Restoration Comedy

The historical context

Despite its name this comedy was not a restorative to a nation wounded and divided by civil war, religious
upheaval and anxiety about the future of the monarchy. The plays may celebrate court life in all its gorgeous
material pomp, but they were written against a backdrop of far-reaching change in governance, the law, the
Church and the family. A deep unease lies beneath the wit and sexual escapades.

In 1660 Charles Stuart was invited to take up the English Crown by a nation that had beheaded his father and
fought a deeply painful civil war (1642–51). He returned from exile in France and began to rebuild a royal court
in which theatre was to play a big part.

Faced with the rampant hypocrisy and cynicism on display in the comedies, critics have looked into England’s
history to find explanations. Some have pointed to the loss of a sense of social and natural order caused by
years of fighting neighbours, friends and kin. Such prolonged trauma can rob people of their faith in personal
relationships. Some see the influence of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. His major work Leviathan (1651) was
widely debated at the time. Hobbes believed that appetite is the strongest driving force in human behaviour,
and that left to ourselves we will destroy what we most value because of our overwhelming competitive greed.

New theatres, new plays and women playing women’s parts

Considered ungodly by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans, London’s theatres had been closed since 1642. Within three
months of his return, Charles had granted ‘letters patent’ (legal documents) to his veteran Cavaliers, Thomas
Killigrew and William Davenant, giving them exclusive rights to each establish a theatre. The patents stipulated
that women (rather than adolescent boys) should play women’s parts.

The Theatre Royal in Drury Lane (1663) and the Dorset Garden Theatre in Whitefriars (1671) became the focus
for a resurgent interest in writing and staging a new kind of comedy. Playwrights were inspired by exciting
advances in theatre design and technology, such as moveable scenery, candlelit chandeliers and footlights.

Audiences came to see themselves reflected in the plays, but such was the disreputable nature of the
profession, especially for women, that actors were mainly recruited from the poorest social groups. Intensive
training was required to mimic upper-class speech and adopt the correct etiquette with swords, hats, fans and
greetings. Everyone knew that they were watching an illusion of high society, and this gave the plays’ themes of
masking, gulling and deceit an additional edge. The Restoration also saw the rise of the celebrity actor, such as
Elizabeth Barry.

Who were the audience?

The aristocratic upper classes may have laid claim to Restoration comedy, but by the end of the century the
audience had diversified considerably. Graded seat prices and seating zones resulted in a sense of class
ownership of parts of the playhouse auditorium. Actors enjoyed exploiting the divisions by ‘playing’ to different
parts of the house. City merchants, their wives and servants, a growing middle class and a vocal group of fops
and critics made up the regulars. In his diary, Samuel Pepys refers to frequent scenes of disorder, which he
blamed on the large numbers of ‘cits’ (lower-class citizens), apprentices and ‘mean types’ seated in the gallery.
Only Puritans, now on the losing side, stayed away. On stage they were ridiculed, portrayed as mercenary
hypocrites bent upon spoiling innocent fleshly pleasures.
There was no concept of a ‘fourth wall’, which made the relationship between players and audience electrifying
at times. Audiences adored the simple technique of the ‘aside’, where characters addressed them directly,
taking them into their confidence. They preferred predictable plots and exaggerated stereotypes. When
disgruntled with a particular play, audiences sometimes became so rowdy that they could close a production
down.

The rake and his rivals

The rake was an invention of Restoration comedy. Seductive, witty and arrogant, he represented a flattering
type of male prowess and drive, much admired in court circles. Through the rake, the plays explore the
possibility of a sexual freedom which was simply not possible in London society at large, but was more than
tolerated at court.

The rake has many enemies to defeat on his journey to possess and control the female body. Intelligent,
manipulative women out for revenge pose a particular threat. Since they have already lost their honour to the
rake, they are dangerous free agents.

Newly enriched middle-class pretenders and foolish fops such as Sir Fopling Flutter (The Man of Mode) present
the rake with serious competition for rich heiresses. The pretenders are always exposed as out of their depth in
the courtship game. The fops are more of a concern; they understand women and can get close to them with
their shared interests in fashion, gossip and faro (a gambling card game).

The rake reminds us that there were real anxieties concerning male authority in an uncertain age. Women had
run estates and businesses very capably while men fought in the Civil Wars. Old assumptions about the family,
based on a belief in religious and national hierarchies, were being challenged. The king’s sexual prowess was
legendary, yet his wife was childless and he had no Protestant heir to continue the Stuart line. Audiences
thronged the theatres to laugh at impotence jokes, applaud serial seducers such as Horner (The Country Wife)
and laugh at the energetic intrigues of Lady Fidget (The Country Wife) and other sexually frustrated wives.

The business of courtship and marriage

In Restoration comedy the finest couples make the best financial deal for themselves in the marriage market.
Mutual attraction, if it exists, is a bonus. In the real world things were not so certain. Some returning Cavaliers
had failed to recoup their lands and fortunes and were having to widen their search for a wife to include the
daughters of the middle class. This sharpened competition for wives and placed an extra premium on women’s
honour and reputation.

Towards the end of the century, new ideas emerged about the position of women in marriage. Their
subservience to their husbands, though fully endorsed in law, was no longer seen as a natural rather than a
social circumstance. As the number of women in the audience grew, Congreve (The Way of the World) and
other playwrights explored concerns of particular interest to them. Proviso scenes became increasingly
common. These are scenes in which couples debate how best to enjoy or endure the married state. Usually,
each gives up some power over the other and forfeits individual rights in order to put unity in marriage first.
This writing put forward fresh thinking; perhaps marriage could be an alliance of like-minded, consenting men
and women?

Marriage is always the proper end of Restoration comedy. Women may roam freely, engage in repartee and
intrigue, but in the end they consent to marry and confirm the value of patriarchy. Although the plays may ask
probing questions about the ‘natural’ hierarchies underpinning the family and society, their endings are
ultimately reassuring to audiences who have, after all, come to the theatre to be entertained.

1688 and after

Towards the end of Charles II’s reign the atmosphere in London was rife with conspiracies, and theatres
emptied, killing off the demand for new plays. When Charles died without a Protestant heir in 1685, three
years of intense unrest followed as his Catholic brother James II tussled with Parliament for control of the
country. James was deposed in a bloodless coup in 1688 (the so-called Glorious Revolution), and the nation
welcomed William and Mary to reign as constitutional monarchs with greatly reduced powers.

The royal couple had no interest in the theatre, and there followed a succession of legislative acts that severely
curtailed playwrights’ freedoms. In 1692 the Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded, and it
quickly started to bring lawsuits against playwrights deemed to have offended public decency. From 1696 the
Lord Chamberlain reserved the right to censor plays before granting them a licence. In 1698 theologian Jeremy
Collier published A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, a highly misleading but
influential text.

Collier damned all Restoration comedy outright, with Vanbrugh and Congreve singled out as being particularly
offensive. The prevailing mood by 1700 was for plays with a clear moral and emotional purpose. The public
indifference, even hostility, that greeted the premiere of Congreve’s masterpiece The Way of the World,
showed that Restoration comedy was out of step with a new age which was at last asserting its identity 12
years after the Glorious Revolution.

By 1700 England’s mercantile class was creating most of the nation’s wealth and driving radical ideas. Among
these was the call for a stronger parliamentary voice to reflect the importance of trade and banking to the
economy and England’s standing in the world as a trading nation. Comedy’s unruly voices of libertine disorder
were replaced by sound Whig values: restraint, common sense and judgement informed by law. Good order in
political and family life could banish Hobbesian appetite after all, by the power of plain speaking, safeguarding
women’s freedoms and a respect for property rights. Comedy required a profound rethink.

Critical debates from the 18th century to the present day

Restoration comedies have faced many obstacles in their 350-year journey to the modern stage. Throughout
the 18th century scripts were subject to heavy revisions and bowdlerisation. By the 19th century the plays
were considered highly immoral, artificial or just plain old-fashioned.

The early 20th century saw a revival of interest, and a determination amongst some directors to restore the
play scripts to their original form. The productions mounted by the Mermaid Society and the Lyric Theatre,
Hammersmith, were welcome, but they led to an unfortunate trend that dogged productions throughout most
of the century. They presented Restoration comedy as a bizarre world, with fantastical, over-fussy sets,
extravagantly detailed costumes and ridiculous wigs. This concentration on the visual effect of the plays
detracted from their real strengths, which lay in characterisation, wit and dialogue.

Later 20th-century critics shed new light on the plays through the lens of literary theories such as feminism and
New Historicism. They have been notably successful in their reappraisal of Aphra Behn, introducing a new
generation of students and audiences to her work.

Any modern production has to find a way of delivering the dialogue to appeal to a contemporary ear, while
remaining faithful to the original. Equally challenging is the search for the right gestures and mannerisms. Little
can be gained from removing the plays from their historical settings, yet approaching them as heritage theatre
will fail to enliven them for today’s audiences. The best approach is to relish the sparkling wit and brilliant
dialogue, while engaging with the sexual politics that are at play in every scene.

The Country Wife

The Country-Wife, comedy of manners in five acts by Restoration dramatist William Wycherley,
performed and published in 1675. It satirizes the sexual duplicity of the aristocracy during the reign of
Charles II. Popular for its lively characters and its double entendres, the bawdy comedy was
occasionally vilified for immorality.

The main plot concerns the activities of lusty Margery, a country woman whose jealous husband, Mr.
Pinchwife, sequesters her at home to ensure her fidelity. At a rare outing to the theatre she is noticed
by Mr. Horner, a notorious rake who starts a false rumour that he is a eunuch in order to gain the
confidence of suspicious husbands. Margery soon learns the art of deception, and lies, disguises, and
conspiracies thicken the plot.

Historical Context of The Country Wife

The Restoration in English history refers to the period between 1660 and 1685, when King Charles II ascended
to the English throne. Although England had been ruled by a monarchy for several centuries, Charles II’s father,
Charles I, had been deposed and executed in the aftermath of the English Civil War.

Although Charles I ruled with the help of Parliament, the King could disband Parliament if he wanted to.
Charles I believed in the “divine right of kings” and felt that monarchs should rule alone, which upset
Parliamentarians and sparked the English Civil War. Another factor which caused Parliament to rebel against
Charles I was the fact that he was a High Anglican; a doctrine closer to Catholicism than Protestantism. This
upset the substantial Protestant and Puritan factions in the country. Charles I and his Royalists went to war with
the Parliamentarians in 1642 and Charles was captured and executed in 1649.

After the death of the King, England was ruled for eighteen years by a Commonwealth parliament under the
direction of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was a Puritan and censored many aspects of life during his rule. He
closed the theatres and was wary of activities such as drinking and dancing. After Cromwell’s death in 1658,
the Commonwealth rapidly collapsed because people were sick of the strict, Puritan lifestyle that was imposed
on them. Charles II, who had been in exile abroad, was restored to the throne. The period of his reign was
notable for its reversal of many of the Commonwealth’s Puritanical policies. Charles II’s court deliberately
cultivated an atmosphere of leisure and hedonism, liberally supported theatres and the arts, and celebrated
the values of the nobility and the upper classes who had been exiled under Cromwell. He ruled until his death
in 1685.

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-country-wife/themes/reputation-appearance-and-hypocrisy
The Aesthetic Movement

The Aesthetic Movement in Britain (1860 – 1900) aimed to escape the ugliness and
materialism of the Industrial Age, by focusing instead on producing art that was
beautiful rather than having a deeper meaning – 'Art for Art's sake'. The artists and
designers in this 'cult of beauty' crafted some of the most sophisticated and
sensuously beautiful artworks of the Western tradition and in the process remade the
domestic world of the British middle-classes.

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols.
Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows itself, it shows
us the whole fiery-coloured world.

What is the meaning of Aesthetic Movement?

The aesthetic movement was a late nineteenth century movement that championed
pure beauty and 'art for art's sake' emphasising the visual and sensual qualities of art
and design over practical, moral or narrative considerations.

Oscar Wilde, 1890

These new Aesthetic artists included romantic bohemians such as Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones; maverick figures such as James
McNeill Whistler, then fresh from Paris and full of 'dangerous' French ideas about
modern painting; avant-garde architects and designers such as E.W. Godwin and
Christopher Dresser; and the 'Olympians', the painters of grand classical subjects who
belonged to the circle of Frederic Leighton and G.F. Watts.

From 1860 to 1900, the Aesthetic Movement initiated sweeping artistic and design
changes and its modern concepts of middle-class lifestyle and domestic environment
reverberate even into our own time. Today Aestheticism is acknowledged for its
revolutionary renegotiation of the relationships between the artist and society,
between art and ethics, and between the fine and decorative arts, all of which
prepared the way for the art movements of the 20th century.

In the following years, artists' houses and their extravagant lifestyles became the
object of public fascination. The influence of the 'Palaces of Art' created by Rossetti,
Burne-Jones, Morris, Leighton and the Dutch painter Alma Tadema was out of all
proportion compared to the numbers of people who ever actually gained access and
saw these spaces for themselves. However, there existed at the time many books,
illustrated articles and instructive manuals that supplied the necessary details.

The ideal of 'The House Beautiful' sparked a revolution in building and interior
decoration and led ultimately to a more widespread recognition of the necessity of
beauty in everyday life. This idea would have a lasting impact not only on architecture
but also on social theory and political thinking for years to come.
Parody and decadence

The figure of the Aesthete, whose super-subtle sensibility and passionate response to
works of art, emerged fully fledged in the 1870s. Considered to be tainted by unhealthy
and possibly dangerous foreign ideas, the Aesthete was treated with a considerable
degree of suspicion by journalists and the general public. However, by the beginning of
the 1880s the Aesthete, with his self-proclaiming attachment to poetry, pictures and to
the nuances of interior decoration – in short, the character so astutely adopted by
Oscar Wilde – had become the popular butt of friendly satire. In both George Du
Maurier's long-running series of sharply observed cartoons in Punch Magazine (which
had begun as early as 1876) and in Gilbert and Sullivans popular opera Patience (1881)
the velvet-clad Aesthetes were ridiculed for their 'stained-glass attitudes', overly
precious speech, and enthusiasm for the curious appeal of pale lilies, sunflowers,
peacock feathers, fragile blue-and-white china and Japanese fans.

From the first, Aestheticism had critics suspicious of the lifestyle of its artists and the
amorality of its imagery. By the 1890s, a new and dangerous French inflection had
started to influence the British Aesthetic, including the self-indulgent and
self-destructive ideas of the French writers Paul Verlaine, Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur
Rimbaud and Joris-Karl Huysmans. Criticism intensified following the brief career of
the English illustrator and author Aubrey Beardsley with his drawings in black ink,
which emphasised the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic.

The Aesthetic project finally ended following the scandal of the trial, conviction and
imprisonment of Oscar Wilde for homosexuality in 1895, following its outlaw that same
year. The fall of Wilde effectively discredited the Aesthetic Movement with the general
public, though many of its ideas and styles remained popular into the 20th century.

The Aesthetic Movement

The Aesthetic Movement believed that art in its various forms should not seek to
convey a moral, sentimental or educational message but should give sensual pleasure.
Their aim was "to exist beautifully": Art for Art's sake. It ran from about 1860 to 1900.

The friendship and rivalry between Dante Gabriel Rossetti and James McNeill Whistler,
a revulsion against current Victorian style and the new influence of Oriental design led
to the foundation of the Aesthetic Movement in Britain. Dr Anderson described Rossetti
as the Johnny Depp of his time, and both he and Whistler were flamboyant figures.
Whistler signed his paintings with a butterfly with a sting in the tail which perfectly
described his quarrelsome personality. He was originally a mentor and close friend of
Oscar Wilde, eventually falling out with him at the time of his trial. Both were renowned
for their wit. Oscar Wilde is alleged to have commented "I wish I had said that" in
response to a quip of Whistler's, to which Whistler replied "You will, Oscar, you will".

Oscar Wilde was the son of Ireland's leading eye surgeon. After going to university in
Dublin he went on to Oxford where he became interested in the Aesthetic Movement.
He left with a double first in Greek and Latin and appeared on the London scene in the
early 1880s with no knowledge of art or published works to his name, describing himself
as a Professor of Aesthetics and an arbiter of taste. He became an art critic. Ever a
great self-publicist, his appearance on the scene gave the movement a new lease of
life. William Powell Frith's painting of 1881 entitled "Private View at the Royal Academy"
shows a very tall Oscar Wilde surrounded by a group of adoring women. They are
dressed in the flowing draperies of the aesthetes, one of them carrying a sunflower,
which present a striking contrast to the formal styles of the other women. Sunflowers
were seen as representing female longing and hopeless love, peacock feathers as
symbols of eternal life and beauty. Lilies were also popular.

Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic movement

1. Aestheticism in Europe
Victorian Age
The Aestheticism was born as a reaction to the materialism of the Victorian Age.

The Victorian Age is the period (1837-1901) when Queen Victoria reigned.

Foreign policy
In the 19th the British Empire expanded. The UK became the most rich and powerful nation. In
fact, the British Empire ruled 25 % of the world’s lands and population thanks to its naval
supremacy and to its colonies which became independent , but they were linked to Great Britain.
In order to lock up (rinchiudere) the world, the UK took control of the 5 strategic places,
Alexandria, Cape Town, Dover, Gibraltar and Singapore.

In 1876, with the control of the Suez canal, Victoria assumed the title of “Empress of India”. In
1899 the African War broke out with the Boer Republics and ended in 1902.

Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa , which were colonies, became members of
the Commonwealth of Nations (composed of 54 nations) with the Treaty of Westminster (1931).

Economic perspective
The UK was defined the “workshop of the world”. England’s economy grew from 1851 to 1911:

● Full development of the Industrial Revolution and scientific progress;

● British manufacturing industries and trade were advanced (2/3 of all ships were built in the
UK, 1 million of railway tracks and many locomotives were sold abroad);
● Raw material from colonies;
● Free trade

Victorian values and home policy

Queen Victoria spread in the UK her believes, such as the Puritanism, rigid morality, simple
life-style and the discipline of the family. In fact, she forbade the use of bad words, especially
related to the sexual sphere. On the home policy, she introduced 3 reforms to improve life and
work conditions:
a) Parliamentary reforms:
Between 1832 and 1969 the right to vote was extended to:

● the middle classes (First Reform Act 1832)

● the working classes in the towns and in the rural districts (Second Reform Act 1867, Third
Reform Act 1884)
● women over 30 years old and the over 21 (Franchise Act 1918, 1928, 1969)
In the end the voting age was lowered to 18.

In 1870 the Ballot Act introduced the principle of voting by secret ballot.
In 1911 the Parliament Act established the Supremacy of House of Commons over the House of
Lords.

b) Factory and Mines Act:

● Factory Act (1833) forbade employment of children under 9

● Mines Act (1842) forbade the work of children and women underground
● Factory Act (1850) reduced the working day between 6 am and 6 pm with meal breaks.

c) Social reforms
Two prime ministers passed very important Acts for the welfare: William Gladstone introduced the
Education Acts (1870) and Benjamin Disraeli was interested in foreign policy and introduced the
Trade Union Act (1875)

Aestheticism
Underlining the supremacy of art over all intellectual activity, Aestheticism was a literary
movement which originated in France in 1835 with Gautier and spread among writers and
painters. It expanded as a reaction against utilitarianism and the moral restrictions of bourgeois
society.
Using Gautier's slogan, "Art for Art's sake" , Aesthetic writers gave free rein to imagination, taking
their attitudes to extremes.
They live an extravagant life, spent in the pursuit of sensation, devoted to the cult of beauty.
In painting, the Aestheticism led to impressionism, in which painters such as Renoir, Monet and
Manet, chose the "pure painting", where sentiment, subject matter were expressed by the colour,
the pattern of light and shade.

The father of Aesthetic Movement was Walter Pater who wrote 2 important prose works:

● Studies in the hystory of the Renaissance: in this book he exalts the cult of beauty and
the belief that gaining pleasure is the most important thing. This is a hedonistic[1] vision of
life. According to him, common people couldn't understand reality, but only get
impressions.
● Marius the Epicurean: in this book he exalts the beauty of faith. Marius, the protagonist,
sacrifies himself to save a Christian friend and lives shut in himself.

In literature, Aestheticism was tinged (si mischiò) with Hedonism and changed into Decadentism
(between 1880 and 1890) and then, in France, it was replaced by Symbolism.
With the Decadentism, the main traits of Aestheticism developed until if toppledinto absurd and
futile.
Disdaining mediocrity, the Decadents cut themselves off from the masses. They escape from
reality within themselves, using drugs to create paradise artificiels where illusion replaced reality
(which is imperfect).
They studied the poems of Baudelaire, whose Les fleurs du mal had revealed the beauty of evil
(male) and decay.

The most important Decadents in Europe are:

● French poets Mallarmé, Verlaine, Laforgue, Corbière

● Huysmans, because of his novel A Rebours, where the protagonist, Des Esseints,
decided to lead a solitary life in seach of sensations
● Gabriele D'Annunzio, because of his novel Il Piacere and its protagonist Andrea Sperelli
● Oscar Wilde, because of Dorian Gray, the protagonist of his novel The Picture of Dorian
Gray.

2. Oscar Wilde: life and works

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was born in Dublin but studied at Oxford. He was influenced by Pater,
the aethetes and by decadents. Wilde didn't want to live shut in himself but he look upon the world
as a stage on which he intended to play a leading role. So he used to dress in a bizarre way and
walk up and down Piccadilly with a lily or a sunflower in his hand. With his eccentric behaviour, he
became famous even before he had written anything of importance.
His first Poems, in spite of their mediocrity, were reprinted 5 times in one year. Apart from some
essays, only with The happy prince and other tales (1888), he became a real writer. Other
collections are Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories and The House of Pomegranates.
Wilde's masterpiece is The Picture of Dorian Gray, published by installments in an American
magazine. It tells the story of a young aesthete who preserves his youth while the signs of old age
manifest themselves on his portrait. But in the end, overcome by disgust, he stabs it and break the
spell, so the portrait regains its splendour and he died. This novel is the most characteristic of
English Aestheticism.
Also Wilde's comedies are very important because they were funny. For example: Lady
windermere's Fan, A Woman of no importance, An ideal husband and The importance of
being Earnest, one of the masterpieces of English comedy. The tragedy of Salomé, written in
French and performed in Paris in 1894, is a story of lust and cruelty.
In 1895 he was sentenced to two years' hard labour because of his homosexuality. After his
release from prison, he tried unsuccessfully to regain his position in society and died in Paris in
1900, after a conversion to Catholicism. In these years he wrote The ballad of Reading Gaol, a
poem and De Profundis, an autobiographical prose work in which he looks for a religious solution
to the problems of existence.