The Conscious Lovers appeared on stage on 7 November 1722, at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and was an immediate success, with an initial run of eighteen consecutive nights.
[1] The original Drury Lane cast included John Mills as Sir John Bevil, Robert Wilks as Mrytle, Barton Booth as Bevil Junior, Benjamin Griffin as Cimberton, Colley Cibber as Tom, Theophilus Cibber as Daniel, Sarah Thurmond as Isabella, Anne Oldfield as Indiana, Hester Santlow as Lucinda and Elizabeth Younger as Phyllis.
In the meantime, Sir John and Mr. Sealand discuss Bevil Jr.'s morals, for it has been discovered that he has been visiting a woman of lower class on a frequent basis.
[2] Steele knew that his audience would be familiar with the Roman source, as Terence's plays were in heavy circulation during this time, being published in hundreds of editions between 1700 and 1800.
[5] These adaptations were an attempt among playwrights to lend a type of legitimacy and authority to the contemporary theater by drawing from a body of familiar classical stories.
In this reading, the goal of his new dramatic style is for the audience to throw off the barbarous traditions of the past, both theatrical and political, and become more like the civilized Romans.
[2] The Conscious Lovers builds on the history of drama while attempting to eschew contemporary principles of morality and theatricality to create new sets of values.
[1] He claimed in the preface that the whole play was written around the scene in act 4 where Bevil Junior overcomes his passions and thus avoids a duel with his friend Myrtle.
However, critics analyzing the history and development of sentimental comedy have found Steele's self-professed key scene to be about more than disapproval of the evil and waste of human life that results from dueling.
Steele's assertion in the preface suggests that the play's purpose is not only to move the audience by depicting scenes of emotional distress[3], but also to provide a model for more restrained and refined behavior in the emerging English middle class.
[1] Bevil Junior and his indifferent restraint represent an ideal of peaceable behavior in sharp contrast to the British theatrical norm of aggressive masculinity and assertiveness.
[2] By providing paragons of upstanding and righteous character, Steele wanted sentimental comedy to be a source of role models that the public could embrace and emulate.
[1] Characters speak in "sentiments", or pithy moral statements of high theatricality that bear greater resemblance to tragedy than to the older comedies.
The ideal of reform and social critique in The Conscious Lovers functions similarly to Steele's work in periodicals like the Spectator, the Tatler, and the Guardian.
Steele was able to compound the moral authority he commanded from adapting a traditional Roman play with the recognition he already possessed as a cultural critic from these journalistic works in order to establish this new type of drama.
In his book The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800[5] Lawrence Stone says that the enhanced dowries which accompanied brides leading into the mid-18th century put the wife in a more powerful position than she had ever been in before.
[5][6] Mixing emotional responses by evoking sadness at the end of the play was considered a violation of the principle that comedy and tragedy were supposed to be separate entities, each consistent in tone and in the feelings they produced in the audience.
[1] In his mind, the sentimental comedy incorporated too much catharsis, while The Conscious Lovers and its followers favored a positive, exemplary hero as a moral beacon.
Steele recognized that not everybody in the audience would approve of his changes and the contrivances he employed to deliver them, but also believed that these older definitions were too narrow and excluded sufficient conditions that allowed comedy to be a vehicle of reform.