_I like an Author that Reforms the Age; And keeps the right Decorum of the Stage: That always pleases by just Reasons Rule: But for a tedious Droll a Quibbling Fool, Who with low nauseous Baudry fills his Plays; Let him begone and on two Tressells raise Some_ Smithfield _Stage, where he may act his Pranks, And make_ Jack-puddings _speak to Mountebanks_.[401]
The _Relapse_ shall follow _Don Quixot_; upon the account of some Alliance between them. And because this _Author_ swaggers so much in his _Preface_, and seems to look big upon his Performance, I shall spend a few more thoughts than ordinary upon his _Play_, and examine it briefly in the _Fable_, the _Moral_, the _Characters_, _&c._ The Fable I take to be as follows.
Fashion _a Lewd, Prodigal, younger Brother; is reduced to extremity: Upon his arrival from his Travels, he meets with_ Coupler, _an old sharping Match-maker_; _This Man puts him upon a project of cheating his Elder Brother Lord_ Foplington, _of a rich Fortune_. _Young_ Fashion _being refused a Summ of Money by his Brother, goes into_ Couplers _Plot, bubbles Sir_ Tunbelly _of his Daughter, and makes himself Master of a fair Estate_.
From the Form and Constitution of the _Fable_, I observe
1st. That there is a _Misnommer_ in the Title. The _Play_ should not have been call'd the _Relapse, or Virtue in Danger_: _Lovelace_, and _Amanda_, from whose _Characters_ these Names are drawn, are Persons of Inferiour Consideration. _Lovelace_ sinks in the middle of the _Fourth_ Act, and we hear no more of him till towards the End of the _Fifth_, where he enters once more, but then 'tis as _Cato_ did the Senate house, only to go out again. And as for _Amanda_ she has nothing to do but to stand a shock of Courtship, and carry off her Virtue. This I confess is a great task in the _Play-house_, but no main matter in the _Play_.
The _Intrigue_, and the _Discovery_, the great Revolution and success, turns upon _Young Fashion_. He without Competition, is the Principal Person in the _Comedy_. And therefore the _Younger Brother_, or the _Fortunate Cheat_, had been much a more proper Name. Now when a _Poet_ can't rig out a _Title Page_, 'tis but a bad sign of his holding out to the _Epilogue_.