Essays on the Stage Preface to the Campaigners (1689) and Preface to the Translation of Bossuet's Maxims and Reflections on Plays (1699) — Edition Insights

D'Urfey's Method: Context as Defense

D'Urfey's central strategy is to restore the missing context that Collier had excised. For the charge of drolling on the Resurrection, D'Urfey prints the complete five-stanza dirge from Don Quixote, a song he describes as 'a solemn piece of morality' sung at a funeral. The lines Collier quoted—'Sleep and indulge thy self with rest, / Nor dream thou e're shalt rise again'—are the final couplet of a stanza that begins with 'Sleep, sleep, poor Youth, sleep, sleep in Peace, / Reliev'd from Love, and mortal care.' D'Urfey argues that the full poem is 'fitter for an Anthem than a Droll.'

Similarly, when Collier accuses D'Urfey of making 'a jest of the Fall' and 'rail[ing] at Adam and Eve,' D'Urfey explains that the offending song is sung by Gines de Passamonte, 'a most notorious Atheistical Villain' whose words are a 'Satyr upon Humanity in general,' not upon divine providence. The character's roguish perspective, D'Urfey insists, is not the author's own.

The Charge of Blasphemy and the Rhetoric of Intent

Collier had seized on D'Urfey's use of the word 'Providence' in a song about a beautiful woman, calling it blasphemy. D'Urfey counters by distinguishing poetic convention from theological statement: 'Providence' in lyrical poetry, he claims, is 'generally intended for Goddess Nature, or Fortune'—a second cause, not the first. He compares this to saying 'the Sun made a gay Tulip flourish,' which no one would mistake for a denial of God's role as 'the original of all.'

This defense reveals a key tension: D'Urfey assumes his audience shares a code of poetic license, while Collier reads literally and moralistically. D'Urfey's exasperation is palpable—'I have a Rigid Critick and a Severe Inquisitor to deal with—He will have a Satyr upon the true Deity, tho I intend nothing of it.' The preface thus becomes a clash between two interpretive frameworks: one that privileges authorial intent and generic convention, and another that judges words by their surface meaning.

The Anonymous Bossuet Translation and the Broader Debate

The second text in this volume is an anonymous 1699 translation of Bossuet's Maxims and Reflections upon Plays. Bossuet, a French bishop and theologian, offers a systematic condemnation of theater as inherently immoral—a position far more absolute than Collier's. Where D'Urfey's preface is defensive and particular, Bossuet's maxims are doctrinal and universal, arguing that plays 'corrupt the heart' and 'inflame the passions.'

Juxtaposing these two texts highlights the range of anti-theatrical argument in the period. Collier attacked specific plays and authors; Bossuet condemns the institution itself. D'Urfey's reply is pragmatic and literary, while the Bossuet translation is theological and prescriptive. Krutch's introduction notes that the playwrights of the 1690s 'misjudged the temper of the public,' but the inclusion of Bossuet suggests that the opposition was not merely a matter of public opinion but of deep-rooted religious principle.

Readers approaching these texts will benefit from reading D'Urfey's preface alongside the songs he quotes in full, as his argument depends on seeing the stanzas Collier omitted. The Bossuet translation, meanwhile, offers a contrasting perspective that is less concerned with individual plays than with the moral dangers of theatrical representation itself. Together, they document a pivotal moment in the history of English stage censorship.

There’s something tender about watching a writer defend his own songs, line by line, against a critic’s snip. I thought of that the other evening, sitting with Shadows of the Stage — Text and Context, and how those old quarrels about a stage’s moral weight still hum beneath our quieter conversations about what a play leaves behind in us.