"THE PLAIN DEALER"   Term Paper ID:18758 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: (William Wycherley). Examines play as updated English version of Moliere's [The Misanthrope] & critique of Restoration society.... More...

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Paper Abstract: (William Wycherley). Examines play as updated English version of Moliere's [The Misanthrope] & critique of Restoration society. Paper Introduction: The purpose of this research is to examine The Plain Dealer by William Wycherley. The plan of the research will be to set forth the outline of the story, to position the play in the appropriate social and dramatic context, and then to explore meanings that various critics have attributed to it. In this regard, the antecedent of the play, Le Misanthrope (Mis.) by Moliere, will be cited so as to show how The Plain Dealer offers the English version of a story that becomes more than an adaptation--an updating of Moliere's style of social comment on one hand, and a criticism of the Restoration society for which Wycherley wrote on the other. The Plain Dealer charts the efforts of the surly, asocial Captain Manly, betrothed to Olivia and betrayed by her and his best friend Vernish, to not only reclaim the fortune he had Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. the appropriate social anddramatic context and then to explore meanings version of a story that becomes more the efforts of the surly asocial CaptainManly betrothed the betrayal by exposing her has disguisedherself as his page Like Alceste in one of the many lawsuits being pursued by an he is doggedly dour in his rejection of ordinary human Philinte Acaste and Clitandre blithely dissectthe foibles of their How proud youare to be his humble servant II v love sonnet to Celimene In Mis the aristocratic characterstraffic in line of action reflects a France in of the higher social aspirations As gossip is notdiversion but a symptom of deep Charles II in and the Wells WinstonChurchill might be thinking of The Plain Dealer when together these assessments of the social context of of thedark tone of The Plain Dealer marks most change in tonefrom Moliere to Wycherley when he the play but says that the main plot sometimes becomes events over the play the scornful and the mood is fundamentally one humor of the pivotal gossipscene as well as the they are tiresome or full in fashion as the languishing eye the hanging the artificial ugliness of affectation ELIZA we find em much handsomer than they are wrong cousin ELIZA No you hate even to family members about her taste and jewels hegave her she to you lest he should conclude you never would i Plot resolution in The Plain muchcritical controversy For Katherine Rogers for example the the one hand there is the ordinary attitude of Restoration Mingled with this attitude is the discordant view based worldly behavior is despicable Wycherley's inconsistency practicing deception Either level of reality values If Wycherley's intention is to suggest that man some confidence thatWycherley knew what he was doing sure Olivia deserves to be ruined Night and far more bawdy But Manly whocomports himself as romantic wooing for him For suchsneakiness he proving the hero asordid lecher As Rogers puts it in sympathized with him but he never lost his sense character within society as such but of the society is that of plain-dealing Wycherley thus puts Manly's plain-dealing being forced to participate in WidowBlackacre's litigation privileged audience for the playwould doubtless find familiar rewarded with the love of the only sympathetic character onstage from the misguided misanthrope of ActI to the if not suffer at least repent for his moral against trust Yet for my sake approval gladly andsuffer fools and cheats grudgingly To deplore or play Riddled withchicanery though it be in Manly this abstraction no onecould do in real life moral category andmore important as something antithetical Fidelia is theonly one who fits the bill more out of control than his moralsense first to last in absolute control showthat and how of an abstraction thatis higher her moral focusmisses the point acknowledging that Wycherley's onManly's character development then Manly is an inconsistent rewarded For Manlyis not so much a personification of as New York Greenwich-Crown Connely Willard Brawny Wycherley New Wycherley Plays of the Restoration Misanthrope Trans Richard Wilbur New York Harvest-Harcourt Rogers Katharine Y Crowell Weales Gerald Introduction The Complete Plays Richard Introduction The Misanthrope By Moliere New of the research will be to set forth theoutline will be cited so as to criticism of the Restoration society reclaim the fortune he had is in facta young woman of fortune so deeply in bitterly persistent inpursuing his revenge on byreference to Mis In Moliere's play I i His excess of character surfaces once Embrace the man you latelycalled face turns back uponhim when he is summoned at Alceste's summons theconsequences of deadly serious honesty are social scheme One would have time if one are higher in The Plain Dealer where nuance civil war and regicide of affairs andhad more vigour and He accepted double-dealing as a slashingadaptation of Moliere's The Misanthrope lacking the latter play's scene as much harsher in tone Weales Congreve is taken from the comedy ofMoliere Matthews Waith Le Misanthrope suffers from thinness of plot that of of description Mr Wycherley's world gossip scene and much elsebesides in more vicious dark bitter Indeed Olivia and Novel say far OLIVIA Then she bestows as unfortunately of our sex are never more nauseous than when they as well at your house as the profession of picture-drawing I ever knew without flattery OLIVIA thecharacter of Olivia who is not have found out I nauseate it of allthings II I have delivered your jewels to m y husband I rather thanyou'd let me use you'd lose I'm sure toOlivia's Yet it is Manly's character The play is written therefore from two incompatible moral viewpoints make the best of a society that he should try to approach he wants Manly and Fidelia to display their higher natures characters is made to fluctuate nor can satire when faulty of Manly is a mistake But The Plain Dealer by a false hypocritical mistress insists her in the dark is as obvious manipulation of his as he presumes page as if wycherley is intent on creating a comically Wycherley's own attitude toward him vacillatedbetween detachment ahero than in an altogether different the truth of its moralcategories Manly's in the role ofantagonist This explains through his page to achieve it It's literally afraid of Manly Connely But why is the play's best joke Weales revenge against Olivia Thetricking of Olivia is consistent with gets thegirl and his last iii Here speaks no moralidealist but a plain to miss the real dramatic focus which is that anabstraction against which itmust deal Wycherley does in the scheme of conventional morality Manlygets better than he of that rare beingwho is apart forone must also allow that he is entitled what the play is about The action and nor coddles romantic sentiment Manly's melodrama toward what might be called heroic-ironic allegory of whichdeclarations of love and friendship had degenerated to show an attack on a degenerate if decorous society Works CitedCommager Henry Steele ed Churchill's History of the New York Simon and Schuster MacMillan Life and His Works New York Charles Scribner's The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama Ed John G The Outline of History Being a Plain History of Study Drama New York Norton The purpose of this research is to examine The that various critics haveattributed to it In this regard the than anadaptation an updating of Moliere's style of to Olivia and betrayed by her duplicity In this enterprisehe enlists the help in Mis Manly disdains virtually all acquaintance the Widow Blackacre The pattern of ideas in comity He says flatly that absent friends Alceste reminds them that if one ofthe absent His view that to savage another'sreputation is acceptable if lighter calumnies and devilish wordplay for sport Smallwonder which sociallines were rigidly drawn and Wells commentsof the court of Louis XIV It societal malaise Wycherley was writingfor an audience that Glorious Revolution Wells's comment on seventeenth-century English literature is that citing the politicalsituationWilliam of Orange The PlainDealer explain Gassner's comment of the criticism of the play remarks that in its form if not in itsspirit so bitter thatit has tragic overtones Waith end being especially huddled together but is nevertheless testimony of weariness and disillusion with an age grown old and actions that flow from it and from the misanthropy of flaws They go beyond criticizingflaws and suggest that or pouting lip but as the fool is never So cousin I find one may have a collection and like here much uglier and flattery and detraction II i This isn't for society fashion the court marriage Marriage she tells her frames her answer so as to suggest Manly's ill have parted with em tome on any Dealer is largely contingent on theemergence of Manly's character particularly action of ThePlain Dealer and the development of its hero comedy based on cynical observation of on the concept of some ideal world that man in attitude is manifested formally by could be accepted but not both together Draina cannot is capable ofreaching and living according On Rogers's view Manly is hardly theplain-dealer To be sure the comic a craggy stoic acts like a is rewarded with the undying love and fortune a comparison of Wycherley's attitudetoward Manly and Moliere's attitude toward of humorabout him Rogers But Wycherley itself Wycherley's characters are secondary to the idea of showing behavior and not Manly in the role his intense fury for sexual revenge As Connely remarks from the Weales puts a bravely caddish moral idealist of Act V lapse Rogers Manly of course neither repents let no one else confide Intears or oaths in rationalize Manly's behavior on moral develops a life of itsown as it inflict plain dealing on the to prevailing moral culture deserves no less than One may allow that Wycherley's notion of thedetails of is perverted Rather Restoration society alliances between honesty and fidelity which society more decent than is meanness attack on falsity isboth forceful undeservingscoundrel and the play has a fault that cannot a stand-in for plain-dealing justas Fidelia is a York Charles Scribner's Sons Gassner John and Eighteenth Century New York M William Wycherley Twayne's English Authors Series New York of William Wycherley By William York Harvest-Harcourt Wycherley William The Plain Dealer Ed of the story to position the play in show how The PlainDealer offers the English for which Wycherley wrote on theother The Plain Dealer charts entrusted to her before going to warbut also avenge love with him that she Olivia even though he is sidetracked by unwillinginvolvement the character of Alceste is aparadox for in the gossip scene wherein Celimene Eliante a dunce Telling him in a tone sincere and fervent by the court to apologize formally for criticizinga rival's far greater than those ofplayful backbiting This had leisure at all tomake verbal nuance one and subtlety arenot achievements but social operating equipment Here the s through theRestoration of less polish than the French necessary element in a situation ofunexampled perplexity Commager Taken subtletybut possessing a power of its own Gassner The assessment than its counterpart in Mis Matthews also notes the notes the satire of the litigation subplotin The Plain-Dealer suffers by the uneven distribution of is a cruel world the laughter is not silvery but Mis But Wycherley transforms the nastier things about those who are absentthan that on her face all the graces would be beauties adding to their natural deformity at Master Lely's only the difference is there I draw after the life do nobody merely coquettish but so programmaticallydeceptive that she lies i Yet when Manly asks her to return the money dare not ask him for your jewels again to restore'em yourself those trifles of yours ii that has been the source of and deals with two incompatible levels of reality On which is after all not so bad absolute moral standards and consequently that ordinary self-sacrificing love or pain at conduct is measured against shifting scales of isWycherley's mature work and criticism must begin with on ruining her in society To be in ThePlain Dealer as in Twelfth into pimping his word specifically not a stubborncharacter a heroic character and equally intent on and identification Moliere saw good points in Alcesteand at times set of themes The Plain Dealer isnot a study of category whatever his obscure motivations Manly's studied rudeness with strangers hisalmost winsome frustration at tit fortat in The Plain Dealer something the is Manly who from a conventionally social standpoint behavesabominably xix-xx Rogers meanwhile sees without believing the movement Restoration mores but Rogers wantsManly to words happy ending fortune and girl equally secure caution dealer who will withhold moral Manly's plain dealing is the hero of the in his play what he most of all knows deserves his plain dealing as a specifically artlessly atypical of that culture to his point of view Hisplaywrighting craft however is no design of theplay of which Wycherley is from victory is the victory of social criticism manners Rogers has but because of into meaninglessprofessions Rogers If The Plain Dealer's chief focus is then it is the attack not the man that is English-Speaking Peoples Arranged for One Volume Dougald and Howard Mumford Jones The Plain-Dealer by William Sons Moliere Jean Baptiste Poquelin The Gassner and Edward Quinn New York Thomas Life and Mankind vols Garden City Doubleday Wilbur Plain Dealer byWilliam Wycherley The plan antecedent of the play LeMisanthrope Mis by Moliere social comment on one hand and a and his best friend Vernish to not only of Fidelia who he thinks is a young man but ofsociety Unlike Alceste Manly is mercilessly The Plain Dealer can be usefully charted sentiments should never be masked under vaincompliments came in sight you'll at it be done to the other's then that they break into laughter where there was no questioning of one's placein the subordinated substance to style Wells Stakes had undergone enormous political religious andsocial upheaval from the it reflected the less stable and centralized quality of English encountered when he arrived in England from Holland in that The Plain Dealer is a Weales refers to Wycherley's gossip the comedy of Wycherley and of MacMillan and Jones summarizethe shift from Moliere to Wycherley If to this writer's wide observation and vigor cold and dreary The Plain Dealer owes much to the ofthe central character into something far the flawed are responsible for the ills of theuniverse more provoking than when he aims at wit the ill-favoured of all ones acquaintances pictures like and you are the first of honesty it's malice very much personified in rather decentcousin Eliza what a pleasure you breeding andcontempt for her for asking for them other score but the exchange of my honour which as it balances and responds Manly create anunsatisfactorily resolved moral and dramatic tension life that a sensible man should should be more than a selfish animal shifts into execrable blank verse when be fully effective when one's attitude toward the to something like absolute morality then hischaracterization but rather a sexual schemer who embarrassed potential of Olivia'sfalling for Fidelia and groping for churlish stud Thisincludes a direct of an innocentwhom he enlists in debauchery It is Alceste One's reaction toManly is confused because was less interested in creating behavior in aparticular social context and illustrating of the protagonist with the society on Olivia anduse of subterfuge beginning theplaygoers had appeared a bit face on the love match by saying thatthe ending a result of Fidelia's deadly earnestremonstrations against his protracted nor suffers Not only that he love or friend untried V grounds asRogers and Weales do is achieves a series of victories over the society whole of the rest ofthe cast i e society If it gets which is the commitment higher good are idiosyncratic but that is a matter is both out of control andperverse and that is needs might be formed This resolution neither violates of spirit and it is a victory thatreaches past sentimental and highly relevant to Restoration society in be overcome But if theplay is chiefly concerned stand-in for the rewards to which plain-dealing may aspire ed A Treasury of the Theatre vols Holt Rinehart Matthews Brander Moliere His Twayne Waith Eugene M The Plain-Dealer Wycherley Garden City Anchor-Doubleday xi-xx Wells H James L Smith New Mermaids A Benn the appropriate social anddramatic context and then to explore meanings version of a story that becomes more the efforts of the surly asocial CaptainManly betrothed the betrayal by exposing her has disguisedherself as his page Like Alceste in one of the many lawsuits being pursued by an he is doggedly dour in his rejection of ordinary human Philinte Acaste and Clitandre blithely dissectthe foibles of their How proud youare to be his humble servant II v love sonnet to Celimene In Mis the aristocratic characterstraffic in line of action reflects a France in of the higher social aspirations As gossip is notdiversion but a symptom of deep Charles II in and the Wells WinstonChurchill might be thinking of The Plain Dealer when together these assessments of the social context of of thedark tone of The Plain Dealer marks most change in tonefrom Moliere to Wycherley when he the play but says that the main plot sometimes becomes events over the play the scornful and the mood is fundamentally one humor of the pivotal gossipscene as well as the they are tiresome or full in fashion as the languishing eye the hanging the artificial ugliness of affectation ELIZA we find em much handsomer than they are wrong cousin ELIZA No you hate even to family members about her taste and jewels hegave her she to you lest he should conclude you never would i Plot resolution in The Plain muchcritical controversy For Katherine Rogers for example the the one hand there is the ordinary attitude of Restoration Mingled with this attitude is the discordant view based worldly behavior is despicable Wycherley's inconsistency practicing deception Either level of reality values If Wycherley's intention is to suggest that man some confidence thatWycherley knew what he was doing sure Olivia deserves to be ruined Night and far more bawdy But Manly whocomports himself as romantic wooing for him For suchsneakiness he proving the hero asordid lecher As Rogers puts it in sympathized with him but he never lost his sense character within society as such but of the society is that of plain-dealing Wycherley thus puts Manly's plain-dealing being forced to participate in WidowBlackacre's litigation privileged audience for the playwould doubtless find familiar rewarded with the love of the only sympathetic character onstage from the misguided misanthrope of ActI to the if not suffer at least repent for his moral against trust Yet for my sake approval gladly andsuffer fools and cheats grudgingly To deplore or play Riddled withchicanery though it be in Manly this abstraction no onecould do in real life moral category andmore important as something antithetical Fidelia is theonly one who fits the bill more out of control than his moralsense first to last in absolute control showthat and how of an abstraction thatis higher her moral focusmisses the point acknowledging that Wycherley's onManly's character development then Manly is an inconsistent rewarded For Manlyis not so much a personification of as New York Greenwich-Crown Connely Willard Brawny Wycherley New Wycherley Plays of the Restoration Misanthrope Trans Richard Wilbur New York Harvest-Harcourt Rogers Katharine Y Crowell Weales Gerald Introduction The Complete Plays Richard Introduction The Misanthrope By Moliere New of the research will be to set forth theoutline will be cited so as to criticism of the Restoration society reclaim the fortune he had is in facta young woman of fortune so deeply in bitterly persistent inpursuing his revenge on byreference to Mis In Moliere's play I i His excess of character surfaces once Embrace the man you latelycalled face turns back uponhim when he is summoned at Alceste's summons theconsequences of deadly serious honesty are social scheme One would have time if one are higher in The Plain Dealer where nuance civil war and regicide of affairs andhad more vigour and He accepted double-dealing as a slashingadaptation of Moliere's The Misanthrope lacking the latter play's scene as much harsher in tone Weales Congreve is taken from the comedy ofMoliere Matthews Waith Le Misanthrope suffers from thinness of plot that of of description Mr Wycherley's world gossip scene and much elsebesides in more vicious dark bitter Indeed Olivia and Novel say far OLIVIA Then she bestows as unfortunately of our sex are never more nauseous than when they as well at your house as the profession of picture-drawing I ever knew without flattery OLIVIA thecharacter of Olivia who is not have found out I nauseate it of allthings II I have delivered your jewels to m y husband I rather thanyou'd let me use you'd lose I'm sure toOlivia's Yet it is Manly's character The play is written therefore from two incompatible moral viewpoints make the best of a society that he should try to approach he wants Manly and Fidelia to display their higher natures characters is made to fluctuate nor can satire when faulty of Manly is a mistake But The Plain Dealer by a false hypocritical mistress insists her in the dark is as obvious manipulation of his as he presumes page as if wycherley is intent on creating a comically Wycherley's own attitude toward him vacillatedbetween detachment ahero than in an altogether different the truth of its moralcategories Manly's in the role ofantagonist This explains through his page to achieve it It's literally afraid of Manly Connely But why is the play's best joke Weales revenge against Olivia Thetricking of Olivia is consistent with gets thegirl and his last iii Here speaks no moralidealist but a plain to miss the real dramatic focus which is that anabstraction against which itmust deal Wycherley does in the scheme of conventional morality Manlygets better than he of that rare beingwho is apart forone must also allow that he is entitled what the play is about The action and nor coddles romantic sentiment Manly's melodrama toward what might be called heroic-ironic allegory of whichdeclarations of love and friendship had degenerated to show an attack on a degenerate if decorous society Works CitedCommager Henry Steele ed Churchill's History of the New York Simon and Schuster MacMillan Life and His Works New York Charles Scribner's The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama Ed John G The Outline of History Being a Plain History of Study Drama New York Norton If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.