Reading Restoration Wit

The idea

Restoration wit works by balance and turn, so read for both. First, find the antithesis: a line or speech often sets two terms against each other, and the point lies in the contrast. In The Way of the World, Fainall says the coldness of a losing gamester lessens the pleasure of the winner, an antithesis that also describes love. Second, catch the double meaning, because comic dialogue says one thing to the listener on stage and another to the audience. Third, ask whom the wit exposes: in a comedy of manners, the target is usually affectation, hypocrisy or greed, the fop's vanity or the jealous husband's folly. Fourth, notice the form: in verse satire, Dryden's closed couplets put the sting in the rhyme at the end of the second line. Fifth, name the tone: urbane, cynical or mocking. Then decide what the passage asks you to laugh at.