Richard Steele's The Conscious Lovers: The Use of the Doppelganger

A puzzling contradiction appears in Richard Steele's most successful play, The Conscious Lovers. Opening “to a greater concourse of people was ever known assembled,”1 according to the Daily Journal of November 8, 1722, the play was nevertheless savagely attacked by critics of the day who complained about Steele's philosophy of comedy, the improbability of the incident, the diction, dialogue, and the sententiousness, but most of all, because of the fantastically virtuous hero, Bevil Jr. John Loftis remarks that the criticism of the play can be divided into two types: that which objected to its sentimentality and that which objected to the character of Bevil Jr.; but principally, the unbelievability of the hero was the main protest.2 Shirley Strum Kenny, in editing the play, says: “It is his experiment with the purely exemplary characters that cause him difficulties. In making Bevil a model of virtue and filial obedience, Steele creates a prig instead of a hero.”3 Why then was the play so popular? Also, why would the man-about-town Richard Steele, mature playwright, governor of the theater, and accurate gauger of public taste, who craved success so vehemently, create a one-dimensional hero who recited moral truisms and announced his own virtue?

This essay suggests that even though the character of Bevil Jr. is the central flaw of the play, it is inherently satisfying to the audience. Also, Steele in fulfilling his own need as a self-adulating sentimentalist, delved into the shadowy, unconscious side of his own psyche to bring up the one-sided image of all the qualities which the conscious Steele did not have.