[In the essay below, Street praises Etherege's display of comedic talent in The Comical Revenge, She Would If She Could, and The Man of Mode.]

When you read Wycherley, you recognise a master of theatrical effects, the able exponent of a robustly vile humanity; then you feel a trifle sickened, and anon are downright bored. He is no cynic, not held by any ethical convention; if in his pages the world be a thing grotesque, obscene, it is because to a modern apprehension the man was even so: honest he was, as well, and, therefore, with little satisfaction for a splenetic mood. Congreve, of course, is pre-eminent in wit and diction; and because there is a malicious subtlety in the wickedness of his world, and his way is to see evil in everything, while you are aware, all the time, that your author has in reality as clear a perception of what is otherwise as your own, he suits your occasional spite against dull circumstance. But this convention—that there is nothing good under the sun, that desire is the whole of life—grows, in spite of Elia, tedious to minds that have outgrown the counter convention of Puritan propriety too long for constant militancy against it.

If this be so with you, Etherege should find place in your appreciations. If he lack the scenic sense of Wycherley, he lacks also his brutality; if the wit of Congreve, Congreve's conscious narrowness. He is more apt to distinguish than either; the passions of his men take an individual air; his women, honest or not, show degrees and differences. A most readable play is his last, The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter. It seems to show you ‘Gentle George's’ world, as he saw it. A world gayer and more wanton than our own, but not immersed in (what you would call) immoral pursuits, not unknowing of the charm of frank innocence and virile friendship. It is an obvious criticism to say, with Lamb, that the whole business of this world is intrigue. But these plays are frankly of intrigue, and in what age have idle young men of the town not given the most of their attention to one or other sort of the world of women? The Dorimant is said to be sketched from Rochester, and it may well be the case, though it is curious that a song in the play, said to be by Dorimant, is by Sir Charles Sedley. Dorimant is of profligate habit and ironical temper, a ‘fine gentleman,’ a man of parts withal, and fascinating at will. ‘I know he is a devil,’ says poor Mrs. Loveit; ‘but he has something of the angel yet undefac'd in him.’ Now when he would cast off this Mrs. Loveit—a woman ‘in society’—it is to be noted that, vain and unfeeling though he be, he yet sets about it with a regard for outward decency, bears him in fact more as a gentleman than in a like case the hero of The Story of the Gadsbys. And his friend Medley, ‘the spirit of scandal’—said to be Sedley or Etherege himself—and young Bellair are possible. Old Bellair would be no doubt accounted coarse in his speech to-day, but he is neither a brute nor a bully, and his heartiness (that most difficult quality to portray) has a certain engaging sincerity. Sir Fopling Flutter was said by Dean Lockitt to be Etherege, which can hardly be the case; the foundation for the idea is that in him French modes and predilections are ridiculed, and Etherege had lived in Paris. He may or may not be drawn from one Beau Hewit, but in any case he is drawn with art, effectively. Dryden can say with truth in his epilogue that ‘Sir Fopling is a fool so nicely writ, the ladies ‘would mistake him for a wit.’ His folly is absurd but not extravagant; his conceit immense but not abnormal. Supposed to have birth and breeding, he is no clown: and because it is comedy, the satire is not a whit less mordant. The women are, one passionate and reckless, one amorous and discreet, besides two lightly sketched match-makers. Their superficial coarseness is of the time, hardly more pronounced than you find it a hundred years later.

Of the other two plays, She Would if She Could is merely farcical on broad lines, diverting sometimes, sometimes wooden; and Love in a Tub is a compound of serious scenes in verse, and of buffoonery dragged in by the heels. They deserve a word: the ‘Poems’ do not, and one may pass to a general and somewhat noticeable consideration. The girls in Etherege are commonly charming. In the first play, Love in a Tub, they are on a poetical plane, and, it may be, dull; but at least you must credit their author with a not ignoble conception. Aurelia, who pleads with her sister to accept the love of a man herself loves secretly, may be unconvincing, but is not, surely, the creation of a narrowly base nature. This play, it is to be observed in the connection, benefited the house by a thousand pounds in a month. In She Would if She Could are ‘two young ladies’ neither prudes nor hussies, neither sticks nor unnaturally witty. Wild by our notions, they are provocative, human, delightful.

This is sly and pretty,
And this is wild and witty;
If either staid
'Till she dy'd a maid,
I' faith 'twould be great pity.

And you feel, as you read, that the catch is in the right. And Harriet, in the best play, is likewise natural and frank and charming. All are unaffectedly aware of the lives of their suitors, but they are open with their knowledge, and sin not with innuendo or pretence. And the writers who can show, convincingly, innocence which is not mere ignorance are sufficiently uncommon.

Etherege, then, has distinction as a writer. He is fanciful, life-like, and sometimes even fine, and is further notable among his contemporaries for an effective restraint in satire. A touch of feeling here and there and a suggestion of romance come pleasantly upon you. His grossness—ah, there we come on an old friend in this connection. ‘Chastity,’ says Sterne, ‘by nature the gentlest of the affections, ‘give it but its head—'tis like a ramping and ‘a roaring lion.’ But it must really spare this lamb without the argumentative interference of a champion. Of Etherege the man our ramping lion has better right to make a meal. Horace Walpole tells a tale of a king's mistress discarded, who was insulted by the rabble. ‘Messieurs,’ she said, ‘puis-que vous me connoissez, priez Dieu pour moi.’ Etherege was the friend of Rochester, and had to retire with my lord from the public eye. Sent to the Hague by Charles, and to Ratisbon by James, he was a scandalous ambassador given to gaming and other vice. But he had the grace to be ruined by the Revolutions which ruined his master. Priez Dieu pour lui, though he himself would not have thanked you.