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WILLIAM WYCHERLEY (c. 1640-1716)
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Wycherley's university career seems also to have been influenced by the same causes
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Although See also:Puritanism had certainly not contaminated the See also:universities, yet English " quality and politeness " (to use Major Pack's words) have always, since the great See also:rebellion, been rather ashamed of possessing too much learning
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As a See also:fellow-commoner of See also:Queen's See also:College, Oxford, Wycherley only lived (according to See also:Wood) in the See also:provost's lodgings, being entered in the public library under the See also:title of " Philosophiae Studiosus " in See also:July 166o
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And he does not seem to have matriculated or to have taken a degree
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Nor when, on quitting Oxford, he took up his See also:residence in the Inner See also:Temple, where he had been entered in 1659, did he give any more See also:attention to the dry study of the See also:law than was proper to one so warmly caressed " by the persons most eminent for their quality or politeness." See also:Pleasure and the See also:stage were alone open to him, and probably early in 1671 was produced, at the See also:Theatre Royal, Love in a Wood
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It was published the next year
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With regard to this See also:comedy Wycherley told Pope—told him " over and over " till Pope believed him—believed him, at least, until they quarrelled about Wycherley's verses—that he wrote it the year before he went to Oxford
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But we need not believe him: the worst See also:witness against a man is mostly himself
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To pose as the wicked boy of See also:genius has been the foolish ambition of many writers, but on inquiry it will generally be found that these inkhorn Lotharios are not nearly so wicked as they would have us believe
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When Wycherley charges himself with having written, as a boy of nineteen, scenes so callous and so depraved that even See also:Barbara See also:Palmer's appetite for profligacy was, if not satisfied, appeased, there is, we repeat, no need to believe him
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Indeed, there is every See also:reason to disbelieve him, not for the reasons advanced by Macaulay, how-ever, who in challenging Wycherley's date does not go nearly deep enough
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Macaulay points to the allusions in the See also:play to gentlemen's periwigs, to guineas, to the vests which See also:
We must remember, however, that even if the play had been written in that year, and delayed in its See also:production till 1672, it is exactly this See also:kind of allusion to See also:recent events which any dramatist with an See also:eye to freshness of See also:colour would be certain to weave into his See also:dialogue
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It is not that " the whole See also:air and spirit of the piece belong to a period subsequent to that mentioned by Wycherley," but that " the whole air and spirit of the piece " belong to a man—an experienced and hardened See also:young man of the world—and not to a boy who would See also:fain pose as an experienced and hardened young man of the world
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The real defence of Wycherley against his foolish See also:impeachment of himself is this, that Love in a Wood, howsoever inferior in structure and in all the See also:artistic economies to The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer, contains scenes which no inexperienced boy could have written—scenes which, not for moral hardness merely, but often for real dramatic ripeness, are almost the strongest to be found amongst his four plays
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With regard to dramatic ripeness, indeed, if we were asked to indicate the finest See also:touch in all Wycherley, we should very likely select a speech in the third See also:scene of the third See also:act of this veryplay, where the vain, foolish and boastful See also:rake Dapperwit, having taken his friend to see his See also:mistress for the See also:express purpose of advertising his lordship over her, is coolly denied by her and insolently repulsed
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" I think," says Dapperwit, " See also:women take inconstancy from me worse than from any man breathing."
Now, does the subsequent development of Wycherley's dramatic genius See also:lead us to believe that, at nineteen, he could have given this touch, worthy of the See also:hand that See also:drew Malvolio
?
Is there anything in his two masterpieces—The Country Wife or The Plain Dealer—that makes it credible that Wycherley, the boy, could have thus delineated by a single quiet touch vanity as a See also:chain-See also:armour which no See also:shaft can See also:pierce—vanity, that is to say, in its perfect development
?
However, Macaulay (forgetting that, among the myriad vanities of the See also:writing fraternity, this of pretending to an early development of intellectual See also:powers that ought not to be, even if they could be, See also:developed early is at once the most comic and the most See also:common) is rather too severe upon Wycherley's disingenuousness in regard to the See also:dates of his plays
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That the writer of a play far more daring than See also:Etheredge's She Would if She Could—and far more brilliant too—should at once become the talk of Charles's court was inevitable; equally inevitable was it that the author of the See also:song at the end of the first act, in praise of harlots and their offspring, should touch to its depths the soul of the duchess of See also:Cleveland
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Possibly Wycherley intended this famous song as a glorification of Her See also:Grace and her profession, for he seems to have been more delighted than surprised when, as he passed in his See also:coach through See also:Pall Mall, he heard the duchess address him from her coach window as a " See also:rascal," a " villain," and as a son of the very kind of See also:lady his song had lauded
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For his See also:answer was perfect in its readiness: " Madam, you have been pleased to bestow a title on me which belongs only to the fortunate." Perceiving that Her Grace received the compliment in the spirit in which it was meant, he lost no time in calling upon her, and was from that moment the recipient of those " favours " to which he alludes with See also:pride in the See also:dedication of the play to her
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Voltaire's See also:story (in his Letters on the English Nation) that Her Grace used to go to Wycherley's See also:chambers in the Temple disguised as a country wench, in a See also:straw See also:hat, with pattens on and a See also:basket in her hand, may be apocryphal—very likely it is—for disguise was quite superfluous in the case of the mistress of Charles II. and See also:Jacob See also: Whether Wycherley's experiences as a See also:naval officer, which he alludes to in his lines " On a See also:Sea Fight which the Author was in betwixt the English and the Dutch," occurred before or after the production of Love in a Wood is a point upon which opinions differ, but on the whole we are inclined to agree with Macaulay, against See also:Leigh See also:Hunt, that these experiences took See also:place not only after the production of Love in a Wood but after the production of The Gentleman Dancing Master, in 1673 . We also think, with Macaulay, that he went to sea simply because it was the " polite " thing to do so—simply because, as he himself in the See also:epilogue to The Gentleman Dancing Master says, " all gentlemen must pack to sea." This second comedy was published in 1673, but was probably acted See also:late in 1671 . It is inferior to Love in a Wood . In The Relapse the artistic See also:mistake of blending comedy and See also:farce See also:damages a splendid play, but leaves it a splendid play still . In The Gentleman Dancing Master this mingling of discordant elements destroys a play that would never in any circumstances 'See also:nave been strong—a play nevertheless which abounds in See also:animal ,pirits, and is luminous here and there with true dramatic points . It is, however, on his two last comedies—The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer—that must See also:rest Wycherley's fame as a master of that comedy of repartee which, inaugurated by Etheredge, and afterwards brought to perfection by Congreve and Vanbrugh, supplanted the humoristic comedy of the Elizabethans . The Country Wife, produced in 1672 or 1673 and published in 1675, is so full of wit, ingenuity, animal See also:spirits and conventional See also:humour that, had it not been for its See also:motive—a motive which in any healthy See also:state of society must always be as repulsive to the most lax as to the most moral reader—it would probably have survived as See also:long as the acted See also:drama remained a See also:literary See also:form in England . So strong, indeed, is the hand that could draw such a See also:character as Majory Pinchwife (the undoubted See also:original not only of Congreve's See also:Miss Prue but of Vanbrugh's Hoyden), such a character as Sparkish (the undoubted original of Congreve's Tattle), such a character as See also:Horner (the undoubted original of all those cool impudent rakes with whom our stage has since been familiar), that Wycherley is certainly entitled to a place alongside Congreve and Vanbrugh . And, indeed, if priority of date is to have its See also:fair and full See also:weight, it seems difficult to See also:challenge See also:Professor See also:Spalding's dictum that Wycherley is " the most vigorous of the set." In See also:order to do See also:justice to the life and brilliance of The Country Wife we have only to compare it with The Country Girl, after-wards made famous by the acting of Mrs See also:Jordan, that Bowdlerized form of The Country Wife in which See also:Garrick, with an See also:object more praiseworthy than his success, endeavoured to See also:free it of its load of unparalleled licentiousness by disturbing and sweetening the motive—even as Voltaire afterwards (with an object also more praiseworthy than his success) endeavoured to disturb and sweeten the motive of The Plain Dealer in La Prude . While the two Bowdlerized forms of Garrick and Voltaire are as dull as the .Esop of See also:Boursault, the texture of Wycherley's scandalous dialogue would seem to scintillate with the changing hues of shot See also:silk or of the See also:neck of a See also:pigeon or of a shaken See also:prism, were it not that the many-coloured See also:lights rather suggest the miasmatic radiance of a foul ditch shimmering in the See also:sun . It is easy to See also:share Macaulay's indignation at Wycherley's satyr-like defilement of art, and yet, at the same time, to protest against that disparagement of their literary riches which nullifies the value of Macaulay's See also:criticism . And scarcely inferior to The Country Wife is The Plain Dealer, produced probably early in 1674 and published three years later,— a play of which Voltaire said, " Je ne connais point de comedie chez les anciens ni chez les moderns oil it y ait autant d'esprit." This comedy had an immense See also:influence, as regards manipulation of dialogue, upon all subsequent English comedies of repartee, and he who wants to trace the ancestry of Tony Lumpkin and Mrs Hardcastle has only to turn to See also:Jerry Blackacre and his See also:mother, while Manly (for whom Wycherley's early See also:patron, the duke of Montausier, sat), though he is perhaps overdone, has dominated this kind of stage character ever since .
If but few readers know how constantly the See also:blunt sententious utterances of this character are reappearing, not on the stage alone, but in the novel and even in See also:poetry, it is because a play whose motive is monstrous and intolerable can only live in a monstrous and intolerable state of society; it is because Wycherley's genius was followed by See also:Nemesis, who always See also:dogs the footsteps of the defiler of literary art
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When See also:Burns said
" The See also:rank is but the See also:guinea See also:stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that ";
when See also:Sterne, in Tristram Shandy, said, "Honours, like impressions upon See also:coin, may give an ideal and See also:local value to a See also:bit of See also:base See also:metal, but See also:gold and See also:silver will pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their own weight," what did these writers do but adopt—adopt without improving —Manly's fine saying to See also:Freeman, in the first act:—" I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the See also:
See also:Plutarch's impeachment of See also:Aristophanes, which affirms that the master of the old comedy wrote less for honest men than for men sunk in baseness and debauchery, was no doubt unjust to the See also:Greek poet, one See also:side of whose humour, and one alone, could thus be impeached
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But does it not touch all sides of a comedy like Wycherley's—a comedy which strikes at the very See also:root of the social compact upon which See also:civilization is built
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As to comparing such a comedy as that of the Restoration with the comedy of the Elizabethans, See also:Jeremy See also:Collier did but a poor service to the cause he undertook to See also:advocate when he set the occasional coarseness of See also:Shakespeare alongside the wickedness of Congreve and Vanbrugh
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And yet, ever since Macaulay's See also:essay, it has been the fashion to speak of Collier's attack as being levelled against the immorality of the " Restoration dramatists." It is nothing of the kind
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It is (as was pointed out so long ago as 1699 by Dr See also:Drake in his little-known vigorous reply to Collier) an attack upon the English drama generally, with a See also:special reference to the case of Shakespeare
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While dwelling upon that noxious and highly immoral play See also:Hamlet, Collier actually leaves unscathed the author of The Country Wife, but fastens on Congreve and Vanbrugh, whose plays—profligate enough in all See also:conscience—seem almost decent beside a comedy whose incredible vis motrix is " the modish distemper."
That a stage, indeed, upon which was given with See also:applause A Woman Killed with Kindness (where a wife See also:dies of a broken heart for doing what any one of Wycherley's married women would have gloried in doing) should, in seventy years, have given with applause The Country Wife shows that in historic and social See also:evolution, as in the evolution of organisms, " change " and " progress " are very far from being convertible terms
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For the barbarism of the society depicted in these plays was, in the true sense of the word, far deeper and more brutal than any barbarism that has ever existed in these islands within the historic period
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If civilization has any meaning at all for the soul of man, the Englishmen of See also:Chaucer's time, the Anglo-See also:Saxons of the See also:Heptarchy, See also:nay, those See also:half-naked heroes, who in the See also:dawn of English See also:history clustered along the See also:southern See also:coast to defend it from the invasion of See also:Caesar, were far more civilized than that " See also:race gangrenee "—the treacherous rakes, See also:mercenary slaves and brazen strumpets of the court of Charles II., who did their best to substitute for the human passion of love (a passion which
II
was known perhaps even to See also:palaeolithic man) the promiscuous intercourse of the beasts of the See also: An introduction ensued, then love-making, then See also:marriage—a See also:secret marriage, probably in 168o, for, fearing to lose the king's patronage and the income therefrom, Wycherley still thought it politic to pass as a See also:bachelor . 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 See also:dowager countess and awakened to the situation, or whether because treacherous confidants divulged his secret, does not appear, but the See also: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 See also: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 See also:husband whose virtue prospers best when closely guarded at the domestic See also:hearth . Wherever he went the countess followed him, and when she did allow him to meet his boon companions it was in a See also:tavern in See also:Bow See also:Street opposite to his own See also:house, and even there under certain protective conditions . In summer or in See also:winter he was obliged to sit with the window open and the blinds up, so that his wife might see that the party included no member of a See also: |