"LADY BETTY. The easiest of any. One has ten thousand times the
trouble with a coxcomb....The men of sense, my dear, make the best
fools in the world: their sincerity and good breeding throws them so
entirely into one's power, and gives one such an agreeable thirst of
using them ill, to show that power--'tis impossible not to quench it."

* * * * *

Compare this bristling dialogue with the inane stuff that too often
passes for comedy nowadays, and one finds all the difference between
real humour and flippancy. We stand at the threshold of the twentieth
century, boastfully proclaiming that we do everything better than ever
could our ancestors, yet where are the new comedies that might hold a
candle to the "Careless Husband," the "Inconstant," or the "School for
Scandal?" We may be presumptuous enough, nevertheless, to hold up that
much-quoted candle, but the light from it will burn pale and dim when
placed near the golden glow of the past. Would that we could purify
some of the old-time pieces and thus preserve them for future
generations of theatre-goers. Alas! that is impossible, for to cleanse
them with a sort of moral soap and water would destroy nearly all
their delightful glitter.

The lines of Lady Betty must have fairly sizzled with the fire of
comedy as they fell from the pretty lips of Oldfield. No wonder that
Londoners thought the character bewitching; no wonder that Cibber
wrote so enthusiastically of the actress in that wonderful Apology.
"Had her birth plac'd her in a higher rank of life," he notes, perhaps
forgetting that her very descent entitled the poor sewing-girl to a
position which poverty denied her, "she had certainly appear'd in