William Wycherley in 1675.

William Wycherley (c. 1640 - January 1, 1716) was an English dramatist of the Restoration period. William Wycherley, cirka 1675, by Peter Cross. ... Events December 1 - Portugal regains its independence from Spain and João IV of Portugal becomes king. ... January 1 is the first day of the calendar year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. ... // Events August 5 - In the Battle of Peterwardein 40. ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location within the British Isles Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population – Total (mid-2004) – Total (2001 Census) – Density Ranked 1st UK... A dramatist is an author of dramatic compositions, usually plays. ... King Charles II The English Restoration or simply Restoration was an episode in the history of Great Britain beginning in 1660 when the monarchy was restored under King Charles II after the English Civil War. ...

He was born at Clive, near Shrewsbury, where his family was settled on a moderate estate of about £600 a year. Like Vanbrugh, Wycherley spent his early years in France, where he was sent, at fifteen, to be educated in the heart of the "precious" circle on the banks of the Charente. Wycherley's friend, Major Pack, says that he "improved, with the greatest refinements", the "extraordinary talents" for which he was "obliged to nature". Although the harmless affectations of the circle of Madame de Montausier, formerly Madame de Rambouillet, are not chargeable with the "refinements" of Wycherley's comedies — comedies which caused even his great admirer Voltaire to say afterwards of them, "Il semble que les Anglais prennent trop de liberté et que les Françaises n'en prennent pas assez" (It seems that the English take too much liberty and the French don't take enough) — they seem to have been much more potent in regard to the "refinements" of Wycherley's religion. Map sources for Shrewsbury at grid reference SJ4912 Porthill Bridge crossing the Severn at Shrewsbury Shrewsburys Old Market Hall and The Square Market Street, behind the Old Market Hall, with the Music Hall on the left Shrewsbury (pronounced either /ˈʃɹuːzbɹiː/ or /ˈʃɹəʊzbɹiː/) is a town of... Sir John Vanbrugh in Godfrey Knellers Kit-cat portrait, considered one of Knellers finest portraits. ... Charente is a département in central France named after the Charente River. ... Comedy is the use of humor in the form of theater, where it simply referred to a play with a happy ending, in contrast to a tragedy. ... The last of Voltaires statues by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1781). ...

While in France Wycherley converted to Roman Catholicism. He returned to England shortly before the restoration of King Charles II, and lived at Queen's College, Oxford where Thomas Barlow was provost. Under Barlow's influence, Wycherley returned to the Church of England. Wycherley only lived (according to Wood) in the provost's lodgings, being entered in the public library under the title of "Philosophiae Studiosus" in July 1660. And he does not seem to have matriculated or taken a degree. The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... King Charles II The English Restoration or simply Restoration was an episode in the history of Great Britain beginning in 1660 when the monarchy was restored under King Charles II after the English Civil War. ... Charles II (29 May 1630–6 February 1685) was the King of England, King of Scots, and King of Ireland from 30 January 1649 (retrospectively de jure) or 29 May 1660 (de facto) until his death. ... College name The Queens College Named after Queen Philippa of Hainault Established 1341 Sister College Pembroke College Provost Sir Alan Budd JCR President Sushrut Yalamanchili Undergraduates 304 Graduates 133 Homepage Boatclub The Queens College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United... Thomas Barlow (1607 - 1691) was a British bishop of Lincoln often considered one of the candidates for being the Vicar of Bray. ... The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, and acts as the mother and senior branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion, as well as a founding member of the Porvoo Communion. ...

Macaulay hints that Wycherley's turning back to Roman Catholicism once more had something to do with the patronage and unwonted liberality of the future James II. As a professional fine gentleman, at a period when, as the genial Major Pack says, "the amours of Britain would furnish as diverting memoirs, if well related, as those of France published by Rabutin, or those of Nero's court writ by Petronius", Wycherley was obliged to be a loose liver. However, his nickname of "Manly Wycherley" seems to have been earned by his straightforward attitude to life. Quotes His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. ... James II of England and VII of Scotland ( 14 October 1633–16 September 1701 ) became King of England, King of Scots, and King of Ireland from 6 February 1685. ... Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy (April 13, 1618 - April 9, 1693), commonly known as Bussy-Rabutin, was a French memoir-writer. ... A statue of Nero Nero Claudius Cæsar Augustus Germanicus (December 15, 37 AD–June 9, 68 AD), born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, also called Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus, was the fifth and last Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. ... This article is about the Roman author Petronius. ...

When, on leaving Oxford, he took up residence at the Inner Temple, where he had been entered in 1659, Wycherley gave little attention to the study of law. Pleasure and the stage were his only interests, his play, Love in a Wood, being produced early in 1671 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It was published the next year. Wycherley told Pope "over and over", till Pope believed him, that he wrote it the year before he went to Oxford. Wycherley's boast of having written such scenes as a nineteen-year-old is probably untrue. Macaulay points to the allusions in the play to gentlemen's periwigs, to guineas, to the vests which Charles ordered to be worn at court, to the Great Fire of London, etc, as showing that the comedy could not have been written the year before the author went to Oxford. However, even if the play had been written in that year, and delayed in its production till 1672, it is exactly this kind of allusion to recent events which any dramatist with an eye to freshness of colour would be certain to weave into his dialogue. However, if we were asked to indicate the finest touch in all Wycherley, we should very likely select a speech in the third scene of the third act of this very play, where the vain, foolish and boastful rake Dapperwit, having taken his friend to see his mistress for the express purpose of advertising his lordship over her, is coolly denied by her and insolently repulsed. "I think", says Dapperwit, "women take inconstancy from me worse than from any man breathing." The Inner Temple is one of the four Inns of Court around the Royal Courts of Justice in London, England, to which barristers belong and where they are called to the bar. ... Drury Lane is a street in the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. ... This article needs cleanup. ... London, as it appeared from Bankside, Southwark, During the Great Fire — Derived from a Print of the Period by Visscher The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the City of London from September 2 to September 5, 1666, and resulted more or less in the...

That the writer of a play far more daring than Etheredge's She Would if She Could — and far more brilliant too — should at once become the talk of the court was inevitable; equally inevitable was it that the author of the song at the end of the first act, in praise of harlots and their offspring, should attract the attention of the king's mistress, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland. Possibly Wycherley intended this famous song as a glorification of Her Grace and her profession, for he seems to have been more delighted than surprised when, as he passed in his coach through Pall Mall, he heard her address him from her coach window as a "rascal" and a "villain", and the son of a woman such as that mentioned in the song. His answer was perfect: "Madam, you have been pleased to bestow a title on me which belongs only to the fortunate." Seeing that she received the compliment in the spirit in which it was meant, he lost no time in calling upon her, and was from that moment the recipient of those "favours" to which he alludes with pride in the dedication of the play to her. Voltaire's story (in his Letters on the English Nation) that Her Grace used to go to Wycherley's chambers in the Temple disguised as a country wench, in a straw hat, with pattens on and a basket in her hand, may be apocryphal, for disguise was superfluous in her case, but it shows how general was the opinion that, under such patronage as this, Wycherley's fortune as poet and dramatist was now made. King Charles, who had determined to bring up his son, the Duke of Richmond, like a prince, sought as his tutor a man as qualified as Wycherley to impart a "princely education", and it seems clear that, if not for Wycherley's marriage, the education of the young man would actually have been entrusted to him as a reward for having written Love in a Wood. Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine Barbara Villiers (November 1640 - October 9, 1709), Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the most notorious of Charles IIs mistresses. ... Pall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London. ... The last of Voltaires statues by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1781). ...

Whether Wycherley's experiences as a naval officer, which he alludes to in his lines "On a Sea Fight which the Author was in betwixt the English and the Dutch", occurred before or after the production of Love in a Wood is a point upon which opinions differ, but probably took place not only after the production of Love in a Wood but after the production of The Gentleman Dancing Master, in 1673. Macaulay claims that he went to sea simply because it was the "polite" thing to do so — because, as he says in the epilogue to The Gentleman Dancing Master, "all gentlemen must pack to sea". This second comedy was published in 1673, but was probably acted late in 1671. In The Gentleman Dancing Master the mingling of discordant elements destroys a play that would never in any circumstances have been strong.

It is, however, on his two last comedies — The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer — that Wycherley's fame rests. The Country Wife, produced in 1672 or 1673 and published in 1675, is full of wit, ingenuity, high spirits and conventional humour. William Wycherley in 1675. ... The Plain Dealer is a Restoration comedy by William Wycherley, first performed on 11 December 1676. ...

In all literatures — ancient and modern — an infinite wealth of material has been wasted upon subjects that are unworthy, or else incapable, of artistic realization; and yet Wycherley's case is, in our literature at least, without a parallel. Perhaps he felt that the colossal depravity of intrigue in which the English comedians indulged needs to be net only warmed by a superabundance of humour but softened by the playful mockery of farce before a dramatic circle such as that of the Restoration drama can be really brought within human sympathy. Plutarch's impeachment of Aristophanes, which affirms that the master of the old comedy wrote less for honest men than for men sunk in baseness and debauchery, was no doubt unjust to the Greek poet, one side of whose humour, and one alone, could thus be impeached. But does it not touch all sides of a comedy like Wycherley's — a comedy which strikes at the very root of the social compact upon which civilization is built? As to comparing such a comedy as that of the Restoration with the comedy of the Elizabethans, Jeremy Collier did but a poor service to the cause he undertook to advocate when he set the occasional coarseness of Shakespeare alongside the wickedness of Congreve and Vanbrugh. And yet, ever since Macaulay's essay, it has been the fashion to speak of Collier's attack as being levelled against the immorality of the "Restoration dramatists". It is nothing of the kind. It is (as was pointed out so long ago as 1699 by Dr Drake in his little-known vigorous reply to Collier) an attack upon the English drama generally, with a special reference to the case of Shakespeare. While dwelling upon that noxious and highly immoral play Hamlet, Collier actually leaves unscathed the author of The Country Wife, but fastens on Congreve and Vanbrugh, whose plays — profligate enough in all conscience — seem almost decent beside a comedy whose incredible vis matrix is "the modish distemper". Plutarch Mestrius Plutarchus (c. ... Bust of Aristophanes Aristophanes (c. ... Jeremy Collier (1650-1726) was an English bishop. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... This article is about a writer. ... The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare and one of his best-known and most oft-quoted plays. ...

Wycherley's efforts to bring to Buckingham's notice the case of Samuel Butler shows that the writer of even such heartless plays as The Country Wife may have generous impulses, while his defence of Buckingham, when the duke in his turn fell into trouble, show that the inventor of so shameless a fraud as that which forms the pivot of The Plain Dealer may in actual life possess that passion for fair play which is believed to be a specially English quality. But among the "ninety-nine" religions with which Voltaire accredited England there is one whose permanency has never been shaken — the worship of gentility. To this Wycherley remained as faithful to the day of his death as Congreve himself. And, if his relations to that "other world beyond this", which the Puritans had adopted, were liable to change with his environments, it was because that "other world" was really out of fashion altogether. George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (January 10, 1628 - April 16, 1687), English statesman, son of the 1st Duke of the second creation (1623) of that title. ... Samuel Butler Samuel Butler (4 December 1612–18 June 1680) was born in Strensham, Worcestershire and baptised 14 February 1613. ... William Wycherley in 1675. ... The Puritans were members of a group of radical Protestants which developed in England after the Reformation. ...

It was after the success of The Plain Dealer that the turning point came in Wycherley's career. The great dream of all the men about town in Charles's time, as Wycherley's plays all show, was to marry a widow, young and handsome, a peer's daughter if possible — but in any event rich, and spend her money upon wine and women. While talking to a friend in a bookseller's shop at Tunbridge, Wycherley heard The Plain Dealer asked for by a lady who, in the person of the countess of Drogheda, answered all the requirements. An introduction ensued, then love-making, then marriage — a secret marriage, probably in 1680, for, fearing to lose the king's patronage and the income therefrom, Wycherley still thought it politic to pass as a bachelor. Events First Portuguese governor was appointed to Macau The Swedish city Karlskrona was founded as the Royal Swedish Navy relocated there. ...

He had not seen enough of life to learn that in the long run nothing is politic but "straightforwardness". Whether because his countenance wore a pensive and subdued expression, suggestive of a poet who had married a dowager countess and awakened to the situation, or whether because treacherous confidants divulged his secret, does not appear, but the news of his marriage oozed out — it reached the royal ears, and deeply wounded the father anxious about the education of his son. Wycherley lost the appointment that was so nearly within his grasp — lost indeed the royal favour for ever. He never had an opportunity of regaining it, for the countess seems to have really loved him, and Love in a Wood had proclaimed the writer to be the kind of husband whose virtue prospers best when closely guarded at the domestic hearth. Wherever he went the countess followed trim, and when she did allow him to meet his boon companions it was in a tavern in Bow Street opposite to his own house, and even there under certain protective conditions. In summer or in winter he was obliged to sit with the window open and the blinds up, so that his wife might see that the party included no member of a sex for which her husband's plays had advertised his partiality. Bow Street is a thoroughfare in Covent Garden, Westminster London. ...

She died, however, in the year after her marriage and left him the whole of her fortune. But the title to the property was disputed; the costs of the litigation were heavy — so heavy that his father was unable (or else he was unwilling) to come to his aid; and the result of his marrying the rich, beautiful and titled widow was that the poet was thrown into the Fleet prison. There he remained for seven years, being finally released by the liberality of James II. James had been so much gratified by seeing The Plain Dealer acted that, finding a parallel between Manly's "manliness" and his own, such as no spectator had before discovered, he paid off Wycherley's execution creditor and settled on him a pension of £200 a year. James II of England and VII of Scotland ( 14 October 1633–16 September 1701 ) became King of England, King of Scots, and King of Ireland from 6 February 1685. ...

Other debts still troubled Wycherley, however, and he never was released from his embarrassments, not even after succeeding to a life estate in the family property. In coming to Wycherley's death, we come to the worst allegation that has ever been made against him as a man and as a gentleman. At the age of seventy-five he married a young girl, and is said to have done so in order to spite his nephew, the next in succession, knowing that he himself must shortly die and that the jointure would impoverish the estate.

Wycherley wrote verses, and, when quite an old man, prepared them for the press by the aid of Alexander Pope, then not much more than a boy. But, notwithstanding all Pope's tinkering, they remain contemptible. Pope's published correspondence with the dramatist was probably edited by him with a view to giving an impression of his own precocity. The friendship between the two cooled, according to Pope's account, because Wycherley took offence at the numerous corrections on his verses. It seems more likely that Wycherley discovered that Pope, while still professing friendship and admiration, satirized his friend in the Essay on Criticism. Wycherley died on the 1st of January 1716, and was buried in the vault of the church in Covent Garden. Alexander Pope, an English poet best known for his Essay on Criticism and Rape of the Lock Pope, circa 1727. ... Covent Garden is a district in central London and within the easterly bounds of the City of Westminster. ...

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. (Redirected from 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica) The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ...

William Wycherly may have coined the expression "nincompoop" in one of his plays. Nincompoop is a term for a person who publicly displays his ignorance. ...

The Pearl Theatre Company presents the American Professional Premiere of Wycherley's often-ignored classic, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, in NYC from Nov 10 - Dec 18, 2005.