In a theatre, where every man may, if he will, express his
dissatisfaction, in defiance of _beaux-esprits, nobles_, or
_mousquetaires_, that which is dull will seldom be long fashionable:
"Cleomenes" was accordingly coldly received. Dryden published it with a
dedication to Lord Rochester, and the Life of Cleomenes prefixed, as
translated from Plutarch by Creech, that it might appear how false those
reports were, which imputed to him the composing a Jacobite play.
Omitting, for the present, Dryden's intermediate employments, I hasten
to close his dramatic career, by mentioning, that "Love Triumphant," his
last play, was acted in 1692 with very bad success. Those who look over
this piece, which is in truth one of the worst our author ever wrote,
can be at no loss to discover sufficient reason for its condemnation.
The comic part approaches to farce, and the tragic unites the wild and
unnatural changes and counter-changes of the Spanish tragedy, with the
involutions of unnatural and incestuous passion, which the British
audience has been always averse to admit as a legitimate subject of
dramatic pity or terror. But it cannot be supposed that Dryden received
the failure with anything like an admission of its justice. He was a
veteran foiled in the last of his theatrical trials of skill, and
retreated forever from the stage, with expressions which transferred the
blame from himself to his judges; for, in the dedication to James, the
fourth Earl of Salisbury, a relation of Lady Elizabeth, and connected
with the poet by a similarity of religious and political opinions, he
declares, that the characters of the persons in the drama are truly
drawn, the fable not injudiciously contrived, the changes of fortune not
unartfully managed, and the catastrophe happily introduced: thus
leaving, were the author's opinion to be admitted as decisive, no
grounds upon which the critics could ground their opposition.
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