[THE PLAYS OF] WILLIAM WYCHERLEY _EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES_ BY W. C. WARD UNEXPURGATED EDITION LONDON T.FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1893 [Illustration: _William Wycherley. From the Picture by Sir Peter Lely._] CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. WILLIAM WYCHERLEY, [by Thomas Babington Macaulay]. LOVE IN A WOOD; OR, ST. JAMES'S PARK. THE GENTLEMAN DANCING-MASTER. THE COUNTRY WIFE. THE PLAIN DEALER. NOTES. As long as men are false and women vain, Whilst gold continues to be virtue's bane, In pointed satire WYCHERLEY shall reign. EVELYN. _INTRODUCTION._ William Wycherley was, before Congreve arose to surpass him, the most eminent master of that artificial school of Comedy which commenced with the restoration of Charles II., and which may be said to have perished, in a blaze as of a funeral pyre, with Sheridan. Abandoning the beaten paths of English drama, the writers of this school found, in the various intrigue of the Spanish theatre, in the verbal vivacity and piquant satire of the French, a new basis for their productions. Their works, as a class, have been designated the Comedy of Manners, a title which aptly distinguishes them from the Comedy of Human Life, set forth by Shakespeare. It is a title, nevertheless, of limited applicability. The manners portrayed in these comedies, if drawn from the life, illustrate but one side of human character, and that side the most superficial. To divert by wit and ingenuity being the writer's aim, all allusion to the deeper motives of humanity was rejected as impertinent, or admitted only as an occasional contrast to the prevailing tone. Thus the artificiality of the characters is the consequence rather of incompleteness than of untruth; they are, as it were, but half characters; the dialogue is no longer, as with Shakespeare, the means of their development, but the purpose of their creation.