Mawworm's sermon met
with extraordinary success; on some occasions it was even encored, and
the comedy has never since been presented without this supreme effort
of gag. Liston borrowed the address from Mathews, and gained for it so
great an amount of fame, that the real contriver of the interpolation
had reason to complain of being deprived of such credit as was due to
him in the matter. The sermon is certainly irresistibly comical, and a
fair outgrowth of the character of Mawworm; at the same time it must
be observed that Mawworm is himself an excrescence upon the comedy,
having no existence in Cibber's "Non-Juror," upon which "The
Hypocrite" is founded, or in "Tartuffe," from whence Cibber derived
the subject of his play.
In the same way the additions made by the actors to certain of
Sheridan's comedies--such as Moses's redundant iterations of "I'll
take my oath of that!" in "The School for Scandal," and Acres's
misquotation of Sir Lucius's handwriting: "To prevent the trouble that
might arise from our both undressing the same lady," in "The Rivals,"
are gags of such long standing, that they may date almost from the
first production of those works.
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