Restoration Drama: Sentimentalism

Loosely, the consciously reformed writing (usually drama) with deliberate didacticism and emotional manipulation. In both sentimental comedy and tragedy, the emphasis falls on feeling, especially feelings of pity and sympathy. Plots are generated by a moral problem, and the differences between the two genres are minimised, for comedy like tragedy deals with suffering, sympathy and tears, and is required to excite a "Joy too exquisite for laughter [quoting Steele ]--Pearson, The Prostituted Muse, 58.

According to Pearson, the form was supposed to appeal to women, "though few female dramatists were dedicated practitioners" (58).  But Pix wrote a number of them, and so did Centlivre and Trotter and there weren't many women around.

Sensibility--The tendency to be easily and strongly affected by emotion.  Grows through the 18th century.

This can lead to:
Sentimentalism--False, exaggerated or superficial feeling, where the focus is on the feeling itself, rather than on the person supposedly stimulating the feeling.  This results in formulaic expressions of grief, sympathy and remorse.  It was also used as a way to reform people.

Sentimental comedy -- a dramatic genre of the 18th century, denoting plays in which middle-class protagonists triumphantly overcome a series of moral trials. Such comedy aimed at producing tears rather than laughter. Sentimental comedies reflected contemporary philosophical conceptions of humans as inherently good but capable of being led astray through bad influences.
 
Contemporary reputation:

Some women attacked sentimentalism as "respectable pornography."

Mary Wortley Montagu: it would do "more general mischief than the Works of Lord Rochester" by encouraging wallowing in emotion.

Delarivier Manley attacked it as harmful to women's morality in The New Atalantis.

Defoe rejects it, and Sheridan brilliantly attacks it in School for Scandal.

"There is much critical disagreement about whether sentimentalism presented affirmative images of women or not. One historian of feminism [Hilda Smith] argues that the feminism of the late seventeenth century faded when faced with eighteenth-century values which `embraced sentimentality rather than reason.'  Other critics argue that the tendency of sentimental drama was `to idealise women' [Maureen Sullivan], and that because it emphasised `feelings' it respected `the values that were important to . . . women' [Katherine M. Rogers] Pearson 58.

But is it just women's roles which are changed in these plays?  What makes a man "a man"?

Steele calls his play a revolutionary theoretical innovation, and Hume notes: "he is indulging in no more than a little exaggeration."

Steele also thought that Belvil Junior and Indiana should be admired, and the play should give moral guidance, but he was attacked by his contemporaries with "critics variously pointing to its supposed hypocrisy, its didacticism, and the seriousness of its tone" (Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature).

One critic in particular was the undistinguished poet/playwright John Dennis (1657-1734), who for all his faults as a creator, was an astute critic. According to Dennis, Steele's attempts to "elicit a Joy too exquisite for words shows that Steele "knows nothing of the Nature of Comedy."

"Humane Comedy"

A term coined by Shirley Strum Kenny in her essay "Humane Comedy" in English Dramatic Comedy from Congreve to Sheridan: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed Albert Wertheim and Philip Wikelund. She felt this was a better way to explain the humor, that it was less "pejorative," or didn't carry the pejorative "baggage" of the earlier term.

Humane comedy is a synthesis in forms of comedy. Writers of this form (i.e., Steele and Cibber), "tend to be benevolists, and a strong didactic element frequently produces `reform' plots and even overtly exemplary models."

She calls The Conscious Lovers "the embodiment of Steele's philosophy of comedy."

Some resources:

Ellis, Frank H. Sentimental Comedy: Theory and Practice.

Sentimental comedy became a distinctive dramatic form on the London stage in the eighteenth century, featuring a complex blend of humor and pathos. Frank Ellis' authoritative study of the genre expounds a theory of sentimental comedy derived from detailed knowledge of a comprehensive range of plays in this period. The practice of sentimental comedy is illustrated by detailed analysis of sentimental attitudes in ten popular plays from 1696-1793. An appendix comprises the texts of The School for Lovers by William Whitehead (1762) and Elizabeth Inchbald's Every One Has His Fault (1793).   Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought 10, 1991, 246 pp. 8 halftones  Hardback 0-521-39431-7 $59.95   (their advertisement)

Loftis, John. "The Genesis of Steele's The Conscious Lovers."   Essays Critical and Historical Dedicated to Lily B. Campbell, Berkeley, CA  1950, 173-82.