Budapest Theatre Digest

Primer on Restoration Era Drama (1660 – c. 1710) 

and the So-Called Comedy of Manners

Introduction

Excerpts from Restoration and Eighteenth Century Comedy, edited by Scott McMillin (W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1973):

“[These comedies are] about men and women who live in London, care for sex and money, and make fools of one another if not of themselves.”

“The London theatre from 1660 through most of the eighteenth century … was not a ‘transitional’ stage, standing a bit uncertainly between the Shakespearean playhouse and the theatre of realism… [It was] a place of unusual excitement and innovation.”

“This period presents the first example in England of a transaction between the theatre and an articulate body of social criticism.”

At university, when it came to studying Restoration Comedy, we were handed Richard Sheridan’s School for Scandal, and that was it. Yet, Sheridan represents sunset of this genre, when “laughing comedies” gave way to the “crying comedies” of sentimental theatre, which would dominate stages in the nineteenth century. Ironically, these terms were introduced by Oliver Goldsmith in 1773, the same year he wrote the classic sentimental comedy She Stoops to Conquer.

As examples of playwrights writing “laughing comedies” at the time, Goldsmith identified by name Sir John Vanbrugh, who wrote The Provoked Wife in 1697, and Colley Cibber, an actor and theater-manager whose work does not survive. Then, on 1777, a mere four years after Goldsmith’s article, Sheridan unveiled his celebrated work School for Scandal. To a modern eye, all these works betray some creeping qualities of sentimentality. Vanburgh goes to great lengths to show that his heroine, the eponymous “provoked wife”, commits no true impropriety. As literary critic Louis Kronenberger pointed out in his book The Thread of Laughter (1952), “The most brilliant thing about [School for Scandal] is the seeming wickedness of its plot [although] no one sexually sins.” With succeeding generations, playwrights were careful to distribute rewards to virtuous characters and punishments to wrongdoers by the end of their works, a practice that largely survives to this day.

To put it in historical perspective, I’ll quote here the opening paragraph from the introduction of Restoration Plays, edited by Robert G. Lawrence (Guernsey Press, 1976): “Between the Puritan closing of the theaters in 1642 and the accession of Charles II in 1660, in the interregnum dominated by Oliver Cromwell, dramatic activity almost ceased. The restoration of the monarchy was enthusiastically welcomed, but both social and theatrical conditions had changed during the eighteen-year period of turmoil. Society was in search of new values to replace the rejected Puritan ethos, and almost all the pre-Civil War theaters had been destroyed. The two new theaters permitted to open were wholly controlled by the Court and catered almost exclusively to aristocratic tastes and audiences. The proscenium arch, painted scenery, and the appearance of women in female roles were distinctive features of Restoration drama.”

Comedies of this type faced a backlash in 1698, with the publication of Jeremy Collier’s A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. Although Collier was soundly rebutted by many journalists and literati of the time, his remarks reflected the changing public sentiment. A growing middle class also enjoyed attending the theatre, but their tastes were different. Conscientious playwrights like Richard Steele (The Conscious Lovers, 1722) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The School for Scandal, 1777) tried to address this by dramatizing stories with wholesome moral messages.

Genre and Modern Reception

Comedy of manners was born during the Restoration Era, but it was not the only popular genre at the time. There were also tragedies and so-called heroic plays (often in historic, exotic locales) that capitalized on the newest stage technology. Spectacle was an important draw, and competitive theatre houses used it to attract audience members. Nonetheless, these epic showstoppers have not survived and are largely unavailable in today’s drama literature. (That may be different now in our post-Amazon times, but the only examples I have found are All for Love, John Dryden’s retelling of the Antony and Cleopatra story, and Venice Preserved by Thomas Ottway.) Regardless of genre, the popular format was five acts with musical interludes or shows during the intervals.

Today, Restoration Period drama is known as the birthplace of the comedy of manners. Plays focused on the upper class of London and, while not realistic by today’s standards, addressed their day-to-day concerns: money, marriage, sex, and reputation. The stories typically played out in a limited number of locations (interiors mostly, with the notorious parks of London being an important exterior location), and fewer settings allowed for more detail and verisimilitude in the set decoration (compared to the minimal sets of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama). We find a notable lack of children in these plays, not much (if any) talk of politics, and telling names continued to be popular. (Appendix II)

Even these early examples of “comedy of manners” have been hard to locate and acquire, because modern audiences are troubled by their amoral attitude. (The rake is rarely punished for his sexual shenanigans, but rather rewarded or celebrated for his superior style. Characters who claim to be moral are routinely mocked or exposed as hypocrites.) Take The Country Wife. It was exiled from the stage and replaced by a cleaned-up version, David Garrick’s comparatively sentimental and boring The Country Girl (1766), which survived into the twentieth century. The Country Wife was only rediscovered in the 1960s. It was purportedly the inspiration for the 1975 film Shampoo starring Warren Beatty, and there was a BBC Play of the Month production of The Country Wife in 1977, in which Anthony Andrews played Horner and Helen Mirren played Margery.

To get you in the spirit, here are opening lines from the top three Restorations comedies (in terms of quality, but also popularity and survival):

“A quack is as fit for a pimp as a midwife for a bawd.” – William Wycherley, The Country Wife, 1675

“What a dull and insipid thing is a billet-doux written in cold blood, after the heat of the business is over!” – Sir George Etherege, The Man of the Mode, 1676

“The coldness of a losing gamester lessens the pleasure of the winner. I’d no more play with a man who slighted his ill fortune than I’d make love to a woman who undervalued the loss of her reputation.” – William Congreve, The Way of the World, 1700

From these quotations, you can fairly determine that Wycherley’s play is the most savagely satirical. George Etherege (known by the sobriquet “easy Etherege”) softened his satire with genial good humor, so his play is the lightest and most crowd-pleasing of the three. William Congreve’s work is the wittiest.

We most also mention Aphra Behn, a notable female playwright of the era, who is most famous for her play The Rover, which became the favorite of the royal court. (I have only seen her comedy The Feigned Courtesans, which is one of the three occasions when I laughed the hardest in a theater.) However, her plots generally have multiple threads and settings, placing them closer to the Shakespearean tradition.

Also noteworthy is The Beaux Strategem, written by George Farquhar in 1707, which represents the perfect mid-point between the “laughing” and “crying” comedy. Of the two randy protagonists, Archer is absolutely Restoration in his amoral pursuit of pleasure, while his companion Aimwell evinces more moral concerns, befitting a sentimental hero. The comedy is somewhat broader (including jokes about the French, the Irish, and Catholics), which, again, perhaps reflects the changing profile of the audience.

Audience

Audiences were mixed, but quite segregated. The upper class tended to inhabit the boxes, where discrete visits could be paid. They also afforded clear sight-lines for plenty of flirting looks and gestures. (In one wood-cut, we find boxes for seating on the actual stage, which is rarely written about, so it my have been a novelty.) More casual theatergoing happened in the pit, where there were benches for seating – unless there was a packed house, in which case some patrons were forced to stand. Dandies and young men about town often preferred the pit, since it was livelier and frequented by Orange Women (female concessionists of reputedly loose morals) and Vizard Masks (prostitutes who would ply their trade with covered faces).

This played a part in Vanburgh’s The Provoked Wife, when Lady Brute (the wife of Sir John Brute) dons a mask in order to have a clandestine London adventure, but then she is mistaken for a prostitute. An Orange Woman appears in the first scene of The Man of the Mode to inform the protagonist of all the latest gossip.

For the less well-off, there was gallery seating, which was more notorious for brawls and prostitution. In The Country Wife, Pinchwife does not want his peers to get to know his new spouse, so he sits with her in the gallery, hoping the lusty rakes will assume that she is a common whore beneath their notice.

There are numerous accounts of audience members not paying attention to the show, and playwrights would roast them in the prologues and epilogues to their plays (spoken from the stage by an actor). Patrons occasionally showed up drunk, and some dandies liked to show off their wit in the pit, to the point where the actors onstage could not compete. Some treated the theater as just a stop on their social rounds, a convenient place where intellectuals met, as well wits, gentlemen, persons of quality, and citizens. (Appendix I)

Appendix I: Quotes about Restoration Audiences

 “It was observable how a gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in the midst of the play, did drop down as dead, being choked; but with much ado, Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat and brought him to life again.” (Samuel Pepys, 2 November 1667)

“The Play-houses are so extremely pestered with Vizard-masks and their Trade (occasioning continual Quarrels and Abuses) that many of the more Civilized Part of Town are uneasy in the Company and shun the Theater as they would a House of Scandal.” (Historia Historonica, 1699)

“Some come with lusty Burgundy half-drunk

T’eat China Oranges, make love to Punk;

And briskly mount a bench when th’ Act is done,

And comb their much-lov’d Periwigs to the tune

And can sit out a Play of three hour long,

Minding no part of’t but the Dance or Song.”

(Prologue to The Ordinary, c. January 1670/1)

“You Sparks better Comedians are than we;

 You every day out-fool ev’n Nokes and Lee.

They’re forced to stop, and their own Farces quit,

T’admire the Merry-Andrews of the Pit.”

(Aphra Behn, Epilogue to The False Count, 1681)

“…Then for you Lacqueys, and your Train beside,

(By what e’er Name or Title dignify’d)

They roar so loud, you’d think behind the Stairs

Tom Dove, and all the Brotherhood of Bears;

They’ve grown a Nuisance, beyond all Disasters,

We’ve none so great but their unpaying Masters.

We beg you, Sirs, to beg your Men, that they

Wou’d please to give you Leave to hear the Play.”

(John Dryden, 1682)

“…Some there are, who take their first Degrees

Of Lewdness in our Middle Galleries;

The Doughty Bullies enter Bloody Drunk,

Invade and grabble one another’s Punk;

They Caterwoul, and make a dismal Rout,

Call Sons of Whores, and strike, but ne’re lugged out.”

(Southerne, Prologue to The Disappointment, 1684)

Appendix II: Telling Names in Restoration Comedy

 William Wycherley (The Country Wife, 1675)

Horner, Harcourt, Pinchwife, Sparkish, Lady Fidget, Dainty, Mrs. Squeamish,

also Alithea suggests “truth”

Sir George Etherege (The Man of the Mode, 1676)

Mr. Medley, Sir Fopling Flutter (a fop), Lady Townley, Mrs. Loveit,

Pert and Busy (waiting women), Handy (a valet), Mr. Smirk (a parson)

Sir John Vanbrugh (The Provoked Wife, 1697)

Constant, Heartfree, Sir John Brute, Lord Rake, Col. Bully, Razor (a valet),

Treble (a singing master), Lady Fanciful (with her maids Cornet and Pipe),

Lovewell (the heroine’s faithful serving maid)

William Congreve (The Way of the World, 1700)

Fainall (the villain), Witwould (a fop), Petulant (a fop), Waitwell (a servant),

Lady Wishfort, Mrs. Marwood (Fainall’s accomplice), Foible and Mincing (maids),

also assonance suggests Mirabell and Millamant are meant to be together

George Farquhar (The Beaux Strategem, 1707)

Archer, Aimwell, Squire Sullen, Gibbet (a highwayman with accomplices Bagshot

and Hounslow), Scrub (a servant), Lady Bountiful, Gipsy, Cherry (maid at the inn),

also Boniface is the “good-faced” innkeeper who is secretly a criminal 

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The Rivals, 1775)

Sir Anthony Absolute, Captain Jack Absolute, Bob Acres, Sir Lucius O’Trigger,

Fag (a servant), Lydia Languish, Mrs. Malaprop

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The School for Scandal, 1777)

Sir Oliver Surface, Crabtree, Sir Benjamin Backbite, Snake (the villain), Careless,

Moses (the “friendly Jew”), Lady Sneerwell, Mrs. Candour