William Congreve Comedy

Two main focuses that encompass life are love and money. Since the invention of money, it has been a competition to see who can become the wealthiest and therefore the most successful. But are people really successful if they are unhappy without a person to love in their lives? This essay will investigate the importance of love and money in the novels The Great Gatsby and Pride and Prejudice. Therefore, the essay will focus on the research question: “What effects do love and money have on the authors’ portrayal of the main female characters in the novels The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen?”

In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen introduces the major thematic concept of marriage and financial wealth. Throughout the novel, Austen depicts various relationships that exhibit the two recurring themes. Set during the regency period, the perception of marriage revolves around a universal truth. Austen claims that a single man “must be in want of a wife.” Hence, the social stature and wealth of men were of principal importance for women. Austen, however, hints that the opposite may prove more exact: a single woman, under the social limitations, is in want of a husband. Through this speculation, Austen acknowledges that the economic pressure of social acceptance serves as a foundation for a proper marriage.

In Elizabethan Society during the time in which William Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice, many marriages were arranged by the parents of the betrothed couple to ensure the transfer of wealth as opposed to assuring true love. Once married, the woman was expected to be subservient to her husband and not control any matters of the estate. Although not necessarily written as a stance on women’s position in society, it is from this perspective that Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice laying down an underlying theme of marriage for wealth within the play. Love in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is bartered like a tradable commodity in order to gain money, status, and resources.

Act III offers happy resolution to the problems of identity and marriage that drive much of the humor in the previous acts. Wilde continues to mock the social customs and attitudes of the aristocratic class. He relentlessly attacks their values, views on marriage and respectability, sexual attitudes, and concern for stability in the social structure.

In I Henry IV and II Henry IV, William Shakespeare brings together drama and comedy to create two of the most compelling history plays ever written. Many of Shakespeare's other works are nearly absolute in their adherence to either the comic or tragic traditions, but in the two Henry IV plays Shakespeare combines comedy and drama in ways that seem to bring a certain realism to his characters, and thus the plays. The present essay is an examination of the various and significant effects that Shakespeare's comedic scenes have on I Henry IV and II Henry IV. The Diversity of Society

In Charriere excerpt from The Nobleman, the use of satire helps the audience understand that privileges can allow for a person to take advantage of a situation or of a person who does not hold the same privileges. The Baron d’Aronville is a good example of what happens to privileges when they have been in the family for generations. Old Aristocratic families only hold there ancientry dear to them because it legitimizes there nobility. Julia, unlike her father, never “consulted Patents of Nobility” and wants nothing to do with her noble heritage or rank. She also “would rather have been thought plebeian than proud” (37). Although ancientry gives people recognition and a title, Charriere reveals that the “most recent nobility is the best” because he works the hardest to maintain the title he has won (38). By using fiction and satire Charriere is clearly able to show the decay of ancient nobles and the misuse of privileges.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s epistolary essay “A Vindication of the Rights of Men” acts as a direct, scathing response to Edmund Burke’s opinionated piece regarding the French Revolution, “Reflections on the Revolution in France”. This essay will examine the use of satire as a mode in the opening sections of Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication”, as well as comparing her lexical choices to those of her addressee, Edmund Burke. The Oxford English Dictionary states that “satire” is “… [A] work of art which uses humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize prevailing immorality or foolishness, esp. [sic] as a form of social or political commentary.” Humour is too exaggerated to relate to Wollstonecraft’s work, but ridicule as a

During the 16th Century, English poetry was dominated and institutionalised by the Court. Because it 'excited an intensity that indicates a rare concentration of power and cultural dominance,' the Court was primarily responsible for the popularity of the poets who emerged from it. Sir Thomas Wyatt, one of a multitude of the so-called 'Court poets' of this time period, not only changed the way his society saw poetry through his adaptations of the Petrarchan Sonnet, but also obscurely attempted to recreate the culture norm through his influence. Though much of his poems are merely translations of Petrarch's, these, in addition to his other poetry, are satirical by at least a cultural approach.

In Chaucer’s “Franklin Tale” the plot revolves around a married couple: the knight, Arviragus, his young wife, Dorigen, and a young squire, Aurelius who importunes and attempts to Dorigen. The characters can be said to oscillate between desire and their ego honor which affects what they say and do. Lacan’s definition of desire tells us that we desire for recognition from this “Other.” Our desire is to become what the other person lacks. Duby’s model of courtly love is a concept that focuses on chivalry, nobility and women being at the center. In this paper, I will examine what the story reveals about the relation each character has to his or her desire, how they act in accordance to their desire and the role magic or illusion plays in the plot and how it affect characters’ relation to desire.

The tangled web of relationships that connect each character in this story are what drive Congreve's play forward. With each past affair (or current) affair that

“In roughly built playhouses and cobblestone inn yards, an extraordinary development took place in England in the 1500s.” (Yancey, 8). At that time, an opportunity combined to produce literature achievement never before witnessed in the history of drama and theater. The renaissance, helped spark this movement by inspiring scientific and artistic creativity throughout the land. Models began writing dramas that portrayed life in both realistic and imaginative ways. This created work later captured the attention of the world that changed the English drama. The many aspects of Elizabethan theater helped to shape the acting and theater world forever.

The genre of comedy, throughout the history of dramatic art has always served to not only entertain audiences, but to make them aware of their own individual flaws, or flaws that exist in society. (Weitz, E.) Comedy has no precise definition, and its boundaries are broad. One function of comedy however has remained the same - to hold up a mirror to the society of the time but through pleasure, inviting audiences to reflect and also providing amusement. Set in the late nineteenth century, the play An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (1895) epitomises comedy, as both a literary and dramatic genre. Wilde was masterful in his ability to combine aspects of evolved comedic traditions and dramatic conventions to critique Victorian society. Drawing on characteristics of Greek and Roman tragicomedy, the choices in the play’s plot involves elements of tragedy as well as scenes that serve as comic relief and give the audience a sense of finality through a happy resolution. (Bureman, L) Focussing on the upper class stratum, Wilde employs a comedy of manners Molière style, of the Restoration Period in the seventeenth century in the play by combining forms of comedy with aspects of realist drama. The portrayal of archetypal figures such as Lady Chiltern and Lord Goring satirize rigid moral value of the time and expose their hypocrisies, through dialogue involving irony, wit and humour. Elements of farce and disguises characterized by ‘commedia dell’arte’, a form of comedy first developed in

Voltaire was a rebellious and radical thinker, whose sharp wit and pointed satire drew the ire of critics who say he disrespected the orthodoxy of church and state, and won the respect of a growing rationalist movement that had emerged out of the public sphere in Europe between the 17th and 18th centuries. Although Voltaire is known today for being a philosophical powerhouse, whose writing is the stuff of legend, for most of his life he only wrote plays, poems, and novels. It wasn’t until he was almost forty in 1733 that he published his first major philosophical work, “Letters Concerning the English Nation.” This was a series of letters that describe the customs, cultures and great men of England, and even though his praise for England, a country “where all the arts are honored and rewarded,” and where one could think “free and nobly without being held back by any servile fear,” may be overblown, they are important nonetheless, because it highlights the virtues that an Enlightened society should strive for. (114) In many ways these were not so much love letters to England, as much as they were a call for the rest of Europe to progress in the rationalist movement that England had set the tone for.

The Restoration was the time when King Charles II was restored as the King of England in 1660. This period was extremely different from its previous one, the Puritan Age. During the Puritan Age, all theaters were closed and all forms of expression were supposed to maintain a religious topic. Puritans believed that people should follow a simple life devoted to God and any form of expression that was against God’s laws, was punished. So when King Charles II was restored, the literature of the time turned totally upside down. During his exile, Charles II lived in France. There, he attended to the French theater and developed a significant taste for Spanish plays. He then, patronized two major theater companies and re-opened the establishments. He restored the English Church and gave founds to create the Royal Society, which still exists and is oriented to the literature and scientific development of the country.

The Way of the World serves a particular function. It shows the reality of the world as Congreve perceived it. The characters within the play display certain behaviors and opinions that are found within the high society of the Restoration period. Even the names of the characters impart some knowledge. Each character 's name is a reflection of their personality. For example, Fainall feigns all and Lady Wishfort wishes for it (Congreve 2360). Their names reflect their personality and behaviors, which teaches various lessons. The play functions as a window into the world of wealth and power, and shines a light on their behaviors, both positive and negative. Congreve used his satirical play to make the nobility see the truth of their world, and to show them how their way affects social relations.