The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw a marked change in many aspects of British drama. From the stage growing out to include the apron, to the first appearance of women on the stage, the role of drama in society became extremely different. But the form and thematics of the plays of the time morphed as well. Plays of this era progressed from the more classical and traditional themes of Shakespeare to increasingly bawdy and questionable topics. The characters being portrayed were no longer kings and queens, but tended to be in the leisure class of aristocracy (with others of course coming from the working class), and their activities became much more lewd. In the same play, a woman might withstand a rape attempt and then attend dinner with important socialites in the same day. All of these transformations did not go unnoticed, and as playwrights began to make ironic and specific jabs at the world of drama. This self-reflexivity revealed the playwrights’ (frequently referred to as poets) wide range of opinions; some supported the more open forum for their plays that now allowed them to explore subjects that would have been highly objectionable in the decades previous, while others viewed these changes as steps backwards for the form as whole. In both the subversive and social comedies, as well as the corrective satire[1] some characters discuss both the subject matter of the plays that they have attended, while others chide the type of people who would even venture to be seen at plays of such a vulgar type. Such comments are frequently put in the foppish characters’ mouths and therefore the comments must be re-interpreted to understand the author’s true meaning. Other times, however, the commentary on the playhouses and the society surrounding it come from the more prudent characters and these opinions are more likely to coincide with those of the author. Throughout the plays of William Wycherley, John Vanbrugh, William Congreve, John Gay, and most notably Henry Fielding, self-reflexive commentary reveals the playwrights’ relative views on plays of the time and the society surrounding them.
 

William Wycherley’s The Country Wife has several instances of this sort of commentary that explore the common opinions of the cultural ramifications of the dramatic and comedic theater of the time. One specific subplot of this play involves a recently married husband and wife and their differing interests in the entertainments that the Town has to offer. Pinchwife has a quasi-paranoia about taking his newly acquired wife to see any of the plays in Town for fear of her being corrupted by the society that surrounds it. But this paranoia is clearly overstated and unfounded, and Pinchwife is equally as clearly an overly protective husband, so his feelings about the incivility of the plays are supposed to be seen as the ravings of an overly suspicious man; the plays are indeed nowhere near as dangerous as he believes. However, there are other more direct statements regarding the dramatic scene. During a social gathering of women, one of the secondary characters, Mrs. Squeamish disdainfully exclaims, “That men of parts, great acquaintance, and quality should take up with and spend themselves in keeping little playhouse creatures, faugh!” (II.i.380-383). The most noticeable dig of this comment is toward the men to which she refers. It also reveals her to be a relatively lonely and neglected married woman who is most likely rather unattractive or else the men she yearns for would not go seeking elsewhere. Because it is she who refers to actresses as “little playhouse creatures” in a derogatory way, we can see that the author does not mean to insult the art of acting. Why would an author try to make a gibe at actresses to whom his own line of work is inextricably linked? Also, this remark against actresses is spoken by an actress, further revealing the consciousness of the theatricality of the play itself.

Later in this play the central fop, Mr. Sparkish makes clear his disparagement for plays in general. The two wits of the play, Horner and Harcourt, are more than willing to use their discursive faculties to reveal him for the imbecile he is. Their comments back and forth show that Sparkish is quite convinced he has more wit than the average playwright, and he also takes issue with the characters that the authors create:

Their [current playwrights] predecessors were contented to make serving men only their stage fools, but these rogues must have gentlemen…you shall hardly see a fool upon the stage but he’s a knight and to tell you the truth, they have kept me these six years from being a knight in earnest, for fear of being knighted in a play and dubbed a fool. (III.ii.128-134)

This remark reveals much about Sparkish’s character, because Wycherley made it clear that he wanted to portray him as the impudent fool of the play. Sparkish’s high social standing makes him afraid to be made a idiot on the stage, but it is clear to the other characters of the play as well as the audience/ readers that he is in fact as much a fool as any actor could possibly play him. However, there is still more beneath the surface of Sparkish’s comment because he is actually an actor taking part in the performance of a play written by a playwright whom Sparkish blatantly affronts. Sparkish could be seen to be a characterization of critics of the time who claimed that plays weren’t witty enough. Wycherley’s choice to put this insult in the voice of the fool of his play shows how he views his critics—as idiots trying to claim that they are more intelligent than others—a textbook case of the pot calling the kettle black. Later in the same conversation Sparkish makes yet another comment that insults even more people involved in the dramatic: “Come, damn all your silly authors whatever, all books and book sellers, by the world, and all readers, courteous and uncourteous” (III.ii.146-148). Here, Sparkish condemns both the publisher, writers, and readers of plays, which would be nearly everyone who could ever come into contact with a play. Clearly, this is not an insult that that author would wish to condone, and that is why Sparkish is the character who says it. Sparkish’s idiotic comments seem to embody those that the plays critics might make, and because the speaker is the play’s fop, Wycherley is implying that the critics themselves are fops.

John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse also possesses self-conscious elements. At the beginning of the play, when Amanda first begins to question Loveless’s motives for wishing to go into Town, Loveless claims:

Loveless: There are delights, of which a private life is destitute, which may divert an honest man and be a harmless entertainment to a virtuous woman. The conversation of the Town is one, and truly, with some mall allowances, the plays, I think may be esteemed another.

Amanda: The plays, I must confess, have some small charms and would have more, would they restrain that loose, obscene encouragement to vice, which shocks, if not the virtue of the some women, at least the modesty of all.

Loveless: But till that reformation can be made, I would not leave the wholesome corn for some intruding tares that grow amongst it. Doubtless, the moral of a well-wrought scene is of prevailing force. (I.ii.19-32)

This interaction between Loveless and Amanda reveals much of the author’s opinion on his play and what sets it apart from the less worthy or profound plays that were also being performed and/or printed at the time. This conversation implies that while there may be a number of plays that do deserve to be criticized, there are others that have a significant formal beauty or morality that make all the other plays not matter in the grand scheme of things. Through Loveless’s replies to Amanda, Vanbrugh seems to be claiming that the good plays outweigh the bad. He does not deny the existence of the more questionable plays that, as Amanda claims, should offend the modesty of any woman of quality that observes it, but Vanbrugh contends that the more modest and properly themed plays are more important than the others, and that if all plays were condemned because of the few bad apples, society would suffer as a consequence.

Later in the play, Vanbrugh comments on yet another literary aspect through a clever and scheming character, Berinthia who is trying to convince Amanda to cheat on her husband with Mr. Worthy. Berinthia tells her that he “used you like a text: he took you all to pieces but spoke so learnedly upon every point one might see the spirit of the church was in him…” (IV.i.56-58). While this remark is made in the middle of a conniving conversation, this particular simile bears scrutiny for it reveals Vanbrugh’s feelings on the role of a play as it is read. He seems to be sending a message to his readers, that one must take a text and look at all of its smaller parts in order to appreciate the whole.

In his play, The Way of the World, William Congreve makes a more humorous self-reflective comment on one of the chief characteristics a woman should want in a man. Millamant notes, “Well, an illiterate man’s my aversion. I wonder at the impudence of any illiterate man to offer to make love” (III.i.425-427). These lines, spoken by an actress and written by a playwright, two obviously literate people, make it quite clear how much better suited for “love-making” literate men are. At this time, “making love” and or “love-making” usually just meant to court someone, but they did also have the connotation of actual physical intercourse as well (courtesy of the OED date chart for “love-making”). So, Congreve seems to think that not only are literary men more talented and clever at convincing women of their love, but he also insinuates that they are better at the physical act of love. This humorously blatant praise of a class of man that Congreve is a member of reveals a certain kind of self-consciousness, along with a realization of the type of people most likely to attend or read the play. Nearly all men who would have come into contact with this play would at least be literate, so there would be very few people insulted by this comment, while others of the more literary persuasion would mostly likely agree with it.

Up to this point, the plays discussed reveal their self-reflexive aspects through direct speech mainly, but the next two go one step further. Both John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and Henry Fielding's The Author’s Farce reflect their self-consciousness in form as well as dialogue. Both have a more multi-faceted structure than the other plays in that they have plays imbedded in their plays. The outbreaks of song in The Beggar’s Opera are in response to the Italian opera of the time, but they do not seem to fit into this play very well. The Broadview Anthology editor contends that with this play, Gay “invented the ballad opera, in which spoken dramatic parts are interspersed with songs set to well-known popular tunes, a form that presages modern musical comedy” (Canfield, ed. 1332). This somewhat strange device crucially supports the satire that this play hinges upon, and it reveals Gay’s intention to have a message about plays in his play, to make a humorous point.

The introduction to this play is also clearly self-reflexive. It is a discussion between a player and a beggar involving the state of life for poets at the time. The Beggar implies that all poets find themselves impoverished, and the player responds that poets “live by the Muses” and they do not care about their artistic vehicle’s relative wealth (Introduction, 1-14). Perhaps the correlation between poets and poverty is a result of a public that cannot appreciate a decent play, and it therefore does not flourish in the playhouses, leaving the playwright himself to a life of scrimping. This is not explicit said by any of the characters, but it is left to the audience and readers to infer what they will about the fairness of this relationship. There is also a notable instance of self-reflexivity in the interaction between Mrs. Peachum and Polly, when the former learns that the latter is in love with Macheath. Mrs. Peachum blames her daughter’s imprudent choice on one thing: “Those cursed playbooks she reads have been her ruin” (I.xi.68-69). The literature that her daughter reads has, in her view, contorted her mind and filled it with capricious whims and fancies, for why else would she wish to wed a man of such low standing? Once again, the playwright adds a commentary on the effects of plays on their viewers but puts the dialogue in the mouth of a character whose reliability and wit is questionable at best.

No play on our class’s syllabus is so entirely self-reflexive as Henry Fielding’s The Author’s Farce. From the very beginning, Fielding discusses many aspects f good plays. Fielding’s prologue is in rhymed couplets, and explores the many different ways that his play is different from other plays of the era. He claims that his play will not deal with such weighty topics as “Liberty, Freedom, Liberty, and Briton” (Prologue.14) but will instead to merely entertain. This is of course, not the whole story as it is easier to see in the final part of the prologue:
 

The aim of farce is but to make you laugh.

Beneath the tragic or the comic name,

Farces and puppet shows ne’er miss of fame.

Since then in borrowed dress they’ve pleased the Town,

Condemn them not, appearing in their own.

Smiles we expect from the good-natured few;

As ye are done by, ye malicious, do,

And kindly laugh at him who laughs at you.

(Prologue. 30-37)

Indeed, this prologue does a perfect job of setting the stage (double-meaning intended) for the message of the entire play. Fielding claims that all plays that have met with success are either opera or puppet shows, but they masquerade as something else. He therefore warns against shunning his play merely because it comes out and says what it is instead of pretending to be something it isn’t. he also notes that this type of play is one that will please the masses, but he conforms to this disposition of the Town without necessarily condoning it. He does just what Luckless is forced to in the play, and must pander to the lowest common denominator but he refuses to do so quietly, and he includes in his play all kinds of ironies and gibes at the people who create, publish and play theatrics of such a low form.

If the lyrics that constitutes the prologue sets the thematic premise for the rest of the play, Fielding continues to develop his ideas right from the start of the play itself. To start with, the first act of the play is called An Author’s Farce, and claims to have been written by one Scriblerus Secundus. The form of the play takes another interesting step away from the norm. This fact shows what kind of play Fielding was trying to create in this play. At one point, he has one of his characters differentiate between the two types of plays: acting and reading. This strange second tier of titling and authoring makes it clear that Fielding wanted to write and reading play because it would prove quite difficult to make this strange authorship on the stage. The entire first act continues to discuss numerous aspects of what it takes for a playwright to make money, either by getting his play performed or published. Luckless is just that, a playwright with no reputation to get his play printed or in a playhouse, and finds himself unable to pay rent or even feed himself sufficiently. He may have written the greatest English play to date, but the decision makers of the industry to not see him as a sound investment. The imagery of economy and money pervades plays of this era, and Luckless is truly bereft of currency and therefore cannot participate in the exchange until he gets his hands on some. However, once he is able to do so, he does not choose to back his tragic creation, but instead writes and produces a different kind of theatric—a puppet show. When he tells the publisher who originally shot down his tragedy, Luckless meets with a much more enthusiastic reaction. In order to succeed in his line of work, he had to dumb down his art into mere child’s play.

As mentioned earlier, this play broaches a wide variety of subjects connected with the world of drama. In the first scene between Luckless and Jack, his quasi-servant, the readers are privy to how hard and how unsuccessful Luckless has been at getting his play produced. Jack lists the several people he has gone to with Luckless’s play: a lord, an owner of a playhouse, and a publisher (I.iv.1-8). Luckless has tried to get a wealthy benefactor/ patron, but been denied. Then he talks to a famous playwright and producer—a character modeled after Colley Cibber—who could use his influence to get any play produced that he deemed worthy. But he doesn’t even glorify Luckless’s request with an answer. The latter of the three, Jack relates to Luckless, is on his way to discuss the matter, but we are soon to see that he is not interested in some no-name poet’s play. This reveals a side of a playwright’s career that none of the other plays we have read deal with. It seems problematic that it is left up to these men which plays get produced and which ones lie dormant on a dusty shelf somewhere.

Luckless’s discussions with his friend Witmore also reveal much of Fielding’s opinions. Just from looking at his name, it is clear that Witmore is the voice of reason and truth, regardless of the fact that he is completely jaded and cynical about his friend’s occupation. After Luckless drops a casual comment that women and the Muses are sure connectors to poverty Witmore asks him, “What are you not cured of scribbling yet?” to which Luckless replies, “No, scribbling is as impossible to cure as the gout” (I.vi.25-26). Witmore’s choice of the word scribbling reveals his attitude toward the industry as a whole. Instead of calling it writing, or creating or any number of other verbs that could have worked, “scribbling” has a much more negative connotation. It lends Luckless’s profession an air of the futile. Scribbling seems to have no point, and from Luckless’s point of view, it is a physical ailment as well, and he and Witmore both agree that scribbling leads to financial difficulty as well. From just these two lines, it is clear that this line of work has many hardships.

Soon after this, Witmore makes a small speech about the times and how they are not conducive to the better plays’ survival. He notes

But now, when party and prejudice carry all before them, when learning is decried, wit not understood, when the theaters are puppet shows, and the comedians ballad singers—when fools lead the Town—would a man think to thrive by his wit? If you must write, write nonsense, write operas, write entertainments… and you may meet with encouragement enough. (I.vi.30-42)

Witmore is trying to encourage Luckless to do one of two things here: either he give up the ineffectual writing altogether, or if he insists upon remaining in his chosen career that he stop trying to write something profound and meaningful and merely pander to the desires of the public. A substantially larger number of people would be interested in paying their money for mere entertainment. Wit, learning, and the merit of the playwright no longer enter into the degree of success of any given play, as Witmore sees it. Witmore feels that choosing plays has now been left up to fools and idiots, and therefore nothing but the crudest work will ever be produced, and this does not bode well for a tragedian such as Luckless.

The portrayal of the publisher who first refuses Luckless’s play, Bookweight, is a caricature of publishers (and specifically Edmund Curll). He proves to be equally as helpful as the other two people Luckless has asked. He is uninterested in a play that has not been “accepted” or at least written by someone with a “great reputation” (I.vi.5 and 43). Bookweight also agrees with Witmore that “writing [is] the silliest thing a man can undertake” (I.vi.55-56). Even a publisher who is so bound up in the creation and production of plays is skeptical about its soundness as a profession on its own. This shows how little he lets literary appreciation enter into his choices of the plays to publish. He is not a man of letters, he is a man of money and therefore only prints plays that he deems will please a great number of people, and as Witmore points out, these are the plays of spectacle and magic, not wit and meaning.

The second act of this play looks at the people Bookweight employs as editors and semi-writers. Marplay and Sparkish are noted in the Dramatis Personae as comedians, but they are editors that Luckless takes his play to so he can try again to get it accepted. These two men, however, do not approve of the majestic form and matter of Luckless’s play, and they try to change it to have a more bawdy subject and less artful wording. Luckless cannot bear to see his play marred in such  a way, and so takes his play away with him. Marplay and Sparkish talk about him after he is gone, and the former notes that Luckless’s play “may be a very good one, for aught I know, but I know the author has no interest” (II.ii.3-4). Interest in this case means personal connections or influence and it seems to dictate the likelihood of a play’s production. Marplay goes on to say, “Interest sways as much in the theater as at court. And you know it is not always the companion of merit in either” (II.ii.6-9). Marplay is creating an analogy between the justice system—which he seems to have no fond opinion of—and the theater system. Both seem to possess elements of the corrupt, and even he can recognize that this involvement with interest is not good for either industry. Marjean Purinton notes that “The Author's Farce (1729-37) demonstrates the strategy of antitheatrical theatricalism in its portrayal of the theatre as a place no more artificial than other eighteenth-century cultural sites” (Purinton 305-306). The readers next learn that Marplay himself has a play that he has gotten produced merely through his own connections. It does not seem fair that a man like him who refuses to support any play not written by a man of some recognition, can use his own influence to get his plays produced regardless of their worth as pieces of art. Finally, Marplay says, “Rat the Town. Let them grumble, I’m sure they will not stay away” (II.ii.25-26). This line being spoken to an audience of inhabitants of this Town shows a degree of irony, but also of self-consciousness. Fielding is not expressing this feeling to his fellow playwrights, but to those who have paid to see or read his play. But again, this comment is not intended to insult the very people that have supported Fielding with their admission fees. By giving these remarks to Marplay, we see that Fielding does not really mean this statement. Marplay is fashioned after Colley Cibber, whom Fielding clearly has no love for.

The remainder of this act takes an inside look at Bookweight’s business. From out vantage point as readers, we see an office that deals in the peddling of words and copies—hardly the glorious endeavor that Luckless seems to see the industry of writing to be. The small excerpts that we get to hear show more of an interest in creating spectacle and avoiding accusations of libel. In this same scene, Luckless comes back to Bookweight with another proposition. When Luckless tells him that instead of a tragedy he brings him a puppet show, Bookweight is intensely interested, and exclaims “A puppet show in a playhouse!”, prompting Luckless to remark, “What have been all the playhouses a long time but puppet shows?” (!!.vii.41-42). This rhetorical question reveals much of Fielding’s outlook on theater. By having his play-writing hero ask this question, we see that he believes all playhouses to be controlled from above as if by strings by men in power. They are not merely forums for expression, they are only places where men of influence make their living by producing the plays of the least merit and the most celebrity or spectacle.

The final act of the play is made up primarily of the puppet show that Luckless is now paying to have produced (with his stolen rent money, no less). This is an incredibly obvious play in a play, and the way it is portrayed is quite strange. It is a play of sound bites and short scenes, not a dramatic or insightful interaction of high art. Purinton notes that this creation embodies the era’s theatricality that “became a popular subject of drama, and plays about plays literally stage the strategy of "antitheatrical theatricalism," distancing character through metadramatics and the performance of theatricality as everyday occurrences” (Purinton 305). Another critic, Jim O’Brien notes that plays of this form reveal “the period's exploration of the relationship between staged performances and the increasingly performative culture outside the walls of playhouses” (O’Brien, 191). O’Brien also makes an interesting claim about why an eighteenth century might make use of these self-reflexive devices, even though they give the plays a somewhat less artful element: “To describe something as "theatrical" has often been to denigrate it, to assign it to the dubious realm of the inauthentic, insincere, and artificial. But artifice has its advantages, as it can be a means of creating critical distance” (191). Perhaps these authors use this to separate themselves from their mode of expression and the stigma that seemed to accompany it. By going for the spectacle and the meta-theatricality, playwrights could set their plays apart, and use them to comment on the theatrical scene as a whole, as well as the society that attended it. O’Brien even goes so far as to say that these plays “testify anew to the theater's power to absorb its audiences, provoke its enemies, and help people understand and shape their cultures” (191). Not only does a play have power to comment, it can also reflect the culture, and this seems to be precisely what all of these author’s had been attempting to do. They wrapped up their social commentary in satire, humor, and spectacle but perhaps this was a conscious choice when portraying a society increasingly interested in fostering the spectacle of life.