Remarks on Farquhar

Selected comments on the playwright and his work.


All that love Comedy will be sorry to hear of the Death of Mr. Farquhar, whose two last Plays had something in them that was truly humorous and diverting. ’Tis true the Criticks will not allow any Part of them to be regular, but Mr. Farquhar had a Genius for Comedy, of which one may say, that it was rather above Rules than below them. His Conduct, tho not Artful, was surprizing: His Characters, tho not Great, were Just: His Humour, tho low, diverting: His Dialogue, tho loose and incorrect, gay, and agreeable; and his Wit, tho not super-abundant, pleasant. In a word, his Plays have in the toute ensemble, as the Painters phrase it, a certain Air of Novelty and Mirth, which pleas’d the Audience every time they were represented: And such as love to laugh at the Theatre, will probably miss him more than they new imagine.
    -John Oldmixon, 1707 (transcribed from The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux’ Stratagem: A Casebook, p. 29)

He seems to have been a man of a genius rather sprightly than great, rather flow’ry than solid; his comedies are diverting, because his characters are natural, and such as we frequently meet with; but he has used no art in drawing them, nor does there appear any force of thinking in his performances, or any deep penetration into nature; but rather a superficial view, pleasant enough to the eye, though capable of leaving no great impression on the mind. He drew his observations chiefly from those he conversed with, and has seldom given any additional heightening, or indelible marks to his characters; which was the peculiar excellence of Shakespear, Johnson, and Congreve.
    -Theophilus Cibber, 1753 (from The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, p. 86)

Farquhar had much truer comic genius than any of his contemporaries, but it was confined by his situation in life. With the same advantage that Vanburgh, Congreve, and Steel had, he could have written better than any of them; and there is an originality in his Sir Harry Wildair, that none of his contemporaries have come up to in comedy.
    -L.M., 22 Nov 1776 (from a letter printed in the New Morning Post, London)

Farquhar was a gentleman of elegant person and bewitching address, who, having experienced the vicissitudes of life, as a man of fashion, an actor, a captain in the army, an author, a lover, and a husband; and having encountered bitter disappointment in some of his adventures—though amply gratified by others—He, at the age of twenty-nine, sunk into a dejection of spirits and decline of health; and in this state, he wrote the present drama.
    -Elizabeth Inchbald, 1808 (transcribed from The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux’ Stratagem: A Casebook, p. 35)
      
Farquhar’s chief characters are also adventurers; but they are adventurers of a romantic, not a knavish stamp, and succeed no less by their honesty than their boldness. […] They are real gentlemen, and only pretended imposters. […] [W]e have every sort of good-will towards Farquhar’s heroes, who have as many peccadillos to answer for, and play as many rogue’s tricks, but are honest fellows at bottom. I know little other difference between these two capital writers and copyists of nature, than that Farquhar’s nature is the better nature of the two.
    -William Hazlitt, 1819 (transcribed from The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux’ Stratagem: A Casebook, p. 36)

Who is not familiar with George Farquhar? the fine gentleman, the dramatist, the wit, the ‘most amorous of his sex’ as he himself called himself.
    -J.T. Merydew, 1888 (from remarks made in Volume I of Love Letters of Famous Men and Women..., p. 1)

Farquhar introduced us to the life of the inn, the market-place, and the manor house. He showed us the squire, the justice, the innkeeper, the highwayman, the recruiting sergeant, the charitable lady, the country belle, the chambermaid, and half a score of excellent rustic types. He introduced the picaresque element into English comedy, along with a note of sincere and original observation.[…] Farquhar reduced wit within something like the limits of nature, subordinating it to humour, and giving it, at the same time, an accent, all his own, of unforced, buoyant gaiety.
    -William Archer, 1905 (as printed in The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux’ Stratagem: A Casebook, p. 48)
 
Farquhar brings much of London manners into the country, in the train of his captains and beaux. But he finds so much there that is new and fresh that comedy of manners is completely sunk into a new something that, by contrast, might well be called comedy of life.
    -Louis A. Strauss, 1914 (from the introduction to A Discourse upon Comedy, The Recruiting Officer, and The Beaux' Stratagem, p. xlvi)


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