ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at two plays, George Farquhar's The Inconstant and Susana Centlivre's The Gamester, which echo Vanbrugh's skepticism regarding the ability of theater to effectively disperse lessons in virtue. The plays considered in the book offer ample evidence of the frequency with which husbands, wives, lovers, beloveds or friends lay traps for immoral or foolish protagonists. The primary tool Farquhar uses to encode his dissatisfaction with the genre is an attack on its assumptions about viewer response. Sincerity is crucial to the moral logic of reform comedy. In Restoration comedy, the rewards of money and mate that accompany closure have little to do with moral growth of the protagonists. The use of tragedy-like emotions to depict sincerity in a comedy was based on a paradox insofar as eighteenth-century acting conventions are concerned. Even a brief glance at eighteenth-century discourses about acting reveals how overwhelming the concern with tragic acting was in comparison to the comedian's art.