In comedy, during the first part of the period, stand Sir George
Etherege and William Wycherley.
Etherege, whose husband you found so easy when the police and everyone had given him up for dead.
At Rome its masters were Catullus and Martial; in England, Suckling, Lovelace,
Etherege, Herrick, Landor, Praed, Thackeray" ("Vers de Societe," Manchester Times, May 28, 1870, p.
The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter, George
Etherege; dir: Christopher Marino.
The discussion also makes me want to return to
Etherege's Man of Mode to think about the staging and the role of Medley as satirist in that play's plot.
The OED's second instance is taken from Sir George
Etherege's She wou'd if she cou'd (1668), where it is applied three times to the disreputable Rakehell, once in the cast list and twice by other characters, most interestingly by Sir Joslin when introducing Rakehell to Sir Oliver: "Let me commend this ingenious Gentleman to your Aquaintance; he is a Knight of Industry" ([1688] 1888, 173).
His comic villainous roles included Cheatly in Thomas Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia (1688), and in George
Etherege's The Comical Revenge (1664) he played Wheadle, the gamester.
(2) Norman Holland, The First Modern Comedies: The Significance of
Etherege, Wycherley and Congreve (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1959), 236.
(30) Born in Somerset in ca 1524, he worked his way through the university system at Oxford, studying at Corpus Christi under the composer and Greek scholar George
Etherege, and supplicating for his BA in 1544.
Dorimant in
Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676) has been taken by critics as everything from a devil-figure to a much-to-be-admired libertine rake hero.
He mentions Castiglione's The Courtier as perhaps a singular anticipation of the cool, ignoring or ignorant of Restoration Comedy heroes of
Etherege and Congreve or Algernon Moncrieff or any number of characters, real and fictional, who form the dandy tradition, which the really hip continued in odd ways.
More rarely is it mentioned that these complaints occur in "
Etherege," the second of the three drafts on the American Claimant, and in "
Etherege" only--there is nothing equivalent in either "Grimshawe" or the two "Septimius" manuscripts.