Fisk Deborah Payne - Four Restoration Libertine Plays

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

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OXFORD ENGLISH DRAMA

General editor: MICHAEL CORDNER
Associate General Editors: PETER HOLLAND MARTIN WIGGINS

FOUR RESTORATION LIBERTINE PLAYS

THE court of Charles II (166085) adopted libertinism as a lifestyle, pursuing pleasure with an abandon that shocked and titillated onlookers. Seventeenth-century intellectuals saw libertinism as a body of thought that might underwrite changes in philosophy, politics, and science. These two aspects of libertinism, the lubricious and the learned, found expression in the sex comedies written during the 1670s and early 1680s, a time when London theatre was unfettered by morality. The four plays in this volume capture the gamut of contemporary reactions to libertinism, from the outraged disapproval of Thomas Shadwells sprawling, experimental The Libertine (1675), to the cool acquiescence of Sir George Ethereges brilliant comedy, The Man of Mode (1676), the cheerful assent of Thomas Durfeys rollicking farce, A Fond Husband (1677), and the moody forebodings of Thomas Otways darkly comic tale of marital warfare, Friendship in Fashion (1678).

DEBORAH PAYNE FISK is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature and an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Performing Arts at American University, Washington, DC. The editor of The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, she has published extensively on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theatre. Currently Professor Payne Fisk is working on A History of World Theatre for Laurence King Press. She also does dramaturgical work for theatre companies in Washington, DC.

MICHAEL CORDNER is Reader in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. He has edited George Farquhars The Beaux Stratagem, the Complete Plays of Sir George Etherege, and, for Oxford English Drama, Four Restoration Marriage Plays and Sheridans The School for Scandal and Other Plays. He is writing books on The Comedy of Marriage and Shakespeare and the Actor.

PETER HOLLAND is Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.

MARTIN WIGGINS is a fellow of the Shakespeare Institute and Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham.

OXFORD ENGLISH DRAMA

J. M. Barrie
Peter Pan and Other Plays

Aphra Behn
The Rover and Other Plays

John Ford
Tis Pity Shes a Whore and Other Plays

Ben Jonson
The Alchemist and Other Plays

Ben Jonson
The Devil is an Ass and Other Plays

D. H. Lawrence
The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd and Other Plays

Christopher Marlowe
Doctor Faustus and Other Plays

John Marston
The Malcontent and Other Plays

Thomas Middleton
Women Beware Women and Other Plays

A Mad World, My Masters, and Other Plays

Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The School for Scandal and Other Plays

J. M. Synge
The Playboy of the Western World and
Other Plays

John Vanbrugh
The Relapse and Other Plays

John Webster
The Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays

Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest and
Other Plays

Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

William Wycherley
The Country Wife and Other Plays

Court Masques
ed. David Lindley

Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatists
ed. Melinda Finberg

Five Romantic Plays
ed. Paul Baines and Edward Burns

Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies
ed. Martin Wiggins

Four Restoration Marriage Plays
ed. Michael Cordner

Four Revenge Tragedies
ed. Katharine Maus

London Assurance and Other Victorian
Comedies
ed. Klaus Stierstorfer

The New Woman and Other
Emancipated Woman Plays
ed. Jean Chothia

The Roaring Girl and Other City
Comedies
ed. James Knowles and Eugene
Giddens

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

THOMAS SHADWELL
The Libertine

SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE
The Man of Mode; or, Sir Fopling Flutter

THOMAS DURFEY
A Fond Husband; or, The Plotting Sisters

THOMAS OTWAY
Friendship in Fashion

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
DEBORAH PAYNE FISK

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

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First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 2005

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