In this synopsis certain points are to be noted. First, Adam and Eve participate in the treatment whereas they do not in the York and Towneley versions. Only in the Ludus Coventria does even Adam appear and that is in a brief passage at the beginning of the play. Secondly the features italicized in the above epitome are not based upon anything in the Bible text.1 Such are (1) Cain's statement that he has abundant grain; (2) that it would be a pity to burn good corn; (3) the hope he expresses for worldly benefit from his tithe; (4) the visible sign that the offering of Abel is accepted; (5) Cain's expression of shame and envy; (6) his diatribe against Abel stressing in each case three points: Abel has surpassed him in renown; he shall pay; he shall die; and finally (7) the lamentation of Adam and Eve, including Eve's blaming it all on her original transgression. In the features enumerated stress is to be laid not on chance verbal resemblances in the text but on the ideas and motives involved. In occasional passages the Viel Testament is even closer to the Chester plays than Greban, but such additional resemblances only serve to further illustrate the French tradition. It is difficult to escape the feeling that in the general management of certain scenes and episodes, the structure of individual plays, lies the strongest reason, however strong that may be, for assuming the presence of French influence in the Chester cycle.

In the present discussion an effort has been made to examine the evidence impartially and to avoid starting with a conviction and trying to establish it. Even now I should be the last to assume that the question had been settled by this examination. I do not think French

On the theme in general, see Emerson, O. F., "Legends of Cain, Especially in Old and Middle English," PMLA, XXI (1906), 831-929.

An illustration is Cain's invitation to Abel to accompany him to the fields. The form which this takes in the Chester play is closely paralleled by the same speech in the Viel Testament, which corresponds more closely to the English version than Greban does and much more so than any of the other English cycles. York is defective at this point (two leaves of the MS. are missing). Towneley and the Ludus Coventriæ have no such speech; Cain slays Abel on the spot. So, too, does he in the narrative version in the Cursor Mundi. The Viel Testament agrees with the Chester passage in the reason given for going, in the tone of the request, and even verbally:

come forth. brother, with me thou

muste goe *

into the feild a lyttle here froe,

I haue an Arend to saye.

Il fault aller Ung peu aux champs et entre nous De noz necessitez parler.

(*thou muste goe is the reading of three MSS.)

influence has been "proved"; I merely consider it probable. Briefly, it seems most in accordance with the evidence to believe that somewhere in the development of the Chester cycle the influence of the French dramatic tradition was felt.

THE ORIGINALITY OF WILLIAM WYCHERLEY

T

GEORGE B. CHURCHILL

Professor of English Literature, Amherst College

O the student of English society in the Restoration period, as to the student of the dramatic art, the plays of William Wycherley offer a material of peculiar interest and value. When Wycherley's first comedy was presented, a decade had passed since the restoration of the monarchy and the reopening of the theaters. The advent of Charles II had brought to England a court deeply inoculated with French manners and French standards of life. The ordered elegance of French society had captivated the Englishman of Charles's train, and he introduced it, at least as an ideal, into England, when he had once more a court of his own. But there were some things both in his own nature and in that of the Frenchman of which he was not fully aware. He did not realize that social satisfactions could never conquer or suppress the clamor of his nature for the satisfactions of the individual. It is extremely doubtful if the Englishman of Charles's court ever had any clear vision of society as an organization whose laws profoundly modify the norms and standards of the individual, an organization whose demands not seldom rise into a sphere where the common sense and the social judgment become almost, if not quite, a moral law.

By the beginning of the seventies it was plain how far the admiration of the English court for what was French had gone in the way of actual assimilation, and how far it remained truly English. It was a society highly self-conscious and interested in nothing so much as itself. Certain very definite ideals of social intercourse, the admiration of witty converse, of fidelity to social conventions, of savoir-vivre, the love of ease and gaiety and glitter, testify to the lasting influence of France. But it had already proved to itself, and more, it had come to protest openly with a certain satisfaction, that it was not French. It had not only largely cast off the imitation of externals-so that a Monsieur de Paris had become a ridiculous

figure, the butt of society and of comedy; it had flung away all the trammels of elegant speech and conduct, and revealed and flaunted the unashamed vulgarity of the Englishman given over to the pursuit of sensual gratification. ""Tis too bold for the French manners," wrote Voltaire of Wycherley's Country Wife. An audacious shamelessness is the characteristic that in 1671 chiefly distinguished the court of Charles from that of Louis XIV.

The development of an adequate self-expression in the drama, the establishment of a new comedy, was a process coincident in time with that by which English society had "found" itself. It was subject to the same influences and reached the same goal. As English society found its inspiration and model in French society, only to discover eventually that the ideal was wholly unfitted to its own true nature, so the Restoration comedy sought its model in the work of Molière, only to discover that the standards and purposes of Molière were quite different from its own. By 1668, in Etheredge's She Would If She Could, apart from some borrowing of material, and inspiration of the animation and ease of scene and dialogue, the influence of Molière is confined to the conception of a comedy whose sufficient subject and interest is "manners," the behavior of society as it is. Etheredge had no standards, social or moral, that differed from those of the society he portrayed. He had no share in Molière's conception of the sanative, rationalizing, ordering values of right social standards. "It is a heartless world he presents, and he laughs with an entire acquiescence in its point of view.” 1

The work of William Wycherley was subject to the same influences as those which molded the work of Etheredge. Like the latter, he had spent some years in France, and through his connection with the circle of the Hôtel de Rambouillet had become acquainted with the best that French society had to offer. He had had the opportunity to see the production of some of Molière's earlier work, and had made a close study of the Frenchman's later plays. He had shared intimately the life of the English court. But when in 1673 and 1675-62 he produced The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer, he presented a portrait and expression of English society in certain Macaulay, "Comic Dramatists of the Restoration."

1

'For the evidence for these dates, see the introduction to the author's forthcoming edition of Wycherley's plays, from which, with the permission of the publishers, Messrs. Heath & Co., much of the material of this paper is drawn.