* Restoration comedy had a vogue of approximately 50 years from 1668 to the 1710’s. Built around a central group of young men and women, Patrick Morrah said ‘it’s essential ingredients are wit, urbanity and sophistication. The scene is almost invariably London; it’s streets, parks and coffee-houses. The themes are, almost exclusively, love, sexual intrigue and cuckoldry.’ The Restoration comedy also tends to feature recurring types – the graceful young seducer, the faithless wife, the deceived husband and a charming young heroine who is bestowed in the end onto the seducer.
* Restoration society had an influence on the characters and content of the Restoration comedies: Charles II ascended to the throne in 1660 at the age of 30 and reigned until his death in 1685. Charles himself was considered a ‘Seducer’ as he was a successful and skilled pursuer of women and he had a string of mistresses throughout his reign. In 1662, two licensed theatres were opened and for the first time professional actresses were allowed on the stage. Morrah claims that the Restoration wits and the London theatrical scene, revolved around these beautiful ladies. Many became mistresses of playwrights. In these various ways it is shown that the relationship between the Restoration court and the theatre was an intimate one and thus is reflected in the genre of Restoration comedy.
* Some of the recurrent themes of Restoration comedy can be seen from the audience composition: Pursuit of love and pleasure, cynical manipulation of others, and condemnation of marriage. The playwrights wanted to please their audiences and the court social set supported rather different values than the majority of the British population; thus they are reflected in the plays.
* In general, the Restoration was a time of both political and social uncertainty and transformation. The rise of a merchant middle-class and its aspirations of social mobility also threatened social hierarchies. The bourgeois values of personal acquisition, private judgement and subjective self-assessment began to filter into society and the literature of the period. Individual self-expression became an increasing popular value among educated men and women. The Restoration comedies of manner both dealt with many of these new issues yet Wilkinson says that ‘the search for novelty, the ready resort to laughter, the conscious reducing of the significance of traditional codes’ also helped the audience to evade them.
* One of the features unique to Restoration comedy is the figure of the seducer as a romantic hero. Birdsall points out that the rake-hero is a descendant of earlier comedic male characters who were rogues, shrewd, double-dealing rascals dedicated to the cause of their own freedom and prosperity. The rake-hero exhibits a number of attitudes and characteristics that can be detected in Horner. The dominant plot is set in motion through his experiment: pretending impotence in order to discover which ladies of his acquaintance like sex and are willing to cuckold their husbands by having sex with him. The character of the rake-hero is a product of Restoration society. Taking their clue from the activities and ideas that prevailed in the Restoration court, the Restoration playwrights fashioned a character type whom could be successful in an uncertain society by outwitting others without being hampered by an outmoded morality.
* The heroines of the plays also mark the times with regard to the changing attitudes about proper female behaviour and the nature of women in general. Like her rake counterpart, each heroine is to a certain extent frank about her sexual needs and desires. The female characters seem to reflect an effort by women in Restoration society to both step up from the moral gutter and down from the pedestal.
* ‘The Country Wife’, ‘The Rover’ and ‘The Wives’ Excuse’ collectively share a number of these themes, attributes and character types.
