The Double Dealer

by William Congreve

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Genres: Plays, Drama, Classics, Fiction, 17th Century

100 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1693

About the author

"William Congreve was an English playwright and poet.... William Congreve wrote some of the most popular English plays of the Restoration period of the late 17th century. By the age of thirty, he had written four comedies, including Love for Love (premiered 30 April 1695) and The Way of the World (premiered 1700), and one tragedy, The Mourning Bride (1697).

Unfortunately, his career ended almost as soon as it began. After writing five plays from his first in 1693 until 1700, he produced no more as public tastes turned against the sort of high-brow sexual comedy of manners in which he specialized. He reportedly was particularly stung by a critique written by Jeremy Collier (A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage), to the point that he wrote a long reply, "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations."

A member of the Whig Kit-Kat Club, Congreve's career shifted to the political sector, where he held various minor political positions despite his stance as a Whig among Tories."

Reviews

[Monika]

Another glimpse into Restoration cuckolds and coxcombs.

[Esdaile]

The Double Dealer is a restoration comedy packed with innuendos, romps and shenanigans and of course double dealing, as they all are but in this one it never takes a break. I have only read the play and not seen it performed but I think it would come off dramatically: it is witty fast moving and I was able to follow the plot despite the double crossing, deceit and scheming. Congreve's arch villain in this play, Maskwell (sic.) recalls Iago in behaviour and language. In fact the language and a deal of the plot so strongly echoes the language of Shakespeare's Othello, that it The Double Dealer reads at times like a persiflage of Shakespeare, tragedy repeating itself as farce, so to speak. I wonder to what extent Congreve himself was aware of how much he borrowed from Shakespeare. It would be fun to produce this play if the actors were good enough to do justice to the obscenities and double entendres which can be found in every second line and the impact of which would depend I suspect on pausing or stressing at just the right moment:
“Sweet sir, I will but pen the last line of an acrostic, and be with you in the twinkling of an ejaculation, in the pronouncing of an amen, or before you can-....”

There is one memorably striking image
"that hungry gudgeon credulity will bite at anything" in a play which is not so much quotable as actable. Villainy receives its comeuppance in the end so that all go home satisfied, as it were..

[J]

Another cheating wives and husbands and plots and counterplots restoration comedy that takes a huge dark turn near the end when there's a murder plot added into the business.

[Matthew]

The Double Dealer is a typical example of the Idiot Plot – a plot that can only work if the leading characters behave like idiots. Fortunately for the development of the story, there are plenty of idiots here.

For example, one woman is foolish enough to accidentally hand over the wrong letter to her husband, the wrong letter being the one in which a man is seeking to arrange a sexual assignation with her. We might assume that she will be unable to talk her way out of that, but she and her would-be lover easily dupe her husband into thinking that the letter was merely ‘testing’ her fidelity.

They are not even the main characters in the play. The main characters are equally foolish. It is hardly surprising that Congreve names his play after the only smart person in the play, the double dealer, Maskwell.

Maskwell is amoral, devious and selfish, but his plans can only work because the people around him are so easy to deceive. His friend Mellefont has been warned that Maskwell cannot be trusted, but ignores the signs, while Maskwell schemes to steal Mellefont’s affianced, Cynthia. He is also having an adulterous affair with Mellefont’s aunt, Lady Touchwood, who wants Mellefont for herself and does not seem to understand that he is using her to get to Cynthia.

There is no great substance here. Congreve manipulates his characters for humorous purposes. He is not interested in moralising. There are ‘good’ characters here, but Congreve enjoys the bawdy shenanigans of the cheaters more than the dull stolidity of Mellefont and Cynthia.

The most interesting twist occurs later in the play when Lady Touchwood’s passions take a darker turn, and Maskwell finds himself in danger for his life. There is also a disturbing side to machinations of the characters, with allegations and actual desires of a near-incestuous nature.

However, Congreve is no Middleton or Ford. He does not want to delve into the murkier side of such lusts. They exist here to undermine his villainous characters, so that the audience will be glad to see them fail.

As with many plays written in the years between the death of Shakespeare and the debut of Oscar Wilde, it does not read too well on paper, but might be brought to life by a talented stage manager. The Double Dealer has its amusing moments, but the characterisation is paper-thin, even Maskwell, and the plot is thin.

[Greg]

I simply did not like this drama. That said, there are very memorable lines:

"One minute gives invention to destroy, What, to rebuild, will a whole age employ."

"Why will mankind be fools, and be deceived? And why are friends’ and lovers’ oaths believed; When each, who searches strictly his own mind, May so much fraud and power of baseness find?"

This Restoration comedy of manners, I suspect, requires a nuanced understanding of the comedy of the time...one which I do not possess.

[Beka Altin]

3.5