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Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05

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Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692). 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. Thomas Shadwell (1642–1692) Born, at Broomhill House, Norfolk, 1640. At school at Bury St. Edmunds, 1645–46. Matric., Caius Coll., Cambridge, as Pensioner, 17 Dec. 1656; took no degree. Studied Law at Middle Temple. First play, “The Sullen Lovers,” produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 5 May 1668. Devoted himself mainly to drama, 1668–82. Poet-Laureate and Historiographer Royal, 1688. Died suddenly, in London, 19 Nov. 1692. Works: “The Sullen Lovers,” 1668; “The Royal Shepherdess,” 1669; “The Humourists,” 1671; “The Miser,” 1672; “Epsom Wells,” 1673; “Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco” (anon.; with Dryden and John Crown), 1674; “Psyche,” 1675; “The Libertine,” 1676; “The Virtuoso,” 1676; “The History of Timon of Athens,” 1678; “A True Widow,” 1679; “The Woman-Captain,” 1680; “The Medal of John Bayes” (anon.), 1682; “Satyr to his Muse” (anon.; attrib. to Shadwell), 1682; “The Lancashire Witches, and Teague O’Divelly,” 1682; “A Lenten Prologue” [1683?]; “The Squire of Alsatia,” 1688; “Bury Fair,” 1689; “A Congratulatory Poem on his Highness the Prince of Orange” (under initials: T. S.), 1689; “A Congratulatory Poem to … Queen Mary,” 1689; “The Amorous. Bigotte,” 1690; “Ode on the Anniversary of the King’s Birth,” 1690; “Ode to the King on his Return from Ireland,” [1690]; “The Scowrers,” 1691; “Votum Perenne,” 1692. Posthumous: “The Volunteers,” 1698. He translated: Juvenal’s Tenth Satire, 1687. Collected Works: “Dramatic Works” (4 vols.), 1720.—Sharp, R. Farquharson, 1897, A Dictionary of English Authors, p. 252.    

1 Personal

  That our author was a man of great honesty and integrity, an inviolable fidelity and strictness in his word, an unalterable friendship wherever he professed it, and however the world may be mistaken in him, he had a much deeper sense of religion than many who pretended more to it. His natural and acquired abilities made him very amiable to all who knew and conversed with him, a very few being equal in the becoming qualities, which adorn, and set off a complete gentleman; his very enemies, if he have now any left, will give him this character, at least if they knew him so thoroughly as I did.—His death seized him suddenly, but he could not be unprepared, since to my certain knowledge he never took a dose of opium, but he solemnly recommended himself to God by prayer.—Brady, Nicholas, 1692, Funeral Sermon.    

2   Notwithstanding that Lord Rochester has said,None seem to touch upon true comedy, But hasty Shadwell and slow Wycherley; yet that Lord had a better opinion of his conversation than his writings, when he said, that if Shadwell had burned all he wrote, and printed all he spoke, he would have shewn more wit and humour than any other poet. But the wit of his conversation was often very immoral, obscene, and profane. By which course having meanness of spirit and servility to render himself ridiculous and contemptible to men of fortune, title, and wit, he got their favour and assistance, under the pretence of being a useful instrument of the Revolution. Lord Lansdowne has a short discourse on these two lines above, against the remark of Wycherley’s being a slow writer.—Oldys, William, c. 1761, MS. note to Langbaine’s Account of the English Dramatick Poets.    

3 General

  Is counted the best comoedian we have now.—Aubrey, John, 1669–96, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. II, p. 226.    

4 Of all our modern wits, none seem to me Once to have touched upon true comedy, But hasty Shadwell, and slow Wycherly. Shadwell’s unfinished works do yet impart Great proofs of force of nature, none of art. With just, bold strokes he dashes here and there, Showing great mastery with little care, Scorning to varnish his good touches o’er, To make fools and women praise them more. —Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl, 1680? A Session of the Poets.    

5 Shadwell alone my perfect image bears, Mature in dulness from his tender years; Shadwell alone of all my sons is he Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell’s genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day. —Dryden, John, 1682, Mac Flecknoe, v. 15–24.    

6   I am willing to say the less of Mr. Shadwell, because I have publickly profess’d a Friendship for him: and tho’ it be not of so long date, as some former Intimacy with others; so neither is it blemished with some unhandsome Dealings, I have met with from Persons, where I least expected it. I shall therefore speak of him with the Impartiality that becomes a Critick; and own I like His Comedies better than Mr. Dryden’s; as having more Variety of Characters, and those drawn from the Life; I mean Men’s Converse and Manners, and not from other Mens Ideas, copyed out of their publick Writings: tho’ indeed I cannot wholly acquit our Present Laureat from borrowing; his Plagiaries being in some places too bold and open to be disguised, of which I shall take Notice, as I go along; tho’ with this Remark, That several of them are observed to my Hand, and in a great measure excused by himself, in the publick Acknowledgment he makes in his several Prefaces, to the Persons to whom he was obliged for what he borrowed.—Langbaine, Gerard, 1691, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, p. 443.    

7 Shadwell, the great support o’ the comic stage, Born to expose the follies of the age. To whip prevailing vices, and unite Mirth with Instruction, Profit with Delight. For large ideas and a flowing pen, First of our times, and second but to Ben. Shadwell, who all his lines from Nature drew, Copied her out, and kept her still in view. Who ne’er was bribed by title or estate, To fawn and flatter with the rich and great. To let a gilded vice or folly pass, But always lashed the villain and the ass. —Anon., 1693, The Volunteers; or, The Stock-Jobbers, Epilogue.    

8   Shadwell’s “Squire of Alsatia” took exceedingly at first, as an occasional play: it discovered the cant terms that were before not generally known, except to the cheats themselves; and was a good deal instrumental in causing that nest of villains to be regulated by public authority. The story it was built on was a true fact.—Dennis, John, 1728–30, Spence’s Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 33.    

9   The “Virtuoso” of Shadwell does not maintain his character with equal strength to the end: and this was that writer’s general fault. Wycherley used to say of him: “That he knew how to start a fool very well; but that he was never able to run him down.”—Pope, Alexander, 1728–30, Spence’s Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 10.    

10   An acute observer of nature.—Scott, Sir Walter, 1805–21, The Life of John Dryden.    

11   His “Libertine” (taken from the celebrated Spanish story) is full of spirit; but it is the spirit of licentiousness and impiety.—Hazlitt, William, 1818, Lectures on the English Comic Writers, Lecture iii.    

12   Nahum Tate, of all my predecessors, must have ranked the lowest of the laureates, if he had not succeeded Shadwell.—Southey, Robert, 1835, Life of Cowper.    

13   Shadwell’s plays abound in songs, but the bulk of them are too slovenly, frivolous, or licentious, to deserve preservation in a separate form. His comedies, admirable as pictures of contemporary meanness, supplied an appropriate setting for his coarse and reckless verses; but such pieces will not bear to be exhibited apart from the scenes for which they were designed.—Bell, Robert, 1867? ed., Songs from the Dramatists, p. 248.    

14   Posterity is not obliged to imitate Shadwell’s disappointed adversaries in grudging him the recognition earned by his consistent and useful support of a cause which commended itself to many fine minds and clear intelligences, although its popularity in the world of letters and on the stage was naturally enough of tardy growth. No very close scrutiny need even be applied to the substance of his boast, that he should not be afraid of these adversaries—“till they have shown you more Variety Of natural, unstol’n Comedy than he.” As a matter of fact, he so well fitted to himself much that he had taken over from previous writers as to be fairly entitled to claim it as part of his own equipment; and in the invention of comic characters he was often original. With Ben Jonson, whom he manifestly thought that he followed at no immeasurable distance, he had in common something of the old dramatist’s industry; something of his humour; and more of his healthiness of spirit. If Shadwell is often gross and indecent, it has been observed, I think truly, that he is not profane; and if he altogether lacks elevation of spirit, he is by no means deficient in moral purpose. As a comedian of manners he is obviously often truthful as well as vivid; but his grain is coarse, and brutal though the manners and sentiments of his age most assuredly were in many respects, they can hardly have been so uniformly brutal as he represents them. He did little or nothing to advance his art; but his vigour of comic invention, his hatred of political shams and social abuses, and his healthy antagonism to much that really endangered the national future, contributed to arrest the decay which was overtaking English comedy by reason of its lack both of intellectual breadth and of moral fibre. But the artistic pleasure is scant that is to be derived from the comic pictures in which he faithfully reproduces many of the unattractive features of his age.—Ward, Adolphus William, 1875–99, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. III, p. 460.    

15   He is known to us chiefly from Dryden’s ludicrous caricature, but under that burly and unwieldy exterior—that “tun of man”—there lurked a rich vein of comic humour, keen power of observation, and much real dramatic power both in vivid portraiture and in the presentation of incident.—Collins, John Churton, 1878–95, Dryden, Quarterly Review; Essays and Studies, p. 46.    

16   Notwithstanding the peculiarities of Shadwell’s outspoken muse, there are many scenes in his comedies of great humour and originality; in “The Virtuoso,” for instance, the scene in the laboratory, where Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, the Virtuoso, is learning to swim upon a table, by imitating the movements of a frog in a bowl of water, has some exceedingly comical situations and dialogue, quite equal to the celebrated Undertaker’s Scene in Steele’s “Funeral.”—Hamilton, Walter, 1879, The Poets Laureate of England, p. 121.    

17   Shadwell would have passed without much notice among the second-rate writers of his time, if he had not drawn down upon himself the anger of Dryden. As it is, he lives for all time as a black and ridiculous object seen in relief against the blaze of Dryden’s wit. Dull was hardly the true epithet for Shadwell; but he was certainly heavy. He laboured at composition, and procured “The Virtuoso,” it is said, after a prolonged agony of five years. Shadwell’s ambition to be ever representing “some natural humour not represented before,” his coarseness, his total want of distinction and elevation, have justly deprived him of a high place in literature. But, in spite of Dryden, he was no fool; his comedy of “Epsom Wells” (1676), to name no other, may still be read with pleasure and amusement; and his works are particularly full of matter attractive to antiquaries.—Gosse, Edmund, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, pp. 48, 49.    

18   Shadwell’s odes to William were poor enough. Had they been better it is doubtful if William would have known it.—West, Kenyon, 1895, The Laureates of England, p. 54.    

19   Shadwell’s plays, though poorly written, might still be read for their humour, were it not for their obscenity; his chief merit, however, is to bring the society of his time nearer to us than any other writer. No other records such minute points of manners, or enables us to view the actual daily life of the age with so much clearness.—Garnett, Richard, 1895, The Age of Dryden, p. 117.    

20   Shadwell depended, like Jonson—whom he vainly tried to imitate—for the amusement of his hearers on the “humours” of his characters; he had little wit, though it is not fair to bracket him, as Dryden did, with Settle. His comedies are useful for the vivid account they give of the life of his time. Although no poet, he was, as Scott says, an acute observer of nature, and he showed considerable skill in invention. He seems to have been naturally coarse, and was grossly indecent without designing to corrupt.—Aitken, George A., 1897, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LI, p. 342.    

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