William Congreve

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William Congreve, oil painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1709; in the National Portrait Gallery, … (credit: Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born Jan. 24, 1670, Bardsey, near Leeds, Yorkshire, Eng. — died Jan. 19, 1729, London) English dramatist. He was a young protégé of John Dryden when his first major play, The Old Bachelour (1693), met with great success. Later came The Double-Dealer (1693), Love for Love (1695), and The Way of the World (1700), his masterpiece. Other works include the once-popular tragedy The Mourning Bride (1697), many poems, translations, and two opera librettos. Congreve shaped the English comedy of manners with his brilliant comic dialogue, satirical portrayal of fashionable society, uproarious bawdiness, and ironic scrutiny of the affectations of his age. See also Restoration literature.

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The English dramatist William Congreve (1670-1729) was the most brilliant of the writers of the Restoration comedy of manners. He possessed the wit and charm of the heroes of his plays and was universally admired by his contemporaries.

The Restoration comedy of manners was similar to the satiric comedy of Ben Jonson in that it ridiculed violations of moral and social standards, but it centered upon the intrigues of ladies and gentlemen who lived in a highly polished, artificial society, and much of its effectiveness depended upon repartee and brisk and witty dialogue. In 1698 Jeremy Collier attacked the immorality of situation and indecency of dialogue characteristic of Restoration comedy. A change of taste followed, and William Congreve was forced to abandon the stage.

Congreve was born at Bardsey near Leeds on Jan. 24, 1670. His father was a soldier and a descendant of an old English family which owned considerable property in Staffordshire. When Congreve was 4, his father was commissioned to command the garrison at Youghal in Ireland. Later he became agent for the estates of the Earl of Cork, and ultimately the family moved to Lismore. Congreve received all of his education in Ireland. In 1681 he was sent to Kilkenny School, where he met his lifelong friend the satirist Jonathan Swift. In April 1686 Congreve followed Swift to Trinity College, Dublin. While at Trinity, Congreve seems to have written the novel Incognita; or, Love and Duty Reconciled, which was published under the assumed name of Cleophil in 1692.

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 Congreve and his family returned to the family home in Staffordshire, where he seems to have remained for 2 years. It is most probable that it was here that he wrote his first play, The Old Bachelor, "to amuse himself in a slow recovery from a fit of sickness." In the spring of 1691 he went to London and enrolled at the Middle Temple to study law, but most of his energy was diverted to literature. Within a year he had made the friendship of John Dryden, the former poet laureate. In 1692 the two collaborated on a translation of the satires of Juvenal and Persius. That year he also contributed some verses to Charles Gildon's Miscellany.

The Dramatist

In 1693 The Old Bachelor, which had been revised by Dryden, was produced at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane with the best actors and actresses of the time taking part in it - including Betterton, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle, who was to have the leading role in all of Congreve's plays. The play was a great success and ran for the unprecedented length of a fortnight. Congreve was so encouraged by its reception that he hastened to put forth a second play, The Double Dealer, before the end of the year. This play was more complex and better structured than the first, but it was not nearly so well received.

While Congreve was writing his third comedy, Love for Love, Betterton and other leading actors rebelled against the management of the Theatre Royal, the only theater in London at the time. They were given permission to build a new theater at Lincoln's Inn Fields, which opened with the production of Love for Love in the spring of 1695. Probably Congreve's best acting play, it met with immediate success and placed him among the leading dramatists of the day. He became one of the managers of the new theater and agreed to give the new company a play a year.

At this time he also began to write public occasional verse. He was well established in his literary career, and through Charles Montague, later Earl of Halifax, to whom he had dedicated The Double Dealer, he was appointed one of the five commissioners to license hackney coaches at a salary of £ 100 a year.

Congreve was unable to produce a play a year as promised, but early in 1697 he gave the company the tragedy The Mourning Bride. It met with instantaneous success and was the most popular English tragedy for almost a century. The following year he launched an unsuccessful counterattack on Collier's charges against the stage. But by 1700 the taste in comedy had so changed that his next play, The Way of the World, failed miserably, and he determined to leave the stage.

Later Career

Although Congreve associated briefly with Sir John Vanbrugh at the Queen's Theatre and wrote librettos for two operas (The Judgment of Paris and Semele), he spent the rest of his life at leisure. In 1705 he was appointed commissioner for wines and retained this post until 1714, when he received a more lucrative appointment as secretary of Jamaica. In 1710 he published the first collected edition of his works in three volumes. He continued to write poetry and made translations of Homer, Juvenal, Horace, and Ovid. He was highly regarded as a person and colleague by Swift, Pope, Addison, and Gay. Voltaire was annoyed at Congreve's affecting the role of gentleman in preference to that of author, but Congreve's considerateness of his fellow authors was held to be remarkable.

Congreve never married, but he was intimate for many years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, the leading lady of his plays. In later years he was in constant attendance upon the Duchess of Marlborough and is believed to have been the father of the duchess's daughter, Lady Mary Godolphin. His life of pleasure was pursued at the expense of his health, and he suffered greatly from blindness and gout. In the summer of 1728 he went to Bath with the Duchess of Marlborough and John Gay to recover from a long illness. While there his carriage was overturned, and he suffered internal injuries from which he never recovered. He died on Jan. 19, 1729, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He left the bulk of his fortune to the Duchess of Marlborough, who built a monument to his memory in the abbey.

Further Reading

Edmund Gosse, Life of William Congreve (1888; rev. ed. 1924), was the first full biography. The fullest and most accurate is John C. Hodges, William Congreve, the Man: A Biography from New Sources (1941). Other useful biographical accounts are D. Crane Taylor, William Congreve (1931), and Kathleen M. Lynch, A Congreve Gallery (1951). Studies of the Restoration comedy of manners include John Palmer, The Comedy of Manners (1913); Kathleen M. Lynch, The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy (1926; rev. ed. 1965); and Norman N. Holland, The First Modern Comedies: The Significance of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve (1959).

Additional Sources

Gosse, Edmund, Life of William Congreve, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1977, c1924.

Taylor, D. Crane (Daniel Crane), William Congreve, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1976.

Taylor, D. Crane (Daniel Crane), William Congreve, Philadelphia: R. West, 1977.

Congreve, William (1670-1729). English poet and playwright. Educated at Kilkenny School and Trinity College, Dublin, Congreve quickly gave up law for literature. After Incognita (1691) Congreve found his métier in witty comedy, establishing his reputation with The Old Batchelour (1693), The Double Dealer (1693), Love for Love (1695), and The Way of the World (1700). Disappointed by the reception of this last play, Congreve gave up writing for the stage.

Quotes:

"They come together like the Coroner's Inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week."

"Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study."

"Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life."

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."

"If there's delight in love, 'Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me."

"Grief walks upon the heels of pleasure; married in haste, we repent at leisure."

See more famous quotes by William Congreve

William Congreve
William Congreve in 1709 by Godfrey Kneller.
Born	24 January 1670(1670-01-24) Bardsey, England
Died	19 January 1729 (aged 58) London, England
Occupation	Playwright, Poet
Nationality	English
Writing period	1693–1700

For other uses, see William Congreve (disambiguation).

William Congreve (24 January 1670 – 19 January 1729) was an English playwright and poet.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Literary career 3 Later life 4 Famous lines 5 Bibliography 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Early life

Congreve was born in Bardsey, West Yorkshire, England (near Leeds). His parents were William Congreve (1637–1708) and his wife, Mary (née Browning; 1636?–1715); a sister was buried in London in 1672. He spent his childhood in Ireland, where his father, a Cavalier, had settled during the reign of Charles II. Congreve was educated at Trinity College in Dublin; there he met Jonathan Swift, who would be his friend for the remainder of his life. Upon graduation, he matriculated in the Middle Temple in London to study law, but felt himself pulled toward literature, drama, and the fashionable life. Artistically, he became a disciple of John Dryden.

Literary career

William Congreve wrote some of the most popular English plays of the Restoration period of the late 17th century. By the age of thirty, he had written four comedies, including Love for Love (premiered 30 April 1695) and The Way of the World (premiered 1700), and one tragedy, The Mourning Bride (1697)

Unfortunately, his career ended almost as soon as it began. After writing five plays from his first in 1693 until 1700, he produced no more as public tastes turned against the sort of high-brow sexual comedy of manners in which he specialized. He reportedly was particularly stung by a critique written by Jeremy Collier (A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage), to the point that he wrote a long reply, "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations." A member of the Whig Kit-Kat Club, Congreve's career shifted to the political sector, where he held various minor political positions despite his stance as a Whig among Tories.

Later life

Congreve withdrew from the theatre and lived the rest of his life on residuals from his early work. His output from 1700 was restricted to the occasional poem and some translation (notably Molière's Monsieur de Pourceaugnac). Congreve never married; in his own era and through subsequent generations, he was famous for his friendships with prominent actresses and noblewomen, including Anne Bracegirdle, for whom he wrote major parts in all his plays, and Henrietta Godolphin, 2nd Duchess of Marlborough, daughter of the famous general, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, whom he had probably met by 1703 and with whom he had a daughter, Mary (1723–1764).

As early as 1710, he suffered both from gout and from cataracts on his eyes. Congreve suffered a carriage accident in late September 1728, from which he never recovered (having probably received an internal injury); he died in London in January 1729, and was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

Famous lines

Two of Congreve's turns of phrase from The Mourning Bride (1697) have become famous, albeit frequently in misquotation:

• "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast," spoken by Almeria in Act I, Scene 1. (The word "breast" is often misquoted as "beast".)
• "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned," spoken by Zara in Act 3, Scene 2. (This usually appears as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned")

Bibliography

Wikisource has original works written by or about: William Congreve

• The Old Bachelor (1693)
• The Double Dealer (1693)
• Love for Love (1695)
• The Mourning Bride (1697)
• The Way of the World (1700)

See also

• Restoration comedy

References

• Macaulay, Thomas Babington. The Comic Dramatists of the Restoration. London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1853.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Congreve

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William Congreve

• Works by William Congreve at Project Gutenberg
• Biography
• Find-A-Grave profile for William Congreve
• The Library of William Congreve at the Internet Archive

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