The dual presence of the Puritan heritage and of the immoral spirit of the Restoration in Congreve‘s "Way of the World"

Inhaltsangabe oder Einleitung

After theatres in England were reopened again in the course of the Restoration in 1660, after a period of eighteen years, the English theatre developed very much. Many plays were written for the two theatre companies in London, now in the tradition of the Restoration. Different forms of Restoration plays developed, e.g. the Heroic Tragedy, and the Comedy of Manners. But not only the Restoration and the following Glorious Revolution from 1688 were made a subject, but also the former Puritan period. Both periods differ very much in their politics, their ideas, and their way of living. When William Congreve‘s comedy The Way of the World was published in 1800 and performed by The Dukes‘s Men theatre company at Lincoln‘s Inn Fields in the same year, it was already more than fourty years after the Puritan period and exactly fourty years after the Restoration. By then the constitunional monarchy was well established, and even the ideas of the Restoration were not that uptodate any more. Nevertheless Congreve and his works are seen as part of the Restoration tradition, and his drama The Way of the World even makes not only the Restoration time, but also the Puritan period a topic. Here Congreve acknowledges the dual presence of the Puritan heritage and of the immoral spirit of the Restoration. He does this by presenting both Puritan and Restoration formed characters, by including ideas of both sides, and by refering to exponents and terms of these as I am going to show in the following.