RESTORATION

DRAMA
■ The English theatre passed through a very critical stage under the Puritan regimentation.
■ The theatre, which had enjoyed immense popularity, during the reign of Elizabeth, was
officially closed by an ordinance of Parliament in the very same year (1642), after the
deposition of Charles I.
■ Before the Stuart dynasty was restored to the throne of England, in 1660, Puritan rule
made it very difficult for dramatists to perform. There was little inspiration, and
performances were given in secrecy: in taverns or private houses miles from town.
During this time period, known as the Commonwealth, theatres were closed. As a result,
people were forced to engage in theatrical activities in privacy.
■ No public acting was allowed, and drama lay in a dormant state till the restoration of the
royal power in 1660.
■ During his years of exile in France, Charles II admired the French entertainments and
theatrical styles.
■ In 1660, Charles II was restored to his throne. With his return, drama, too, officially
returned to England, after its official silence for long twenty years under the authority of
the Puritans.
■ The deprivation of dramatic entertainment for twenty years did not certainly impair the appetite
of the English people for this. But the plays, which were presented to them, were strikingly
different from those of the Elizabethan age and of the early years of the seventeenth century.
■ The nature of the Restoration audience was different from that of the Elizabethan age. The
Restoration theatre became wholly a centre of vulgarity and low amusement for corrupt
courtiers and rakish royalists. Consequently, there was extreme licentiousness in the dramatic
works, particularly in the comedy, of the age.
■ The restoration of Charles II brought the French taste and influence to bear on the English stage
leading to a brand new form of drama now referred to as the Restoration drama. The
Restoration drama was short-lived lived due to puritans’ attack.
■ Drama has, in some ways, become arrogant, fake, and overly staged. The primary source of the
dramatists’ dramatic ideas became court life, with all its mannerisms, immorality, and illusory
glory.
■ Changes in theatrical technique also occurred. Stage equipment became necessary, and
moveable scenery started to be utilized. Actresses were then brought in to perform female roles.
Compared to the Elizabethan era, the Restoration era’s audience had a different makeup. The
Restoration theater became a hub of obscene behavior and cheap entertainment for dishonest
courtiers and haughty royalists. As a result, the dramatic works—especially the
comedies—were extremely licentious.
■ Playwrights wrote sexually suggestive scenarios
TYPES OF RESTORATION DRAMA
■ Much of the Elizabethan Play writers blended tragedy and comedy, whereas the Restoration dramatists
chose to separate the two. The drama of this period can be broken into two categories, comedies and
tragedies.
■ Restoration tragedy is classified as heroic tragedy. Heroic tragedy is very extraordinary and usually
encompasses some extremely good deed done by a very willful, admirable character. Restoration tragedy
refers to neoclassical rules making it very imitative. Usually these tragedies are reworkings of
Shakespearean plays.
■ There are three types of comedies that were popular during the Restoration. These three types are:
Humour, Manners, and Intrigue.
■ Comedies of Humour were made popular by the Renaissance playwright and poet Ben Jonson earlier in
the century. These plays centralized around a specific character who had an overshadowing trait.
■ Comedy of Manners were the most popular form of Restoration Drama. These plays would typically mock
the upper-class and would usually include vulgar and sexually suggestive language.
■ The third and final form of comedy during the Restoration is the comedy of Intrigue. This type of comedy
has a somewhat complicated plot, and usually evolves around romance and adventure.
■ The audience was of the middle class and upper-class people.
■ The success of the plays of the Restoration period was dependent upon the strange
staging devices, weird plots, and dramatized language.
■ The Restoration gave rise to the first female playwright Aphra Behn. It also marked the
first instances of actresses appearing on stage in female roles.
■ In spite of the Puritans‟ perception of the theatre as a cesspool of immorality, King
Charles II did not hide his love for theatrical performances. In fact, one of Charles II‟s
acts was to grant patents to Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant.
■ The licenses enabled them to form two theatre companies namely the King‟s Men and
the Duke of York‟s Men respectively.
■ These two companies were the recognized national theatres and they enjoyed the
monopoly of theatrical productions in the country from 1660 to the middle of the 19th
century.
Restoration Playwrights
■ William Congreve (The Old Bachelor in 1692, The Mourning Bride in
1697, The Way of the World in 1700)
■ William Wycherley ( The Country Wife in 1675, in 1676))
■ George Etherege (The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter in 1676)
■ John Vanbrugh (The Provoked Wife in 1697)
■ Nathaniel Lee
■ John Dryden (Marriage à la Mode in 1670)
■ Aphra Behn (The Rover or The Banish'd Cavaliers in 1677)
■ George Farquhar (Love and a Bottle in 1698, The Recruiting Officer in
1706, The Beaux’ Stratagem in 1707)
■ Thomas Otway (Friendship in Fashion in 1678)
Comedy of Manners;
■ This genre refers to English Comedies written and performed in the Restoration Period from 1660
A.D. to 1710 A.D. It is an entertainment form which satirizes the manners and affections of social
class or of multiple classes.
■ A manner is a method in which everyday duties are performed.
■ The French playwright Moliere is the best-known playwright for the comedy of manner. His
popular plays like L’École des Femmes, Le Misanthrope and Tartuffe satirize the hypocrisy of the
aristocratic class.
■ Dryden was the first to write Comedy of Manners with his Wild Gallant, which was a failure. He
wrote several other Comedies of Manners also which were more successful.
■ It is mainly a satirical comedy of the Restoration period (1660–1700) that questions and comments
upon the manners and social norms of a greatly sophisticated, artificial society.
■ It is rich with wit and satire and gives the image of the time.
■ The manners which the Comedy of Manners shows were not the manners of all the classes of
Restoration Society; they were rather the manners of the upper class only.
■ The social environment, represented in this type of comedy, is wholly aristocratic, but definitely
superficial. The playwright seems to be concerned with the cultivated upper-class ethos that is
amoral.
■ This genre is characterized by realism (art), social analysis and satire.
■ These comedies are thus true pictures of the noble society of the age.
■ One feature of the Restoration comedy which has been often criticised and almost as
often defended is its immorality.
■ These comedies often targeted the sophisticated and complex code of conduct in the
society which gave more importance to appearance and outward behaviour, rather than
true moral characteristics.
■ Lust, greed, materialistic nature of people, gossip and rumours, hypocritical nature and
false pretensions of the people were common subjects of the comedy of manners.
Areas such as marriage, love, adultery, cuckoldry, fortune hunting were also portrayed
in these plays.
■ The writers of the Comedy of Manners gave much more importance to the wit and
polish of their dialogues than to their plot-construction
■ These comedies often used minimal physical action. Heavy use of witty dialogue was
the hallmark of comedy of manners. Comedy of manners is the opposite of slapstick
plays which rely upon physical actions and mimicry to evoke laughter.
■ The Way of the World by William Congreve is a great example of Comedy of Manners.
■ Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare can be considered the first comedy
of manners in England. William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, with William
Congreve’s The Way of the World, Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, Richard
Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal and The Rivals are some examples of
comedy of manners. Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Importance of
Being Earnest are also comedies of manners although they were written in the
19th century.
■ Their acquisition of a comic taste was influenced by the comedies of Moliere
■ The comic world of romance preferred by the Elizabethans was, according to Downer,
“exchanged for the comic world of manners, a witty, cynical, intellectual, deliberately immoral
world, an exact reflection of the tastes, interests, and code of behaviour of its aristocratic
audience”.
■ The courtiers went for the plays of Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher built on manners, wits and
humours. Like Jonson’s comedies, wit was the touchstone of the Restoration comedies.
■ Heroes and heroines of the Restoration comedy celebrate the code of life of the gallants and
aristocratic ladies.
■ The heroine is more important and interesting than the hero in the Comedy of Manners
■ Bringing the gallant and the lady into discussing the business of love is like partaking in a
verbal fencing. “They insult one another freely and profess the greatest reluctance to commit
themselves to the permanence of the marriage contract” (Downer 200).
■ In fact, ritous and “aristocratic macho life styles of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest”
are the cornerstones of the Restoration comedy. The characters are pleasure-seeking and
amorous, and essentially profligates/rakes.
■ It is a reflection of the rakish ethos of the court of Charles II
■ The plot of Restoration drama is bustling and multi-coloured. Love intrigue is handled in a variety
of way in order to reveal the English perception of love, marriage, gender as well as power and
capital relations at that given time.
■ Each character seeks for his or her own welfare and what guarantees happiness.
■ The plot highlights the collapse and instability of social structures which is the consequence of the
civil war that preceded the Restoration period.
■ The characters in comedy of manners also have little depth since playwrights often use
stereotypical stock characters such the hypocrite, schemer, fool, jealous husband, and interfering
old parents.
■ The characters of the comedy of manners belong to the real life of the 18th century–to the
artificial, snobbish, vulgar English society. They are realistic, although they belong to a much
restricted social span. In fact, the imitation of a distinct class- aristocratic but immoral- constitutes
the essence of the comedy of manners.
■ In fact one is free to say that Restoration comedy is a drama of social analysis of gambling, sexual
relations, gossip, character – assassination, greed for money, and power tussle between man and
woman.
WILLIAM CONGREVE

■ Born in 1670 in Yorkshire

■ Attended Trinity College
■ The The Old Bachelour was an immature work and borrowed heavily from earlier
seventeenth century playwrights (Wycherley and Etherege)
■ The Double Dealer, Love for Love, The Mourning Bride, and The Way of the World
The Way of the World
■ Known as Restoration comedy
■ A satirical view of the period
■ A particular focus on the relationship between conventional morality and the individual spirit
■ Comic characters as the reflections of the shallow aristocrats of court society (peopled with
libertines and wits, gallants and dandies)
■ The hero as sophisticated and critical of convention and fashion
■ Takes place in London
■ Reflects the manners and customs of London life in 1700
■ A five-act play
■ Three settings (a chocolate house, St. James Park, and Lady Wishfort’s house)
■ The usage of dramatic devices like disguise, the foil, comic relief, counterplot, and hyperbole
THEMES
■ SOCIAL CONVENTION
■ Conventional social behavior as the principle subject of satire
■ Social pretensions and plot complications abound
■ Women are compelled to act coyly and to dissemble in courtship
■ Couples deceive one another in marriage
■ Friends are double-dealing
■ Dowry is more important than love in marriage
■ All moral principle is risked for the sake of reputation and money
■ DOWRIES, MARRIAGE AND ADULTERY
■ In the male-dominated, patriarchal society of Congreve’s time, a woman was little more
than property in a marriage transaction
■ Her dowry (money, property, and estate) was given to her husband at marriage
■ Marriages were arranged according to social status, size of fortune, and family name
■ Marriages as important economic contracts (and socially acceptable)
■ Getting caught in adulterous relationship puts both reputation and fortune at risk