Life, 1884-02-28 · page 12 of 14
Life — February 28, 1884 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "What We Saw at the Last Masquerade Ball" - Life Magazine The upper section is a humorous comic strip about a masquerade ball, depicting guests dancing, drinking champagne, eating supper, and leaving with hangovers. The final panel jokes about a hat that "has grown" smaller—likely a reference to how alcohol affects perception or memory of the night. The lower section reviews a theatrical revival of Wycherly's *"The Country Girl"* (actually an adaptation of *"The Country Wife"*) at Daly's Theatre, starring Ada Rehan. The piece explains that David Garrick had already sanitized Wycherly's notoriously bawdy 17th-century play for 18th-century audiences by removing obscenities and questionable characters. Daly's modern production further tones down the material into "a tolerably virtuous three-act comedy," making it appropriate for families and even clergy. The critic implies this successive bowdlerization has drained much of the original's rakish wit and vigor, while praising Rehan's charming performance.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
- LIFE - WHAT WE SAW AT THE LAST MASQUERADE BALL. ON THE WAY Hoy SAW—NOTHING, ALSO A GREAT DEAL OF GENERAL HILARITY, THE NEXT MORNING. — YES, THAT’S MY HAT, BUT HOW SMALL IT HAS GROWN! A LIVELY REVIVAL. YCHERLY lives again in the newest revival at Daly’s Theatre and in the sprightly Ada Rehan. That is to say, Wycherly lives—in a modified sense. He was, apparently, quite dead until yesterday. To-day, it is found, there is some vitality left in him, In the eighteenth century, David Garrick, who was by no means a prude, took hold of Wycherly’s ‘‘ Country Wife.” He wanted to produce that remarkable show of licentious foolery, sharp wit, and gay incident. But he was wise enough to see that the eighteenth century was not the seventeenth century. His patrons and contemporaries would have stood aghast at the unbridled and obscene buffonery of the filthmonger, Wycherly ; also, by the way, a delightful and brilliant dramatist. Therefore, with commendable prudence, Garrick reset the old play to the new age. The resetting was not perfunctory work. ‘“ The Country Girl”—Garrick’s version of the piece—is innocence itself, compared with “ The Country Wife.” Yet there is a good deal of Wycherly in “‘ The Country Girl,” as this is seen now at Daly’s Theatre. There is also much of Garrick, and a respectable amount of Daly. Garrick turned Peggy Thrift into a jolly and pleasant sort of girl he cut-out Wycherly’s obscenities and characters like the Fidgets and their bad lot; Mr. Daly has changed the piece, as it was shaped in the Garrick version, into a tolerably virtuous three-act comedy. One may observe “ The Country Girl’ without blushing too violently. And ‘there is the charming, breezy, wholesome Rehan, who is a devil of a little fellow in boy’s clothes, Mr. Daly knows how to look at the past through the spectacles of contemporaneous human interest and morality. Some persons were horrified when they learned that Mr. Daly intended to revive ‘‘ The Country Girl.” But they were in too much of a hurry to be horrified. ‘‘The Country Girl” at Daly's Theatre is not ‘‘The Country Wife” which was done at the Theatre Royal in 1675. Take all your children to Daly's, and don’t quake with terror at the thought. Even the Rev. Mr. Fulton, of Brooklyn,-could afford to watch the sprightly gamboling of Ada Rehan, the clean-shaven faces of Drew and Stephens, the severity of Miss Dreher, the promenading of Parkes, the foppish extravagance of Sparkish, and the impurturbable ill-humor of Moody—and remain what he thinks he is, though he is probably mistaken, a Christian. The original play, the play given at the Theatre Royal nearly two centuries ago, was a rakish and wicked affair. Wycherly comicbooks.com