Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/221

 daughter and her lover—disguised as a dancing-master—to elude the vigilance of the lady's father, a merchant who apes Spanish habits and customs. The general idea of the play is borrowed from Calderon's ‘El Maestro de Danzar,’ in which a lover in disguise is placed in similar difficulties by the father insisting on witnessing the dancing lesson; but the whole tone of Calderon's play is different from Wycherley's. The ‘Gentleman Dancing-master’ is witty and amusing, and is comparatively free from the coarseness and cynicism which mark Wycherley's later work.

Probably Wycherley was one of the gentlemen who ‘packed to sea’ early in 1672. It is known that he, like many others who knew little of naval matters, was present at one of the battles with the Dutch (see ‘Lines on a sea-fight which the author was in betwixt the English and the Dutch’ in the Posthumous Works), and 1672 or 1673 seems the most likely time for this incident, though Leigh Hunt thought that the engagement at which Wycherley was present was that between the Duke of York and Opdam in 1665. However this may be, Wycherley's third play, ‘The Country Wife,’ was produced by the king's company at the theatre in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1672 or 1673 (, i. 149). We know it was not brought out before the early spring of 1672, because in the prologue Wycherley, referring to the non-success of the ‘Gentleman Dancing Master,’ speaks of himself as ‘the late so baffled scribbler,’ and the production must have been before March or April 1674, when the ‘Plain Dealer’ appeared, because in the second act of that play the abandoned but hypocritical Olivia is made to profess that she is scandalised at a lady being seen at such a filthy play as the ‘Country Wife’ after the first night. The ‘Country Wife’ was published in 1675. It is the most brilliant but the most indecent of Wycherley's works. When it was revived in 1709, after an interval of six years, for Mrs. Bicknell's benefit, Steele, in a criticism in the ‘Tatler’ (16 April 1709), said that the character of the profligate Horner was a good representation of the age in which the comedy was written, when gallantry in the pursuit of women was the best recommendation at court. A man of probity in such manners would have been a monster. In 1766 Garrick brought out an adaptation of the play, under the title of ‘The Country Girl,’ which is still acted occasionally; but, as Genest says (v. 116), in making it decent he made it insipid. Another adaptation, by John Lee, was published in 1765.

Wycherley was indebted to Molière's ‘L'École des Femmes’ for his idea of Pinchwife, the jealous husband who endeavours to keep his young and ignorant wife from general society for fear she should be unfaithful to him; but there are not many resemblances between the story of Mrs. Pinchwife and that of Agnes. As Taine observes, ‘if Wycherley borrows a character anywhere, it is only to do it violence, or degrade it to the level of his own characters.’ Wycherley has also borrowed some incidents from Molière's ‘L'École des Maris’ (, Wycherley's Leben und dramatische Werke). The play is certainly full of life, and, as Thomas Moore says (Memoirs, 1853, ii. 269), of ‘the very esprit du diable.’

‘The Plain Dealer,’ Wycherley's fourth and last play, was produced by the king's company at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, probably early in 1674. It cannot have been later than April, because in the ‘Apology’ prefixed to his ‘State of Innocence,’ which was registered at Stationers' Hall on 17 April 1674, Dryden wrote the following eulogy of Wycherley: ‘The author of “The Plain Dealer,” whom I am proud to call my friend, has obliged all honest and virtuous men by one of the most bold, most general, and most useful satires which has ever been presented on the English theatre.’ One scene in the second act, at any rate, based on a passage in Molière's ‘Critique de l'École des Femmes,’ which contains a candid criticism of the indecency of the ‘Country Wife,’ cannot have been written before 1672 or 1673. The ‘Plain Dealer’ was printed in 1677, having been licensed by Roger L'Estrange on 9 Jan. 1676[–7]. Wycherley was indebted to Molière's ‘Le Misanthrope’ for the general idea of his plot, and for certain scenes in particular; but he has greatly elaborated upon Molière, and the whole tone of the play is different. There is but little in common between the sincere and upright Alceste, the misanthrope, and the ‘honest surly’ sea-captain, Manly, who behaves so brutally at the close; and there is still less between the coquettish lady, Célimène, and the vicious and odious Olivia. Voltaire—who afterwards bowdlerised the ‘Plain Dealer’ in his ‘La Prude’—gives some indication of the contrast between the kindly humour of Molière and the often brutal satire of Wycherley, when he says, ‘All Wycherley's strokes are stronger and bolder than those of our “Misanthrope,” but then they are less delicate, and the rules of decorum are not so well observed in this play’ (Letters concerning the English Nation, 1733).

The coarseness of Wycherley's touch