SOURCE: Gagen, Jean. “The Design of the High Plot in Etherege's The Comical Revenge.” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 1, no. 22 (winter 1986): 1-15.

[In the essay below, Gagen discusses The Comical Revenge, focusing on how Etherege's satirical treatment of the high plot differs from the more conventional approach of other early Restoration playwrights.]

The tremendous success which Etherege's The Comical Revenge, or, Love in a Tub¹ received when it was first performed (c. March, 1664) is a matter of theatrical history. Later critics, however, have often accused Etherege of incongruously mixing two dramatic modes—a high plot written in heroic couplets and dealing seriously and sedately with love and honor conflicts among aristocrats and several low or comic plots written in prose and concerned with characters who never seriously consider honor.² The heroic rimed drama of the high plot “modeled on Davenant and Lord Orrery” has been said to conflict in “spirit and style” with the “realistic comedy and farce” of the low plots,³ which have been the major focus of the critical attention and praise that the play has received.

With the increasing awareness, however, of the compatibility that can exist between comic and serious plots embodying differing themes and sets of conventions, The Comical Revenge—as well as plays apparently similar to it in structure, such as James Howard's All Mistaken (1665), Charles Sedley's The Mulberry Garden, and Dryden's Secret Love (1667) and Marriage Ala-Mode (1671)—has been absolved of the charge of thematic disunity. Virginia Birdsall,⁴ Laura Brown,⁵ Norman Holland,⁶ Jocelyn Powell,⁷ Arthur Scouten,⁸ and Dale Underwood,⁹ have all discussed the many ways in which the comic and serious plots of The Comical Revenge interact through situational parallels and contrasts. Robert Hume, moreover, cites such plays as The Comical Revenge, Tuke's Adventures of Five Hours (1663) and Dryden's The Rival Ladies (1664?) as evidence that it was certainly possible in the 1660s to present exemplary and even heroic characters in works regarded as comedies—that comedy was obviously not thought of exclusively in terms of ridicule of fools or low characters.¹⁰

Nevertheless, reputable scholars have continued to express disagreement, disapproval, and downright bewilderment about Etherege's intentions in the high plot. Norman Holland confesses frank puzzlement that a man of Etherege's “urbanity” could write a plot “in pure heroic style” since “nothing could be further from the multiple perspectives of comedy than the single-minded admiration of the heroic manner” (21). Jocelyn Powell accuses Etherege of dallying half-heartedly “with conventional problems of ‘platonic’ love that neither his imagination nor technique” were fitted to handle (46-47). Dale Underwood, on the other hand, maintains that the serio-comic division of The Comical Revenge is fundamental to Etherege's intention—namely, the presentation of “two contrasting worlds of values, attitudes, and action.” In the comic world, libertine attitudes prevail; in the heroic world a “totally virtuous love and honor” regulates the attitudes and actions of all the characters, and honor invariably triumphs in the love and honor conflicts (46-50). Underwood and Holland, moreover, have suggested that in the context of the play as a whole, the staunchly heroic high plot has comic implications. Because the heroic values of the high plot are constantly qualified and undercut by the libertine values of the low plots, both sets of values are negated, and a comic perspective is cast over both the higher and lower worlds of the play (Underwood 49-50; Holland 25).

Virginia Birdsall agrees that the values of the heroic plot constantly suffer an undercutting in comparison with the low comic plots. Yet she insists that we are meant to accept the honor-bound world of the high plot seriously as one of the possible interpretations of reality according to which men may still choose to live (44-45). Hume likewise believes that the leading characters in Etherege's top plot are clearly meant to be “exemplary models of propriety” (44) and that Etherege could enjoy and admire the “high-blown flummery” of the heroic love and honor conflicts even though this pleasure may have been mixed with a “little ironic skepticism” (77).

The very expression “high-blown flummery” suggests, of course, that heroic plots are apt to seem exaggerated and somewhat ridiculous to modern readers. But because of convincing evidence that heroic dramas were originally intended to be taken seriously,¹¹ critics have continued to assume that Etherege's heroic plot was meant to be taken about as seriously¹² as other similar plots in plays contemporary with his. Nevertheless, a close examination of Etherege's high or heroic plot reveals that, unlike heroic dramas or the heroic plots in multi-plot plays with which The Comical Revenge is frequently associated, Etherege's high plot is not meant to be taken seriously. Those critics who have conjectured that the high plot, although serious in itself, has comic implications within the total context of the play—or that Etherege's treatment of love and honor conflicts is mixed with a “little ironic scepticism”—are certainly on the right track. They have simply not gone far enough. The ironic contrasts and parallels between the high and low plots may contribute to the humor of the play. But there are more direct sources of humor within the high plot itself, and there is more than a tincture of “ironic scepticism” in Etherege's handling of the intense concern over honor exhibited by the supposedly exemplary characters. In fact, the essence of the comedy of the high plot is the fact that it is an ironic parody rather than an exemplification of the heroic ethos involving love and honor. Its apparent seriousness is a mock-seriousness, its “staunchly heroic” tone is parodic rather than real, and neither its love nor its honor is invariably “totally virtuous.”

Perhaps the fact that modern readers have to exercise their historic imaginations rather more strenuously than usual in order to react seriously to heroic love and honor conflicts has contributed to the failure to notice the difference between Etherege's treatment of the heroic ethos involving love and honor and that of playwrights who had no parodic intent. An even more likely reason is that readers and critics alike have tended to slight the high plot in favor of the robust and obviously amusing low plots which, according to some critics, occupy a crucial position in the evolution of the Restoration comedy of manners.¹³ Without very careful attention to precisely how Etherege manipulates his love and honor conflicts, the reader inevitably misses the rich humor implicit in the apparently solemn and decorous high plot. It is true, however, that Etherege cleverly “traps” his readers and auditors into assuming that they are about to become involved in serious dilemmas over honor: at first his dignified aristocrats do indeed seem to be thoroughly dedicated to the romantic ethos of love and honor. Even when they are flagrantly violating it, they still profess their ardent devotion to it.

This code of gallantry,¹⁴ which had become an international literary phenomenon and had found its way into a variety of literary forms, had already infiltrated Cavalier drama and had begun to infiltrate heroic drama by the time Etherege composed The Comical Revenge. Although the code was concerned with the proper conduct of lovers in a variety of circumstances, it had much to say about how an honorable gentleman should behave when he finds that he has a rival in love.

Ideally, each lover should behave with courtesy and generosity to the other. Both of them should scrupulously honor sacred vows and promises. And eventually one of the lovers should renounce his claim to the love of his lady. Which lover should surrender in deference to his rival depended on a number of factors. But this self-renunciation, when motivated by a genuine sense of honor, was regarded as an act of magnanimity, worthy of praise and glory.

Cavalier¹⁵ and earlier heroic drama, as well as other forms of popular drama, had already provided Etherege and his audience with numerous instances of rival lovers, one of whom heroically surrenders his love in favor of his rival. The Earl of Orrery in The General (Dublin, 1662; London, 1664) presented a lover who twice saves the life of his rival and at the close surrenders the lady he loves to his rival because she herself prefers the rival. In later heroic plays by Orrery—Henry the Fifth (1664), Mustapha (1665), The Black Prince (1667), and Tryphon (1668)—similar renunciations occur. For example, in The Black Prince, Lord Delaware gallantly yields his love for the beautiful widow Plantagenet to his friend and royal master Prince Edward. In Tryphon, Seleucus surrenders his love for Cleopatra to his friend and king Aretus, whom Cleopatra prefers.

Dryden's heroic dramas carry on the tradition of glorifying magnanimity and self-sacrifice in situations involving rivalry in love.¹⁶ Moreover, in his tragicomedy The Rival Ladies Dryden dramatizes a conflict arising from rivalry in love which has so many analogies to the situation which Bruce faces in Etherege's high plot that some critics are convinced that Dryden's play influenced Etherege's, even though this belief necessitates dating The Rival Ladies earlier than its first known performance in the early summer of 1664.¹⁷ What has heretofore not been noted, however, is that Dryden's Don Gonslavo eventually behaves in an exemplary fashion as a rival lover while Etherege's Bruce does not. Dryden's Don Gonsalvo allows himself to be affianced to a woman whose love he knows has already been won by a rival. But he never deludes himself into believing that it is a matter of honor for him to marry Julia against her will. Moreover, after a sharp struggle, he yields to the hard demands of honor, exercises heroic generosity, and surrenders Julia to the man she loves. It is important to note that when Don Gonsalvo makes this magnanimous surrender, he is completely unaware that he will soon be consoled by a new love. Bruce, on the other hand, magniloquently surrenders Graciana to his rival only after his love for Graciana has been replaced by a new love, and he no longer wishes to marry Graciana. In fact, Bruce's conduct as a rival lover repeatedly falls short of the magnanimous ideal that Don Gonsalvo represents once he has won the victory over his dishonorable impulses.

Initially, however, there is nothing reprehensible in Bruce's reaction to the news that a rival has won the love of Graciana, the sister of his friend Lovis. During Bruce's absence at war, Graciana has fallen in love with Beaufort, a virtuous nobleman, and Graciana's father Lord Bevill has consented to their marriage. Only in the first shock of his disappointment does Bruce momentarily blame Graciana. But when Lovis closely questions him, Bruce's honesty compels him to admit that Graciana has not been at fault except in having had too much compassion for him. Bruce freely admits that Graciana had never plighted a promise to him and had even made her distaste for him plain. But because she grieved for the pain she knew that she was inflicting on him, she promised to try to return his love. Unfortunately, this promise encouraged Bruce excessively. He banished despair and allowed his hopes to grow to undue proportions. But after he learns that his hopes have proved false, he sadly remarks, “There is a fate in love, as well as war; / Some though less careful more successful are” (III. vi. 100-101). The latter line suggests “sour grapes” and some self-pity, but there is no serious suggestion that Graciana and Beaufort have actually wronged him.

It is the hot-headed Lovis who precipitates the conflict between Bruce and Beaufort. Though Lovis has been bred “in the school of honour,” in his distress over the plight of his “gen'rous friend,” Lovis' sense of honor becomes thoroughly perverse. Stubbornly determined that Graciana marry his friend Bruce in accordance with his own wishes and Bruce's, Lovis refuses to recognize that Bruce has no rightful claim to Graciana's love. At one point Lovis' anger is so explosive that he rashly exclaims that he wishes Graciana were dead! He declares that the honor of their family is imperiled. He even insists that Lord Bevill order Graciana to marry Bruce. As he is increasingly carried beyond reason, Lovis completely ignores the fact that his father's gracious approval of Bruce's courtship of Graciana had been strictly qualified by his “sacred vow / Never to force what love should disallow” (II. ii. 96-97). In other words, Bruce had to win Graciana's love.

Unfortunately, Lovis is abetted in his resentment against Beaufort and Graciana by his other sister Aurelia. Secretly in love with Bruce herself, she is so tenderly sympathetic to him that she loathes to see him suffer. She accordingly allows her love for Bruce to distort her own sense of honor. She presents the courtship of Beaufort and Graciana in the most derogatory terms possible, as if there had been something almost criminal about it! Lord Bevill, however, knows that there has been nothing amiss in the courtship of Beaufort and Graciana nor in his permission for them to marry. In fact, he becomes so angered by Lovis' outcries over the “threat'ning stain” to the honor of their house that he orders Lovis to “forbear” his “wicked insolence” (III. vi. 2-3) and abruptly leaves him.¹⁸

Lovis, however, is now so thoroughly in the grip of pride and anger that he urges Bruce to challenge Beaufort's right to Graciana in a duel. At first Bruce excuses the suggestion because even he realizes that Lovis' behavior is excessive and that Lovis' friendship for him has incited him to speak rashly. Finally, however, Bruce is infected by Lovis' impassioned urgency. As Lovis continues to taunt Bruce for “tamely” surrendering, Bruce suddenly decides that Graciana was indeed at fault in not instantly putting a damper on his “flame.” Once his pride and anger have clouded his reason and corrupted his sense of honor, Bruce views his despair over gaining Graciana's love as “ignoble” and cowardly. Nevertheless, he makes the damaging admission that his love has become “so wild a fire” that he fears it will conspire to both their ruins. Now whipped into a frenzy of anger, Bruce confronts Beaufort and Graciana with the announcement that he has come to make his lawful claim on Graciana (III. vi. 16). Beaufort has previously expressed a generous compassion for the plight of his rival Bruce. But he has recognized that Bruce has no justifiable claim to Graciana. Had Bruce and Beaufort been friends, or had Bruce been Beaufort's royal master, Beaufort might have felt some compulsion to surrender his right to Graciana. But no such situation exists. Consequently, both he and Graciana are in the right when they remind Bruce that Graciana belongs to the man whom she loves and to whom she is avowed. Bruce, however, is by now deaf to all reason and justice and challenges Beaufort to a duel. Despite Graciana's protests, Beaufort accepts the challenge, convinced that the sacredness of his reputation is at stake.

So far there is nothing inherently comic about the crisis which has developed. There is irony, of course, in the fact that courtly characters earnestly devoted to honor find themselves as deeply embroiled in conflicts as those whose sense of honor is much more casual, if it exists at all. It is also ironic that Bruce continues to consider his conduct honorable after he has become as self-deceived in this respect as his friend Lovis. It is doubtful, however, that the irony of the situation in which Bruce, Lovis, and Beaufort find themselves would seem to have comic implications if subsequent events in the plot were handled differently. What actually happens, however, is that from this point on, Etherege's satiric intent emerges much more openly.

Except for Sir Frederick's cynical jesting at Beaufort's exalted ideal of love in the first act, the first unmistakable intrusion of comedy into the high plot occurs at the end of the duelling scene. But from the moment the participants in the duel assemble on the duelling field, we are increasingly prepared to accept the burst of laughter with which this scene concludes.

Before the duel even begins, Beaufort rescues Bruce from an unexpected attack by five villains. Out of gratitude to Beaufort, Bruce now claims that his honor will not permit him to draw his sword against the life that has just saved his own. Beaufort, however, quite rightly refuses to accept Bruce's surrender because Bruce has failed to express any contrition for the unruly pride and passion which induced him to challenge Beaufort's right to Graciana.¹⁹ Still suffering from orgies of gratitude to Beaufort, Bruce next offers to allow Beaufort to plunge his sword into his bosom. Again Beaufort, in perfect accord with the rationale and protocol of the duel,²⁰ refuses: to accept Bruce's offer would make him guilty of an appalling lack of courtesy, to say nothing of cruelty. In spite of Bruce's melodramatic display of gratitude, none of this noble posturing absolves him in the least from the blame of provoking a totally unjust duel.²¹

Finally, when Bruce seems intent on halting the duel for reasons other than the fact that he has no just cause to dispute Beaufort's claim to Graciana, Beaufort becomes so exasperated that he decides to goad the reluctant Bruce into fighting: Beaufort then proceeds to taunt Bruce by asserting that the man who stands before him is the very man who “robb'd” Bruce of Graciana. At this juncture, Etherege directs the shafts of his comic irony at Beaufort instead of Bruce. In order to redeem his honor by defeating Bruce in the duel, Beaufort untruthfully convicts himself of behaving dishonorably in winning Graciana as his prospective bride. With the issues surrounding this “duel of honor” now finely scrambled, Bruce declares that the mere mention of Graciana's name has aroused his “lazy courage,” and he proceeds to strip for action, confident that he is obeying his “scrup'lous honour.”

Beaufort quickly disarms Bruce, then hands Bruce his sword and bids him live. His life saved a second time by his rival, Bruce salutes Beaufort for his honor, courage, and nobility of mind. Though he no longer disputes Beaufort's right to Graciana, Bruce declares that he does not wish to live without Graciana and promptly falls on his sword. He is about to be followed by his friend Lovis when Sir Frederick intervenes with the comment which prevents an orgy of desperate deaths and underscores the essential comedy of the situation. “Forbear, sir; the frolic's not to go round, as I take it,” Sir Frederick remarks. Sir Frederick himself has few scruples about honor. He would never die for love or honour. But he is clear-sighted enough to see the ludicrousness of Bruce's and Lovis' behavior, and he belittles it humorously as a “frolic” rather than a display of heroism as these elegant victims of passion and folly suppose.

From the conclusion of the duelling scene to the end of the play, the comically ironic perspective in which the “heroic” activities of the high plot are placed becomes increasingly apparent. When Graciana learns from her father that the “gen'rous Bruce” has given himself a supposedly mortal wound because he scorned to live without her, the stage is set for another elegant muddle over honor. Graciana's common sense is positively shattered by the prospect of Bruce's imminent death. In bewilderment, she asks “Which is path that doth to honour lead?” and vows not to be misled by love. So confused is she over what the demands of honor are that when Beaufort enters, confident that Graciana will applaud his victory in the duel, she condemns him as a perfidious man—as the only man she hates. As Graciana sweeps off the stage and leaves the astonished Beaufort to lament his cruel fate, surely the audience was intended to smile, at least, at the lengths to which Graciana's excessive pity for Bruce have finally driven her.

Meanwhile Graciana's sister Aurelia, who throughout the play has concealed her love for Bruce out of regard for custom and honor and even pled Bruce's cause to Graciana, decides that she would be justified in disclosing her love to the dying Bruce. Immediately after the surgeon has confessed that he despairs of Bruce's recovery and has left the room, Aurelia enters. Kneeling by Bruce's chair and weeping copiously, she confesses the suffering she has undergone because of her unrequited love. Aurelia's beauty, together with her confession of love for him, instantaneously banishes the love Bruce once had for “proud Graciana.” In fact, he expresses regret that Aurelia concealed her love until this moment when all he is able to do in return is “sigh away” for her what breath still remains to him. For the first time, he repents his rashness in falling on his sword and in some wonderment remarks, “I ne'er thought death till now a punishment” (V. i. 65).

At this moment, Graciana enters begging Bruce not to talk of death. Then on her knees she confesses that she has childishly refused “the gold” of Bruce's love and accepted “the dross” of Beaufort's. Graciana's self-renunciation, motivated by her mistaken sense of honor, is presented in a thoroughly ironic context, since she does not know what the audience knows—that Bruce no longer seeks her love. As the scene progresses, irony is piled on irony. The situation hovers on the edge of farce and escapes falling into actual farce only because of the courtly language and manners of the participants. Bruce tactfully does not reveal that he now loves Aurelia. Instead he commends Graciana for choosing Beaufort instead of him and affirms that only Beaufort's “great soul” is worthy of her love. Graciana, however, protests that if her love is due to the most deserving, it is due to Bruce. Bruce replies that this is mere flattery. “By honour,” she owes her love to the generous Beaufort and to forget this debt would be unjust, for “Honour with justice always does agree” (V. i. 89). Then, as if the effort to dissuade Graciana were too much for him, Bruce declares that his spirits faint within his wearied breast, and the servants enter and convey him to his bed.

Throughout this scene, Bruce has assumed the heroic manner of the magnanimous lover like Don Gonsalvo, who surrenders his love to his worthy rival without any prospect of finding consolation elsewhere for his loss. Bruce, however, never admits that he has no claim on Graciana's love until after he has fallen in love with Aurelia and is no longer interested in Graciana. Consequently, Bruce's renunciation of Graciana's love has no ethical substance. Bruce's mock renunciation and the solemn prattle about honor which accompanies it is as comically ironic as Graciana's unwelcome gesture of self-renunciation.

As long as Graciana has been in Bruce's presence, she has played the part that she believes her honor requires of her with faultless propriety. Yet when she is alone with her maid she confesses that she is pursuing her honor too rigidly—something is due her love. Eventually she decides that her honor will allow her to marry Beaufort if Bruce lives. Only if Bruce dies will she be forever “contracted to his memory” (V. iii. 52-58). When Beaufort enters unexpectedly and overhears Graciana's remarks, he rejoices that “fortune joins with love” to be his friend, for abler surgeons have pronounced Bruce's wound “not mortal.”

In the final scene, in the presence of Lord Bevill, Beaufort, Lovis, Graciana, and Aurelia, Bruce announces that he has lost his claim to Graciana. He conveniently ignores that he never had any legitimate claim to her. Instead he declares that his heart is due to Aurelia because of her selflessness in courting Graciana for him while her own heart yearned with love for him. In fact, he asserts that Aurelia so excels “in honour and in love” that she has inspired in him both shame and admiration. Bruce then bestows Graciana, who was never his to bestow, on his “gen'rous Rival” Beaufort, to whom she has belonged all along.

Bruce gives no indication that he realizes that his conduct has ever fallen short of complete virtue or that his attitude towards Beaufort's right to Graciana has undergone a radical change. Etherege apparently intended to show that, at least in matters of the heart, Bruce is so accustomed to allowing his passions or emotional inclinations to determine what is honorable and what is not that he can see nothing faulty, inconsistent, or ridiculous in his behavior at any point in the play. In so doing, Etherege has made a beautifully ironic commentary on the self-deception of this “honor-bound” aristocrat from the moment he first insists that Graciana rightfully belongs to him until he surrenders his “right” to the noble Beaufort. At any rate, once Bruce is no longer an obstacle to their love, Beaufort and Graciana—as well as Lord Bevill—are willing to play their parts flawlessly in the elegant game of honor in which Bruce takes the lead, probably without even realizing that his gestures of honor are ostentatious and meaningless.

Graciana demurely confesses that since Bruce has recovered and declined his claim to her, she can “with honour” resign her heart to Beaufort. She does not mention that she had already decided that if Bruce recovered, her honor would allow her to marry Beaufort. Nor does she allude to the fact that until Bruce's flamboyant suicide attempt had thoroughly unsettled her emotionally, she had clearly realized that Bruce never had any claim on her love. Though Beaufort knows that Graciana had already decided to marry him if Bruce recovered, and he has consistently defended the honor of his right to Graciana, he lavishly praises Graciana for her refusal to give herself to him as long as Bruce made any claim on her love. “Such honour and such love,” he asserts with a flourish which must have brought a smile to a sophisticated audience, have not heretofore been known. He then asks and receives Lord Bevill's consent to marry Graciana (a consent he already had), and this segment of the plot is finally concluded with rejoicing on the part of all who have been involved in it.

The scene has allowed every one to save face. Surely it was meant to be played with mock-seriousness, in which laughter is rippling just below the surface, or with a smiling geniality which acknowledges the irony of what is going on and in which both the actors and the audience are bound together in their enjoyment of a performance in which they are all participating.²² There is no indication in this final episode that anyone's behavior has been foolish or anything but totally virtuous. Etherege, however, knew better, and so very possibly did his original audiences, at least some members of it. John Evelyn, who saw the play on April 25, 1664, described it as a “facecious Comedy.”²³ Pepys, who was present at a performance on Jan. 4, 1664/1665, referred to it as “very merry.”²⁴

While these comments do not in themselves prove that Restoration audiences regarded the high plot as well as the low plots as comic in the sense of being laughter-provoking, they point in that direction. They provide evidence that at least two note-worthy theatre goers of the day felt the impact of the play as a whole was sprightly and amusing. At a time when dramatically sophisticated members of the audience could be counted on to understand the niceties of the code of honor which should govern the behavior of courtly rivals in love, we have every right to believe that at least some members of Etherege's original audiences realized that Etherege was comically manipulating and often reducing to essential meaninglessness the heroic ethos which the plot is supposedly demonstrating. After beginning his tale involving a conflict between love and honor by following the proper ethical guidelines in this matter, Etherege allows courtly personages schooled in the precepts of honor to succumb in the name of honor to some of the same naturalistic passions as characters who make no pretense to honor. Then as the plot progresses the issues centering on honor become so deftly scrambled that they are virtually emptied of all ethical substance.

When the intent of Etherege's high plot is properly understood, it can be enjoyed instead of merely tolerated—perhaps with some patronizing amusement—until portions of the comic plot recur. In this high plot, Etherege has presented a delightfully clever and light-hearted satire on a number of the conventions and ideals which had already pervaded Cavalier and early heroic drama and would continue to characterize many later heroic plays. Etherege has mocked the glorification of self-renunciation by ironically praising it in the approved manner while showing that it is empty, in Bruce's case, and foolish and unwelcome in Graciana's. He has shown how easily passion can dictate what “honor-bound” characters consider honorable or dishonorable. In both the aristocratic world of the high plot and the libertine world of the low plots, Etherege has found targets for laughter. Etherege's achievement in his next two plays was far greater than in his first play. But his accomplishment in The Comical Revenge is more complex and sophisticated than has been realized, and it deserves to be recognized.

Notes

1. Edition used: The Plays of George Etherege, ed. Michael Cordner (Cambridge: UP, 1982). Act and scene will be given in text in Roman numerals, line or lines in Arabic.

2. Thomas Fujimura in The Restoration Comedy of Wit (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1952) is one of a number of critics who have considered the high and low plots “irreconcilable” 45.

3. H. F. B. Brett-Smith, introduction, The Dramatic Works of Sir George Etherege, 2 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1927) I:xvi, lxxi, and John Palmer, The Comedy of Manners (London: Bell and Sons, 1913) 67.

4. Wild Civility: The English Comic Spirit on the Restoration Stage (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1970) 42-57.

5. English Dramatic Form, 1660-1760: An Essay in Generic History (New Haven: Yale UP, 1981) 31, 36-37.

6. The First Modern Comedies (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1959) 20-27.

7. “George Etherege and the Form of a Comedy,” Restoration Theatre, ed. John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies, No. 6 (London: Edward Arnold, 1965) 46-48.

8. “Plays and Playwrights,” vol. 5 of The Revels History of Drama in English: 1600-1750, gen. ed. T. W. Craik (London: Methuen, 1976) 178-181.

9. Etherege and the Seventeenth-Century Comedy of Manners (New Haven: Yale UP, 1957) 46-50.

10. The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1976) 45.

11. See Geoffrey Marshall, Restoration Serious Drama (Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1975).

12. Among such references are the relatively recent ones by Laura Brown 31; Arthur Scouten 181; and Hume 44; 48, n. 2; 77.

13. Bonamy Dobrée, for example, in Restoration Comedy, 1660-1720 (1924; London: Oxford UP, 1966) 66, declared that the comic plot centering on Sir Frederick and his wooing of the Widow “set the whole tone of Restoration comedy.” Alfred Harbage in Cavalier Drama (New York: Modern Lang. Assoc. of America, 1936) also accords The Comical Revenge a supremely high place in the development of Restoration comedy, as does Virginia Birdsall (4). Fujimura, however, disagrees (87) and so does Hume, who insists that such a view ignores crucial evidence about comic modes which were firmly established before Etherege and on which he and other playwrights drew (238).

14. D'Urfé's L'Astrée was the single most popular source of the intricacies of this code and for this reason was highly valued by Henrietta Maria and her coterie, who helped popularize the code in England. See, for example, Harbage, chs. 1 and 2 and Kathleen Lynch, The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy (New York: MacMillan, 1926), ch. 3 for discussions of the ethical ideals which this code embodied.

15. In Walter Montague's The Shepherd's Paradise (London, 1629), Prince Basilino relinquishes Fidamira because her “faith” has been given to another. In Thomas Killigrew's The Princesse in Comedies and Tragedies (London, 1644), Lucius surrenders Sophia to his brother because of his brother's prior claim to her.

16. Derek Hughes in Dryden's Heroic Plays (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1981) represents a minority view in contending that Dryden's heroic plays “reveal profound scepticism about the utility and practicability of heroic endeavour” (Preface viii).

17. C. V. Deane in Dramatic Theory and the Rhymed Heroic Play (1931; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968) 168; John Harrington Smith, “The Dryden-Howard Collaboration,” SP, 51 (Jan. 1954) 56; and Frank Harper Moore, The Nobler Pleasure: Dryden's Comedy in Theory and Practice (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1963) 237, n, 11 all argue for 1663 as the date when The Rival Ladies was written and believe that Etherege's play was influenced by Dryden's. Similarly, Judith Milhous and Robert Hume in “Dating Play Premieres from Publications Data, 1660-1700,” Harvard Library Bulletin 22 (1974) consider it likely that The Rival Ladies was performed in the fall of 1663 or early in 1664 (380) and thus could have influenced The Comical Revenge.

18. Not only would Bruce's behavior be considered dishonorable in accordance with the heroic ethos, but even seventeenth century plays relatively uninfluenced by this code of gallantry regarded the belief that the rejection of a lover's suit justified the taking of revenge as a perversion of the code of honor. See Elizabeth Mary Brennan, “The Concept of Revenge for Honour in English Fiction and Drama between 1580 and 1640,” diss., U of London, 1958.

19. Sir William Segar in The Booke of Honor and Armes (London, 1590) would allow the injured to accept satisfaction for an injury in place of a duel if the injured expresses contrition, yields himself into the hands of the one he has injured, and stands at his mercy (41). Bruce does place himself at Beaufort's mercy, but out of gratitude for the fact that Beaufort saved his life, not out of contrition for the wrong he has done Beaufort. Vincent Savioli, his Practice (London, 1595) took a dim view of even a man who expresses genuine contrition but waits until he has his weapons in hand to recant. The man who pursues an unjust quarrel to the very zero hour dishonors himself and reveals “a most vile and wicked mind” (n.p.).

20. According to Segar, when a man in genuine contrition for a wrong he has done places himself at the mercy of one he has injured, he is following a very doubtful course of action, “For if the injured with his own hand shall doe anything to his satisfaction, in so doing he sheweth no courtesie” (41).

21. To consider this duel a “paragon of honor” which is contrasted with “the tricksters' mock … duel of dishonour” in the low plot (Powell 47 and Holland 25) is to see only half of Etherege's satire. The duel in the low plot is conducted in broadly farcical terms. When honor or reputation or conscience is invoked by Wheadle, Palmer, or Sir Nicholas, these words are such thinly disguised cloaks for cowardice or deceit that they provoke outbursts of laughter. The satire on the duel in the high plot is much more subtle. Nevertheless, Etherege makes it clear that despite Bruce's edifying display of gratitude, his motives for challenging Beaufort are nearly as discreditable as those which have generated the projected duel between Cully and Palmer.

22. Peter Holland in The Ornament of Action: Text and Performance in Restoration Comedy (Cambridge: UP, 1979) presents the thesis that to discover how a Restoration audience understood a play, one must examine carefully the nature of the performance that they witnessed. Holland, however, does not discuss how Restoration audiences would have understood The Comical Revenge in performance, although he does allude briefly to the fact that in the early 1660s Thomas Betterton played “quasi-heroic roles in comedy” like the role of Beaufort in The Comical Revenge (80).

23. The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. DeBeer (London: Oxford, 1959) 460, entry for April 27, 1664.

24. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, eds. Robert Latham and William Matthews, 6 vols. (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1972) 6:4, entry for Jan. 4, 1664/1665.