The Funeral by Sir Richard Steele

First produced: 1701

First published: 1702

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Comedy of manners

Time of work: Early eighteenth century

Locale: London

Principal Characters:

• The Earl Of Brumpton, a British nobleman
• Lady Brumpton, his wife by a second marriage
• Lord Hardy, his son by his first marriage
• Mr. Campley, Lord Hardy’s friend and junior officer
• Lady Sharlot (Charlotte), Lord Brumpton’s ward
• Lady Harriot (Harriet), Sharlot’s sister
• Trusty, Lord Brumpton’s servant

Critique:

THE FUNERAL, OR, GRIEF A LA MODE was Sir Richard Steele’s first and best-constructed play, but it is far less serious than his later work. Nevertheless, the drama has moral overtones and some highly sincere social criticism. Through the characterization of the hypocritical widow who gives the play its subtitle, Steele ridiculed manners of the time, as he was to do so often in his later plays and in his familiar essays. Notable in the play are the two young army officers, Lord Hardy and Ensign Campley, who are more reputable and honest than most of their dramatic predecessors, a circumstance probably due to Steele’s own career in the military service. Steele boasted, quite rightly, in his preface to the play that his drama was more innocent than the prevalent style of comedy. In many ways his characters and actions show an innocent freshness quite unlike the atmosphere of intrigue found in Restoration drama and the comedies of the early eighteenth century.

The Story:

Young Lady Brumpton was quite happy when her husband, the Earl of Brumpton, died suddenly. A second wife, many years her husband’s junior, she could look forward to a lively life as soon as her mourning period was over. Indeed, she intended to begin enjoying life discreetly long before she doffed her widow’s weeds. Meanwhile she had the enjoyment of the earl’s entire fortune, for she had persuaded him to disown his only son, Lord Hardy. The task had been easy. The elderly earl, foolishly fond of his pretty young wife, never guessed that she had been plotting against his own best interests and his son’s.

The earl’s servant, Trusty, remained with his master’s corpse when everyone else left it. Much to his surprise and joy, he discovered that the earl had only lapsed into a coma, and before long the nobleman regained consciousness and health. Trusty, seeing an opportunity to prove that his mistress was an intriguer and an adulteress, persuaded the earl to remain hidden and allow everyone to believe he was really dead. The only person taken into the secret was the funeral director, who agreed to keep silent after the earl paid him an amount equal to what the funeral charges would have been.

In addition to planning ways for the enjoyment of her late husband’s wealth, Lady Brumpton also gave some thought to the problem of ridding herself of the earl’s two teen-age wards, Lady Sharlot and Lady Harriot. The girls were a very real threat to her freedom and to a portion of the earl’s estate, since Lady Sharlot was in love with the earl’s son and Lady Harriot with his friend Mr. Campley.

Despite the fact that he had been put out of his father’s house, Lord Hardy, an officer in the army, refused to believe ill of his father, and with Campley’s help he plotted to release the two girls from his stepmother’s clutches before some evil should befall them. He was right in his fear; Lady Brumpton planned to have the girls spirited away and seduced by her brother and a friend.

Help for Lord Hardy and Campley came unexpectedly from Trusty, who went to Lord Hardy’s apartment and outlined his plan to the earl’s son. Lord Hardy, he said, was to send a detachment of troops to the earl’s house and the casket containing the earl’s body would be turned over to the soldiers. In the meantime, with the help of Lord Hardy’s servant and a French seamstress, Campley managed to win Lady Harriot’s confidence and persuaded her to escape with him from the Brumpton mansion. They escaped by dressing in the clothes of the French seamstress and a servant girl.

The earl, hidden in the house, eavesdropped on various conversations and learned that his wife had abused him terribly in her conduct with other men and had plotted to bring his son to disfavor. He also learned that the lawyer he had trusted with the drafting of his will had written it in such a way that most of the estate would go, not to the rightful heirs, but to court and legal fees. The earl, seeing his wife as she really was, resolved to reinstate his son as his rightful heir.

When the detachment of soldiers arrived at the house, the casket was delivered to them, but not before a fight between the soldiers and the servants in order to make it seem as if the delivery had not been voluntary. Actually, the casket contained Lady Sharlot. The plot was a ruse to get the girl out of the house before she could be kidnaped and seduced by Lady Brumpton’s brother.

As soon as she discovered what had happened and who the commanding officer of the detachment of soldiers was, Lady Brumpton went to confront Lord Hardy. When she arrived, she found Lady Harriot and Campley, who defied her to stop his marriage to the girl. Bitter words were spoken on both sides. At last Lord Hardy entered, to take his turn as the recipient of Lady Brumpton’s invective. She railed against him for taking away his father’s body and desecrating it. When she had finished, Lord Hardy accused her of poisoning his father, an accusation which made her furious. They went into another room to view the body. When the casket was opened, Lady Sharlot emerged, much to Lord Hardy’s joy. His stepmother then told him he had been cut off from his father’s fortune, and she handed him the one shilling which had been left to him according to his father’s will. She demanded again that he and his soldiers return the body, for she still thought that they had somehow spirited it away. All the while the earl was listening in another room and gaining further evidence that his second wife was entirely dishonorable and evil.

To Lady Brumpton’s consternation, the earl showed himself. Although her plans for enjoying a fortune and independence were gone, she felt that the delay was only temporary, for she believed that she could once again put herself in his esteem in spite of the facts he had learned. The earl was not happy to return to a life with an adulteress and a shrew.

Once more Trusty saved the situation. He produced a letter written by a man who had married Lady Brumpton some months before her marriage to the earl. The earlier marriage made the later one void, a fact which took the scheming woman out of the earl’s life. The first husband had been induced to write the letter when he saw the earl sitting reading in his study. Like everyone else, he thought that the earl was dead, and he therefore believed the nobleman had returned to haunt him for not telling what he knew about Lady Brumpton’s past. Instead of being either a rich widow or a countess, Lady Brumpton found herself the wife of a man who had no money and who was forced to live by his wits. Her plans were utterly undone.

The earl, overjoyed to see his son after many years, promised to reinstate Lord Hardy as the rightful heir to his estates. He also gave his blessing to the approaching marriages between Lord Hardy and Lady Sharlot and Campley and Lady Harriot. He was, indeed, delighted that his two wards were to marry his son and his son’s closest friend.

Further Critical Evaluation of the Work:

THE FUNERAL opens on a scene with all the hallmarks of high Restoration comedy: two gentlemen discourse with an undertaker on the economics of grief, while the playwright applies numerous satirical needles to the balloons of hypocrisy and social pretension. But the courtier audience of the reign of Charles II would not have been satisfied for long with Steele’s wit or his dramatic concerns. This is post-Jeremy Collier drama; written only twenty-five years after Etherege’s MAN OF MODE, it seems closer in spirit to the good-natured comedy of Goldsmith, well over half a century later.

To be sure, many features of the older comedy remain. As Steele points out in his preface, his purpose is to level ridicule “at a set of people who live in impatient hopes to see us out of the world.” There is considerable witty exposure of the topsy-turvy values of wives, undertakers, and lawyers, whose fortunes and happiness are made by the deaths of their spouses or clients. Some of the Restoration types strut pompously across the stage, such as the female fop, Mademoiselle Epingle, who affects a French accent to make herself more genteel; and the battle of the sexes continues with the women, as usual, winning through their wiles and “affections” over the “brutal power” of the men.

But the future co-founder (with Joseph Addison) of the TATLER and the SPECTATOR has new concerns; he has already begun his attempt to refine the manners and sensibilities of his audiences. His heroes are not licentious rakes, but men of the highest honor and generosity. Ensign Campley, in a characteristic gesture, unobtrusively slips his straitened friend Lord Hardy three hundred pounds through Trim, his witty but good-natured and honest servant. The loyal and wise old steward Trusty works day and night for the best interests of his master, finally extricating him from a hopeless marriage. While the villains retreat in confusion, truth and virtue trumph at the conclusion in a paroxysm of sentiment that would have reduced a Restoration audience to gales of laughter: “O my children—oh, oh! These passions are too strong for my old frame—oh the sweet torture! My son, my son! I shall expire in the too mighty pleasure! my boy!” Even the sprightly heroine, Lady Harriot, who begins the play with a temperament as contrary as Congreve’s Millamant, very early abandons her feminine haughtiness and affectations after a straight talking-to by her lover.

In addition to the elements of sentiment and sensibility, there is a new, earnest note of morality and social consciousness. When Campley asks a soldier why he has been treated so badly by superiors, the soldier replies, “I was found guilty of being poor.” The idle life of a gentleman is roundly condemned; and in the final scene, Lord Brumpton delivers a Polonius-like lecture (in verse) to his son on the duties and responsibilities of leadership for a “worthy lord.” Finally, there is a timely note of seriousness at the close, as the men prepare to go off to war and to die, if necessary. Much comedy of this period ends with a song; it is indicative of Steele’s dual concerns that he ends with two songs: the first, a conventional marriage hymn, the second, a martial air, urging the patriotic British on “to glorious death, or comely wounds.”