Three Restoration Comedies

George Etherege (1636-1689) invented the comedy of intrigue, and led the way for the masterpieces of Congreve and Sheridan. 
 
William Wycherley (1640?-1716) is famous for his brilliant wit and savagely clever satire which give him a prominent place in the history of English Restoration drama. 
 
William Congreve (1670-1729) was apprenticed under the tutelage of John Dryden. Congreve's wit and his characters' sexual freedom and experimentation were at odds with the thinking of certain moralists of the day. However, he has since been considered one of the most intellectually accomplished of English playwrights. 
 
Gamini Salgado was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and came to England in 1947 to attend the University of Nottingham. He became an expert on Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, and was appointed to the Chair of English at Exeter University in 1977. He died in 1985.

After the restoration of King Charles II to the British throne in 1660, dramatists experienced new freedom in an age that broke from the strict morality of puritan rule and in which elegance and wit became the chief virtues. Irreverent, licentious and cynical, the three plays collected here hold up a mirror to this dazzling era and satirize the gulf between appearances and reality. In Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676), the womanizing Dorimant meets his match when he falls in love with the unpretentious Harriet, while Wycherley's The Country Wife (c. 1675) depicts the rakish Horner who fakes impotence to fool trusting husbands into giving him easy access to their wives. And in Congreve's Love for Love (1695), the extravagant Valentine can only win his beloved Angelica if he loses his inheritance.

William Congreve

Eric Rump

With piercing accuracy William ongreve depicted the shallow, brittle world of 'society' where the right artifice in manners, fashion and conversation--and money--eased the passage to success. Through sparkling, witty dialogue and brilliant characterisation--Lady Plyant, Valentine, Lady Touchwood, Mirabell and Millamant--Congreve exposed the follies and vanities of that world, and suggested that behind the glinting mirror lay something more brutal. 
 
'The language is everywhere that of Men of Honour, but their Actions are those of Knaves; a proof that he was perfectly well acquainted with human Nature, and frequented what we call polite company.' --Voltaire 
 
'Congreve quitted the stage in disdain, and comedy left it with him.' --A contemporary

William Congreve

Books by William Congreve

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