William Congreve

 William Congreve

        - a Restoration comedy writer

William Congreve was one of the greatest writers of restoration comedy. In his works, comedy of manners reached perfection. He used to reflect upper class life through his writings. He saved immortality from being objectionable by artificial wit. So, there was lack of realism but prose was lucid, concise and pointed.

His works:

Comedies⬇️

" The Old Bachelor"  in 1693,

"The Double Dealer",

"Love for Love",

"The Way of the World"  in 1700

Tragedy⬇️

"The Mourning Bride"

William Congreve was one of the greatest writers of restoration comedy. In his works, comedy of manners reached perfection. He used to reflect upper class life through his writings. He saved immortality from being objectionable by artificial wit. So, there was lack of realism but prose was lucid, concise and pointed.

Restoration comedy in detail

 Restoration comedy

Restoration comedy was being written to mock at aristocratic people. Scholars like to write it for breaking social or moral taboos. It is a kind of comedy known for it's representation of shallowness in upper class behaviour by showing pretentious nature of people during 18th century. Basically, It is satirical in nature in which obsecurity is a dominant factor. 

Restoration comedy faced criticism because people consider it as immoral due to very authentic nature of comedy (showing obscene things) but various scholars defended it by saying that it was the time period when people were unable to write romantic dramas.

Initially, writers from pre commonwealth period  started imitating the plays from Elizabethan era but that romanticism of Elizabethan comedy was missing in new writings.

Comedy was well flourished at that time but the growth was very slower in comparison to heroic plays. It was mostly influenced by Ben Johnson, Beaumont and Fletcher whereas Moliere provided English dramatists with ideas for plots. 

Replacement of emotions by wit , poetry by clear and concise prose was a remarkable feature of this type of comedy.

Jeremy collier provided a view of immortality and preferences of English stage whereas humour is predominantly found in works of Johnson.