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MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE: 

A COMEDY.

_—­Quicquid sum ego, quamvis
Infra Lucili censum ingeniumque, tamen me
Cum magnis vixisse, invita fatebitur usque
Invidia, et fragili quaerens illidere dentem,
Offendet solido._

                                            HORAT.  SERM.

MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE

Marriage a-la-mode was one of Dryden’s most successful comedies.  A venerable praiser of the past time, in a curious letter printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1745, gives us this account of its first representation.  “This comedy, acted by his Majesty’s servants at the Theatre-Royal, made its first appearance with extraordinary lustre.  Divesting myself of the old man, I solemnly declare, that you have seen no such acting, no, not in any degree since.  The players were then, 1673, on a court establishment, seventeen men, and eight women.” Gent.  Mag. Vol. xv. p. 99.  From a copy of verses, to which this letter is annexed, we learn the excellence of the various performers by whom the piece was first presented.  They are addressed to a young actress.

  Henceforth, in livelier characters excel,
  Though ’tis great merit to act folly well;
  Take, take from Dryden’s hand Melantha’s part,
  The gaudy effort of luxuriant art,
  In all imagination’s glitter drest;
  What from her lips fantastic Montfort caught,
  And almost moved the thing the poet thought. 
    These scenes, the glory of a comic age,
  (It decency could blanch each sullied page)
  Peruse, admire, and give unto the stage;
  Or thou, or beauteous Woffington, display
  What Dryden’s self, with pleasure, might survey. 
  Even he, before whose visionary eyes,
  Melantha, robed in ever-varying dies,
  Gay fancy’s work, appears, actor renowned. 
  Like Roscius, with theatric laurels crowned,
  Cibber will smile applause, and think again
  Of Harte, and Mohun, and all the female train,
  Coxe, Marshal, Dryden’s Reeve, Bet Slade, and Charles’s reign.

Mrs Monfort, who, by her second marriage, became Mrs Verbruggen, was the first who appeared in the highly popular part of Melantha, and the action and character appear to have been held incomparable by that unquestionable judge of the humour of a coquette, or coxcomb, the illustrious Colley Cibber.  “Melantha” says Cibber, “is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room; and seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady.  Her language, dress, motion, manners, soul, and body, are in a continual hurry to be something more than is necessary or commendable.  And, though I doubt it will be a vain labour to offer you a just likeness of Mrs Monfort’s action, yet the fantastic expression is still so strong in my memory, that I cannot help saying something, though fantastically,