WYCHERLEY, WILLIAM (c. English dramatist, was born about 164o at Clive, near Shrewsbury, where for several generations his family had been settled on a moderate estate of about £600 a year. Like Vanbrugh, Wycherley spent his early years in France, whither, at the age of fifteen, he was sent to be educated in the very heart of the "precious" circle of Mme. de Montausier, on the banks of the Charente. This lady effected the first of his successive conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism. Later at Oxford, Bishop Barlow reclaimed him, and under James II. he returned to Catholicism once more. In fact, the deity he worshipped was the deity of the "polite world" of his time—gentility. Moreover, as a professional fine gentleman, at a period when, as the genial Major Pack says, "the amours of Britain would furnish as diverting memoirs, if well related, as those of France published by Rabutin, or those of Nero's court writ by Petronius," Wycherley was obliged to be a loose liver.
As a fellow-commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, Wycherley lived (according to Wood) in the provost's lodgings, being entered as "Philosophiae Studiosus" in July 1660. And he does not seem to have matriculated or to have taken a degree. He left Oxford and settled in the Inner Temple ; but not, naturally, to engage seriously in the study of the law. Pleasure and the stage were alone open to him, and probably early in 1671 was produced, at the Theatre Royal, Love in a Wood. It was published the next year. With regard to this comedy Wycherley told Pope that he wrote it the year before he went to Oxford. But we need not believe him : the worst witness against a man is mostly himself. To pose as the wicked boy of genius has been the foolish ambition of many writers, but on inquiry it will gen erally be found that these inkhorn Lotharios are not nearly so wicked as they would have us believe. It is not so much that as Macaulay insists, "the whole air and spirit of the piece belong to a period subsequent to that mentioned by Wycherley," but that "the whole air and spirit of the piece" belong to a man—an experi enced and hardened young man of the world—and not to a boy who would fain pose as an experienced and hardened young man of the world. The real defence of Wycherley against his foolish
impeachment of himself is this, that Love in a Wood, howsoever inferior in structure and in all the artistic economies to Thel Country Wife and The Plain Dealer, contains scenes which, not for moral hardness merely, but often for real dramatic ripeness, are almost the strongest to be found amongst his four plays. The play was dedicated to Charles II.'s mistress, the duchess of Cleveland, whose favours Wycherley forthwith enjoyed. His f or tune as a dramatist was made. Voltaire (in his Letters on the English Nation) has a picturesque description of the duchess's visits to Wycherley's chambers in the Temple.
Whether Wycherley's experiences as a naval officer, which he alludes to in his lines "On a Sea Fight which the Author was in betwixt the English and the Dutch," occurred before or after the production of Love in a Wood is a point upon which opinions differ, but on the whole we are inclined to agree with Macaulay, against Leigh Hunt, that these experiences took place not only after the production of Love in a Wood but after the production of The Gentleman Dancing Master, in 1673. We also think, with Macaulay, that he went to sea simply because it was the "polite" thing to do so—simply because, as he says in the epilogue to The Gentleman Dancing Master "all gentlemen must pack to sea." This second comedy was published in 1673, but was probably acted late in 1671. It is inferior to Love in a Wood. In The Relapse the artistic mistake of blending comedy and farce damages a splendid play, but leaves it a splendid play still. In The Gentle man Dancing Master this mingling of discordant elements destroys a play that would never in any circumstances have been strong--a play nevertheless which abounds in animal spirits, and is lum inous here and there with true dramatic points.