The purpose of this research is to examine The Plain Dealer by William Wycherley. The plan of the research will be to set forth the outline of the story, to position the play in the appropriate social and dramatic context, and then to explore meanings that various critics have attributed to it. In this regard, the antecedent of the play, Le Misanthrope (Mis.) by Moliere, will be cited so as to show how The Plain Dealer offers the English version of a story that becomes more than an adaptation an updating of Moliere's style of social comment on one hand, and a criticism of the Restoration society for which Wycherley wrote on the other.
The Plain Dealer charts the efforts of the surly, asocial Captain Manly, betrothed to Olivia and betrayed by her and his best friend Vernish, to not only reclaim the fortune he had entrusted to her before going to war but also avenge the betrayal by exposing her duplicity. In this enterprise he enlists the help of Fidelia, who he thinks is a young man but is in fact a young woman of fortune so deeply in love with him that she has disguised herself as his page. Like Alceste in Mis., Manly disdains virtually all of society. Unlike Alceste, Manly is mercilessly, bitterly persistent in pursuing his revenge on Olivia, even though he is sidetracked by unwilling involvement in one of the many lawsuits being pursued by an acquaintance, the Widow Blackacre.
The pattern of ideas in The Plain Dealer can be usefully charted by reference to Mis. In Moliere's play, the character of Alceste is a paradox, for he is doggedly dour in his rejection or ordinary human comity. He says flatly that "sentiments should never be masked under vain compliments" (I.i). His excess of character surfaces in the gossip scene, wherein Celimene, Eliante, Philinte, Acaste, and Clitandre blithely dissect the foibles of their absent friends. Alceste reminds them that if one of the absent came in sight, "you'll at once / E...