humours (which are comedy) that they represented the form and the spirit of the society they created, working out, through gaiety, a solemn and a lasting moral. If this, my impression of that scene, and that time, be true, I trust I shall be pardoned, not only for the tone of the lighter portions of the play, but for the use of a diction, in such portions, which will probably sound a little prosaic to ears accustomed to the florid prettiness of modern verse, or attuned to the elaborate quaintness of the elder dramatists. To thoughts and to persons that belong to prose, belongs prosaic expression. Where the subject of itself rises into poetry, I have given whatever advantage of poetical language it is in the power of one whom the Muse has long deserted, to command. I now dismiss this experiment to its fate, prefaced by these (I fear tedious) observations, which may prove at least that it is not without something of preliminary study that I have ventured to diverge into a new path of that great realm of fiction, which grants indeed to indolence the shade and the fountain, but guards the fruit and the treasure, as the just monopoly of labour.* Paris, 21 December, 1835. E. L. B. * The necessities of poetical justice have liged me to an anachronism in the punishment of Madame de Montespan. In reality, longer deferred, it was yet more strikingly retributive than it appears in the play. Betraying a friend, by a friend she was betrayed; the nun was avenged by the devotee; and what Montespan was to La Vallière, Maintenon was to Montespan. Í should also add that the concentration and climax of interest required on the stage has obliged me to introduce Louis in the last scene. In my first outline of the Plot, and more in accordance with strict historical data, it was in the hotel of Madame de La Vallière (when she announced her intention of taking the veil) that the King acted that part, and uttered those sentiments which I have ascribed to him in the convent of the Carmelites. ADVERTISEMENT. This play (with the above Preface) was writen in the autumn and winter of 1835. It was submitted to no other opinion than that of Mr. Macready, with whom the Author had the honour of a personal acquaintance; and who, on perusal, was obligingly anxious for its performance at Drury Lane. The manager of that theatre wished, naturally perhaps, to see the manuscript before he hazarded the play; the Author (perhaps no less naturally) declined a condition from a manager, which was precisely of that nature which no author, of moderate reputation, concedes to a publisher. A writer can have but little self-respect, who does not imagine, in any new experiment in literature, that no risk can be greater than his own. Subsequently, Mr. Morris, of the Haymarket Theatre, was desirous of the right of performing the Play, and complied at once with the terms proposed. A difficulty with respect to the requisite actors obliged the Author, however, to break off the negotiation, and to decide upon confining the publication of his Drama to the press. The earnest and generous zeal of Mr. Macready, with the very prompt and liberal accedence, on the part of Mr. Osbaldiston, the present manager of Covent Garden, to the conditions of the Author, have induced him, however, to alter his intention, and to rank himself with the Neophytes of that great class of writers whose rights, some years ago, when he little thought he should ever be a humble member of so illustrious a fraternity, it was his fortune to protect and to extend. Albany, October, 1836. |