An Evening's Love  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

"Thus tragedy fulfils one great part of its institution ; which is, by example, to instruct. But in comedy it is not so; for the chief end of it is divertisement and delight: and that so much, that it is disputed, I think, by Heinsius, before Horace's " Art of Poetry," whether instruction be any part of its employment. At least I am sure it can be but its secondary end : for the business of the poet is to make you laugh : when he writes humour, he makes folly ridiculous ; when wit, he moves you, if not always to laughter, yet to a pleasure that is more noble. And if he works a cure on folly, and the small imperfections in mankind, by exposing them to public view, that cure is not performed by an immediate operation : For it works first on the ill-nature of the audience ; they are moved to laugh by the representation of deformity ; and the shame of that laughter teaches us to amend what is ridiculous in our manners. This being then established, that the first end of comedy is delight, and instruction only the second ; it may reasonably be inferred, that comedy is not so much obliged to the punishment of faults which it represents, as tragedy. For the persons in comedy are of a lower quality, the action is little, and the faults and vices are but the sallies of youth, and the frailties of human nature, and not premeditated crimes : such to which all men are obnoxious ; not such as are attempted only by few, and those abandoned to all sense of virtue : such as move pity and commiseration ; not detestation and horror : such, in short, as may be forgiven ; not such as must of necessity be punished."

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

An Evening's Love, or The Mock Astrologer is a comedy in prose by John Dryden. It was first performed before Charles II and Queen Catherine by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal on Bridges Street, London, on Friday, 12 June 1668. Samuel Pepys saw the play on 20 June of that year, but didn't like it; in his Diary he called it "very smutty."

The play was first published in 1671 by Henry Herringman; Dryden dedicated to work to William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle.

Dryden's sources for An Evening's Love include Thomas Corneille's comedy Le Feint Astrologue, Madeleine de Scudéry's novel Ibrahim, ou l'Illustre Bassa, and Calderón's comedy El Astrologo fingido, as well as several other French, Spanish, Italian, and English works.

The action of the play takes place in Madrid on the last night before Lent, 1665, and involves two young English gentlemen, Wildblood and Bellamy, and their comic servant Maskall, who fall in love with two beautiful young Spanish ladies, Donna Theodosia and Donna Jacinta, and their clever servant Beatrix.

The original production featured Charles Hart as Wildblood, Michael Mohun as Bellamy, Nell Gwyn as Jacinta, Nicholas Burt as Don Lopez, William Wintershall as Don Alonzo, Robert Shatterell as Maskal, Anne Marshall as Aurelia, and Mary Knep as Beatrix.



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "An Evening's Love" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools