Series Five:
Drama


No. 1


Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)


With an Introduction by

Charles H. Peake

and

a Bibliographical Note by

Philip R. Wikelund




The Augustan Reprint Society
July, 1948
Price: 75 cents

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GENERAL EDITORS

Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
Edward Niles Hooker, University of California, Los Angeles
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles


ASSISTANT EDITOR

W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan


ADVISORY EDITORS

Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington
Benjamin Boyce, University of Nebraska
Louis I. Bredvold, University of Michigan
Cleanth Brooks, Yale University
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Ernest Mossner, University of Texas
James Sutherland, Queen Mary College, London



Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author
by
Edwards Brothers, Inc.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.
1948

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INTRODUCTION

This reprint of Edward Moore's The Gamester makes available to students of eighteenth century literature a play which, whatever its intrinsic merits, is historically important both as a vehicle for a century of great actors and as a contribution to the development of middle-class tragedy which had considerable influence on the Continent. The Gamester was first presented at the Drury Lane Theatre February 7, 1753 with Garrick in the leading role, and ran for ten successive nights. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century it remained a popular stock piece--John Philip Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Barry, the Keans, Macready, and others having distinguished themselves in it--and in America from 1754 to 1875 it enjoyed even more performances than in England. (J.H. Caskey, The Life and Works of Edward Moore, 96-99). Moore's middle-class tragedy is the only really successful attempt to follow Lillo's decisive break with tradition in England in the eighteenth century. His background, like Lillo's, was humble, religious, and mercantile. The son of a dissenting pastor, Moore received his early education in dissenters' academies, and then served an apprenticeship to a London linen-draper. After a few years in Ireland as an agent for a merchant, Moore returned to London to join a partnership in the linen trade. The partnership was soon dissolved, and Moore turned to letters for a livelihood. Among his works are Fables for the Female Sex (1744) which went through three editions, The Foundling (1748), a successful comedy, and Gil Blas (1751), an unsuccessful comedy. In 1753, with encouragement and some assistance from Garrick, he produced The Gamester, upon which his reputation as a writer depends.

It is impossible, of course, to review here all the factors involved in the development of middle-class tragedy in England in the eighteenth century. However, certain aspects of that movement which concern Moore's immediate predecessors and which have not been adequately recognized might be mentioned briefly. Aside from Elizabethan and Jacobean attempts to give tragic expression to everyday human experience, historians have noted the efforts of Otway, Southerne, and Rowe to lower the social level of tragedy; but in this period middle-class problems and sentiments and domestic situations appear in numerous

tragedies, long-since forgotten, which in form, setting, and social level present no startling deviations from traditional standards. Little or no attention has been given to some of these obscure dramatists who in the midst of the Collier controversy attempted to illustrate in tragedy the arguments advanced in the third part of John Dennis's The Usefulness of the Stage, to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government, and to Religion (1698). Striving to demonstrate the usefulness of the stage, these avowed reformers produced essentially domestic tragedies, by treating such problems as filial obedience and marital fidelity in terms of orthodox theology. The argument that the stage can be an adjunct of the pulpit is widespread, and appears most explicitly in Hill's preface to his Fatal Extravagance (1721), sometimes regarded as the first middle-class tragedy in the eighteenth century, and in Lillo's dedication to George Barnwell (1731). The line from these obscure dramatists at the turn of the century to Lillo is direct and clear. Of these forgotten plays we can note here only Fatal Friendship (1698) by Mrs. Catherine Trotter whom John Hughes hailed as "the first of stage-reformers"

(To the Author of Fatal Friendship, a Tragedy), an unquestionably domestic tragedy inculcating a theological "lesson". To this play, which was acted with "great applause" (Biographica Dramatica, 107), Aaron Hill was, I am convinced, considerably indebted for his Fatal Extravagance, which is, in turn, one of the sources of The Gamester.

In the early eighteenth century, then, there is clearly discernible a two-fold tendency toward middle-class tragedy which reaches its fullest expression in Lillo: the desire to lower the social level of the characters in order to make the tragedy more moving; and the desire to defend the stage by demonstrating its religious and moral utility. In his prologue to The Fair Penitent (l703), Rowe gave expression to the first: the "fate of kings and empires", he argues, is too remote to engage our feelings, for "we ne'er can pity that we ne'er can share"; therefore he offers "a melancholy tale of private woes". In his prologue, Lillo repeats this idea, but in his dedication he shows himself primarily concerned with the second tendency. Specifically challenging those "who deny the lawfulness of the stage", he argues that "the more extensively useful the moral of any tragedy is, the more excellent that piece must be of its kind"; the generality of mankind is more liable to vice than are kings; therefore "plays founded on moral tales in private life may be of admirable use... by stifling vice in its first principles". Dramatists who were concerned only or primarily with the first of these tendencies (the emotional effect), produced domestic or pseudo-domestic tragedies in the manner of Otway and Rowe. But those who stressed the second (moral and religious utility), seeking practical themes of widespread applicability, quite logically moved toward genuine middle-class tragedy. Thus Hill's Fatal Extravagance is concerned with the "vice" of gambling; while Charles Johnson's Caelia, or The Perjur'd Lover (1732) attacks fashionable libertinism of the day, telling the story which Richardson was later to retell in seven ponderous volumes. In Caelia the religious rationalization of the tragic action is subdued, Johnson apparently preferring to stress the social and moral aspects of his subject, and to this end he resolutely refused to expunge or modify the boldly realistic brothel scenes, against which a fastidious audience had protested.

A comparison of The Gamester with its predecessor, Fatal Extravagance, reflects certain developments in the intellectual background of the first half of the eighteenth century. Hill anticipated Lillo in repeating Rowe's argument for lowering the social level of tragedy and in stating vigorously his desire to defend the stage by demonstrating its religious and moral utility. An admirer of Dennis's critical writings, Hill repeats Dennis's argument that the stage can affect those whom the pulpit falls to reach, and he offers his play

as proof that "sound and useful instruction may be drawn from the Theatre", challenging the enemies of the stage to test his play "by the rules of religion and virtue" (Preface). Taking a "hint", as he says, from A Yorkshire Tragedy, Hill endeavored to show the "private sorrows" that result from gaming.

At the opening of the play, the hero, having gambled away his fortune, faces poverty. His friend who signed his bond is in jail and a kindly uncle has failed to secure the needed relief. In a fit of passion growing out of despair, the hero kills the villainous creditor, and decides to poison his (the hero's) wife and children, and then stab himself. In his dying moments he learns that the uncle has substituted a harmless cordial for the poison and that a long-lost brother has died leaving him a fortune. This bare outline gives no indication of Hill's careful theological rationalization of character and plot which he promised in his preface. Hill incorporated in his play the teachings of orthodox divines; there is nothing 'revolutionary' in his analytical presentation of human nature. The theological significance of Hill's play has not, to my knowledge, been recognized; thematic passages tend to be dismissed as tiresome and gratuitous moralizing and the plot is often regarded as empty melodrama or the representation of some ambiguous 'fate'. It is in this deliberate theological rationalization of his materials that Hill owes most to Mrs. Trotter's domestic tragedy and that he differs significantly from Moore.

As with Hill and Lillo, Moore's desire to write a play with an extensively useful 'moral' led him to middle-class realism and prose. To attack the widespread fashion of gaming which he regarded as a "vice", Moore attempted to present "a natural picture" in language adapted "to the capacities and feelings of every part of the audience" (Preface, 1756). That he should have treated this social problem tragically is to be explained, perhaps, by his sources and by his religious background. He justified the "horror of its catastrophe" on the grounds that "so prevailing and destructive a vice as Gaming" warranted it. The Gamester has been justly credited with superior dramatic qualities in comparison with Hill's Fatal Extravagance,, but we might perhaps note briefly certain aspects of the two plays which reflect changes in the intellectual background. In both plays theological ideas are involved in the treatment of the fall of the

hero, partially in Moore's play, completely In Hill's. Not recognizing ideas common to early eighteenth century sermons, the modern reader may perhaps puzzle over the steadily increasing moral paralysis and despondency in Moore's hero, Beverly. Vice, preached the divines, beclouds the reason, leaving it progressively incapable of controlling the passions:

  Follies, if uncontroul'd, of every kind,
  Grow into passions, and subdue the mind. (V, 4)

Further each commission of sin causes progressive loss of grace, without which man cannot act rightly. In prison Beverly is incapable of prayer ("I cannot pray--Despair has laid his iron hand upon me, and seal'd me for perdition..."). However, a benevolent deity touches him with the finger of grace, enabling him to repent ("I wish'd for ease, a moment's ease, that cool repentance and contrition might soften vengeance"). He can now pray for mercy and in his dying moments is vouchsafed assurance of forgiveness ("Yet Heaven is gracious--I ask'd for hope, as the bright presage of forgiveness, and like a light, blazing thro' darkness, it came and chear'd me...").

In this aspect Moore is working along the lines laid down by Hill, but there is a significant difference, attributable perhaps to the weakening of orthodox theology and the spreading influence of the Shaftesburian school of ethical theorists. In the older theology, man's progressive loss of grace correspondingly releases his natural propensity for evil, and working in these concepts neither Hill nor Lillo hesitated to show his hero descending to murder. Moore, influenced perhaps by the ethical sentiments of the day, compromised his theological concepts and permitted his hero no really evil act (excluding of course his suicide), and stressed instead Beverly's mistaken trust in Stukely, who is, as Elton has pointed out, a "Mandevillian man" (Survey of English Literature: 1730-1760, I, 329-30).

There is another significant difference between the two plays which reflects the development of religious thought in the first half of the eighteenth century. Commenting on the too-late arrival of the news of the uncle's death, Elton remarks that "this too-lateness... which is in the nature of an accident, is a common and mechanical device of Georgian tragedy" (I, 330). Hill employed the device, the good news coming as a complete surprise, but he made it part of a carefully ordered plot designed to reveal the direct intervention and mysterious workings of a particular Providence, making characterization and action consistent, and giving his play a precise theological significance. In Moore's day, however, under the impact of deism and the developing rationalism, the concept of a particular Providence in orthodox theology had become so subtilized that the older idea of direct and striking intervention in human affairs all but disappeared. By mid-eighteenth century, deity, as Leslie Stephen points out, "appears under the colourless shape of Providence--a word which may be taken to imply a remote divine superintendence, without admitting an actual divine interference" (History of English Thought In the Eighteenth Century, II, 336). The references to Providence in Moore's play are of this type, pious labels on prudential morality. Moore carefully avoids the various devices employed by Hill to indicate direct divine intervention; consequently the late arrival of the news of the uncle's death (which was expected throughout the play) is without special meaning, and serves only as a theatrical device intended to heighten the emotional effect. The Gamester, then, is a clear reflection of the state of English thought in the middle of the eighteenth century, in which a declining theology becomes suffused with the ideas and sentiments of the moralists of the age.

Despite the popularity of their plays, neither Lillo nor Moore inspired any significant followers in England. On the Continent, however, their influence was considerable. In his introduction to his edition of The London Merchant, A.W. Ward traces Lillo's influence on the Continent, and Caskey gives a detailed account of Moore's (119-134). The Gamester was translated into German, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian. It was first acted at Breslau in 1754 and retained its stage popularity for more than two decades. A German translation appeared in 1754, and for more than twenty years numerous editions and translations continued to appear. In France, Diderot admired the play and translated it in 1760 (not published until 1819); Saurin's translation and adaptation (1767) proved popular on the French stage (he later provided an alternate happy ending which was frequently played).

The Gamester is reproduced, with permission, from a copy owned by the University of Michigan.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The first edition of Moore's The Gamester appeared in 1753 shortly after the opening of Garrick's performance of the play on February 7. This edition is in many respects a good text; it has seemed desirable for several reasons, however, to reprint this work from the 1756 edition of Poems, Fables, and Plays (often referred to as the "Collected Works"). The 1756 text often corrects that of 1753 and is generally superior to later printings; it contains passages and improved readings not present in other editions; it aims at formal correctness, employing classical scene division; as a "Works" edition it exhibits excellent editorial and typographical treatment; it enjoys a superior general readability advantageous to classroom use; and, finally, it contains Moore's vindicatory preface, which, as far as an examination of available copies shows, does not appear in other editions. Inasmuch as the 1756 printing is somewhat late, standing between the fourth and fifth editions of the play, a brief bibliographical account of The Gamester is offered.

The play was printed separately many times in the eighteenth century. The first edition, in the University of Michigan copy, bears the title: THE / GAMESTER. / A / TRAGEDY. / As it is Acted at the / Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane. / [rule] / ornament / [rule] / LONDON: / Printed for R. FRANCKLIN, in Russel-Street, / Covent-Garden; and Sold by R. DODSLEY, / in Pall-Mall. M.DCC.LIII. / The anonymity of the titlepage is half-hearted, for the dedication to Henry Pelham is signed "Edw. Moore." A prologue written by Garrick, an epilogue, and the cast of the original performance

precede the eighty-four page text. Francklin and Dodsley brought out a second edition in the same year and a fourth edition in 1755; presumably a third edition had been issued in the interim. In 1771 a fifth and a sixth edition appeared, and in 1776 another London edition came out. In 1784 two more editions made an appearance, the first printed for R. Butters (John H. Caskey, The Life and Works of Edward Moore, Yale Studies in English, LXXV [New Haven, 1927], p. 174), the second printed for a group of four booksellers--Thomas Davies, W. Nicoll, Samuel Bladon, and John Bew. The same combination of booksellers, with W. Lowndes taking the place of Davies, issued in 1789 an inferior reprinting of their 1784 text. The editions of 1784 and 1789 are interesting because they identify by inverted commas the cuts made in contemporary stage versions. Before the end of the century three editions were printed outside London: two Dublin imprints of 1763 and 1783, and an American imprint of 1791 by Henry Taylor in Philadelphia.

In addition to these separate publications, The Gamester was included in two collections of Moore's works. The 1756 edition has already been noticed. THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF Mr. Edward Moore, as the 1788 titlepage describes the volume, was issued by the Lowndes-Nicoll-Bladon-Bew group and was actually an assembled text made up of the 1784 printing of The Gamester, the 1786 The Foundling, and the 1788 Gil Blas.

The play was a favorite in many popular dramatic collections of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century; it appeared in Bell's British Theatre in 1776 and thereafter, in Mrs. Inchbald's The British Theatre in 1808, in Dibdin's London Theatre in 1815, and in Cumberland's British Theatre in 1826. According to Caskey and other sources the play was thus reprinted more than a dozen times by the middle of the nineteenth century. Since then it has declined in favor and has seldom been reprinted, even in textbook anthologies covering representative literature of the period.

The 1756 text of the play and the plates from the Davies-Nicoll-Bladon-Bew 1784 edition have been reproduced through the cooperation of the University of Michigan Library from copies of these editions in its possession. Because of its lack of significance, the dedication to Henry Pelham has not been reprinted.

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THE

 GAMESTER.

A

 TRAGEDY.

As it is Acted at the

 THEATRE-ROYAL

IN

 DRURY-LANE.

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Mrs. SIDDONS and Mr. KEMBLE as
Mr. & Mrs. Beverley Act 5. Sc. 4.
Bev. O! for a few short Moments to tell you how my
Heart bleeds for you.

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PREFACE.

It having been objected to this tragedy, that its language is prose, and its catastrophe too horrible, I shall entreat the reader's patience for a minute, that I may say a word or two to these objections.

The play of the Gamester was intended to be a natural picture of that kind of life, of which all men are judges; and as it struck at a vice so universally prevailing, it was thought proper to adapt its language to the capacities and feelings of every part of the audience: that as some of its characters were of no higher rank than Sharpers, it was imagined that (whatever good company they may find admittance to in the world) their speaking blank verse upon the stage would be unnatural, if not ridiculous. But though the more elevated characters also speak prose, the judicious reader will observe, that it is a species of prose which differs very little from verse: in many of the most animated scenes, I can truly say, that I often found it a much greater difficulty to avoid, than to write, measure. I shall only add, in answer to this objection, that I hoped to be more interesting, by being more natural; and the event, as far as I have been a witness of it, has more than answered my expectations.

As to the other objection, the horror of its catastrophe, if it be considered simply what that catastrophe is, and compared with those of other tragedies, I should humbly presume that the working it up to any uncommon degree of horror, is the merit of the play, and not its reproach. Nor should so prevailing and destructive a vice as Gaming be attacked upon the theatre, without impressing upon the imagination all the horrors that may attend it.

I shall detain the reader no longer than to inform him, that I am indebted for many of the most popular passages in this play to the inimitable performer, who, in the character of the Gamester, exceeded every idea I had conceived of it in the writing.

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PROLOGUE.

Written and spoken by Mr. GARRICK.

heart in Britain grieve?
Th' attempt, though wild, would not in vain be made,
If every honest hand would lend its aid.

Dramatis Personae.

Beverley, Mr. Garrick. Lewson, Mr. Mossop. Stukely, Mr. Davies. Jarvis, Mr. Berry. Bates, Mr. Burton. Dawson, Mr. Blakes. Waiter, Mr. Ackman.


Mrs. Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard. Charlotte, Miss. Haughton. Lucy, Mrs. Price.

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THE

 GAMESTER.

A

 TRAGEDY.

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BE comforted, my dear; all may be well yet. And now, methinks, the lodgings begin to look with another face. O sister! sister! if these were all my hardships; if all I had to complain of were no more than quitting my house, servants, equipage and show, your pity would be weakness.

Char. Is poverty nothing then?

Mrs. Bev. Nothing in the world, if it affected only Me. While we had a fortune, I was the happiest of the rich: and now 'tis gone, give me but a bare subsistance, and my husband's smiles, and I'll be the happiest of the poor. To Me now these lodgings want nothing but their master. Why d'you look so at me?

Char. That I may hate my brother.

Mrs. Bev. Don't talk so, Charlotte.

Char. Has he not undone you? Oh! this pernicious vice of gaming! But methinks his usual hours of four or five in the morning might have contented him; 'twas misery enough to wake for him till then: need he have staid out all night? I shall learn to detest him.

Mrs. Bev. Not for the first fault. He never slept from me before.

Char. Slept from you! No, no; his nights have nothing to do with sleep. How has this one vice driven him from every virtue! nay, from his affections too!—The time was, sister—

Mrs. Bev. And is. I have no fear of his affections. Would I knew that he were safe!

Char. From ruin and his companions. But that's impossible. His poor little boy too! What must become of Him?

Mrs. Bev. Why, want shall teach him industry. From his father's mistakes he shall learn prudence, and from his mother's resignation, patience. Poverty has no such terrors in it as you imagine. There's no condition of life, sickness and pain excepted, where happiness is excluded. The needy peasant, who rises early to his labour, enjoys more welcome rest at night for't. His bread is sweeter to him; his home happier; his family dearer; his enjoyments surer. The sun that rouses him in the morning, sets in the evening to release him. All situations have their comforts, if sweet contentment dwell in the heart. But my poor Beverley has none. The thought of having ruined those he loves, is misery for ever to him. Would I could ease his mind of That!

Char. If He alone were ruined, 'twere just he should be punished. He is my brother, 'tis true; but when I think of what he has done; of the fortune You brought him; of his own large estate too, squandered away upon this vilest of passions, and among the vilest of wretches! O! I have no patience! My own little fortune is untouched, he says: would I were sure on't!

Mrs. Bev. And so you may; 'twould be a sin to doubt it.

Char. I will be sure on't. 'Twas madness in me to give it to his management. But I'll demand it from him this morning. I have a melancholy occasion for't.

Mrs. Bev. What occasion?

Char. To support a sister.

Mrs. Bev. No; I have no need on't. Take it, and reward a lover with it. The generous Lewson deserves much more. Why won't you make him happy?

Char. Because my sister's miserable.

Mrs. Bev. You must not think so. I have my jewels left yet. I'll sell them to supply our wants; and when all's gone these hands shall toil for our support. The poor should be industrious—Why those tears, Charlotte?

Char. They flow in pity for you.

Mrs. Bev. All may be well yet. When he has nothing to lose, I shall fetter him in these arms again; and then what is it to be poor?

Char. Cure him but of this destructive passion, and my uncle's death may retrieve all yet.

Mrs. Bev. Ay, Charlotte, could we cure him. But the disease of play admits no cure but poverty; and the loss of another fortune would but encrease his shame and his affliction. Will Mr. Lewson call this morning?

Char. He said so last night. He gave me hints too, that he had suspicions of our friend Stukely.

Mrs. Bev. Not of treachery to your Brother? That he loves play I know; but surely he is honest.

Char. He would fain be thought so; therefore I doubt him. Honesty needs no pains to set itself off.

Mrs. Bev. What now, Lucy?

Lucy. Your old steward, madam. I had not the heart to deny him admittance, the good old man begged so hard for it.

Mrs. Bev. Is this well, Jarvis? I desired you to avoid me.

Jar. Did you, madam? I am an old man, and had forgot. Perhaps too you forbad my tears; but I am old, madam, and age will be forgetful.

Mrs. Bev. The faithful creature! how he moves me!

Char. Not to have seen him had been cruelty.

Jar. I have forgot these apartments too. I remember none such in my young master's house; and yet I have lived in't these five and twenty years. His good father would not have dismissed me.

Mrs. Bev. He had no reason, Jarvis.

Jar. I was faithful to him while he lived, and when he died, he bequeathed me to his son. I have been faithful to Him too.

Mrs. Bev. I know it, I know it, Jarvis.

Char. We both know it.

Jar. I am an old man, madam, and have not a long time to live. I asked but to have died with him, and he dismissed me.

Mrs. Bev. Prithee no more of this! 'Twas his poverty that dismissed you.

Jar. Is he indeed so poor then? Oh! he was the joy of my old heart. But must his creditors have all? And have they sold his house too? His father built it when He

was but a prating boy. The times I have carried him in these arms! And, Jarvis, says he, when a beggar has asked charity of me, why should people be poor? You shan't be poor, Jarvis; if I was a king, nobody should be poor. Yet He is poor. And then he was so brave!—O, he was a brave little boy! And yet so merciful, he'd not have killed the gnat that stung him.

Mrs. Bev. Speak to him, Charlotte; for I cannot.

Char. When I have wiped my eyes.

Jar. I have a little money, madam; it might have been more, but I have loved the poor. All that I have is yours.

Mrs. Bev. No, Jarvis; we have enough yet. I thank you though, and will deserve your goodness.

Jar. But shall I see my master? And will he let me attend him in his distresses? I'll be no expence to him: and 'twill kill me to be refused. Where is he, madam?

Mrs. Bev. Not at home, Jarvis. You shall see him another time.

Char. To-morrow, or the next day. O, Jarvis! what a change is here!

Jar. A change indeed, madam! My old heart akes at it. And yet methinks—But here's somebody coming.

Lucy. Mr. Stukely, Madam.

Stu. Good morning to you, Ladies. Mr. Jarvis, your servant. Where's my friend, madam?

Mrs. Bev. I should have asked that question of You. Have not you seen him to-day?

Stu. No, madam.

Char. Nor last night?

Stu. Last night! Did not he come home then?

Mrs. Bev. No. Were not you together?

Stu. At the beginning of the evening; but not since. Where can he have staid?

Char. You call yourself his friend, Sir; why do you encourage him in this madness of gaming?

Stu. You have asked me that question before, madam; and I told you my concern was that I could not save him. Mr. Beverley is a man, madam; and if the most friendly entreaties have no effect upon him, I have no other means. My purse has been his, even to the injury of my fortune. If That has been encouragement, I deserve censure; but I meant it to retrieve him.

Mrs. Bev. I don't doubt it, Sir; and I thank you. But where did you leave him last night?

Stu. At Wilson's, madam, if I ought to tell; in company I did not like. Possibly he may be there still. Mr. Jarvis knows the house, I believe.

Jar. Shall I go, madam?

Mrs. Bev. No; he may take it ill.

Char. He may go as from himself.

Stu. And if he pleases, madam, without naming Me. I am faulty myself, and should conceal the errors of a friend. But I can refuse nothing here.