It is, however, on his two last comedies—The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer—that must rest Wycherley's fame as a master of that comedy of repartee which, inaugurated by Etheredge, and afterwards brought to perfection by Congreve and Vanbrugh, supplanted the humoristic comedy of the Elizabethans. The Country Wife, produced in 1672 or 1673 and published in 1675, is so full of wit, ingenuity, animal spirits and conventional humour that, had it not been for its motive, it would probably have sur vived as long as the acted drama remained a literary form in England. So strong, indeed, is the hand that could draw such a character as Marjory Pinchwife (the undoubted original not only of Congreve's Miss Prue but of Vanbrugh's Hoyden), such a character as Sparkish (the undoubted original of Congreve's Tattle), such a character as Horner (the undoubted original of all those cool impudent rakes with whom our stage has since been familiar), that Wycherley is certainly entitled to a place alongside Congreve and Vanbrugh.
Scarcely inferior to The Country Wife is The Plain Dealer, produced probably early in 1674 and published three years later,— a play of which Voltaire said, "Je ne connais point de comedie chez les anciens ni chez les moderns ou it y ait autant d'esprit." This comedy had an immense influence, as regards manipulation of dialogue, upon all subsequent English comedies of repartee, and he who wants to trace the ancestry of Tony Lumpkin and Mrs. Hardcastle has only to turn to Jerry Blackacre and his mother, while Manly (for whom Wycherley's early patron, the duke of Montausier, sat), though he is perhaps overdone, has dominated this kind of stage character ever since.
It was after the success of The Plain Dealer that the turning point came in Wycherley's career. The great dream of all the men about town time, as Wycherley's plays all show, was to marry a widow, young and handsome, a peer's daughter if possible—but in any event rich, and spend her money upon wine and women. While talking to a friend in a bookseller's shop at Tunbridge, Wycherley heard The Plain Dealer asked for by a lady who, in the person of the countess of Drogheda, answered all the requirements. An introduction ensued, then love-making, then marriage—a secret marriage, probably in 1680, for, fearing to lose the king's patronage and the income therefrom, Wycherley still thought it politic to pass as a bachelor. But the news reached the royal ear, and Wycherley lost the royal favour for ever. He never had an opportunity of regaining it, for the countess seems to have really loved him, and Love in a Wood had proclaimed the writer to be the kind of husband whose virtue prospers best when closely guarded at the domestic hearth. Wherever he went the
countess followed him, and when she did allow him to meet his boon companions it was in a tavern in Bow Street opposite to his own house, and even there under certain protective conditions. In summer or in winter he was obliged to sit with the window open and the blinds up, so that his wife might see that the party included no member of a sex for which her husband's plays had advertised his partiality. She died, however, in the year after her marriage and left him the whole of her fortune. But the title to the property was disputed ; the costs of the litigation were heavy—so heavy that his father was unable (or else he was un willing) to come to his aid; and the result of his marrying the rich, beautiful and titled widow was that the poet was thrown into the Fleet prison. There he remained for seven years, being finally released by the liberality of James II.—a liberality which, in credible as it seems, is too well authenticated to be challenged. James had been so much gratified by seeing The Plain Dealer acted that, finding a parallel between Manly's "manliness" and his own, such as no spectator had before discovered, he paid off Wycherley's execution creditor and settled on him a pension of £200 a year. Other debts still troubled Wycherley, however, and he never was from his embarrassments, not even after suc ceeding to a life estate in the family property. In coming to Wych erley's death, we come to the worst allegation that has ever been made against him as a man and as a gentleman. At the age of seventy-five he married a young girl, and is said to have done so in order to spite his nephew, the next in succession.
Wycherley wrote verses, and, when quite an old man, prepared them for the press by the aid of Alexander Pope, then not much more than a boy. But, notwithstanding all Pope's tinkering, they remain contemptible. Pope's published correspondence with the dramatist was probably edited by him with a view to giving an impression of his own precocity. The friendship between the two cooled, according to Pope's account, because Wycherley took offence at the numerous corrections on his verses. It seems more likely that Wycherley discovered that Pope, while still professing friendship and admiration, satirized his friend in the Essay on Criticism. Wycherley died on Jan. 1, 1716, and was buried in the vault of the church in Covent Garden.
Wycherley's complete works were edited by M. Summers in 4 vols. (Nonesuch Press, 1924). See C. Perromat, William Wycherley, sa vie, son oeuvre (1921). (T. W.-D.; X.)