John Vanbrugh - Legacy

Legacy

Vanbrugh is remembered today for his vast contribution to British culture, theatre, and architecture. An immediate dramatic legacy was found among his papers after his sudden death, the three-act comedy fragment A Journey to London. Vanbrugh had told his old friend Colley Cibber that he intended in this play to question traditional marriage roles even more radically than in the plays of his youth, and end it with a marriage falling irreconcilably apart. The unfinished manuscript, today available in Vanbrugh's Collected Works, depicts a country family travelling to London and falling prey to its sharpers and temptations, while a London wife drives her patient husband to despair with her gambling and her consorting with the demi-monde of con men and half-pay officers. As with The Relapse at the outset of Vanbrugh's dramatic career, Colley Cibber again became involved, and this time he had last word. Cibber, now a successful actor-manager, completed Vanbrugh's manuscript under the title of The Provoked Husband (1728) and gave it a happy and sententious ending in which the provocative wife repents and is reconciled: a eulogy of marriage which was the opposite of Vanbrugh's declared intention to end his last and belated "Restoration comedy" with marital break-up. Cibber considered this projected outcome to be "too severe for Comedy", and such severity was in fact rarely to be seen on the English stage before Ibsen.

On the 18th century stage, Vanbrugh's Relapse and Provoked Wife were only considered possible to perform in bowdlerised versions, but as such, they remained popular. Throughout Colley Cibber's long and successful acting career, audiences continued to demand to see him as Lord Foppington in The Relapse, while Sir John Brute in The Provoked Wife became, after being an iconic role for Thomas Betterton, one of David Garrick's most famous roles. In the present day, The Relapse, now again to be seen uncut, remains a favourite play.

With the completion of Castle Howard, English baroque came into fashion overnight. It had brought together the isolated and varied instances of monumental design, by, among others, Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren. Vanbrugh thought of masses, volume and perspective in a way that his predecessors had not.

He was adept at delivering buildings for his clients, that successfully met their requirements. His reputation has suffered because of his famed disagreements with the Duchess of Marlborough, yet, one must remember his original client was the British Nation, not the Duchess, and the nation wanted a monument and celebration of victory, and that is what Vanbrugh gave the nation.

His influence on successive architects is incalculable. Nicholas Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh's friend and collaborator on so many projects continued to design many London churches for ten years after Vanbrugh's death. Vanbrugh's pupil and cousin the architect Edward Lovett Pearce rose to become one of Ireland's greatest architects. His influence in Yorkshire can also be seen in the work of the amateur architect William Wakefield who designed several buildings in the county that show Vanbrugh's influence.

Vanbrugh is commemorated throughout Britain, by inns, street names, a university college (York) and schools named in his honour. However, his greatest attribute was his versatility and ability to combine his talents. His architectural works have been described as "the architectural equivalent of the heroic play, theatrical, grandiose, a dramatic grouping of restless masses with little reference to function."