The ‘Lying Lover’ in Alarcon’s play is a Don Garcia fresh from his studies in Salamanca, and Steele’s Latine first appears there as a Tristan, the gracioso of old Spanish comedy.  The two ladies are a Jacinta and Lucrecia.  Alarcon has in his light and graceful play no less than three heavy fathers, of a Spanish type, one of whom, the father of Lucrecia, brings about Don Garcia’s punishment by threatening to kill him if he will not marry his daughter; and so the Liar is punished for his romancing by a marriage with the girl he does not care for, and not marrying the girl he loves.

Corneille was merciful, and in the fifth act bred in his ‘Menteur’ a new fancy for Lucrece, so that the marriage at cross purposes was rather agreeable to him.

Steele, in adapting the ‘Menteur’ as his ‘Lying Lover’, altered the close in sharp accordance with that ‘just regard to a reforming age,’ which caused him (adapting a line in his ‘Procession’ then unprinted) to write in his Prologue to it, ’Pleasure must still have something that’s severe.’  Having translated Corneille’s translations of Garcia and Tristan (Dorante and Cliton) into Young Bookwit and Latine, he transformed the servant into a college friend, mumming as servant because, since ‘a prating servant is necessary in intrigues,’ the two had ’cast lots who should be the other’s footman for the present expedition.’  Then he adapted the French couplets into pleasant prose comedy, giving with a light touch the romancing of feats of war and of an entertainment on the river, but at last he turned desperately serious, and sent his Young Bookwit to Newgate on a charge of killing the gentleman—­here called Lovemore—­who was at last to win the hand of the lady whom the Liar loved.  In his last act, opening in Newgate, Steele started with blank verse, and although Lovemore of course was not dead, and Young Bookwit got at last more than a shadow of a promise of the other lady in reward for his repentance, the changes in construction of the play took it beyond the bounds of comedy, and were, in fact, excellent morality but not good art.  And this is what Steele means when he says that he had his play damned for its piety.

With that strong regard for the drama which cannot well be wanting to the man who has an artist’s vivid sense of life, Steele never withdrew his good will from the players, never neglected to praise a good play, and, I may add, took every fair occasion of suggesting to the town the subtlety of Shakespeare’s genius.  But he now ceased to write comedies, until towards the close of his life he produced with a remarkable success his other play, the ‘Conscious Lovers’.  And of that, by the way, Fielding made his Parson Adams say that ‘Cato’ and the ’Conscious Lovers’ were the only plays he ever heard of, fit for a Christian to read, ’and, I must own, in the latter there are some things almost solemn enough for a sermon.’

Perhaps it was about this time that Addison wrote his comedy of the ‘Drummer’, which had been long in his possession when Steele, who had become a partner in the management of Drury Lane Theatre, drew it from obscurity, suggested a few changes in it, and produced it—­not openly as Addison’s—­upon the stage.  The published edition of it was recommended also by a preface from Steele in which he says that he liked this author’s play the better