They are carried to a
country house, and made to believe they are in the Grand Turk's
seraglio. There is also an underplot, in which Isabella, Francisco's
proud and vain daughter, is courted by Guilion, a supposed Count, but in
reality a chimney-sweep, whose hand she accepts. In the end everything
is discovered, and Guilion comes to claim his wife in his sooty clothes.
Thomas Shadwell, a dramatist, and the poet-laureate of William III., who
has been flagellated by Dryden in his _MacFlecknoe_ and in the second
part of _Absalom_ and _Achitophel_, and been mentioned with contempt by
Pope in his _Dunciad_, took from the _Precieuses Ridicules_ Mascarille
and Jodelet, and freely imitated and united them in the character of La
Roch, a sham Count, in his _Bury-Fair_, acted by His Majesty's servants
in 1689. This play, dedicated to Charles, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex,
was written "during eight months' painful sickness." In the Prologue
Shadwell states:
That every Part is Fiction in his Play;
Particular Reflections there are none;
Our Poet knows not one in all your Town.
If any has so very little Wit,
To think a Fop's Dress can his Person fit,
E'en let him take it, and make much of it.
Whilst, in The _Pretentious Young Ladies_, Mascarille and Jodelet impose
upon two provincial girls, in _Bury-Fair_, La Roch, "a French
peruke-maker" succeeds in deceiving Mrs.
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