ay, &c." _Life of Sir Dudley North._

* * * * *

THE

ASSIGNATION;

OR,

LOVE IN A NUNNERY.

A

COMEDY.

_Successum dea dira negat_
VIRG.

THE ASSIGNATION.

This play was unfortunate in the representation. It is needless, at
the distance of more than a century, to investigate the grounds of the
dislike of an audience, who, perhaps, could at the very time have
given no good reason for their capricious condemnation of a play, not
worse than many others which they received with applause. The author,
in the dedication, hints at the "lameness of the action;" but, as the
poet and performers are nearly equally involved in the disgrace of a
condemned piece, it is a very natural desire on either side to assign
the cause of its failure to the imperfections of the other; of which
there is a ludicrous representation in a dialogue betwixt the player
and the poet in "Joseph Andrews." Another cause of its unfavourable
reception seems to have been, its second title of "Love in a Nunnery."
Dryden certainly could, last of any man, have been justly suspected of
an intention to ridicule the Duke of York and the Catholic religion;
yet, as he fell under the same censure for the "Spanish Friar," it
seems probable that such suspicions were actually entertained. The
play certainly contains, in the present instance, nothing to justify
them. In point of merit, "The Assignation" seems pretty much on a
level with Dryden's other comedies; and certainly the spectators, who
had received the blunders of Sir Martin Mar-all with such unbounded
applause, might have taken some interest in those of poor Benito.
Perhaps the absurd and vulgar scene, in which the prince pretends a
fit of the cholic, had some share in occasioning the fall of the
piece. This inelegant _jeu de theatre_ is severely ridiculed in the
"Rehearsal."

To one person, the damnation of this play seems to have afforded
exquisite pleasure. This was Edward Ravenscroft, once a member of the
Middle Temple,--an ingenious gentleman, of whose taste it may be held
a satisfactory instance, that he deemed the tragedy of "Titus
Andronicus" too mild for representation, a