Restoration comedy Details, Meaning Restoration comedy Article and Explanation Guide

Restoration comedy Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

Restoration comedy is the name given to a particular type of witty sex comedy written during the period 1660—1700, and especially associated with the reign of King Charles II (1660—1685).

Table of contents

1 The first actresses
2 Sex comedy: from obscenity to problem plays
3 After Restoration comedy
4 Notable Restoration comedies
5 References
6 See also

The first actresses

The theatres had been closed for 18 years during the Commonwealth, and they enjoyed a resurgence under the new reign. When the theatres opened again in 1660, comedy was strongly influenced by the introduction of the first professional actresses. Previously all female parts had been played by boys, and the predominantly male audiences of the 1660s and 1670s were both curious, censorious, and delighted at the novelty of seeing real women engage in risquée repartee and take part in physical seduction scenes. Consequently such scenes became increasingly common in the comedies. Famous actresses of this time include Elizabeth Barry and Charles II's mistress Nell Gwyn. There are many references in Pepys' diary to visits to the playhouse in order to watch or re-watch the performance of some particular actress, and descriptions of how much Pepys enjoys these experiences.

Sex comedy: from obscenity to problem plays

Restoration comedy peaked twice: first the genre came to spectacular maturity with an extravaganza of aristocratic comedies in the mid-1670s, then came twenty lean years brightened in the main only by the achievement of Aphra Behn, and then in the 1690s a brief new Restoration comedy renaissance arose, just as public taste was about to turn away from wit comedy and towards the new sentimental comedy.

The drama of the 1660s and 1670s was greatly vitalized by the competition between the two patent companies created at the Restoration, as well as by the personal interest of Charles II. In the 1670s, the unsentimental or "hard" comedies of John Dryden, William Wycherley, and George Etherege reflected the atmosphere at Court and celebrated with frankness an aristocratic macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. The Earl of Rochester, real-life Restoration rake, courtier and poet, is flatteringly portrayed in Etherege's Man of Mode (1676), while the single play that does most to support the charge of obscenity levelled then and now at Restoration comedy is probably Wycherley's The Country Wife (1675). Wycherley's The Plain-Dealer (1676), a variation on the theme of Molière's Le misanthrope, was highly regarded for its uncompromising satire and earned Wycherley the appellation "Plain Dealer" Wycherley or "Manly" Wycherley, after the play's main character Manly.

When the two companies were amalgamated in 1682 and the London stage became a monopoly, both the number and the variety of new plays being written dropped sharply. There was a swing away from comedy to serious political drama, reflecting preoccupations following on the Popish Plot (1678) and the Exclusion Crisis (1682), and the few comedies produced also tended to be political in focus. The dominant comic playwright of the unencouraging 1682—1695 theatrical period is Aphra Behn, whose unique early achievement as a professional woman writer has been the subject of much recent study. (Immediately after 1700 Behn was followed by several other female dramatists outside the scope of this article.)

During the second wave of Restoration comedy in the 1690s, the "softer" comedies of William Congreve and John Vanbrugh reflected mutating cultural perceptions and great social change. The playwrights of the 1690s set out to appeal to more socially mixed audiences with a strong middle-class element, and to female spectators, for instance by moving the war between the sexes from the arena of intrigue into that of marriage. In Congreve's plays, the "wit duels" between lovers typical of the earlier comedy have been transformed into witty prenuptial debates such as the famous "Proviso" scene in The Way of the World (1700). Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife (1697) is something of a Restoration problem play in its discussion of the subordinate legal position of women in marriage at this time.

The tolerance for Restoration comedy even in its modified form was running out at the end of the 18th century, as public opinion turned to respectability and seriousness even faster than the playwrights did. Interconnected causes for this shift in taste were demographic change, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, William's and Mary's dislike of the theatre, and the lawsuits brought against playwrights by the Society for the Reformation of Manners (founded in 1692). When Jeremy Collier attacked Congreve and Vanbrugh in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage in 1698, he was confirming a shift in audience taste that had already taken place. At the much-anticipated all-star première in 1700 of Congreve's first comedy for five years, the subtly intellectual and almost melancholy The Way of the World, the audience showed no great enthusiasm. The comedy of sex and wit was about to be replaced by the drama of obvious sentiment and exemplary morality.

After Restoration comedy

For the next two and a half centuries, the sexual explicitness of Restoration comedy ensured that theatre producers would cannibalize it or adapt it with a heavy hand rather than actually perform it. In criticism and literary history, the distaste of nearly all 18th-20th century drama critics for double entendre and frankly sexual plots kept Restoration comedy locked up in a critical poison cupboard for a comparable time, and Victorian critics like William Hazlitt, although valuing the literary qualities of the canonical writers Etherege, Wycherley and Congreve, always found it necessary to temper aesthetic praise with heavy moral condemnation. Aphra Behn, with few exceptions, received the condemnation without the praise, since outspoken sex comedy was considered particularly offensive coming from a woman author.

Today, Restoration comedy is again appreciated on the stage. The classics The Man of Mode, The Way of the World and The Plain-Dealer have competition not only from Vanbrugh's The Relapse and The Provoked Wife, but from such dark unfunny comedies as Thomas Southerne's The Wives Excuse. Aphra Behn from being considered unstageable has had a major renaissance, with The Rover now a repertory favorite.

As an academic field, Restoration comedy still remains understudied today.