BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mann, David D. Sir George Etherege: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1981, 135 p.

Comprehensive bibliography of Etherege's life and works, ranging from 1664 to 1980.

CRITICISM

Barnard, John. “Point of View in The Man of Mode.” Essays in Criticism 34, no. 4 (October 1984): 285-308.

Examines the relationship between the text of The Man of Mode and how Restoration cultural milieu likely influenced the way it was staged in Etherege's time.

Boyette, Purvis E. “The Songs of George Etherege.” Studies in English Literature 6, no. 3 (summer 1966): 409-19.

Discusses the significance of the songs included in Etherege's plays.

Brown, Laura. “Dramatic Social Satire.” In English Dramatic Form, 1660-1760: An Essay in Generic History, pp. 28-65. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

Explores the evolution of social satire in Etherege's plays, finding little criticism of social standards in his two early comedies and a more outspoken approach in The Man of Mode.

Davies, Paul C. “The State of Nature and the State of War: A Reconsideration of The Man of Mode.” University of Toronto Quarterly 39, no. 1 (October 1969): 53-62.

Argues that a “true understanding” of the relationship between Dorimant and Harriet is essential for understanding The Man of Mode as a whole.

Fisher, Judith W. “The Power of Performance: Sir George Etherege's The Man of Mode.” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 10, no. 1 (summer 1995): 15-28.

Analyzes the text of The Man of Mode in an effort to reconstruct how the play might have been staged for Etherege's audience.

Hayman, John G. “Dorimant and the Comedy of A Man of Mode.” Modern Language Quarterly 30 (1969): 183-97.

Contends that the “comic movement” of The Man of Mode rests on Dorimant's “initial skill and subsequent failure in fulfilling the requirements of polite society and turning them to some ulterior end.”

Hazlitt, William. “Lecture III: On Cowley, Butler, Suckling, Etherege, Etc.” In Lectures on the English Comic Writers, with Miscellaneous Essays, pp. 49-69. 1819. Reprint, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1910.

Brief notice of Etherege, with a favorable description of The Man of Mode as a “more exquisite and airy picture of the manners of that age than any other extant.”

Henshaw, Wandalie. “Sir Fopling Flutter, or The Key to The Man of Mode.” Essays in Theatre 3, no. 2 (May 1985): 98-107.

Contends that critics have underestimated Sir Fopling Flutter's significance to The Man of Mode, due to their emphasis on the characters of Dorimant and Harriet.

Hughes, Derek. “Play and Passion in The Man of Mode.” Comparative Drama 15, no. 3 (fall 1981): 231-57.

Analyzes game-playing and religious imagery in The Man of Mode, maintaining that the subtly shifting images reveal Etherege's attitudes toward game-playing and the losers in those games.

Hume, Robert D. “The Nature of Comic Drama.” In The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeeth Century, pp. 63-148. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

Takes exception to the claim that The Man of Mode is an intellectual showpiece on the manners and mores of Etherege's cultural milieu, arguing that the dramatist simply meant to create “a delightfully satiric entertainment.”

Husboe, Arthur R. Sir George Etherege. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987, 143 p.

In-depth critical discussion of Etherege's life and works.

Knights, L. C. “Restoration Comedy: The Reality & The Myth.” Scrutiny 6 (June 1937): 122-43.

Censures all Restoration comedy, including Etherege's, as inferior works of literature which depict social conventions artificially. The critic further argues that because these dramatists relied on “a miserably limited set of attitudes,” not one “has achieved a genuinely sensitive and individual mode of expression.”

Martin, Leslie H. “Past and Parody in The Man of Mode.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 16, no. 3 (summer 1976): 363-76.

Posits that Etherege invented the character of Mrs. Loveit in The Man of Mode to parody heroic drama and other outmoded conventions.

Mignon, Elizabeth. “Etherege.” In Crabbed Age and Youth: The Old Men and Women in the Restoration Comedy of Manners, pp. 36-47. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1947.

Examines Etherege's attitudes toward youth and old age in his comedies.

Morrow, Laura. “The Right Snuff: Dorimant and the Will to Meaning.” Restoration 14, no. 1 (spring 1990): 15-21.

Psychological analysis of Dorimant and his relationships to women in The Man of Mode.

Muir, Kenneth. “Sir George Etherege.” In The Comedy of Manners, pp. 28-40. London: Hutchinson University Library, 1970.

Broad survey of Etherege's comedies and their critical reception.

Palmer, John. “The Life and Letters of Sir George Etherege.” In The Comedy of Manners, pp. 30-91. 1913. Reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1962.

Comprehensive biographical and critical account of Etherege.

Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vols. IV-VI, edited by Henry B. Wheatley, p. 304. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1926.

Briefly recounts seeing Etherege's The Comical Revenge, describing it as “very merry, but only so by gesture, not wit at all.”

Pinto, Vivian de Sola. “Sir George Etherege.” In The Restoration Court Poets, pp. 33-40. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1965.

Examines Etherege's role in the influential group of court poets which included John Wilmont, earl of Rochester, Charles Sackville, and Sir Charles Sedley.

Powell, Jocelyn. “George Etherege and the Form of Comedy.” In Restoration Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies, no. 6, edited by John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, pp. 43-69. London: Edward Arnold, 1965.

Argues that Etherege's comedies display a central problem of subjectivity in that they condone ridicule and vice rather than satirizing antisocial behavior.

Staves, Susan. “The Secrets of Genteel Identity in The Man of Mode: Comedy of Manners vs. the Courtesy Book.” In Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Vol. 19, edited by Leslie Ellen Brown and Patricia Craddock, pp. 117-28. East Lansing, Mich.: Colleagues Press, 1989.

Discusses the relationship between The Man of Mode and contemporary courtesy books, asserting that Etherege represents courtesy literature as “a threat to his ideology of gentility.”

Traugott, John. “The Rake's Progress from Court to Comedy: A Study in Comic Form.” Studies in English Literature 6, no. 3 (summer 1966): 381-407.

Explores the role of the rake in Restoration comedy, noting that Dorimant in Etherege's The Man of Mode nearly succeeds in making “a nasty character the vessel of value for the society and the aesthetic center of a proper comedy.”

Underwood, Dale. Etherege and the Seventeenth-Century Comedy of Manners. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957, 165 p.

Comprehensive discussion of Etherege's comedies within the context of the seventeenth-century intellectual and cultural milieu. The critic maintains that Etherege's plays validate the genre of the comedy of manners in that they are works of “literary and comic art” which enhanced “the principal traditions of pre-Restoration drama.”

Walsh, Paul. “Performance, Space, and Seduction in George Etherege's The Man of Mode (Dorset Garden Theatre, 1676).” Essays in Theatre/Études Théâtrales 11, no. 2 (May 1993): 123-31.

Proposes a possible seventeenth-century staging of The Man of Mode, exploring how “performance space”—the physical environment of the theater and the audience interaction with the actors—perhaps influenced the “dynamics of seduction and revelation” in the play.

Weber, Harold. “Charles II, George Pines, and Mr. Dorimant: The Politics of Sexual Power in Restoration England.” Criticism 32, no. 2 (spring 1990): 193-219.

Examines the sexual dynamics in Etherege's The Man of Mode, arguing that the comedy affirms a patriarchal anxiety in the Restoration period about the power of female sexuality.

Wilkinson, D. R. M. “Etherege and a Restoration Pattern of Wit.” English Studies 68, no. 6 (December 1987): 497-510.

Asserts that Etherege played a critical role in the development of the witty dialogue which is the hallmark of Restoration comedy.

Young, Douglas M. “The Play-World of Sir George Etherege.” In The Feminist Voices in Restoration Comedy: The Virtuous Women in the Play-Worlds of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve, pp. 25-83. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1997.

Discusses how Etherege innovated on Restoration attitudes toward women in his comedies, arguing that in each of the plays the virtuous heroine culminates the action in equal standing to her libertine male suitor.

Zimbardo, Rose A. “Of Women, Comic Imitation of Nature, and Etherege's The Man of Mode.” Studies in English Literature 21, no. 3 (summer 1981): 373-87.

Analyzes the comic function of the female characters in The Man of Mode, noting that Etherege was one of the last playwrights to utilize women to achieve proper comic perspective.

Additional coverage of Etherege's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 80 and Literature Resource Center.