Were Man but Wise

Restoration comedy is the strongest single argument for closing down a nation's theaters for a generation. Repression fosters a ferment of expression. The parched worship water. The starved adore food. The zest of Restoration comedy is that it is a theater of appetite. It is based on what Louis Kronenberger has called "our three great hungers --vanity, money and sex."

Dramatically, even these great hungers may be sated. A dramatic genre is organic, and aging like a man, becomes tired, jaded and brittle. Substance succumbs to style, and the play and the playwright simply go through the motions of existence for lack of having any specific convictions about the right place to go. Such was the condition of George Farquhar, the last Restoration playwright, who died in 1707 at the unseemly age of 29.

It may be argued that he did not live long enough to know who he was, but he wrote for an age that did not quite know what it was. He was, in effect, writing for dead playgoers, many of whom still occupied the theater seats, a situation vividly applicable to the contemporary theater. Restoration comedy thrived on high wit, low morals and ice-cold hearts. But by Farquhar's day, the twin corrupters of that comedy lurked in the wings--virtue, which would bar both wit and lechery from the stage, and romance, which would open the sluices of sentimentality. Traces of this mar Farquhar's last play, The Beaux' Stratagem.

Chestnutty As They Come. It is with The Beaux' Stratagem that the British National Theater, headed by Sir Laurence Olivier, has chosen to open its first U.S. engagement, a six-week run at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theater during which the company will also do Chekhov's Three Sisters. Stratagem is a slightly odd choice in that a mighty ensemble of actors is laboring over a mite of a classic. It is rather like the winner of the Grand National demonstrating how to clear a two-foot hedge. Naturally, this superb company does it with grace, stamina and abundant verve, but one is forced to admire the skill rather than the purpose.

The plot of The Beaux' Stratagem is as chestnutty as they come. Two young purse-poor gallants pose as master and servant in order to wed wealthily. One sometimes feels that money is the English equivalent of Nirvana. The country inn, where much of the action takes place, is the English dramatic equivalent of the French bedroom. It offers an almost novelistic diversity of characters and encounters. Prelates and highwaymen, maids and matrons meet and mingle--strangers in the night who may, with a little bit of luck, become intimates for the night. Mine host, Boniface, has given his name to the language and, with a certain conjugal felicity that has persisted over the centuries, combines the roles of innkeeper and robber.

Like all decent/indecent Restoration comedies, the play cuts to the chase, the chaste and the unchaste. The masquerading Master Aimwell (Ronald Pickup) pursues Dorinda (Sheila Reid) with lofty ardor. They are a fluttery pair, brimming with sentiment and much given to pledges of undying affection and confessional honesty. The masquerading servant, Archer (Robert Stephens), has the cool, calculating charm of an accomplished womanizer. The woman he now wants, Mrs. Sullen (Maggie Smith), has had but one melancholy tutor: her husband. He is an alcoholic brute who keeps her in the country when her only heaven is London. As the chase quickens, the ladies profess virtues which they could scarcely wish to possess. The feint and parry of amour ends well, with the lout of a husband paid off for a divorce and the pairs of lovers united. One does not regret the convention that they will live happily ever after, but one does regret somewhat the amount of time that they have to be kept apart onstage. Anticipation is an overrated pleasure. However, the play does have the abiding relish of Restoration comedy in that while the characters warily watch and fend each other off, their minds and their words are concupiscently active between the sheets.

With Regal Elegance. The evening is an unmitigated triumph for Maggie Smith. Her performance ought to be filmed as an instructional visual aide for U.S. actresses. Where they stride like plow jockeys, she moves with regal elegance. Where they mushmouth their lines, she inflects each syllable with sorcery. The luminous high point of the play is a speech that she delivers on the ideal of marriage, one of the greatest speeches in all of dramatic literature on that subject:

Wedlock we own ordain'cl by

Heaven's Decree, But such as Heaven ordain'd it first

to be; Concurring Tempers in the Man

and Wife As mutual Helps to draw the Load

of Life.

View all the Works of Providence

above, The Stars with Harmony and

Concord move; View all the Works of Providence

below, The Fire, the Water, Earth, and Air,

we know, All in one Plant agree to make

it grow.

Must Man, the chiefest Work of

Art Divine, Be doom'd in endless Discord to

repine?

No, we should injure Heaven by

that surmise; Omnipotence is just, were Man

but wise.

On opening night, Maggie Smith brought down the first-act curtain and the house with that speech. Beyond discipline of craft and a reverence for tradition, the English theater retains the renown of greatness because it has behind it an unseen but not an unheard god, the English language. This wonder of wonders is a verdant isle of beauty, a tiara of crystalline delight, a font of wit and wisdom, a burnished mirror of the mind. Born to a noble tongue, Maggie Smith serves it nobly.

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