Mrs. Behn, in the same year, had _her_ political knight as well as D’Urfey. In this lady’s more than usually licentious play, the “City Heiress,” performed at Dorset Gardens, she has a Sir Timothy Treat-all for her comic hero. She boasts in her introduction that her play is political, loyal, true Tory all over; and as “Whiggism has become a jest,” she makes a caricature of Sir Timothy, an old, seditious, Oliverian knight, who keeps open house for commonwealth-men and true-blue Protestants. He is contrasted with two Tory knights, Sir Anthony and Sir Charles Meriwill, and a Tory gentleman, named Wilding. The old Whig knight, however, is by far the least disreputable fellow of the lot. The Tory knights and their friends are rogues, perjurers, and something worse. When they are not on the stage, Mrs. Behn is not afraid to tell what they are about, and _that_ in the very plainest language. “D--n the City!” exclaims the courtly Sir Charles. “Ay, ay!” adds his uncle, Sir Anthony, “and _all_ the Whigs, Charles, d--n all the Whigs!”--And in such wise did Mrs. Afra Behn take vengeance upon political enemies, to the infinite delight of loyal audiences. How the Whig knights ever kept their own against the assaults made on them in plays, prologues, and epilogues, is, as Mr. Slick says, “a caution!” It is a fact, however, that these political plays were far more highly relished than those which merely satirized passing social follies. Audiences roared at the dull jokes against the Oliverian knights, but they had no relish for the rhyme-loving Sir Hercules Buffoon, of Lacy. For one stage knight we may be said to be indebted to Charles II. himself. It was from a hint from him that Crowne wrote his “Sir Courtly Nice,” produced at the Theatre Royal shortly after the death of Charles. Sir Courtly alludes to the death of one, and the accession of a new, king, in very flattering terms:-- “What nation upon earth, besides our own, But by a loss like ours had been undone? Ten ages scarce such royal worth display As England lost and found in one strange day.” Of all the comedies with knights for their heroes, this one of Sir Courtly Nice retained a place longest on the stage. The hero was originally played by handsome, but hapless Will Mountfort. Cibber played it at the Haymarket in Queen Anne’s time, 1706, and again at Drury Lane, and before George I. at Hampton Court. Foote and Cibber, jun., and Woodward, were there presentatives of the gallant knight, and under George II. Foote played it, for the first time, at Drury Lane, and the younger Cibber at Covent Garden, in 1746, and Woodward, at the latter house, in 1751. The last-named actor was long the favorite representative of the gentlemanly knight, retaining the character as his own for full a quarter of a century, and being succeeded, but not surpassed in it, by sparkling Lewis, at Covent Garden, in 1781.