Elizabeth Inchbald

• Born: October 15, 1753
• Birthplace: Standingfield (now Stanningfield), Suffolk, England
• Died: August 1, 1821
• Place of death: London, England

Other Literary Forms

Elizabeth Inchbald published two novels: A Simple Story (1791) and Nature and Art (1796). For the 125 plays collected in The British Theatre (1806-1809), she provided brief critical prefaces, and she chose the works for the seven-volume A Collection of Farces and Other Afterpieces (1809) and the ten-volume The Modern Theatre (1811).

Achievements

Elizabeth Inchbald was a highly successful playwright for her time. Fourteen of her plays ran ten or more nights their first season. In the 1788-1789 season, six of her works were performed, and during the week of March 16, 1790, The Child of Nature, Such Things Are, and The Midnight Hour were performed at Covent Garden. Her comedies were sufficiently popular to allow her to retire in 1805. When the Quarterly Review was begun in 1809, Inchbald was invited to contribute. Though she declined, she did agree to write critical prefaces to the 125 plays in The British Theatre and to select the pieces to be included in two other anthologies.

Biography

According to writer Mary Shelley, when Elizabeth Inchbald would enter a room, every man present turned his attention to her, ignoring all other women in the room. This beautiful actress and author was born Elizabeth Simpson at Standingfield, Suffolk, on October 15, 1753, the eighth child and sixth daughter of the Catholic farmer John Simpson and his wife, the former Mary Rushbrook.

At an early age she fell in love with the stage. When she was seventeen, she tried to join the theater in Norwich, where her brother George was acting. She received encouragement but no engagement. On April 11, 1772, she boarded the Norwich Fly, bound for London’s playhouses forty miles away. Here, too, she could not gain a foothold. On June 9, 1772, she married the actor Joseph Inchbald, whom she had met the previous year when she visited her married sisters in the English capital. Joseph Inchbald was twice Elizabeth’s age, but he had theatrical experience and connections. Their seven-year marriage would be tempestuous, in large part because Elizabeth’s beauty gained her many admirers and her independent spirit caused her to reject subservience to her husband. The rebellious Miss Milner of A Simple Story is largely a self-portrait.

Through her husband’s connections and her own good looks, Inchbald secured positions in various provincial theaters, where she performed such leading roles as Cordelia to her husband’s Lear, Desdemona to her husband’s Othello, Cleopatra in John Dryden’s All for Love: Or, The World Well Lost (pr. 1677), and Lady Snearwell in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal (pr. 1777). Such parts may have satisfied her ego, but acting in Hull, Edinburgh, or Dublin paid poorly. After Joseph’s sudden death on June 6, 1779, the widowed Inchbald returned to London to try her luck, which now proved better: Thomas Harris of Covent Garden hired her. However, in the metropolis, she received only minor parts, and in 1782, she returned to the provincial theaters of Shrewsbury and Dublin. Her roles were bigger, but her income remained about one hundred pounds a year. In 1783, she went back to Harris.

Her experience had taught her what pleased audiences, and the early 1780’s, she began writing plays. Her earliest efforts never saw daylight, but on July 6, 1784, the summer Haymarket Theatre produced her farce The Mogul Tale, with Inchbald as Selima. The piece earned her a hundred guineas, as much as a year’s salary. The success of her next comedies allowed her to abandon acting in 1789 to concentrate on her writing, and by 1805, she was able to retire. Thereafter, in addition to working on The British Theatre and two other anthologies, Inchbald contributed the occasional periodical article. She also devoted much time to writing her memoirs, though on her deathbed she ordered that these be burnt, and they were. Inchbald died on August 1, 1821, and was buried in Kensington churchyard.

Analysis

The latter half of the eighteenth century witnessed the rise of the cult of sensibility. Scottish writer Henry McKenzie, author of the sentimental novel The Man of Feeling (1771), claimed that “the stimulation of melancholy feelings” led to “social sympathy” and a sense of “the duties of humanity.” The literary heroes of the period are magnanimous, even to their enemies. Novels and plays sought to provoke the tender smile or tear rather than laughter. Though wit was not banished from stage and page, it often was associated with morally ambiguous characters. Elizabeth Inchbald fit squarely into this new cult of sentiment. Because plays were family affairs, dramatists such as Inchbald were careful to exclude ribaldry or questionable morality.

Inchbald’s prefaces to the plays in The British Theatre expressed her views about comedy. She praised David Garrick’s adaptation of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (pr., pb. 1675) because Garrick had removed parts that a tasteful person might find objectionable. She condemned Sir George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem (pr., pb. 1707) for its licentiousness and John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (pr., pb. 1728) because she felt it made vice appealing. She criticized Farquhar’s The Inconstant: Or, The Way to Win Him (pr., pb. 1702) because it sought only to amuse, and she commended her friend and fellow playwright Thomas Holcroft for combining entertainment with instruction.

As in the Restoration comedies that Inchbald condemned, the battle of sexes looms large in her work. However, where the Restoration heroine defends herself with witty repartee, Inchbald’s does so with sentiment. In addition, where the Restoration heroine achieves marriage of equality with a Truewit, Inchbald’s weds a moralizer to whom she surrenders her autonomy. Friendly with the radicals William Godwin and Thomas Holcroft, Inchbald even shared their liberal publisher Joseph Robinson. Politically she was liberal and used her plays to advocate prison reform, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theories of education, and humanitarian forgiveness rather than punishment. Yet unlike Godwin, Holcroft, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (from whom Inchbald pointedly distanced herself), she had no quarrel with the existing political or social establishment, nor did she express sympathy with the French Revolution that energized the English radicals. Her plays remain firmly in the sentimental mainstream.

Such Things Are

Although Inchbald sets this play in Sumatra, her central concern is prison reform in England. In the play, the benevolent Haswell (based on contemporary philanthropist and prison reformer John Howard) tours the sultan’s jail and is appalled by what he sees. The keeper points out a man who remains incarcerated because he cannot pay the costs of the trial that acquitted him. Many are political prisoners. Haswell asks the jailer whether “gentleness, or mercy, [might] reclaim them.” The jailer replies, “That I can’t say—we never try those means in this part of the world.” Inchbald implies that this approach is not used in England either.

Inchbald demonstrates the efficacy of Haswell’s method through his encounter with Zedan. When the jailer’s torch is extinguished, Zedan steals Haswell’s wallet. The money Zedan thus secures will allow him and his companions to bribe their way to freedom. Hardened by ill treatment, Zedan rejoices at the thought of Haswell’s chagrin on discovering the theft: “And then the pleasure it will be to hear the stranger fret, and complain of his loss!—O, how my heart loves to see sorrow!—Misery such as I have known, on men who spurn me.” Unaware of his loss, Haswell, before leaving the prison, gives Zedan some coins to buy food. Overwhelmed by the stranger’s generosity, Zedan confesses his theft and returns the purse. Haswell’s action, Zedan says “makes me like not only you, but all the world besides—the love of my family was confined to them alone; but this makes me feel I could love even my enemies.”

Conversely, harsh treatment teaches bloody instruction, which being taught returns to plague the inventor. Thinking that his wife, Arabella, has been murdered, the sultan declares that he has avenged the wrongs committed against her and him “with such unsparing justice on the foe, that even the men who made me what I was, trembled to reveal their imposition.” Haswell undertakes to purge the sultan’s cruelty by taking him to the prison to exercise benevolence in freeing six inmates. The inmates’ gratitude, Haswell promises, will give the sultan more pleasure than the suffering he has imposed on them. In prison, the sultan finds his long-lost wife. Reunited with Arabella, the sultan gives Haswell a signet ring, allowing him to free whomever the philanthropist chooses.

Into this serious play, Inchbald introduces some comic touches, chiefly through the obtuse Twineall. Like so many of his dramatic counterparts, he derives from the early seventeenth century comedy of humors created by Ben Jonson, with his name a guide to his character. He is a sycophant, who would bind himself to everyone else through flattery. Meanright, whose name perhaps suggests that he wishes to reform this bad habit, tells Twineall to speak of bravery to Lord Tremor, pedigree to Lady Tremor, and to question the sultan’s legitimacy in front of Lord Flint. Lord Tremor, as his name reveals, is a coward; his wife is the daughter of a grocer and niece of a wigmaker; and Lord Flint is fiercely loyal to the sultan. By following Meanright’s advice, Twineall engenders humorous embarrassment, until Flint has him condemned to death for treason. At the end of the play, Haswell frees him, though Lady Tremor still wants his head and Lord Flint would have him sent to row in the galleys. Sententious Haswell uses even this comic moment to inculcate a moral: “For shame—for shame—Gentlemen! the extreme rigour you shew in punishing a dissension from your opinion, or a satire upon your folly, proves to conviction what reward you had bestowed upon a skilful flatterer.” Presumably forgiveness will reform the comic Twineall as it will the other characters.

Every One Has His Fault

Like so many of Inchbald’s other plays, Every One Has His Fault concerns marriage and forgiveness. Sir Robert Ramble has been divorced for five months, but he and his wife continue to harbor an affection for each other that leads to their remarrying at the end of the comedy. Although the Placids’ married life belies their name, they, too, reach a truce in the fifth act, and Solus, who has been debating whether or not to wed, decides at last to marry Miss Spinster. Comic playwright Miles Peter Andrews’s epilogue opens with witty portraits of unhappy marriages but concludes that whatever the problems of conjugal life, it is preferable to the alternative.

The Placids and Rambles agree to overlook or accept their partners’ flaws, thus illustrating the value of forgiveness. The same lesson underlies the plot involving Captain Irwin and Lord Norland. Irwin has married Norland’s daughter, Eleanor, against the wishes of both her father and his uncle, Solus. Hence, neither man will help the impoverished couple. Rebuffed by friends and relatives, Irwin declares that the English are worse than the savages he encountered in North America. A savage shares what he has with his fellow savage, “gives him the best apartment his hut affords, and tries to hush those griefs that are confined in his bosom,” whereas in London no one will invite him to visit.

As in Such Things Are, punishment and cruelty lead to crime. Needing money to feed his family, Irwin robs Lord Norland. Even though Lord Norland’s daughter and grandson urge mercy, Norland at first wants to prosecute his son-in-law. Inchbald’s greatest creation in this play, Mr. Harmony, effects a happy ending in his customary way: He lies. He has reconciled the Rambles and Placids by telling the wives that their husbands have been seriously wounded in a duel. They rush to their husbands’ sides, and even though both men are unhurt, the women recognize their love for their men. Similarly, he announces that Irwin has killed himself. When Lord Norland, Solus, Ramble, and Placid all wish that they had been kind to Irwin, he produces the captain. Everyone is now forgiven, and Lord Norland confesses that mercy gives him greater joy than rigorous justice.

In this, her best play, Inchbald deftly fuses sentiment and humor. The tearful plot involving Irwin is offset by Solus’s five-act dithering over whether to marry and Harmony’s clever deceptions. The Placids’ bickering is also treated with wit at times worthy of Oscar Wilde. When Harmony tells Mrs. Placid that her husband has been wounded, she responds, “Mr. Harmony, if Mr. Placid is either dying or dead, I shall behave with very great tenderness; but if I find him alive and likely to live, I will lead him such a life he has not led a long time.”

To Marry, or Not to Marry

In her final play, Inchbald once more illustrates the power of forgiveness. Years before the opening scene, Sir Oswin Mortland had successfully prosecuted Lavensforth, modeled on Indian mogul Warren Hastings. Though the court’s judgment against Lavensforth extended only to a hefty fine, he exiled himself, leaving his daughter, Hester, to the care of Ashdale. As the curtain rises, Hester, fleeing an arranged marriage, has arrived at Sir Oswin’s house seeking asylum.

A confirmed bachelor, Sir Oswin, unaware of Hester’s parentage, more than once resolves to send her back to Ashdale, but each time he relents. At length his kindness prompts her to reveal her identity. Although Lavensforth has sworn to kill Sir Oswin, Sir Oswin has fallen in love with Hester and so cannot reject her despite this information. Also, over time, he has come to doubt the justice of his prosecution and Lavensforth’s guilt. When Lavensforth, back in England, summons his daughter, Sir Oswin accompanies her. Near Lavensforth’s hut, Lavensforth’s faithful servant, Amos, wounds Sir Oswin, and Sir Oswin retires to the nearby shelter. Lavensforth now has his opportunity for revenge, but when Hester relates how Sir Oswin has protected her and has changed his mind about the long-ago trial, the two men are reconciled.

Balancing this sentimental plot is Willowear’s matrimonial quest. Ashdale had intended him to marry Hester. Jilted, Willowear proposes to Lady Susan Courtly, and when she, too, refuses him, he woos Sir Oswin’s spinster sister, Sarah Mortland. Unlike the typical Inchbald female, Sarah prefers the single life. In the last scene, Willowear seems to have won Lady Susan after all, though she reminds him that she is free to change her mind. Inchbald thus again combines laughing and weeping comedy in a play that advocates humanitarian forgiveness.

Bibliography

Boaden, James. Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald. London: Richard Bentley, 1833. Still the most comprehensive biography, drawing on Inchbald’s diaries and the recollections of those who knew her. Includes many of her letters and two of her plays not previously produced or published.

Littlewood, S. R. Elizabeth Inchbald and Her Circle: The Life of a Charming Woman (1753-1821). London: Daniel O’Connor, 1921. A charming biography that draws freely on Boaden. Offers little analysis of Inchbald’s writings and contains some factual errors.

Manvell, Roger. Elizabeth Inchbald: England’s Principal Woman Dramatist and Independent Woman of Letters in Eighteenth Century London. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987. Examines Inchbald’s literary and political theories as she expressed them in her plays, novels, and literary criticism. Includes a useful primary and secondary bibliography as well as excerpts from Inchbald’s letters and brief plot summaries of her plays.