THE NEW SCIENCE AND COMEDY 81 



virtuosity. "Madam", says Lady Vaine, "d'ye think I, that am 

 a Virtuosa, understand no better than to leave you, now you are 

 not well ? ' '*^ But she has no experiments to show, no discoveries to 

 disclose. She is only a "she-pedant" with a vague idea of what 

 learning consists. A far more direct thrust at the new philosophy 

 is given by Emilia, — "Others, after twenty or thirty years study 

 in Philosophy, arrive no furtlier than at the weighing of carps, 

 the invention of a travelling wheel, or the poisoning of a Cat with 

 the Oyl of Tobacco; these are your Wits and Virtuoso's". In 

 the last act of the play it is stated on hearsay evidence that Sir 

 Positive-At-All can fly; this is distinctly a virtuoso's acquirement. 



The new science appeared later in Mrs. Aphra Behn's The 

 Emperor of the Moon (1687). Dr. Boliardo, having spent a long 

 time in the study of the * ' lunar orb ", "so religiously believes there 

 is a world there, that he Discourses as gravely of the People, their 

 Government, Institutions, Laws, Manners, Religion, and Constitu- 

 tion, as if had been bred a Machiavel there ".*^ 



"Scaramouch, — How came he so infected? 



Elaria, — With reading foolish Books, Lucian's Dialogues of the 

 Lofty Traveller, who flew up to the Moon, and thence to Heaven; 

 an Heroick Business called the Man in the Moon, if you'll believe a 

 Spaniard, who was carried thither, upon an Engine drawn by 

 wild Geese; with another philosophical Piece, A Discourse of the 

 World in the Moon; with a thousand other ridiculous volumes 

 too hard to name".^° 



A play, called The Man in the Moon, is to be presented before 

 the moon-struck doctor with such realistic setting that he will be 

 convinced of its reality.'^^' The purpose is to bring about an op- 

 portunity for the two young gallants to meet with the closely 

 guarded young women, with whom they are in love. The doctor, 

 with all his moon gazing, is jealous of any attention paid his wards. 



In the second scene of Act II Doctor Boliardo enters "with all 

 manner of mathematical Instruments hanging at his girdle; 

 Scaramouch bearing a Telescope twenty or thirty feet long". This 



««Ibid. Act II, sc. 1. 



*9 The Emperor of the Moon, Act III. 



^Ibii. Act I. 



SI Ibid. Act I, 6C. 1. 



