The scene is London. Sir Timothy Treat-all, an old seditious knight, that keeps open house for Commonwealthsmen and true Blue Protestants, has disinherited his nephew, Tom Wilding, a town gallant and a Tory. Wilding is pursuing an intrigue with Lady Galliard, a wealthy widow, and also with Chariot, heiress to the rich Sir Nicholas Get-all, recently deceased. Lady Galliard is further hotly wooed by Sir Charles Meriwill, a young Tory, but she favours Wilding. Sir Charles is encouraged in his suit by his roystering uncle, Sir Anthony. Wilding introduces his mistress Diana to Sir Timothy as the heiress Charlot; and at an entertainment given by Sir Timothy, Charlot herself appears, disguised as a Northern lass, to watch the progress of Tom’s intrigue with the widow, who eventually yields to him. Sir Charles, none the less, backed by Sir Anthony, still persists, and after various passionate scenes forces her to consent to become his bride. Meanwhile Sir Timothy has arranged a marriage with Diana, whom he firmly believes to be Charlot. During the progress of the entertainment he is visited by a strange nobleman and his retinue, who offer him the crown of Poland and great honours. That night, however, his house is rifled by thieves and his money and papers stolen. He himself is pinioned hand and foot, the foreign lord bound fast in his own room, and all his followers secured. Sir Timothy having married Diana discovers that she is none other than his nephew’s mistress, and, moreover, the Polish ambassador was Tom in masquerade, the attendants and burglars his friends, who by obtaining his treasonable correspondence are able effectually to silence the old knight. Wilding is united to Charlot, whilst Lady Galliard weds Charles Meriwill.

SOURCE.

The City Heiress is most manifestly borrowed from two main sources. Sir Anthony Meriwill and Charles are Durazzo and Caldoro from Massinger’s The Guardian (licensed 31 October, 1633, 8vo, 1655). Mrs. Behn has transferred to her play even small details and touches. The burglary, that most wonderful of all burglaries, is taken and improved from Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters (4to, 1608), Act ii, where Sir Bounteous Progress is robbed by Dick Folly-Wit, his grandson, in precisely the same way as Sir Timothy is choused by Tom. On 4 February, 1715, Charles Johnson produced at Drury Lane his The Country Lasses; or, The Custom of the Manor, a rifacimento of Fletcher’s The Custom of the Country and The City Heiress. It is a well-written, lively enough comedy, but very weak and anaemic withal when compared to Mrs. Behn. B. G. Stephenson, in his vivacious libretto to Cellier’s tuneful opera, Dorothy, produced at the Gaiety Theatre, 25 September, 1886, has made great use of Johnson’s play, especially Act i, where the gallants meet the two ladies disguised as country girls; the duel scenes of Act v; and the pseudo-burglary of Act iii. He even gives his comic sheriff’s officer the name of Lurcher, who in Johnson is the rackety nephew that tricks his hospitable old uncle, Sir John English. The Biographia Dramatica states that Mrs. Behn ‘introduced into this play (The City Heiress) a great part of the Inner Temple Masque by Middleton.’ This charge is absolutely unfounded, and it would not be uninteresting to know how so complete an error arose. The two have nothing in common. It must be allowed that Mrs. Behn has displayed such wit and humour as amply to justify her plagiarisms. Sir Timothy Treat-all himself is, of course, Shaftesbury almost without disguise. There are a thousand telling hits at the President of the Council and his vices. He was also bitterly satirized in many other plays. In Nevil Payne’s The Siege of Constantinople (1675) he appears as The Chancellor; 1680 in Otway’s Shakespearean cento cum bastard classicism Caius Marius some very plain traits can be recognized in the grim Marius senior; in Southerne’s The Loyal Brother (1682) Ismael, a villainous favourite; in Venice Preserved (1682) the lecherous Antonio; in the same year Banks caricatured him as a quite unhistorical Cardinal Wolsey, Virtue Betray’d; or, Anna Bullen; in Crowne’s mordant City Politics (1683) the Podesta of a most un-Italian Naples; the following year Arius the heresiarch in Lee’s Constantine the Great; in the operatic Albion and Albanius (1685), Dryden does not spare even physical infirmities and disease with the crudest yet cruellest exhibition, and five years later he attacked his old enemy once more as Benducar in that great tragedy Don Sebastian.

THEATRICAL HISTORY.

The City Heiress; or, Sir Timothy Treat-all was produced at the Duke’s House, Dorset Garden, in 1682. Downes specially mentions it as having been ‘well acted’, and it was indeed an ‘all star’ cast. It had a tremendous ovation but in spite of its great merit did not become a stock play, probably owing to the intensely political nature of much of its satirical wit, a feature necessarily ephemeral. It seems, however, to have been presented from time to time, and there was a notable revival on 10 July, 1707, at the Haymarket, for the benefit of Husband and Pack. Sir Timothy was played by Cross; Tom Wilding, Mills; Sir Anthony, Bullock; Foppington, Pack; Lady Galliard, Mrs. Bradshaw; Charlot, Mrs. Bicknall; Clacket, Mrs. Powell. It met with a very favourable reception.

To the Right Honourable Henry Earl of Arundel, and Lord Mowbray.

MY LORD,

’.is long that I have with great impatience waited some opportunity to declare my infinite Respect to your Lordship, coming, I may say, into the World with a Veneration for your Illustrious Family, and being brought up with continual Praises of the Renowned Actions of your glorious Ancestors, both in War and Peace, so famous over the Christian World for their Vertue, Piety, and Learning, their elevated Birth, and greatness of Courage, and of whom all our English History are full of the Wonders of their Lives: A Family of so Ancient Nobility, and from whom so many Heroes have proceeded to bless and serve their King and Country, that all Ages and all Nations mention ‘em even with Adoration: My self have been in this our Age an Eye and Ear-witness, with what Transports of Joy, with what unusual Respect and Ceremony, above what we pay to Mankind, the very Name of the Great Howards of Norfolk and Arundel, have been celebrated on Foreign Shores! And when any one of your Illustrious Family have pass’d the Streets, the People throng’d to praise and bless him as soon as his Name has been made known to the glad Croud. This I have seen with a Joy that became a true English heart, (who truly venerate its brave Country-men) and joyn’d my dutiful Respects and Praises with the most devout; but never had the happiness yet of any opportunity to express particularly that Admiration I have and ever had for your Lordship and your Great Family. Still, I say, I did admire you, still I wish’d and pray’d for you; ‘twas all I cou’d or durst: But, as my Esteem for your Lordship daily increased with my Judgment, so nothing cou’d bring it to a more absolute height and perfection, than to observe in these troublesome times, this Age of Lying, Peaching, and Swearing with what noble Prudence, what steadiness of Mind, what Loyalty and Conduct you have evaded the Snare, that ‘twas to be fear’d was laid for all the Good, the Brave, and Loyal, for all that truly lov’d our best of Kings and this distracted Country. A thousand times I have wept for fear that Impudence and Malice wou’d extend so far as to stain your Noble and ever-Loyal Family with its unavoidable Imputatious; and as often for joy, to see how undauntedly both the Illustrions Duke your Father, and your Self, stem’d the raging Torrent that threatned, with yours, the ruin of the King and Kingdom; all which had not power to shake your Constancy or Loyalty: for which, may Heaven and Earth reward and bless you; the noble Examples to thousands of failing hearts, who from so great a President of Loyalty, became confirm’d. May Heaven and Earth bless you for your pious and resolute bravery of Mind, and Heroick honesty, when you cry’d, Not Guilty; that you durst, like your great self, speak Conscientious Truths in a Juncto so vitious, when Truth and Innocence was criminal: and I doubt not but the Soul of that great Sufferer bows down from Heaven in gratitude for that noble service done it. All these and a thousand marks you give of daily growing Greatness; every day produces to those like me, curious to learn the story of your Life and Actions, something that even adds a Lustre to your great Name, which one wou’d think you’d be made no more splendid: some new Goodness, some new act of Loyalty or Courage, comes out to cheer the World and those that admire you. Nor wou’d I be the last of those that dayly congratulate and celebrate your rising Glory; nor durst I any other way approach you with it, but this humble one, which carries some Excuse along with it.

Proud of the opportunity then, I most humbly beg your Lordships’ patronage of a Comedy, which has nothing to defend it, but the Honour it begs, and nothing to deserve that Honour, but its being in every part true Tory! Loyal all-over! except one Knave, which I hope no body will take to himself; or if he do, I must e’en say with Hamlet,

—Then let the strucken Deer go weep—

It has the luck to be well received in the Town; which (not for my Vanity) pleases me, but that thereby I find Honesty begins to come in fashion again, when Loyalty is approv’d, and Whigism becomes a Jest where’er ‘tis met with. And, no doubt on’t, so long as the Royal Cause has such Patrons as your Lordship, such vigorous and noble Supporters, his Majesty will be great, secure and quiet, the Nation flourishing and happy, and seditious Fools and Knaves that have so long disturb’d the Peace and Tranquility of the World, will become the business and sport of Comedy, and at last the scorn of that Rabble that fondly and blindly worshipt ‘em; and whom nothing can so well convince as plain Demonstration, which is ever more powerful and prevailent than Precept, or even Preaching it self. If this have edifi’d effectual, ‘tis all I wish; and that your Lordship will be pleas’d to accept the humble Offering, is all I beg, and the greatest Glory I care shou’d be done,

MY LORD, Your Lordship’s most Humble and most Obedient Servant, A. BEHN.

THE CITY HEIRESS; or, Sir Timothy Treat-all.

PROLOGUE,

Written by Mr. Otway, Spoken by Mrs. Barry.

How vain have proved the Labours of the Stage, In striving to reclaim a vitious Age! Poets may write the Mischief to impeach, You care as little what the Poets teach, As you regard at Church what Parsons preach. But where such Follies, and such Vices reign, What honest Pen has Patience to refrain? At Church, in Pews, ye most devoutly snore And here, got dully drunk, ye come to roar: Ye go to Church to glout, and ogle there, And come to meet more loud convenient here. With equal Zeal ye honour either Place, And run so very evenly your Race, Y’ improve in Wit just as you do in Grace. It must be so, some Daemon has possest Our Land, and we have never since been blest. Y’ have seen it all, or heard of its Renown, In Reverend Shape it staled about the Town, Six Yeomen tall attending on its Frown. Sometimes with humble Note and zealous Lore, ’.wou’d play the Apostolick Function o’er: But, Heaven have mercy on us when it swore. Whene’er it swore, to prove the Oaths were true, Out of its much at random Halters flew Round some unwary Neck, by Magick thrown, Though still the cunning Devil sav’d its own: For when the Inchantment could no longer last, The subtle Pug most dextrously uncas’d, Left awful Form for one more seeming pious, And in a moment vary’d to defy us; From silken Doctor home-spun Ananias: Left the leud Court, and did in City fix, Where still, by its old Arts, it plays new Tricks, And fills the Heads of Fools with Politicks. This Daemon lately drew in many a Guest, To part with zealous Guinea for—no Feast. Who, but the most incorrigible Fops, For ever doomed in dismal Cells, call’d Shops, To cheat and damn themselves to get their Livings, Wou’d lay sweet Money out in Sham-Thanksgivings? Sham-Plots you may have paid for o’er and o’er; But who e’er paid for a Sham-Treat before? Had you not better sent your Offerings all Hither to us, than Sequestrators Hall? I being your Steward, Justice had been done ye; I cou’d have entertain’d you worth your Money.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

MEN.

Sir Timothy Treat-all, an old seditious Knight, | that keeps open House for Commonwealthsmen | Mr. Nokes. and true blue Protestants, Uncle to T. | Wilding, | Tom Wilding, a Tory, his discarded Nephew, Mr. Bctterton. Sir Anthony Meriwill, an old Tory Knight of Mr. Lee. Devonshire, Sir Charles Meriwill, his Nephew, a Tory also, | in love with L. Galliard, and Friend to | Mr. Williams. Wilding, | Dresswell, a young Gentleman, Friend to Mr. Bowman. Wilding, Foppington, a Hanger-on on Wilding, Mr. Jevon. Jervice, Man to Sir Timothy. Laboir, Man to Tom Wilding. Boy, Page to Lady Galliard. Boy, Page to Diana. Guests, Footmen, Musick, &c.

WOMEN.

Lady Galliard, a rich City-Widow, in love with | Mrs. Barry. Wilding, | Charlot, The City-Heiress, in love with Wilding, Mrs. Butler. Diana, Mistress to Wilding, and kept by him, Mrs. Corror. Mrs. Clacket, a City Baud and Puritan, Mrs. Novice. Mrs. Closet, Woman to Lady Galliard, Mrs. Lee. Mrs. Sensure, Sir Timothy’s Housekeeper. Betty, Maid to Diana. Maid at Charlot’s lodging.

Act 5 — THE CITY HEIRESS; OR, SIR TIMOTHY TREAT-ALL.

ARGUMENT.