Sir Feeble and Sir Cautious are at length obliged to acquiesce in the existing state of things and to resign their ladies to their two gallants.  They are unable to protest even when Sir Feeble finds that his daughter Diana has married Bredwel instead of Sir Cautious’ nephew Bearjest for whom she was designed, whilst the choused fop is wedded to Pert, Lady Fulbank’s woman, to whom he had been previously contracted.

SOURCE.

The plot of The Lucky Chance; or, An Alderman’s Bargain is original save for the details of Lady Fulbank’s design upon Gayman, when he is conveyed to her house by masqued devils and conducted to her chamber by Pert dressed as a withered beldame.  In this Mrs. Behn exactly copies Shirley’s excellent comedy, The Lady of Pleasure, produced at the Private House in Drury Lane, October, 1635, (4to 1637).  In the course of Lady Bornwell’s intrigue with Kickshaw he is taken blindfold to the house of the procuress, Decoy, who, in the guise of a doting crone, leads him to a chamber where he imagines he is to meet a succubus, whilst the Lady, unknown to him, entertains him herself.

THEATRICAL HISTORY.

The Lucky Chance; or, An Alderman’s Bargain, produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1687, was, with the exception of the disapproval of a certain pudibond clique, received with great favour, and kept the stage for a decade or more.  During the summer season of 1718 there was, on 24 July, a revival, ‘not acted twenty years,’ of this witty comedy at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.  Gayman was played by Frank Leigh, son of the famous low comedian; Sir Feeble Fainwou’d by Bullock.

On 25 November, 1786, there was produced at Drury Lane a comedy by Mrs. Hannah Cowley (1743-1809), a prolific but mediocre dramatist, entitled, A School for Greybeards; or, The Mourning Bride (4to 1786 and 1787).  Genest writes:  ’On the first night it struck me that I had seen something like the play before and when the 4th act came I was fully satisfied—­that part of the plot which concerns Antonia, Henry, and Gasper [Donna Antonia (The Mourning Bride), Mrs. Crouch; Don Henry, Kemble; Don Gasper (a Greybeard), Parsons; Donna Seraphina, Miss Farren]; and even the outlines of Seraphina’s character, are taken from The Lucky Chance—­as Mrs. Behn’s play, though a very good one is too indecent to be ever represented again.  Mrs. Cowley might without any disgrace to herself have borrowed whatever she pleased provided she had made a proper acknowledgement—­instead of which she says in her preface “—­The idea of the business which concerns Antonia, Henry and Gasper was presented to me in an obsolete Comedy; I say the idea, for when it is known that in the original the scene lay among traders in London—­and those traders of the lowest and most detestable manners, it will be conceived at once, that in removing it to Portugal