  We can learn no more of the history of this play than what the title-page gives us, viz., that it was "publickly acted by the students in Saint John's College, Cambridge."[25] The merits and characters of our old poets and actors are censured by the author with great freedom; and the shameful prostitution of Church preferment, by the selling of livings to the ignorant and unworthy, laid the foundation of Dr Wild's "Benefice, a Comedy," 4to, 1689. [Hawkins himself elsewhere (in his "General Introduction") remarks:—] As the piece which follows, called "The Return from Parnassus," is, perhaps, the most singular composition in our language, it may be proper to give a succinct analysis of it. This satirical drama seems to have been composed by the wits and scholars of Cambridge, where it was acted at the opening of the last century. The design of it was to expose the vices and follies of the rich in those days, and to show that little attention was paid by that class of men to the learned and ingenious. Several students of various capacities and dispositions leave the university in hopes of advancing their fortunes in the metropolis. One of them attempts to recommend himself by his publications; another, to procure a benefice by paying his court to a young spark named Amoretto, with whom he had been intimate at college; two others endeavour to gain a subsistence by successively appearing as physicians, actors, and musicians: but the Man of Genius is disregarded, and at last prosecuted for his productions; the benefice is sold to an illiterate clown; and in the end three of the scholars are compelled to submit to a voluntary exile; another returns to Cambridge as poor as when he left it; and the other two, finding that neither their medicines nor their music would support them, resolve to turn shepherds, and to spend the rest of their days on the Kentish downs. There is a great variety of characters in this play, which are excellently distinguished and supported; and some of the scenes have as much wit as can be desired in a perfect comedy. The simplicity of its plan must naturally bring to our mind the old species of comedy described by Horace, in which, before it was restrained by a public edict, living characters were exposed by name upon the stage, and the audience made merry at their expense without any intricacy of plot or diversity of action: thus in the piece before us Burbage and Kempe, two famous actors, appear in their proper persons; and a number of acute observations are made on the poets of that age, of whom the editor has given an account in the notes, and has added some chosen specimens of their poetry. [The late Mr Bolton Corney thought that this play was from the pen of |
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