Restoration Comedy /Comedy of Manners
Restoration Comedy /Comedy of Manners
The literature of the Restoration period is best represented through its comedies. Having been closed under the rigour and repression of Puritanism when the theatre reopened with the Restoration of Kingship in 1660, it was natural that the theatre would be affected with excess. Consequently, instead of dwelling on didacticism and morality, the plays of this period represented the follies and foibles, dresses, manners, affected behaviour and amorous intrigues of the upper-class society. This is why Restoration comedy is often called the Comedy of Manners. For their root, these comedies owe to the realistic comedies of Ben Jonson, and the French dramas of the writers like Moliere, Racine .In contrast to the heart-throbbing emotion of the Elizabethan plays, these plays are more private, less rich in action, and have a greater presentation of wit. The most well-known practitioners of Restoration comedy are William Wycherley, William Congreve, George Farquhar, Sir John Vanbrugh and sir George Etherege.
Restoration comedy was introduced by sir George Etherege who wrote The Comical Revenge or Love in a Tub, She would if she could and The Man of Mode or Sir Fopling Flatter. The last one, his most brilliant play, gives a picture of the immoral manners of society, but it has no proper plot.
William Wycherley is a satirical dramatist. His best works are A Country wife, a course play with some fine wit in it, and The Plain Dealer, which was perhaps modelled on Moliere’s Le Misanthrope. Wycherley’s plays are preoccupied with sexual desire in their most coarse and direct form, but their plot construction is witty. However, Wycherley openly objects to the new, freer reality of both men and women.
The most renowned practitioner of Restoration Comedy is William Congreve. When Congreve appeared on the stage, the coarseness of the earlier phrase was beginning to pass away, and the more reasonable eighteenth century was near. His first comedy, The Old Bachelor, is about an old man who pretends to hate women but marries a bad one. The Double Dealer is concerned with angry lovers. His Love for Love is a funny play which contains clever speeches and foolish yet interesting characters. These three comedies reflect the pattern of Etherege’s polished style. But Congreve’s masterpiece is The way of the world which is probably the finest High comedy in English. The drama failed to achieve initial appreciation, though the construction of Character, especially of woman , is good. As a dramatist, Congreve is elegant, witty and stylish. Hazlitt wrote of him –“Every sentence is replete with sense and satire conveyed in the most polished and pointed forms”.
George Farquhar, another writer of Restoration Comedy, is unrivalled in humanity and warmth. His plays are marked by humour and high spirit. Farquhar is responsible for two wonderful comedies-The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux Stratagem-both of which deal with imposture. While in the first play the plucky Silvia disguises herself as a man in order to test the truth of her soldier lover’s affection, in The Beaux Stratagem, the two horses, Aimwell and Archer resort to prevention.
Sir John Vanbrugh wrote three successful Comedies-The Relapse, The provoked Wife and The Confederacy. Though his characters are distinct, and plots interesting, there is nothing remarkable in his writing. He was wholly unconscious of the diction which, for Congreve, was the chief end of Comedy. yet, he separated himself from the other writers of Comedy by the vivid talent of caricature.
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