The Conscious Lovers

The Dedication of the play is explicitly political. Steele asks George I to endorse The Conscious Lovers, comparing the influence of the theater on its audience to the influence of the king on the country. Steele implicitly connects English rebels rejecting George I’s rule to the kind of immoral licentiousness he opposes on the stage, calling both kinds of behavior dehumanizing in their departure from acceptability: “’Tis to be a savage to be a rebel, and they who have fallen from you have not so much forfeited their allegiance as lost their humanity” (322). Steele reinforces his own support for George I, further cementing the implication that Georgian rule is aligned to morality.

The Preface and the Prologue discuss the criticism that the genre of sentimental comedy lacks humor. Steele’s defense of his play is that theatrical comedy doesn’t have to be funny, but should instead simply celebrate positive life events: “anything that has its foundation in happiness and success must be allowed to be the object of comedy” (323). In this passage, Steele is specifically referring to the scene in which Indiana and Sealand are reunited—a scene that moved early 18th-century audiences much as similar reunions had in other works. Steele is thus appealing to an older definition of theatrical comedy as simply the opposite of tragedy: While tragedies end in death, comedies typically end in marriage. At the time that Steele was writing, comedy in theater had moved away from this genre classification, featuring humorous scenes, wordplay, and explicit jokes. To distance himself from this kind of playwriting, Steele insists that his work is still a comedy without these traits and blames the audience for not understanding the genre.

Act I introduces the central conflict of the play: Sir Bevil’s plan to marry his son to Lucinda Sealand, despite the fact that Bevil Jr. has been spending time with another woman. This conflict between arranged marriages and matches based on love and attraction isn’t simply a generational divide, however. Bevil Jr.’s ostensibly split affections remind his father of his own libertine past, as he notes to Humphrey: “I have myself, in some part of my life, lived, indeed, with freedom, but, I hope, without reproach” (326). Sir Bevil’s concern is that his son may also be leaning toward a more “free” youth, though both he and Humphrey agree that Bevil Jr. has never disobeyed his father’s wishes. However, Sir Bevil also fears that he is forcing his son into an unwelcome, and thus unhappy, marriage.

Bevil Jr.’s conflicting sense of duty—to his father on the one hand, and to his beloved on the other—forces him into what he terms “honest dissimulation,” or lying to both of the most important people in his life to attempt to meet societal expectations. Setting aside Honesty and Integrity in Relationships, Bevil Jr. instead hides his true feelings from the woman he loves, disguises a letter breaking his engagement to Lucinda as a love letter, and resolves “with the assurance of being rejected, [to] confidently say to my father I am ready to marry her” (333). These contradictory deceptions, lies of omission, and self-denials show the degree to which Bevil Jr.’s desire to obey his father, passion for his beloved, and sense of obligation to his engagement to Lucinda drive his actions. Still, Bevil Jr. cannot fully hide his real feelings: In his conversation with his father, Bevil Jr. assures his father that he will marry Lucinda if he must, but is careful not to pretend that he loves her. This allows him to remain somewhat truthful to the contradictory loyalties of obedience and love.

Act I also hints at The Impact of Social Standing on Prospects, with both Humphrey and Phillis reflecting on their positions as servants. Humphrey reminds Sir Bevil: “Ah sir, our manners were formed from our different fortunes, not our different age. Wealth gave a loose to your youth, and poverty put a restraint upon mine” (326), reminding Sir Bevil that Humphrey, too, would have been a libertine if he could have afforded it. Likewise, Phillis laments to Tom: “Is it not a pity that you should be so great a coxcomb and I so great a coquette and yet be such poor devils as we are?” (331), arguing that if they’d had access to the same resources that their employers do, they could have participated fully in the fashionable flirting of the time. Both Phillis and Humphrey would express themselves differently, live different lives, and exercise greater agency if they were not restrained by their class.