ETHEREGE, SIR GEORGE (c. English dramatist and poet, was probably born about 1634-35, but practically nothing is known of his life except for a short period. Knowledge of his ancestry and early history is only de rived from some chancery papers in the record office, from which it is gathered that his grandfather lived at Maidenhead and that he spelled his name as it is here spelled. He may have been edu cated at Cambridge, have studied law at one of the inns of court, and have lived some part of his early life abroad. In 1664 he was living in London, apparently quite unknown, when his first comedy, Love in a Tub, was produced at the Duke's theatre. This play marks the beginning of the specifically restoration com edy. It is partly in rhymed heroic verse, but the comedy scenes, with their play of wit, and their introduction of the "war of the sexes" theme, strike a new note in the history of the English drama. With the production of this play, Etherege leaped into fame. Thereafter he was one of the outstanding figures in the circle of Sedley and' Rochester, and soon became an almost legendary type of the beau and wit of the day. More than 20 years after he had left London for ever the Spectator, to indicate the position Sir Roger de Coverley had held in his youth, said that he had often supped with Rochester and Etherege.
Three years of elegant idleness followed, before his next play, She would if she could, was produced at the Duke's house in "Lord ! " says Pepys, "how full the house and how silly the play." He goes on to say that the actors were "out of humour," which may be partly explained by the nature of the play, which hovers rather indecisively between the formal comedy of the four lovers, and the farcical scenes where Jolly and Cockwood appear, which are more in the spirit of the Jonsonian comedy of humours. About this time he had an affair with the famous actress Mrs. Barry; she bore him a daughter who died in her youth. In 1668 he went to Constantinople as secretary to Sir Daniel Harvey, the English ambassador there. He returned to London in 1671, but published nothing but some occasional poems, drawing a rebuke for his laziness even from Rochester. At last in his last comedy, The Man of Mode, appeared at the Duke's house. It was a great success, unlike the previous one, which appears to have fallen a trifle flat. But "Gentle George's" life was beginning to tell. A supreme picture of the life of the day, so much so that it set the fashion of "original-hunting" from which we have never escaped, it is yet a little less high-spirited and a little more savage than its predecessors. After this he continued his life as a man about-town, and was involved with Rochester in the Epsom brawl which led to the death of Downes. Somewhere about I679-8o he was married and knighted. The gossip of the day, our only authority, takes two forms ; one that he married a fortune and so got a knighthood, the other that he was forced to purchase a knighthood to secure a fortune.
In 1685 he was appointed ambassador at Ratisbon, and his letters are preserved, so that at last he ceases to be a legend and becomes a living person for us. It is these letters that let us see the justice of his nicknames "Gentle George" and "Easy Ethe rege"; the essence of his letters is tolerance and good manners. It was not good form to make a fuss about anything, particularly your work. But this paraded idleness, which became affectation in his successors, is natural to him ; his own nature is a summary of the ideal of the period. The only thing that roused him was the bad manners of the local burghers to a visiting actress in whom he was interested. That, as one might expect, he would not stand, and he raised all sorts of trouble until he got his apology. Exactly when he died we do not know, but it seems to have been in Paris, probably in 1691.
Etherege deserves to hold a more distinguished place in English literature than has generally been allotted to him. In a dull and heavy age, he inaugurated a period of genuine wit and sprightliness. He invented the comedy of intrigue, and led the way for the mas terpieces of Congreve and Sheridan. Before his time the manner of Ben Jonson had prevailed in comedy, and traditional "humours" and typical eccentricities, instead of real characters, had crowded the comic stage. Etherege paints with a light, faint hand, but it is from nature, and his portraits of fops and beaux are simply unexcelled. No one knows better than he how to present a gay young gentleman, a Dorimant, "an unconfinable rover after amorous adventures." His genius is as light as thistle-down; he is frivolous, without force of conviction, without principle; but his wit is very sparkling, and his style pure and singularly picturesque. No one approaches Etherege in delicate touches of dress, furni ture and scene; Sir Fopling, for example, "He was yesterday at the play, with a pair of gloves up to his elbow, and a periwig more exactly curled than a lady's head newly dressed for a ball"; he makes the fine airs of London gentlemen and ladies live before our eyes even more vividly than Congreve does ; but he has less insight and less energy than Congreve. Had he been poor or am bitious, he might have been to England almost what Moliere was to France, but he was a rich man living at his ease, and he dis dained to excel in literature. Etherege was "a fair, slender, gen teel man, but spoiled his countenance with drinking." His con temporaries all agree in acknowledging that he was the soul of affability and sprightly good-nature.
The life of Etherege was first given in detail by Edmund Gosse in Seventeenth Century Studies (1883). His works were edited by A. W. Verity, in i888, and by H. F. B. Brett-Smith (Percy Reprints, no. 6, Oxford, 1927) ; see B. Dobree, Restoration Comedy (Oxford, 1924) • (E. G.)