Restoration Comedy

Question 1

Restoration stage - about

Answer 1

Period 1660-1712, after theatres were reopened under Charles II. Women allowed onstage - promiscuity and sexuality ensued. Run by Davenant and Killigrew - two men with royal patents for theatre. Rise of “stock figures” - COMEDIES OF MANNERS! commentary on courtly conduct.

Question 2

Restoration stage - critics

Answer 2

Collier - accusations of theatre undermining public morality through sympathetic portrayals of vice. Playing on dual meanings of words.
Langham - intimate feeling of theatres because of their smaller size. Plays “highly verbal and full of wit”. Audience “very conscience of itself”
Corman - general idea of comedy: “it please and instruct”. Key debates: wit vs humour and implication for morals. The rover an eg of balance between sex and love. “Libertine values” replaced with new “social virtues”.
Gill - comedies of manners less tolerant of fallen women. Heroines have verbal proficiency where fallen women do not. C of m “defend an ideal of aristocratic, urbane English masculinity”
Canfield - “witty women and their witty men discipline their political rivals by cuckolding them”. “Trickster tricked” tropes. Pedigree vs virtue in later revolution plays.
Styan - 89 of 375 plays from 1660-1700 had breeches parts - exploiting sexuality.

Question 3

Key restoration plays:

Answer 3

Dryden - Marriage a la mode
Wycherley - the country wife
Behn - the rover

Question 4

John Dryden - about

Answer 4

Anglican, d.1700. Turned to theatre for financial security. Catholic under JII

Question 5

Dryden - critics

Answer 5

Crane - “the great apologist for king and court”, used the confines of the theatre to use asides etc.
Engetsu - realised the need to reform the English language & insisted on the importance of Royal public institutions in this.

Question 6

Marriage a la mode - key info

Answer 6

1671/2 - Commended by CII.
Themes - courtly living, court/country, pastoral honour/simplicity, divine nature of kingship. Parental relationships. Language and fashions of court. Dual plot - comic and serious? Crossing of love.

Question 7

Marriage - critics

Answer 7

Crane - “half comic and half serious” play. Not a simple comedy because Dryden equally “repelled by the stupidity and pettiness of court life” and flattered by its attention. Court revealed to be “a deeply flawed place”. Melantha = “linguistic energy”. “Desire is the product of frustration, so that marriage… is the death of it”

Question 8

Marriage… - key figures

Answer 8

Melantha (lover of rodophil)
Rodophil (married unsatisfactorily to)
Doralice (lover of)
Palmede (sent to marry melantha) 
Leonidas (secret prince in love with) Palmyra
Argaleon (wants to marry palmyra)

Question 9

Marriage - love triangle quotes

Answer 9

Palamede “You dislike her for no other reason but because she’s your wife”
Rhodophil - “thou hast made an old knife of me” (in marriage)
“There was an appearance of an intrigue between us too!” (Garden scene)
Bawdy song “now die, my alexis, and I will die too”

Question 10

Aphra Behn - key info

Answer 10

D.1689. Loyalist background, friends with Killigrew. Very unusual career as a female playwright.

Question 11

Behn - critics

Answer 11

Gill - behn’s plays “sexual frolic and gender playfulness”

Question 12

The Rover - critics

Answer 12

Burke - the Rover transforms “the cavalier from an object of admiration into an object of derision and scorn” and attacks the “system of male aristocratic privilege that the cavalier now represented”
Corman - rover is “back to the sympathetic” where “love and honour are balanced by sex and farce”
Trussler - Angellica = loose end of society because she uses her looks as capital and suffers for it, being left with a future of economic uncertainty. Play uncovers the “very brittle veneer” of politeness in high society.

Question 13

The Rover - about

Answer 13

1677, plot linked to Killigrew’s “the wanderer”.

Question 14

The Rover - main characters

Answer 14

Willmore (the Rover who loves)
Hellena (sister to)
Florinda (in love with)
Belville (friend of)
Frederick 
Blunt (foolish English gentleman - 'sheartlikins" all the time)
Angellica bianca (courtesan)
Moretta (her woman)
Valeria (nurse of florinda)
Don Antonio (destined to marry Hellena but in love with Angellica) and Don Pedro (sister of Hellena)

Question 15

The Rover - key themes

Answer 15

Deception/disguise/cross dressing. True love vs conquest. Bawdy wittiness, chivalry, timing! Colloquial dialogue.

Question 16

The Rover - quotes - women

Answer 16

Angellica - “I have spread my nets” (picture in window/aesthetic nature of love) to get a rich man.
Hellena to willmore - “therefore I’m resolved/ oh!/ to see your face no more/ oh!/ till tomorrow/ egad you frightened me” “kiss the book” (her hand)
Angellica - had she not loved “I should have thought all men were my slaves”

Question 17

William Wycherley - the country wife - themes

Answer 17

1675. City comedy genre. Anti-puritan, colloquial dialogue, sharp social satire. Aristocratic POV, names important, 3 plots - impotence, marriage, courtship. Deception/disguise. Playgoing, male friendship, stereotype/”stock characters” - wit, cit, fool.

Question 18

The country wife - critics

Answer 18

Corman - Wycherley raises difficult/complex moral issues about private love/marriage in m/c’s and gentry.

Question 19

The country wife - key characters

Answer 19

Horner (linchpin of seduction; reputed impotent)
Dorilant (his friend)
Harcourt (likewise, and in love with Alithea)
Pinchwife (jealous new husband) + Mrs P
Alithea (his sister, reputed promiscuous and to be married to)
Sparkish
Sir Jasper and Lady fidget
Squeamish + Old Lady S

Question 20

The country wife - key quotes by men

Answer 20

Quack: “I have reported you throughout the whole town as bad as an eunuch”
Dorilant “a mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town” (for odd nights away)
Pinchwife - refuses to be a cuckold - “I understand the town, sir”
Sparkish - ‘pshaw” exclamation - colloquial (?) to mr p “are you not ashamed that I should have more confidence in the chastity of your family than you have?”
Horner, entering study to get Lady Fidget out - “I’ll get into her the back way, and so rifle her for it” (china)
Horner innuendo “now I’m going to a private feast”. At end “you are all three my false rogues too” (upon nearly being discovered)
Final lines: “he who aims by women to be prized,/ first by the men, you see, must be despised.”

Question 21

The Rover - quotes - men

Answer 21

Blunt - “when did you ever hear of an honest woman that took a man’s money?” (He is stripped naked in a trick to get his money)
Willmore speaks in verse to woo Angellica: “poor as I am, I would not sell myself”…“I’ve no faith left for the cozening sex” ang: “the pay I mean is but thy love for mine” willmore, after: “all the honey of matrimony, but none of the sting, friend”
Blunt/Frederick on attempting to rape florinda “twould anger us boldly to be trussed up for a rape upon a Maid of quality, when we only believe we ruffle a harlot”

Question 22

The Country wife - key quotes by women

Answer 22

Lady fidget “would you wrong my honour” Horner “if I could”
Mrs p - “I was a-weary of the play, but I liked hugely the actors” “I did not care for going, but when you forbid me, you make me, as’t were, desire it” (the town) “I must stay at home like a poor lonely sullen bird in a cage”
Colloquialisms - “dear bud” nickname Mrs p
Mrs p - opposing “cold” feelings for husband with “hot” for her gallant.
Men’s Wives are called “pretenders to honour” by Horner.

Question 23

The Rover - Crossdressing quotes

Answer 23

The Rover - women enter “dressed like gipsies” will. to hell. “still in this habit, you say” (organising meeting) (interesting play because men inhabit different outfits too - Belville fights in disguise as Antonio against Pedro, to ‘prove’ his love for Florinda, not Angellica)
Hellena also dresses as a man (undermining masculinity? but is discovered) W calls H a “young devil” in disguise; “Ha! Do not I know that face?”… “I’ll teach you to spoil sport you will not make”

Question 24

Marriage a la Mode - crossdressing quotes

Answer 24

(context: Doralice dresses as a man to go out and meet Palamede; sends Rodophil a note to say so; P overhears and believes the note is intended for him.) P: “she loves me too much to disguise herself from me” (overconfident) - “I could know her in any shape” - R enters with M in same disguise - as D is kissed by P - “Then I find I was deceived in him” (disguises allow them to kiss partners in front of each other.)
Argaelon discovers Palmyra has also disguised herself to access Leonidas: “I cannot be deceived; that is the princess”

Question 25

The Country Wife - cross dressing quotes

Answer 25

Pinchwife to Horner - “you have only squeezed my orange, I suppose, and given it me again”
Horner, seeing disguised mrs p - “I have seen a face like it too” - Pinchwife: “‘sdeath, he knows her, she carries it so sillily” (H to Mrs p disguised) “give her this kiss from me”

Question 26

Marriage A La Mode - language quotes

Answer 26

Melantha - “intrigue, philOtis! That’s an old phrase, I have laid that word by.” (But doesn’t speak in verse ie. isn’t great)

Question 27

Marriage a la Mode - court/family quotes

Answer 27

Corrupt Courtiers “he gilds over all his vices to the king”
Polydamas “Be not dazzled with the splendour/and greatness of a court” leonidas “I need not this encouragement./ I can fear nothing but the gods”
Fearing disobedience for love leonidas: “a fathers anger”
Leonidas when revealed as not royal - “my nighard fortune starves my love”