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Nathaniel Lee (c. 1653-1692). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05

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Nathaniel Lee (c. 1653-1692). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05 Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record Charles Wells Moulton, ed.  Library of Literary Criticism.  1901–05. Nathaniel Lee (c. 1653–1692) Nathaniel Lee (d. 1692), the son of Dr. Lee, Incumbent of Hatfield, was educated at Westminster School and at Trinity College, Cambridge; but, left to his own resources, he took to the stage, and, in 1672, played at the Duke’s Theatre the part of Duncan in “Macbeth.” Although an admirable reader, he was unable to get his living as an actor. He then produced, at the age of twenty-five, the first of his eleven plays, “Nero;” and between 1675 and 1684, this was followed by eight other plays of his own, including his two most popular, “The Rival Queens; or, Alexander the Great” (1677), and “Theodosius; or, the Force of Love” (1680). He also joined Dryden in the plays of “Œdipus” (1679) and “The Duke of Guise” (1683). There was a wildfire of imagination in Lee, and he drank too freely. In November, 1684, he was received into Bedlam, where he remained four years…. Between his recovery and his death, at the age of about forty, Lee wrote, in 1689 and 1690, two more plays, “The Princess of Cleve” and “The Massacre of Paris;” but he was chiefly dependent upon ten shillings a week from the Theatre Royal.—Morley, Henry, 1879, A Manual of English Literature, ed. Tyler, p. 426.    

1 Personal

  6 April, 1692, Nathaniel Lee a man bur.—Burial Register, St. Clement’s Danes.    

2   I remember, poor Nat. Lee, who was then upon the very verge of madness, yet made a sober and a witty answer to a bad poet, who told him, “It was an easie thing to write like a madman:” “No,” said be, “it is very difficult to write like a madman, but it is a very easie matter to write like a fool.”—Dryden, John, 1694? Letter to Dennis, Malone’s Dryden, vol. II.    

3   Nathaniel Lee was fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge. The Duke of Buckingham (Villiers) brought him up to town; where he never did anything for him: and that, I verily believe, was one occasion of his running mad. He was rather before my time; but I saw him in Bedlam.—Lockier, Dr., Dean of Peterborough, 1730–32, Spence’s Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 47.    

4   Was so pathetic a reader of his own scenes, that I have been informed by an actor who was present, that while Lee was reading to major Mohun at a rehearsal, Mohun in the warmth of his admiration threw down his part and said—“Unless I were able to play it as well as you read it, to what purpose should I undertake it?” And yet this very author, whose elocution raised such admiration in so capital an actor, when he attempted to be an actor himself, soon quitted the stage in an honest despair of ever making any profitable figure there.—Cibber, Colley, 1739, An Apology for His Life, p. 71.    

5   Educated at Westminster school, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was very handsome as well as ingenious man; but given to debauchery which necessitated milk-diet, when some of his university comrades visiting him, he fell to drinking with them out of all measure, which flying up into his head, caused his face to break out into those carbuncles which were afterwards observed there; and also touched his brain, occasioning that madness so much lamented in so rare a genius. Tom Brown says he wrote while he was in Bedlam a play of twenty-five acts; and Mr. Bowman tells me that going once to visit him there, Lee showed him a scene, “in which,” says he, “I have done a miracle for you.” “What’s that?” said Bowman “I have made you a good priest.”—Oldys, William, c. 1761, MS. note to Langbaine’s Account of the English Dramatick Poets.    

6   As he is known to have entered college in 1668, he must have been older than thirty-five when he died twenty-four years later. No trace of his grave remains in St. Clement Danes; and Butcher Row, afterwards called Pickett Street, in which stood the Bear and Harrow, was wiped out of existence some years ago, and the New Law Courts stand on its site. It was a very narrow street, running from Ship Yard to Holywell Street, by the side of St. Clement’s Church.—Hutton, Laurence, 1885, Literary Landmarks of London, p. 196.    

7 General
Your beauteous images must be allowed By all but some vile poets of the crowd. But how should any sign-post dauber know The worth of Titian or of Angelo? Hard features every bungler can command; To draw true beauty shows a master’s hand. —Dryden, John, 1677, To Nathaniel Lee.    

8 Nat Lee stepp’d in next, in hopes of a prize. Apollo rememb’ring he had not once in thrice. By the rubies in’s face, he could not deny But he had as much wit as wine would supply; Confess’d that indeed he had a musical note, But sometimes strained so hard that it rattled in the throat; Yet own’d he had sense and ’t encourage him for ’t He made him his Ovid in Augustus’s court. —Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl, 1680? A Session of the Poets.    

9   It has often been observed against me, that I abound in ungoverned fancy; but I hope the world will pardon the sallies of youth. Age, despondence, and dullness come too fast of themselves. I discommend no man for keeping the beaten road; but I am sure the noble hunters that follow the game must leap hedges and ditches sometimes, and run at all, or never come into the fall of the quarry. My comfort is, I cannot be so ridiculous a creature to any man as I am to myself: for who should know the house so well as the good man at home?—who, when his neighbours come to see him, still sets the best rooms to view; and, if he be not a wilful ass, keeps rubbish and lumber in some dark hole, where nobody comes but himself, to mortifie at melancholy hours.—Lee, Nathaniel, 1680, Theodosius, or the Force of Love, Dedication.    

10   An Author whose Plays have made him sufficiently remarkable to those who call themselves The Witts; and One whose Muse deserv’d a better Fate than Bedlam…. However, before this misfortune befel him, he writ several Dramatical Pieces, which gave him Title to the first Rank of Poets; there being several of his Tragedies, as “Mithridates,” “Theodosius,” &c., which have forc’d Tears from the fairest Eyes in the World: his Muse indeed seem’d destin’d for the Diversion of the Fair Sex; so soft and passionately moving, are his Scenes of Love written.—Langbaine, Gerard, 1691, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, pp. 320, 321.    

11   Among our modern English poets, there was none who was better turned for tragedy than Lee; if instead of favouring the impetuosity of his genius, he had restrained it, and kept it within its proper bounds. His thoughts are wonderfully suited to tragedy, but frequently lost in such a cloud of words, that it is hard to see the beauty of them. There is an infinite fire in his works, but so involved in smoke, that it does not appear in half its lustre. He frequently succeeds in the passionate parts of the tragedy, but more particularly where he slackens his efforts, and eases the stile of those epithets and metaphors, in which he so much abounds.—Addison, Joseph, 1711, On Tragedy, The Spectator, No. 39, April 14.    

12   There cannot be a stronger proof of the charms of harmonious elocution, than the many, even unnatural, scenes and flights of the false sublime it has lifted into applause. In what raptures have I seen an audience at the furious fustian and turgid rants in Nat. Lee’s “Alexander the Great!” For though I can allow this play a few great beauties, yet it is not without its extravagant blemishes. Every play of the same author has more or less of them.—Cibber, Colley, 1739, An Apology for His Life, p. 66.    

13   He seems to have been born to write for the Ladies; none ever felt the passion of love more intimately, none ever knew to describe it more gracefully, and no poet ever moved the breasts of his audience with stronger palpitations, than Lee.—Cibber, Theophilus, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. II, p. 227.    

14   Lee’s “Theodosius, or the Force of Love,” is the best of his pieces, and, in some of the scenes, does not want tenderness and warmth, though romantic in the plan, and extravagant in the sentiments.—Blair, Hugh, 1783, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. Mills, p. 531.    

15   Many of the Bedlam witticisms of this unfortunate man have been recorded by those who can derive mirth from the most humiliating shape of human calamity. His rant and turgidity as a writer are proverbial; but those who have witnessed justice done to the acting of his “Theodosius” must have felt that he had some powers in the pathetic.—Campbell, Thomas, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.    

16   Of Lee nothing need be said, but that he is, in spite of his proverbial extravagance, a man of poetical mind and some dramatic skill. But he has violated historic truth in “Theodosius,” without gaining much by invention.—Hallam, Henry, 1837–39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iv, ch. vi, par. 46.    

17   The tragedies of Lee discover noble if not rare gifts; his choice of subjects exhibits a soaring delight in magnificent and imposing historic themes, and is in general felicitous as well as ambitious. In execution he displays an impetuosity in which it is easy to discover the traces of incipient insanity; Dryden, who co-operated with him, speaks of him as one “who had a great genius for tragedy,” but who, following the fury of his natural temper, made every man, and woman too, in his plays stark raging mad; there was not a sober person to be had for love or money.” But, as one of his critics has observed, there is “method in his madness” and his “frenzy is the frenzy of a poet.” In bombast he may almost be said to be without an equal—but a real passion often burns beneath the heap of words superimposed upon it…. Nor is it possible to part from this author without pointing out that, as typically characteristic of him, the constant extravagance of his diction is even less noticeable than is the uniform extravagance of his imagination; it might be said of his personages that they are mad even before they go mad (as they often do); and none of our later tragic poets has dealt so persistently on images of lust and wantonness. Lee had in him some genuine fire of passion, but it burnt with an impure flame.—Ward, Adolphus William, 1875–99, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. III, pp. 408, 412.    

18   In spite of his undoubted ability and his increasing experience, he did not contrive to write one really good play, except, perhaps, “Lucius Junius Brutus.”… Lee came very near being a master of sounding blank verse. He was solitary among the dramatists of the age in taking Milton for his model, and even when he is most turgid and most unnatural, there is often a Miltonic swell in his verse which preserves it from complete absurdity. He has often been compared to the early Elizabethans, and he may be called a vulgar Marlowe. His heroic language is often spoiled in its most gorgeous passages by an incidental meanness of expression, as in the famous line where Brutus says to his son—“I’ll tug with Teraminta for thy heart.” Lee marks a certain crisis in tragedy. He shrieked so loud that succeeding playwrights gave up the idea of out-screaming so bombastic a writer, and the tendency of tragedy in future was to become sentimental and reflective.—Gosse, Edmund, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 58.    

19   Throughout his tragedies Lee borrows phrases and turns of thought from Shakespeare. But it is in their barbaric extravagances rather than their rich vein of poetry that Lee resembles Shakespeare’s contemporaries, and hardly any Elizabethan was quite so bombastic in expression and incident as Lee proved himself in his “Cæsar Borgia.”—Lee, Sidney, 1892, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXXII, p. 367.    

20   The only tragic dramatist of the age, after Dryden and Otway, who had any pretension to rank as a poet, was Nathaniel Lee, and his claims are not very high. Notwithstanding his absurd rants, however, there are fire and passion in his verse which lift him out of the class of mere playwrights…. He is mainly glare and gewgaw, and seldom succeeds but in those scenes of passion and frenzy where extravagant declamation seems a natural language. There is little to remark on his dramatic economy, which is that of the French classical drama. His characters are boldly outlined and strongly coloured, but transferred direct from history to the stage, or wholly conventional. His merit is to have been really a poet.—Garnett, Richard, 1895, The Age of Dryden, pp. 109, 112.    

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