Purcell

We once had a glorious school of composers. It departed, with no sunset splendour on it, nor even the comfortable ripe tints of autumn. The sun of the young morning shone on its close; the dews of dawn gleam for ever on the last music; the freshness and purity of the air of early morning linger about it.

On one point we may be quite certain. It is the greatest pity that Purcell wasted so much time on these Restoration shows. When the English people revolted against Puritanism, and gave the incorrigible Stuarts another chance, Charles the Wanderer returned to find them in a May-Day humour. They thrust away from them for a little while the ghastly spiritual hypochondria of which Puritanism was a manifestation, and determined to make merry. But, heigh-ho! the day of Maypoles was over and gone. From the beginning the jollity and laughter were forced, and the new era of perpetual spring festival soon became an era of brainless indecency. Even the wit of the Restoration was bitter, acid, sardonic (as Charles's own death-bed apology for being an unconscionable time a-dying). Generally it was ill-tempered, and employed to inflict pain. And there was not even wit in most of the plays. It is hard to see what even the worst age could discover to laugh at in Shadwell's Libertine, the story of Don Juan told in English, and, in a sense, made the most of.

If the Circe music is indeed Purcell's, it cannot have been written until the author, Davenant, had been in his grave seventeen years. If only the estimable ladies and gentlemen whose passion for writing about Purcell has wrapped the real man in a haze of fairy tales had taken the preliminary trouble of learning a little of the literature and drama of Purcell's day! Nay, had they only looked at the scores of Purcell's "operas"! Most of these plays undoubtedly had some music from the beginning. It will be remembered that during the Puritan, joyless reign of dunderheadedness the playhouses were closed; but Cromwell, who loved music and gave State concerts, licensed Davenant to give "entertainments"—plays in which plot, acting, and everything else were neglected in favour of songs, dances, and such spectacles as the genius and machinery of the stage managers enabled them to devise. When the Puritan rule faded, the taste for these shows still persisted.