The comedy of manners

The Restoration theatre, in full revival after several years of prohibition, is especially well-known through the comedy of manners, a light and caustic genre that marks the return of England to peace and pleasure. As opposed to the comedy of the Elizabethan theatre that staged the life and manners of the common people, that of the Restoration chooses its topics from those of the nobility. It clearly breaks with its inheritance and takes its inspiration in the French classic theatre appreciated by the nobility and dramatists during their exile in France at the time of Cromwell's regime.
Its other model comes from the comedies of Ben Jonson, in vogue during the first reign of the Stuarts, whose satirical character it copies. However the synthesis of these two influences very quickly gives birth to a unique genre, and the comedy of manners then takes a completely new coloration combining a humour and a critical trait that the English theatre had never known before and will not know again. This new genre is created by two dramatists, Etherege and Wycherley joined by Congreve, Shadwell and occasionally John Dryden. They add a light and spiritual style to a comedy devoid of all moralising realism or doctrinarian intention. The main preoccupation is to please the public, exclusively aristocratic, with a casual light.
The political and social context is evidently responsible for the enthusiasm with which the genre is met with the nobility of the Court, starved of entertainment during the puritanical years and who rediscover the pleasure of going out and having fun. But, if the comedy of manners takes its model in this society, it does not treat it kindly.
On the contrary, it apes it and pokes fun with freedom and uncommon frankness. All the madness and exaggerations of the gentilshommes and ladies, down to their debauchery, are portrayed, and the public which easily recognises itself in these satires, is totally forgiving. The comedy thus remains a social affair, especially since only a small intimate circle - mostly aristocrats easily mocking their own vices and turpitudes - appreciates this theatre.
The comedies of manners of the Restoration have been harshly treated. Under the puritanical reign of Queen Victoria in the 19th century, the English sought to erase this period from her memory. Cynical, coarse, graceless, insolent, were the terms used to qualify these plays judged easy-going and disrespectful. Yet, progressively rediscovered, these comedies prove to be fitting testimonies of their time.
Even though they primarily portray the manners of the aristocracy, they brush quick, colourful and animate pictures of a society in full transition, a society in which the bourgeoisie takes an increasing role and women a newfound liberty. They are faithful indicators of, and an aid to, understanding the foundations of the approaching revolution of  1688.