FARQUHAR, GEORGE (1677-1707), British dramatist, son of William Farquhar, a clergyman, was born in Londonderry, Ireland, in 1677. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He became an actor on the Dublin stage, but in a fencing scene in Dryden's Indian Emperor he forgot to exchange his sword for a foil, with nearly fatal results to a fellow-actor, and never acted again. At the suggestion of Robert Wilks, the comedian, he wrote his first play, Love and a Bottle, which was performed at Drury Lane in 1698. His second comedy, The Constant Couple (1699) ridiculing the pilgrimages to Rome in the Jubilee Year, was en thusiastically received, Wilks as Sir Harry Wildair contributing largely to its success. In 1701 he wrote a sequel, Sir Harry Wildair, and in 17o2 The Inconstant, borrowed from Fletcher's Wild Goose Chase. In the same year he published a volume of miscellanies, Love and Business, containing a "Discourse on Comedy," defending the English neglect of the dramatic unities. In 1703 he married, in expectation of a fortune which did not materialize. The rest of his life was a constant struggle against poverty. His other plays are The Stage Coach (17o4), a one-act farce from the French; The Twin Rivals (Drury Lane, 1702); The Recruiting Officer (Drury Lane, 1706) ; and The Beaux' Stratagem (Haymarket, 17o7). This is the best of his plays, and long kept the stage. Genest notes 19 revivals up to 18o8. It was revived again at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1927. The plot concerns the adventures of two embarrassed gentlemen who travel as master and servant, in the hope of marrying a fortune. Archer, the supposed valet, was one of Garrick's best parts. Before he had finished the second act of The Beaux' Stratagem he was taken mortally ill, but he finished the play, for which he had been paid in advance. It was staged on March 8, and he had his third night, with an extra benefit on April 29, 17o7, the day of his death.
Farquhar marks the end of the true Restoration tradition. In stead of the intellectual foil-play of his predecessors he gives us j something of the cheerful singlestick of Elizabethan comedy, while his return to the romantic treatment of love, whether you regard it as a disastrous lapse into the "luscious" or a breath of purer air, is at any rate fatal to the maintenance of the Restora tion atmosphere. His characters are lively and amusing, his plots ingenious and well worked out. But for his early death he might have been very great.
Farquhar's dramatic works were published in 1728, 1742 and 1772, and by Thomas Wilkes with a biography in 1775• They were included in the Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanburgh and Far quhar (1849) edit. by Leigh Hunt. See also A. C. Ewald, Dramatic Works of George Farquhar, with Life and Notes (2 vols., 1892); L. I. Guiney, A Little English Gallery (1894) ; The Beaux' Stratagem, ed. H. Macauley Fitzgibbon (1898) ; D. Schmid, "George Farquhar," in Wiener Beitrhge zur engl. Philol. (Vienna, 1904) ; The Best Plays of George Farquhar, edit. William Archer (1906) ; H. Ten E. Perry, The Comic Spirit in Restoration Drama (New Haven, Conn. 1925).