SOURCE: Fujimura, Thomas H. “Sir George Etherege.” In The Restoration Comedy of Wit, pp. 75-116. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1952.

[In the essay below, Fujimura discusses how Etherege employs wit in his plays to reflect Restoration intellectual attitudes toward such topics as naturalism, skepticism, and libertinism.]

Sir George Etherege is generally credited with having originated a new type of comedy, and this belief need not be challenged, though there is reason to question modern opinion as to the type of comedy he inaugurated. To determine the nature of his contribution, however, we should first find out what sort of man he was. And here we are fortunate in having the Letterbook, the epistolary record of his last years at Ratisbon. From these letters, both personal and official, and also from contemporary records, there emerges a clear picture of Etherege as a Truewit—libertine, skeptical, naturalistic, and more concerned with wit than with morality or “manners.”

Unfortunately, Etherege has suffered the same misinterpretation as have his comedies, and at present his true features are obscured by the descriptions of the censorious and of the “manners” critics. On the one hand, he is called “the most irresponsible rake of all,” “an atrocious libertine” who could be fierce and vindictive under passion, and a man whose life is “a sordid story.”¹ On the other hand, he is described by the “manners” critics as “a brilliant butterfly, alighting only upon such things as attract him; a creature without much depth, but of an extraordinary charm and a marvellous surety of touch.”² He is called “a delicate painter who loved subtle contrasts in ‘rose-colour and pale grey’”;³ and he is said to have encountered gracefully the one problem of his generation, that of style, “whether it was fighting the Dutch, defeating the policy of Achitophel, tying a riband, or writing a play.”⁴ The world of his plays is described as a frivolous one, where Strephon bends on one knee to Chloe fanning the pink blush on her painted cheek, while Momus peeps out at them—“an engaging trio, mais ce n'est pas de la vie humaine.”⁵

Of these two schools, the moralistic critics have at least a more colorful conception of Etherege than his apologists, who emasculate both the man and his art. But neither gives a credible nor faithful picture of the witty dramatist who created such intelligent and convincing people as Harriet and Dorimant. What is needed is an examination of Etherege's ideas and personality to determine to what extent he was affected by the currents of naturalism, skepticism, and libertinism, and how his comedies are an aesthetic expression of the Truewit's attitude toward life. Once we have a clear picture of Etherege as a human being, and of the connection between the man and his art, we shall not dismiss him casually as a brilliant butterfly or a mere rake, nor regard his plays as creating only the illusion of life.

The accounts of his contemporaries do not harmonize with either of the descriptions given above of Etherege. By Oldys he was called “a celebrated Wit,” and he was praised by Langbaine as “a Gentleman sufficiently eminent in the Town for his Wit and Parts, and One whose tallent in sound Sence, and the Knowledge of Wit and Humour, are sufficiently conspicuous.”⁶ The Earl of Rochester, in “A Trial of the Poets for the Bays,” credited Etherege with “fancy, sense, judgment and wit”—virtues which are not all suggested in the “manners” description. The charming, yet rather malicious, character of his wit is evident from his comedies (particularly in such passages as the raillery between Dorimant and Harriet), the rallying letter to Buckingham, and some “smart lampoons” on Nell Gwynn with which Theophilus Cibber credited him.⁷ In his writings there was a grace, delicacy, and courtly air that made them attractive;⁸ and this, with his affable and courteous deportment, and his sprightly and generous temper, gained him the character of “Gentle” George and “Easy” Etherege.⁹ By virtue of these qualities, he gained ready access to the best company, and soon became a popular companion of aristocratic Wits like Buckingham, Rochester, Sir Car Scroope, Sedley, and Henry Savile.¹⁰ They constituted an intimate circle with similar tastes: they were all men of wit and pleasure, all naturalistic, libertine, and skeptical; they were occasionally amateur men of letters, now and then diplomats, and sometimes rakes, but always Truewits. With them Etherege had his share of writing, diplomacy, and dissipation. He wrote three plays and some verse, served as secretary to the English ambassador at Constantinople, created some scandal, and in late life found himself the King's envoy at Ratisbon.

There is not much need to linger over the more scandalous events of his life, such as his part, with Rochester, in the notorious Downes affair in which Downes was killed,¹¹ his squabble with Buckley,¹² his championing of the actress Julia which upset the staid citizens of Ratisbon,¹³ or his keeping a wench and getting diseased.¹⁴ He was, as Cibber said, as great a libertine “in speculation as in practice.”¹⁵ Such libertinism was the product of an unsettled age, when the Civil Wars created political and social chaos, and the “new philosophy” induced skepticism among thinking men. Etherege belonged to a younger generation, described by Clarendon as having no respect for authority or religion, which had seen conventional notions discarded and family relations destroyed.¹⁶ He passed through an unsettled youth in unsettled times, and though of gentle birth, he seems to have had little or no university training, and went early into France to escape the Civil Wars in England.¹⁷

The libertinism of Etherege consisted of a witty, naturalistic attitude born of such conditions, rather than of settled principles arrived at through speculation. There is a poem by him entitled “The Libertine” which sums up the easy carpe diem philosophy by which he lived:

Since death on all lays his impartial hand,
And all resign at his command,
The Stoic too, as well as I,
With all his gravity must die:
Let's wisely manage the last span,
The momentary life of man,
And still in pleasure's circle move,
Giving t'our friends the days, and all our nights to love.
CHORUS
Thus, thus, whilst we are here, let's perfectly live,
And taste all the pleasures that nature can give;
And fill all our veins with a noble desire.

In this and the remaining stanzas, there is a touch of disillusionment and cynicism, a sense of the brevity and vanity of this “momentary life of man”; but this is buoyed up by the witty irreverence for conventional notions, and a zestful relish for “all the pleasures that nature can give,” such as friendship, gaming, wine, women, and wit.

His easy libertinism and his naturalistic bias are expressed also in his letters from Ratisbon. Like his friend the Earl of Rochester, Etherege pursued the pleasures of “wine and women,”¹⁸ and he found himself “often very hearty” with a “plain Bavarian,”¹⁹ though he complained that the handsome young ladies were difficult because “their unconscionable price is marriage.”²⁰ To a man who had been “bred in a free nation / With liberty of speech and passion,”²¹ it must have been extremely painful to curtail the natural indulgence of sexual passion, which he believed good and necessary. “'Tis a fine thing,” he exclaimed, “for a Man, who has been nourish'd so many Years with good substantial Flesh and Blood, to be reduc'd to Sighs and Wishes, and all those airy Courses which are serv'd up to feast a belle Passion.”²² But at least there was the divertissement of “le traîneau où l'on se met en croupe de quelque belle Allemande,”²³ and for a time there was also Julia, “a comedian no less handsome and no less kind in Dutchland than Mrs. Johnson was in England.”²⁴ At times, after over-indulgence, he confessed himself more epicurean than libertine: “tout d'un coup je suis devenu disciple d'Épicure, je me tien, dans ma petite retraite, et je me suis établi pour maxime que la plus grand volupté consiste dans une parfaite santé.”²⁵

His philosophy was a worldly and sensible one arrived at through experience and observation, and he was never overly interested in anything transcendental or theoretical. Speaking of his epicureanism, he declared: “je n'ai pas le loisir de m'étendre sur un si digne sujet; pour ces atomes ils ne me rompent guère la tête.” Metaphysics and the atoms of Democritus were beyond his scope: “Par la grâce de Dieu je sais où mon esprit est borné et je ne me mets guère en peine de savoir de quelle manière ce monde ici a été fait ou comment on se divert dans l'autre.”²⁶ Like the skeptical St. Evremond, Etherege regarded such metaphysical speculations as futile and sterile.

His skeptical and naturalistic temper is evident also in his references to religion. In such matters he confessed, “'tis indifferent to me whether there be any other in the world who thinks as I do; this makes me have no temptation to talk of the business.”²⁷ As the boon companion of free-thinkers like Sedley and Rochester, Etherege probably had a commonsensical, and perhaps deistic, attitude toward religion, and he no doubt accepted the hereafter as another of the possible hazards of existence. In a letter to a friend he said that the only quarrel that Mme. de Crecy had with them was that they were “heretics,”²⁸ and Hughes reported the Count to have said of Etherege, “Ce que je trouve de plus pire en lui que toutes ses débauches est, qu'il est profane et voudrait persuader tout le monde d'être de son sentiment.”²⁹ There is no proof that Etherege was atheistic, but he was at least anticlerical and as Erastian as Hobbes, for he wrote of the clergy: “The mischief they daily do in the world makes me have no better an opinion of them than Lucian had of the ancient philosophers; their pride, their passion, and their covetousness makes them endeavour to destroy the government they were instituted to support, and, instead of taking care of the quietness of our souls, they are industrious to make us cut one another's throats.”³⁰

As a Truewit he accepted the vicissitudes of this life with equanimity, and without too much anxiety about the future. Of his attitude toward life he wrote:

Humble to fortune, not her slave,
I still was pleas'd with what she gave;
And, with a firm, and cheerful mind,
I steer my course with every wind,
To all the ports she has design'd.(31)

He accepted life as it is, without complaint, because he had experienced enough of it to know what its limitations are. After all, this life is brief, and there is the disillusionment of knowing that “our Gayety and Vigour leaves us so soon in the lurch, … Feebleness attacks us without giving us fair Warning, and we no sooner pass the Meridian of Life but begin to decline.”³² He was not dazzled by the sham prizes of this world; and when James Fitzjames, the king's natural son, received a dukedom, Etherege wrote him that such honors are of no intrinsic value—“nevertheless the glittering favours of fortune are necessary to entertain those who, without examining any deeper, worship appearances.”³³ This is the wisdom of a Truewit who has seen enough of the world to know that titles are baubles, of no intrinsic value to men of sense, yet useful in impressing the foolish, with whom the world abounds. When Etherege was praised too highly by Lord Dover, he wrote back: “The life I have led has afforded me little time to turn over books, but I have had leisure sufficient while I idly rolled about the town to look into myself and know when I am too highly valued.”³⁴ He was not swayed by popular opinion or rumor, and upon hearing that Prince Herman of Baden, who was coming to Ratisbon, was an intolerably proud person, Etherege wrote to his superior in London, “I know the injury report generally does to mankind and therefore will not give you his character by hearsay, but stay till I have seen him and know him a little myself.”³⁵ He showed manliness and generosity, if not prudence, in defending the actress Julia against the irate citizens of Ratisbon,³⁶ and he remained loyal to King James to the end of his life.

This is hardly the superficial “butterfly” depicted by the “manners” critics. Though never profound in his thinking, Etherege had the sensible worldliness of an Augustan like Horace. He was not overly interested in speculative matters like religion and philosophy, and he lived for this world in an epicurean spirit, in accordance with his naturalistic bias; but he was tolerant of others' beliefs, affectionate toward his friends, and capable of loyalty. He accepted this life, according to his judgment, without illusions, and he lived it as sensibly and pleasantly as a Truewit could, suffering neither envy at the fortunes of others nor regret for his libertine existence.

Toward women he had the naturalistic bias of most Truewits: he regarded them as affected, hypocritical, vain, and dissembling creatures, useful principally for venereal pleasures. From Constantinople, during his secretaryship there, he wrote of the Sultana: “though women here are not so polite and refin'd as in Christendome, yet shee wants not her little arts to secure her Sultan's affections, shee can dissemble fondness and jealousy and can swoone at pleasure.”³⁷ He probably agreed with Dryden when the latter wrote to him from London, “Ask me not of love, for every man hates every man perfectly and women are still the same bitches.”³⁸ To Buckingham he wrote a witty account of how a grief-stricken widow, a “Pattern of Conjugal Fidelity,” had eloped with a young ensign, after being persuaded that immoderate sorrow would be ruinous to her beauty, and had thus proved herself a modern example of the Widow of Ephesus.³⁹ Toward matrimony he could scarcely be charitable in view of his own unhappy marriage to a widow, gently described by an anonymous writer as “a Bitch, / A Wizard, wrincled Woman, & a Witch.”⁴⁰ In a poem “To a lady, asking him how long he would love her,” he declared that a man and woman should be constant to each other, freely and naturally, only so long as love endured between them; any such yoke as marriage was an unnatural imposition on human nature, and a commitment to love one another when love had ceased to exist.

Being a Truewit, he was opposed not only to marriage but to business; and as the King's envoy at Ratisbon he conducted himself more like a Wit than a diplomat, though he discharged his duties creditably. He was encouraged in this attitude by his superior and friend Lord Middleton, who wrote, “I hope in a little time we may hear something of your diversions as well as your business, which would be much pleasanter, and perhaps as instructive.”⁴¹ Following such advice, Etherege referred lightly to political matters, and to a friend he wrote, “The business of the Diet for the most part is only fit to entertain those insects in politics which crawl under the trees in St. James's Park.”⁴² Yet, to the Duke of Buckingham he confessed to a greater aptitude for business than he had suspected,⁴³ and his lucid reports of the political situation in the Empire and of its relations with France show his mastery of affairs. Though he challenged Dryden's title to the province of idleness,⁴⁴ he turned out a voluminous official correspondence, as well as many personal letters, three comedies, and some verse. One suspects that his “noble laziness of mind” was a pretense, especially when he described himself ironically as an idle fellow at the end of a lengthy official communication that runs to some three printed pages.⁴⁵ Etherege was closer to the truth when he said, “I am too lazy and too careless to be ambitious.”⁴⁶

At Ratisbon, he longed for cheer, company, and late hours—some such evening as Dryden described so happily in his dedication of a play to Sedley: “We have, like them our genial nights, where our discourse is neither too serious nor too light, but always pleasant, and, for the most part, instructive; the raillery, neither too sharp upon the present, nor too censorious on the absent; and the cups only such as will raise the conversation of the night, without disturbing the business of the morrow.”⁴⁷ But at Ratisbon, Etherege found that the men were so addicted to drinking that it destroyed the pleasures of conversation.⁴⁸ The ceremony of the place also made convivial gatherings rare; and often he was condemned “To make grave legs in formal fetters, / Converse with fops, and write dull letters.”⁴⁹ Wittily Etherege exposed the absurd formality with which the Diet conducted even the trifling business of arranging to see a farce that had come to town,⁵⁰ and he exercised his wit in a malicious portrait of the Count de Windisgratz, the most pompous of them all.⁵¹ He kept the wittiest and easiest company he could find—the French ambassador the Count de Crecy, described by Etherege as “a bel esprit”; the Count de Lamberg, a gentleman who knew how to live; and Monsieur Schnolsky, so much a Wit that no one could distinguish “between his jest and earnest.”⁵² He remembered with regret the bitter frosty night when he and Dorset carried “two draggle-tailed nymphs” over the Thames to Lambeth,⁵³ and in his letters he asked to be remembered to all his friends at the Rose and “the lily at the bar.”⁵⁴ He was cheered to hear that his friend Sedley, who “had always more wit than was enough for one man,” had produced a successful play in Bellamira.⁵⁵ Himself he compared to Ovid at Pontus,⁵⁶ and epigrammatically he dismissed the bourgeois society in which he was stranded: “London is dull by accident but Ratisbon by nature.”⁵⁷ The person mirrored in these letters is, indeed, a Truewit—genial, witty, skeptical, worldly, and easy.

As a writer, Etherege displayed the same careless, playful attitude, and of his literary success he wrote to Dryden: “Though I have not been able formerly to forbear playing the fool in verse and prose I have now judgment enough to know how much I ventured, and am rather amazed at my good fortune than vain upon a little success; and did I not see my own error the commendation you give me would be enough to persuade me of it. A woman, who has luckily been thought agreeable, has not reason to be proud when she hears herself extravagantly praised by an undoubted beauty. It would be a pretty thing for a man who has learned of his own head to scrape on the fiddle to enter the list with the greatest master in the science of music.”⁵⁸ Yet, Etherege was the man of whom Dryden said in 1687, “I will never enter the lists in prose with the undoubted best author of it which our nation has produced.”⁵⁹ That this high praise is merited is evident if we compare the rather heavy and labored wit of Dryden's letter with the sprightly ease and wit of Etherege's reply.⁶⁰ There was ease and carelessness in Etherege's attitude toward writing, but he was by no means an artless writer. In his library at Ratisbon he had copies of Critiques sur Horace (5 volumes), Rymer's Tragedies of the Last Age, and Reflections on Aristotle's Treaty of Poesy;⁶¹ and as a Truewit, Etherege was also committed to the principle of decorum (wit), which called for naturalness, an easy elegance, and propriety. What he objected to was the labored writing that savored of the pedant or the professional writer, as one may gather from his censure of the Count de Crecy for meticulously polishing and repolishing the expressions in his memorial.⁶²

As a writer Etherege seems to have been interested in wit in all its manifestations. In the prologue he wrote for Dryden's Sir Martin Mar-all, he lamented the fact that the age was no longer content with wit, but wanted gaudy sights. From Ratisbon, he requested a copy of Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia that he might know what fools were prevalent.⁶³ In his own comedies, what contemporaries praised was the witty, naturalistic depiction of coxcombs and Truewits, and Dryden wrote in “MacFlecknoe”:

Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage,
Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage;
Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit,
And in their folly show the writer's wit.

Oldys, in fact, attributed Etherege's success as a dramatist to his witty dialogue and to his naturalistic representation of Truewits: “These applauses arose from our Author's changing the study after old copies, and chimerical draughts from ungrounded speculation, which is but painting with dead colours, for those, taken directly from the freshest practise and experience in original life. … He has also spirited his dialogues, especially in the courtship of the fair sex, for which he is distinguished by Mr. Dryden and others, with a sparkling gaiety which had but little appeared before upon the stage, in parts pretending to the character of modish Gallants; and to judge his figures according to the rules of true resemblance, he will appear a masterly hand; but strictly to examine them, by the rules of honour, morality, and the principles of virtue, where none are seriously professed … would be a severity.”⁶⁴

This is as clear a statement as one can find anywhere of what constitutes the salient features of Etherege's comic writing: witty dialogue, especially between the gallant and his mistress in raillery and “proviso” scenes, a naturalistic view of man (and a consequent disregard of conventional morality), and realistic technique. These are the points in which Etherege excelled as a writer, though not every critic approved, as one gathers from Captain Alexander Radcliffe's censure of Etherege for being too photographic in his realism, “So what he writes is but Translation / From Dog and Partridge conversation.”⁶⁵ What we should look for in Etherege's comedies, then, is not interest in “manners,” but such features of wit comedy as witty dialogue, naturalistic content, and realistic technique. We should also expect malicious laughter at fools, and the expression of a skeptical and libertine philosophy in witty form.

His first comedy, The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub (1664),⁶⁶ has most of these elements, though in rather rudimentary form. Evelyn described the play as “a facetious comedy,” and Pepys observed that it was “very merry, but only so by gesture, not wit at all, which methinks is beneath the House.”⁶⁷ Both Langbaine and Downes record that the play was a success,⁶⁸ and we have Oldys' statement that “the fame of this play,” dedicated to the witty Lord Buckhurst, helped Etherege gain the friendship of the aristocratic Wits.⁶⁹

But despite its warm reception, the play reveals an ambiguity of purpose on Etherege's part, and a consequent lack of unity; and at best, it represents only a groping toward what later became the comedy of wit. In the prologue, Etherege lamented the fact that political bias, and not wit, determined the merit of a play. Yet one cannot say that he succeeded in writing a witty play, nor in wholly excluding political bias. The title of the play suggests an outwitting situation; and the three comic plots are indeed of this nature: Wheadle and Palmer setting plots against Sir Nicholas Cully, only to be outwitted themselves by the Truewit; Betty exposing Dufoy; and Sir Frederick and the Widow trying to outwit each other in a series of “comical revenges.” But in these situations, the comical element is more in evidence than the witty; and the opening scenes could hardly have impressed the audience. In the first scene, Dufoy, with a plaster on his head, is complaining that his master Sir Frederick has broken his head:

DUFOY:
dis Bedlamé, Mad-cape, diable de matré, vas drunké de last night, and vor no reason, but dat me did advisé him to go to bed, begar he did striké, breaké my headé, Jernie.
CLARK:
Have patience, he did it unadvisedly.
DUFOY:
Unadvisé! didé not me advise him justé when he did ité?

(i, i)

When Sir Frederick appears, the wit is not much better. Upon Dufoy's showing his plastered head, Sir Frederick remarks lamely, “Thou hast a notable brain” (i, ii).

The embryonic character of this first comedy of wit by Etherege is most apparent from an examination of the Truewits in the play. Sir Frederick, who dominates the outwitting situations, is such a man as is described in The Character of a Town-Gallant—a drinker of wine, an assailer of the watch, and a breaker of windows.⁷⁰ His wildness reminds us of the author's own frolics. The night prior to the first scene, Sir Frederick has been out drinking, crying “whore” at the door of a kept mistress, and he has come home drunk and broken Dufoy's head. There are coachmen, link-boys, and fiddlers to be paid after the night's debauch. There is a rather sophomoric quality about his escapades; and by the standards of Dorimant or Mirabell, Sir Frederick could hardly qualify as a Truewit. Noise, bustle, the breaking of windows, and the beating of the watch gradually came to be regarded as signs of false wit; and in later wit comedies, these came to be the marks of Witwoud rather than of the Wit. Sir Frederick conforms to a rather callow conception of the Truewit, though Etherege distinguished between his gallant wildness and the stupid, witless wildness of Sir Nicholas (iv, iii).

Though he is a poor specimen of a Truewit by comparison with Dorimant, Sir Frederick satisfies the Widow's taste for “the prettiest, wittiest, wildest Gentleman about the Town.” He has traveled abroad in France; he has the easy courage of a Truewit who does not take life, death, or love too seriously; and he can bear with “the inconveniences of honest Company,” if there is freedom of conversation. He speaks lightly of virtue, and is inclined to be cynical about women and matrimony. He believes that “Women, like Juglers-Tricks, appear Miracles to the ignorant; but in themselves th' are meer cheats” (i, ii); and when he disposes of his kept mistress Lucy to Sir Nicholas, he tells the cully: “And, give her her due, faith she was a very honest Wench to me, and I believe will make a very honest Wife to you” (v, v). As a Truewit he also shares the naturalistic belief that love is only lust, and when informed by Beaufort that the Widow loves him, he exclaims, “What? the Widow has some kind thoughts of my body?” (i, ii). He has honesty enough to save Sir Nicholas from being cheated by Wheadle, but he has malice enough to marry off Sir Nicholas to his own kept mistress, and to couple Wheadle with Grace, and Palmer with Grace's maid.

There is no doubt that Sir Frederick possesses vivacity, some degree of perspicacity, and malice—all marks of the Truewit. But he hardly conforms to the standard of decorum, nor displays much novelty or fineness of fancy. In fact, he can even be gross in his double-entendre, as on the occasion of his disturbing the Widow's household late at night:

MAID:
Sir Frederick, I wonder you will offer this; you will lose her favour for ever.
SIR Fred:
Y'are mistaken; now's the time to creep into her favour.
MAID:
I'm sure y'ave wak'd me out of the sweetest sleep. Hey ho—
SIR Fred:
Poor girl! let me in, I'le rock thee into a sweeter.

(iii, ii)

In his solitary efforts he is seldom striking, and for the Widow he has this rather jejune similitude: “Some Women, like Fishes, despise the Bait, or else suspect it, whil'st still it's bobbing at their mouths; but subtilly wav'd by the Angler's hand, greedily hang themselves upon the hook” (i, ii).⁷¹ Again, the double hyperbole of his remark on Jenny the maid lacks novelty: “Sh'as made more noise than half a dozen Paper-mills: London-bridge at a low water is silence to her” (i, ii). Even the most frequently quoted of his witticisms comes off poorly when read in its context:

MAID:
Unhand me; are you a man fit to be trusted with a woman's reputation?
SIR Fred:
Not when I am in a reeling condition; men are now and then subject to those infirmities in drink, which women have when th' are sober. Drunkenness is no good Secretary, Jenny; you must not look so angry, good faith, you must not.

(i, ii)

The author spoils the wit by not knowing when to stop; and Sir Frederick, after a witty stroke at women, tumbles into a feeble apology to a maid. Sir Frederick's wit splutters now and then, but is never sustained.

The liveliest wit is to be expected in the courtship scenes, but here again, we usually find tricks rather than comic wit. Part of this defect is due to the fact that the heroine suffers under the handicap of being a widow. Sir Frederick assumes that her marital experiences have only sharpened her sexual appetite, and the Widow Rich conforms to his expectations by betraying more eagerness than a witty woman should. She is obviously in love with him from the beginning; and when he pretends to be dead, in order to trick a confession of love from her, she weeps with genuine grief and exclaims in blank verse: “Unhappy woman! why shou'd I survive / The only man in whom my joys did live? / My dreadful grief!” (iv, vii). Though she laughs at Sir Frederick a moment later to prove she saw through his trick, her show of emotion is too genuine to be laughed away so easily. She is too warm and generous for a Truewit: she feels sorry for Dufoy and orders him released from the tub, and she also sends money to free Sir Frederick when she hears he has been arrested for his debts. In these episodes she shows a lack of perspicacity which makes her the dupe of others. It is evident that the Widow lacks the perspicacity and the malice of a Truewit, so that she is no ready match for Sir Frederick. Because of this initial disadvantage under which the Widow labors, there can be no real wit combat between her and Sir Frederick such as we find in later comedies by Etherege. Furthermore, the combats between the two very often degenerate into tricks (“comical revenges”), such as Sir Frederick's having himself borne in on a bier or his sending word that he has been arrested. It is then up to the Widow to penetrate his trick, and thus expose him.

It is in these encounters, however, that we have the best repartee in the play. There is not a great deal of wit in these exchanges, but they do show some spirit. On their first meeting the two are wary of each other but amiable, and they rally one another sharply, though with more humor than wit:

SIR Fred:
Widow, I dare not venture my self in those amorous shades; you have a mind to be talking of Love I perceive, and my heart's too tender to be trusted with such conversation.
WID:
I did not imagine you were so foolishly conceited; is it your Wit or your Person, Sir, that is so taking?
SIR Fred:
Truly you are much mistaken, I have no such great thoughts of the young man you see; who ever knew a Woman have so much reason to build her Love upon merit? Have we not daily experience of great Fortunes, that fling themselves into the arms of vain idle Fellows? Can you blame me then for standing upon my guard?

(ii, i)

Sir Frederick and the Widow are too good-natured for sharp raillery, and his disparagement of himself at the same time that he rallies the Widow shows a man of humor as much as a man of wit. On another occasion, when he pounds her door at night to prove his wit, we have this characteristic passage of repartee:

SIR Fred:
Can you in conscience turn a young man out of doors at this time o'th' night, Widow? Fie, fie, the very thought on't will keep you waking.
WID:
So pretty, so well-favour'd a young man; one that loves me.
SIR Fred:
Ay, one that loves you.
WID:
Truly 'tis a very hard-hearted thing. (She sighs.)
SIR Fred:
Come, come, be mollifi'd. You may go, Gentlemen, and leave me here; you may go. (To the Masquers.)
WID:
You may stay, Gentlemen; you may stay, and take your Captain along with you: You'l find good Quarters in some warm Hay-loft.
SIR Fred:
Merciless Woman! Do but lend me thy Maid; faith I'le use her very tenderly and lovingly, even as I'd use thy self, dear Widow, if thou wou'dst but make proof of my affection.

(iii, iii)

The Widow's wit is sarcasm of no very high order, and her speech, with its “Hay-loft,” is too homely for a city Wit. The raillery lacks polish and point; and Sir Frederick can be smutty but not very witty. Now and then the Widow may bristle up and exclaim, “I have seen e'ne as merry a man as your self, Sir Frederick, brought to stand with folded arms, and with a tristful look tell a mournful tale to a Lady” (ii, ii); but more often, Sir Frederick adopts a domineering tone toward her, and cries, “Widow, May the desire of man keep thee waking till thou art as mad as I am” (iv, vii).

It is evident that Pepys's criticism of the play as “merry by gesture, not wit,” is largely justified. The play has occasional flashes of wit, but they are never sustained. The two Truewits lack the polish and brilliance of a Dorimant and Harriet. They are promising young fledglings not yet come of age, and their wit necessarily shows a somewhat callow quality. Sir Frederick at least has the buoyancy and carefree attitude toward life characteristic of the Truewit, but his interests are still too physical, such as playing tricks on the Widow, creating disturbances at night, and chasing maids. He has not yet arrived at a refined taste in women or in wit.

The naturalistic temper in the play is much more consistently maintained than the wit, particularly in the comic scenes involving the minor figures. There are such naturalistic passages as Dufoy jesting about being “clap'd”:

CLARK:
Methinks the wound your Master gave you last night, makes you look very thin and wan, Monsieur.
DUFOY:
Begar you mistake, it be de voundé dat my Metresse did give me long agoe.
CLARK:
What? some pretty little English Lady's crept into your heart?
DUFOY:
No, but damn'd littel English whore is creepé into my bone begar, me could vish dat de Diable vould také her vid allé my harté.

(ii, i)

In appreciating such scenes, we need not be as squeamish as some modern critics are,⁷² for such witticisms are to be expected from characters naturalistically conceived. The saucy, impertinent Dufoy is also ridiculous as an incipient Witwoud who claims he was hired for being a “man d'esprit, and of vitté,” and is consequently exposed to the malicious laughter of his superiors.

The strength of the naturalistic temper is evident, too, in the Wheadle-Sir Nicholas plot. This has been described as Middletonian in spirit,⁷³ but Etherege probably did not go back to his literary predecessor when he could copy directly from the life about him. A book published in the reign of Charles, Proteus Redivivus: or the Art of Wheedling, or Insinuation (1675), gives a very complete account of the contemporary practice of wheedling, and describes such persons as Wheadle and Sir Nicholas. “Wheedle” is defined as a term in the “Canting Dictionary” which “imports a subtil insinuation into the nature, humours and inclinations of such we converse with, working upon them so effectually, that we possess them with a belief that all our actions and services tend to their pleasures and profit, whereas it is but seemingly so, that we may work on them our real advantage”; and the town Wheedle is described as living off fops, whom he entices to a tavern for the purpose of swindling them.⁷⁴ He has also laid up a store of choice things to say, and has wit enough to please in conversation.⁷⁵ This picture corresponds to Sir Frederick's description of Wheadle: “one whose trade is Trechery, to make a Friend, and then deceive him; he's of a ready Wit, pleasant Conversation, throughly skill'd in men” (i, ii). Like Dufoy, Wheadle has a dry, hard wit that is part of his naturalistic make-up. When outwitted by the Truewit and forced to marry the mistress he has been keeping, he says: “Come hither, Grace; I did but make bold, like a young Heir, with his Estate, before it came into his hands: Little did I think, Grace, that this Pasty, (Stroaking her belly.) when we first cut it up, should have been preserv'd for my Wedding Feast” (v, iv). Wheadle has many of the characteristics of the Witwoud; and at the same time, he is a realistic portrayal of a familiar figure from contemporary low-life.

Sir Nicholas Cully is obviously the Witless in the play, but like Wheadle, he is an imperfect copy of what eventually became a type figure in wit comedy. He is ridiculous not only because of his stupidity and boorishness but because he has Puritan antecedents. He is described by Sir Frederick as “one whom Oliver, for the transcendent knavery and disloyalty of his Father, has dishonour'd with Knight-hood; a fellow as poor in experience as in parts, and one that has a vain-glorious humour to gain a reputation amongst the Gentry, by feigning good nature, and affection to the King and his Party” (i, ii).

Though neither Sir Nicholas nor Wheadle are perfect examples of Witless and Witwoud, they fit into the normal pattern of wit comedy. Wheadle, as Witwoud, plays with Sir Nicholas Cully; but he overrates his wit (cleverness), and is exposed at the end by Sir Frederick, the Truewit, who forces him to marry Grace. Wheadle and Sir Nicholas, along with Dufoy, are naturalistically conceived, and they contribute to the comic side of the play, since they are all exposed to the malicious laughter of the Truewits.

Of the main plot, which is heroic and serious, I have said nothing, because it is out of keeping with the rest of the play. Aurelia puts her finger on the essential difference between it and the rest of the play when she says: “But we by Custom, not by Nature led, / Must in the beaten paths of Honour tread” (ii, ii). The characters in the comic portion follow nature because of their naturalistic bias, and a person like Sir Frederick never considers honor; but the people of the Graciana-Beaufort world act according to custom and honor. Yet the heroic world is not insulated against the currents of skepticism and naturalism; and even Graciana recognizes the fact that men admire women who can conceal their love, and contend with them on equal terms (ii, ii), though she herself is incapable of profiting from this knowledge, as the Widow Rich does. The two worlds in the play are irreconcilable; and Etherege, perhaps unintentionally, shows the absurdity and artificiality of the code by which the honorable, custom-bound half lives and suffers.

Etherege's second play, She Would it She Could, opened on February 6, 1668, to a capacity audience which included Wits like Charles, Buckingham, Buckhurst, and Sedley. Pepys, who was also there, wrote in his Diary, “Lord! how full was the house, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good in it, and few people pleased in it”—to which he added, “all the rest did, through the whole pit, blame the play as a silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish and witty; but the design of the play, and end, mighty insipid.” Dennis observed many years later that despite its poor reception on the first performance, “it was esteem'd by the Men of Sense, for the trueness of some of its Characters, and the purity and freeness and easie grace of its Dialogue.”⁷⁶

The story of the overeager woman frustrated is not very original, and is familiar to us from pre-Restoration plays like Shirley's Lady of Pleasure (1635). But the picture of the lustful woman in Lady Cockwood is an extremely fine naturalistic study. She serves several purposes in the play: first, she exemplifies the author's naturalistic belief that women are, at bottom, as sensual as men; second, she gives pleasure to the audience by serving as the butt of its malicious laughter; and third, through her, the dramatist wittily exposes the conventional notion of honor. It is a mistake to think of her as “a woman of social pretensions whose attempted illicit amours are wrecked by the pressure of a social standard which she lacks intelligence to comprehend.”⁷⁷ She has no social pretensions because she is evidently on good terms with the modish people of her group. Nor is she “a female Tartuffe, a woman of loud religious pretensions, who demands respect and devotion for her piety, and who is really engaged, all the time, in the vain prosecution of a disgraceful intrigue.”⁷⁸ Neither the “manners” nor the moralistic interpretation can explain her character and her role in the play. She is actually an unhappily married woman whose strong sexual desires are frustrated because her unmanly husband shuns his marital duties.

In the naturalistically conceived role of the frustrated wife, Lady Cockwood becomes ridiculous only because of her overeager efforts to satisfy her sexual desire, and, at the same time, her refusal to recognize the natural fact that she has physical needs. Since she has other faults such as impertinence, inordinate fondness, vanity, and jealousy—all marks of the female Witwoud—she is also ridiculed for aspiring to the love of a Truewit. But her chief flaw is her pretending to the principles of conventional morality: she declares that she loves her husband fondly, and she professes to be the very soul of honor. Since she is at the same time striving to satisfy her desires extramaritally, she speaks euphemistically, from hypocrisy or self-delusion, of Courtall's “generous passion.” Even in her relations with her maid Mrs. Sentry, she cannot put off her tarnished dress of honor; and following an interview alone with Courtall, which she desired, Lady Cockwood admonishes her maid:

LA. Cock:
What a strange thing is this! will you never take warning, but still be leaving me alone in these suspicious occasions?
SEN:
I was but in the next room, Madam.
LA. Cock:
What may Mr. Courtall think of my innocent intentions? I protest if you serve me so agen, I shall be strangely angry: you should have more regard to your Lady's Honour.

(ii, ii)

This is not social satire, as the “manners” critics would suggest, for Lady Cockwood is not criticized because of her failure to conform to a social mode: she is ridiculed because of her self-delusion, her hypocrisy, and her cant about honor. On the other hand, this is not conventional moral satire; for though Etherege may prefer sincerity to hypocrisy, he is not concerned with virtue or with exposing vanity and hypocrisy for the usual moral reasons. In fact, Lady Cockwood will undoubtedly take Courtall's advice at the end to “entertain an able Chaplain,” as the best means of satisfying her sexual appetite circumspectly. She remains as obdurate as ever in her lust and reforms only so far as to solace herself with a chaplain rather than a gallant; and there is no suggestion that Etherege condemns her for having adulterous desires. As her name implies, she is a naturalistically conceived woman who would follow nature and fornicate, if she could stop pretending that she lives by honor. Through her, Etherege wittily exposes the conventional notion of honor, since it is only a ridiculous female coxcomb like her that professes it.

In this naturalistic world, Sir Oliver Cockwood and Sir Joslin Jolly are quite at home: they are a pair of Witlesses who set off each other's folly and expose themselves to the malicious laughter of the Truewits. Sir Oliver and Lady Cockwood, in the familiar role of Witless and Witwoud, are also involved in an outwitting situation in which the more stupid is exposed to laughter. Sir Oliver pretends to be a “taring Blade” but is cowardly at heart, and as a husband, he is not only uxorious and hen-pecked, but lacks the wherewithal to satisfy his wife. Above all, he is a stupid oaf who believes in his wife's fidelity, and says fatuously, “Never man was so happy in a vertuous and loving Lady!” (v, i). Sir Joslin Jolly is equally a Witless. His merriment smacks of the coarse boisterousness of the country, and his speech is larded with sexual references, horse and hare similitudes, and country snatches; and he thinks that low creatures like the pimp Rake-hell and the whores that Rake-hell brings to their parties are the finest company in the world. These two Witlesses are ridiculous because they lack sense and judgment, they are boorish in their fun, and they lack perspicacity to see through the deception of others.

Pepys's comment on the mediocrity of the plot and the unoriginal ending applies to the pursuit of the young girls by the gallants as much as to the Cockwood story, for the courtship is left pretty much to chance, and the final agreement among the lovers is due principally to accident and opportunity. The outwitting plot serves as a framework, however, for the wit play of a quartet of Truewits consisting of the two gallants and their mistresses.

Courtall and Freeman are “two honest Gentlemen of the Town” in pursuit of wine, women, and wit. Of the two, Courtall is not only the wittier and more perspicacious but the bolder, and he takes the lead in the intrigue to outwit Lady Cockwood and gain the favors of the young women. When Freeman fears that the girls mistrust them, Courtall exclaims, “Never fear it; whatsoever women say, I am sure they seldom think the worse of a man, for running at all, 'tis a sign of youth and high mettal, and makes them rather piquee, who shall tame him” (iii, i). With his ready tongue, he rallies the Exchange women, who are fond of him for his wit; and he plays with Lady Cockwood, wittily pretending that it is his virtue and her honor that stand in the way of their affair:

COUR:
Oh, 'tis impossible, Madam, never think on't now you have been seen with me; to leave 'em upon any pretence will be so suspitious, that my concern for your honour will make me so feverish and disordered, that I shal lose the taste of all the happiness you give me.
LA. Cock:
Methinks you are too scrupulous, heroick Sir.

(iii, i)

This is Truewit using Lady Cockwood's own cant about honor to outwit a hypocritical woman for whom he has no real taste. Courtall rallies her ironically at times: “The truth is, Madam, I am a Rascal; but I fear you have contributed to the making me so” (iv, ii). He is cynical about marriage, and exclaims, “a Wife's a dish, of which if a man once surfeit, he shall have a better stomach to all others ever after” (iii, iii). In a conversation with Sir Oliver, he also expresses his libertinism and skepticism:

SIR Oliv:
Well a pox of this tying man and woman together, for better, for worse! upon my conscience it was but a Trick that the Clergy might have a feeling in the Cause.
COUR:
I do not conceive it to be much for their profit, Sir Oliver, for I dare lay a good wager, let 'em but allow Christian Liberty, and they shall get ten times more by Christnings, than they are likely to lose by Marriages.

(i, i)

Freeman is less witty than his friend, and is less inclined to indulge in skeptical wit, though now and then he can handle a witty antithesis cleverly: “I have an appointment made me without my seeking too, by such a she, that I will break the whole ten Commandments, rather than disappoint her of her breaking one” (iv, ii). But more often he plays second fiddle to his friend:

COUR:
I have been so often balk'd with these Vizard-Masks, that I have at least a dozen times forsworn 'em; they are a most certain sign of an ill face, or what is worse, an old Acquaintance.
FREE:
The truth is, nothing but some such weighty reason, is able to make women deny themselves the pride they have to be seen.

(ii, i)

In the witticisms of these two gallants, there is nothing very striking, aside from an occasional hit at matrimony and Courtall's ironical pretense to virtue. Sometimes they even fall into such labored similitudes as the following, when they meet unexpectedly:

COUR:
What unlucky Devil has brought thee higher?
FREE:
I believe a better natur'd Devil then yours, Courtall, if a Leveret be better meat then an old Puss, that has been cours'd by most of the young Fellows of her country: I am not working my brain for a Counterplot, a disappointment is not my bus'ness.
COUR:
You are mistaken, Freeman: prithee be gone, and leave me the Garden to my self, or I shall grow as testy as an old Fowler that is put by his shoot, after he has crept half a mile upon his belly.
FREE:
Prithee be thou gone, or I shall take it as unkindly as a Chymist wou'd, if thou should'st kick down his Limbeck in the very minute that he look'd for projection.

(iv, ii)

The wit play of the two gallants alone, though spirited, shows no great merit: not only is there an absence of original similitudes, but there is little of the elegance and epigrammatical quality of fine wit. What chiefly distinguishes the two as Truewits is their carefree attitude, their naturalistic temper, and their contempt for Witlesses like Sir Oliver and Sir Joslin.

Of the two girls, Gatty is the only real Truewit: she is almost as fine a figure as Harriet, and she is superior to Courtall. On their first appearance, Gatty reveals herself as a Truewit, and Ariana as something less. Gatty cries, “How glad am I we are in this Town agen,” while Ariana regrets the pleasures of the country—“the benefit of the fresh Air, and the delight of wandring in the pleasant Groves” (i, ii). Gatty is also rebellious against the restraints imposed by their “grave Relations,” and wants to partake freely of the pleasures of the town. She is wild and free, and has the freshness of the country about her; if she does not always show the decorum of a fine town lady, she has the verve of a young filly romping about the pasture. She is not above a homely country simile: to the young gallants she says, “Our Company may put a constraint upon you; for I find you daily hover about these Gardens, as a Kite does about a back-side, watching an opportunity to catch up the Poultry” (iv, ii). But this is part of her carefree, witty attitude toward life. She likes freedom and sincerity, and when Ariana reproves her for singing a wanton love-song, she exclaims, “I hate to dissemble when I need not.” With true naturalistic bias, she ridicules Platonic love, and she rallies her sister for being melancholy out of love: “Now art thou for a melancholy Madrigal, compos'd by some amorous Coxcomb, who swears in all Companies he loves his Mistress so well, that he wou'd not do her the injury, were she willing to grant him the favour, and it may be is Sot enough to believe he wou'd oblige her in keeping his Oath too” (v, i). To a woman, nothing can be more serious than love, but she will jest about it nevertheless. Gatty has the virtue of maintaining the character of a Truewit throughout the play, without falling into flat similitudes or ever losing her witty attitude toward life.

It is hardly sound, then, to suggest, as Dobrée does, that “the full-blooded boisterousness of Sir Joslin Jolly and Sir Oliver Cockwood” is incompatible with “Ariana's fragile world.”⁷⁹ Actually there is no such fragile and artificial world of the sort the “manners” critics imagine, for the world of Ariana and Gatty is full-blooded and naturalistic. The two girls are happy-go-lucky in their attitude toward life; and after so serious an episode as Sir Oliver and Courtall fighting, the girls are next door, “laughing and playing at Lantre-lou.” Though Ariana expresses too much sentiment in her earlier appearances, neither of the girls weeps and trembles over the future, as do Graciana and Aurelia in the preceding play. They are a charming pair of Truewits, with a touch of naïveté, but with sufficient perspicacity to see through the hypocrisy of Lady Cockwood and the coxcombry of Sir Oliver. There is more good-nature than malice in their raillery, and their frank delight in the pleasures of courtship is unspoiled by satiety or experience.

Separately, the four young Truewits do not approach the highest wit. The courtship scenes, however, provide passages that Pepys found “very roguish and witty.” When the quartet meet, they usually engage in what Gatty calls “a little harmless Raillery betwixt us.” Their first encounter is marked by a long passage of sustained repartee which has the character of a tour de force:

COUR:
By your leave, Ladies—
GATTY:
I perceive you can make bold enough without it.
FREE:
Your Servant, Ladies—
ARIA:
Or any other Ladys that will give themselves the trouble to entertain you.
FREE:
'Slife, their tongues are as nimble as their heels.
COUR:
Can you have so little good nature to dash a couple of bashful young men out of countenance, who came out of pure love to tender you their service?
GATTY:
'Twere pity to baulk 'em, Sister.
ARIA:
Indeed methinks they look as if they never had been slip'd before.
FREE:
Yes faith, we have had many a fair course in this Paddock, have been very well flesh'd, and dare boldly fasten.

(ii, i)

The speeches are quick and short, and the repartee has verve. Despite the absence of balanced epigrams and of real malice, the remarks are witty, and Freeman's double-entendre is superior to anything in the preceding play.

As they grow more familiar and develop a little pique toward each other, the comic wit improves; and when the girls encounter the men, who they believe have audaciously forged letters from them, there is some sharp repartee:

GATTY:
I suppose your Mistress, Mr. Courtall, is always the last Woman you are acquainted with.
COUR:
Do not think, Madam, I have that false measure of my acquaintance, which Poets have of their Verse, always to think the last best, though I esteem you so, in justice to your merit.
GATTY:
Or if you do not love her best, you always love to talk of her most; as a barren Coxcomb that wants discourse, is ever entertaining Company out of the last Book he read in.
COUR:
Now you accuse me most unjustly, Madam; who the Devil, that has common sense, will go a birding with a Clark in his Cap?
ARIA:
Nay, we do not blame you, Gentlemen, every one in their way; a Huntsman talks of his Dogs, a Falconer of his Hawks, a Jocky of his Horse, and a Gallant of his Mistress.
GATTY:
Without the allowance of this Vanity, an Amour would soon grow as dull as Matrimony.

(iv, ii)

Here are fine “turns” and some pointed rejoinders. Finally, in an incipient “proviso” scene, there is one fine passage, at once balanced and paradoxical, when Courtall says to Gatty: “Now shall I sleep as little without you, as I shou'd do with you” (v, i).

She Would if She Could is superior to the first play in every respect. Yet the wit is not always of the highest: there is often a lapsing into flat similitudes; there is not much of the malicious and skeptical wit that gives so much vitality to wit comedy; and there is little of the elegance and fine balance of language which is the mark of high wit. The comic wit sparkles at times, but principally because of the zest and high spirit of the young Truewits rather than because of an original play of ideas. The Truewits are, in fact, extremely young, and display more fancy than judgment in their speech and conduct. Finally, the wit in the play does not always spring from the dramatic action, nor is the wit of the different characters often distinguished, since the witticisms are assigned somewhat indiscriminately to the several Truewits. The best thing in the play is the naturalistic portrait of Lady Cockwood, and Etherege's witty use of her to deflate the notion of honor.

His last play, The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter (1676), is one of the best examples of the comedy of wit. In the prologue Sir Car Scroope implied that one would find “Nature well drawn and Wit” in this comedy; and Langbaine commended its naturalism: “This Play is written with great Art and Judgment, and is acknowledg'd by all, to be as true Comedy, and the Characters as well drawn to the Life, as any Play that has been Acted since the Restauration of the English Stage.”⁸⁰ The contemporaries of Etherege noted particularly this fact of realistic portraiture, and there was much speculation as to the originals of characters like Dorimant, Sir Fopling, and Medley.

It is a failure to appreciate the realistic technique and the naturalistic basis which has led to an underestimation of the play's true merits. On the one hand, we have Steele's moralistic censure of the play, in the Spectator #65, as “a perfect contradiction to good manners, good sense, and common honesty,” and of Dorimant as “a direct knave in his designs, and a clown in his language.” On the other hand, we have the “manners” view that the play is “a more exquisite and airy picture of the manners of that age than any other extant.”⁸¹ Neither of these estimates does justice to the comedy, for they both fail to appreciate the essential character of the play and the two main elements in it—the wit and the naturalistic characterization. The Man of Mode is a comedy of wit, with the usual outwitting situations involving naturalistically conceived characters.

Among the major figures, Dorimant is perhaps the least appreciated by modern readers, largely because the naturalistic characterization is not recognized. He is too often dismissed as a cruel and selfish rake; whereas he is actually a superb portrait of a Truewit. Dennis, in his defence of the play, pointed out that “Dorimont is a young Courtier, haughty, vain, and prone to Anger, amorous, false, and inconstant,” because this is the true nature of young men as described by Aristotle in his Rhetoric, and the dramatist must be true to life (that is, be a naturalistic writer).⁸² Dennis also pointed out that Rochester was the model for the part: “all the World was charm'd with Dorimont; and … it was unanimously agreed, that he had in him several of the Qualities of Wilmot Earl of Rochester, as, his Wit, his Spirit, his amorous Temper, the Charms that he had for the fair Sex, his Falshood, and his Inconstancy; the agreeable Manner of his chiding his Servants … ; and lastly, his repeating, on every Occasion, the Verses of Waller, for whom that noble Lord had a very particular Esteem.”⁸³ Jacob says further that “the Character of Dorimant was drawn in Compliment to the Earl of Rochester.”⁸⁴

Dorimant embodies all the virtues of the masculine Truewit, and he is what Dean Lockier called “the genteel rake of wit.”⁸⁵ Every term of this description deserves emphasis: Dorimant is genteel, as a Truewit who observes decorum ought to be; he is a rake, because his principles are libertine; and above all, he is a Wit, for he values intellectual distinction above other virtues. This is a far better description than Hazlitt's, which makes Dorimant “the genius of grace, gallantry, and gaiety”⁸⁶—and sacrifices accuracy to alliteration. The gallantry of Dorimant is more predatory than courtly, in keeping with his naturalistic bias; and his gaiety is subdued, for there is a dark streak in his nature, compounded of the intellectuality, cynicism, and passion of his original. He is not easy to understand because he has considerable depth, and unlike Courtall and Freeman, he is not open and frank about his inner life. He is a man of strong passions, but is Wit enough to have control over them; his fancy is tempered by judgment; and he possesses higher intellectual qualities than the average Truewit.

On the more superficial side, he is the embodiment of elegant ease—a ready Wit, a cultivated man who has Waller on his lips, and an easy conversationalist with “a Tongue … would tempt the Angels to a second fall.” He has histrionic talents, and can adopt the proper tone for every occasion: with Lady Woodvill, he ironically plays the role of the formally courteous Mr. Courtage; with his fellow Wits he is the railler; with Belinda he is gallantly amorous and ardent; and with the Orange Woman and the Shoemaker, he adopts a tone of rough raillery and easy superiority. Possessing the superior perspicacity and cleverness of a Truewit, Dorimant can see through the devices of others, and at the same time, dissemble well enough so that others cannot see through him. His histrionic talents are also displayed in mimicry of others, a talent which Harriet shares with him. He does it grossly and sarcastically with Loveit, in his imitation of Sir Fopling, or ironically and maliciously, as in his mimicry of Harriet. Dorimant can please anyone when, and if, he wishes to do so, because he possesses the virtues of versatility, ease, and perspicacity.

As a Truewit, he also has a tongue as sharp as a rapier—and the raillery of Dorimant is seldom gentle, since he has malice enough to be cutting. Yet it has point and originality enough to be pleasing. It can be as fine as his repartee with Harriet on their first encounter:

DOR:
You were talking of Play, Madam; Pray what may be your stint?
HAR:
A little harmless discourse in publick walks, or at most an appointment in a Box bare-fac'd at the Play-House; you are for Masks, and private meetings, where Women engage for all they are worth, I hear.
DOR:
I have been us'd to deep Play, but I can make one at small Game, when I like my Gamester well.
HAR:
And be so unconcern'd you'l ha' no pleasure in't.
DOR:
Where there is a considerable sum to be won, the hope of drawing people in, makes every trifle considerable.
HAR:
The sordidness of mens natures, I know, makes 'em willing to flatter and comply with the Rich, though they are sure never to be the better for 'em.
DOR:
'Tis in their power to do us good, and we despair not but at some time or other they may be willing.
HAR:
To men who have far'd in this Town like you, 'twoud be a great Mortification to live on hope; could you keep a Lent for a Mistriss?
DOR:
In expectation of a happy Easter, and though time be very precious, think forty daies well lost, to gain your favour.

(iii, iii)

His raillery can also be as sarcastic as his retort to Pert, “Oh Mrs. Pert, I never knew you sullen enough to be silent” (ii, ii); or as good-naturedly rough as his remark to his servant, “Take notice henceforward who's wanting in his duty, the next Clap he gets, he shall rot for an example” (i, i).

As a Truewit, Dorimant professes naturalistic principles, and he is cynical about women. He has known enough women to be certain that they are vain, hypocritical, and affected creatures; most complaisant when they seem most to resist; and jealous and demanding when won. A striking example of his raillery, malice, his libertinism, frankness, and wit is his passage with Mrs. Loveit:

LOVEIT:
Is this the constancy you vow'd?
DOR:
Constancy at my years! 'tis not a Vertue in season, you might as well expect the Fruit the Autumn ripens i'the Spring.
LOVEIT:
Monstrous Principle!
DOR:
Youth has a long Journey to go, Madam; shou'd I have set up my rest at the first Inn I lodg'd at, I shou'd never have arriv'd at the happiness I now enjoy.
LOVEIT:
Dissembler, damn'd Dissembler!
DOR:
I am so, I confess; good nature and good manners corrupt me. I am honest in my inclinations, and wou'd not, wer' not to avoid offence, make a Lady a little in years believe I think her young, wilfully mistake Art for Nature; and seem as fond of a thing I am weary of, as when I doated on't in earnest.
LOVEIT:
False Man!
DOR:
True Woman!
LOVEIT:
Now you begin to show your self!
DOR:
Love gilds us over, and makes us show fine things to one another for a time, but soon the Gold wears off, and then again the native brass appears.

(ii, ii)

He is professedly libertine, and lives according to naturalistic principles.

If there is any fault in Dorimant as a Truewit, it is his over-sophistication, which makes his wit a little too self-conscious; for now and then his wit is a trifle forced, as in his raillery on the young woman whom the Orange Woman reports to him: “This fine Woman, I'le lay my life, is some awkward ill fashion'd Country Toad, who not having above Four Dozen of black hairs on her head, has adorn'd her baldness with a large white Fruz, that she may look sparkishly in the Fore Front of the Kings Box, at an old Play” (i, i). Harriet, who is a keen judge of wit, observes of Dorimant, when Young Bellair praises him for his ease and naturalness, “He's agreeable and pleasant I must own, but he does so much affect being so, he displease me” (iii, iii). Dorimant has too much judgment to indulge in franciful wit, so that he does not provide the most natural and spontaneous display of wit. But he is a Truewit because he is libertine in his principles, perspicacious and malicious, he observes decorum in his speech and conduct, and he detests coxcombs like Sir Fopling.

His friend Medley has the more fanciful wit of the two, and he serves, therefore, as a foil to Dorimant's more solid wit. When he is “rhetorically drunk,” he is a great elaborator of fancies; and he rallies the ladies with a pleasant account of a fictitious book, “written by a late beauty of Quality, teaching you how to draw up your Breasts, stretch up your neck, to thrust out your Breech, to play with your Head, to toss up your Nose, to bite your Lips, to turn up your Eyes, to speak in a silly soft tone of a Voice, and use all the Foolish French Words that will infallibly make your person and conversation charming, with a short apologie at the end, in behalf of young Ladies, who notoriously wash, and paint, though they have naturally good Complexions” (ii, i). Medley rallies everyone, but with much less malice than Dorimant, and he lets his tongue run freely on everyone and everything.

It is also he, rather than Dorimant, who voices most of the skeptical wit in the play; and this is done with a much more natural, if less fine, carelessness than Dorimant is capable of. He is a skeptic in matrimony as well as religion, and he rallies Young Bellair on his intended marriage: “You have a good strong Faith, and that may contribute much towards your Salvation. I confess I am but of an untoward constitution, apt to have doubts and scruples, and in Love they are no less distracting than in Religion; were I so near Marriage, I shou'd cry out by Fits as I ride in my Coach, Cuckold, Cuckold, with no less fury than the mad Fanatick does Glory in Bethlem” (i, i). When Dorimant gets a letter from Molly the whore asking for a guinea to see the “Opery,” Medley exclaims, “Pray let the Whore have a favourable answer, that she may spark it in a Box, and do honour to her profession” (i, i). He also gives the rallying advice to the witty Shoemaker: “I advice you like a Friend, reform your Life; you have brought the envy of the World upon you, by living above your self. Whoring and Swearing are Vices too gentile for a Shoomaker” (i, i). Though Dorimant is the finer Wit, with more malice, perspicacity, and judgment, Medley, with his fanciful and skeptical wit, is often more original and entertaining.

The one other important Truewit in the play is Harriet, who has much in common with Dorimant. Compared to her sisters Gatty, Ariana, and the Widow Rich, Harriet is endowed with a much more solid wit; and her perspicacity, sound sense, and fine self-control make her a formidable person. She is, as Dorimant says, “Wild, witty, lovesome, beautiful and young,” but tempering these qualities is sound judgment and sincere feeling. Her exceptional physical beauty is the least part of her merits, and it speaks well for Dorimant that he is interested in her wit (i, i).

Like Dorimant, she has histrionic talents and the ability to dissemble, and there are excellent scenes of comic with when she and Dorimant take each other off on their first meeting, and when she and Young Bellair dissemble before their parents, by pretending to be in love. She displays a roguish wit, as when she tells Young Bellair, “I know not what it is to love, but I have made pretty remarks by being now and then where Lovers meet” (iii, i). Or when she is merry at her mother's expense, by exclaiming in the presence of Dorimant, who is unknown to Lady Woodvill, “I would fain see that Dorimant, Mother, you so cry out of, for a monster; he's in the Mail I hear” (iii, iii). But there is goodnature at bottom in Harriet, and the occasional malice of her tongue is due to some deeper feeling which she wishes to conceal. She is a Truewit with sufficient self-control to treat her lover and her emotion playfully; and if her emotion breaks through, it is perceptible only in her sharper and more malicious wit:

HAR:
I did not think to have heard of Love from you.
DOR:
I never knew what 'twas to have a settled Ague yet, but now and then have had irregular fitts.
HAR:
Take heed, sickness after long health is commonly more violent and dangerous.
DOR:
I have took the infection from her, and feel the disease spreading in me—(Aside.)
Is the name of love so frightful that you dare not stand it? (To her.)
HAR:
'Twill do little execution out of your mouth on me, I am sure.
DOR:
It has been fatal—
HAR:
To some easy Women, but we are not all born to one destiny; I was inform'd you use to laugh at Love, and not make it.
DOR:
The time has been, but now I must speak—
HAR:
If it be on that Idle subject, I will put on my serious look, turn my head carelessly from you, drop my lip, let my Eyelids fall and hang half o're my Eyes—Thus—while you buz a speech of an hour long in my ear, and I answer never a word! why do you not begin?

(iv, i)

Such raillery is a fine weapon in her capable hands.

Her wit is charming because it springs from sincere feeling and sound judgment. She has sensible views, untainted by cynicism; and though she may say of a husband, “I think I might be brought to endure him, and that is all a reasonable Woman should expect in a Husband,” she adds significantly, “but there is duty i'the case,” implying thereby that were not duty involved (as there must be in an arranged marriage), a woman might reasonably dote on her husband (iii, i). As a Truewit she is an enemy of all that is affected, dull, and formal, and speaking of Hyde Park, she says, “I abominate the dull diversions there, the formal bows, the Affected smiles, the silly by-Words, and amorous Tweers, in passing” (iii, iii). She has passions, and will not conceal them under an affected softness (iv, i). In fact, she loves naturalness so much that she criticizes even Dorimant for not being natural enough in his wit (iii, iii). And she exclaims against all pretenders—“That Women should set up for beauty as much in spite of nature, as some men have done for Wit!” (iii, i). At its best, her wit is first-rate because it is unpretentious: her witticisms are never forced, and her speech is free of labored similitudes. Only she is capable of wit at once so sensible and whimsical as the following:

DOR:
Is this all—will you not promise me—
HAR:
I hate to promise! what we do then is expected from us, and wants much of the welcom it finds, when it surprizes.
DOR:
May I not hope?
HAR:
That depends on you, and not on me, and 'tis to no purpose to forbid it.

(v, ii)

It must be her speeches in particular that Dennis had in mind when he said of The Man of Mode: “the Dialogue is the most charming that has been writ by the Moderns: That with Purity and Simplicity, it has Art and Elegance; and with Force and Vivacity, the utmost Grace and Elegance; and with Force and Vivacity, the utmost Grace and Delicacy.”⁸⁷

As foils to the three Wits discussed so far, there are the several characters who fall short of being Truewits. Of these Emilia and Young Bellair are the most attractive, but like Graciana and Beaufort in the first play, they belong to an honorable world which is out of harmony with the dominantly naturalistic temper of the play. Young Bellair is described by Dorimant as “Handsome, well bred, and by much the most tolerable of all the young men that do not abound in wit” (i, i); and Emilia, according to Medley, “has the best reputation of any young Woman about Town, who has beauty enough to provoke detraction; her Carriage is unaffected, her discourse modest, not at all censorious, nor pretending like the Counterfeits of the Age” (i, i). What alone makes them tolerable to the Truewits is their naturalness and lack of affectation; as lovers, they lack fire and spirit, and theirs is a conventional affair, with the usual obstacles and hazards of honorable courtship and marriage.

Aside from Bellinda, who is a rather foolish young woman, the other foils to the Truewits are all objects of malicious laughter in the play. Mrs. Loveit has some beauty and wit, but she is absurd because of her unnatural jealousy and affectation. Lady Woodvill and Old Bellair, “their Gravities” of a past age, are minor objects of ridicule. Old Bellair is laughable because of his unnatural love for a young girl, for such fond love at his age is a sure sign of dotage or impotent lechery. Lady Woodvill is “a great Admirer of the Forms and Civilities of the last Age,” when beauties were courted in proper form, with a due regard for the conventions of Platonic love. “Lewdness is the business now,” she says with regret, “Love was the bus'ness in my Time” (iv, i). She does not realize that the new world in which she is so out of place is naturalistic in its principles, and that young couples like Emilia and Young Bellair who carry on in the approved fashion of her age are passé.

The chief foil to the Truewits is Sir Fopling, but so much has been said about him by critics that further commentary seems superfluous. It is important, however, to note that he is not chiefly an object of social satire, as is commonly supposed: he is laughed at principally because he is deficient in wit. His pretension to fashion and taste in clothes reveals the poverty of his mind, and it is this mental defect that exposes him to laughter. He is such a person as the Marquess of Halifax described—a superfine gentleman whose understanding is so appropriated to his dress that his fine clothes become his sole care.⁸⁸ After the Truewits have ironically ridiculed his supposed fine taste in clothes, they mercilessly condemn him as a fool:

MED:
a fine mettl'd Coxcomb.
DOR:
Brisk and Insipid—
MED:
Pert and dull.
EMILIA:
However you despise him, Gentlemen, I'le lay my life he passes for a Wit with many.
DOR:
That may very well be, Nature has her cheats, stum's a brain, and puts sophisticate dulness often on the tasteless multitude for true wit and good humour.

(iii, ii)

Undoubtedly there is some element of social satire in the ridicule of the fop, but the “manners” approach which makes Sir Fopling a mere conglomeration of fine clothes misses the whole point of his being Witwoud. Furthermore, the “manners” view which finds him a superfluous accessory to the plot fails to grasp the unity of the play. It is quite evident that in this comedy of wit he occupies the role of the Witwoud who is exposed by his intellectual superiors, and that he is not only a foil to the Truewits but the butt of their malicious laughter.

In his three wit comedies, Etherege shows a progressive development in his art. The Comical Revenge, his first attempt at the comedy of wit, shows an uncertain mastery: the heroic-moral world is not properly subordinated, Wheadle and Dufoy are not perfect Witwouds, and Sir Nicholas is not a very amusing Witless. The Truewits are also deficient: Sir Frederick, with his callow interest in frolics, and the Widow, with her over-ready show of feeling, are not yet capable of the brilliant comic wit to be found in later plays. But the naturalistic temper is prominently displayed. In the second comedy, She Would if She Could, Etherege successfully poked witty fun at the conventional notion of honor, in the person of Lady Cockwood, and he brought together a quartet of spirited Truewits. The wit in the play, however, seldom reaches a very high level: the repartees are characterized more by high spirits than by an original exchange of ideas; there is a preponderance of wit play over comic wit; and the Truewits are not properly distinguished in their wit, for the difference between Courtall and Freeman, for example, is that the former is the bolder of the two.

The last play, The Man of Mode, is superior in every respect. Not only does it have a fine Witwoud in Sir Fopling Flutter, but it has three notable Truewits, in Dorimant, Harriet, and Medley, who are carefully distinguished by Etherege in terms of their wit: Dorimant is characterized by malice and judgment, Medley by fanciful and skeptical wit, and Harriet by natural, spontaneous wit. In Dorimant and Harriet, we see to what an extent Etherege succeeded in making the wit significant and dramatic: not only does the wit of Harriet probe deeper into human absurdities; it is more thoroughly a part of the dramatic action, as well as an expression of her true character. Dorimant and Harriet also have an intellectual solidity and depth of feeling which make them far more human and substantial than their predecessors. These two Truewits are both lovers of fine wit; they have penetration enough to see through the affectation and folly of others, and wit enough to dissemble with the world; enough judgment to act sensibly at all times; a sufficiently playful attitude toward life not to be swept away by their own emotions; and an easy and elegant superiority to everyone else by virtue of these qualities. They are intelligent without being over-intellectual, worldly without being disillusioned with life, and witty without being superficial or frivolous.

Dorimant and particularly Harriet represent the finest expression of Etherege's witty attitude toward life—his good sense, elegance, and libertinism; and his scorn of fools, ceremony, and artificiality. As Truewits they belong to a free world—and a world which is neither corrupt as the moralistic critics affirm, nor superficial as the “manners” critics would have us believe. It may not have the breadth of Dante's universe because the supernatural is excluded, but there is much in this world of the Truewit that is valuable, such as elegance, intellectual distinction, clarity of thought, absence of artificial formality, freedom from cant about honor, and a graceful and natural acceptance of this life on earth.

Notes

1. Elwin, The Playgoer's Handbook to Restoration Drama, pp. 12-13; Dr. Doran, “Their Majesties' Servants”: Annals of the English Stage, from Thomas Betterton to Edmund Kean, New York, 1865, i, 140; Felix E. Schelling, English Drama, London and New York, 1914, p. 259.

2. Dobrée, [Bonamy.] Restoration Comedy [1660–1720. Oxford University Press, 1925], p. 58.

3. Ibid., p. 76.

4. Palmer, [John.] [The] Comedy of Manners [London, G. Bell and Sons, 1913], p. 91.

5. Edmund Gosse, “Sir George Etheredge,” in Seventeenth Century Studies, New York, 1897, p. 283.

6. John Oldys, “Sir George Etherege,” in Biographia Britannica, London, 1747-1766, iii, 1841. Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, Oxford, 1691, p. 186.

7. Theophilus Cibber, The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the Time of Dean Swift, London, 1753, iii, 37-38.

8. Dennis, Original Letters, Familiar, Moral and Critical, London, 1721, p. 52.

9. Oldys, “Sir George Etherege,” Biographica Britannica, iii, 1844.

10. Ibid., iii, 1841. Cf. also, Cibber, The Lives of the Poets, iii, 33; Charles Gildon, The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets, London, 1699, p. 53.

11. Correspondence of the Family of Hatton, 1878, ed. Edward M. Thompson, i, 133-134.

12. The Rochester-Savile Letters, 1671-1680, ed. John Harold Wilson, Columbus, Ohio, 1941, p. 52.

13. Etherege, The Letterbook, ed. Rosenfeld, pp. 388-389.

14. Ibid., pp. 383-384.

15. Cibber, The Lives of the Poets, iii, 37.

16. Clarendon, [Edward Hyde.] [The] Life, [of Edward Earl of Clarendon, 3 vols. Oxford, 1759], ii, 39-49.

17. Cibber, op. cit., iii, 33.

18. Letterbook, p. 304.

19. Ibid., p. 190.

20. Ibid., p. 304.

21. Ibid., pp. 62-63.

22. Ibid., p. 422.

23. Ibid., p. 55.

24. Ibid., p. 328.

25. Ibid., p. 264.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., p. 305.

28. Ibid., p. 310.

29. Ibid., pp. 386-387.

30. Ibid., p. 337.

31. Ibid., p. 63.

32. Ibid., p. 415.

33. Ibid., p. 187.

34. Ibid., pp. 301-302.

35. Ibid., p. 284.

36. Ibid., p. 119.

37. Ibid., p. 406.

38. Ibid., p. 357.

39. Ibid., pp. 417-421.

40. Quoted by H. F. Brett-Smith, intro. to [Etherege, Sir George.] The Dramatic Works of Sir George Etherege, [ed. H. F. Brett-Smith, 2 vols. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1927], i, xxix.

41. Letterbook, p. 344.

42. Ibid., p. 210.

43. Ibid., p. 413.

44. Ibid., p. 167.

45. Ibid., p. 67.

46. Ibid., p. 139.

47. Dryden, Dedication of The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, in [Dryden, John. The]Works, [of John Dryden, ed. Sir Walter Scott and George Saintsbury, 18 vols. Edinburgh, 1882–1893], iv, 351.

48. Letterbook, p. 414.

49. Ibid., p. 62.

50. Ibid., p. 117.

51. Ibid., pp. 103-104.

52. Ibid., p. 290, p. 142, p. 309.

53. Ibid., p. 240.

54. Ibid., p. 325.

55. Ibid., p. 227, p. 212.

56. Ibid., p. 293.

57. Ibid., p. 278.

58. Ibid., p. 168.

59. Ibid., p. 355.

60. Dryden to Etherege, February 16, 1687; Etherege to Dryden, March 10/20, 1686/7. Letters 13 and 14, in The Letters of John Dryden, ed. Charles E. Ward, Durham, 1942.

61. Letterbook, pp. 376-378.

62. Ibid., p. 289.

63. Ibid., p. 338.

64. Oldys, “Sir George Etherege,” Biographia Britannica, iii, 1842.

65. Radcliffe, “News from Hell,” in Dryden, Miscellany Poems, London, 1716, ii, 101.

66. The edition used for this and subsequent plays is The Dramatic Works of Sir George Etherege, ed. H. F. Brett-Smith, 2 vols., Oxford, 1927.

67. Evelyn, [John. The] Diary [of John Evelyn, 3 vols. London, Macmillan, 1906], April 27, 1664; Pepys, [Samuel. The] Diary [of Samuel Pepys, ed. by Hendy B. Wheatley, 2 vols. New York, Random House, 1946], January 4, 1664/5.

68. Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, p. 187. Rev. John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, or, an Historical Review of the Stage, London, 1789, p. 35.

69. Oldys, op. cit., iii, 1841.

70. The Character of a Town-Gallant[; Exposing the Extravagant Fopperies of some vain Self-conceited Pretenders to Gentility and Good Breeding. London, 1675], p. 6.

71. Cf. Etherege's use of the same figure in Act I, sc. iii, where Wheadle is speaking of Sir Nicholas Cully: “How eagerly did this half-witted fellow chap up the bait? Like a ravenous Fish, that will not give the Angler leave to sink his Line, but greedily darts up and meets it half way.” This reveals a somewhat indiscriminate distribution of wit among the characters in the play.

72. Cf. Palmer: “To-day the scenes in which the plight of Dufoy is for comic purposes exploited are wholly disgusting” (Comedy of Manners, p. 75).

73. Lynch, The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy. [University of Michigan Publications, iii, New York, Macmillan, 1926], p. 143.

74. [Richard Head], Proteus Redivivus: or the Art of Wheedling, or Insinuation, London, 1675, pp. 2, 4, 198.

75. Ibid., p. 149.

76. Dennis, “A Large Account of the Taste in Poetry” (1702), in The Critical Works, i, 289.

77. Lynch, op. cit., p. 154.

78. Gosse, “Sir George Etheredge,” p. 271.

79. Dobrée, Restoration Comedy, p. 65.

80. Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, p. 187.

81. Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Comic Writers, in The Collected Works, viii, p. 129.

82. Dennis, “A Defence of Sir Fopling Flutter,” The Critical Works, ii, 245-247.

83. Ibid., p. 248.

84. Giles Jacob, The Poetical Register, London, 1719, p. 96.

85. Rev. Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men, London, 1858, p. 47.

86. Hazlitt, op. cit., viii, 68.

87. Dennis, “A Defence of Sir Fopling Flutter,” The Critical Works, ii, 243.

88. Halifax, [Marquess of.] “Some Cautions offered to the Consideration of those who are to chuse Members to serve for the Ensuing Parliament,” in The Complete Works [of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax, ed. Walter Raleigh. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1912], p. 153.