Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/72
1st Play.Has he destroyed the writings of an estate, or your billet-doux?
Clink.A pindaric ode I five similes! and half an epilogue!
2nd Player.Has he thrown a new fan, or your pearl neck-lace into the flames?
Clink.Worse, worse! The tags of the acts of a new Comedy! a Prologue sent by a person of quality! three copies of recommendatory verses! and two Greek mottos!
When the play is finally refused, Phœbe is unhappy but philosophical. She reflects on the egregious stuff that passes current on the stage, and comforts herself with the thought that she is but one of the famous daughters of Apollo to suffer because of the "wrong gout of the rabblement." And she felicitates herself that whatever may be said of her judgment and correctness, no one excels her in readiness and fertility.
Mrs. Clinket is a prude as well as a pedant. She calls herself a "platonic lady" in matters of love, and boasts that in her plays she does not allow "the libertinism of lipembraces," for, though Aristotle never actually prohibited kissing on the stage, she is "unwilling to stand even on the brink of an indecorum." Phœbe is very religious and very severe on the corrupt plays so popular in London. She chooses the Deucalion and Pyrrha version of the "Universal Deluge" for her tragedy because she counts neither the stage nor the actors of her day "hallowed enough for sacred story." In her attitude toward her own plays Phœbe is a combination of pompous self-conceit and of extreme sensitiveness to criticism. Her ruling passion is her desire to get her plays before the public. For that she scorns delight and lives laborious days.
We learn from the Complete Key that some touches in this satiric portrait refer to Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, but that in general the Countess of Winchilsea is the one ridiculed. Yet the authors of the farce were careful not to