TEI-encoded version

Elizabeth InchbaldREMARKS [on The Mourning Bride].1
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This is a tragedy, which engages the attention, pleases the ear, and charms the eye, but never touches the heart.

Love is a fervid passion to feel, but an insipid one to see. Imagination, fancy, whim, a kind of enchanting influence, presides over this tender emotion of the mind; but persons, on whom its magic has no immediate power, look coldly upon those ideal joys and sorrows, which the lover considers as realities.

Love, in this play, is, however, substantiated by wedlock, which is no chimera:—still the marriage of Alphonso and Almeria is merely bridal; neither cemented by long friendship, offspring, or any of those positive ties of affection, which would infallibly win the audience to sympathize in their mutual fondness.2

"The Mourning Bride" is fortunate in an attractive title, and more fortunate in the name of its author.

A tragedy from the pen of the first comic writer of the age was, at the time it was announced (1691), a subject of respect and curiosity.3 The learned and critical part of the town crowded the theatre on the first night, and had, at least, some of their senses charmed, for the play had an unequivocal good reception.4 The great Dryden was present, and is said to have been enraptured.5 But it is with poets as b 2[Page 4]with politicians; few persons are sufficiently independent of fortune or affections, to speak exactly what they think on public topics; and where it is held prudent to disguise thoughts, it is surely discreet to pay little regard to words.

Churchill calls "The Mourning Bride" a pantomime.6 Dr. Johnson gives it the extreme praise of containing, in the following speech of Almeria (when she visits the vaulted aisle, to behold the tomb of Anselmo), an image the most poetical of any in the English language: How rev'rend is the face of this tall pile,Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,To bear aloft its arch'd and pond'rous roof,By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable,Looking tranquility!—It strikes an aweAnd terror on my aching sight.—The tombsAnd monumental caves of death look cold,And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart! 7 space between stanzas

Whatever merit this tragedy possesses, it is certain that its being placed upon the list of acting plays at present, is wholly to be ascribed to the magnificent representation of Zara by Mrs. Siddons.8

Mrs. H. Siddons has every grace and sensibility requisite for the part of Almeria.

There is but one male character in this play worthy the talents of a superior actor; nor will some actors allow that one: Osmyn (or Alphonso) is not a favourite with any performer. Garrick had great spi-[Page 5]rit and fire in every scene of the part—but not the fire of love. Kemble has not even the sparks. Yet Kemble looks nobly, majestically, in Osmyn; and reminds the audience of the lines just quoted. ———Tall pillar rear its marble head,Looking tranquillity.———And shoots a chillness to the trembling heart!9 space between stanzas

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Notes

1.  "Remarks." The Mourning Bride; A Tragedy, In Five Acts; By William Congreve. As Performed at the Theatres Royal, Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Printed Under the Authority of the Managers From the Prompt Book. With Remarks by Mrs. Inchbald. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster Row, pp. 3-5. The British Theatre; or, A Collection of Plays, Which Are Acted At the Theatres Royal, Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and Haymarket. Printed Under the Authority of the Managers from the Prompt Books. With Biographical and Critical Remarks, by Mrs. Inchbald. In Twenty-Five Volumes. Vol. XIII. Love for Love. Mourning Bride. Mahomet. Tancred and Sigismunda. Suspicious Husband. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster Row. 1808. The first performance of this play was staged at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre on February 20th, 1697. Laura DeWitt and Mary A. Waters edited this essay for The Criticism Archive. Back

2.  The plot of this tragedy centers around Alphonso, son of the King Anselmo of Valencia, and Almeria, daughter of King Manuel of Granada, who are secretly-wed lovers who have been separated in a shipwreck. The two were forced to marry in secrecy due to their fathers' hatred of one another. The disguised Alphonso (under the name "Osmyn") is captured by King Manuel along with the Moorish queen Zara. Through a series of plots involving love and deception, Manuel is mistakenly murdered, Zara commits suicide in response, and Alphonso overthrows the government to become reunited with Almeria. Back

3.  This play was first produced and published in 1697, at which point Congreve was established as a comic playwright. Back

4.  The Mourning Bride was immensely popular and became Congreve's most performed play during his lifetime. Back

5.  Inchbald draws the notion of Dryden's presence at the first production of The Mourning Bride and his approval from Thomas Davies' Dramatic Miscellanies (1784, vol. III, p. 343). Back

6.  From Charles Churchill's The Rosciad (1761, p. 21). Back

7.  Spoken by Almeria, Act II, scene i. Of this passage, Johnson writes in his The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; with Critical Observations on their Works: "if I were required to select from the whole mass of English poetry the most poetical paragraph, I know not what I could prefer to an exclamation in The Mourning Bride" (1781, vol. III, p. 62). Back

8.  Sarah Siddons assumed the role of Zara on February 9th, 1782, and held the role for three decades. This role became an audience favorite, second only to her depiction of Lady Macbeth. Back

9.  Spoken by Almeria, Act II, scene i. Back