Rachel ventured, on the 1st of
July, 1844, to act Marinette, but not with much success.
Dryden has imitated, in the fourth act of _An Evening's Love_, a
small part of the scene between Marinette and Eraste, the quarrelling
scene between Lucile, Eraste, Marinette, and Gros-Rene, as well as in
the third act of the same play, the scene between Albert and
Metaphrastus. Vanbrugh has very closely followed Moliere's play in the
_Mistake_, but has laid the scene in Spain. This is the principal
difference I can perceive. He has paraphased the French with a spirit
and ease which a mere translation can hardly ever acquire. The epilogue
to his play, written by M. Motteux, a Frenchman, whom the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes brought into England, is filthy in the extreme. Mr.
J. King has curtailed Vanbrugh's play into an interlude, in one act,
called _Lover's Quarrels_, or _Like Master Like Man_.
Another imitator of Moliere was Edward Ravenscroft, of whom Baker says
in his _Biographia Dramatica_, that he was "a writer or compiler of
plays, who lived in the reigns of Charles II. and his two successors."
He was descended from the family of the Ravenscrofts, in Flintshire; a
family, as he himself, in a dedication asserts, so ancient that when
William the Conqueror came into England, one of his nobles married into
it.
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