TERM PAPER
Akaash Kumar Singh Massey
Professor. Jaideep Pandey
British Literature: 18 Century
8th March, 2017
Restoration Comedy as a genre and the Restoration Period.
The time period between 1660 and 1700 is known as the age of Dryden or the Restoration Period. This period brought social and economic changes in the lives of the people of England . The new Kingship replaced the Commonwealth , and drastic changes were witnessed in the field of Literature, which in numerous ways can be interpreted as the mirror of the society . The rigid methods of the Puritans were replaced by open and broad thoughts after the restoration of Charles II . Theatres which had been closed down were reopened and the actors were not restricted to the strict Puritan …show more content…
The first such work of the Restoration Age was Wild Gallant which was written by John Dryden, and proved to be a disaster because in this new genre, Dryden did not take into consideration the dramatic theories ,instead he was dependent on his own notion of imagination and thought which was not appreciated by the audience in the beginning. But with time as playwrights gained experience, their works also gained momentum and the audiences’ likability. Newspapers and other reading materials which were only available for the upper middle classes were now accessible even to the common masses, thus promoting literature , dramatics and journalism. Even though the majority of the plays were performed for the people belonging to the upper middle classes ,yet there was some sought of motivation for the common masses as the dramas were more comprehensible to them compared to the journals and other published …show more content…
The battle of the sexes and wits is an important characteristic of Mirabell and Millamant’s love story , but greed intervenes between the two and everything just becomes a bit more chaotic . The chaos which is portrayed by Congreve is very different from that of Wycherley’s and other dramatists’ works as it includes greed , confusion, deception and contracts which make the play more complicated and entertaining at the same time. Through this play Congreve has tried to portray to the mass audiences the reality of the society, where deception, forgery and greed hold a massive place in most people’s lives and how that is in reality the way of the
Akaash Kumar Singh Massey
Professor. Jaideep Pandey
British Literature: 18 Century
8th March, 2017
Restoration Comedy as a genre and the Restoration Period.
The time period between 1660 and 1700 is known as the age of Dryden or the Restoration Period. This period brought social and economic changes in the lives of the people of England . The new Kingship replaced the Commonwealth , and drastic changes were witnessed in the field of Literature, which in numerous ways can be interpreted as the mirror of the society . The rigid methods of the Puritans were replaced by open and broad thoughts after the restoration of Charles II . Theatres which had been closed down were reopened and the actors were not restricted to the strict Puritan …show more content…
The first such work of the Restoration Age was Wild Gallant which was written by John Dryden, and proved to be a disaster because in this new genre, Dryden did not take into consideration the dramatic theories ,instead he was dependent on his own notion of imagination and thought which was not appreciated by the audience in the beginning. But with time as playwrights gained experience, their works also gained momentum and the audiences’ likability. Newspapers and other reading materials which were only available for the upper middle classes were now accessible even to the common masses, thus promoting literature , dramatics and journalism. Even though the majority of the plays were performed for the people belonging to the upper middle classes ,yet there was some sought of motivation for the common masses as the dramas were more comprehensible to them compared to the journals and other published …show more content…
The battle of the sexes and wits is an important characteristic of Mirabell and Millamant’s love story , but greed intervenes between the two and everything just becomes a bit more chaotic . The chaos which is portrayed by Congreve is very different from that of Wycherley’s and other dramatists’ works as it includes greed , confusion, deception and contracts which make the play more complicated and entertaining at the same time. Through this play Congreve has tried to portray to the mass audiences the reality of the society, where deception, forgery and greed hold a massive place in most people’s lives and how that is in reality the way of the