What of this remarkable comedy?  Its story turned upon the marriage of the elderly Lord Brumpton to a designing young minx who estranges the nobleman from his son, Lord Hardy, the gentlemanly, poverty-stricken leading man of the piece.  When Brumpton has a cataleptic fit, and is apparently dead as a doornail, the spouse confides his body to the undertaker with feelings of serene pleasure.  But let the lines of the play, or a portion thereof, unfold the situation.

The scene is at Lord Brumpton’s house; the nobleman has just been pronounced defunct, and Sable, the undertaker, has arrived.  The latter, who is being bantered by two of the characters, Mr. Campley and Cabinet, is evidently a bit of a philosopher, albeit an uncanny one, for he says: 

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“There are very few in the whole world that live to themselves, but sacrifice their bosom-bliss to enjoy a vain show and appearance of prosperity in the eyes of others; and there is often nothing more inwardly distressed than a young bride in her glittering retinue, or deeply joyful than a young widow in her weeds and black train; of both which the lady of this house may be an instance, for she has been the one, and is, I’ll be sworn, the other.

“CABINET.  You talk, Mr. Sable, most learnedly.

“SABLE.  I have the deepest learning, sir, experience; remember your widow cousin, that married last month.

“CABINET.  Ay, but how you’d you imagine she was in all that grief an hypocrite!  Could all those shrieks, those swoonings, that rising falling bosom, be constrained?  You’re uncharitable, Sable, to believe it.  What colour, what reason had you for it?

“SABLE.  First, Sir, her carriage in her concerns with me, for I never yet could meet with a sorrowful relict but was herself enough to make a hard bargain with me.  Yet I must confess they have frequent interruptions of grief and sorrow when they read my bill; but as for her, nothing she resolv’d, that look’d bright or joyous, should after her love’s death approach her.  All her servants that were not coal-black must turn out; a fair complexion made her eyes and heart ake, she’d none but downright jet, and to exceed all example, she hir’d my mourning furniture by the year, and in case of my mortality, ty’d my son to the same article; so in six weeks time ran away with a young fellow.”

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And so on (with a cynicism of which, of course, no modern “funeral director” would be guilty—­out loud), until the undertaker’s men come on the scene.

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“Where in the name of goodness have you all been?” asks SABLE.  “Have you brought the sawdust and tar for embalming?  Have you the hangings and the sixpenny nails, and my lord’s coat of arms?”

“SERVANT.  Yes, sir, and had come sooner, but I went to the herald’s for a coat for Alderman Gathergrease that died last night—­he has promised to invent one against to-morrow.”