Comedies by William Congreve - Paperback

COMEDIES BY WILLIAM CONGREVE -- 1670 - Born at Bardsey, near Leeds. 1685. Goes to Trinity College, Dublin. 1692. Publishes Incognila, under the name of Cleophil. Translates the 11th satire of Juvenal for Drydens translation. Writes complimentary verses for Drydens Persius. On Mrs. Arabella Hunt Singing. 1693. The Old Bachelor. 1694. The Double Deuler. Obtains a post in the Pipe Office circa. 1695. The Mourning Muse of Alexis. Love fbr Love. Ode to the King. Letter to Dennis Concerning Ifurnour in Comedy. Becomes commissioner for licensing Hackney Coaches. 1691. The Mourning Bride. The Birth of the Muse. 1698, Amendments of Mr. Colliers False and Imperfect Citations. 1700. The Way of the World. 1701. The Judgment of Paris. Ode for St. Cecilias Day. 1704. Squire Trelooby, an adaptation from Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, in collaboration with Vanbrugh and Walsh. vi CHRONOLOGY 1705. The Tears of Amaryllis. Is given a place in the Customs. 1706. A Pindaric Ode to the Queen, with A Discourse on the Pindaric Ode. 1710. Publication of his Works, with Smele. 1714. Place in the Customs bettered. Receives in addition the Secretaryship of the Island of Jamaica. 1720. Pope dedicates his Iliad to him. 1722. Steele dedicates to him his edition of Addisons The Drummer. 1726. Is visited by Voltaire. 1729. Dies. Epistle to Lord Cobham posthumously published. Written 1728. INTRODUCTION RESTORATION COMEDY SINCE t he year 1698, when Jeremy Collier flung his fulminations into the strongholds of the . English drama, it has been the-habit to tag Restoration comedy with the epithet licentious . Macaulay scrawled the word in flaming characters throughout a full-length essay and Lamb, in elaborating his nimbleexcuse, admitted the black indictment. What has happened that to-day we can face without flinching the prospect of seeing a comedy by Wycherley, and that Congreve touches our emotions instead of seeming a monster of callousness The first thing to remgniire is that Restoration comedy was not merely licentious, even if the adjective is useful in revealing that its chief subject is the intimate relations between men and women. It is a mistake to confuse subject with treatment one might as well say that Vanity P a i M, adame Bova g, and Crime and Punishment are licentious, because the characters in those books do not behave with the perfect propriety of the ladies in Cranford. The truth is-perhaps it was this that really shocked the moralists-that the comedy written from 1660 to 1700 dealt somewhat coldly viii INTRODUCTION with human love and lust, something cavalierly with the marriage tie. For there are, in the main, two attitudes one can take up in face of mans inability to live up to his ideals one that of amusement in the comic spirit, which implies that mans ideals need modification, or at least that his attitude towards them does the other that of horror, which implies that man himself needs modification-a task in which the risks of failure are discouraging. The comic writers of that time took for subject. the relations between the sexes not only because it lends itself so easily to jest the earliest recorded laughter is on this subject but because at that time it was one of crying importance. This was due to the fact not so much that society was lax, ss that it was experimental...