"Restoration comedy" is English comedy written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. Comedy of manners is used as a synonym of Restoration comedy. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama. Sexually explicit language was encouraged by King Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish style of his court. Historian George Norman Clark argues:
The best-known fact about the Restoration drama is that it is immoral. The dramatists did not criticize the accepted morality about gambling, drink, love, and pleasure generally, or try, like the dramatists of our own time, to work out their own view of character and conduct. What they did was, according to their respective inclinations, to mock at all restraints. Some were gross, others delicately improper....The dramatists did not merely say anything they liked: they also intended to glory in it and to shock those who did not like it.
William Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.
The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written in 1675 by William Wycherley. A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in its own time. The title itself contains a lewd pun with regard to the first syllable of "country". It is based on several plays by Molière, with added features that 1670s London audiences demanded: colloquial prose dialogue in place of Molière's verse, a complicated, fast-paced plot tangle, and many sex jokes. It turns on two indelicate plot devices: a rake's trick of pretending near impotence to safely have clandestine affairs with married women, and the arrival in London of an inexperienced young "country wife", with her discovery of the joys of town life, especially the fascinating London men. The implied condition the Rake, Horner, claimed to suffer from was, he said, contracted in France whilst "dealing with common women". The only cure was to have a surgeon drastically reduce the extent of his manly stature and therefore he would be no threat to any man's wife.
The Plain Dealer is a Restoration comedy by William Wycherley, first performed on 11 December 1676. The play is based on Molière's Le Misanthrope, and is generally considered Wycherley's finest work along with The Country Wife.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1728.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1729.
Shrooms is a 2007 Irish psychological slasher film written by Pearse Elliot and directed by Paddy Breathnach. The film stars Lindsey Haun, Jack Huston, and Max Kasch. The plot follows a group of American students and their English guide who are stalked by a serial killer while out in the woods looking for psilocybin mushrooms.
In English literature, the term comedy of manners describes a genre of realistic, satirical comedy of the Restoration period (1660–1710) that questions and comments upon the manners and social conventions of a greatly sophisticated, artificial society. The satire of fashion, manners, and outlook on life of the social classes, is realised with stock characters, such as the braggart soldier of Ancient Greek comedy, and the fop and the rake of English Restoration comedy. The clever plot of a comedy of manners is secondary to the social commentary thematically presented through the witty dialogue of the characters, e.g. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), by Oscar Wilde, which satirizes the sexual hypocrisies of Victorian morality.
Events from the year 1967 in Ireland.
Events from the year 1908 in Ireland.
Bachelors Walk was an Irish (RTÉ) comedy-drama series shot in and around Dublin. The programme was first broadcast on Network 2 on 1 October 2001. After a run of three series and an absence for three years, a one-off Christmas special which aired on St. Stephen's Day 2006 on RTÉ Two.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Don Wycherley is an Irish actor. He played Father Cyril McDuff in Father Ted, Father Aidan O'Connell in Ballykissangel, and Raymond in Bachelors Walk.
Events from the year 1641 in England.
Tina Kellegher, is an Irish actress, best known for her role as Niamh Quigley in the BBC television series Ballykissangel. She is also a well-known voice on BBC Radio 4, having played policewoman Tina Mahon in the first four series of Baldi. She is married to Gordon Wycherley, location manager on, among other projects, Ballykissangel. They have two sons, Michael, who was born in 2003, and Brian, who was born in 2007. Her brother-in-law is fellow Ballykissangel star Don Wycherley.
The Altar of the Twelve Gods, was an important altar and sanctuary at Athens, located in the northwest corner of the Classical Agora. The Altar was set up by Pisistratus the Younger, during his archonship, in 522/1 BC. It marked the central point from which distances from Athens were measured and was a place of supplication and refuge.
Florence Wycherley was an Irish politician. A farmer by trade, he first stood for election to Dáil Éireann as a Clann na Talmhan candidate at the 1954 general election for Cork West but was not elected. He was elected to the Dáil as an independent Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork West at the 1957 general election. He lost his seat at the 1961 general election.
Scúp is a Northern Irish drama television series which was broadcast on TG4 and BBC Northern Ireland in 2013–14. The series was nominated to the Special Irish Language Award at the 11th Irish Film & Television Awards in 2014.
Fineen Wycherley is an Irish rugby union player for Munster in the Pro14 and European Rugby Champions Cup. He plays primarily as a lock, though he can also play as a flanker, and represents Young Munster in the All-Ireland League.
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