person suffers on the stage, because the author "has spread 
 a privation of moral light over his creation." He says that if 
 translated into real life they are "profligates and strumpets" and 
 would reduce things to "chaos." However Lamb seems to forget that 
 they did represent the life of the Restoration period, and as such 
 were real people. 
 
 But this essay is another illustration of Lamb's para- 
 doxical and whimsical style of writing. Lamb's romantic nature 
 rebelled against the restraint of the audience which demanded morals 
 in a play. They were satisfied with puerile plays, the repent-anl- 
 forgive type where the moral point was everything. He was cross at 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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41 
 
 the audience for demanding realistic life rather than fictitious 
 personages. In the School for Scandal they desired Joseph Surface 
 to be a real villain, while Lamb upheld Jack Palmer's acting, a 
 sort of hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy. "Jack Palmer was 
 twice an actor in this exquisite part." He was playing to the 
 audience all the while he was playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. 
 
 This essay shows Lamb's tendency to be perverse at times. 
 He enjoys taking the contrary side from that of general opinion. 
 
 As Hazlitt says of the Occult school, "They discern no beauties 
 but that are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that 
 are obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. By happy alchemy of mind 
 they convert dross into gold." 1 Lamb seems to be hunting for good 
 in an evil thing. He has come under the influence of the senti- 
 mental school which finds good in all humanity. He comes to the 
 aid of the censured wr iters, in the spirit of his father when he 
 maintained the cause of the oppressed regardless of the number of 
 his opponents. He does all this in his whimsical way, basing his 
 argument on his principle of illusion. 
 
 Perhaps Lamb is not a great critic in the broadest sense 
 
 of the term, but he has shown great genius and has won favor with 
 
 critics. Saintsbury says, "It may be doubted whether such a critic 
 
 as Lamb though infinitely delightful is exactly 'great' because of 
 
 2 
 
 the singular gaps and arbitrariness of his likes and dislikes." 
 
 ^Hazlitt, Table Talk , p.225. 
 
 ~°History of Criticism . Vol. 1, p.496. 
 

 
 
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42 
 
 Hazlitt speaks of the Occult school "whose members have a natural 
 proneness to singularity, a love of what is odd. They like a mono- 
 poly of taste and are shocked at the prostitution of intellect in 
 popular productions. They would tolerate the sweetness of an 
 actress’s voice only for the ugliness of her face. Nothing goes down 
 with them but what is caviare to the public . . . Yet they smack of 
 genius and would be worth any money were it only for the rarity of 
 the thing." 1 Brander Matthews says, "It is difficult for any one who 
 has had to read much of the writings of other dramatic critics to 
 
 speak of Lamb's essays on theatrical subjects without falling into 
 
 o 
 
 extravagance of eulogy." Swinburne states, "When he took on him to 
 grapple in spirit with Shakespeare and his followers, he shewed him- 
 self the strongest as well as the finest critic that ever was found 
 worthy to comment on the most masculine or leonine school of poets 
 in all the range of English literature."'-' Ainger says, "He was too 
 fond of paradox, too much at the mercy of his emotions, or the mood 
 of the hour to be a safe guide always. But where no disturbing 
 forces interfered, he exercised a faculty almost unique in the 
 history of criticism." 4 It is seen that the critics agree that Lamb 
 has genius in dramatic criticism, but that he is capricious in 
 style, and too much influenced by his likes and dislikes. 
 
 Lamb's genius of criticism is due not so much to its 
 extent as to its forcefulness, yet his criticisms on acting make a 
 valuable handbook for the actor, and his interpretations illuminate 
 
 iHazlitt, Table Talk , p.325. 
 
 ‘' Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb . p.13. 
 
 ^Nineteenth Century , January 1885. 
 
 Ainger, English Men of Letters . Vol. 5, p. 185. 
 

 
 
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 ’ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 ‘ 
 
 ' 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
43 
 
 the text for the student, while his Specimens form a guide for the 
 
 dramatist . 
 
 The delightful note of his criticism is due to his sense 
 of humor, and this together with his vivid imagination and power of 
 concrete expression make his writing forceful, as he flashes upon our 
 imagination the wonderful scenes of his beloved poets. He spent so 
 many hours with these old Elizabethan dramatists, that the scenes did 
 not merely pass before his mind but they electrified his innermost 
 life. These scenes were the "old familiar faces" that he loved. What 
 he loved stirred his imagination, and in turn, his imagination en- 
 nobled his love; therefore he elevates the scene according to the 
 thermometer of his emotions. Sometimes he exaggerates the dramatic 
 greatness of the character or scene. 
 
 His "will-worship" exaggerates, but his perverse ways some- 
 times bias his judgment against excellent dramatic work. He says, 
 "Goethe's Faust is inferior to Marlowe's in the chief motive of the 
 plot and lets the criticism rest there."" As a critic his paradoxical 
 style is unique, and it makes one seek beneath the surface for the 
 real meaning. 
 
 His criticisms indicate his romantic nature. His anti- 
 quarian tendency is shown in his love for old literature; and his 
 "return to nature 1 ' may be noted in his seeking to learn the emotion 
 of man when in trying situations; his wonderful imagination and 
 fancy is seen in his attitude toward illusion on the stage; and his 
 emotion is portrayed by his response to dramatic scenes. As an 
 impressionist, he is a romantic critic; he dares to express what 
 he likes with no other authority than his own sensibility. 
 
 ■Ainger, English Men of Letters . Vol. 5, p.184. 
 

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 •- 
 
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CHAPTER THREE 
 
 
 LAMB AS A DRAMATIST 
 
 The period in which a dramatist lives has much to do with 
 his success. We find in Lamb's time that the drama was at low ebb, 
 having been on the decline since the Elizabethan period. During the 
 reign of the Puritans the stage had been tabooed, but after the ban 
 was lifted in the Restoration period, the artificial comedy, which 
 reflected the lowest tide of English morality, was produced. The 
 artificial comedy was followed by the sentimental drama of the 
 eighteenth century. It seemed that the public desired either a love 
 story like Richardson's Pamela in the form of an opera, presenting 
 idealized lovers and humorous characters of rustic simplicity, or, a 
 comedy of social and domestic life which had a sentimental plot with 
 a good deal of action and some mystery, and one prominent comic 
 figure . ^ 
 
 Lamb's natural poetical ability and his love for the 
 theater stimulated his ambition to become a dramatist, since he 
 could not be an actor. Shortly after the tragedy in his family he 
 began writing his first play called Pride 1 s Cure , but later changed 
 to John Woodvil . After submitting it to Coleridge and Southey, who 
 tried to dissuade him from publishing it, he sent the play to John 
 Kemble, who offered to put it in the hands of the proprietor of 
 Drury Lane Theater. After waiting a year for a reply, he wrote to 
 
 ^Bernbaum, Drama of Sensibility , p.223. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 ’ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
45 
 
 Kemble to know the result. Lamb in a letter to Manning writes, 
 
 "At last I have written to Kemble to know the event of my play which 
 was presented last Christmas. As I suspected came an answer back 
 that the copy was lost, and could not be found, no hint that anybody 
 had to this day looked into it, with a courteous request of another 
 copy (if I had one by me) and a promise of a definitive answer in a 
 week. I could not resist so facile and moderate a demand, so 
 scribbled out another, omitting sundry things ... I sent it last 
 night, and am in weekly expectation of the tolling bell and death 
 warrant." 1 The play was soon returned as unsuitable for the theater. 
 In 1802 Lamb printed the play at his own expense of £.25. 
 
 I 
 
 John Woodvil is a tragedy in five acts, written in the 
 Shakespearian style of alternate prose and blank verse. The setting 
 is in the period immediately after the Restoration, when puritanical 
 restraint being removed, society became drunk and English morality 
 was at its lowest ebb. 
 
 The hero of the play is the elder son of a puritan. Sir 
 Walter Woodvil, who has been so deeply engaged in the revolution 
 against the crown that he has not been pardoned under the Oblivion 
 Act. Sir Walter and his younger son Simon disguised as Frenchmen 
 are living in the Forest of Sherwood. The elder son John has re- 
 mained a royalist, not because of principle, since he was indifferent 
 alike to Cromwell and Charles I, but because he is ambitious to 
 
 ^Ainger, Works of Charles Lamb , Letters. Chap. 1, p.321. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
46 
 
 become great in political life. He remains in Woodvil Hall 
 surrounded by a set of cavalier friends and hangers-on who spend 
 their time drinking toasts to the King, in merrymaking, and in feed- 
 ing on the estate like so many parasites. Some of the company 
 insult Margaret, a ward of Sir Walter, and with womanly indignation 
 against such procedure in Woodvil Hall, and with bitter feelings 
 toward John who has neglected her, she disguises herself as a boy 
 and joins Sir Walter and Simon in the Forest of Sherwood. After her 
 departure John, who has been her lover since boyhood, makes a show 
 of grief for the moment. On the King's birthday he and his comrades 
 are celebrating the event in excessive drinking. John under the 
 influence of wine discloses to Lovell, a false friend, the hiding 
 place of his father. Lovell and Gray, another false friend, proceed 
 at once to Sherwood Forest to arrest Sir 7/alter as a traitor. 
 Arriving at the hiding place they make known their errand. Simon 
 draws his sword, but the father is so overcome by grief because of 
 his son's betrayal, that he dies. After his burial Simon travels, 
 but Margaret returns to Woodvil Hall to comfort John, who has dis- 
 missed his rioting companions and spends his time in grieving over 
 his mistake. Margaret consoles him; their love is renewed; and 
 after some time in prayer, he feels that his sin is expiated. 
 
 When the play was published, it was ridiculed. The maga- 
 zines were not sparing in their criticisms. The Edinburgh Review 
 made heavy fun of it, and The Annual Review turned it to ridicule, 
 ending a contemptuous criticism with, "What precious nonsense.' but 
 this is a specimen of that canting, whining style, or rather slang 
 of poetry, which is now-a-days offered to us as the very essence of 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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47 
 
 simplicity and pathos !"1 Blackwood’s Magazine gave the following 
 criticism: "It is a tame imitation of the manner of the old 
 
 dramatists — of their manner when engaged in their subordinate 
 and preparatory scenes. For there is an attempt at tragic passion. 
 
 We read the piece asking ourselves when the play is to begin, and 
 
 2 
 
 while still asking the question find ourselves at the conclusion." 
 Wordsworth however wrote, "I like your play marvelously, having no 
 objection to it but one ... I mean a little degradation of 
 character for a more dramatic turn of the plot."* - Hazlitt says, 
 "There is much that is exquisite both in sentiment and expression." 4 
 De Quine ey said, "I had felt and acknowledged a delicacy and tender- 
 ness in the situation as well as the sentiments, but disfigured as 
 
 4 
 
 I thought by quaint, grotesque, and mimetic phraseology." These 
 
 criticisms call attention to the pathos and poetical beauty of the 
 
 dialogue, and its defects of vulgarity and "antiquity." 
 
 In answer to Southey's criticism, and objection to printing 
 
 the play, Lamb writes, "You object to my pauses being at the end of 
 
 my lines. I do not know any great difficulty I should find in 
 
 diversifying or changing my blank verse; but I go upon the model of 
 
 Shakespeare in my play, and endeavor after a colloquial ease and 
 
 spirit, something like him ... I love to anticipate charges of 
 
 unoriginality; the first line is almost Shakespeare’s: 
 
 "To have my love to bed and to rise" 
 
 Midsummer Night 1 s Dream 
 
 ^Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb . Vol. 1, p.226. 
 
 ^ Living Age , September 15, 1849. 
 
 ^William C. Hazlitt, "Eliana," Atlantic Monthly, February 1906. 
 ^Allibone, Dictionary of Authors . Vol. 1, p.1049. 
 
 Ainger, Works of Charles Lamb , Letters, Vol. 1, p.159. 
 

 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
48 
 
 I think there is a sweetness in the versification not unlike some 
 rhymes in that exquisite play." In another letter to Southey he 
 says, "My tragedy will be a medley (as I intend it to be a medley) 
 of laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places rhyme, 
 songs, wit, pathos, humour, and, if possible, sublimity; at least 
 it is not a fault in my intention if it does not comprehend most 
 of these discordant atoms. Heaven send they dance not the 'Dance 
 of Death'!" 
 
 After reading John Woodvil the first time, I felt dis- 
 appointed, as I was expecting to find an illustration of Lamb's 
 dramatic ideas, as set forth in the Specimens . I, too, found myself 
 at the close of the play and discovered no dramatic action, or vigor 
 of passion that Lamb discussed in his criticisms. Instead, he 
 seemed to be imitating the very thing he condemned in the modern 
 repent-and-forgive play. 
 
 The construction and characterization are weak. (Only 
 once does Lamb refer to the construction of the drama in his 
 Specimens . There is no motive for action, the hero becomes 
 intoxicated, and without any temptation whatever, discloses the 
 hiding place of his father. Had he been tempted by either love or 
 political ambition and wavered between one of them and his filial 
 duty, we should have had dramatic action. There is no suspense, no 
 rise or fall of action, and the incidents are not interwoven. We 
 do not know when the curtain falls, upon what scene it will rise. 
 
 In the fourth act John gives a few lines in soliloquy; then we are 
 
 •^ The Specimens of English Dramatic Poets , 
 
 "Fletcher . " 
 

 
 
 
 
 If 
 
 
 
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49 
 
 hurried to Sherwood to see the arrest of Sir Walter; then to 
 another part of the forest to hear what Margaret has to say; then 
 hack to Woodvil Hall again. The play is more like a closet drama, 
 than one for the stage. 
 
 John Woodvil is "a medley," especially in the dialogue. 
 
 It is shot through and through with Shakespearian phrases, so that 
 in reading, one is constantly diverted from the thread of the story 
 by locating these phrases in their native place. Let us compare 
 some of these borrowed phrases in John Woodvil with the speeches in 
 Shakespeare's plays. Compare a commendation in this play with one 
 in The Merchant of Venice . 
 
 "MARTIN: Well spoken, Daniel! 0 rare Daniel! 
 
 — his oaths and his politics! excellent!"' 1 
 
 "SHYLOCK: A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel! 
 
 • • • ♦ • 
 
 2 
 
 0 noble judge! 0 excellent young man!" 
 
 John's speech on confidence is parallel with Hamlet's speech on the 
 reason of man. 
 
 "JOHN: How fine and noble a thing is confidence! 
 
 How reasonable too, and almost godlike!" ^ 
 
 "HAMLET: What a piece of work is man! How noble 
 in reason! ... In action how like 
 an angel! In apprehension how like a god!" 
 
 The expression "Men die but once" recalls Julius Caesar's words, 
 "The valiant never taste of death but once,"^ and "I would be 
 
 1 
 
 oAct 1. 
 
 ^ The Merchant of Venice , Act 4, sc. 1. 
 
 Act 3. 
 
 4 
 
 _ Hamlet , Act 3, sc. 2. 
 
 "’Act 2, sc. 2. 
 

 
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50 
 
 great" is probably suggested by Lady Macbeth's soliloquy in which 
 she says, "Thou wouldst be great." 1 
 
 There are other imitations of Shakespeare than these 
 phrases. Sometimes whole speeches are modelled on Shakespeare's. 
 There is a resemblance of the complaints of Margaret to those of 
 Portia in Julius Caesar . Margaret complains of John's altered 
 manner, his neglect, and refers to his former vows of love, and to 
 her own pride. Both speeches are in the same mood, and the verse 
 is similar. Another example of this imitation is the speech of 
 Sanford, scolding and threatening the servants of V/oodvil Hall, 
 which is parallel with Malvolio's reprimanding the carousal of Sir 
 Toby and Aguecheek. In loyalty and dignity the stewards resemble 
 each other, yet the content and verse form of Sanford's speech 
 recalls, also, Marullus' reprimand" to the Commoners. 
 
 The greatest worth of the play lies in the isolated 
 passages which are almost Shakespearean in poetic beauty. Godwin 
 mistook the following passage for one of the beauties of the Old 
 Dramatists and asked Lamb to help him locate the author. 
 
 "To see the sun to bed and to rise, 
 
 Like some hot amorist with glowing eyes. 
 
 Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him, 
 
 With all his fires and travelling glories round him: 
 Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest, 
 
 Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast. 
 
 And all the winking stars, her handmaids keep^ 
 
 Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep:" ° 
 
 But much of his verse form is harsh and jangling as, 
 
 Macbeth . Act 1, sc. 1. 
 
 Julius Caesar , Act 1, sc. 1. 
 Act 3. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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51 
 
 "This Lovel here's of a tough honesty, 
 
 Would put the rack to the proof. He is not of that sort 
 Which haunt my house, snorting the liquors, 
 
 And, when their wisdoms are afloat with wine, 
 
 Spend vows as fast as vapours, which go off, 
 
 Even with the fumes, their fathers. "1 
 
 The following Shakespearian devices may be noted: the 
 
 play opens with music and a comment upon it by the first speaker as 
 in Twelfth Night ; one scene opens with the reading of a letter, 
 followed by a comment on the writer which has a parallel in Macbeth : 
 the simple life enjoyed by Sir Walter in the Forest of Sherwood 
 resembles the life of the Duke in the Forest of Arden in Aa You 
 Like It : and Margaret's disguising as a boy and fleeing to 
 Sherwood is an imitation of the adventure of Rosalind in the same 
 play. 
 
 Lamb shows the influence not only of Shakespeare but of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher as well. 2 Lamb speaks of them as his "first 
 love" and remarks, "From what I was so freshly conversant in, what 
 
 p 
 
 wonder if ray language took a tinge." A resemblance to Beaumont 
 and Fletcher may be noted in the vulgar dialogue and drunkenness of 
 the characters. In Beaumont's The Scornful Lady , the younger 
 Loveless in confederation with his boon companions squanders his 
 elder brother's estate while he is away, and in The Coxcomb 
 Ricardo's shame for his drunken mistake when he neglected his lady- 
 love is akin to John's remorse for neglecting Margaret and betraying 
 his father. 
 
 Lamb is not only influenced by the old dramatists but he 
 
 lAct 3. 
 
 ^Dircks, Plays and Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb . p. X. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . , 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
shows the marks of his own age . His play is romantic after the 
 fashion not of the Old Dramatists but of the German melodramas. 
 
 "It is not difficult to trace the influence of Kotzebue; the piece 
 belongs clearly to the time when plays of The Stranger type found 
 appreciative audiences . " ^ 
 
 Let us next note the romantic characteristics of John 
 Woodvil . The play lacks the impersonal style of Shakespeare because 
 Lamb is subjective and writes himself in his plays. One cannot read 
 the play without being reminded of the author again and again. He 
 frequently uses his coined epithets as "not -to -be -endured tribute" 
 and "Resist-the-devil-and-he-will-f lee-from-thee Pureman." The 
 
 i 
 
 following speech recalls Lamb's love for art, "You shall go with me 
 
 3 
 
 into the gallery where I will show you the Vandyke I have purchased." 
 Again John’s hospitality toward his friends, and the effect of wine 
 on his imagination and speech remind one of Lamb. Margaret's 
 sympathy for John, because in a state of intoxication he betrayed 
 his father, recalls Charles Lamb's sympathy for his sister. John's 
 love of emotion is akin to that of the author. 
 
 A second dramatic feature is the strange combination 
 resulting from an imitation of an Elizabethan drama set in the 
 period of the Restoration. Other features are the expression of 
 the love of nature and simple life in the Forest of Sherwood, and 
 the sentimental feeling for animals, Simon expresses his love for, 
 
 "All things that live, 
 
 From the crooked worm to man ' s_ imperial form 
 And God-resembling likeness." 
 
 x Di rcks, Plays and Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb , Introduction, 
 p. XI . ,, 
 
 2Act 1. ^Act 2. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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53 
 
 The hero himself is a romanticist. He is under no 
 restraint in his epicurean habits. He is given to levity, wine, 
 and caprice and " spends too much time in riotous living, graceless 
 society, and mirth unpalatable," yet he has the confidence of his 
 father and brother in his "honor and fidelity." He has excessive 
 pride and ambition to be great, if we judge from his own remarks. 
 
 He possesses artistic temperament and values highly, the imagination 
 of a poet. It is "an internal wine, richer than Lippara or Canaries 
 yet uncrushed from any grapes of earth, unpressed in mortal wine 
 presses. . . It is denominated indifferently wit, conceit, inven- 
 tion, inspiration; but its most royal and comprehensive name is 
 fancy ." -1 He enjoys emotion and seeks it in excessive drinking, for 
 he exclaims to his companions, "more mirth I beseech you, gentlemen, 
 
 . . . every man must commit his twenty bumpers first. We are not 
 yet well roused . . . Another round, and then let every man devise 
 what trick he can in his fancy, for better manifesting our loyalty 
 this day." Then occurs the following conversation and action. 
 
 "THIRD GENTLEMAN: Who shall pledge me in a pint bumper, 
 
 while we drink the king’s health upon 
 our knees? 
 
 LOVEL: Why on our knees, cavalier? 
 
 JOHN: (smiling) For more devotion, to be sure. 
 
 Sirrah, fetch the gilt goblets. 
 
 (They drink the king's health kneeling.) 
 
 LOVEL: (aside) Vanity and gay thoughts of wine do meet 
 
 in him, and^engender madness. 
 
 (While the rest are engaged in a wild kind of talk, 
 
 John advances to the front of the stage and soliloguizes . ) 
 
 ^Act 3. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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54 
 
 JOHN: My spirits turn to fire, they mount so fast 
 
 My joys are turbulent, my hopes show like fruition. 
 These high and gusty relishes of life, sure. 
 
 Have no allayings of mortality in them. 
 
 I am too hot now and o’er capable, 
 
 For the tedious processes, and creeping wisdom, 
 
 Of human acts, and enterprises of a man. 
 
 I want some seasonings of adversity. 
 
 Some strokes of the old mortifier, calamity, 
 
 To take these swellings down, divines call vanity.” 1 
 
 Woodvil is romantic in his enjoyment of grief. It does 
 not possess him so much, as he entertains and cherishes it. His 
 mind is turned inward witnessing his own emotions and he discusses 
 them as he handles his mourning. 
 
 "How beautiful 
 
 And comely do these mourning garments show! 
 
 Sure grief hath set his sacred impress here, 
 
 To claim the worlds respect! they note so feelingly 
 By outward types the serious man within. 
 
 Alas! What part or portion can I claim 
 In all the decencies of virtuous sorrow, 
 
 Which other mourners use? "2 
 
 In the following quotation we see not so much a man grieving over 
 his mistakes, as analyzing his own condition and pitying himself: 
 
 "I have no part in any good man's love, 
 
 In all earth's pleasures have I none, 
 
 I fade and wither in my own esteem, 
 
 This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am."' 5 
 
 Again we find the romantic hero indulging in a flood of tears. 
 
 "And then I at my own presumption smiled, 
 
 And then I wept that I should smile at all. 
 Having such cause of grief! I wept outright, 
 Tears like a river, flooded all my face."^ 
 
 Uct 3. ?Ihid. 
 
 s Act 5. 4 Ibid. 
 
55 
 
 His freedom from restraint, his subjective mind, his love of the 
 imagination and emotions are the chief romantic characteristics of 
 the hero. 
 
 Lamb's play failed because it was "a medley.” He 
 gathered together materials but he could not properly order them 
 in the plot of a drama. He could not link incident with incident 
 to create surprise. He could not motivate his play to produce 
 dramatic action, nor delineate character. 
 
 The play is ”a medley” in that it shows the influence of 
 the period in its melodramatic tone; the influence of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher in the drunken scenes; and the influence of the style of 
 Shakespeare. It is a weak imitation of Shakespeare in form which 
 is prose and blank verse; a part of the verse, however, is hardly 
 different in matter and style from prose. He has borrowed many 
 phrases, and imitated the dialogue, characters, and scenes. Lamb 
 has given his attention to the accessories which are valuable in 
 a drama, but he has failed to imitate the most essential parts, 
 delineation of character and plot. 
 
 II 
 
 Lamb's first failure did not destroy all hope for success 
 as a dramatist. His second attempt was a farce entitled Mr . H„ 
 consisting of two acts and a prologue. Lamb spent about six 
 months in its composition, as he only wrote when in the mood. The 
 play was submitted to Wroughton, manager of Drury Lane, in 
 February 1806. On June 9, Lamb wrote begging to know if his piece 
 had any chance so that he might make alterations. He received a 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 1 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 ' ■ 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
56 
 
 reply that it had been accepted and would be sent for alterations 
 in a few days. Lamb was jubilant. He wrote to Wordsworth 
 expressing a childish joy over his success. He wrote to Manning, 
 "The rehearsals have gone on privately, lest by many folks knowing 
 it, the story should come out, which would infallibly damn it . . . 
 
 I had no idea it was so forward. I have had no trouble, attending 
 no reading or rehearsal. What a contrast to the usual parade of 
 authors! . . . The title is Mr. H no more. A great H, sprawling 
 over the playbill and attracting eyes at every corner." The plot 
 is related by Lamb in the same letter. "The story is a coxcomb 
 appearing at Eath, vastly rich — all the ladies dying for him — 
 all bursting to know who he is; but he goes on by no other name 
 than Mr. H — a curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg 
 about the man with the great nose. But I won't tell you more about 
 it. Yes, I will; but I can't give you an idea of how I have done it. 
 I'll just tell you that after much vehement admiration, when his 
 true name come3 out, 'Hogsflesh' all the women shun him, and not 
 one can be found to change their name for him." 1 The play however 
 does not end so disastrously for the hero, as he receives permission 
 from the king to change his name from Hogsflesh to Bacon. With this 
 new appellation he receives the promise of Melisanda, a rich young 
 heiress, to wed him. 
 
 The play was acted December 10, 1806, at Drury Lane 
 Theater, Mr. Elliston taking the title role. The house was crowded 
 to the ceiling, many friends of the author being present. There was 
 great expectation, for Lamb's wit was not unknown. The audience 
 
 ^Ainger, The Letters of Charles Lamb . Vol. 1, p.140. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 ■ 
 
 * . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
57 
 
 waited impatiently to the close of the long opera, which preceded 
 Mr . H . At last Mr. Elliston entered and gave the prologue, which 
 was greatly applauded, even Lamb himself entering in the applause. 
 The substance of the prologue concerned the various uses of 
 initials instead of names. The first part of the play was well 
 received, but on the disclosure of the name, the audience was dis- 
 pleased and hissed. The farce went on amid shouts of "hear.' hear!" 
 and "off! off!" Lamb himself, says Crabb Robinson, x who was in the 
 pit with him and Mary, joined in the hissing! Lamb's fears were 
 realized, he heard "the tolling of the bell"! 
 
 The next day Lamb wrote to Wordsworth the following: 
 
 " Mr . H came out last night and failed. I had my fears; the subject 
 was not substantial enough. John Bull must have solider fare than 
 a letter. We are pretty stout about it; have had plenty of con- 
 doling friends, but after all we had rather it should have suc- 
 ceeded. You will see the prologue in most of the morning papers. 
 
 It was received with such shouts, as I never witnessed to a 
 prologue. It was attempted to be encored. How hard! a thing I did 
 merely as a task, because it was wanted, and set no great store by; 
 and Mr. H. J !. The number of friends we had in the house . . . was 
 astonishing, but they yielded at length to a few hisses! A hundred 
 hisses! (Damn the word, I write it, like kisses — how different) a 
 hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former came more 
 
 2 
 
 directly from the heart. Well, ' tis withdrawn and there is an end." 
 
 ^ Diary . Vol. 1, p.230. 
 
 2 Ainger, Letters of Charles Lamb. 
 
 Vol. 1, p.144. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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 • ' ’ 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
58 
 
 About a year later he wrote to Manning, who was in China. 
 Time having removed some of the sting of failure, Lamb used his 
 imagination and wrote somewhat playfully as follows: "So I go 
 
 creeping on since I was lamed with the cursed fall from the top of 
 Drury Lane into the pit, something more than a year ago. However, 
 
 I have been free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty 
 free with me on that occasion. Damn 'em how they hissed! It was 
 not a hiss either, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congrega- 
 tion of mad geese, with roaring sometimes like bears, mows and mops 
 like apes, sometimes snakes that hissed me into madness." 1 
 
 Elliston wanted to put on the play a second night, but 
 Lamb refused as he thought the failure was due to the slight sub- 
 ject, and, if so, the second night would be as disastrous. Hazlitt 
 in Table Talk says, "How often did I conjure up in my recollections 
 the full diapason of applause at the end of the prologue, and hear 
 
 my ingenuous friend in the first row of the pit roar with laughter 
 
 2 
 
 at his own wit." The following criticism on Mr. H was printed in 
 The Monthly Literary Recreation of December, 1806: "This piece met 
 
 with the fate which it most justly merited. A prologue full of 
 real humor and wit, excellently well delivered by Mr. Elliston, made 
 us hope better things, and we confess that for the first two or 
 three scenes our curiosity was excited; and the first act, owing to 
 the exertions of Mr. Elliston and Miss Mellon went off tolerably 
 smooth, until the last scene. In the second act Mr. H, the hero 
 of the piece who had before concealed his name on account of its 
 
 
 jAinger, Letters of Charles Lamb. Vol. 1, p.151. 
 2 P. 232! 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 •/ • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
59 
 
 disgusting vulgarity, blunders it out himself and the appellation 
 of Hogsflesh is made known and immediately a string of the most 
 stale puns and proverbs are let loose upon it. Here all interest 
 vanished, the audience was disgusted, and the farce went on to its 
 conclusion almost unheard.”' 1 
 
 Although the play failed the first night, yet it was 
 produced a few times afterward, according to some of Lamb's 
 biographers. There is a reference to its being played in New York 
 three months later, and in Philadelphia in 1812 it had a ccnsider- 
 able run. On April 26, 1822 Charles Mathews the younger played 
 the part of Mr. H. at the Theater Royal English Opera House Strand. 
 In 1885 it was presented by a Society of Dramatic Students who 
 compressed it into a single act and contracted the dialogue. 3 
 
 There are different conjectures as to the cause of the 
 failure. Hazlitt thought if it had followed a tragedy instead of 
 an opera the audience would have been in a more receptive mood. 
 Talfourd says the stage had begun to require interest moral or 
 immoral to be interwoven with the web of all its action, and no 
 longer rejoiced in the riot of animal spirits and careless gaity; 
 it no longer permitted wit to take the sting from evil as well as 
 the load from care; but infected even its prince of rakes, Charles 
 Surface, with a cant of sentiment."^ Brander Matthews thinks the 
 fatal fault was keeping the secret from the spectators. He says, 
 
 ^Dobell, Side Lights on Charles Lamb. p. 339. 
 
 ^Ainger, Work s of Charles Lamb. Vol. 2, p.389. 
 
 ''Dircks, Flays and Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb. p.XV. 
 
 ^Craddock, Charles Lamb , p.60. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
60 
 
 "To keep a secret is a misconception of true theatrical effect, an 
 improper method of sustaining dramatic suspense. An audience is 
 interested not in what the end may be, but in the means whereby 
 that end is to be reached. ... If the audience that night had 
 been slyly let into the secret in an early scene, they would have 
 had double enjoyment in watching the futile endeavors of the 
 dramatis personae to divine it, and they would not have been dis- 
 appointed when Mr. Hogsflesh let slip his full patronymic. Kept in 
 ignorance, the spectators joined the actors in speculation, and 
 when the word was revealed they were not amused by the disgust of 
 the actors, so annoyed were they, that they had been puzzled by a 
 vulgar name . " ^ 
 
 The failure may have been due partly to the play and 
 partly to the audience. An article by J. E. Babson in the Atl a ntic 
 Monthly . May 1863, entitled "Charles Lamb's Uncollected Writings," 
 gives some account of a club of "damned authors." He states that 
 no fewer than two tragedies, four comedies, one opera, and three 
 
 farces suffered at Drury Lane Theater during the season of 1806 and 
 
 % 
 
 1807. The audience began to hiss early in the season and "retained 
 through the remainder of the season a relish of blood." Lamb says 
 "Our nonsense did not suit their nonsense." 
 
 The farce has the necessary requisites, probable people 
 in possible circumstances with some exaggeration of their foibles 
 and sentiments. It is "whimsical" as Lamb intended it should be. 
 What other causes can be found for its failure than the lateness 
 of the hour, the high expectations of the audience, and the habit 
 
 •^Matthews, Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb . p.27. 
 

 
 ■ 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
61 
 
 which the audience may have acquired, of hissing what did not suit 
 their fancy? 
 
 The construction of the plot is too weak even for a 
 whimsical farce. The centra.l idea of the piece — for one can 
 hardly say action as it is so slight — is the secret to be revealed 
 of who Mr. H. really is. The audience was expecting a good laugh 
 at the wit of Charles Lamb, and when the name was revealed and it 
 proved to be a somewhat vulgar but common name, the disappointment 
 became disgust, and the audience felt that they themselves had been 
 tricked. They forgot perhaps for the moment that Lamb their 
 favorite was responsible for this foolishness and hissed. Had 
 Hogsflesh been the name of some popular character of the city, it 
 might have made what is termed a local hit, but even then it is too 
 flimsy for the central idea of a farce. The action being so slight, 
 the farce consists mostly of dialogue, some of which is vulgar and 
 common-place. The interest excited at first died out, as there was 
 too much playing with Lamb's favorite toy, the pun. The audience 
 wanted a new idea. But had the play been condensed to a single act 
 by eliminating most of the second act which is mere word play, there 
 is no doubt that it would have met with a reasonable degree of 
 success. 
 
 Another defect of the farce is its lack of characteriza- 
 tion. An audience likes to discover the foibles of a farcical 
 character by his action and conversation, rather than by hearing 
 a discussion of him by other players or by his own soliloquies. 
 
 The characters are not discriminated. All of them possess one 
 human foible, an abundance of curiosity — an excellent one to 
 satirize, as it is universal. The hero is best shown. He is a 
 
J ' 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , . 3 
 
 V I 
 
 
 
 
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62 
 
 gentleman with some fortune, possesses a good figure, is anxious 
 to find a wife, takes much pride in his conversation which in fact 
 is very common-place. He has a bad memory which upset his little 
 game for winning a wife. 
 
 Lamb shows lack of skill in handling the catastrophe. 
 When, through forgetfulness, Mr. H. betrays his own secret, the 
 playwright prolongs the dramatic moment by having him repeat the 
 thought the second time. The catastrophe which follows is mere 
 dialogue so drawn out as to cause the play to lose its sparkle and 
 life. 
 
 In his exaggeration of ridiculous names Lamb has allowed 
 his imagination and wit to carry him too far. He enumerates names 
 of persons that were names of fishes, birds, beasts, coins, 
 professions, long names and short names. He displays his wit in 
 numerous puns, and introduces numerous terms suggesting hog, in 
 order to make his hero flinch. But it is overdone and wearies the 
 audience.lt seems as if Lamb was in the mood for word play, and, 
 while in imagination the speeches were only a moment in length, he 
 had not counted the minutes required to present the thoughts on 
 the stage. The amusement of the author in creating the jokes 
 exceeded the enjoyment of the audience in hearing them. Here his 
 emotion overcame his judgment. He either lacked a psychological 
 knowledge of the theatrical audience, or he was not guided by it, 
 at least. 
 
 But with all these faults the play has interest. There 
 is sparkle and wit in the dialogue. The numerous demands for the 
 hero’s name and the curiosity aroused is entertaining. Lamb has 
 shown ingenuity in choosing appropriate names as Mrs. Pointer, Mrs. 
 

 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
63 
 
 Setter, and Mrs. Guesswell for the committee to discover the real 
 identity of Mr. H. Some of his puns are clever hut others resemble 
 those of our present day vaudeville. 
 
 The most entertaining feature is the exaggeration of 
 curiosity. Lamb has expressed the superlative degree of this human 
 foible in Mr. Pry, the landlord, who is complaining of his house 
 being upside down because of the guessing and speculating of the 
 servants as to the identity of Mr. H. While complaining the land- 
 lord takes up a box belonging to the hero and displays his own 
 curiosity. This is the only dramatic incident of the play. Mr. Pry 
 says, "I hate such inquisite — I wonder what is in it? — it 
 feels heavy, ’Leases, title deeds, wills.’ Here, now, a man might 
 satisfy his curiosity at once . . . But I wouldn’t — it is a pretty 
 box too. — but I'd cut my fingers off before I’d do such a dirty — 
 what have I to do — curse the keys, how they rattle! (takes out a 
 bunch and plays with them) I wonder if any of these would fit? One 
 might just try them; but I wouldn't lift up the lid. 0 Lord! 
 little rusty fits it! but what is that to me? I wouldn't go to — 
 no, no — but" (While he is turning up the lid of the box Mr. H. 
 enters behind him unperceived.) As the usual custom in the plays 
 of Lamb's time the offense is forgiven. The landlord excuses him- 
 self by declaring he has had a natural curiosity from childhood. 
 
 He says, "I could never see a cold pie with legs dangling out at 
 the top but my fingers were for lifting up the crust — just to try 
 if it were pigeon or partridge, — for no other reason in the world. 
 
 In this farce as in the tragedy Lamb has portrayed in the 
 hero some of his own characteristics: Mr. H is interested in 
 music; he is familiar with quotations from authors; the discussion 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 : 
 
 
 
 
64 
 
 of his blasted hope of marriage recalls Lamb's "Dream Children"; 
 he loves to swear but is not so adept as Lamb; and he is as 
 forgiving as the author himself. The last sentence of the farce is 
 a characteristic "Lambism," "Hogsflesh has saved his Bacon." 
 
 Ainger has suggested that it was this speech which probably gave 
 rise to the play. 
 
 The pun was characteristic of Lamb's humor. His beloved 
 master made use of it in his earlier plays, but Shakespeare outgrew 
 it in his mature literary life. Lamb, however, remained the "boy" 
 in more ways than one; he always loved the pun. The playfulness 
 of the author in dallying so long with such slight ideas, and the 
 flowing conversation of the dialogue suggests the style of an 
 essayist, rather than the more active, pointed, and abbreviated 
 conversation of a dramatist. 
 
 The third play was a tragi-comedy entitled The Wife ' s 
 Trial or The Intruding Widow, founded on Crabbe's tale of The 
 Confidant . This play was written in the summer of 1837, and 
 printed December 1828, in Blackwood' s Magazine . 
 
 The plot is as follows: The fifth wedding anniversary 
 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Selby finds the home somewhat disturbed by an 
 intruding widow, Mrs. Frampton, a former school-mate, who came to 
 visit Mrs. Selby for a few days but has remained weeks, and shows 
 no intention of leaving. Mr. Selby has discovered that she has 
 some mysterious power over his wife which has reduced her from the 
 attitude of a hostess to that of a cringing servant. He rebels 
 

 
 •• 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
65 
 
 against this situation and insists upon his wife's requesting the 
 widow to leave. Fearfully she complies with her husband's request 
 but the widow becomes indignant and refuses. Mr. Selby overhears 
 the widow say, "Your husband shall know all this!” He at once sus- 
 pects his wife's fidelity. When he informs his si3ter Lucy of the 
 situation, she suggests that he cajole the widow into telling the 
 secret by pretensions of love. Mrs. Frampton falls into the snare 
 without much hesitation. According to her story Mrs. Selby has 
 been secretly married as a schoolgirl, though her husband left her 
 at the church door and had died abroad. The widow withholds how- 
 ever the knowledge of his death. When Mr. Selby relates the secret 
 to Lucy, she recalls a letter received by Katherine his wife, 
 shortly after the marriage, and Mr. Selby remembers that it con- 
 veyed the news of the death of some friend, as yet unconfirmed. They 
 decide that the young husband and dead friend are the same. Mr. 
 Selby leads the widow on to disclose the name, which proves their 
 conjecture is right. The husband and wife are reconciled and the 
 widow is forgiven. 
 
 This is the slightest of Lamb's plays as it is entirely 
 wanting in dramatic action. Lamb was aware of this defect as he 
 wrote to Mrs. Shelley, "I am writing a farce in two acts; the 
 incidents are tragi-coraic. I can do the dialogue; but the damned 
 plot, I believe I must admit altogether. The scenes come after one 
 another like geese, not marshalling like cranes on a Hyde Park 
 Review. The story is as simple as G(eorge) D(yer), and the 
 language plain as his spouse. The characters are three women to 
 one man; which is one more than laid hold on him in Evangely . . . 
 
 I want some Howard Paine to sketch a skeleton of artfully succeeding 
 
68 
 
 scenes through a whole play as the courses are arranged in a cook 
 book: I to find wit, passion, sentiment, character and the like 
 trifles; to lay in the dead colors — I'd Titianesque 'em up; to 
 mark the channel in a cheek, and where tears should course I'd 
 draw the waters down; to say where a joke should come in or a pun 
 be left out; to bring my personae on and off like Bean Nash; and 
 I'd Frankenstein them there; to bring three on the stage at once; 
 they are so shy with me, that I can get no more than two; and there 
 they stand till it is the time without being the season, to with- 
 draw them." 1 
 
 Lamb did leave the plot out as far as motive and dramatic 
 action is concerned. In the beginning of the play the motive of 
 jealousy is suggested. Had Mr, Selby carried on a flirtation with 
 the widow in order to arouse his wife's jealousy and hasten the 
 departure of the intruder the play would have had dramatic interest. 
 As in Mr. H . the secret is too slight for dramatic value. Only a 
 sentimental creature would endure the tyrannical widow for fear of 
 its being exposed. After the secret is disclosed, Mr. Selby tries 
 to arouse his wife's jealousy, when it has no purpose in securing 
 dramatic action. 
 
 The characters are merely interlocutors informing the 
 audience what has happened behind the scenes. Mr. Selby refers to 
 the widow's power over his wife thus, 
 
 "Katherine's meek 
 And gentle spirit cowers beneath her eye 
 As spell bound by some witch." 
 
 hi 
 
 acdonald, Works of Charles Lamb . Vol. 2, p.175. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Such a scene would be interesting and arouse some sympathy for 
 Katherine. The audience would be entertained by the actions of 
 the widow as Mr. Selby describes them. 
 
 "Sometimes I have thought 
 A secret glance would tell me she could love 
 If I but gave encouragement." 
 
 The characters of the play are weak and puling sort of 
 creatures. Katherine is a meek, tearful, sentimental wife at the 
 beginning of the play and continues so to the end. She lacks the 
 independence and will of Margaret in John Woodvil , Margaret com- 
 manded our sympathy but Katherine does not. The character of the 
 widow is better delineated. She i3 a bold, imperious, and assuming; 
 somewhat affected and coquettish. She is near the verge of im- 
 morality as Mr. Selby describes her, 
 
 "She rests prepared, as mistress or as wife 
 To seize the place of her betrayed friend." 
 
 She is stupid in telling her secret so readily, and in believing 
 Mr. Selby's attitude had changed toward her so quickly. One is 
 not convinced of her penitence although Mr. Selby says at the close 
 that he reads "penitence on her dejected brow." Mr. Selby is weak 
 in suspecting hi3 wife's fidelity on such a slight foundation. Lucy 
 is a mere tool which the playwright uses to explain situations. 
 
 Although the play is written in blank verse, yet it 
 should have been in prose. The thought and diction do not possess 
 poetic beauty or sublimity. The following is a very common 
 greeting with some affectation. 
 
68 
 
 "Be seated. For your brother's sake you are welcome. 
 
 I had thought this day to have spent in homely fashion, 
 With the good couple to whose hospitality 
 I stand so far indebted. But your coming 
 Makes it a feast." 
 
 Let us test this verse by applying the touchstone of Shakespeare. 
 In speaking of the unfaithfulness of his wife Mr. Selby says, 
 
 "I begin 
 
 To call in doubt the course of her life past 
 Under my eyes. She hath not been good 
 Not virtuous, nor discreet." 
 
 Othello says of Desdemona, 
 
 "She's gone. I am abus'd; and my relief 
 Must be to loathe her." 1 
 
 Lamb has put the burden of the drama on the dialogue which consists 
 principally of narration and description. He has told a story, but 
 as a dramatist he should have motivated action, and portrayed his 
 charactersand scenes, through dramatic action and terse, pointed 
 dialogue . 
 
 The Wife 1 s Tragedy is colored by the sentimentality of the 
 time. The play lacks the poetical passages we found in John 
 Woodvil . and the wit in Mr . H . The Lambisms are scarcely seen, but 
 the love of emotion which he tried but failed to express — "the 
 channels where the tears should course" — is the marked character- 
 istic of Lamb in this play. It is the most impersonal and also the 
 least interesting of his plays. 
 
 ^Act 2, sc. 3. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
69 
 
 IV 
 
 The Pawnbroker 1 s Daughter , a farce in two acts written 
 in 1829, was Lamb's last attempt as a dramatist. It was never 
 presented on the stage. Lamb appealed to Elliston, who was then 
 manager of Surrey Theater, to produce it, but he replied that it 
 would not be suited to the interest of the theater. According to 
 some of Lamb's biographers Lamb had expected it to be performed at 
 the Haymarket, 1 and had submitted it to Charles Matthews at the 
 
 p 
 
 Adelphi Theater. The farce was printed in January 1830, in 
 Blackwood* s Magazine . but it was never reprinted by Lamb, and 
 Ainger omitted it in his edition of Lamb's works. 
 
 The farce is founded upon the essay "On the Inconveniences 
 of Being Hanged.” The plot is not quite so slight as Mr . H. for 
 this play has two romances somewhat interwoven. Marian, the 
 daughter of Flint the pawnbroker, is wooed by Davenport of the 
 gentry, against the wishes of her father who is determined she shall 
 not marry to be twitted afterward of her low estate. He plans for 
 her to marry one of his choice. Through a trick of her maid, 
 
 Marian is rushed away by her lover during the absence of her father. 
 In her excitement she carries with her a box of jewels placed in 
 her care. Davenport finds lodging for her in Cutlet the butcher's 
 house, where she occupies an apartment with Miss Flyn, whose lover 
 Pendulous has just escaped death by hanging, news of his innocence 
 coming two minutes after he was hung. Pendulous is grieved over 
 
 ^Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb . Vol. 2, p. 153. 
 
 ^Thomson, B ib lio graph v of Char le s and Mary Lamb , p.102. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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70 
 
 the disgrace and feels that no lady could accept him. Miss Flyn 
 resolves to commit some deed which will bring her to justice, 
 hoping the disgrace will produce a bond of sympathy with her lover, 
 by reducing herself to the same level. Her plan soon materializes. 
 Just as she arrives at this conclusion, an officer, sent by the 
 pawnbroker to arrest his daughter for stealing the jewels, enters 
 and finds Miss Flyn holding the jewel casket intrusted to her, by 
 Marian during her absence. When Miss Flyn is brought before the 
 court, Flint declares she is not his daughter. She will make no 
 explanation but asks them to send for Pendulous. He comes and 
 offers to answer for her with his life and fortune. At this point, 
 Marian rushes in, falls at her father's feet and begs his forgive- 
 ness. The father relents and all are happy. 
 
 This play failed as did the others, because of the lack of 
 dramatic action. It is an artificial, motiveless, and conventional 
 farce. It is less extravagant in verbal wit than Mr . H . but it is 
 also less entertaining in wit on account of the absence of 
 imaginative qualities. The dialogue moves more rapidly, thanks to 
 the many short speeches. The audience enjoys the dialogue at times 
 because they are informed of the situation, before it is known by 
 all the characters. Betty the maid knows nothing of Pendulous being 
 hanged, but she says to Miss Flyn, "He has not had a fall or tumble 
 has he?" and "If his neck is whole his heart is too." 
 
 Lamb has indulged himself as usual in word play. When 
 Cutlet complains that he cannot sleep because of his thinking, Lucy 
 the maid replies "And what may be the subject of your Night 
 Thoughts?" thus playing upon the title of Young's poem. He has 
 

 
 
?1 
 
 shown his caprice in choosing names for the characters: Flint for 
 
 the pawnbroker, Cutlet for the butcher, and Pendulous for the man 
 hanged. Lamb has also indulged himself in the use of the paradox. 
 
 He reverses the tendency of society: instead of scheming to marry 
 his daughter above her rank, the pawnbroker refuses such an 
 alliance; instead of ignoring or ostracizing a disgraced person, 
 
 Miss Flyn plans to commit a crime in order to create a bond of love. 
 We are introduced to Cutlet pouring over the sentimental verse, 
 
 "The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today 
 Had he thy reason would be sport and play? 
 
 Pleased to the last he crops his flowery food, 
 
 And licks the hand just raised to shed its blood." 
 
 Then he throws aside his book and rushes to sell a saddle of mutton. 
 The pawnbroker's business is a paradox. It is beneficient in loan- 
 ing money to those in dire circumstances, it is harsh in the tooth- 
 and-claw method by which it succeeds. 
 
 As in John Woodvil . Lamb has portrayed the characters as 
 romanticists. The pawnbroker engages in a business in which 
 fortune's wheel sometimes stops at his number, truly a romantic 
 business. He has a temperamental disposition. When in a bad mood, 
 Marian can sooth him with music. At times he feels like a poet, 
 and expresses himself in an artificial manner as, "You shall ride 
 in a gilded chariot upon the necks of these poor, Marian. Their 
 tears shall drop pearls for my girl." He is extreme in his emotions 
 toward his daughter. In the beginning of the play he is 
 affectionate, begging a kiss; after she elopes taking the jewels, 
 he denounces her as a thief, and orders a warrant for her arrest, 
 saying, "I am rock, absolute rock." His extreme emotion causes his 
 

 [ 
 
 
72 
 
 strength to fail and he exclaims, "What is it that makes my legs 
 to fail, and my whole frame to totter thus?" After the jewels are 
 regained the dramatically dashes them to the floor exclaiming, 
 
 "Was it in the power of these pale splendors to dazzle the sight 
 of honesty, to put out the regardful eye of pity and daughter love?" 
 
 Cutlet is even more romantic. He feels that his 
 "trembling sensibility'' is not adapted to his business, and wishes 
 he might have sold gloves and lace. He enjoys emotions. He says, 
 
 "I would not exchange this luxury of unavailing pity for the world." 
 He inquires of Pendulous if he kept a journal of his emotions when 
 he was hanged. He thinks that his "nerves" are due to his highly 
 developed mind. He remarks, "I believe I must not think so deeply, 
 common people that don't reason kno - w nothing of these aberrations." 
 He recites, 
 
 "Great wits go mad, and small ones only dull; 
 
 Distracting cares vex not the empty skull: 
 
 They seize on heads that think, and hearts that feel 
 As flies attack the — better sort of veal." 
 
 He is extremely sentimental in his feelings toward animals as he 
 continues his poetry: 
 
 "Yet still I keep my feeling ways, 
 
 And leave the town on slaughtering days. 
 
 At Kentish Town or High Gate Hill, 
 
 I sit, retired beside some rill; 
 
 And tears bedew my glistening eyes 
 To think my playful lambs must die." 
 
 As the usual thing in Lamb's writing he has given us 
 flash lights of himself now and then. His literary bent is seen 
 in his reference to Kight Thoughts, to Pope's verse, and to 
 Buckingham's speech. His capricious style is noted in the many 
 

 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
73 
 
 paradoxes he has conceived. Cutlett possesses several of Lamb's 
 well-known characteristics; the enjoyment of emotion, his 
 imagination, his "nerves" and "trembling sensibility"; his dislike 
 for his business; his love of poetry; and his humorous verse. 
 
 Y/e have discussed at some length each of Lamb's plays. 
 
 We have noted that the characters as well as their master have been 
 trained in the romantic school of expression. The features he 
 admired in the Grand Master Shakespeare he has taught them to 
 imitate. Some of his characters are heard discoursing on the 
 wonders of imagination; some have learned to juggle and play with 
 words; some are discussing their strange emotions with great joy 
 and satisfaction; and some are sentimental. All have been assigned 
 some part in a romantic incident or adventure, yet they have never 
 learned the art of acting. They prefer to discuss their emotions 
 and relate their experiences rather than display them before an 
 audience. The master himself is displeased with them and says they 
 come on the stage "after one another like geese." Why have they 
 failed? 
 
 Why did Lamb fail? During a period of thirty years he 
 produced only four plays, one of which was accepted for acting and 
 it was "damned" at its first appearance. Yet during these thirty 
 years Lamb was a regular attendant at the theater, and was reading 
 the dramas of the old masters. But while he gave himself to the 
 enjoyment of emotions and to the beauty of the dialogue, he did not 
 seem to give attention to their foundation structure. The cause of 
 his failure is adequately expressed by Arnold. He says, "Shakespeare 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
74 
 
 had the gift of ingenious expression eminent and unrivalled, so 
 eminent as irresistibly to strike the attention in him, and even 
 to throw into comparative shade his other excellencies as a poet 
 (which were his fundamental excellencies as a poet.) . . . these 
 attractive accessories of a poetical work being more easily seized 
 than the spirit of the whole ... A young writer having recourse 
 to Shakespeare as his model runs risk of being vanquished and 
 absorbed by them, . . . and in consequence reproducing these and 
 these alone. "I 
 
 But the constructive genius of a dramatist was not among 
 the talents bestowed upon Lamb. He lacked the faculty of mind 
 which sees the parts in their relation to the whole. He saw only 
 the parts. The genius who could make his reputation in literature, 
 in an essay on the "Dissertation on Roast Pig" did not have the 
 faculty for portraying the human soul in trying situations, in its 
 conflict of passion and duty. 
 
 But there is another cause for Lamb's failure. In the 
 first quarter of the nineteenth century, there was neither a national 
 glow of life and thought such as existed in the time of Shakespeare, 
 nor was there the learning and criticism that was found at this time 
 in Germany. Lamb had neither the materials nor the atmosphere con- 
 ducive to the creation of dramatic poetry, even though he had 
 possessed the natural ability. The dramatists of Lamb's period, 
 therefore, played an insignificant part in English literature. 
 
 ■^Arnold, Poems . "Preface" p. x. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 v x 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 It has been the aim of this thesis to show Lamb as a 
 representative of the Romantic school, by discussing his relation to 
 the stage. In the three chapters we have discussed his life, his 
 dramatic criticism, and his plays. We have discovered the native 
 elements of the man; imagination, emotion, sympathy, a subjective 
 mind, and an antiquarian spirit, which are characteristics of his 
 group. 
 
 These native qualities together with his acquirements 
 prepared him for the work of a critic, a critic of the romantic 
 method, one who depended upon his own sensibility, and conveyed 
 the charm he felt under the spell of the Old Actors or Elizabethan 
 Dramatists. He was an impressionistic critic. 
 
 His criticisms brought him in touch with the actors and 
 dramatists of hi3 day. They sought his criticism. His comments on 
 the actors in which he pointed to the superior qualities of imagina- 
 tion, emotion, and intelligence; and his principle of illusion by 
 which he judged acting, are valuable notes to those seeking success 
 in the theatrical world. But in searching through the old manu- 
 scripts of the Elizabethan dramatists and pointing out the superior 
 qualities of Shakespeare's plays in comparison with those of the 
 other dramatists, yet giving credit to their excellencies as well, 
 his work has been of most value to the stage. 
 
 Where Lamb could use his native qualities he succeeded, 
 but where he sought to imitate others he failed. Where emotion, 
 

 
 
 
76 
 
 imagination, and a subjective mind were essential qualities for the 
 work he succeeded; but where order of mind, constructive power, 
 and impersonal expression were required he failed. Therefore as 
 a dramatist he failed, but as a critic he possessed the necessary 
 qualities to appreciate a "great work" and convey its charm to 
 others. It was as an impressionistic critic that Lamb played the 
 most important part in his relation to the stage. 
 

 4 
 
 
 
 
 
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i 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Ainger, Alfred, Charles Lamb, English Men of Letters, vol. 5, 
 
 L ondon , 1906. 
 
 Lectures and Essays , vol. 2. London, 1905. 
 
 Allibone, S. A., Critica l Dictionary of English Literature and 
 
 British and American Authors, vol. 1. Philadelphia, 1908. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, Poems , Oxford ed. London, 1920. 
 
 Babson, J. E., ’’Charles Lamb's Uncollected Writings,” Atlantic 
 Monthly. May, October 1863. 
 
 Bernbaum, Ernest, Drama of Sensibility . Ginn and Co. Boston, 1915. 
 
 Biographica Dramatica , edition by Baker, David E. Vol. 2, 
 
 London, 1812. 
 
 Cambridge History of English Literature , ed. by Ward A.W. and 
 Waller A. R. Vol. 12, New York, 1916. 
 
 Chew, S. C., Mode rn Language Notes . January, 1921. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Biographia Literaria , ed. by Shawcross , J . , 
 Vol. 1, Oxford, 1907. 
 
 Craddock, Thomas, Charles Lamb . Vol. 7, London, 1867. 
 
 Dictionary of National Biography, edition by Sidney Lee. Vol. 11. 
 New York, 1909. 
 
 Dircks, Rudolph, Plays and Dramatic Essays by Charles Lamb . 
 
 London, 1893. 
 
 Dobell, Bertram, Sidelights on Charles Lamb . London, 1903. 
 
 Fitzgerald, P. H., The Art of the Stage as Set Out in Lamb 1 s Dra - 
 matic Essays with a Commentary . London, 1885. 
 
 Hallward, N. L. and Hill, S. C. , Lamb 1 s Essays of Elia, with notes 
 and Introduction . London, 1900. 
 
 Hazlitt, W. G., The Atlantic Monthly . February, 1906. 
 
 Jerrold, Walter, Charles Lamb . London, 1905. 
 
 Lake, Bernard, A General Introduction to Charles Lamb . Leipzig, 
 
 1903. Dr. Seele and Company. 
 
ii 
 
 Lucas, E. V. , Life of Charles Lamb . 2 vols. London, 1905. 
 
 Matthews, Brander, The Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb . London, 
 1891. 
 
 Moulton, E. W., The Library of Literary Criticism of English and 
 American Authors . Malkan, Henry. Voi. 5. New York, 1910. 
 
 Pater, Walter Horatio, Appreciations : with an Essay on Style . 
 London, 1890. Macmillan and Company. 
 
 Robinson, Crabb, Diary. Reminiscences and Correspondence . Macmillan 
 and Company. Vol. 2, London, 1869. 
 
 Saint sbury, George, History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Eu- 
 rope . Vol. 3, New York, 1906. 
 
 Sherman, Stuart P., Mathew Arnold . Ho a to Know Him . Indianapolis, 
 
 Stoddard, R. H. , Personal Recollections of Lamb. Hazlitt and Others . 
 New York, 1876. 
 
 Talfourd, T. N., Charles Lamb. Final Memorials Consisting of his 
 Letters . 2 vols., London, 1848. 
 
 Thomson, J. C., Bibliography of Charles and Mary Lamb . J. R. Tu- 
 tin, Albert Avenue, Hull, 1908. 
 
 The Works of Matthew Arnold . Macmillan and Company, London, 1904. 
 Vol. 10. 
 
 The Collected Works of William Hazlitt . Ed. by Waller, A.R. and 
 Glover, Arnold. Vol. 6, London, 1902. 
 
 The Works of Charles Lamb . Ed. by Ainges, Alfred, Ed. de Luxe, C. E. 
 Brainard Publishing Company. 8 vols., Boston, 191-? 
 
 Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb 
 
 rt My First Play? ( London Magazine . 1821.) 
 
 "The Old Actors? ( London Magazine . 1822.) 
 
 "On the Acting of Munden? ( London Magazine , 1822.) 
 
 "Munden 1 s Farewell. " ( London Magazine. 1824; 
 
 "The Death of Munden." ( Athenaeum. 1832.) 
 
 "Autobiography of Mr. Munden. " ( London Magazine . 1825.) 
 "Biographical Memoi r of Mr. Liston. ( London Magazine , 1825.] 
 "To the Shade of Elliston.” ( The Englishman * s Magazine . 1851) 
 "Ellistoniania. " (Ibid.) 
 
 "The Religion of Actors." ( The New Monthly Magazine. 1826.) 
 "On the Custom of Hissing at Theaters . " ( The Ref lector. 1811) 
 "John Hemble and Godwin's Tragedy of Antonio. ""( London MagazLn 
 "Stage Illusions." ( London Magazine. 1825.) 
 
 "On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century." 
 
 ( London Magazine. 1822.) 
 
 "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare." ( The Reflector. 1811.) 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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iii 
 
 "Charaters of Dramatic Writers Contemporary with Shakes- 
 speare." ( Collected Works. 1818.) 
 
 "Barbara S." ( London Magazine . 1825. 5 
 "Criticisms." (The Examiner, 1819.) 
 
 Olympic Theater 
 
 Mill Kelly at Bath 
 
 The Jovial Crew 
 
 The Hypocrite 
 
 New Pieces at the Lyceum 
 
 "On a Passage in the Tempest." (London Magazine, 1823.) 
 
 Some Important Letters of Lamb containing Dramatic Criticism . 
 
 To Coleridge. June 14, 1796. 
 
 To William Dogwin. December 14, 1800. 
 
 To Robert Lloyd. July 26, 1801. 
 
 To William Godwin. September 9, 1801. 
 
 To William Godwin. September 17, 1801. 
 
 To William Wordsworth. April 9, 1816.