George Etherege

Sir George Etheredge or Etherege (born in 1635 in the Oxfordshire - died [[Paris]?] the May 10th 1692) is a Dramaturge English of the 17th century. Among his Comedy S most famous, one counts comic Revenge, or the Love in a barrel ( The Comical Revenge but, Love in has Tub ) in 1664, It would make it if it could it ( She Would yew She Could ) in 1668 and the Man with the mode ( The Man off Mode) in 1676.

Its work is representative of the anti-sentimental tendency and grivoise which crossed the British Théâtre at the beginning of the English Restauration. The author a long time occupied a place lower than his real merit in the English Littérature: at one dull and heavy time, still strongly impregnated of the puritan bracket of the reign of Oliver Cromwell, Etheredge inaugurated a new era of humor and lightness of spirit. As an inventor of the comedy of intrigue in English language, it can be regarded as the precursor of the masterpieces of William Congreve and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Before him, it is the style of Ben Jonson which prevailed in Comédie: traditional humor and the odd eccentricities held the advantage on the realistic characters.

The conceited and affected characters of the theater of Etheredge are seen like the most succeeded of their kind. Humor is sharp-edged and frivolous, the picturesque style. Etheredge remained famous for its indelicacy in the choice of the clothes, the pieces of furniture and more generally of the scenic decorations. It depicts with effectiveness large the air of the London Aristocratie , and this perhaps better still than Congreve, although this last exceeds it in energy and perspicacity.

All the contemporaries of Etheredge agreed to describe at his place a gracious and enjouée nature, which was accompanied by a tendency pronounced with the Alcoolisme. The first biography which was dedicated to him is the work of Edmund Gosse in Seventeenth Century Studies (1883).

See too

Literature of the English Restoration

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