This play has been imitated in the _Andrienne_ of Baron, the celebrated French actor. The Latin names are preserved in the _dramatis personæ_, and the first, second, and fifth acts, have been nearly translated from Terence. In the fourth, however, instead of the marriage being interrupted by Davus’s stratagem, Glycerium, hearing a report of the falsehood of her lover, rushes on the stage, throws herself at the feet of Chremes, and prevails on him to break off the intended match between his daughter and Pamphilus. But, though the incidents are nearly the same, the dialogue is ill written, and is very remote from the graceful ease and simplicity of Terence.
Steele’s _Conscious Lovers_ is the best imitation of the _Andria_. The English play, it will be remembered, commences in a similar manner with the Latin comedy, by Sir John Bevil relating to an old servant, that he had discovered the love of his son for Indiana, an unknown and stranger girl, by his behaviour at a masquerade. The report of this attachment nearly breaks off an intended marriage between young Bevil and Lucinda, Sealand’s daughter. Young Bevil relieves the mind of Myrtle, the lover of Lucinda, by assuring him that he is utterly averse to the match. Still, however, he pretends to his father, that he is ready to comply with his wishes; and, meanwhile, writes to Lucinda, requesting that she would refuse the offer of his hand. Myrtle, hearing of this correspondence having taken place, without knowing its import, is so fired with jealousy that he sends Bevil a challenge. Sealand, being still pressed by Sir John to bestow his daughter in marriage, waits on Indiana, in order to discover the precise nature of her relations with Bevil. She details to him her story; and, on his alluding to the probability of the projected nuptials being soon concluded, she tears off, in a transport of passion, a bracelet, by which Sealand discovers, that she is a daughter whom he had lost, and who, while proceeding to join him in the East Indies, had been carried into a French harbour, where she first met with young Bevil.
An English translator of Terence remarks, “That Steele has unfolded his plot with more art than his predecessor, but is greatly his inferior in delineation of character. Simo is the most finished character in the Latin piece, but Sir John Bevil, who corresponds to him, is quite insignificant. Young Bevil is the most laboured character in the _Conscious Lovers_, but he is inferior to Pamphilus. His deceit is better managed by Terence than Steele. Bevil’s supposed consent to marry is followed by no consequence; and his honest dissimulation, as he calls it, is less reconcilable to the philosophic turn of his character, than to the natural sensibility of Pamphilus. Besides, the conduct of the latter is palliated, by being driven to it by the artful instigations of Davus, who executes the lower part of the stratagems, whereas Bevil is left entirely to his own resources.” Bevil, indeed, in spite of his refinement and formality, his admiration of the moral writers, and, “the charming vision of Mirza consulted in a morning,” is a good deal of a _Plato-Scapin_. Indiana, who corresponds to Glycerium, is introduced with more effect than the ladies in the French plays imitated from Terence. Her tearing off her ornaments, however, in a fit of despair, at the conclusion, is too violent. It is inconsistent with the rest of her character; and we feel that she would not have done so, had not the author found that the bracelet was necessary for her recognition as the daughter of Sealand. The under plot is perhaps better managed in the English than in the Latin play. Myrtle sustains a part more essential to the principal fable than Charinus; and his character is better discriminated from that of Bevil than those of the two lovers in the _Andria_. The part of Cimberton, the other lover of Lucinda, favoured by Mrs Sealand, is of Steele’s own contrivance; and of course, also, the stratagem devised by Bevil, in which Myrtle and Tom pretend to be lawyers, and Myrtle afterwards personates Sir Geoffry Cimberton, the uncle of his rival.