Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, vol 3

Vol 3

Markman Ellis

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138752870
• eBook ISBN: 9781351568654
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

Helps scholars and students form an understanding of the contribution made by the coffee-house to British and even American history and culture. This book attempts to make an intervention in debates about the nature of the public sphere and the culture of politeness. It is intended for historians and scholars of literature, science, and medicine.

Thomas Sydserf, Tarugo’s Wiles: or, the Coffee-House. A Comedy. As it was acted at his Highness’s The Duke of York’s Theatre (London, Henry Herringman, 1668), [8], 54pp.; 4° BL:644.f.44. ESTCR27882

Tarugo’s Wiles: or, the Coffee-House, by the Scottish dramatist Thomas Sydserf (also spelled St Serfe), is a reworking of a Spanish comedy by Moreto. The setting is announced as ’A Coffee-house, where is presented a mixture of all kind of people’ (p. 52). The bulk of the play is set in non-specific urban locations in Madrid, except for the coffee-house of Act III, which is located in London. At this period there were no coffee-houses in Spain: of this contradiction the play remains silent. The play is a translation of No puede ser [It Cannot Be] (Madrid, 1660), by Agustín Moreto y Cabaña, itself derived from Lope de Vega’s El Mayor Impossible. The plot turns on a complex series of courtship reversals, gender stereotypes and transgressive disguise scenes. Sydserf’s prose translation is fairly close to the original, except for the gratuitous addition of the third act, and the elevation of Tarugo from a servant to the brother of Don Horatio. No puede ser was translated again in 1685 by the English dramatist John Crowne as Sir Courtly Nice (see James Castañeda, Agustín Moreto (New York, Twayne Publishers, 1974), pp. 97–9).

Act III is set in the coffee-room, where Tarugo has sought refuge from his debtors by swapping clothes with the coffee waiter. The act offers a satirical portrait of coffee-house conversation, with the ironic punctum that the absurd debates witnessed there are mediated by the presence of Tarugo in disguise. In a series of small skits, a range of customers discuss a medley of fashionable topics: the physiological properties of coffee, inane syllogisms, the transfusion of the blood, utopian Harringtonian political philosophy, Italian painting, political allegiance, sexuality and military stratagems. While some debate and converse with apparent ease, others bicker and gossip: one discussion, on military fortifications, leads to a brawl precipitated by one protagonist having a dish of coffee thrown in his face.

Sydserf’s play met with some success in London. It was acted at the Duke of York’s theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields on Saturday 5, 7(?), 8 and 15 October 1667 (London Stage, part I, pp. 119–20). On 5 October, Pepys noted ’To the Duke of York’s playhouse, but the house so full, it being a new play, “The Coffee House”, that we could not get in’ (Diary, vol. VIII, p. 463). On Tuesday 15 October, Pepys went again, where in the presence of the King and the Duke of York he saw the play. He commented it was ’the most ridiculous, insipid play that ever I saw in my life, and glad we were that Betterton had no part in it’ (Diary, vol. VIII, p. 481) The Scottish traveller, Sir John Lauder, saw a performance on 5(?) October at ’the Dukes playhouse’ in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He commented ’we saw Tom Sydserfes Spanish Comedie Tarugoes Wiles, or the Coffee House, acted. In the pit they payed 30p., in our place 18s. He could not forget himselfe: was very satyricall sneering at the Greshamers for their late invention of the transfusion of blood, as also at our covenant, making the witch of Geneva to wy [weigh] it and La Sainte Ligue de France togither’ (The Journals of Sir John Lauder Lord Fountainhall with his observations on public affairs and other memoranda 1665–1676, ed. by Donald Crawford, Publications of the Scottish History Society, 36 (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1900), pp. 174–5). After publication in London in 1668, Tarugo’s Wiles was further acted at the Tennis Court Theatre in Edinburgh in 1668 (Bill Findlay (ed.), A History of Scottish Theatre (Edinburgh, Polygon, 1998), p. 68). In 1691, Gerald Langbaine’s An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (London, L.L. for George West and Henry Clements, 1691), noted that ’ This Comedy if not equal with those ofthe first Rank, yet exceeds several which pretend to the second; especially the third Act, which discovers the several Humours of a Coffee-house’ (pp. 434–5).

Sydserf (1624–69) was the son of the Bishop of Galloway and afterwards of Orkney (also called Thomas Sydserf, d. 1663), and was the publisher of the first Scottish newspaper, the Mercurius Caledonius, in 1660 (a Royalist news-sheet suppressed by the King in the interests of toleration). Like his father, he was closely attached to the Stuart cause, and received payments for espionage on their behalf (Terence Tobin, ’Thomas St Serf (Sydserf) 1624–69’, Theatre Notebook, 27:2 (1973), pp. 74–7). He was the manager of the Tennis Court Theatre in Edinburgh from late 1667 to 1669 (’Trial of Mungo Murray for assaulting Thomas Sydserf, Comedian (1669)’ in Miscellany ofthe Abbotsford Club, vol. I, ed. by James Maidment (Edinburgh, n. p., 1837), pp. 87–95). Tarugo’s Wiles was printed by Henry Herringman, at the Sign of the Anchor on the Lower-Walk of the New Exchange, a bookseller and publisher active 1653–93. In William Wycherley’s comedy The Country-Wife (London, Thomas Dring, 1675), Tarugo’s Wiles is mentioned as an example of a debased and unfashionable play that appeals only to country taste (Act III, p. 40). Charles Sackville (1643–1706), Lord Buckhurst and later Earl of Dorset, wrote verses ’To Sir Thomas St. Serfe: on the Printing his Play Call’d Tarugo’s Wiles’ praising him as the first Scot to have a play performed in London (the poem appeared anonymously in Covent Garden Drollery, 1672, and was attributed in Dryden’s Poetical Miscellanies: the fifth part (London, Jacob Tonson, 1704), p. 276).

TARUGO’S
WILES:
OR, THE
Coffee-House.

A
COMEDY.

As it was Acted at his Highness’s, the Duke
of York’s Theater.

---

WRITTEN

By THO. S^t SERFE, Gent.

---

LONDON,

Printed for Henry Herringman, at the Sign of the Anchor, on the Lower-walk of the New-Exchange. 1668.

To the Right Honourable, and most Noble Lord,
GEORGE
MARQUESSE of HUNTLEY,
EARL of EIGNEY,
AND
LORD STRATHBOGY.

My Lord,

S Cities receive great Princes with Showes and Pageants, so I welcome your Honour into the world with this Dramatick divertisement. Perchance a more serious Present bad not been so becoming your age, as having but newly shaken off the infant blossoms of a hopefull fruit, which in all reason is to be expected, if your Honour contemplate the actions of your Illustrious Ancestors, whose greatness and glory were fi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• [John Tatham], Knavery in all Trades: or, The Coffee-House. A Comedy (1664)
• Thomas Sydserf, Tarugo’s Wiles: or, the Coffee-House. A Comedy (1668)
• Elkanah Settle, The New Athenian Comedy (1693)
• Charles Johnson, The generous husband: or, the coffee house politician ([1711])
• Exchange-Alley: or, the stock-jobber turn’d gentleman (1720)
• James Miller, The Coffee-House. A Dramatick Piece (1737)
• The Usurpers: or the Coffee-House Politicians. Afarce (1749)
• Explanatory Notes