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Page 1
Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author
by
Edwards Brothers, Inc.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.
1948
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION
This reprint of Edward Moore's _The Gamester_ makes available to
students of eighteenth century literature a play which, whatever its
intrinsic merits, is historically important both as a vehicle for a
century of great actors and as a contribution to the development of
middle-class tragedy which had considerable influence on the Continent.
_The Gamester_ was first presented at the Drury Lane Theatre February 7,
1753 with Garrick in the leading role, and ran for ten successive
nights. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century it remained a popular
stock piece--John Philip Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Barry, the Keans,
Macready, and others having distinguished themselves in it--and in
America from 1754 to 1875 it enjoyed even more performances than in
England. (J.H. Caskey, _The Life and Works of Edward Moore_, 96-99).
Moore's middle-class tragedy is the only really successful attempt
to follow Lillo's decisive break with tradition in England in the
eighteenth century. His background, like Lillo's, was humble, religious,
and mercantile. The son of a dissenting pastor, Moore received his early
education in dissenters' academies, and then served an apprenticeship to
a London linen-draper. After a few years in Ireland as an agent for a
merchant, Moore returned to London to join a partnership in the linen
trade. The partnership was soon dissolved, and Moore turned to letters
for a livelihood. Among his works are _Fables for the Female Sex_ (1744)
which went through three editions, _The Foundling_ (1748), a successful
comedy, and _Gil Blas_ (1751), an unsuccessful comedy. In 1753, with
encouragement and some assistance from Garrick, he produced _The
Gamester_, upon which his reputation as a writer depends.
It is impossible, of course, to review here all the factors involved in
the development of middle-class tragedy in England in the eighteenth
century. However, certain aspects of that movement which concern Moore's
immediate predecessors and which have not been adequately recognized
might be mentioned briefly. Aside from Elizabethan and Jacobean attempts
to give tragic expression to everyday human experience, historians have
noted the efforts of Otway, Southerne, and Rowe to lower the social
level of tragedy; but in this period middle-class problems and
sentiments and domestic situations appear in numerous tragedies,
long-since forgotten, which in form, setting, and social level present
no startling deviations from traditional standards. Little or no
attention has been given to some of these obscure dramatists who in the
midst of the Collier controversy attempted to illustrate in tragedy the
arguments advanced in the third part of John Dennis's _The Usefulness of
the Stage, to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government, and to Religion_
(1698). Striving to demonstrate the usefulness of the stage, these
avowed reformers produced essentially domestic tragedies, by treating
such problems as filial obedience and marital fidelity in terms of
orthodox theology. The argument that the stage can be an adjunct of
the pulpit is widespread, and appears most explicitly in Hill's preface
to his _Fatal Extravagance_ (1721), sometimes regarded as the first
middle-class tragedy in the eighteenth century, and in Lillo's
dedication to _George Barnwell_ (1731). The line from these obscure
dramatists at the turn of the century to Lillo is direct and clear. Of
these forgotten plays we can note here only _Fatal Friendship_ (1698)
by Mrs. Catherine Trotter whom John Hughes hailed as "the first of
stage-reformers"
(_To the Author of Fatal Friendship, a Tragedy_), an unquestionably
domestic tragedy inculcating a theological "lesson". To this play,
which was acted with "great applause" (_Biographica Dramatica_,
107), Aaron Hill was, I am convinced, considerably indebted for his
_Fatal Extravagance_, which is, in turn, one of the sources of _The
Gamester_.
In the early eighteenth century, then, there is clearly discernible a
two-fold tendency toward middle-class tragedy which reaches its fullest
expression in Lillo: the desire to lower the social level of the
characters in order to make the tragedy more moving; and the desire to
defend the stage by demonstrating its religious and moral utility. In
his prologue to _The Fair Penitent_ (l703), Rowe gave expression to the
first: the "fate of kings and empires", he argues, is too remote to
engage our feelings, for "we ne'er can pity that we ne'er can share";
therefore he offers "a melancholy tale of private woes". In his
prologue, Lillo repeats this idea, but in his dedication he shows
himself primarily concerned with the second tendency. Specifically
challenging those "who deny the lawfulness of the stage", he argues
that "the more extensively useful the moral of any tragedy is, the more
excellent that piece must be of its kind"; the generality of mankind is
more liable to vice than are kings; therefore "plays founded on moral
tales in private life may be of admirable use... by stifling vice in its
first principles". Dramatists who were concerned only or primarily with
the first of these tendencies (the emotional effect), produced domestic
or pseudo-domestic tragedies in the manner of Otway and Rowe. But those
who stressed the second (moral and religious utility), seeking practical
themes of widespread applicability, quite logically moved toward genuine
middle-class tragedy. Thus Hill's _Fatal Extravagance_ is concerned with
the "vice" of gambling; while Charles Johnson's _Caelia, or The Perjur'd
Lover_ (1732) attacks fashionable libertinism of the day, telling the
story which Richardson was later to retell in seven ponderous volumes.
In _Caelia_ the religious rationalization of the tragic action is
subdued, Johnson apparently preferring to stress the social and moral
aspects of his subject, and to this end he resolutely refused to
expunge or modify the boldly realistic brothel scenes, against which
a fastidious audience had protested.
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