Restoration Comedy, 1660-1720 |
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Common terms and phrases
Alceste Amphitryon audience beauty Belinda Brisk Brome characters charming Cibber Cockwood comedy of humours comedy of manners comic common sense Congreve Congreve's Country Wife court Courtal critical comedy dear delight Doralice Dorimant Dryden Elizabethan English Etherege face Farquhar follies fools French gallant Gatty give hate honour Horner husband jealous Jonson Lady F Lady Fid laugh laughter Le Misanthrope Leigh Hunt living Lord Love for Love Loveit lover Madam Manly marriage married Medley Melantha Millamant Mirabell mistress Molière moral nature never Olivia Palamede passage passions period Plain Dealer play pleasure plot poet Prue realism Restoration comedy Rhodophil ridicule Rochester satire scene Shadwell Sir Fopling Flutter Sir Joslin Sir Rowland society speak stage sure tell thing thou thought tion touch tragedy Vanbrugh whole Widow woman women write wrote Wycherley Wycherley's
Popular passages
Page 144 - ... familiar — I shall never bear that — good Mirabell, don't let us be familiar or fond, nor kiss before folks, like my Lady Fadler and Sir Francis: nor go...
Page 33 - As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour.
Page 145 - I'm out of humour, without giving a reason; to have my closet inviolate; to be sole empress of my tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave; and lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.
Page 144 - Sententious Mirabell! Prithee, don't look with that violent and inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in an old tapestry hanging.
Page 16 - Peace, peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep?
Page 144 - Sunday in a new chariot, to provoke eyes and whispers; and then never to be seen there together again; as if we were proud of one another the first week, and ashamed of one another ever after. Let us never visit together, nor go to a play together, but let us be very strange and well-bred; let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while; and as well bred as if we were not married at all.
Page 154 - O ay, letters - I had letters - I am persecuted with letters - I hate letters - nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has 'em, one does not know why. - They serve one to pin up one's hair. Wit. Is that the way? Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters ; I find I must keep copies. Milla. Only with those in verse, Mr Witwoud. I never pin up my hair with prose.
Page 148 - Rowland will not fail to come ? or will he not fail when he does come ? Will he be importunate, Foible, and push ? For if he should not be importunate, I shall never break decorums : — I shall die with confusion, if I am forced to advance. — Oh no, I can never advance ! — I shall swoon if he should expect advances. No, I hope sir Rowland is better bred than to put a lady to the necessity of breaking her forms.
Page 57 - And splay-foot verse, remain'd, and will remain. Late, very late, correctness grew our care, When the tir'd Nation breath'd from civil war. Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire, Show'd us that France had something to admire. Not but the Tragic spirit was our own, And full in Shakespear, fair in Otway shone: But Otway fail'd to polish or refine, And fluent Shakespear scarce effac'da line.
Page 22 - I could never connect those sports of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to imitation in real life. They are a world of themselves almost as much as fairyland.