Complete Works of William Congreve Read online

  William Congreve

  (1670-1729)

  Contents

  The Life and Poetry of William Congreve

  Brief Introduction: William Congreve by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Complete Poetical Works of William Congreve

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  The Comedies

  The Old Bachelor

  The Double Dealer

  Love for Love

  The Way of the World

  The Tragedy

  The Mourning Bride

  The Masque

  The Judgement of Paris

  The Opera

  Semele

  The Prose

  Incognita; Or, Love and Duty Reconcil’d

  The Biographies

  Congreve by Samuel Johnson

  Introduction to William Congreve by G. S. Street

  William Congreve by Leslie Stephen

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2018

  Version 1

  William Congreve

  By Delphi Classics, 2018

  COPYRIGHT

  William Congreve - Delphi Poets Series

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2018.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 978 1 78656 127 5

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  NOTE

  When reading poetry on an eReader, it is advisable to use a small font size and landscape mode, which will allow the lines of poetry to display correctly.

  The Life and Poetry of William Congreve

  Bardsey, West Yorkshire, a small village now in the City of Leeds — Congreve’s birthplace

  Brief Introduction: William Congreve by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  From ‘1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 6’

  WILLIAM CONGREVE (1670–1729), English dramatist, the greatest English master of pure comedy, was born at Bardsey near Leeds, where he was baptized on the 10th of February 1670, although the inscription on his monument gives his date of birth as 1672. He was the son of William Congreve, a soldier who was soon after his son’s birth placed in command of the garrison at Youghal. To Ireland, therefore, is due the credit of his education — as a schoolboy at Kilkenny, as an undergraduate at Dublin, where he was a contemporary and friend of Swift. From college he came to London, and was entered as a student of law at the Middle Temple. The first-fruits of his studies appeared under the boyish pseudonym of “Cleophil,” in the form of a novel whose existence is now remembered only through the unabashed avowal of so austere a moralist as Dr Johnson, that he “would rather praise it than read it.” In 1693 Congreve’s real career began, and early enough by the latest computation, with the brilliant appearance and instant success of his first comedy, The Old Bachelor, under the generous auspices of Dryden, then as ever a living and immortal witness to the falsehood of the vulgar charge which taxes the greater among poets with jealousy or envy, the natural badge and brand of the smallest that would claim a place among their kind. The discrowned laureate had never, he said, seen such a first play; and indeed the graceless grace of the dialogue was as yet only to be matched by the last and best work of Etherege, standing as till then it had done alone among the barefaced brutalities of Wycherley and Shadwell. The types of Congreve’s first work were the common conventional properties of stage tradition; but the fine and clear-cut style in which these types were reproduced was his own. The gift of one place and the reversion of another were the solid fruits of his splendid success. Next year a better play from the same hand met with worse fortune on the stage, and with yet higher honour from the first living poet of his nation. The noble verses, as faultless in the expression as reckless in the extravagance of their applause, prefixed by Dryden to The Double Dealer, must naturally have supported the younger poet, if indeed such support can have been required, against the momentary annoyance of assailants whose passing clamour left uninjured and secure the fame of his second comedy; for the following year witnessed the crowning triumph of his art and life, in the appearance of Love for Love (1695). Two years later his ambition rather than his genius adventured on the foreign ground of tragedy, and The Mourning Bride (1697) began such a long career of good fortune as in earlier or later times would have been closed against a far better work. Next year he attempted, without his usual success, a reply to the attack of Jeremy Collier, the nonjuror, “on the immorality and profaneness of the English stage” — an attack for once not discreditable to the assailant, whose honesty and courage were evident enough to approve him incapable alike of the ignominious precaution which might have suppressed his own name, and of the dastardly mendacity which would have stolen the mask of a stranger’s. Against this merit must be set the mistake of confounding in one indiscriminate indictment the levities of a writer like Congreve with the brutalities of a writer like Wycherley — an error which ever since has more or less perverted the judgment of succeeding critics. The general case of comedy was then, however, as untenable by the argument as indefensible by the sarcasm of its most brilliant and comparatively blameless champion. Art itself, more than anything else, had been outraged and degraded by the recent school of the Restoration; and the comic work of Congreve, though different rather in kind than in degree from the bestial and blatant licence of his immediate precursors, was inevitably for a time involved in the sentence passed upon the comic work of men in all ways alike his inferiors. The true and triumphant answer to all possible attacks of honest men or liars, brave men or cowards, was then as ever to be given by the production of work unarraignable alike by fair means or foul, by frank impeachment or furtive imputation. In 1700 Congreve thus replied to Collier with The Way of the World — the unequalled and unapproached masterpiece of English comedy, which may fairly claim a place beside or but just beneath the mightiest work of Molière. On the stage which had recently acclaimed with uncritical applause the author’s more questionable appearance in the field of tragedy, this final and flawless evidence of his incomparable powers met with a rejection then and ever since inexplicable on any ground of conjecture. During the twenty-eight years which remained to him, Congreve produced little beyond a volume of fugitive verses, published ten years after the miscarriage of his masterpiece. His even course of good fortune under Whig and Tory governments alike was counterweighed by the physical infirmities of gout and failing sight. He died, January 19, 1729, in consequence of an injury received on a journey to Bath by the upsetting of his carriage; was buried in Westminster Abbey, after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber; and bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to the chief friend of his last years, Henrietta, duchess of Marlborough, daughter of the great duke, rather than to his family, which, according to Johnson, was then in difficulties, or to Mrs Bracegirdle, the actress, with whom he had lived longer on intimate terms than with any other mistress or friend, but who inherited by his will only £200. The one memorable incident of his later life was the visit of Voltaire, whom he astonished and repelled by his rejection of proffered praise and the expression of his wish to be considered merely as any other gentleman of no literary fame. The great master of well-nigh every province in the empire of letters, except the only one
in which his host reigned supreme, replied that in that sad case Congreve would not have received his visit.

  The fame of the greatest English comic dramatist is founded wholly or mainly on but three of his five plays. His first comedy was little more than a brilliant study after such models as were eclipsed by this earliest effort of their imitator; and tragedy under his hands appears rouged and wrinkled, in the patches and powder of Lady Wishfort. But his three great comedies are more than enough to sustain a reputation as durable as our language. Were it not for these we should have no samples to show of comedy in its purest and highest form. Ben Jonson, who alone attempted to introduce it by way of reform among the mixed work of a time when comedy and tragedy were as inextricably blended on the stage as in actual life, failed to give the requisite ease and the indispensable grace of comic life and movement to the action and passion of his elaborate and magnificent work. Of Congreve’s immediate predecessors, whose aim had been to raise on French foundations a new English fabric of simple and unmixed comedy, Wycherley was of too base metal and Etherege was of metal too light to be weighed against him; and besides theirs no other or finer coin was current than the crude British ore of Shadwell’s brutal and burly talent. Borrowing a metaphor from Landor, we may say that a limb of Molière would have sufficed to make a Congreve, a limb of Congreve would have sufficed to make a Sheridan. The broad and robust humour of Vanbrugh’s admirable comedies gives him a place on the master’s right hand; on the left stands Farquhar, whose bright light genius is to Congreve’s as female is to male, or “as moonlight unto sunlight.” No English writer, on the whole, has so nearly touched the skirts of Molière; but his splendid intelligence is wanting in the deepest and subtlest quality which has won for Molière from the greatest poet of his country and our age the tribute of exact and final definition conveyed in that perfect phrase which salutes at once and denotes him— “ce moqueur pensif comme un apôtre.” Only perhaps in a single part has Congreve half consciously touched a note of almost tragic depth and suggestion; there is something well-nigh akin to the grotesque and piteous figure of Arnolphe himself in the unvenerable old age of Lady Wishfort, set off and relieved as it is, with grace and art worthy of the supreme French master, against the only figure on any stage which need not shun comparison even with that of Célimène.

  The Works of William Congreve were published in 1710 (3 vols.). The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve . . . edited by Leigh Hunt (1840), contains a biographical and critical notice of Congreve. See also The Comedies of William Congreve (1895), with an introduction by W. G. S. Street; and The Best Plays of William Congreve (1887, 1903), edited for the Mermaid Series by A. C. Ewald. The Life of William Congreve (1887) by Edmund Gosse, in E. S. Robertson’s Great Writers, contains a bibliography by J. P. Anderson. (A. C. S.)

  William Congreve by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1709

  Kilkenny College in the eighteenth century — Congreve spent his childhood in Ireland, where his father, a Cavalier, had settled during the reign of Charles II. He was educated at Kilkenny College, where he met Jonathan Swift.

  Henrietta Godolphin, 2nd Duchess of Marlborough (1681-1733) was the daughter of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, general of the army, and Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough, close friend and business manager of Queen Anne. Congreve never married and so he was famous for his friendships with prominent actresses and noblewomen for whom he wrote major parts in all his plays, among whom Henrietta Godolphin figured prominently.

  Complete Poetical Works of William Congreve

  CONTENTS

  Poems upon Several Occasions

  EPISTLE TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES LORD HALIFAX, &C.

  THE MOURNING MUSE

  TO THE KING, ON THE TAKING OF NAMURE.

  THE BIRTH OF THE MUSE.

  ON MRS. ARABELLA HUNT, SINGING.

  PRIAM’S LAMENTATION AND PETITION TO ACHILLES, FOR THE BODY OF HIS SON HECTOR.

  THE LAMENTATIONS OF HECUBA, ANDROMACHE, AND HELEN, OVER THE DEAD BODY OF HECTOR.

  PARAPHRASE UPON HORACE.

  STANZA’S IN IMITATION OF HORACE, LIB. II. ODE XIV.

  IN IMITATION OF HORACE. ODE IX. LIB. I.

  SONG. I LOOK’D, AND I SIGH’D, AND I WISH’D I COU’D SPEAK

  THE RECONCILIATION.

  ABSENCE.

  SONG. FALSE THOUGH SHE BE TO ME AND LOVE

  SONG IN DIALOGUE, FOR TWO WOMEN.

  SONG. CRUEL AMYNTA, CAN YOU SEE

  SONG. SEE, SEE, SHE WAKES, SABINA WAKES!

  OCCASIONED ON A LADY’S HAVING WRIT VERSES IN COMMENDATION OF A POEM WHICH WAS WRITTEN IN PRAISE OF ANOTHER LADY.

  EPIGRAM

  SONG. PIOUS SELINDA GOES TO PRAY’RS

  A HYMN TO HARMONY.

  VERSES TO THE MEMORY OF GRACE LADY GETHIN

  EPITAPH UPON ROBERT HUNTINGTON, OF STANTON HARCOURT, ESQ; AND ROBERT HIS SON.

  TO MR. DRYDEN, ON HIS TRANSLATION OF PERSIUS.

  THE ELEVENTH SATIRE OF JUVENAL.

  PROLOGUE TO QUEEN MARY

  EPILOGUE AT THE OPENING OF THE QUEEN’S THEATRE IN THE HAY-MARKET

  PROLOGUE TO PYRRHUS KING OF EPIRUS.

  EPILOGUE TO OROONOKO.

  PROLOGUE TO THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD.

  PROLOGUE TO THE COURT; ON THE QUEEN’S BIRTH-DAY, 1704.

  THE TEARS OF AMARYLLIS FOR AMYNTAS.

  TO CYNTHIA, WEEPING AND NOT SPEAKING.

  AMORET.

  LESBIA.

  DORIS.

  TO SLEEP.

  TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER,

  TO A CANDLE.

  ΟVID’S THIRD BOOK OF THE ART OF LOVE.

  OF PLEASING

  A PINDARIQUE ODE

  A DISCOURSE ON THE PINDARIQUE ODE.

  ODE.

  TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF GODOLPHIN

  IMPOSSIBLE THING.

  THE PEASANT IN SEARCH OF HIS HEIFER.

  HOMER’S HYMN TO VENUS.

  TO THE READER OF THE ENSUING HYMN.

  HOMER’S HYMN TO VENUS.

  Songs from Plays

  FROM THE OLD BATCHELOR.

  SONG. THUS, TO A RIPE, CONSENTING MAID

  SONG. AS AMORET AND THYRSIS LAY

  FROM THE DOUBLE DEALER.

  SONG. CYNTHIA FROWNS WHEN E’RE! WOO HER

  SONG. ANCIENT PHILLIS, HAS YOUNG GRACES

  FROM LOVE FOR LOVE.

  SONG. A NYMPH AND A SWAIN TO APOLLO ONCE PRAY’D

  FROM LOVE TRIUMPHANT.

  SONG. SO FOREKNOWING THE CHEAT

  FROM THE FAIR PENITENT.

  SONG. AH STAY! AH TURN! AH WHITHER WOULD YOU FLY

  Miscellaneous Songs and Poems

  LEONORA’S SONG, FROM INCOGNITA

  THE DECAY, A SONG.

  THE MESSAGE, A SONG.

  FADED DELIA MOVES COMPASSION

  A TWO-PART SONG.

  A POEM IN PRAISE OF THE AUTHOR.

  THE OATH OF THE TOST

  TO MARIA.

  JACK FRENCH-MAN’S DEFEAT.

  PROLOGUE. WRITTEN FOR MR. HAINS, AND SPOKEN BY HIM.

  PROLOGUE TO THE PRINCESS.

  PROLOGUE TO THE CONQUEST OF SPAIN

  OVID’S METAMORPHOSES. BOOK X.

  Poems upon Several Occasions

  — Minuentur atræ

  Carmine curæ.

  Hor.

  EPISTLE TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES LORD HALIFAX, &C.

  TO You, my Lord, my Muse her Tribute pays

  Of various Verse, in various rude Essays;

  To You, she first Address’d her early Voice,

  By Inclination led, and fix’d by Choice;

  To You, on whose Indulgence she depends, 5

  Her few collected Lays, she now, Commends.

  By no one Measure bound, her Numbers range,

  And unresolv’d in Choice, delight in Change;

  Her Songs to no distinguish’d Fame aspire,

  For, now, she tries the Reed, anon, attempts the Lyre; 10

  In high Parnassus she no Birthright clai
ms,

  Nor drinks deep Draughts of Heliconian Streams;

  Yet near the sacred Mount she loves to rove,

  Visits the Springs, and hovers round the Grove.

  She knows what Dangers wait too bold a Flight, 15

  And fears to fall from an Icarian Height:

  Yet, she admires the Wing that safely soars,

  At Distance follows, and its Track adores.

  She knows what Room, what Force, the Swan requires,

  Whose towring Head above the Clouds aspires, 20

  And knows as well, it is Your Lowest Praise,

  Such Heights to reach with equal Strength and Ease.

  O had Your Genius been to Leisure born,

  And not more bound to Aid us, than Adorn!

  Albion in Verse with ancient Greece had vy’d, 25

  And gain’d alone a Fame, which, there, sev’n States divide.

  But such, ev’n such Renown, too dear had cost,

  Had we the Patriot in the Poet lost.

  A true Poetick State we had deplor’d,

  Had not Your Ministry our Coin restor’d. 30

  But still, my Lord, tho’ Your Exalted Name

  Stands foremost in the fairest List of Fame,

  Tho’ Your Ambition ends in Publick Good,

  (A Virtue lineal to Your House and Blood:)

  Yet think not meanly of Your other Praise, 35

  Nor slight the Trophies which the Muses raise.

  How oft, a Patriot’s best laid Schemes we find

  By Party cross’d, or Faction undermin’d!

  If he succeed he undergoes this Lot,

  The Good receiv’d, the Giver is forgot. 40

  But Honours which from Verse their Source derive,