William Congreve, "Excerpt from Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations" (1698)
The playwright William Congreve (1670–1729) found it necessary to defend himself against Jeremy Collier's severe attack (Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage) on his work. He argues that Collier distorts his work by taking passages out of context, and that Collier forgets that "the business of comedy is to delight as well as to instruct."
I have been told by some that they should think me very idle if I threw away any time in taking notice even of so much of Mr. Collier's late treatise of the Immorality, etc. of the English stage as related to myself, in respect of some plays written by me; for that his malicious and strained interpretations of my words were so gross and palpable that any indifferent and unprejudiced reader would immediately condemn him upon his own evidence and acquit me before I could make any defense.
On the other hand, I have been taxed of laziness, and too much security, in neglecting thus long to do my self a necessary right, which might be effected with so very little pains; since very little more is requisite in my vindication than to represent truly and at length those passages which Mr. Collier has shown imperfectly and for the most part by halves. I would rather be thought idle than lazy; and so the last advice prevailed with me.
I have no intention to examine all the absurdities and falsehoods in Mr. Collier's book; to use the gentleman's own metaphor in his preface, an inventory of such a warehouse would be a large work. My detection of his malice and ignorance, of his sophistry and vast assurance, will lie within a narrow compass, and only bear a proportion to so much of his book as concerns myself.
Least of all would I undertake to defend the corruptions of the stage; indeed if I were so inclined, Mr. Collier has given me no occasion, for the greater part of those examples which he has produced are only demonstrations of his own impurity, they only savor of his utterance, and were sweet enough till tainted by his breath.
I will not justify any of my own errors; I am sensible of many, and if Mr. Collier has by any accident stumbled on one or two, I will freely give them up to him, nullum unquam ingenium placuit sine venia. But I hope I have done nothing that can deprive me of the benefit of my clergy; and though Mr. Collier himself were the ordinary, I may hope to be acquitted.
My intention, therefore, is to do little else but to restore those passages to their primitive station which have suffered so much in being transplanted by him. I will remove 'em from his dunghill and replant 'em in the field of nature; and when I have washed 'em of that filth which they have contracted in passing through his very dirty hands, let their own innocence protect them.
Mr. Collier, in the high vigor of his obscenity, first commits a rape upon my words, and then arraigns 'em of immodesty; he has barbarity enough to accuse the very virgins that he has deflowered, and to make sure of their condemnation he has himself made 'em guilty. But he forgets that while he publishes their shame he divulges his own.
His artifice to make words guilty of profaneness is of the same nature; for where the expression is unblameable in its own clear and. genuine signification, he enters into it himself like the evil spirit; he possesses the innocent phrase and makes it bellow forth his own blasphemies; so that one would think the muse was legion.
To reprimand him a little in his own words, if these passages produced by Mr. Collier are obscene and profane, why were they raked in and disturbed unless it were to conjure up vice and revive impurities? Indeed Mr. Collier has a very untoward way with him; his pen has such a libertine stroke that 'tis a question whether the practice or the reproof be the more licentious.
He teaches those vices he would correct and writes more like a pimp than a p——. Since the business must be undertaken, why was not the thought blanched, the expression made remote, and the ill features cast into shadows? So far from this, which is his own instruction in his own words, is Mr. CoIlier's way of proceeding, that he has blackened the thoughts with his own smut; the expression that was remote, he has brought nearer; and lest by being brought near its native innocence might be more invisible, he has frequently varied it, he has new-moIded it, and stamped his own image on it; so that it at length is become current deformity and fit to be paid into the devil's exchequer.
I will therefore take the liberty to exorcise this evil spirit and whip him out of my plays wherever I can meet with him. Mr. Collier has reversed the story which he relates from Tertullian; and after his visitation of the playhouse, returns, having left the devil behind him.
If I do not return his civilities in calling him names, it is because I am not very well versed in his nomenclatures; therefore, for his foot pads, which he calls us in his preface, and for his buffoons and slaves in the Saturnalia, which he frequently bestows on us in the rest of his book, I will only call him Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it.
Before I proceed, for method's sake, I must premise some few things to the reader, which if he thinks in his conscience are too much to be granted me, I desire he would proceed no further in his perusal of these animadversions, but return to Mr. Collier's Short View, etc.
First, I desire that I may lay down Aristotle's definition of comedy, which has been the compass by which all the comic poets since his time have steered their course. I mean them whom Mr. CoIlier so very frequently calls comedians; for the distinction between comicus and comoedus and tragicus and tragoedus is what he has not met with in the long progress of his reading.
Comedy (says Aristotle) is an imitation of the worse sort of people. [greek text] , imitatio pejorum. He does not mean the worse sort of people in respect to their quality, but in respect to their manners. This is plain from his telling you immediately after, that he does not mean [greek text], relating to all kinds of vice; there are crimes too daring and too horrid for comedy. But the vices most frequent, and which are the common practice of the looser sort of livers, are the subject matter of comedy. He tells us farther, that they must be exposed after a ridiculous manner. For men are to be laughed out of their vices in comedy; the business of comedy is to delight as well as to instruct; and as vicious people are made ashamed of their follies or faults by seeing them exposed in a ridiculous manner, so are good people at once both warned and diverted at their expense.
Thus much I though necessary to premise, that by showing the nature and end of comedy we may be prepared to expect characters agreeable to it.
Secondly, since comic poets are obliged by the laws of comedy, and to the intent that comedy may answer its true end and purpose above-mentioned, to represent vicious and foolish characters—in consideration of this, I desire that it may not be imputed to the persuasion or private sentiments of the author if at any time one of these vicious characters in any of his plays shall behave himself foolishly or immorally in word or deed. I hope I am not yet unreasonable; it were very hard that a painter should be believed, to resemble all the ugly faces that he draws.
Thirdly, I must desire the impartial reader not to consider any expression or passage cited from any play as it appears in Mr. Collier's book, nor to pass any sentence or censure upon it out of its proper scene, or alienated from the character by which it is spoken; for in that place alone, and in his mouth alone, can it have its proper and true signification.
I cannot think it reasonable, because Mr. Collier is pleased to write one chapter of Immodesty and another of Profaneness, that therefore every expression traduced by him under those heads shall be condemned as obscene and profane immediately, and without any further inquiry. Perhaps Mr. Collier is acquainted with the deceptio visus, and presents objects to the view through a stained glass; things may appear seemingly profane, when in reality they are only seen through a profane medium, and the true color is dissembled by the help of a sophistical varnish. Therefore, I demand the privilege of the habeas corpus act, that the prisoners may have liberty to remove and to appear before a just judge in an open and an uncounterfeit light.
Fourthly, because Mr. Collier in his chapter of the profaneness of the stage has founded great part of his accusation upon the liberty which poets take of using some words in their plays which have been sometimes employed by the translators of the Holy Scriptures, I desire that the following distinction may be admitted, viz. that when words ate applied to sacred things and with a purpose to treat of sacred things, they ought to be understood accordingly; but when they are otherwise applied, the diversity of the subject gives a diversity of signification. And in truth he might as well except against the common use of the alphabet in poetry because the same letters are necessary to the spelling of words which are mentioned in sacred writ.
Though I have thought it requisite and but reasonable to premise these few things, to which, as to so many postulata, I may when occasion offers refer myself, yet if the reader should have any objection to the latitude which at first sight they may seem to comprehend, I dare venture to assure him that it shall be removed by the caution which I shall use, and those limits by which I shall restrain myself, when I shall judge it proper for me to refer to them.
It may not be impertinent in this place to remind the reader of a very common expedient which is made use of to recommend the instruction of our plays, which is this. After the action of the play is over and the delight of the representation at an end, there is generally care taken that the moral of the whole shall be summed up and delivered to the audience in the very last and concluding lines of the poem. The intention of this is that the delight of the representation may not so strongly possess the minds of the audience as to make them forget or oversee the instruction. It is the last thing said, that it may make the last impression; and it is always comprehended in a few lines and put into rhyme, that it may be easy and engaging to the memory.