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RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE:

A COMEDY,

En Five Acts.

BY BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

5

PRINTED FROM THE ACTING COPY, WITH REMARKS,
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL, BY D.-G.

To which are added,

A DESCRIPTION OF THE COSTUME,-CAST OF THE CHARACTERS,
ENTRANCES AND EXITS,-RELATIVE POSITIONS OF THE PER-
FORMERS ON THE STAGE, AND THE WHOLE OF THE STAGE
BUSINESS.

As now performed at the

THEATRES ROYAL, LONDON:

EMBELLISHED WITH A FINE ENGRAVING,

By MR. WHITE, from a Drawing taken in the Theatre, by
MR. R. CRUIKSHANK.

LONDON:

JOHN CUMBERLAND, 6, BRECKNOCK PLACE,

CAMDEN TOWN.

REMARKS.

Kule a Wife and have a‚Wife.

THIS play is attributed solely to the pen of John Fletcher; bat we are unacquainted with any precise authority that can fairly deprive Beaumont of the honour of participation. For, if it be true that the latter contributed the plots to their numerous dramas, while the dialogue was, in a great measure, supplied by the former-in the happy art with which the present story is conducted, and its dramatic effect, we may reasonably ask if the hand of Beaumont be not equally discernible? This comedy, however, bears internal evidence of being the peculiar work of Fletcher, whose disposition it was to paint female errors in the most odious colours, and to treat them with unsparing severity. Rule a Wife and have a Wife, in plot, character, and language, is one continued exhibition of female libertinism.-Every woman in it is a wanton. A mere superficial glance will lead to its total condemnation. We shall pronounce the humour gross, the wit licentious, and the characters base and unworthy. A nearer and more critical view will remove many of these objections. We shall find something like a moral in the examples of Margarita, Michael Perez, and Cacafogo. The very means that Margarita takes to insure the unrestrained indulgence of her passions, turn to their suppression; and where she hoped to find an easy tool, she meets with a guardian and a monitor. She is still spared the pain of entire degradation, for she is humbled, not by vice, but by virtue; and, though we may be sceptical as to her promised reformation, we leave her in the hands of one, who, if he cannot altogether reclaim will, at least, awe her into obedience.

In the Copper Captain we behold an impudent boaster outwitted by the superior cunning of a plotting abigail. The cupidity of Perez had, perhaps, found sufficient punishment in disappointment and poverty; but his base grovelling spirit deserved a severer chastisement, which he fairly meets with, in finding his princess, to whose fancied wealth there was no end, metamorphosed into a wantou and a shrew. Cacafogo, that gross fat man, in whom profligacy and avarice contend for the mastery, is rightly served by the trick put upon him by Estifania. We cannot say that any of the characters are rendered unnecessarily licentious, with the exception of Margarita, whose conduct and language, in the early part of the play, are so repulsive to female delicacy, that Fletcher was never gufity of a more palpable contradiction than when he placed her in a situation where good manners and a decent exterior might at least have been expected.

Leon, though his conduct is in many respects noble, has not our entire approbation. He betrays an easy credulity that suits not with the penetration and dignity of his character. After the repeated instances he had witnessed of Margarita's treachery, upon her bare asservation, and with a doubt still hanging upon his lips, he again receives her into favour :

"I take you up,

And wear ye next my heart.-See you be worth it."

His plan to foil the duke's schemes, his spirited assertion of his matrimonial rights, his caustic humour, and manly tenderness, are admirably expressed. The following passage is particularly beautiful:

"He that dares strike against a husband's freedom,

The husband's curse stick to him, a tame cuckold!
Let him be lost, no eye to weep his end,

Nor find no earth that's base enough to bury him."

Michael Perez has been considered as a sort of contrast or foil to Leon. The one wins his wife under the mask of folly, and rules her with the rod of reason and power; the other is egregiously gulled by his bona roba; and, though he rails loudly and manfully when the bubble is broke, he still finds himself out-railed, and cries peccavi to Estifania's superior wit and ingenuity. The stage affords not two scenes of more exquisite banter, than those in which this fond couple mutually recriminate upon each other. The catalogue of the trumpery discovered in the trunks of the Copper Captain-the gilt shoeing-horn, and the chain of whitings' eyes-the promise of clothes and clean shirts-the disappointment and rage of Perez, breaking out into whimsical reproach and bombastic threats, when he finds himself gulled a second time-Estifania's pious preparations for death, and sudden presentation of the pistol-the cowardice of Perez, and his joy at the sight of the thousand ducats—and his acknowledgment that he is every way outwitted ;

"I see I am an ass when thou art near me !"

are in the highest spirit of comedy. That he should have been fooled a second time into the belief that his magnificent dreams were to be realized, is the infatuation of one who willingly believes. what he wishes to be true.

Cacafogo has been most inaptly compared to Falstaff; but he inherits nothing in common with the fat knight, but his lechery and cowardice. Falstaff is a rich, racy, delightful roisterer, scattering mirth and good humour around him with glorious profusion. Cacafogo is a selfish, gross, and brutal sensualist-a very satyr in his amours, and a miser in his cups. He has the vulgarity of ignorance,

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