The Restoration

Unit nine ended on Milton, a Commonwealth man whose epic is a Restoration publication. This unit opens that Restoration. Its governing idea is that the age runs on wit, and that a question about a witty line usually asks what the line exposes: affectation, hypocrisy, greed, a dull poet or a living politician. We move in three steps: the king's return and Dryden, the couplet, the mock-heroic and the critic; then the stage, Behn, the comedy of manners and its rakes and fops; and then the other voices, Pepys, Rochester, Bunyan and the women who wrote after sixteen sixty, before two procedures for reading wit and matching authors to works.

We begin in sixteen sixty, with a king's return, the theatres reopened, and Dryden's couplet.

First, where the period sits on the exam.

ENL 0901 The Restoration and Eighteenth Century on This Exam

The Restoration and eighteenth century carry ten percent of the questions, from Charles the Second's return in sixteen sixty to the end of the seventeen hundreds. This course gives the period two units: the Restoration, then the eighteenth century of Swift, Pope and Johnson. Ten percent; two units. Milton published here but belongs earlier.

The king brought back the stage.

ENL 0902 1660: The Return of the King and the Theatres

In sixteen sixty Charles the Second returned from exile. One of his first moves was to reopen the theatres, closed for eighteen years. For the first time, women acted on the English stage, and the first professional actresses drew crowds; Pepys records watching them. A king, the playhouses, the first actresses. Before sixteen sixty, boys played women's parts.

Dryden's form was the rhymed pair.

ENL 0903 John Dryden and the Heroic Couplet

John Dryden so dominated Restoration letters that the period is called the Age of Dryden. He was England's first Poet Laureate and made the heroic couplet, rhyming iambic pentameter pairs, closed and self-contained, a standard English form for satire, plays and translation. Rhymed pentameter pairs, closed and balanced. A closed couplet completes its sense in two lines.

Dryden crowned a dull poet.

ENL 0904 "Mac Flecknoe"

"Mac Flecknoe," written about sixteen seventy-eight and published in sixteen eighty-two, is Dryden's mock-heroic satire on the playwright Thomas Shadwell. It crowns Shadwell heir to a kingdom of poetic dullness, succeeding the poor poet Richard Flecknoe, in the elevated style of epic. Epic grandeur crowning a dull poet. Mock-heroic uses high style for low subjects.

He also allegorized politics.

ENL 0905 Absalom and Achitophel

Absalom and Achitophel, of sixteen eighty-one, is a satire in heroic couplets that retells the Bible's rebellion against King David as an allegory of the Exclusion Crisis: Charles the Second is David, the Duke of Monmouth is Absalom, and the Earl of Shaftesbury is Achitophel. Biblical names for living politicians. Map each biblical name to its original.

Dryden defended his own practice.

ENL 0906 Dryden as Critic

Dryden is considered a father of the modern essay. His Of Dramatick Poesie, of sixteen sixty-eight, is a dialogue in which four speakers debate drama, Dryden himself as Neander. He wrote that "the true end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction." A critical dialogue; satire as correction. Dryden defended his own practice in prefaces.

Now the London of the stage: a diarist's private record, a woman who wrote for her living, and the comedy of manners.

One man recorded the age in shorthand.

ENL 0907 Samuel Pepys's Diary

Samuel Pepys, a naval administrator, kept a diary from January sixteen sixty until sixteen sixty-nine, when failing eyesight stopped him. Written in shorthand, it records the coronation, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London, the theatres and his private life. Shorthand, Fire, Plague, theatres. Pepys did not write it for readers.

Behn wrote a prose history.

ENL 0908 Aphra Behn: Oroonoko

Aphra Behn, called the first commercially successful woman writer in England, published Oroonoko in sixteen eighty-eight. An African prince is betrayed into slavery and shipped to Suriname, where he finds Imoinda, leads a failed revolt, and is executed. It helped develop the novel. A royal slave, a revolt, a death. Oroonoko mixes romance, travelogue and tragedy.

Behn also wrote for the stage.

ENL 0909 Behn the Playwright: The Rover

Behn wrote for the stage after a spy mission for Charles the Second; a debtor's prison stay is told of her, though the evidence is doubtful. Her comedy The Rover, of sixteen seventy-seven, follows English cavaliers in Naples at Carnival, where young women disguise themselves to escape arranged marriages and a convent. Carnival, masks, women choosing. Her plays address women's limited choices.

The age's comedy has stock figures.

ENL 0910 Restoration Comedy of Manners

The comedy of manners uses wit and clever dialogue to satirize the social codes of a fashionable society. Restoration comedy built it on stock types, the rake and the fop, and on actresses. In sixteen ninety-eight Jeremy Collier attacked it as immoral and profane. Wit, the rake, the fop, the drawing room. Manners here means social codes, not politeness.

Congreve's comedy turns on money.

ENL 0911 Congreve's The Way of the World

William Congreve's The Way of the World, of seventeen hundred, epitomized Restoration comedy's wit and urbanity. The lovers Mirabell and Millamant need the blessing of her aunt, Lady Wishfort, to marry with her fortune. Congreve defended comedy as laughing men out of their vices. Witty lovers, a fortune, a disapproving aunt. The plot turns on marriage and money.

Wycherley's comedy is the bawdiest.

ENL 0912 Wycherley and The Country Wife

William Wycherley's The Country Wife, first performed in sixteen seventy-five, was greeted as the bawdiest and wittiest play yet seen on the English stage. The rake Horner pretends impotence to pursue married women, and an inexperienced young country wife discovers London. A rake's trick, a country wife in town. The satire targets hypocrisy and jealousy.

Last, the other voices of the age, and two procedures that turn its wit into answers.

A courtier attacked reason itself.

ENL 0913 Rochester and the Libertine Lyric

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, a courtier of Charles the Second, embodied a rebellion against the Puritans and was as famous for his rakish life as for his poetry. He was best known for A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind. He died at thirty-three. A courtier, a rake, a satirist. Rochester attacks reason's pride, not pleasure.

A jailed preacher wrote an allegory.

ENL 0914 Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress

John Bunyan, a nonconformist preacher, was imprisoned for twelve years after sixteen sixty for refusing to stop preaching. His Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, of sixteen seventy-eight, told as a dream, follows Christian, burdened by sin, from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. A pilgrim, a burden, a road to Heaven. The names are the allegory: places are spiritual states.

Women entered print after sixteen sixty.

ENL 0915 Women Writers After 1660

After sixteen sixty more women published. Katherine Philips, "the Matchless Orinda," wrote on female friendship and became a model for later women writers. Behn wrote for a living, and Virginia Woolf later urged women to "let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn." Orinda, Behn, and Woolf's tribute. Philips and Behn stand for two kinds of authorship.

Here is the method for reading wit.

ENL 0916 Reading Restoration Wit

Restoration wit works by balance and turn. Find the antithesis, two terms set against each other: in The Way of the World, Fainall says the coldness of a losing gamester lessens the winner's pleasure, a line that also describes love. Catch the double meaning, one sense for the listener on stage, another for the audience. Ask whom the wit exposes: affectation, hypocrisy or greed, the fop's vanity or the jealous husband's folly. Notice the form: Dryden's closed couplets put the sting in the second rhyme. Name the tone, urbane, cynical or mocking, and decide what you are asked to laugh at.

Here is the method for matching works to authors.

ENL 0917 Matching Restoration Authors and Works

Sort by genre first. Verse satire: Dryden's Mac Flecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel, and Rochester's Satyr Against Reason and Mankind. Comedy: Wycherley's Country Wife, Congreve's Way of the World, Behn's Rover. Prose: Behn's Oroonoko, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Pepys's Diary. Then use a clue: a biblical name for a living politician points to Dryden, a royal slave to Behn, a pilgrim with a burden to Bunyan, the Fire to Pepys. Last, check the date: Paradise Lost appeared in sixteen sixty-seven but belongs to Milton's earlier formation. And place Behn in two columns, not one.

The capstone gathers what the age changed.

ENL 0918 What the Restoration Changed

The Restoration began in sixteen sixty, when Charles the Second returned and reopened the theatres after eighteen years, and it changed English writing in three ways. The stage returned with women acting for the first time, and comedy turned to fashionable manners, with the rake and the fop; Wycherley's Country Wife was the bawdiest play yet seen, Congreve set Mirabell and Millamant's wit against money, and Jeremy Collier attacked the form as immoral in sixteen ninety-eight. Poetry turned to public argument in the closed couplet: Dryden, the first Poet Laureate, mocked a dull poet, allegorized the Exclusion Crisis and argued that satire corrects vice, while Rochester satirized reason itself. New voices entered print: Behn wrote for a living, The Rover and Oroonoko; Philips wrote on friendship as Orinda; Bunyan, jailed for preaching, wrote The Pilgrim's Progress; and Pepys kept a shorthand diary of the Plague and the Fire. Comedy and satire share wit but not form.

This unit read wit for what it exposes. We saw what returned in sixteen sixty: a king, the playhouses, and the first actresses. We read Dryden's closed couplet, his mock-heroic crowning of a dull poet, and his biblical names for living politicians. We identified the comedy of manners in Congreve, Wycherley and Behn's Rover. We named the age's prose and new voices: Pepys, Oroonoko, Rochester, Bunyan and Orinda. And we read wit by antithesis, double meaning and target, and matched works to authors by genre, clue and date. Unit eleven, The Eighteenth Century, carries the couplet forward.