THE NEW SCIENCE AND COMEDY 83 



i i Bayes, A friend of mine at Gresham College has promised to 

 help me to some Spirit of Brains." 55 



These are but chance references and are practically negligible, 

 except for the rather important fact that they could persumably 

 be understood by all play-goers. Allusions to the new science, like 

 those to puritanism and the "Good Old Cause ", are made without 

 appended explanations. As early as 1664 sufficient knowledge of 1 

 what the Greshamites were doing had spread through London to 

 make it a familiar source of allusion for wits. 



John Lacy's The Dumb Lady appeared in 1672. "The main 

 plot is taken from Moliere's Mock Doctor; the catastrophe is bor 

 rowed from Moliere's Love's the best Doctor". 56 And yet a little 

 of the English science has crept into the character of Drench to 

 give a touch of local color. Isabella praises his ability as a phy 

 sician most extravagantly, "he brought a mad- woman to her wits 

 again that was suspected never to have had any ; nay, he has taken 

 men's legs and arms off, and set 'em on sound again". 57 Jarvis 

 thereupon declares "that's beyond Surgeon's Hall". 



"Softhead, I'll be hanged if this fellow be not a spy of the 

 virtuoso's and is come to betray the sectreat of Nature". 68 



The farrier, Drench, once turned physician, goes the full course. 

 By happy fortune he is endowed with remarkable wit, and having 

 once served a montebank, who had taught Drench, had learned 

 something of the "fanatic branches" of the new science. 



"Gernette, But, Sir, 'tis strange that you should know my 

 daughter's disease from my pulse. 



Doctor, Sympathy does it. I find you have no faith in sym 

 pathetic powder, therefore, cannot know our sympathetical way of 

 practice. When any man or woman is sick in Greenland, they 

 always send the next of kin to the doctor; and by that pulse the 

 disease is known and the patient cured 



Doctor, Why, Sir, your men that have endeavored to find 

 out perpetual motion have come near it, I confess, with their clocks 

 and pendulums; but Aristotle says, Fix a dial plate to a woman's 



"Act II, sc. 1. 



66 Dramatists of the Restoration, John Lacy, Note to the Dumb Lady. 



67 Ibid. Act I, sc. 2. 



68 Dramatists of the Restoration, John Lacy, The Dumb Lady. Act. I, sc. 2. 



