XX The Duchess of Newcastle 



to become Lieutenant General of their whole armie. 

 We see her " in brave cloths, hat and feather, and a 

 sword by her side," and a great many commanders in 

 attendance on her. The end may be foreseen; and 

 the story is a natural outcome of the life of a soldier 

 who lived in exile and won a young wife to share it with 



him. 



In Scene 13 of the Comedy of the Apocriphal Ladies, 

 the stage directions open: " Enter the Comical Dutch- 

 ess " ; and she is further described as being in the 

 state which to-day no one could possibly associate 

 with comical. The scene rapidly runs to a close which 

 more than enhances the startling character of the 

 opening. 



The Duke's plays are much better than the Duchess's. 

 He had at least a sense of comedy, and he could of his 

 own part, and not only as the pupil of Moliere and 

 Jonson, make his audience laugh. Pepys speaks of 

 " Sir Martin Mar-all," — the play from MoUere's L'Etourdi, 

 in which the Duke and Dryden both had a hand, with 

 a sort of comic rapture. " It is the most entire piece of 

 mirth," he says, "a complete farce from one end to the 

 other, that certainly was ever writ. I never laughed so 

 in all my life. I laughed till my head (ached) all the 

 evening and night with the laughing ; and at very good 

 wit therein, not fooling." Some of the credit at least 

 for this orgy of laughter may be given to the Duke, for 

 he has scenes of his own devising which touch a similar 

 note of comic extravagance. Pepys had, as we heard 

 previously, no words bad enough for some other of the 

 Newcastle plays, two of which at least the Duke wrote 

 with the Duchess's partial collaboration. 



From the plays, turn to their songs and poems. The 

 Duke wrote most of his verse d la mode ; and much of 

 it he contributed to the dramatic and other works of 

 the Duchess. In the folio at the British Museum of 

 Nature's Pictures there is an entry in her own writing 

 against four songs of sorrow and death: " These songs 

 my Lord writt." The third of them, while not wholly 

 original, touches the Duke's highest mark in verse: 



