The Way of the World

Congreve, William
William Congreve (1670-1729) was an English playwright, and one of the most sophisticated exponent of the comedy of manners during the Restoration era. Congreve wrote five plays before he was 30. His first, The Old Bachelor, was an enormous success at Drury Lane in 1693, in a production starring Thomas Betterton and Mrs Bracegirdle. According to Congreve he wrote the play to amuse himself during a convalescence. The Double Dealer (1694) was not so well received but in 1695 he produced another hit, Love for Love (again with Betterton and Mrs Bracegirdle), to open the new Lincoln's Inns Fields Theatre. Its success secured his reputation and earned him a share in the theatre. His promise to write at least one play a year for the theatre of which he was now a part owner, was unfortunately not fulfilled. Congreve's only tragedy, The Mourning Bride (1697), was his most popular work during his lifetime but is now rarely seen. It starred Mrs Bracegirdle as Almeria, a part that became much coveted by tragic actresses. In 1700 The Way of the World - a highly sophisticated and complex work now considered his masterpiece - met with a cool reception. This failure, together with his continued discomfort at having been attacked in Jeremy Collier's influential pamphlet A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage (1698), persuaded him to retire. (Congreve had replied to Collier with little effect in Amendments of Mr Collier's False and Imperfect Citations.) Voltaire later visited him and accused him of wasting his genius. Congreve told him he wished to be visited as a gentleman, not as an author. To this Voltaire replied that if Mr Congreve were only a gentleman, he would not have bothered to call upon him. Congreve was by all accounts a warm man who won the love and respect of his many friends. John Dryden called him the equal of Shakespeare, Alexander Pope dedicated his translation of the Iliad to him in 1715, and John Gay called him an 'unreproachful man'. When he died he left nearly all of his Pds. 10,000 estate to his mistress, Henrietta, the second Duchess of Marlborough, who arranged for his burial in Westminster Abbey.
Gibbons, Brian
Brian Gibbons is a distinguished scholar and editor of Shakespeare and other early modern dramatists. He is the author of many critical studies and a General Editor of the New Mermaids and the New Cambridge Shakespeare series.

If seventeenth- and eighteenth-century comedy differ in that the former
is about sex (and adultery actually happens) while the latter is about
love (and adultery is merely threatened), then Congreve - writing at
the turn of the century - occupies a phase of transition. Mirabell is
no saint, but he deserves the title of 'hero' for masterminding the
action with the same wit and humanity with which the dramatist designed
the play. Mirabell is both financially and amorously interested in the
skittish Millamant, who declares that she might, with certain provisos,'dwindle into a wife'. The introduction to this edition clarifies the
playwright's and his characters' highly intricate plotting and argues
that the key metaphor of the play is card-playing, in which fortune,
cunning, concealment and a high trump drawn from the sleeve at the
right moment will win the game - and the heiress.

One of Congreve's comedies, which features Mirabell who is in love with
Millamant, a niece of Lady Wishfort. He pretends to favour the aunt to
conceal his attraction to the niece.

One of Congreve's comedies, which features Mirabell who is in love with
Millamant, a niece of Lady Wishfort. He pretends to favour the aunt to
conceal his attraction to the niece.