Moll Davis by Bernard Capes — Read

It must be explained at this point that the comedy with which we are especially concerned formed only one of innumerable kindred sideshows in the endless junketing fair at Whitehall Palace, where, ever since the first days of the Restoration, the high revel which that reaction from Cimmerian glooms had come to inaugurate had been steadily degenerating into a Saturnalia as unblushing as it was universal. It represents, in fact, but one among many such performances, and, though isolated by us for purely dramatic purposes, is none the less to be understood as constituting part of the general entertainment. Thus, you can picture our little company, if you will, as joining, in the intervals between the acts, in the common hilarity, as forming part of the glittering personnel which daily, in that idle, pleasure-loving Court, laughs and fribbles away the hours. The young Countess is there, _ingénue_, childish, but already a mark for predatory eyes, and not, alas!

in her proud revolt, wholly, or wholly innocently, unconscious of the fact. My lord her husband, secretly watchful of the change, conceals, under an affectation of _insouciance_, the jealousy which is beginning to set him speculating as to any reason which may exist for it. Hamilton, who holds in his hand, or imagines that he holds, the strings of all the puppets implicated in this play of cross-purposes, pervades the entire scene, a figure of wit and grace, handsome, urbane, and popular wherever he chooses to distribute his favours. Of the Court and its demoralizing atmosphere are all these lives, is all this complication of unscrupulous intrigue; and, if we leave that Court out of our account, it is not to imply thereby that the aforesaid lives are not nine-tenths subject to its baneful influences, but simply because to mix any such complex ingredients with a plain tale were hopelessly to confuse the issues thereof.