The Plain Dealer

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 adaptationan 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 referenc

Related Essays

American cities and racial discrimination .... However, an editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer takes the position that racism is one of the easiest charges to make and one of the most difficult to rebut .... (2381 10 )

The Conscious Lovers (Richard Steele) .... sermons (Hazlitt 431 2) As a piece of social criticism, The Conscious Lovers seems to have much the same intent as Wycherley's The Plain Dealer, but whereas .... (2727 11 )

English Adaptations of Plays by Moliere .... the Stone Guest as works that illustrate a specific social milieu, and then to show how Anglicizers of Moliere, notably Wycherley in The Plain Dealer and The .... (9292 37 )

IAMS Bibliography .... 28, 1993). The Plain Dealer, 8F. Students learn safety at Iams. .... The Plain Dealer, C1. Watkins & Son Pet Supplies v. Iams Co., 107 F. Supp. 2d 883 (SD Ohio. .... (4210 17 )

LTV Case. A. Alfred Taubman & Sotheby's Case .... One of the city's major newspapers, the Plain Dealer and city officials believed the rumors and the town turned against LTV management. .... (3414 14 )

t merely coquettish but so programmatically deceptive that she lies even to family members about her taste for society, fashion, the court, marriage. "Marriage!" she tells her rather decent cousin Eliza, "what a pleasure you have found out! I nauseate it of all things" (II.i). Yet when Manly asks her to return the money and jewels he gave her, she frames her answer so as to suggest Manly's ill breeding and contempt for her for asking for them: "I have delivered your jewels to . . . [m]y husband. . . . I dare not ask him for your jewels again, to restore 'em to you; lest he should conclude you never would have parted with 'em to me, on any other score, but the exchange of my honour: which rather than you'd let me use, you'd lose I'm sure yourself, those trifles of yours" (II.i). Plot resolution The Plain Dealer is largely contingent on the emergence of Manly's character, particularly as it balances and responds to Olivia's. Yet it is Manly's character that has been the source of much critical controversy. For Katherine Rogers, for example, the action of The Plain Dealer and the development of its hero Manly create an unsatisfactorily resolved moral and dramatic tension. The play is written, therefore, from two incom

Category: Literature - T