The+Beaux-Stratagem

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Beaux-Stratagem Playgoer's Companion draft

Laura Graham



**GEORGE FARQUHAR (1677-1707)** || This article was originally published in __European Theories of the Drama__. Barrett H. Clark. Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd Company, 1918.

GEORGE FARQUHAR was born in Londonderry, Ireland, in 1677 or 1678. Little is known of his early years beyond the fact that he went to school in his native town and entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1694. He remained there about a year. Not long after he made the acquaintance of the actor Robert Wilks, through whom he obtained a position on the Dublin stage, where he acted many parts during 1696. He accidentally wounded an actor and left the stage, having decided to write plays. He went to London that or the following year. //Love and a Bottle//, his first comedy, was produced at Drury Lane in 1698, and enjoyed a fair degree of popularity. It is interesting to know that soon after his arrival he discovered Nance Oldfield and with Vanbrugh's help, secured her a place with Rich. Farquhar's next play brought him a certain fame. This was //The Constant Couple//, produced in 1699. The next year found him in Holland, probably for his health. //Sir Harry Wildair//, his next play, was produced in1701. //The Inconstant// and //The Twin Rivals// belong to the year 1702. Later in the same year Farquhar published a little collection of miscellaneous prose and verse, in which he included his //Discourse upon Comedy//. He was married probably the next year. He spent the following three in recruiting for the army, though he collaborated with Motteux in an adaptation from the French, called //The Stage Coach// (1704). Two years later //The Recruiting Officer// was performed at Drury Lane. Though it was successful, Farquhar was harassed with debts and was forced to sell a commission which he held. During an illness in 1707 he wrote //[|The Beaux Stratagem]//. He died a few weaks after the first performance. Farquhar's importance as a dramatist consists in his having combined many of the elements of the comedy of his time and evolving them into a form which was later developed by [|Goldsmith] and [|Sheridan]. One of the dire results of Collier's attack on the stage was the conversion of Farquhar. //The Twin Rivals// (1702) and its //Preface// constitute Farquhar's reply to Collier; the play, in the author's words, sets out to prove that "an English comedy may answer the strictness of poetical justice." This was precisely the "poetical justice" which Addison attacked in the //Spectator//, the conventional reward of the virtue and punishment of vice. The //Discourse// published the same year contains a defense of the drama against Collier and his followers, but in general, it is merely a light essay, anti-classic in its rejection of [|the Unities]. ||  ||

Kendra Murray

//**The First Performance**//. //**The Beaux-Stratagem**// was first performed on Saturday, 8th March 1707, at the Theatre Royal (or, as it was sometimes called, the Queen's Theatre), situated in the Haymarket, on the site afterwards occupied by Her Majesty's Theatre. It ran for ten nights only, owing to benefits. The cast on that occasion was a strong one. Robert Wilks (a brother-Irishman), who performed Archer, was the foremost actor of the day. He was Farquhar's lifelong friend, and appeared in all his plays, except //**Love and a Bottle**// which was produced in London during Wilks's absence in Dublin. This actor's most famous part was 'Sir Harry Wildair' (//**The Constant Couple**//), which our author drew on purpose for him, and which ran for fifty-two nights on its first appearance. Farquhar himself said that when the stage had the misfortune to lose Wilks, 'Sir Harry Wildair' might go to the Jubilee! Peg Woffington is said to have been his only rival in this part. Sullen was the last original character undertaken by Verbruggen, a leading actor of the time. It was from Verbruggen's wife (probably the 'Mrs. V———' of Farquhar's letters) that the famous Mrs. Oldfield received her earliest instructions in acting. The last-named lady was the original Mrs. Sullen. Her connection [|[xii]] with Farquhar is very interesting and romantic. She resided with her aunt, Mrs. Voss, who kept the Mitre Tavern in St, James's Market (between Jeryrm Street, Regent Street, and the Haymarket). One day, when she was aged sixteen, Farquhar, a smart young captain of twenty-two, happened to be dining there, and he overheard her reading Beaumont and Fletcher's //**Scornful Lady**// aloud behind the bar. When Farquhar, much struck by her musical delivery and expression, pressed her to resume her reading, the tall and graceful girl consented with hesitation and bashfulness; although she afterwards confessed, 'I longed to be at it, and only needed a decent entreaty.' The dramatist quickly acquainted Sir John Vanbrugh with the jewel he had thus accidentally found, and she obtained through him an engagement at the Theatre Royal as 'Candiope' in Dryden's //**Secret Love**//. She soon became the fine lady of the stage, and was the original representative of no less than sixty-five characters. Pope disliked and satirised her severely; on the other hand, Cibber worshipped her. According to some, Farquhar fell violently in love with her, and she is the 'Penelope' of his letters; but although she often spoke of the happy hours she spent in his company, there appears to be no foundation for this surmise. Bowen, a low comedian of considerable talent, afterwards accidentally killed by Quin the actor, was Foigard; and Scrub—originally written for Colley Cibber, who, however, preferred Gibbet—was represented by Norris, a capital comic actor, universally known as 'Jubilee Dicky' on account of his representation of 'Dicky' in //**The Constant Couple**//. He had an odd, formal little figure, and a high squeaking voice; if he came into a coffee-house and merely called 'Waiter!' everybody present felt inclined to laugh. He had previously appeared in Farquhar's four principal plays, as [|[xiii]] also had Mills, who did Aimwell. Cibber tells us that the play was better received at Drury Lane than at the Haymarket, as, owing to the larger size of the latter house, it was difficult to hear. //**Later Stage History**//. Originally brought out under the title //**The Stratagem**// only, which it retained in the playbills till 1787 (though printed with 'Beaux'), this play continued to be very popular with the stage down to the dawn of the present century; and many great actors and actresses appeared from time to time in its characters; In 1721 Quin acted in Lincoln's Inn Fields as Squire Sullen. The part of Mrs. Sullen has been undertaken by Mrs. Pritchard (1740 and 1761), Peg Woffington (1742, along with Garrick as Archer for the first time, and Macklin as Scrub), Mrs. Abington (1774, 1785, 1798), Mrs. Barry (1778), Miss Farren (1779), Mrs. Jordan (1802), Mrs. C. Kemble (1810), Mrs. Davison (1818), and Miss Chester (1823, for Dibdin's benefit, with Liston as Scrub). Garrick's repeated performances of Archer, in light blue and silver livery, were supremely good, more particularly in the scenes with Cherry, the picture scene with Mrs. Sullen, and when he delivers Lady Howd'ye's message. He generally acted with Weston, an inimitable Scrub; but at O'Brien's benefit at Drury Lane, 10th April 1761, Garrick himself played Scrub to O'Brien's Archer. On one occasion Garrick had refused Weston a loan of money, and Weston not appearing at the greenroom, Garrick came forward before the curtain and announced that he would himself play Scrub, as Weston was ill. Weston, who was in the gallery with a sham bailiff, shouted out, 'I am here, but the bailiff won't let me come '; whereupon the audience insisted on Garrick's paying the loan and relieving the debtor so as to [|[xiv]] enable him to play Scrub! Other famous Scrubs were Shutes (1774), Quick (1778, 1785, 1798), Bannister, junior (1802, will C. Kemble as Aimwell), Dowton (1802), Liston (1810), Johnstone (1821), and Keeley (1828, with C. Kemble as Arches and Miss Foote as Cherry; it ran for twelve nights at Covenl Garden). Goldsmith is said to have expressed a desire to art this part. On the occasion of Mrs. Abington's benefit (Covenl Garden, November 19, 1785), she took the part of Scrub for that night only, for a wager, it is said. Ladies were desired to send their servants to retain seats by four o'clock, and the pit and boxes were laid together. She disgraced herself, acting the part with her hair dressed for 'Lady Racket' in the afterpiece (//**Three Hours After Marriage**//). In April 1823 another female impersonator of this part appeared—not very successfully—in Miss Clara Fisher, with Farren as Archer. This was in Dublin (Hawkins' Street), where the play was frequently performed about 1821-1823. It was also the piece chosen for the re-opening of Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, in 1759, when Mrs. Abington made her first appearance on the Irish stage as Mrs. Sullen. Miss Pope (1774), Mrs. Martyn (1785, 1798), and Mrs. Gibbs (1819) were the principal exponents of Cherry. In 1819 Emery did Gibbet. About 1810 the play was performed at the Royal Circus under Elliston as a //**ballet d'action**//, in order to evade the Patent Act. Otherwise, neither this play nor any other of Farquhar's seems ever to have been 'adapted' for the modern stage. In the present half-century //**The Beaux-Stratagem**// has been but seldom performed. It was acted in London in 1856. In February 1878 Mr. Phelps gave it extremely well in the Annexe Theatre at the Westminster Aquarium. Lastly, William Farren, as Archer, revived it at the Imperial Theatre, on Monday, 22nd [|[xv]] September 1879, with great success, a new Prologue (spoken by Mrs. Stirling) being written for the occasion. There were several matinees given in succession. The cast included Mr. Kyrle Bellew as Gibbet; Mr. Lionel Brough as Scrub; Miss Marie Litton as Mrs. Sullen; Mrs. Stirling—one of her last appearances—as Lady Bountiful; Dorinda, Miss Meyrick; Cherry, Miss Carlotta Addison; Gipsy, Miss Passinger; Aimwell, Mr. Edgar; Sir Charles Freeman, Mr. Denny; Sullen, Mr. Ryder; Foigard, Mr. Bannister; Boniface, Mr. Everill; Hounslow, Mr. Bunch; Bagshot, Mr. Leitch. The Epilogue for this occasion was written by Mr. Clement Scott. I know not if the play has been acted since that date. [|Merely taken from the script we were given.]

Meghan Jagoe


 * Previous Productions/Modern Interpretations**

In an article by Shafer, more modern productions are mentioned. An issue with modern interpretations is the challenge of the language. The vocabulary makes for confusion and requires extensive foreknowledge to truly grasp both the plot and the subtle intricacies of the humour. One ambitious author took it upon himself to make the play more clear and proceeded to cut parts that didn’t resonate, be it in humour or in sentiment, today. He hoped to bring the play new life with this revamp, making it more accessible. Some of the changes were more drastic than others, such as the re-imagining of certain characters and their motivations, re-inventing the original dynamic between the players. The article goes on to review a particular production that used the modern adaptation. The description of the set is particularly interesting and useful, and the picture accompanying the review gives an impression of the set and the costumes that helped to create this world for the audience.

// Farquhar, George (1676/7–1707), playwright, was born in Londonderry, one of seven children of an Anglican clergyman. //He was educated under a schoolmaster named Walker. His wife later claimed that he served as a volunteer under Colonel Hans Hamilton at the battle of the Boyne in 1690, although he was then a mere thirteen years old. He matriculated at Trinity College, Dublin, on 17 July 1694 at the age of seventeen as a sizar, that is, one who served at table in exchange for food and lodgings. // In May 1695 he received an exhibition of £4 a year, which was suspended when he and some other students behaved inappropriately at Donnybrook fair, but restored in February 1696. //His formal education ended abruptly: according to early accounts he was dismissed for a profane witticism when asked to write about the miracle of walking on water. **Early theatrical career in Dublin and London** // By 1696 Farquhar had joined the acting company in the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin, but stage fright and a weak voice hampered his performances. //He is said to have played Young Bellair in George Etherege's The Man of Mode, Careless in Robert Howard's The Committee, Young Loveless in Francis Beaumont's and John Fletcher's The Scornful Lady, and other roles. After two seasons he left Smock Alley when, as Guyomar in John Dryden's The Indian Emperor, he forgot to exchange his sword for a foil and consequently injured the actor playing Vasquez. At Smock Alley Farquhar had met Robert Wilks, the actor who was later to bring his comic heroes to life on the London stage. // According to biographers, Wilks suggested that Farquhar leave acting and write comedy. //
 * George Farquhar Biography**
 * N.B. I've made what I feel to be the most important points of this brief biography in italics and a different colour to facilitate information gathering, but I bow down to the wishes of the Editorial Team and their judgments as necessary.

In 1697 or 1698 Farquhar headed for London, probably with a draft of his first play, Love and a Bottle, in hand. He fell ill along the way, a circumstance referred to in his two works of 1698, Love and a Bottle and a novella called The Adventures of Covent Garden. // Frequent bouts of illness marked both his life and his writings. Farquhar perhaps suffered from rheumatic fever; he often wrote of long and debilitating fevers, rheumatism, and aching extremities, particularly hands so excruciatingly painful that sometimes he could not hold a quill. //

The hero of Love and a Bottle, a young Irishman freshly arrived in London and devilishly successful with the ladies, has generally been accepted as self-referential; the poet Lyrick says in the play that the hero ‘is always the Poet's Character’. Farquhar was a handsome young man, a frequenter of such haunts as The Rose tavern near the theatre, attracted by and attractive to women, witty, and good-humoured. He painted an epistolary picture of himself, published in Love and Business (1701), as a melancholy yet amorous and inconstant person. He viewed himself as Epicurean in his tastes and a lover of ease; people liked him because he was not pretentious, malicious, or angry by nature. He had very little estate except for: what lies under the Circumference of my Hat. … I ought to thank Providence that I can by Three Hours Study live One and Twenty with Satisfaction my self, and contribute to the Maintenance of more Families than some who have Thousands a Year. (Works, 2.352) Love and a Bottle, embellished with songs and dances, opened very probably in early December 1698, and had a successful run. It was published on 29 December. The Adventures of Covent Garden was published anonymously on 15 December (but dated 1699), and was supposedly loosely based on Antoine Furetière's Le roman bourgeois (1666), translated as Scarron's City Romance (1671). Farquhar, a man of rare creativity and great productivity, seldom borrowed lines from others but often recycled his own plot ideas and lines of poetry; the romance is attributable to him because of materials he reused in The Constant Couple.

**Fame with The Constant Couple, 1699** By spring or summer 1699 Farquhar was writing The Constant Couple, or, A Trip to the Jubilee, the comedy that made him famous. In it he developed the character of Sir Harry Wildair, played to perfection by his friend Robert Wilks, who afterwards went by the sobriquet of that character; a second actor, Henry Norris, came to be known as Jubilee Dicky from his comic servant in the same play. // Farquhar created a new kind of rakish hero, less extravagant and foppish, more believably human, a known war hero. //During rehearsals or the early run, act V scene i was almost entirely rewritten to reduce sentimentality and make Sir Harry's airy, flippant character consistent to the end. The comedy opened in November 1699 and had an unprecedented run of fifty-three nights in London and a reported twenty-three in Dublin in its first season, a record that remained unbroken until John Gay's The Beggar's Opera played sixty-two times in London in 1728–9. // The young playwright's talents were proven; at twenty-one years old, he was by far the season's most successful playwright. //

In a time of unquestioning adherence to neo-classical principles, the critics fumed at the audiences' delight in this very modern comedy. Critics and Farquhar himself gave Wilks the credit for the phenomenal success, but it was Farquhar's creation of Sir Harry as well as Wilks's portrayal of him that changed the nature of comedic heroes. The play was published on 11 December 1699 with the date 1700, and on 1 February the second edition appeared. The comedy became a perennial favourite in the theatres, invariably known by its subtitle, the Trip to the Jubilee; it ran more than 400 times in the eighteenth century, with its greatest popularity, after the première season, in the 1730s and 1740s. Sir Harry, always a favourite role for actors, became a favourite breeches part for women, most notably Peg Woffington, who performed the role seventy-three times between 1740 and 1757.

Farquhar stayed busy about the theatre that season, writing prologues and epilogues. One night he heard sixteen-year-old Anne Oldfield reading The Scornful Lady behind the bar of her uncle's Mitre tavern in St James's market. He admired her reading so much, so the story goes, that he recommended her to the playwright John Vanbrugh. Vanbrugh then introduced her to Christopher Rich, who hired her as an actress at Drury Lane. She had not yet become a featured actress when The Constant Couple opened, but she took over the role of Lurewell after the reigning actress, Susannah Verbruggen, died in childbirth.

Farquhar attended John Dryden's funeral on 13 May 1700 with some bemusement; he described the extravagant pomp and ceremony in a letter in Love and Business. On 7 August 1700 he sailed for the Netherlands, where he stayed until after 23 October. Again he suffered ‘a very tedious Fit of Sickness, which had almost sent your Friend a longer Journey than he was willing to undertake at present’, but he managed to write interesting travel and love letters (Works, 2.320).

Back in London, Farquhar wrote a sequel, Sir Harry Wildair, to cash in on the runaway popularity of The Constant Couple. It opened, probably in April 1701, with the popular actors continuing in their original roles; it was published on 13 May. A marriage comedy, as sequels inevitably were, it featured Sir Harry Wildair as a relapsed rake, suffering the boredom of marriage to a chaste wife and tricked by his spouse to shock him back into matrimonial bliss. The play realized mild success but then disappeared from the theatres for thirty-six years.

// Although Farquhar's genius lay in comedy, he dabbled in many other genres. During the spring and summer of 1701 he published letters and poems in several miscellanies. //The correspondence included exchanges between Farquhar and dramatist Susanna Carroll, later Centlivre, as Damon and Astraea. By 3 July he had signed an agreement with Bernard Lintott for his own ‘Letters and Poems’, actually published on 22 November with the date 1702 as Love and Business: … a Discourse Likewise upon Comedy in Reference to the English Stage. Farquhar pulled together any scraps he could find to fill out the miscellany, early poems, written while he was still a student, as well as others clearly written after he went to London. Letters, several written from Holland, included romantic ones to Anne Oldfield (his ‘Penelope’) and the widow Margaret Pemell; there was an epilogue for Catharine Trotter's The Fatal Friendship.

**Annoying the critics** But it was the Discourse upon Comedy that evoked the outrage of Farquhar's detractors. Farquhar audaciously attacked Aristotle, Scaliger, Vossius, and all the lesser critics who followed Aristotle's ‘fixt and immutable’ rules of poetry, as well as the modern playwrights who were ‘hoodwink'd’ into obeisance. He had no patience for the unities of time, place, and action or for the playwrights and critics who blindly followed them. The attack on neo-classical tenets was shockingly forthright; coming from a young newcomer so unforgivably successful with audiences, it infuriated the critics.

Farquhar usually wrote easily and rapidly, but the afterpiece The Stage-Coach proved agonizing. This was the only dramatic work for which he had a collaborator, Peter Anthony Motteux, a French dramatist on the English stage, and it was his only attempt at translation, an Anglicization of Jean de la Chapelle's Les carrosses d'Orléans. Farquhar disliked the task, being accustomed neither to collaboration nor to translation. It opened between autumn 1700 and February 1702 at Lincoln's Inn Fields, and was the only dramatic piece that Farquhar ever wrote for Thomas Betterton's troupe. Afterpieces, which supplemented full-length plays in extended programmes, were still a rarity, and no record of the first run exists, but throughout the years audiences loved it. It ran in London on 182 known occasions and probably many other times not recorded. In 1730, two years after John Gay's The Beggar's Opera took London by storm, The Stage-Coach was transformed into a ballad opera at Goodman's Fields. The farce was not published immediately after the first run; it was probably considered too inconsequential and even too short for separate publication. Eventually three distinct texts, from three different manuscripts, appeared, the first in Dublin in 1704 when Farquhar was there, the second, perhaps from Motteux in London in 1705, and the third, probably a playhouse copy, in Farquhar's Works dated 1736.

Farquhar next chose to adapt Fletcher's The Wild Goose Chase (1652). In The Inconstant he cut the number of characters, invented new dialogue, and changed the plot line almost entirely in the last half of the play. Although translations and adaptations were the stock-in-trade of contemporaneous playwrights, Farquhar's originality was irrepressible even when he tried to adapt a work; after The Inconstant he never tried again.

The Inconstant opened at Drury Lane in February 1702 with a prologue by Motteux. Wilks once again played the lead. Even before it opened, it was vilified by the critics, still seething over the Discourse upon Comedy. Nevertheless, the comedy ran six successive nights, and might have proved hardier except for the death of King William on 8 March. It did not play again for fourteen years, but from the 1730s it continued in the repertory throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Twin-Rivals followed ten months later. A very different kind of comedy, perhaps influenced by the success of Richard Steele's sentimental The Funeral a year earlier, it opened on 14 December 1702. Like Steele's comedy, it dealt with serious crimes, a stolen inheritance and attempted rape; the stakes are far higher than those of the usual drawing-room comedies of the period. The critics attacked the play even before it opened, and the first run was disappointing. Farquhar by now had produced the extraordinarily successful Constant Couple followed by one successful but inconsequential afterpiece and three comedies received tepidly by audiences and savagely by critics. For more than three years he wrote no new plays.

**Marriage and the army** Farquhar was reputed to have had numerous liaisons, including ones with Susanna Carroll and Anne Oldfield. Probably some time in 1703 he married Margaret Pemell, a widow, older than he, with three children. She tricked him, it is said, into believing she was rich, but after the vows he discovered the truth. He fathered two daughters. Despite Margaret's deception, he remained loyal to her until the end.

Whether motivated by his familial responsibilities or his theatrical disappointments, in 1704 Farquhar secured a lieutenancy as a grenadier in the earl of Orrery's regiment raised for service in Ireland. By summer he was recruiting, perhaps in Shrewsbury. Recruiting was a risky enterprise since the standard pay was very low; officers sometimes had to supplement it out of their own pockets; if the men deserted, the officers were personally liable for the levy money. Having raised troops, Farquhar was sent to Dublin, where his brother was a bookseller. Hoping to recoup his recruiting losses, he arranged with Smock Alley to perform the role of Sir Harry Wildair in The Constant Couple, and reportedly his benefit earned him £100. By autumn 1705 there was a new need for troops, and Farquhar may have been sent back to England on another recruiting tour. According to Orrery, Farquhar was assiduous in raising the regiment ‘to the great prejudice of his family’, that is, at his own expense (Sutherland, 171).

Although Farquhar's wife claimed that he remained an officer until he died, the biographers tell a sadder story. Farquhar applied to the duke of Ormond, lord lieutenant of Ireland, for preferment and was promised a captaincy if he relinquished his commission as lieutenant. He obligingly did so, but then was gravely disappointed when the captain's commission was given to another. He returned to London, desperate for money. That winter he tried his hand at an epic on the battle of Barcelona in 1705. The epic was a genre for which he totally lacked talent, and he never published this attempt, either because he found it unworthy or perhaps because its hero, Charles Mordaunt, earl of Peterborough, had fallen from the Queen's favour.

**Final months** // By February 1706 Farquhar had a mere fifteen months to live, yet during this period he produced his two best-known, liveliest comedies, The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux' Stratagem. //Duped into marriage and familial obligations, tricked out of his military commission, melancholy by nature, reviled by critics, he transcended his difficulties to create two of the most spirited and good-natured comedies on the British stage.

The Recruiting Officer clearly reflected Farquhar's own experience. Local citizens claimed the characters were based on people he knew in Shrewsbury; the hero, Plume, of course played by Wilks, was considered yet another rendering of the author himself; for the first time Anne Oldfield, as Silvia, acted in one of Farquhar's premières. The opening on 8 April 1706 at Drury Lane produced an immediate and enthusiastic response; the comedy ran ten nights despite the fact that it opened so late in the season. By the next year both houses were performing it, and thereafter it became one of the most popular plays on stage, running 512 times in London during the century. In the 1730s it was acted at four to six houses every year, and it was reportedly the first play ever staged in Australia, performed by convicts in 1789. Even the critics grudgingly admired The Recruiting Officer, admitting that Farquhar's comedies played well on stage. He was recognized for his freshness and good nature. The comedy was published on about 25 April 1706 and frequently republished; more than fifty editions appeared in the eighteenth century.

Eleven months later, on 27 January 1707, Lintott paid Farquhar £30 for another manuscript, at that point called ‘The Broken Beaux’, but later called The Stratagem on stage and The Beaux' Stratagem in print. Farquhar also published a bagatelle early in 1707, Love's Catechism, a flirtatious secular catechism later echoed by Archer and Cherry in the new comedy. He finished his masterpiece during his final illness. One florid biographer depicted him lying ill and penniless in his lodgings when Wilks, noticing he had not been to the theatre for more than two months, sought him at his old address in York Buildings and discovered he had moved. Finding him ill in a back garret in St Martin's Lane, Wilks suggested he write a comedy, and left him some money. Farquhar, only weeks from death, then wrote his sprightliest and most humane comedy.

// The Stratagem opened on 8 March 1707 at the new Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, to which many of the Drury Lane actors had defected. Wilks as Archer and Oldfield as Mrs Sullen joined others who had regularly appeared in Farquhar's plays. The comedy was immediately successful, and the theatres competed shamelessly by running other Farquhar comedies against it. It played 632 times during the eighteenth century, 194 times as benefits for actors and others, who picked the most popular plays to assure good receipts. It was published on 28 March 1707; more than fifty editions appeared during the eighteenth century. //

But Farquhar was probably too ill to care. Contemporaries said he died of a broken heart brought on by Ormond's failure to produce a captain's commission, and indeed his heart may have been to blame for his early demise. The symptoms which afflicted him at least all his adult life suggest a condition which could have led to rheumatic heart disease or bacterial endocarditis, an infection of the heart valve which causes an invariably fatal decline over a few months. He certainly seemed aware he would not recover.

Farquhar was reportedly visited by Wilks after The Stratagem opened and told that Oldfield had complained of Mrs Sullen's being too loosely used since she went with Archer before she was divorced from Sullen. Farquhar suggested Wilks tell her to marry him, and in a fortnight she would be a widow in earnest. // He died soon after and was buried at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 23 May 1707. //

Farquhar's wife, Margaret, widowed a second time and left with four small children including his two young daughters, never gave up using his fame to improve her own fortune. She petitioned the queen for redress for her two lost husbands, both of whom had served in the military. She published the epic Barcelona, even with apparent gaps in the text, and she dedicated it to the earl of Peterborough, now restored to favour. There were also charity benefits for Farquhar's daughters as late as 1750.

// With his last two plays, Farquhar finally got recognition appropriate to his achievements. His entire career had spanned a mere eight and a half years. Seven comedies, an afterpiece, a novella, a miscellany, a discourse on comedy, poems, songs, prologues, and epilogues, not to mention a military career, marriage, and parenthood were comprehended in that short span. //As a playwright, measured by number of performances and editions throughout the century, he won incomparable popularity, and his plays continue to be performed and read three centuries later. // He influenced comedy with believable characters, fallible and funny, humanly inconsistent, foolish and endearing. His extravagant rakes were impetuous but likeable; his women were full of spirit and intelligence. //The characters became so familiar that they inevitably shaped other characters written for the same actors and deeply influenced eighteenth-century comedy. After his death critics finally admitted that he had a ‘genius’ for comedy, that he was, as Dr Samuel Johnson said, ‘a man whose writings have considerable merit’ (Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman, 1953, 1070).

**The Beaux** **'** **Stratagem** George Farquhar 's final comedy, produced with great success in 1707. Aimwell and Archer, two spendthrifts, arrive at an inn at Lichfield, in search of adventure and money. To economize, Archer pretends to be Aimwell's servant, causing much speculation as to their identity. Dorinda, daughter of the wealthy Lady Bountiful, falls in love with Aimwell, who, thinking her a suitable prey, gets admission to her house by passing himself off as his elder brother Lord Aimwell. He is accompanied by Archer, who has formed a liaison with Mrs Sullen, the unhappy wife of Lady Bountiful's alcoholic son. The two men protect the women during an attack on the house. Overpowered by the trustfulness of Dorinda, Aimwell confesses the fraud. Mrs Sullen's brother brings news of Lord Aimwell's death and of Aimwell's accession to the title; Sullen agrees to the dissolution of his marriage, and Mrs Sullen is free to marry Archer.
 * Play Synopsis**

Charles Lindsay

__**Analysis**__

[|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beaux'_Stratagem] Aimwell and Dorinda become engaged to be married at the end of the play, in accordance with the rules of the genre, in which young lovers always get married in the end. However, Farquhar uses Kate Sullen to criticize this facile outcome. She, originally rich in her own right, is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man she despises, who keeps her from the town-based society she adores. The legal system does not allow divorce based on incompatibility, and any divorce at the time left women disgraced and penniless. The dark side to the play produced by this theme threatens to overwhelm the rest of it, and Farquhar has to resort to a deus ex machina character and an arbitrary adjustment to English law to get out of the hole he has dug for himself. Noticeably, even when Kate's separation from her husband seems an accomplished fact, the possibility of marriage never seems to cross either her or Archer's mind.

=The Beaux' Stratagem by Farquhar=

Disguise and Deception in a Restoration Romantic Comedy
//The Beaux’ Stratagem// (1707) by George Farquhar, begins at a country inn with the arrival of a gentleman from London, Mr. Aimwell, and his servant Archer. The innkeeper, the honest and hospitable Boniface, makes them welcome. In fact, as the play will reveal, almost none of the cast are quite who they seem. Cherry, the landlord’s daughter, at first suspects from the strongbox full of money that Archer entrusts to Boniface that he is a “parliament-man” come down to Litchfield to buy votes, but then decides that he and his servant are highwaymen in disguise.

Suspicion and Disguise
Highwaymen are something that Boniface knows about – though he seems to be the archetypal cheery host, he is in fact in league with a gang of thieves led by the highwayman Gibbet (disguised as a soldier), who specialise in working robberies in that area. Boniface is right to be suspicious of the London men: though they aren’t highwaymen, they are both broke gentlemen of fashion who have come down to the country to make fortunes, by marriage if possible. Just for good measure, it turns out that Foigard, the French chaplain in the town, is in fact an Irish renegade. About the only person who turns out to be what she appears is Cherry, who always hoped she was the lost daughter of someone more noble than Boniface.

A Smash Hit
In its day, //The Beaux’ Stratagem// was a great success with the London audiences. It became part of the standard repertoire of Restoration comedies, and Boniface’s catchphrase “as the saying is...”, which he repeats at just about any opportunity, became part of English slang for a time. The name of Lady Bountiful, the noblewomen who distributes alms and medecine to the poor around her estates, is still used today, though generally to describe a condescending person.

// The Beaux Stratagem // ’s style is lively and entertaining, particularly in the rapid banter between Cherry and Aimwell. Fans of modern romantic comedy will recognise a great deal in the assumptions of Restoration comedy: that love will win out in the end, that the characters who spar with each other will end up together, that a little disguise and trickery is necessary to achieve a happy ending. As soon as Archer tells Aimwell “Ay, you’re such an amorous puppy, I fear you’ll spoil our sport; you can’t counterfeit the passion without feeling it”, we are firmly in the territory of rom-com.

[|The Beaux' Stratagem by Farquhar: Disguise and Deception in a Restoration Romantic Comedy]