George Etherege

She wou'd if she cou'd. The man of mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter. Textual notes. Readings of the first quartos. General notes

The Dramatic Works of Sir George Etherege

A Comedy as it is Acted at the Theater-Royal by Their Majesties Servants

She Wou'd If She Cou'd

The Dramatic Works of Sir George Etherege: She wou'd if she cou'd. The man of mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter. Textual notes. Readings of the first quartos. General notes

A Comedy Acted at His Highness the Duke of York's Theatre

The Man of Mode. A Comedy ... To which is Prefixed, the Life of the Author

A Comedy

She Wou'd, If She Cou'd

She Wou'd if she Cou'd, a comedy in five acts and in prose

A Comedy Acted at His Highnesse the Duke of York's Theatre

The Man of Mode, Or, Sir Fopling Flutter

The Works: Containing His Plays and Poems

Containing His Plays and Poems

The Works of Sir George Etherege

Containing She Would If She Could, The Comical Revenge, Or, Love in a Tub. The Man of Mode, Or, Sir Fopling Flutter

The comical revenge; or, Love in a tub [a comedy, by sir G. Etherege].

Or, Love in a Tub

The Comical Revenge

The Comical Revenge; Or Love in a Tub, Etc

Sir George Etherege

Even among the richly talented generation who wrote for the stage during the Restoration, Etherege was, from the start, considered to be a very special kind of innovator. His first play, The Comical Revenge (1664), with its partisan portrait of the Cavalier gentry during the last years of the Revolution and its bravura interweaving of four separate plots, deftly caught an early Restoration mood and enjoyed great popularity. Its successor, She Would if She Could (1668), marks a deliberate change in direction. Audiences, expecting a sequel more akin to The Comical Revenge, were at first faltering in their response, but by 1671 Thomas Shadwell was confidently calling it the best comedy to have been written since the return of the king in 1660. Etherege's masterpiece, however, is his last play, The Man of Mode (1676), which in clarity of vision and freshness of detail surpasses both its predecessors and in the early years of the eighteenth century became a central text in the debate about the worth of Restoration comedy. This edition includes annotated texts of all three plays, prefaced by an account of Etherege's life and the reception of his plays on the stage and in criticism.

The Plays of George Etherege

William Congreve

William Wycherley

After the restoration of King Charles II to the British throne in 1660, dramatists experienced new freedom in an age that broke from the strict morality of puritan rule and in which elegance and wit became the chief virtues. Irreverent, licentious and cynical, the three plays collected here hold up a mirror to this dazzling era and satirize the gulf between appearances and reality. In Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676), the womanizing Dorimant meets his match when he falls in love with the unpretentious Harriet, while Wycherley's The Country Wife (c. 1675) depicts the rakish Horner who fakes impotence to fool trusting husbands into giving him easy access to their wives. And in Congreve's Love for Love (1695), the extravagant Valentine can only win his beloved Angelica if he loses his inheritance.

Three Restoration Comedies

George Etherege

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