Essays on the Stage: Preface to the Campaigners (1689) and Preface to the Translation of Bossuet's Maxims and Reflections on Plays (1699)

In Short

This collection reprints two incendiary prefaces from the late seventeenth century, serving as primary evidence of the intense backlash against Jeremy Collier’s infamous moral crusade against the theater. The primary text is a stinging, highly personal defense by Thomas D’Urfey, who rejects charges of "profaneness" and "immorality" leveled against his work. By pairing this with a later translation of Bishop Bossuet’s restrictive views on drama, the book frames a volatile historical debate. It remains essential for understanding how playwrights—and their antagonists—wielded rhetoric, satire, and theology to define the boundaries of public art.

The Story

The narrative arc of this volume begins with a crisis of reputation. Thomas D’Urfey, a popular and prolific dramatist, finds himself a prime target in Jeremy Collier’s 1698 polemic, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. Collier’s work, which castigated the theater as a cesspool of vice and impiety, threatened the livelihoods and standing of contemporary writers. D’Urfey, refusing to suffer in silence, attaches a lengthy, combative preface to his new comedy, The Campaigners.

D’Urfey’s defense is aggressive and deeply personal. He does not merely argue for the artistic merit of his plays; he systematically dismantles Collier’s character. He paints his attacker as a hypocrite—an "Absolver" who, while claiming to be a paragon of Christian virtue, supposedly spent his time hardening condemned criminals rather than guiding them toward redemption. D’Urfey mocks the critic's inconsistency, pointing out that Collier’s own writing is often just as "bawdy" as the plays he condemns, and that he frequently "blows hot and cold" by criticizing and then offering his own "improvements" to the very scripts he claims are sinful.

As the argument unfolds, D’Urfey transitions from personal insults to a broader defense of the stage’s function. He invokes historical precedent, citing poets like Thomas Randolph and Geoffrey Chaucer to assert that theater has long been a vehicle for social correction. For D’Urfey, the stage serves as a mirror; it shows society its flaws so that, through laughter and reflection, it might mend them. He concludes his rebuttal with a biting satirical fable about a dog and an otter, signaling that he has had the final word in this particular exchange of barbs.

The collection then shifts to a second, more formal piece: a preface to a translation of Bishop Bossuet’s Maxims and Reflections upon Plays. Here, the tone changes from the scrappy, street-level brawling of a playwright to the calculated, high-minded moralizing of a church official. This section serves as a reminder of the international scope of the anti-theater sentiment. By including this, the volume contrasts the defensive, often ribald wit of the London playwrights with the stern, theological condemnation emanating from across the English Channel. The book does not attempt to resolve the conflict; instead, it leaves the reader with the full, unresolved tension of two irreconcilable visions of public morality.

How It Unfolds

The provocation The book opens with D’Urfey’s immediate, indignant reaction to being singled out by Jeremy Collier. He explains his shift from a conventional introduction to a confrontational "Answer," framing his defense as a service to the theater-going public.

The character assassination D’Urfey turns his sights on Collier’s personal integrity, questioning the critic’s religious sincerity and past actions as a clergyman. He labels Collier the "Absolver," casting doubt on the moral authority of a man he views as a pedantic hypocrite.

The defense of drama The argument moves toward the purpose of comedy, with D’Urfey employing poetry and historical references to claim that plays are, at their core, tools for social improvement. He highlights the hypocrisy of a critic who claims to be offended by language while obsessively cataloging the very "bawdry" he purports to hate.

The counter-attack D’Urfey concludes his preface with a direct, lyrical rebuke, using stinging couplets to mock the critic’s motives and lack of true spiritual grace. He attempts to turn the tables by suggesting that the critic is the one who truly misunderstands the nature of piety and community.

The theological shift The volume transitions to a preface by a separate, anonymous hand regarding Bishop Bossuet’s work. This final movement provides a more detached, scholarly perspective on the same conflict, showing how the debate over "profaneness" was a widespread struggle between ecclesiastical authority and artistic freedom.

The People

Thomas D’Urfey, the central voice, is a playwright under fire who values his artistic reputation and his right to depict the world as he sees it. He is pugnacious, quick-witted, and deeply offended by the idea that his work is a corruption of public morals. He refuses to see himself as a moral transgressor, portraying his work instead as an honest reflection of human folly.

Jeremy Collier, though absent as a direct author of these prefaces, is the shadow over every page. He is depicted by D’Urfey not as a principled man of God, but as a "Switching" hypocrite and a "Doctor Crambo" who hides his own love for salacious detail behind a mask of righteous indignation. His goal is the radical reformation—or, as D’Urfey sees it, the destruction—of the English stage.

The anonymous translator of Bishop Bossuet represents the broader, more systematic institutional opposition to the theater. This figure is less interested in the messy, personal insults that D’Urfey favors, focusing instead on the theological arguments that categorize play-going as an inherently sinful activity.

Ultimately, these figures stand as symbols of a broader societal clash. D’Urfey represents the defiant artist, while Collier and Bossuet embody the rigid moral guardians of the era. Neither side is willing to concede, and their clashing perspectives define the era’s struggle over the power of performance.

In Its Own Voice

"So, Comedies, as Poets still intend 'em, Serve first to shew your faults, and then to mend 'em."

D’Urfey uses this line from the poet Thomas Randolph to argue that the stage is a moral tool rather than a source of corruption.

"If all those that preach up Paradise, Will have their shares of every human Vice, They shall Cant long enough e're I believe, Or pin my Soul's Salvation on their sleeve."

D’Urfey quotes this verse to dismiss the moral authority of clergymen who he believes act with hypocrisy.

What It's Really About

At its core, this book is an exploration of the power of the public mirror. The fundamental question is whether the artist is responsible for the morality of the audience, or if the audience is responsible for interpreting the art they consume. D’Urfey argues that the depiction of vice is not the promotion of vice, and he exposes the contradictions inherent in any attempt to police artistic expression. Beyond the specific 1690s theatrical context, the book touches on the timeless tension between those who believe culture should reflect the world as it is—warts and all—and those who demand that culture serve a prescriptive, moralizing function. It is a document about the weaponization of language in the service of reputation.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy the sharp, combative wit of Restoration-era prose will find much to admire in D’Urfey’s unapologetic defense of his craft. The book captures a moment where the "culture wars" of the seventeenth century were at their most intense, and there is a visceral pleasure in watching a writer fight back against a censorial critic with such ferocity and flair.

However, the reader must be prepared for the realities of the period’s writing style. The prose is dense, filled with classical allusions, and deeply embedded in the specific, often petty grievances of 1698. The dialect and the intensity of the insults may feel jarring to a modern sensibility, and the book requires patience to navigate the intricate, sometimes circular logic of the arguments. There is no easy synthesis here; the book is a series of documents that show an argument in progress rather than a tidy historical summary.

Those interested in the history of theater, the evolution of censorship, or the long-standing debate over morality in art will find these primary sources invaluable. Reading it feels like stumbling into a public brawl in an eighteenth-century coffee house—messy, loud, and deeply revealing of the anxieties that continue to influence how we talk about art and public decency today.