ENGL 326(S) Restoration Comedy in Context (Same as Theatre 314)

Superficial, amoral, occasionally obscene, the comic dramas of the Restoration period (1660-1700) have sometimes been excused on the grounds that, as Charles Lamb wrote in 1822, "they are a world of themselves . . . which has no reference whatever to the world that is." This course will take the opposite view, arguing that these plays are best viewed in their cultural and historical context. We will read four plays from the 1670s (Dryden's Marriage a la Mode, Wycherley's The Country-Wife, Etherege's The Man of Mode, and Behn's The Rover), and we will consider them alongside a wide variety of non-dramatic texts (diaries, conduct books, poems, ballads, satiric pamphlets, biographies, and sermons) to see how the plays participated in contemporary debates about social issues. In particular, we will focus on debates about women: their clothing, their use of cosmetics, the morality of their seeing or acting in plays, their appearance in public, and their general character. Requirements: two 5- to 7-page papers, one 8- to 10-page paper, and occasional short assignments. Prerequisite: English 101. Enrollment limited to 25. (Pre-1800)

Hour: Pritchard