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The Plain Dealer
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
148 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1676
About the author
William Wycherley
151 books20 followersWilliam Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.
Wycherley left Oxford University and took up residence at the Inner Temple, but gave little attention to the study of law. Pleasure and the stage were his only interests. His play, Love in a Wood, was produced early in 1671 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It was published the next year. Though Wycherley boasted of having written the play at the age of nineteen, before going to Oxford, this is probably untrue. Macaulay points to the allusions in the play to gentlemen's periwigs, to guineas, to the vests which Charles ordered to be worn at court, to the Great Fire of London, etc., as showing that the comedy could not have been written the year before the author went to Oxford. However, even if the play had been written in that year, and delayed in its production till 1672, it is exactly this kind of allusion to recent events which any dramatist with an eye to freshness of colour would be certain to weave into his dialogue.
That the writer of a play far more daring than Etherege's She Would if She Could — and far more brilliant too — should at once become the talk of the court was inevitable; equally inevitable was it that the author of the song at the end of the first act, in praise of harlots and their offspring, should attract the attention of the king's mistress, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland. Possibly Wycherley intended this famous song as a glorification of Her Grace and her profession, for he seems to have been more delighted than surprised when, as he passed in his coach through Pall Mall, he heard her address him from her coach window as a "rascal" and a "villain", and the son of a woman such as that mentioned in the song. His answer was perfect: "Madam, you have been pleased to bestow a title on me which belongs only to the fortunate." Seeing that she received the compliment in the spirit in which it was meant, he lost no time in calling upon her, and was from that moment the recipient of those "favours" to which he alludes with pride in the dedication of the play to her. Voltaire's story (in his Letters on the English Nation) that Her Grace used to go to Wycherley's chambers in the Temple disguised as a country wench, in a straw hat, with pattens on and a basket in her hand, may be apocryphal, for disguise was superfluous in her case, but it shows how general was the opinion that, under such patronage as this, Wycherley's fortune as poet and dramatist was now made. King Charles, who had determined to bring up his son, the Duke of Richmond, like a prince, sought as his tutor a man as qualified as Wycherley to impart a "princely education", and it seems clear that, if not for Wycherley's marriage, the education of the young man would actually have been entrusted to him as a reward for having written Love in a Wood.
It is, however, his two last comedies — The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer — that sustain Wycherley's reputation. The Country Wife, produced in 1672 or 1673 and published in 1675, is full of wit, ingenuity, high spirits and conventional humour.
It was after the success of The Plain Dealer that the turning point came in Wycherley's career. The great dream of all the men about town in Charles's time, as Wycherley's plays all show, was to marry a widow, young and handsome, a peer's daughter if possible — but in any event rich, and spend her money upon wine and women. While talking to a friend in a bookseller's shop at Tunbridge, Wycherley heard The Plain Dealer asked for by a lady who, in the person of the countess of Drogheda (Letitia Isabella Robartes, eldest daughter of the 1st Earl of Radnor and widow of the 2nd Earl of Drogheda), answered all the requirements. An introduction ensued, then love-making, then marriage — a secret marriage, probably in 1680, for, fearing to lose the king's patr
Wycherley left Oxford University and took up residence at the Inner Temple, but gave little attention to the study of law. Pleasure and the stage were his only interests. His play, Love in a Wood, was produced early in 1671 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It was published the next year. Though Wycherley boasted of having written the play at the age of nineteen, before going to Oxford, this is probably untrue. Macaulay points to the allusions in the play to gentlemen's periwigs, to guineas, to the vests which Charles ordered to be worn at court, to the Great Fire of London, etc., as showing that the comedy could not have been written the year before the author went to Oxford. However, even if the play had been written in that year, and delayed in its production till 1672, it is exactly this kind of allusion to recent events which any dramatist with an eye to freshness of colour would be certain to weave into his dialogue.
That the writer of a play far more daring than Etherege's She Would if She Could — and far more brilliant too — should at once become the talk of the court was inevitable; equally inevitable was it that the author of the song at the end of the first act, in praise of harlots and their offspring, should attract the attention of the king's mistress, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland. Possibly Wycherley intended this famous song as a glorification of Her Grace and her profession, for he seems to have been more delighted than surprised when, as he passed in his coach through Pall Mall, he heard her address him from her coach window as a "rascal" and a "villain", and the son of a woman such as that mentioned in the song. His answer was perfect: "Madam, you have been pleased to bestow a title on me which belongs only to the fortunate." Seeing that she received the compliment in the spirit in which it was meant, he lost no time in calling upon her, and was from that moment the recipient of those "favours" to which he alludes with pride in the dedication of the play to her. Voltaire's story (in his Letters on the English Nation) that Her Grace used to go to Wycherley's chambers in the Temple disguised as a country wench, in a straw hat, with pattens on and a basket in her hand, may be apocryphal, for disguise was superfluous in her case, but it shows how general was the opinion that, under such patronage as this, Wycherley's fortune as poet and dramatist was now made. King Charles, who had determined to bring up his son, the Duke of Richmond, like a prince, sought as his tutor a man as qualified as Wycherley to impart a "princely education", and it seems clear that, if not for Wycherley's marriage, the education of the young man would actually have been entrusted to him as a reward for having written Love in a Wood.
It is, however, his two last comedies — The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer — that sustain Wycherley's reputation. The Country Wife, produced in 1672 or 1673 and published in 1675, is full of wit, ingenuity, high spirits and conventional humour.
It was after the success of The Plain Dealer that the turning point came in Wycherley's career. The great dream of all the men about town in Charles's time, as Wycherley's plays all show, was to marry a widow, young and handsome, a peer's daughter if possible — but in any event rich, and spend her money upon wine and women. While talking to a friend in a bookseller's shop at Tunbridge, Wycherley heard The Plain Dealer asked for by a lady who, in the person of the countess of Drogheda (Letitia Isabella Robartes, eldest daughter of the 1st Earl of Radnor and widow of the 2nd Earl of Drogheda), answered all the requirements. An introduction ensued, then love-making, then marriage — a secret marriage, probably in 1680, for, fearing to lose the king's patr
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 21, 2018
I read this in Nettleton, "British Dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan," when I Teaching Assisted a course on Restoration Comedy at U Minnesota fifty years ago.
In The Plain Dealer Wycherley’s adapts Moliere’s Misantrope, six years earlier; the Englishman offers more complications, plus a “happy ending”: Moliere’s Alceste heads for a cave where he need not see humans, whereas Manly finds Fidelia and her inherited lands attractive. Wycherley invites his young audience critics to find fault,
“For plays, like women, by the world are thought,
When you speak kindly of them, very naught.”—Epilog
In brilliant self-reference a quarter through the play, Wycherley has Olivia judge
another woman harshly because she’d enthused over his great earlier play,
“For her conduct, she was seen at The Country Wife after the first day.”(II.i.481)
Olivia’s answered, “But, Madam, she did not turn aside her head, or by a conscious blush discover more guilt than modesty.”
In addition to wit aplenty, Plain Dealer abounds in plain truths, like late in the play Manly’s “I was wondering why fools, rascals, and desertless wretches should still have the better of men of merit with all women, as much as with their own common mistress, Fortune.
“Because,” Freeman responds,”most women, like Fortune, are blind, seem to do all things in jest…their love deserves neither thanks nor blame, for they cannot help it.”(IV.i.221ff).
Comedy thrives on common assumptions, and Restoration Comedy had plenty, not only in opposing my Puritan forbears who arrived in Massachusetts just as King Charles was restored from France. Casual anti-Irish racism shamed Boston three centuries later, as well as the more historical anti-French ethnicism which Shakespeare also mimes in his Henry the Fifth where his French speak with a comic accent, though not as comic as the Welsh. Wycherley combines both the Irish and French when his modish women, Olivia, satirize another woman, “As sluttish and slatternly as an Irish woman bred in France”(II.i.437).
Some regional English assumptions abound, such as the guile in Norfolk. The Widow Blackacre impoverishes herself to annoy others at law; her father was a “vexatious attorney—nay, as a dozen Norfolk attorneys, and as implacable an adversary as a wife suing for divorce, or a parson for his tithes” (I.i.493).
The misanthrope Manly tartly observes of the ruling class at Westminster Hall or Whitehall, “Here you see a bishop bowing to an atheist, a judge to a doorkeeper; a great lord to a fishmonger; a lawyer to a sergeant-at-arms; a velvet physician to a threadbare chemist…and so tread around in a preposterous huddle of ceremony to each other, whilst they can hardly hold their solemn false countenances” (I.i.355ff).
Freeman observes of Manly, “You use [treat] a lord with very little ceremony, it seems.”
“A lord!” Manly says, “What…I weigh a man, not his title; ’tis not the king’s stamp can make the metal better or heavier. Your lord is a leaden shilling…”(I.i.210).
He refers to Lord Plausible, who “speaks well of all mankind,” while Manly accepts, “I thought so: but know, that speaking well of all mankind is the worst kind of detraction; for it takes away the reputation of the few good men in the world, by making all alike. Now, I speak ill of most men, because they deserve it—I that can do a rude thing, rather than an unjust thing.” The play begins with this, Manly’s self-characterization, forty lines into Act I scene i.
In The Plain Dealer Wycherley’s adapts Moliere’s Misantrope, six years earlier; the Englishman offers more complications, plus a “happy ending”: Moliere’s Alceste heads for a cave where he need not see humans, whereas Manly finds Fidelia and her inherited lands attractive. Wycherley invites his young audience critics to find fault,
“For plays, like women, by the world are thought,
When you speak kindly of them, very naught.”—Epilog
In brilliant self-reference a quarter through the play, Wycherley has Olivia judge
another woman harshly because she’d enthused over his great earlier play,
“For her conduct, she was seen at The Country Wife after the first day.”(II.i.481)
Olivia’s answered, “But, Madam, she did not turn aside her head, or by a conscious blush discover more guilt than modesty.”
In addition to wit aplenty, Plain Dealer abounds in plain truths, like late in the play Manly’s “I was wondering why fools, rascals, and desertless wretches should still have the better of men of merit with all women, as much as with their own common mistress, Fortune.
“Because,” Freeman responds,”most women, like Fortune, are blind, seem to do all things in jest…their love deserves neither thanks nor blame, for they cannot help it.”(IV.i.221ff).
Comedy thrives on common assumptions, and Restoration Comedy had plenty, not only in opposing my Puritan forbears who arrived in Massachusetts just as King Charles was restored from France. Casual anti-Irish racism shamed Boston three centuries later, as well as the more historical anti-French ethnicism which Shakespeare also mimes in his Henry the Fifth where his French speak with a comic accent, though not as comic as the Welsh. Wycherley combines both the Irish and French when his modish women, Olivia, satirize another woman, “As sluttish and slatternly as an Irish woman bred in France”(II.i.437).
Some regional English assumptions abound, such as the guile in Norfolk. The Widow Blackacre impoverishes herself to annoy others at law; her father was a “vexatious attorney—nay, as a dozen Norfolk attorneys, and as implacable an adversary as a wife suing for divorce, or a parson for his tithes” (I.i.493).
The misanthrope Manly tartly observes of the ruling class at Westminster Hall or Whitehall, “Here you see a bishop bowing to an atheist, a judge to a doorkeeper; a great lord to a fishmonger; a lawyer to a sergeant-at-arms; a velvet physician to a threadbare chemist…and so tread around in a preposterous huddle of ceremony to each other, whilst they can hardly hold their solemn false countenances” (I.i.355ff).
Freeman observes of Manly, “You use [treat] a lord with very little ceremony, it seems.”
“A lord!” Manly says, “What…I weigh a man, not his title; ’tis not the king’s stamp can make the metal better or heavier. Your lord is a leaden shilling…”(I.i.210).
He refers to Lord Plausible, who “speaks well of all mankind,” while Manly accepts, “I thought so: but know, that speaking well of all mankind is the worst kind of detraction; for it takes away the reputation of the few good men in the world, by making all alike. Now, I speak ill of most men, because they deserve it—I that can do a rude thing, rather than an unjust thing.” The play begins with this, Manly’s self-characterization, forty lines into Act I scene i.
November 24, 2021
what is this twelfth-night tomfoolery
September 12, 2025
love how everyone is just lying their asses off 100% of the time
November 28, 2021
*the pain dealer
May 14, 2023
Who is the plain dealer in William Wycherley’s play? It must surely be Manly, a ship captain with an honourable record in war, who bluntly tells the other characters some unpleasant truths about themselves.
Still even Manly is not given to plain dealing all the time. In the third act, he finds ingenious means to deter many of the hangers-on that plague him. His methods are certainly justified, but they are not plain dealing.
Manly is also easily fooled by Olivia, a woman who professes plain dealing to win his affections, but who is exploiting Manly and a number of court fops so that she can obtain gifts from them, which she can share with Varnish, Manly’s false friend and her secret husband. She also despises Varnish and intends to cheat on him.
After Manly discovers that Olivia is faithless, he seeks revenge on her by various backwards means that are certainly not plain dealing. Finally virtue is rewarded when he discovers another woman who loves him, and whom he considers a plain dealer, even though she has spent the entire play pretending to be a man!
So perhaps the real plain dealer here is William Wycherley (he was nicknamed Manly Wycherley), who seeks to expose the cracked actors, shysters and charlatans that make up ‘respectable’ society. Using Moliere’s play Le Misanthrope as his template, Wycherley satirises courtly behaviour that hides hypocrisy, lechery and greed.
Manly is not exactly a misanthrope, but he occupies a similar role to the traditional outsider found in plays by Moliere, Shakespeare, and others. He is not seen as completely correct, and despite his cynical view of the behaviour of others, he is surprisingly easy to dupe.
Indeed Manly’s sneering is so charmless that I failed to understand Fidelia’s unswerving devotion and self-sacrifice for him. Perhaps a stage play would lend his bitter wit a degree of brio that would make him seem more likeable than he appears in print.
There is a possible moral purpose in Wycherley’s play. The numerous characters all reveal certain questionable attitudes and behaviours that are common in society. Lord Plausible flatters everyone, thereby rendering his praise worthless and calculating. Mr Novel goes to the opposite extreme and rails at everyone in society, but unlike Manly he only does it behind their backs.
If Novel is obsessed only with modern fads, Major Oldfox is equally committed to fuddy-duddy standards of the past. He has the vanity to consider himself a great poet, leading to one amusing scene where, instead of ravishing a captive woman, he chooses instead to read his poetry to her.
Widow Blackacre is litigious and uses the law to further her aims. However her shallow son Jerry proves her undoing. Wycherley had studied law himself, so he is able to use the correct legal terms to describe Widow Blackacre’s law suits, or maybe the incorrect terms to expose her ignorance of law.
Perhaps the closest thing to a real plain dealer in the play is Olivia’s cousin, Eliza. She openly condemns Olivia, and provides an additional voice for Wycherley’s concerns.
There are other minor characters who briefly appear to flatter or deceive Manly, but what is more interesting are the characters that Manly does not read well. He is deceived by Freeman, his lieutenant, a man who certainly cheats and wheedles his way through society, but is actually loyal to Manly.
Meanwhile Manly puts his trust in Varnish, a friend who is secretly laughing at him and exploiting him. We gather Varnish’s true worth when he discovers that Fidelia is really a woman and conspires to rape her. Manly is also reluctant to give up his good opinion of Olivia, even when the facts have become clear. It takes him a long time to credit the loyalty of Fidelia as genuine.
We can certainly read Wycherley’s play as moralistic, but I am not sure we should get too carried away with this view. Wycherley was a decent man in some respects, and a loyal friend too. However he was just as caught up in the shallow court life as anyone else. He had mistresses. He changed his religion to reflect the politics of the time. He fully revelled in the immorality of the Restoration period.
So while Wycherley mocks the bad behaviour of his characters, he also thoroughly revels in showing their mischievous behaviour. There is mockery but no abhorrence of the appalling behaviour on show. The only problem for the characters is that they got caught.
I sense that Wycherley feels a scurrilous amusement in watching how far the liars and cheats can get away making mischief before they are finally brought to task, but never so thoroughly or completely that any of them will reform their ways or endure severe punishment for their actions.
Before closing I must mention Wycherley’s mischievous use of his earlier play The Country Wife. The characters discuss the morals of this shocking play, allowing Wycherley to put forth his own defence of the themes in that work. The point seems to be that people professed to be scandalised by the work, but they went back to watch it again.
William Wycherley is an entertaining dramatist, though not one who translates well to the modern age. For various reasons most of his plays have not been performed too often since they first came out.
There are practical reasons for this. In the case of The Plain Dealer, the play is probably too long for easy performance. I cannot help suspecting that the problem is that the plays have not dated too well. Wycherley revels in the pettiness of contemporary affairs, but he fails to offer us enough enduring universal truths.
Still even Manly is not given to plain dealing all the time. In the third act, he finds ingenious means to deter many of the hangers-on that plague him. His methods are certainly justified, but they are not plain dealing.
Manly is also easily fooled by Olivia, a woman who professes plain dealing to win his affections, but who is exploiting Manly and a number of court fops so that she can obtain gifts from them, which she can share with Varnish, Manly’s false friend and her secret husband. She also despises Varnish and intends to cheat on him.
After Manly discovers that Olivia is faithless, he seeks revenge on her by various backwards means that are certainly not plain dealing. Finally virtue is rewarded when he discovers another woman who loves him, and whom he considers a plain dealer, even though she has spent the entire play pretending to be a man!
So perhaps the real plain dealer here is William Wycherley (he was nicknamed Manly Wycherley), who seeks to expose the cracked actors, shysters and charlatans that make up ‘respectable’ society. Using Moliere’s play Le Misanthrope as his template, Wycherley satirises courtly behaviour that hides hypocrisy, lechery and greed.
Manly is not exactly a misanthrope, but he occupies a similar role to the traditional outsider found in plays by Moliere, Shakespeare, and others. He is not seen as completely correct, and despite his cynical view of the behaviour of others, he is surprisingly easy to dupe.
Indeed Manly’s sneering is so charmless that I failed to understand Fidelia’s unswerving devotion and self-sacrifice for him. Perhaps a stage play would lend his bitter wit a degree of brio that would make him seem more likeable than he appears in print.
There is a possible moral purpose in Wycherley’s play. The numerous characters all reveal certain questionable attitudes and behaviours that are common in society. Lord Plausible flatters everyone, thereby rendering his praise worthless and calculating. Mr Novel goes to the opposite extreme and rails at everyone in society, but unlike Manly he only does it behind their backs.
If Novel is obsessed only with modern fads, Major Oldfox is equally committed to fuddy-duddy standards of the past. He has the vanity to consider himself a great poet, leading to one amusing scene where, instead of ravishing a captive woman, he chooses instead to read his poetry to her.
Widow Blackacre is litigious and uses the law to further her aims. However her shallow son Jerry proves her undoing. Wycherley had studied law himself, so he is able to use the correct legal terms to describe Widow Blackacre’s law suits, or maybe the incorrect terms to expose her ignorance of law.
Perhaps the closest thing to a real plain dealer in the play is Olivia’s cousin, Eliza. She openly condemns Olivia, and provides an additional voice for Wycherley’s concerns.
There are other minor characters who briefly appear to flatter or deceive Manly, but what is more interesting are the characters that Manly does not read well. He is deceived by Freeman, his lieutenant, a man who certainly cheats and wheedles his way through society, but is actually loyal to Manly.
Meanwhile Manly puts his trust in Varnish, a friend who is secretly laughing at him and exploiting him. We gather Varnish’s true worth when he discovers that Fidelia is really a woman and conspires to rape her. Manly is also reluctant to give up his good opinion of Olivia, even when the facts have become clear. It takes him a long time to credit the loyalty of Fidelia as genuine.
We can certainly read Wycherley’s play as moralistic, but I am not sure we should get too carried away with this view. Wycherley was a decent man in some respects, and a loyal friend too. However he was just as caught up in the shallow court life as anyone else. He had mistresses. He changed his religion to reflect the politics of the time. He fully revelled in the immorality of the Restoration period.
So while Wycherley mocks the bad behaviour of his characters, he also thoroughly revels in showing their mischievous behaviour. There is mockery but no abhorrence of the appalling behaviour on show. The only problem for the characters is that they got caught.
I sense that Wycherley feels a scurrilous amusement in watching how far the liars and cheats can get away making mischief before they are finally brought to task, but never so thoroughly or completely that any of them will reform their ways or endure severe punishment for their actions.
Before closing I must mention Wycherley’s mischievous use of his earlier play The Country Wife. The characters discuss the morals of this shocking play, allowing Wycherley to put forth his own defence of the themes in that work. The point seems to be that people professed to be scandalised by the work, but they went back to watch it again.
William Wycherley is an entertaining dramatist, though not one who translates well to the modern age. For various reasons most of his plays have not been performed too often since they first came out.
There are practical reasons for this. In the case of The Plain Dealer, the play is probably too long for easy performance. I cannot help suspecting that the problem is that the plays have not dated too well. Wycherley revels in the pettiness of contemporary affairs, but he fails to offer us enough enduring universal truths.
June 20, 2018
Though dripping with wit, filled with observational comedy, and the narrative being somewhat clever (though not as much so as "The Country Wife"), Wycherly tried combining far too many elements in this epic of a play. It became hard to follow the plot with how many times there were tangents on honesty, law, or humankind, and the plot mostly moved too slowly to make up for said tangents.
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August 2, 2020A good play, not a great one. Not as good as The Country Wife.
March 24, 2021
The Misanthrope by Moliere but make it dramatic, add useless characters, a loooooot of misogyny and an almost rape scene and here we are
May 9, 2021
The last and by far the best play William Wycherley ever wrote.
January 25, 2022
Wycherley may not be Shakespeare or Wilde, but his bawdy comedy is filled with period-specific and ageless satire.
April 18, 2026
a lying liar never lies
September 4, 2013
I know my rating doesn't do the book the justice it deserves, but I read it immediately after Moliere's 'Le Misanthrope' and, the comparison was inevitable. This seems like a more wordy version of the latter. I prefer the laconic length of Moliere's play, as well as the more refined flow it has, as opposed to the vulgarity of Wycherley's characters. His play really... tired me! I hope I'll revise it some day, with broader mind and without it being instructed as part of a University course.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews