Background
Jeremy Collier was born at Stow-with-Quy, Cambridgeshire, on the 23rd of September 1650.
Jeremy Collier was born at Stow-with-Quy, Cambridgeshire, on the 23rd of September 1650.
Jeremy Collier was educated at Ipswich free school, overwhich his father presided, and at Caius College, Cambridge, graduating B. A. in 1673 and M. A. in 1676.
Jeremy Collier acted for a short time as a private chaplain, but was appointed in 1679 to the small rectory of Ampton, near Bury St Edmunds, and in 1685 he was made lecturer of Gray's Inn. At the Revolution he was committed to Newgate for writing in favour of James II a tract entitled The Desertion discuss'd in a Letter to a Country Gentleman (1688), in answer to Bishop Burnet's defence of King William's position.
He was released after some months of imprisonment, without trial, by the intervention of his friends.
In the two following years he continued to harass the government by his publications: and in 1692 he was again in prison under suspicion of treasonable correspondence with James.
His scruples forbade him to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court by accepting bail, but he was soon released.
In 1697 appeared the first volume of his Essays on Several Moral Subjects, to which a second was added in 1703, and a third in 1709.
He dealt with the immodesty of the contemporary stage, supporting his contentions by a long series of references attesting the comparative decency of Latin and Greek drama; with the profane language indulged in by the players; the abuse of the clergy common in the drama; the encouragement of vice by representing the vicious characters as admirable and successful; and finally he supported his general position by the analysis of particular plays, Dryden's Amphitryon, Vanbrugh's Relapse and D'Urfey's Don Quixote.
The Book abounds in hypercriticism, particularly in the imputation of profanity; and in a useless display of learning, neither intrinsically valuable nor conducive to the argument.
Yet, in the words of Macaulay, who gives an admirable account of the discussion in his essay on the comic dramatists of the Restoration, " when all deductions have been made, great merit must be allowed to the work. "
Collier was prepared to meet any number of antagonists, and defended himself in numerous tracts.
The Short View was followed by a Defence (1699), a Second Defence (1700), and Mr Collier's Dissuasive from the Playhouse, in a Letter to a Person of Quality (1703), and a Further Vindication (1708).
