as the only form of comic insight. At any rate the audiences
for which Congreve wrote had just so much of the old leaven that we can
quite understand why they were regarded as wicked by a majority of the
middle classes. The doctrine that all playgoing was wicked was naturally
confirmed, and the dramatists retorted by ridiculing all that their
enemies thought respectable. Congreve was, I fancy, a man of better
morality than his characters, only forced to pander to the tastes of the
rake who had composed the dominant element of his audience. He writes
not for mere blackguards, but for the fine gentleman, who affects
premature knowledge of the world, professes to be more cynical than he
really is, and shows his acuteness by deriding hypocrisy and pharisaic
humbug in every claim to virtue. He dwells upon the seamy side of life,
and if critics, attracted by his undeniable brilliance, have found his
heroines charming, to me it seems that they are the kind of young women
whom, if I adopted his moral code, I should think most desirable
wives--for my friends.

Though realistic in one sense, we may grant to Lamb that such comedy
becomes 'artificial,' and so far Lamb is right, because it supposes a
state of things such as happily was abnormal except in a small circle.
The plots have to be made up of impossible intrigues, and imply a
distorted theory of life. Marriage after all is not really ridiculous,
and to see it continuously from this point of view is to have a false
picture of realities. Life is not made up of dodges worthy of
cardsharpers--and the whole mechanism becomes silly and disgusting. If
comedy is to represent a full and fair portrait of life, the dramatist
ought surely, in spite of Lamb, to find some space for generous and
refined feeling. There, indeed, is a difficulty. The easiest way to be
witty is to be cynical. It is difficult, though desirable, to combine
good feeling with the comic spirit. The humourist has to expose the
contrasts of life, to unmask hypocrisy, and to show selfishness lurking
under multitudinous disguises. That, on Hazlitt's showing, was the
preaching of Wycherly. I can't think that it was the impression made
upon Wycherly's readers. Such comedy may be taken as satire; which was
the excuse that Fielding afterwards made for his own performances. But I
cannot believe that the actual audiences went to see vice exposed, or
used Lamb's ingenious device of disbelieving in the reality. They simply
l