George Farquhar: The Recruiting Officer (1706)

Edition: Nick Hern Books, 1997
Review number: 585

Today we probably think of compulsory enlistment as a feature of the eighteenth century British navy rather than the army, mainly because it features strongly in such well known fiction as the Hornblower series. However, during the wars of the early part of the century, the Press Act allowed the involuntary recruitment of those with no visible means of support, and so army officers toured the country, to encourage voluntary enlistment with all kinds of specious promises and to press others with the co-operation of local magistrates. The activities of such a group of enlisters forms the basis for The Recruiting Officer, a comedy satirising the abuses for which they were notorious.

The abuses shown in the play include corruption (any bribe greater than the bounty paid for a new recruit secured his release), enlistment of infants so that other soldiers could draw their pay, debauchery (it was said at the time that they made enough women pregnant to replace the men enlisted).

Against this background, Farquhar sets a fairly traditional romantic comedy, with two courting couples delaying the inevitable happy ending, though even here there are digs at the society of the time. The obstacle in the way of Plume and Silvia is conventional (the objections of her father), but that which mars the courtship of Worthy and Melinda is more unusual. Worthy is of higher social standing, and had attempted to make Melinda his kept mistress for the (large) sum of 500 pounds a year. Then she suddenly inherited 20,000 pounds and became his social equal, and naturally resents his attempts to marry her now that it is acceptable to do so. Class plays an important part in The Recruiting Officer - another example is that the original audience would have understood that the lure of promotion held out to get yokels to volunteer was false, as it was not until the Crimean War that non-gentlemen could become commissioned officers.

The emphasis of The Recruiting Officer is not really on satire; it is meant to be a fun comedy. Thus, none of the characters are really unpleasant; they may be weak, tempted into abuses by the absurdity of early eighteenth century society or the system created by the Press Act. The characters are a great strength of this play, the male parts in particular avoiding melodramatic heroes and villains. (The female parts are rather blander.)

The Recruiting Officer remains a classic comedy which has retained its charm and sparkle. Since its satirical targets are long gone, the way that Farquhar made them secondary to the fun has ensured the survival of the play.

George Farquhar: The Beaux Stratagem (1707)

Edition: Nick Hern Books
Review number: 294

Just as the term 'Elizabethan drama' is frequently extended well into the seventeenth century, so too the term 'Restoration comedy' is not restricted to the historical period implied by the title. George Farquhar is a case in point; of Irish origin (son of an Anglican clergyman of Londonderry, who lived through the siege of that city), his success as a playwright falls firmly in the reigns of William and Mary. Though well after the 1660 restoration, his plays still fall within the stylistic genre of Restoration comedy. By the time he was writing, this genre was on its last legs, and the new fashion, a more mannered style, was soon to replace it. Farquhar is clearly not happy with some of the literary conventions of the time, but his ideas lead more towards low comedy and in a few years would have been considered somewhat immoral. (In particular, he was very cynical about the charms of matrimony - an attitude which plays an important part in The Beaux Stratagem.)

The plot of The Beaux Stratagem is reasonably simple for this sort of comedy. The main male parts are two fashionable beaux, on the lookout for a heiress to marry so they can repair their fortunes. Aimwell and Archer are taking it in turns to be the fashionable gentleman, the other being the gentleman's servant. When they arrive in Lichfield, Aimwell is the gentleman, and his insinuates himself into friendship with the beautiful Dorinda, daughter of Lady Bountiful (the origin of the expression). Meanwhile, Archer strikes up an extremely worldly friendship with Dorinda's sister-in-law. She's married to Sullen, the country squire parody in this play, mad for hunting and eating and (especially) drinking.

While Aimwell and Dorinda continue their inexorable approach to an engagement at the end of the play, in accordance with the rules of the genre - young lovers always marry in the end, to live happily ever after - Farquhar uses Mrs Sullen to criticise this facile outcome. She, originally rich in her own right, is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man she despises, who keeps her from the town-based society she adores, by a legal system which does not allow divorce for incompatibility, and in which divorce would leave her disgraced and in absolute poverty (as her property passed absolutely to her husband when they married). The dark side to the play produced by this theme threatens to overwhelm the rest of it, and Farquhar has to resort to a deus ex machina character and an arbitrary adjustment to English law to get out of the hole he has dug for himself. Noticeably, even when her separation from Sullen seems an accomplished fact, the possibility of marriage never seems to cross either her or Archer's mind.