[28] [This sentence rests on a rather slender basis of fact.  Butler is said to have had a share in the “Rehearsal,” and certainly wrote a charming parody of the usual heroic-play dialogue, in his scene between “Cat and Puss.”  But this of itself can hardly be said to justify the phrase “adversary of our author’s reputation.”  As for Dryden, he nowhere attacks Butler, and speaks honourably of him after his death in his complaint to Lawrence Hyde.—­ED.]

[29] [This is the correct date of the patent.  There is however in the Record Office an instruction for the preparation of a bill for the purpose, dated April 13.  This was pointed out to me by Mr. W. Noel Sainsbury.—­ED.]

[30] Pat. 22 Car. 11. p. 6, ii. 6.  Malone, i. p. 88.

[31] Their account was probably exaggerated.  Upon a similar occasion, the master of the revels stated the value of his winter and summer benefit plays at L50 each; although, in reality, they did not, upon an average, produce him L9.  See Malone’s Historical Account of the Stage.

[32] [1672.—­ED.]

SECTION III.

Heroic Plays—­The Rehearsal—­Marriage a la Mode—­The Assignation—­ Controversy with Clifford—­with Leigh—­with Ravenscroft—­Massacre of Amboyna—­State of Innocence.

The rage for imitating the French stage, joined to the successful efforts of our author, had now carried the heroic or rhyming tragedy to its highest pitch of popularity.  The principal requisites of such a drama are summed up by Dryden in the first two lines of the “Orlando Furioso,”

  “Le Donne, i cavalier, l’arme, gli amori
  Le cortesie, l’audaci imprese.”

The story thus partaking of the nature of a romance of chivalry, the whole interest of the play necessarily turned upon love and honour, those supreme idols of the days of knight-errantry The love introduced was not of that ordinary sort, which exists between persons of common mould; it was the love of Amadis and Oriana, of Oroondates and Statira; that love which required a sacrifice of every wish, hope, and feeling unconnected with itself, and which was expressed in the language of prayer and of adoration.  It was that love which was neither to be chilled by absence, nor wasted by time, nor quenched by infidelity.  No caprice in the object beloved entitled her slave to emancipate himself from her fetters; no command, however unreasonable, was to be disobeyed; if required by the fair mistress of his affections, the hero was not only to sacrifice his interest, but his friend, his honour, his word, his country, even the gratification of his love itself, to maintain the character of a submissive and faithful adorer.  Much of this mystery is summed up in the following speech of Almahide to Almanzor, and his answer, from which it appears, that a lover of the true heroic vein never thought himself so happy, as when he had an opportunity of thus showing the purity and disinterestedness of his passion.  Almanzor is commanded by his mistress to stay to assist his rival, the king, her husband.  The lover very naturally asks,