



Produced by Clare Graham and Marc D'Hooghe at Free
Literature (online soon in an extended version,also linking
to free sources for education worldwide); Images generously
made available by the Internet Archive.







[THE PLAYS OF]
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY


_EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES_

BY W. C. WARD


UNEXPURGATED EDITION


LONDON
T.FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1893




[Illustration: _William Wycherley. From the Picture by Sir Peter
Lely._]




CONTENTS



INTRODUCTION.

WILLIAM WYCHERLEY,
[by Thomas Babington Macaulay].

LOVE IN A WOOD; OR, ST. JAMES'S PARK.

THE GENTLEMAN DANCING-MASTER.

THE COUNTRY WIFE.

THE PLAIN DEALER.

NOTES.





  As long as men are false and women vain,
  Whilst gold continues to be virtue's bane,
  In pointed satire WYCHERLEY shall reign.
                                    EVELYN.




_INTRODUCTION._


William Wycherley was, before Congreve arose to surpass him, the most
eminent master of that artificial school of Comedy which commenced
with the restoration of Charles II., and which may be said to have
perished, in a blaze as of a funeral pyre, with Sheridan. Abandoning
the beaten paths of English drama, the writers of this school found,
in the various intrigue of the Spanish theatre, in the verbal vivacity
and piquant satire of the French, a new basis for their productions.
Their works, as a class, have been designated the Comedy of Manners,
a title which aptly distinguishes them from the Comedy of Human Life,
set forth by Shakespeare. It is a title, nevertheless, of limited
applicability. The manners portrayed in these comedies, if drawn
from the life, illustrate but one side of human character, and that
side the most superficial. To divert by wit and ingenuity being the
writer's aim, all allusion to the deeper motives of humanity was
rejected as impertinent, or admitted only as an occasional contrast
to the prevailing tone. Thus the artificiality of the characters is
the consequence rather of incompleteness than of untruth; they are,
as it were, but half characters; the dialogue is no longer, as with
Shakespeare, the means of their development, but the purpose of their
creation.

Living in an age of loose manners and corrupt morals, the result, as
has often been pointed out, of the unnatural state of repression which
accompanied the Puritan supremacy, Wycherley cannot be acquitted of
the vices of his time, nor can it be contended that it was altogether
with the object of lashing these vices that he decked them out with
all the allurements of brilliant dialogue and diverting situations.
Yet I venture to assert that, in spite of their licentiousness, these
comedies possess claims to recognition not lightly to be ignored. Nay,
more: that their very indecency, although the most open, is certainly
not the most pernicious form of immorality known to us in literature.
For as the harm of licentious allusions consists in their appeal to
the basest passions of human nature, so the appeal is stronger as the
impression of human passion is deeper. But these _simulacra_, these
puppet semblances of humanity, which Wycherley and his contemporaries
summon upon the stage for our diversion, what human passion can we
discover in these to which we should be in danger of unworthily
responding? As we read the plays no sense of reality disturbs us.
Transfer the language they employ, the actions they perform, to the
characters in a play of Shakespeare's, a novel of Richardson's, and our
resentment and detestation are instantly awakened. But the _dramatis
personæ_ of Wycherley or of Congreve are not, as the characters of
Shakespeare and Richardson, men and women whom we feel to be as real
and living as those with whom we daily associate. They merely simulate
humanity so far as is requisite for the proper enactment of their
parts. And herein lies the test: a Cordelia, an Iago, a Clarissa, a
Lovelace, are, to our feelings, real creatures of flesh and blood,
whom we love or hate, as the case may be. The characters of Wycherley
and Congreve, on the contrary, we neither love nor detest; we are
interested not in what they are, but only in what they say and do. They
have no further existence for us than as they act and speak on the
stage before our eyes; touch them, and, like ghosts in Elysium, they
turn to empty air in our grasp.

Another counter-influence to the unwholesomeness of these comedies
is the current of mirth which runs through them, more or less, from
end to end. For laughter may be reckoned in some sort an antidote to
sensuality, at least to sensuality in its