Restoration and re-opening of the theaters

The theaters were to stay closed until 1660, when Charles II was restored to the throne. That is what is meant by the Restoration. Restoration drama means that group of plays, both tragedies and comedies, written and performed, between 1660 and 1700. It is a very distinct, even extraordinary form of theater, like nothing before or since. It was written for a distinct audience: the returning Royalist exiles who made up the court of King Charles II. The dramatists and actors were not only out of touch with the country they returned to: they were hostile to its dominant, merchant middle class. They had lived a long time in France, as mostly Protestants in a Catholic country, without any serious power or purpose, as guests of Louis XIV. They had been exposed to French customs, French theatre and actresses. But they had been totally detached from Frances serious

neoclassical cultural agenda. So they had experienced only the superficial aspects of French culture, including drama, without any engagement with that cultures serious agenda or purpose. That is probably why, when they restored drama to the English scene, they sought to spice up both the tragedies and the comedies they had witnessed. The comic writers plagiarized the French tragedies and comedies - especially Molire, but then added and embroidered them to suit the coarser English taste.

The nature of Restoration drama

It is hard to say which is the more unique, the preposterous plays that were called 'Heroic Tragedy' that glamorized the frivolous courtier' idea of themselves, or, in total contrast, the incredibly bawdy sex comedies that came out of the same period. Fielding's Tom Thumb the Great is a very clever and funny send-up of the tragedies. What his satire exposes is the utter remoteness of

Restoration Tragedy from the experience and language of life. In trying to amaze and astonish audiences with high heroic characters and actions and exotic scenes and locales, Restoration tragedy presented onstage a world that had never existed and could never exist. It is an escapist fantasy world, lacking the serious moral content of Corneille, and any of the depth of Racine. Test this out by reading John Dryden's THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA, (a play, by the way, that does require from its audience, along with the need for a massive suspension of disbelief, some intelligence and taste, however misapplied.) In fact, there was a poet in England who had both a true tragic vision and the language for tragedy, JOHN MILTON, (See excerpt). But he was in internal exile: blind, disgraced, even facing execution as a traitor to the King. His one drama, Samson Agonistes, is filled with

the language of tragedy: but the action of the play is too austere and stiff, too weighed down with its conscious imitation of Greek tragedy - notably OEDIPUS AT COLONUS, to be theatrically compelling. RESTORATION COMEDY, however, is a definite success, though in a way that is as unique and astonishing as the impossible heroic tragedies. It is more sex-obsessed than any comedy ever written at any time in history - even the present time. Aristophanes can be very bawdy, but he is also interested in politics, philosophy, religion, war and peace, poetry, the future of his city and so on. Restoration Comedy, for the most part, has only one subject: the predatory 'rake' in pursuit of as many women as he can seduce. And he is well matched by the female rake, generally married, whose purpose is to bed as many young men as possible without losing her reputation - which she calls her 'honor'. What distinguishes this comedy from

Hollywood sex-movies is its totally cynical, ruthless aggressiveness.

Why is it so bawdy?
4. One explanation for the extraordinary bawdiness of this drama is that it is a deliberate defiance by the royalists against the Puritans who had closed down the theater, executed their King and sent them into exile in France. The mostly aristocratic audience that attended the theaters were men of leisure, most of whom disdained any kind of career, their fashionable lady friends and the large band of courtesans, wearing masks, who used the theaters as convenient places for their business. They relished the fact the merchant society of the City resented them - and so they set out defiantly to outrage the Puritans as much as possible, by flaunting and maybe exaggerating their immorality. This is one of the reasons why businessmen, City men like Sir Jasper Fidget in The Country Wife are made fools of by the

plots of these plays and why the references to business and the City in The Man of Mode are so contemptuous. In Restoration Drama the merchant or businessman is an enemy who must be humiliated at every opportunity. It is the one attack the courtiers can make, for Parliament now holds the purse-strings of the Court and the merchants are remaking England in non-aristocratic terms. Later, they will remake the theatre, also, in the moral Sentimental Comedies and Instructive tragedies of Addison Steele, Lillo. Restoration Comedy in a sense celebrates the audacious qualities of a class that is going into political extinction. It will have a last fling, as a subversive beggar society, in THE BEGGARS OPERA. Restoration Comedy is a warfare against the City and its values, the rakish group professing its audacious solidarity against the

respectable world of the growing middleclass. In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the middle class was to win the battle and the theatre in England went into eclipse, after Sheridan, for over a century. That is, the great age of Romanticism and of the English novel - one of the great periods of English Literature, has no notable theatre at all.( From 1770 - 1890)

The political powerlessness of the Restoration Court

As exiles, in Louis XIV's France, the British aristocrats had nothing to do but live for pleasure. Politics was forbidden them; religion was too dangerous a subject, - for they were mostly Protestants in a Catholic country - and when they returned to England, they discovered that the powers of the Court and the King had been greatly diminished (in contrast to Louis IV's absolute power). Parliament, funded by the City and by the merchant class throughout England, now was

the supreme power, though Charles tried to resist this. But he knew his limits. So 'politics' was mainly removed from the courtiers' range of vision, as was economics and religion. This didn't leave much apart from heroic fantasy in the tragedies and, in the comedies, SEX and its pursuit in terms of the codes of social elegance. Restoration comedies are ruthless but they are also refined: a very disturbing combination.

The ruthlessness of this comedy: Thomas

Hobbes its philosopher The philosophy of the Restoration Court and its dramatists was summed up by the cynical political-social Philosophy of ---THOMAS HOBBES (Major work: LEVIATHEN) He was the court philosopher in residence in the court of Charles II and teacher of the king and was the first 'materialist' philosopher of Britain. Hobbes's contended that both animals and humans act entirely from responses to external stimuli: to the effect upon their

animal instincts from the chance motions of an outside 'matter'. He denied that human were divided between a soul and a body as Descartes had insisted: indeed Hobbes really reversed Descartes, because Descartes was at least sure of the operations of the soul, or spirit but not of the body (which could be a delusion): whereas for Hobbes consciousness was only a matter of bodily responses and the idea of a soul was a delusion. It was hardly a secret that he was an atheist in the tolerant court of Charles. 2. For Hobbes, this materialism had important political consequences. Belief in the independent existence of the soul (a world of spirits) encouraged priestcraft and other conceptions that lessened the dependence of subjects on the sovereign power of the country. The illusion that we possessed independent souls made us believe in our own rights and freedoms and caused us to disrupt the commonwealth with our chimerical

demands. For Hobbes, all we decently could demand from a political order was to have our lives regulated so as to preserve our bodily safety. (He did allow that we had the right to resist any danger to our bodily selves; i.e. any law that threatened our selfpreservation). This was an attractive theory for Charles II and his more cynical courtiers, who believed in the absolute power of the monarch, even though they could not achieve this in England. It was, to their thinking, the fallacious belief in our spiritual existences that gave rise to the murderous Civil War fought over concepts of religion and of liberty. Hobbes, believed humans were ruled by two supreme drives: the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. If we merely were responding to external stimuli, free will was an illusion . If this was so, there was no such thing as good and evil: good was the satisfaction and evil the frustration, of appetite.

8. Life governed entirely by satisfying natural appetites could lead to a warfare between all, where our lives would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Men and women, in order to survive, allowed a sovereign power over themselves: the government and its laws and regulations, which would prevent society falling into total chaos. But this authority has no moral or spiritual sanction: merely that of practical regulation. If left alone, our natural instincts still would drive us to the maximum satisfaction of appetites. This was the natural state of man. Hobbes was taken up by Charles's courtiers and the Restoration comedy that reflected their view of life, is, not surprisingly, one in which the pursuit of sexual appetite, and power over others, is the main aim of life. Such Restoration rake heroes like Horner or Dorimant have a particularly cynical and 'cold-hearted' idea of the good life: in which

new conquests are always desirable while old affairs grow wearisome because conquest no longer is necessary. Man by nature was a predatory animal whose natural pursuit was the fulfillment of his appetites, requiring the subjugation and oppression of others. It was a natural human tendency to seek the maximum gratification of one's appetites and it was only when one came up against a force stronger than oneself that one drew back and acted cautiously. Cautiously, not morally, notice. In the law of the jungle that is our natural state, there is only force, power. Morality is just a hypocritical cloak, like the 'Honor' that Mrs. Fidget and the ladies keep harping on. Dorimant and Horner, or Bellinda or Mrs. Fidget, therefore, are acting perfectly naturally as Hobbesian men or women. All this was cheerfully accepted by the audience who, just by attending a play, were

making a statement against the Puritan ethos. In ACT IV, Sc. Ii. Of THE MAN OF MODE, Etherege can present onstage Dorimant, in his gown(bed attire) talking to Bellinda while in the background is his manservant Handy, tying up soiled linen that is cleaning up the bed - a wonderfully cheeky challenge to any (unlikely) Puritans in the audience.

The Man of Mode

Etherege practically established the Comedy of Manners in his first two plays, preceding The Man of Mode: the other plays we shall read are all offshoots of his early plays. These established the plot, scene, characters, action and dialogue of Restoration Comedy. The fact that this model was copied again and again means that it was successful with its public. The Man of Mode combines the themes and plot devices of Etherege's two earlier plays. The opening of The Man of Mode shows us

Dorimant dressing while receiving visitors and the news of the world: surveying the field of his coming campaign. This takes up the entire First Act. He is arming, like a sexual predator, for his campaign against the town and his fashionable clothes, perfume, etc. along with his alert intelligence are his armor against the town, along with his ready 'wit'. This whole opening scene should show Dorimant, at first undressed, little by little taking on the attire of the dangerous rake. The scene calls to mind Aeschylus's The Seven Against Thebes, with its opening action of Eteocles gradually arming himself for battle, until his fatal exit). Similarly, the opening of THE COUNTRY WIFE, shows HORNER cynically outlining his campaign to his doctor, and not giving away his secret to his closest friends: for in this sexual warfare, friends cant be trusted. Horner would try to seduce ALITHEA if he could, even though he is the friend of HARCOURT who is engaged to her..

(Restoration women, were just as predatory, though less fortunately placed, as the men: everyone was involved in the sex-pursuit. Aphra Behn, the first professional woman playwright in the English language, is every bit as bawdy as the male dramatists. [Wycherley himself had been literally picked up in the street, as an impoverished but good-looking young man, by the Duchess - of Cleveland, (she was in a coach) - and kept as her lover. There is a similar situation in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones where Tom is 'kept' by a wealthy aristocratic lady . )

Scene, Character, Action, Dialogue, Props in the play

The Scene is even more narrow than that of French comedy: the rakes operate within about one square mile of London: of The Mall, Hyde Park and the coffee houses and fashionable squares around Whitehall much

tinier than contemporary London. It is very similar to the famous Steinberg(?) NEW YORKER cartoon of the New Yorkers idea of America which consists of Manhatten, up to 42nd.Street, beyond which is a vague wilderness hinterland known as America and then the Pacific : In the much tinier Britain, Hampshire for example, is considered a dreadful wilderness. Characters consist of Fashionable Society and its servants. There is a funny little scene (p.80) Act III. iii, where the highly fashionable Sir Fopling Flutter and his companions are interrupted: Enter four illfashioned fellows singing.. It is the only glimpse we get of a different world beyond polite society: for the Orangewomen and the Bootmaker are the acceptable servants.

The characters include:

(a) fashionable rakes. (ideal of elegance) Usually younger sons without inheritance

looking for pleasure but also an heiress. These young men, are on display for sale. Until they are accepted by an heiress, they live for maximum sexual satisfaction. Among these Dorimant is the leader. Medley his ally: Young Bellair his potential victim, for it is hinted he is not enough of a wit to survive Dorimant. Thus the males cannot trust each other: Dorimant will poach a friends wife. Dorimant has many of the qualities of an amoral, cool James Bond but with genuine wit and intelligence. Dorimant is impeccably dressed, attracts the best looking women, acts entirely from the instinct of self-advantage and self-image much like the James Bond character, though within a more circumscribed and more real social world. The world of the rakes is much like the world of Laclos Dangerous Liaisons. Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Dorimant, in the play, has about three simultaneous entanglements. He discards Loveit by

employing Bellinda with whom he is conducting an affair while courting Harriet. There is no claim that this is love: and even his unexpected feelings for Harriet still keep in sight that she is wealthy. He tells Young Bellair, who is marrying for love: The wise will find a difference in our fate: You wed a woman, I a good estate. (b) Fops (parodies of elegant ideal, who overdo it (as the ill-fashioned underdo it). These establish the norm by violating it so that we better discern true elegance and wit. Sir Fopling Flutter was the most sought after role by actors for his almost sublime comic invulnerability (c) Female rakes: Loveit, the discarded mistress; Bellinda, the new one. These women accept the world of the rakes, operate it, are treacherous to each other while professing friendship, and are more

vulnerable than the males. The reputation of rake can enhance a mans status but if it was TOO OPEN, it could destroy a womans. Thus women were known to be rakes but they could not flaunt the fact. Bellinda is careful to be discreet. (d) The bright respectable women, who watchfully appreciate the rakes world. Emilia; The clever heiress, Harriet. It is essential the clever female keeps her cool while sizing up the field Wit is a survival requirement in this world. She detects that Dorimant is the smartest of the rakes and uses her intelligence to establish her own terms for a relationship. She does not expect Dorimant to totally reform (I would not have you turn fanatic) but he must respect her rights and needs. OUTSIDE THE RAKE -FOP WORLD is the world of ordinary society: the older generation that the younger one must deceive and outwit

(Young Bellair vs. Old Bellair) Outmoded fashion (Lady Woodvil) or sympathetic worldly elders LADY TOWNLEY. BEYOND THAT IS THE HOSTILE WORLD OF THE CITY; MERCHANTS, BUSINESS MEN whom the rakes long to cuckold or humiliate.

ACTION-PLOT
In an age of arranged and often loveless marriages (for men and women) both women and men were sexual adventurers, often using the theatre for vizarded assignations. Cf. Samuel Pepys Diaries. (tho the philandering Pepys loved his wife!) Loveit, like Donna Elvira in DON GIOVANNI, has been discarded, has lost the war. The Man of Mode shows fashionable society as a Hobbesian warfare of all (like Dangerous Liaisons) against all, made up of a series of almost military strategies performed by: Men vs.Women; Men vs. Men; Women vs.Women;

Parents vs. Children. Deception, Treachery, betrayal are all accepted moves in the predatory game. Marriage (Dorimant-Harriet) is a form of armistice. Even if it is one of innocent love Bellair and Emilia will be vulnerable to rakes like Dorimant. (Tom Stoppards THE REAL THING is in this tradition.) The plot of the play is set out as a series of strategic actions By Dorimant (a) To find a way of discarding his mistress Loveit. (b) To conquer Bellinda (c) To help Young Belllair to marry so Dorimant might get access to Emilia (in reserve) (d) Major campaign: to win Harriet and her Fortune

(e) To maintain his status as dominant rake (his rage at Loveits humiliation of him Young Bellair: (a) To deceive his father and gain Emilia Bellinda (b) To serve DORIMANT and deceive Loveit Loveit (a) To regain Dorimant against all comers (b) To publicly humiliate him in revenge Harriet (a) To make sure she marries the man she chooses: he must achieve the standard of wit (b) To try to get Dorimant to respect her conditions for marriage, while remaining tolerant and liberal (I would not have you turn fanatic - there are a lot of disrespectful (anti-Puritan) religious references in the play The only person not at war, is the ultimately innocent Sir Fopling Flutter, in his own impregnable world of self-approval.

DIALOGUE:

Its world of reference is incredibly narrow: just idle fashionable London society and its world of theater, cards, clothes, sexual predation, fortune-hunting. Within these limitations, however, language is expected to maintain a rigorous standard of witty repartee, of taste and observation. Taste is a serious substitute for morality or religion. It must recognize and maintain its own level of acceptable character and behavior, which is extremely permissive so long as these standards are kept up. (his is still an aristocratic attitude that shocks the bourgeoisie!) Dorimants cruel treatment of Loveit disturbs Bellinda (her friend) but not enough to turn her against him. Serious religion or state affairs are excluded from this discourse. (Old, blind, radical, exiled John Milton is still alive!)

PROPS
Of immense importance in this drama: dress,

we saw, is a form of armor which Sir Fopling hilariously misapplies. Fans (Loveit unpardonably tears her fan) Masks at the theater for especially women to employ on their affairs. These women can be fashionable adulteresses or prostitutes. Deportment: Dancing masters often from France, gave lessons in proper deportment: how to sit, use a cane, snuff-box or fan, curtsy or bow, make an exit, etc. These dancing masters also trained the actors who therefore were expected to be as elegant as anyone in the audience. It is a branch of French neoclassical decorum applied to life. Social life was a form of play-acting, (Cf. pp. 55-57 Bellair and Harriet) This is why these comedies succeed in the theater. Introduction of the Actress to English theatre The idea of life as a war between the sexes was amplified by the introduction, for the first time, of actresses on the English stage. (Men

still played some women's parts - as in France where Mme. Pernille in Tartuffe was played by a man.) Actresses were an absolute requirement in an entertainment for King Charles II and his circle. The court in exile had seen actresses on the stage in France and were determined to introduce actresses to the English stage. The king himself was a notorious 'rake' and a lover of the theater. His multitudinous mistresses founded many of our current aristocratic families: a great number of ladies were raised, with their tolerant husbands, to the ranks of the aristocracy. (The theme of a recent movie called Restoration). And often, the best way to the King's bed was via the theater, either by selling oranges in the theater, like Nell Gwynne, who then became an actress and the king's favorite; or by starting out as an actress. Restoration comedy is not a fantasy world; it

is a direct reflection of what was going on in this little circle of male and female rakes. Frequently the comedies contain only slightly hidden references to what is going on in the audience's lives. No other theater has so dramatized itself. It is theater about the theater world, with the actors on the stage talking to the members of the audience (in 'asides' that are more intimate than their Elizabethan counterparts).

Contrast between French and Restoration Drama

In France, Charles II and his courtiers had been exposed to French drama, (and to the idea of actresses) and many of the Restoration tragedies and comedies are based on French models. Molire, especially, was pillaged for plots. Wycherley's The Plain Dealer for example, is very loosely based on The Misanthrope. But there is a world of difference between

French drama and the drama of Restoration England. We can see this is we compare Tartuffe with The Man of Mode and The Country Wife. Both are accomplished comedies: but Tartuffe is daring, and raises serious cultural issues about the collision between religious and social demands upon the citizen of a rational society. The Man of Mode, as much as The Country Wife is an outrageous celebration of sexual anarchy. The Way of the World is, in a sense, a 'cleaned up' version of Restoration Comedy. It is still a world of male and female rakes, fops, wits, comic duennas, clever servants and buffoons, but the emphasis now is more on manners and witty dialogue and somewhat less on the ruthless pursuit of sex. Theatre and Audience on the British Stage Because the Restoration comedies were written for a very narrow class of people by members of that class, that is, the courtiers surrounding the king and the more raffish

members of the public who wanted to be part of this circle, these comedies set up a very close intimacy between stage and audience in every sense of intimacy. The continual interplay between the stage and the audience, through 'asides', through continual references in the plays to the theatre and to making assignations in the theater (then going on during the performance) to "masks" and vizards (women who wore masks to conceal identity). The plays began with a Prologue spoken to the audience by the actor or actress playing a prominent part, and referring to events everyone in the audience knew about. Both THE MAN OF MODE and THE COUNTRY WIFE bring the theatre into the dialogue, describing the women in the audience, early in the first scenes and these references to the theatre run all through the play. It probably is the most intimate theater (in every sense) ever. Actresses were known mistresses of audience

members. Dorimant probably was modeled on John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, a famous rake. Restoration Comedy, though it celebrates the triumph of the 'rake-hero' nevertheless subscribes to a code of conduct, amounting almost to a morality, with its rules and infringements, in which the cynical audiences believed in and upheld. This code, celebrated a form of sexual freedom (or at least in the value of the sexgame, the sex chase, by both sexes) and above that, a code of social intelligence and taste. There was a double standard in that the male 'rake' was permitted far more freedom than the female 'rake' and could survive being abandoned much better. The male rake could boast about his conquests: the female rake had to pretend to be virtuous. The character of Mrs. Loveit in THE MAN OF MODER, or Mrs. Fainall, the discarded lover of Mirabell, in The Way of the World are good examples of the hazards that

the sexually free woman ran. She had to guard her reputation more than the hero did, and, if he got tired of her, and she was no longer young, her future was far more perilous. Mrs. Loveit and Mrs. Fainall and their kind are potentially tragic characters whose futures, unlike the mens are likely to be very problematic. RESTORATION COMEDY is an amazingly 'exclusive' stylistic genre. Despising the CITY and PARLIAMENT, the theatre and its audience are cut off from serious economic or political life. (Though SAMUEL PEPYS could straddle both worlds). In pursuit of pleasure the men and women of the plays seem to have no connection with the great work of the ROYAL SOCIETY, with ISAAC NEWTON, or GABRIEL HARVEY, and certainly they are unaware of the greatest poet of the age. While they incessantly quote such 'polite' minor poets and Edmund Waller and Sir John Suckling, there's no trace of

John Milton, their contemporary (and regicidal enemy). As Restoration comedy evolves, so it changes; it becomes gradually more human, more moral, and begins to realize that life has to be more than this endless sexual warfare within society. That is what we notice as we move from Etherege, through Wycherly, to Congreve and Farquhar. The idea of life summed up in the philosophy of Hobbes later gave way to the more congenial political and psychological philosophy of Locke. In drama, this meant abandoning the cynical comedy of the Restoration for the sentimental comedy (and tragedy) of the eighteenth century. Arguably the finest Restoration comedy, The Way of the World was a flop before an audience weary of the genre. Gradually, Restoration Comedy was seen to belong to an impossible idea of society. It ceased being performed in

the early 18th. century, and was considered hopelessly immoral in the 19th century. It was only in the 1920's (itself an age of cynicism - AFTER WORLD WAR ONE - and of manners or style that it began its present revival. It fitted the period that succeeded the political/philosophic comedies of GEORGE BERNARD SHAW with the stylish and risqu comedies of Noel Coward. 5 Etherege and Wycherley complacently accept the rules of a game that so obviously gives their heroes, DORIMANT and HORNER such unfair advantages. Almost as shocking, though more modern, is the reduction of sexuality to a kind of cynical hunt where love itself is an act of foolishness. The young lover, Bellair, in THE MAN OF MODE it is hinted, is due to be cuckolded by Dorimant after he is married to EMILIA. BELLINDA betrays her best friend, Loveit, under the pretence of helping her. (Shades of Linda Tripp!!) In Etherege's world, it is one's

good impulses that put one in danger. Intelligence ('wit') is more esteemed than virtue. All Restoration comedies celebrate watchful intelligence. One can only 'pass' in good society by finely discriminating between true and false wit, fashion, 'raillery', prudence (not prudishness) nd so on. It is like a survival of the fittest, where one is looking for the 'mate' who will best further one's survival as man or woman. HARRIET is attracted to DORIMANT in THE MAN OF MODE, because he has shown the best survival mechanisms in a dangerous environment, and he to her for the same reasons. This is true of HARCOURT and ALITHEA, in THE COUNTRY WIFE, or Mirabel and Millament in The Way of the World. The Gay Couple, as they used to be called, are an evolution from Beatrice and Benedick.:intelligent, aware, resourceful, able to get what they want, ultimately.

DORIMANT admires and maybe even loves HARRIET (in a way)but he also is aware of the fortune she has inherited and which is essential for his marriage to her. Reputation' or 'saving face' is one of the survival mechanisms: hence, in THE COUNRY WIFE, the extended discussions on Honor. [DORIMANT'S' rage when LOVEIT seems to make him lose face: and HARRIET'S careful, precaution-taking attraction to and acceptance of DORIMANT on her terms, while respecting his.] 6. The strangest thing about Wycherleys and Etherege's plays is that we know that not only Etherege approved of Dorimant, but so did the audience. Dorimant was believed to have been modeled on actual notorious, scandalous but much admired rakes, such as the Earl of Rochester, or even Etherege himself whose two lifelong passions were women, and gambling.

There is no alternative moral code of conduct in Etherege's world. Dorimant may treat Loveit shamefully, but Loveit has no moral case against him, for she herself has accepted the rules by which Dorimant operates. So, too, do Bellinda, Harriet and Dorimant's male companions. Furthermore: even the nonaristocratic, servant-class characters, share Dorimant's view of the world, (except for PEERT) as the early scenes with Handy and the Orangewoman (perhaps once a prostitute) reveal. That opening scene with the Orangewoman, by the way, is excellent character-comedy and reveals a whole 'easiness' between Dorimant and the working class that is itself subversively attractive. Doriment and Medley might be easygoing aristocrats but they are not 'snobs' in the middle-class sense. Their way of bantering with and trading insults with the orangewoman and with the other servants

shows they are 'above' class and already establishes that alliance between low life and high life that we will see, later, in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. 7. But the world Etherege and Wycherley show us is far from being a sexual paradise, though Etherege himself seemed to think so. What is so actable about the plays is that they really shows society in a state of perpetual war: war between men and women, men and men and women and women. Obeying the logic of their code of conduct, these characters can never trust each other, must always be on the alert against betrayal, and cannot appeal to any sympathies or values that can restrain the completely unscrupulous man or woman. 9. But this is not enough to explain the peculiar nature of Restoration life and drama. It does not explain the peculiar nature of the sexual pursuit, nor the extraordinary 'comedy

of manners' that ensued. Appetites alone could not have created the extraordinary peacock displays of Restoration men and women and their society. We need to look at the economic and cultural nature of Restoration society to understand its drama: its emphasis upon social decorum, manners, elegance: and its extremely cynical view of the one value it honored: the sexual relationship. Even respectable society accepted a highly cynical - or at least unromantic view of the sexual and marriage relationship. In the moneyed and landed classes, marriages were arranged for the perpetuation of estates and not for 'love. Dorimant's final success, it will seem, is that he will gain both Harriet and her estate. The male rake often was a young man without an estate (a younger son) or one who had lost his estate (as many families did in the Civil War) and sought his fortune not in 'trade' which was considered ungentlemanly,

but by making a 'good marriage'. This often meant marrying against the wishes of the girl's parents, of fooling them: a classical theme of comedy. For the male, the greatest threat was being 'cuckolded': that is, having bastards inherit one's estate: hence the strong fear of and emphasis upon 'cuckolding' plots where wives, married to husbands they did not love, took on more agreeable lovers. While, therefore, the male rake's chiefest interest was the pursuit of women, married or otherwise, his greatest fear -even greater than the ever-present fear of syphilis, was for himself to be cuckolded. This was the great contradiction in the 'rake' code of conduct. It forced upon him an extreme degree of watchfulness as to his own honor. For the women, agreeable lovers meant lovers who represented the smartest that London society could offer: 'wits,' men of fashion, and so on. The CITY, of merchants and bankers and Puritans (and regicides) was

the despised ENEMY. The countryside was considered an exile from everything that fashionable society could offer. THE COUNTRY WIFE, is about Educating Marjorie, who, as its title tells us, is brought out of the ignorance of country life and into the fashionable corruption of London life. It is taken for granted that this is a good thing, quite apart from it being poetic justice for PINCHWIFE. The implication of the end of the play is that she WILL join the corrupt circle, despite her reconciliation to being a country wife (p. 77) 9. {At the end of the THE MAN OF MODE, Harriet declares she who does not expect Dorimant to become 'fanatic' by totally giving up other women after their engagement. This is a joke against the Puritan lifestyle and a declaration of tolerance in both sexual and religious matters. But she at least expects him to show his love for her by enduring the countryside for a term. (142) Dorimant

agrees to this while also making sure he keeps Bellinda as his mistress.