Collier’s own argument was either confused or deliberately disingenuous, since he shifts his ground several times.  On occasion he argues merely in the role of a moderate man who is shocked by the extravagances of the playwrights, and on other occasions as an ascetic to whom all worldly diversion, however innocent of any obvious offence, is wicked.  At one time, moreover, he accuses the playwrights of recommending the vices which they should satirize and at other times denies that even the most sincere satiric intention can justify the lively representation of wickedness.  But none of his opponents actually seized the opportunity to completely clarify the issues.  Vanbrugh, it is true, makes some real points in his “A Short Vindication of The Relapse and The Provok’d Wife”, and John Dennis, in his heavy handed way, showed some realization of what the issues were both in “The Usefulness of the Stage to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government and to Religion” (1698) and, much later, In “The Stage Defended” (1726).  But, Vanbrugh is casual, Dennis is slow witted, and it is only by comparison with the triviality of D’Urfey or the contemptuous disingenuity of Congreve’s “Amendments of Mr. Collier’s False and Imperfect Citations” (1698) that they seem effective.

At least forty books and pamphlets published between 1698 and 1725 are definitely part of the Collier controversy, but the fact that none of them really discusses adequately fundamental premises concerning the nature, method, and function of comedy had serious consequences for the English stage.  The situation was further complicated by the rise of sentimental comedy and the fact that the theories supposed to justify it were expounded with all the completeness and clarity which were so conspicuously lacking in the case of those who undertook halfheartedly to defend what we call “high” or “pure”, as opposed to both sentimental and satiric comedy.  Steele’s epilogue to “The Lying Lover”, which versified Hobbes’ comments on laughter and then rejected laughter itself as unworthy of a refined human being, is a triumphant epitaph inscribed over the grave of the comic spirit.

The second item included in the present reprint, namely the anonymous preface to a translation of Bossuet’s “Maxims and Reflections Upon Plays”, belongs to a different phase of the Collier controversy.  It serves as an illustration of the fact that Collier was soon joined by men who were, somewhat more frankly than he had himself admitted he was, open enemies of the stage as such.  He had begun with arguments supported by citations from literary critics and he called in the support of ascetic religious writers after his discourse was well under way.  But the direct approach by way of religion was soon taken up by others, of whom Arthur Bedford was probably the most redoubtable as he was certainly the most long winded, since his “Evil and Danger of Stage Plays” (1706) crowds into its two hundred and twenty-seven pages some two thousand instances of