Background
Wycherley was born about 1640 at Clive, near Shrewsbury, England, where his father, a royalist, owned a small estate.
(William Wycherley's four comedies are admired for their s...)
William Wycherley's four comedies are admired for their satirical wit, farcical humor, vivid characterization, and social criticism. This edition includes Love in a Wood, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, The Country Wife, and The Plain Dealer. The texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation. In addition, there is a scholarly introduction, a note on staging, and detailed annotation. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Wycherley was born about 1640 at Clive, near Shrewsbury, England, where his father, a royalist, owned a small estate.
Because the Puritans were in power, Wycherley was sent to France for his education.
But he was more inclined toward literature and later settled in Oxford at the provost's quarters of Queen's College to study at the Bodleian library.
He spent several years there studying with the Duchesse de Montausier and her circle of intellectuals.
As was the case with many who followed the Stuarts to France, Wycherley was converted to Roman Catholicism. However, he reverted to Protestantism upon his return to England just before the Restoration.
His first comedy, Love in a Wood, was acted at the Theatre Royal around April 1671, and was followed, probably in January or February 1672, by The Gentleman Dancing Master.
Neither had great success then or later although Love in a Wood helped to gain him the favors of Lady Castlemaine, duchess of Cleveland and a mistress of King Charles II.
Much later, in 1704, he published a volume of Miscellany Poems.
His third play, The Country Wife (1675), centered around a rake who lulls husbands into a false sense of security by pretending to be a eunuch, was one of his two more enduring successes. Like the comedies of Etherege, these three plays center in the intrigues of London gallants, fops, and ladies of fashion. His fourth comedy, The Plain Dealer, acted in December 1676, is, however, a more serious-minded, bitterly satiric view of Restoration society and is unusual among Restoration comedies of manners for its underlying moral outlook. Much later, in 1704, he published a volume of Miscellany Poems. Wycherley died Jan. 1, 1716, in London, his once handsome looks ravaged by the dissolute living so typical of his period. His literary reputation rests upon the robust sexuality of The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.
By the middle of the 18th century, the original versions were considered too offensive and were no longer being acted.
In 1765 Isaac Bickerstaff restored The Plain Dealer in an adaptation which was for many years a stock piece.
In the same year John Lee condensed The Country Wife into a two-act play.
In 1766 David Garrick rewrote Wycherley's comedy into The Country Girl, a five-act play with a tone and situations less objectionable to the taste of Garrick's day.
(William Wycherley's four comedies are admired for their s...)
While in France, Wycherley converted to Roman Catholicism.
He had not seen enough of life to learn that in the long run nothing is politic but "straightforwardness". Whether because his countenance wore a pensive and subdued expression, suggestive of a poet who had married a dowager countess and awakened to the situation, or whether because treacherous confidants divulged his secret, does not appear, but the news of his marriage oozed out — it reached the royal ears, and deeply wounded the father anxious about the education of his son.
Wycherley lost the appointment that was so nearly within his grasp — lost indeed the royal favour for ever. He never had an opportunity of regaining it, for the countess seems to have really loved him, and Love in a Wood had proclaimed the writer to be the kind of husband whose virtue prospers best when closely guarded at the domestic hearth.
Wherever he went the countess followed trim, and when she did allow him to meet his boon companions it was in a tavern in Bow Street opposite to his own house, and even there under certain protective conditions.