[220px-John_Vanbrugh]

John Vanbrugh (1664–1726),author of The Relapse

The Relapse,or,Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by
John Vanbrugh.The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift,or,
The Fool in Fashion.

In Cibber's Love's Last Shift,a free-living Restoration rake is brought to
repentance and reform by the ruses of his wife,while in The Relapse,the rake
succumbs again to temptation and has a new love affair.His virtuous wife is
also subjected to a determined seduction attempt,and resists with difficulty.

Vanbrugh planned The Relapse around particular actors at Drury Lane,writing
their stage habits,public reputations,and personal relationships into the
text.One such actor was Colley Cibber himself,who played the luxuriant fop
Lord Foppington in both Love's Last Shift and The Relapse.However,Vanbrugh's
artistic plans were threatened by a cutthroat struggle between London's two
theatre companies,each of which was "seducing" actors from the other.The
Relapse came close to being not produced at all,but the successful performance
that was eventually achieved in November 1696 vindicated Vanbrugh's intentions,
and saved the company from bankruptcy as well.

Unlike Love's Last Shift,which never again performed after the 1690s,The
Relapse has retained its audience appeal.In the 18th century,however,its
tolerant attitude towards actual and attempted adultery gradually became
unacceptable to public opinion,and the original play was for a century
replaced on the stage by Sheridan's moralised version A Trip to Scarborough
(1777).On the modern stage,The Relapse has been established as one of the
most popular Restoration comedies,valued for Vanbrugh's light,throwaway wit^
[1] and the consummate acting part of Lord Foppington,a burlesque character
with a dark side.^[2]

Contents

The Relapse as sequelEdit

Sexual ideologyEdit

Love's Last Shift can be seen as an early sign of Cibber's sensitivity to
shifts of public opinion,which was to be useful to him in his later career as
manager at Drury Lane (see Colley Cibber).In the 1690s,the economic and
political power balance of the nation tilted from the aristocracy towards the
middle class after the Glorious Revolution of 1688,and middle-class values of
religion,morality,and gender roles became more dominant,not least in
attitudes to the stage.Love's Last Shift is one of the first illustrations of
a massive shift in audience taste,away from the analytic bent and sexual
frankness of Restoration comedy and towards the conservative certainties and
gender role backlash of exemplary or sentimental comedy.The play illustrates
Cibber's opportunism at a moment in time before the change was assured:
fearless of self-contradiction,he puts something into his first play to please
every section of the audience,combining the old outspokenness with the new
preachiness.The way Vanbrugh,in his turn,allows the reformed rake to relapse
quite cheerfully,and has the only preaching in the play come from the
comically corrupt parson of "Fatgoose Living",has made some early 20th-century
critics refer to The Relapse as the last of the true Restoration comedies.^[3]
However,Vanbrugh's play is also affected by the taste of the 1690s,and
compared to a play like the courtier William Wycherley's The Country Wife of 20
years earlier,with its celebration of predatory aristocratic masculinity,The
Relapse contains quite a few moments of morality and uplift.In fact it has a
kind of parallel structure to Love's Last Shift: in the climactic scene of
Cibber's play,Amanda's virtue reforms her husband,and in the corresponding
scene of The Relapse,it reforms her admirer Worthy.Such moments have not done
the play any favours with modern critics.

Love's Last Shift plotEdit

Love's Last Shift is the story of a last "shift" or trick that a virtuous wife,
Amanda,is driven to reform and retain her rakish husband Loveless.Loveless
has been away for ten years,dividing his time between the brothel and the
bottle,and no longer recognises his wife when he returns to London.Acting the
part of a high-class prostitute,Amanda lures Loveless into her luxurious house
and treats him to the night of his dreams,confessing her true identity in the
morning.Loveless is so impressed that he immediately reforms.A minor part
that was a great hit with the première audience is the fop Sir Novelty Fashion,
written by Cibber for himself to play.Sir Novelty flirts with all the women,
but is more interested in his own exquisite appearance and witticisms,and
Cibber would modestly write in his autobiography 45 years later,"was thought a
good portrait of the foppery then in fashion".Combining daring sex scenes with
sentimental reconciliations and Sir Novelty's buffoonery,Love's Last Shift
offered something for everybody,and was a great box-office hit.

The Relapse plotEdit

Vanbrugh's The Relapse is less sentimental and more analytical than Love's Last
Shift,subjecting both the reformed husband and the virtuous wife to fresh
temptations,and having them react with more psychological realism.Loveless
falls for the vivacious young widow Berinthia,while Amanda barely succeeds in
summoning her virtue to reject her admirer Worthy.The three central
characters,Amanda,Loveless,and Sir Novelty (ennobled by Vanbrugh into "Lord
Foppington"),are the only ones that recur in both plays,the remainder of the
Relapse characters being new.

In the trickster subplot,young Tom tricks his elder brother Lord Foppington
out of his intended bride and her large dowry.This plot takes up nearly half
the play and expands the part of Sir Novelty to give more scope for the roaring
success of Cibber's fop acting.Recycling Cibber's merely fashion-conscious
fop,Vanbrugh lets him buy himself a title and equips him with enough aplomb
and selfishness to weather all humiliations.Although Lord Foppington may be
"very industrious to pass for an ass",as Amanda remarks,he is at bottom "a
man who Nature has made no fool" (II.i.148).Literary historians agree in
esteeming him "the greatest of all Restoration fops" (Dobrée),"brutal,evil,
and smart" (Hume).

Background: theatre company splitEdit

In the early 1690s,London had only one officially countenanced theatre
company,the "United Company",badly managed and with its takings bled off by
predatory investors ("adventurers").To counter the draining of the company's
income,the manager Christopher Rich slashed the salaries and traditional perks
of his skilled professional actors,antagonising such popular performers as
Thomas Betterton,the tragedienne Elizabeth Barry,and the comedian Anne
Bracegirdle.Colley Cibber wrote in his autobiography that the owners of the
United Company,"who had made a monopoly of the stage,and consequently
presumed they might impose what conditions they pleased upon their people,did
not consider that they were all this while endeavouring to enslave a set of
actors whom the public… were inclined to support." Betterton and his colleagues
set forth the bad finances of the United Company and the plight of the actors
in a "Petition of the Players" submitted to the Lord Chamberlain.This unusual
document is signed by nine men and six women,all established professional
actors,and details a disreputable jumble of secret investments and "farmed"
shares,making the case that owner chicanery rather than any failure of
audience interest was at the root of the company's financial problems.Barely
veiled strike threats in the actors' petition were met with an answering
lock-out threat from Rich in a "Reply of the Patentees",but the burgeoning
conflict was pre-empted by a suspension of all play-acting from December until
March 1695 on account of Queen Mary's illness and death.During this interval,
a cooperative actors' company took shape under the leadership of Betterton and
was granted a Royal "licence to act" on 25 March,to the dismay of Rich,who
saw the threat too late.

The two companies that emerged from this labour/management conflict are usually
known respectively as the "Patent Company" (the no-longer-united United
Company) and "Betterton's Company",although Judith Milhous argues that the
latter misrepresents the cooperative nature of the actors' company.In the
following period of intense rivalry,the Patent Company was handicapped by a
shortage of competent actors."Seducing" actors (as the legal term was) back
and forth between the companies was a key tactic in the ensuing struggle for
position,and so were appeals to the Lord Chamberlain to issue injunctions
against seductions from the other side,which that functionary was quite
willing to do.Later Rich also resorted to hiring amateurs,and to tempting
Irish actors over from Dublin.But such measures were not yet in place for the
staging of The Relapse in 1696,Rich's most desperate venture.

CastingEdit

Vanbrugh is assumed to have attempted to tailor his play to the talents of
particular actors and to what audiences would expect from them,as was normal
practice (Holland),but this was exceptionally difficult to accomplish in
1695–96.Love's Last Shift had been cast from the remnants of the Patent
Company—"learners" and "boys and girls"—after the walkout of the stars.
Following the surprising success of this young cast,Vanbrugh and Rich had even
greater difficulty in retaining the actors needed for The Relapse.However,in
spite of the continuous emergency in which the Relapse production was mounted,
most of Vanbrugh's original intentions were eventually carried out.^[4]

Love's Last Shift castEdit

[220px-Love] 

The Love's Last Shift cast list.Please click for larger image.

To cast Love's Last Shift in January 1696,the Patent Company had to make the
best use of such actors as remained after the 1694 split (see cast list right).
An anonymous contemporary pamphlet describes the "despicable condition" the
troupe had been reduced to:

The disproportion was so great at parting,that it was almost impossible,
in Drury Lane,to muster up a sufficient number to take in all the parts of
any play; and of them so few were tolerable,that a play must of necessity
be damned,that had not extraordinary favour from the audience.No fewer
than sixteen (most of the old standing) went away; and with them the very
beauty and vigour of the stage; they who were left being for the most part
learners,boys and girls,a very unequal match for them that revolted.^[5]

The only well-regarded performers available were the Verbruggens,John and
Susanna,who had been re-seduced by Rich from Betterton's company.They were of
course used in Love's Last Shift,with John playing Loveless,the male lead,
and his wife Susanna the flirtatious heiress Narcissa,a secondary character.
The rest of the cast consisted of the new and untried (for instance Hildebrand
Horden,who had just joined Rich's troupe,playing a rakish young lover),the
modest and lacklustre (Jane Rogers,playing Amanda,and Mary Kent,playing Sir
Novelty's mistress Flareit),and the widely disliked (the opportunist Colley
Cibber,playing Sir Novelty Fashion); people who had probably never been given
the option of joining Betterton.Betterton's only rival as male lead,George
Powell,had most likely been left behind by the rebels with some relief
(Milhous); while Powell was skilled and experienced,he was also notorious for
his bad temper and alcoholism.Throughout the "seduction" tug-of-war between
Rich and Betterton in 1695–96,Powell remained at Drury Lane,where he was in
fact not used for Love's Last Shift,but would instead spectacularly
demonstrate his drinking problem at the première of The Relapse.

The Relapse castEdit

[220px-Relapse_characters] 

The Relapse cast list.Please click for larger image.

Vanbrugh planned The Relapse,too,round these limited casting resources and
minor talents,which Peter Holland has argued explains the robust,farcical
character of the play; Vanbrugh's second comedy,The Provoked Wife (1697),
written for the better actors of the cooperative company,is a much subtler
piece.The Relapse was written in six weeks and offered to the Patent Company
in March,^[6] but because of the problems with contracting and retaining
actors,it did not première until November.It is known from Cibber's
autobiography that Vanbrugh had a decisive say in the ongoing casting changes
made during these seven months; it is not known whether he altered his text to
accommodate them.

To reinforce the connection with Love's Last Shift and capitalise on its
unexpected success,Vanbrugh designed the central roles of Loveless,Amanda,
and Sir Novelty for the same actors: John Verbruggen,Jane Rogers,and Colley
Cibber.Keeping Rogers as Amanda was not a problem,since she was not an
actress that the companies fought over,but holding on to John Verbruggen and
Colley Cibber posed challenges,to which Rich rose with energetic campaigns of
bribery and re-seduction.Filling the rest of the large Relapse cast presented
a varied palette of problems,which forced some unconventional emergency
casting.

John Verbruggen was one of the original rebels and had been offered a share in
the actors' company,but became disgruntled when his wife Susanna,a popular
comedian,was not.For Rich,it was a stroke of luck to get Susanna and John
back into his depleted and unskilled troupe.John's availability to play
Loveless remained precarious,however.In September,when The Relapse had still
not been staged after six months of trying (probably because Rich was still
parleying with Cibber about his availability as Lord Foppington),John was
still complaining about his employment situation,even getting into a physical
fight over it at the theatre.This misbehaviour caused the Lord Chamberlain to
declare his contract void and at the same time order him to stay with the
Patent Company until January 1697,to give Rich time to find a replacement.The
original Loveless was thus finally guaranteed for an autumn season run of The
Relapse.Since the loyal Verbruggen couple always moved as a unit,Susanna's
services were also assured.

The Verbruggens were essential to the play,not least because Vanbrugh had
customised the sprightly temptress Berinthia to Susanna's talents and
reputation for witty,roguish,sexually enterprising characters,most recently
Mrs Buxom in Thomas D'Urfey's Don Quixote (a success thanks to "the
extraordinary well acting of Mrs Verbruggen",wrote D'Urfey).Although John was
less well known,his acting skills were considerable and would flourish after
January 1697 in the cooperative company,where commentators even started to
compare him with the great Betterton.Verbruggen was considered a more natural,
intuitive or "careless" actor,with "a negligent agreeable wildness in his
action and his mien,which became him well."^[7] Anthony Aston vividly
described Verbruggen as "a little in-kneed,which gave him a shambling gait,
which was a carelessness,and became him."^[8] Modern critics do not find the
Loveless part very lively or irresistible,but Vanbrugh was able to count on
Verbruggen's shambling male magnetism and "agreeable wildness" to enrich the
character.This would originally have worked even in print,since cast lists
were included in the published plays: most 1690s play readers were playgoers
also,and aware of the high-profile Verbruggens.Happily married in private
life and playing the secret lovers Loveless and Berinthia,the Verbruggens have
left traces of their charisma and erotic stage presences in Vanbrugh's
dialogue.The Relapse even alludes to their real-life relationship,in
meta-jokes such as Berinthia's exclamation,"Well,he is a charming man! I
don't wonder his wife's so fond of him!"

[220px-Colley_Cibber_as_Lord_Fo] 

Young Colley Cibber as Vanbrugh's Lord Foppington,"brutal,evil,and smart".

Hildebrand Horden,who had played a "wild" young lover in Love's Last Shift,
was the only young,handsome,potential romantic lead Rich had.He was
presumably cast by Vanbrugh as Tom Fashion,Lord Foppington's clever younger
brother (Holland),and it was a blow to the Patent Company when he was killed
in a tavern brawl (more glamorously referred to as a "duel" in older sources)
in May.At the première in November,Tom Fashion was instead played as a
breeches role by Mary Kent,an unusual piece of emergency casting that puts a
different face on a uniquely frank homosexual scene where Tom keeps skipping
nimbly out of the way of the matchmaker Coupler's lecherous groping.

Colley Cibber was a rather unsuccessful young actor at the time of the split,
with a squeaky voice and without any of the physical attractiveness of the
soon-to-be-dead Horden.After the success of Love's Last Shift,his status was
transformed,with both companies vying for his services as actor and
playwright.He made an off-season transfer to Betterton's company in the summer
of 1696 and wrote part of a play for the rebels before being re-seduced by Rich
by means of a fat contract (Milhous).Cibber as Lord Foppington was thus also
assured,and finally the première of The Relapse could be scheduled with some
confidence.Cibber's performance in it was received with even greater acclaim
than in his own play,Vanbrugh's Lord Foppington being a larger and,in the
estimation of both contemporaries and modern critics,much funnier part than
Sir Novelty Fashion.Vanbrugh's play incorporates some of the ad-libbing and
affectations of Cibber's by all accounts inspired performance in Love's Last
Shift.Cibber has thus imprinted not only his own playwriting but also his
acting style and squeaky personality on Vanbrugh's best-known character.

Vanbrugh's preface to the first edition preserves a single fleeting concrete
detail about the première performance: George Powell was drunk.He played
Amanda's worldly and sophisticated admirer Worthy,the "fine gentleman of the
play",and apparently brought an unintended hands-on realism to his supposedly
suave seduction attempt:

One word more about the bawdy,and I have done.I own the first night this
thing was acted,some indecencies had like to have happened,but it was not
my fault.The fine gentleman of the play,drinking his mistress's health in
Nantes brandy from six in the morning to the time he waddled upon the stage
in the evening,had toasted himself up to such a pitch of vigour,I confess
I once gave Amanda for gone.

Stage historyEdit

[170px-William_Powell_Fr] 

Trickster subplot in The Relapse: Tom Fashion,pretending to be Lord
Foppington,parleys with Sir Tunbelly Clumsey in a 19th-century illustration by
William Powell Frith.

The desperate straits of the United Company,and the success of The Relapse in
saving it from collapse,are attested in a private letter from 19 November
1696: "The other house [Drury Lane] has no company at all,and unless a new
play comes out on Saturday revives their reputation,they must break." The new
play is assumed to have been The Relapse,and it turned out the success Rich
needed."This play",notes Colley Cibber in his autobiography,"from its new
and easy turn of wit,had great success,and gave me,as a comedian,a second
flight of reputation along with it." Charles Gildon summarises: "This play was
received with mighty applause."

The Relapse is singled out for particular censure in the Puritan clergyman
Jeremy Collier's anti-theatre pamphlet Short View of the Immorality and
Profaneness of the English Stage (1698),which attacks its lack of poetic
justice and moral sentiment.Worthy and Berinthia,complains Collier,are
allowed to enact their wiles against the Lovelesses' married virtue without
being punished or losing face.The subplot is an even worse offence against
religion and morality,as it positively rewards vice,allowing the trickster
hero Tom to keep the girl,her dowry,and his own bad character to the end.
Vanbrugh failed to take Short View seriously and published a joking reply,^[9]
but Collier's censure was to colour the perception of the play for centuries.
While it remained a popular stage piece through the 18th century,much praised
and enjoyed for its wit,attitudes to its casual sexual morality became
increasingly ambivalent as public opinion became ever more restrictive in this
area,and more at odds with the permissive ethos of Restoration comedy.From
1777 Vanbrugh's original was replaced on the stage by Sheridan's A Trip to
Scarborough,a close adaptation but with some "covering",as the prologue
explains,drawn over Vanbrugh's "too bare" wit:

As change thus circulates throughout the nation,
Some plays may justly call for alteration;
At least to draw some slender covering o'er,
That graceless wit which was too bare before.

Sheridan does not allow Loveless and Berinthia to consummate their
relationship,and he withdraws approval from Amanda's admirer Worthy by
renaming him "Townly".Some frank quips are silently deleted,and the
matchmaker Coupler with the lecherous interest in Tom becomes decorous Mrs
Coupler.A small-scale but notable loss is of much of the graphic language of
Hoyden's nurse,who is earthy in Vanbrugh's original,genteel in Sheridan.
However,Sheridan had an appreciation of Vanbrugh's style,and retained most of
the original text unaltered.

In the 19th century,A Trip to Scarborough remained the standard version,and
there were also some ad hoc adaptations that sidelined the Lovelesses'
drawing-room comedy in favour of the Lord Foppington/Hoyden plot with its
caricatured clashes between exquisite fop and pitchfork-wielding country
bumpkins.^[10] The Man of Quality (1870) was one such robust production,Miss
Tomboy (1890) another.Vanbrugh's original Relapse was staged once,in 1846,at
the Olympic Theatre in London.

During the first half of the 20th century The Relapse was relatively neglected,
along with other Restoration drama,and experts are uncertain about exactly
when Vanbrugh's original again resurged to prominence on the stage and thereby
marginalised Sheridan's version.These experts now believe the play may have
been first brilliantly rehabilitated by Anthony Quayle's 1947 production at the
Phoenix Theatre,starring Cyril Ritchard as Lord Foppington and brought to
Broadway by Ritchard in 1950.^[11] A musical version,Virtue in Danger (1963),
by Paul Dehn and "John Bernard",opened to mixed reviews.John Russell Taylor
in Plays and Players praised the cast,which included Patricia Routledge as
Berinthia and John Moffatt as Lord Foppington,but complained that the
production was "full of the simpering,posturing and sniggering which usually
stand in for style and sophistication in Restoration revivals."^[12] Following
Donald Sinden's outstanding and award-winning performance at the Aldwych
Theatre in the mid-1960s Vanbrugh's original play is now again a favourite of
the stage.A 2001 revival by Trevor Nunn at the National Theatre was described
by Sheridan Morley as "rare,loving and brilliantly cast." As so often with
commentary on The Relapse,Morley focused on the role of Lord Foppington and
its different interpretations: "Alex Jennings superbly inherits the role of
Lord Foppington which for 20 years or so belonged to Donald Sinden,and for
another 20 before that to Cyril Ritchard."^[13]

Restoration Comedy,a play by Amy Freed that draws on both The Relapse and its
predecessor,Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift,premiered at Seattle Repertory
Theatre in 2005,starring Stephen Caffrey as Loveless,Caralyn Kozlowski as
Amanda,and Jonathan Freeman as Lord Foppington,and directed by Sharon Ott.^
[14]

NotesEdit

1.^ See Faller.
2.^ See reviews of Trevor Nunn's 2001 production by Michael Coveney in the
Daily Mail and Michael Billington in the Guardian,each of which makes this
point.
3.^ Dobrée.
4.^ Some of the "seductions" and counter-seductions of actors have been
reconstructed by modern scholars,notably Judith Milhous,from the records
of the Lord Chamberlain's office and from Colley Cibber's autobiography An
Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740).However,actors were obscure
people of low status at this time.This is especially true of the actors
remaining at the Patent Company after all the stars had decamped to
Betterton's cooperative company; except for Cibber,their birth dates are
unknown and there is no portrait in existence of any of them.John
Vanbrugh,later a famous architect,was likewise an obscure young man in
1696.Some of the motives of these all but unrecorded people remain
irrecoverable; for example,there is no obvious reason why William
Penkethman,a popular clown and funnyman,well liked by his peers,who
played Vanbrugh's Lory the pert valet,should have stayed with Rich and the
Patent Company.
5.^ A Comparison Between the Two Stages,1702,quoted in Milhous,82.
6.^ The London Stage I,470.
7.^ The anonymous The Laureat (1740),quoted in Biographical Dictionary of
Actors.
8.^ 1748,quoted in Biographical Dictionary of Actors.
9.^ A Short Vindication of The Relapse and The Provok'd Wife From Immorality
and Profaneness (1698),reprinted in Dobrée,Works.
10.^ Unless otherwise indicated,the information in this paragraph comes from
Harris xxvi.
11.^ "Cyril Ritchard biography site".Users.bestweb.net.Retrieved 6 June 2012
.
12.^ John Russell Taylor,review in Plays and Players.
13.^ Sheridan Morley,"Company Pride",28 July 2001,review in The Spectator.
14.^ Kelly Huffman,review Archived 10 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine
of Seattle premiere,December 2005; Robert Hurwitt,review of San Francisco
performance,July 2006,San Francisco Chronicle.

ReferencesEdit

• Cibber,Colley (first published 1740,ed.Robert Lowe,1889).An Apology
for the Life of Colley Cibber,vol.1,vol 2.London.
• Dobrée,Bonamy (1927).Introduction to The Complete Works of Sir John
Vanbrugh,vol.1.Bloomsbury: The Nonesuch Press.
• Faller,Lincoln B.(1974–75)."Between jest and earnest: the comedy of Sir
John Vanbrugh".Modern Philology 72,17—29.
• Gildon,Charles (1699).The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatic
Poets.London.
• Harris,Bernard (1971).Introduction to The Relapse.London: New Mermaids,
Ernest Benn.
• Highfill,Philip Jr,Burnim,Kalman A.,and Langhans,Edward (1973–93).
Biographical Dictionary of Actors,Actresses,Musicians,Dancers,Managers
and Other Stage Personnel in London,1660–1800.16 volumes.Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press.All details about individual actors are
taken from this standard work unless otherwise indicated.
• Holland,Peter (1979).The Ornament of Action: Text and Performance in
Restoration Comedy.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hume,Robert D.(1976).The Development of English Drama in the Late
Seventeenth Century.Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Milhous,Judith (1979).Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's
Inn Fields 1695–1708.Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
• Van Lennep,William (ed.) (1965).The London Stage 1660—1800: A Calendar of
Plays,Entertainments and Afterpieces Together with Casts,Box-Receipts and
Contemporary Comment Compiled from the Playbills,Newspapers and Theatrical
Diaries of the Period,Part 1: 1660–1700.Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press.

External linksEdit

• ●  Media related to The Relapse at Wikimedia Commons

*
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