The profession of piety had become so disagreeable that a
shameless cynicism was now considered the mark of a gentleman. The ideal
hero of Wycherley or Etherege was the witty young profligate, who had
seen life, and learned to disbelieve in virtue. His highest qualities
were a contempt for cant, physical courage, a sort of spendthrift
generosity, and a good-natured readiness to back up a friend in a
quarrel, or an amour. Virtue was _bourgeois_----reserved for London
trades-people. A man must be either a rake or a hypocrite. The gentlemen
were rakes, the city people were hypocrites. Their wives, however, were
all in love with the gentlemen, and it was the proper thing to seduce
them, and to borrow their husbands' money. For the first and last time,
perhaps, in the history of the English drama, the sympathy of the
audience was deliberately sought for the seducer and the rogue, and the
laugh turned against the dishonored husband and the honest man.
(Contrast this with Shakspere's _Merry Wives of Windsor_.) The women
were represented as worse than the men--scheming, ignorant, and corrupt.
The dialogue in the best of these plays was easy, lively, and witty the
situations in some of them audacious almost beyond belief. Under a thin
varnish of good breeding, the sentiments and manners were really brutal.
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