| John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) has a high reputation
both as an architect and as a playwright. As the former, he designed a
number of famous and illustrious buildings, including Blenheim Palace,
Castle Howard and the first great London opera house in the Haymarket.
As the latter, he completed two brilliant, original comedies,
The Relapse: or Virtue in
Danger
(1696) and The Provok'd Wife
(1697), as
well as a host of translations and adaptations. As if these two
professions were not enough, Vanbrugh managed to combine mastership of
these with a respectable career as a soldier.
Such
a multi-faceted career was less unusual at that time than nowadays. The
educated elite were small in number and likely to be well-connected, so
those with ability found it easier to gain recognition than they would
do today. A multi-talented man thus had a reasonable chance of making a
name for himself in several fields.
Vanbrugh was first inspired to write for the stage
by the production of Colley Cibber's sentimental play, Love's Last Shift, to which The Relapse is a cynical sequel. It was so popular that
Vanbrugh was commissioned to write The Provok'd Wife. This became the most popular of the Restoration
comedies and was revived more often throughout the eighteenth century
than even those by Congreve and Farquar.
The
play was actually conceived several years before the date of its first
performance, being the only London-produced play known to have been
drafted in the Bastille. Vanbrugh's sojourn in that notorious
prison--for spying, it is presumed--lasted from September 1688 until
November 1692, but does not seem to have been too unpleasant an
experience. The Bastille was then a comfortable place for the rich or
well-connected, who lived in comparative luxury and were even assigned
a personal servant each, who could run out to buy, for instance, pens,
ink and paper.
At the request of the arts patron Charles Montague,
Vanbrugh revised and completed the manuscript of The Provok'd Wife for the actor-manager Thomas Betterton, then in
his sixies. The part of Sir John Brute fitted Betterson to perfection,
and Elizabeth Barry matched him well as Lady Brute.
It was unfortunate for Vanbrugh that, by that time,
the theatre was once again coming under attack for its alleged
obscenity and profanity. Witty and elegant as Restoration comedy was,
it was notable for its nonchalant, uninhibited bawdiness. Vanbrugh's
humour was more good-natured than many, but that did not save him, in
1698, from assault by an outraged clergyman, Jeremy Collier, who
singled out his works especially as too lewd to be staged. This led to
the prosecution of Vanbrugh's publisher Jacob Tonson and of some of the
leading actresses in his plays, including Mrs. Barry and Mrs.
Bracegirdle, for using indecent expressions "in some plays particularly
The Provok'd
Wife."
The playwright made a few alterations to this work
for a Haymarket revival in 1706, but his most crucial alteration was
made for Colley Cibber's revival twenty years later, when Vanbrugh was
prevailed upon "to clap his Lordship into the undress of a woman of
quality," rather than "the borrowed habit of a clergyman." This, in
Cibber's words, kept Sir John "clear of his former
profaneness"--although it would be interesting to have known the
reaction of the Reverend Collier, had he lived to see it. With these
new scenes, The
Provok'd Wife was
revived a dozen times between 1726 and 1796, and it is this version
that is used in our production.
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