Four Comedies

by John Vanbrugh, Michael Cordner

Mass Market Paperback

First published October 3, 1989

About the author

Sir John Vanbrugh was an English architect and dramatist, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy.

Vanbrugh was in many senses a radical throughout his life. As a young man and a committed Whig, he was part of the scheme to overthrow James II, put William III on the throne and protect English parliamentary democracy, dangerous undertakings which landed him in the dreaded Bastille of Paris as a political prisoner. In his career as a playwright, he offended many sections of Restoration and 18th-century society, not only by the sexual explicitness of his plays, but also by their messages in defence of women's rights in marriage. He was attacked on both counts, and was one of the prime targets of Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. In his architectural career, he created what came to be known as English Baroque. His architectural work was as bold and daring as his early political activism and marriage-themed plays, and jarred conservative opinions on the subject.

Reviews

[Mole Mann · Rating 3 out of 5]

These plays were written during the early days of the "novel" as a common literary form, between the works of Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding. Along with this, they are about a hundred years removed from the works of Shakespeare.
I found them all decent, though The Confederacy is the weakest of the four.
Some rather silly/intriguing names here, from Pilgrim's Progress-esque names where they shed light into the personality of the character (or show the opposite of their character) to the uncommon actual names.