The ways of the world

By William Congreve

William Congreve, (born January 24, 1670, Bardsey, near Leeds, Yorkshire, England—died
January 19, 1729, London), English dramatist who shaped the English comedy of manners
through his brilliant comic dialogue, his satirical portrayal of the war of the sexes, and his ironic
scrutiny of the affectations of his age. His major plays were The Old Bachelour (1693), The
Double-Dealer (1693), Love for Love (1695), and The Way of the World (1700).

Play Summary
Before the action of the play begins, the following events are assumed to have taken place.

Mirabell, a young man-about-town, apparently not a man of great wealth, has had an affair
with Mrs. Fainall, the widowed daughter of Lady Wishfort. To protect her from scandal in the
event of pregnancy, he has helped engineer her marriage to Mr. Fainall, a man whom he feels
to be of sufficiently good reputation to constitute a respectable match, but not a man of such
virtue that tricking him would be unfair. Fainall, for his part, married the young widow because
he coveted her fortune to support his amour with Mrs. Marwood. In time, the liaison between
Mirabell and Mrs. Fainall ended (although this is not explicitly stated), and Mirabell found
himself in love with Millamant, the niece and ward of Lady Wish-fort, and the cousin of his
former mistress.

There are, however, financial complications. Half of Millamant's fortune was under her own
control, but the other half, 6,000 pounds, was controlled by Lady Wishfort, to be turned over to
Millamant if she married a suitor approved by her aunt. Unfortunately, Mirabell had earlier
offended Lady Wishfort; she had misinterpreted his flattery as love.

Mirabell, therefore, has contrived an elaborate scheme. He has arranged for a pretended uncle
(his valet, Waitwell) to woo and win Lady Wishfort. Then Mirabell intends to reveal the actual
status of the successful wooer and obtain her consent to his marriage to Millamant by rescuing
her from this misalliance. Waitwell was to marry Foible, Lady Wishfort's maid, before the
masquerade so that he might not decide to hold Lady Wishfort to her contract; Mirabell is too
much a man of his time to trust anyone in matters of money or love. Millamant is aware of the
plot, probably through Foible.

When the play opens, Mirabell is impatiently waiting to hear that Waitwell is married to Foible.
During Mirabell's card game with Fainall, it becomes clear that the relations between the two
men are strained. There are hints at the fact that Fainall has been twice duped by Mirabell:
Mrs. Fainall is Mirabell's former mistress, and Mrs. Marwood, Fainall's mistress, is in love with
Mirabell. In the meantime, although Millamant quite clearly intends to have Mirabell, she
enjoys teasing him in his state of uncertainty.

Mirabell bids fair to succeed until, unfortunately, Mrs. Marwood overhears Mrs. Fainall and
Foible discussing the scheme, as well as Mirabell and Mrs. Fainall's earlier love affair. Since Mrs.
Marwood also overhears insulting comments about herself, she is vengeful and informs Fainall
of the plot and the fact, which he suspected before, that his wife was once Mirabell's mistress.
The two conspirators now have both motive and means for revenge. In the same afternoon,
Millamant accepts Mirabell's proposal and rejects Sir Wilfull Witwoud, Lady Wishfort's
candidate for her hand.

Fainall now dominates the action. He unmasks Sir Rowland, the false uncle, and blackmails Lady
Wishfort with the threat of her daughter's disgrace. He demands that the balance of
Millamant's fortune, now forfeit, be turned over to his sole control, as well as the unspent
balance of Mrs. Fainall's fortune. In addition, he wants assurance that Lady Wishfort will not
marry so that Mrs. Fainall is certain to be the heir.

This move of Fainall's is now countered; Millamant says that she will marry Sir Wilfull to save
her own fortune. Fainall insists that he wants control of the rest of his wife's money and
immediate management of Lady Wishfort's fortune. When Mirabell brings two servants to
prove that Fainall and Mrs. Marwood were themselves guilty of adultery, Fainall ignores the
accusation and points out that he will still create a scandal which would blacken the name of
Mrs. Fainall unless he gets the money.

At this point, Mirabell triumphantly reveals his most successful ploy. Before Mrs. Fainall
married Fainall, she and Mirabell had suspected the man's character, and she had appointed
her lover trustee of her fortune. Fainall is left with no claim to make because Mrs. Fainall does
not control her own money. He and Mrs. Marwood leave in great anger. Sir Wilfull steps aside
as Millamant's suitor; Lady Wishfort forgives the servants and consents to the match of
Mirabell and Millamant.

The Restoration Period

The term Restoration drama, usually applied to the plays written during the period from 1660
to 1700 or 1710, is not really satisfactory. Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660.
By 1700, Charles II had died, his brother James had reigned for five years and had been deposed
in the "glorious revolution," or "bloodless revolution," of 1688, and William and Mary had
reigned for twelve years. Congreve was not born until ten years after the Restoration; The Way
of the World was first presented when he was thirty. By that time, some of the most obvious
and most notorious features of the period no longer existed or existed only in much weaker
forms.

The easiest way to grasp the particular tone of the Restoration period is to think of it as a
reaction against the Puritanism of Cromwell and the period of the Commonwealth. The
dissolute court of Charles II is well known in history and legend. It was the result of a blend of
world-weariness, cynicism, and debauchery, dominated by a group of exiles who returned to
their country determined to make up for the lean years history had imposed upon them. In
general, the people of England welcomed the change. But such a reaction had only a limited
life; the court gradually shifted from undisguised dissipation to the pattern of covert intrigues,
political and domestic, and the clandestine adulteries that always existed in English courts.

The relations between the court and the theater were more than merely casual. Among Charles
II's first acts after he returned to the throne was the reopening of the playhouses that had been
closed by the Puritans. He was a patron of the theater, attended frequently, and was fond of "a
very merry play." Since, in fact, in the early years of the Restoration the theater depended very
greatly on the support of the nobility and its hangers-on, it reflected the taste of the court and
its activities. For the courtiers, "tis a pleasant, well-bred, complaisant, fine, frolic, good-natured,
pretty age; and if you do not like it leave it to us that do," as one of Wycherley's characters says.
Many characters in the comedies were based on well-known figures in the court; many
episodes echoed scandals that were known.

By the 1690s, if not earlier, a change in the court's attitudes occurred that inevitably affected
the theater. William and Mary did not follow in the footsteps of the queen's uncle, Charles II.
The over-reaction to Puritanism had run its course, and respectability was reasserting its
importance in the life of the upper and middle classes. A Society for the Reformation of
Manners was organized; laws were passed to suppress licentiousness. At the same time, the
audience changed. In the 1660s and 1670s, the solid and wealthy middle class had ignored or
deliberately avoided the theater; they now became an important part of the audience. This was
due to their increased sophistication, but inevitably they imposed their values on the
playwrights as well. And the English merchant was not prepared to condone a cynical
acceptance of loose behavior.

Influences on Restoration Comedy

The nature of the audience is a very important influence on all art forms, theatrical arts
especially. But it is only one factor. Attempts to explain — if such a thing is possible —
Restoration drama must consider other threads of influence as well. Because the theaters were
closed between 1642 and 1660, there was at one time a tendency to treat the Restoration
drama as if it had no connections with the main stream of English drama. This was, on the face
of it, inaccurate. People had seen Jacobean plays; the plays were there to read; and Jacobean
plays formed the bulk of the repertoire of the two theatrical companies after the Restoration.
At the same time, the courtiers, returning after varying lengths of time spent in France, had
seen French plays. We might, therefore, list the main threads that made up that many-
splendored thing, Restoration comedy.

There existed an English tradition of social comedy that treated the love game with lightness,
humor, and some ribaldry. Such comedies are associated with Beaumont and Fletcher, among
others. The plays included satire of social types: the fops, the pedants, and the vain women. At
the same time, the English comic tradition included a different comedy of character types, Ben
Jonson's comedy of "humours," which emphasized the way in which people's characters would
be strongly bent in one direction. Jonson's plays were also intensely satiric, attacking above all
the sins of avarice, lechery, and hypocrisy.

There was a strong French influence which led to elegance of plotting, characterization, and
acting. The French emphasis on correctness was probably a salutary antidote to the casual
attitude to structure of many Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. However, one characteristic
of French comedy, unity of plot, was never adopted; English comedies had plots and subplots,
and generally an excess of action.

The third most important influence on the comedy was the patronage of the court. Very often
what occurred in the play had to be thought of as a private joke, comprehensible only to those
"in the know."

The ways in which these various threads of influence showed themselves varied from dramatist
to dramatist. One dramatist, Wycherley, might borrow a plot from Molierè but then add
subplots and make the sympathetic characters coarser and their antagonists more crudely
vicious to intensify the satire: Le Misanthrope is a brilliant French comedy, and The Plain Dealer
is a brilliant English comedy based on it, but very different indeed. Some comic writers
attempted to follow in the footsteps of Ben Jonson, and Congreve himself professed an
occasional dependence on the Jonsonian "humour." Other dramatists, whose works are not
generally anthologized, for their plays are not among the best, depended on scandal, bawdry,
and the mirroring of their narrow world's activities.

Congreve represents the attitude of the period at its best. The rakehell was no longer a hero;
Mirabell is a descendent of the rakehell, but compared with earlier specimens he displays
urbanity, grace, and decorum. Congreve's love passages can be graceful and dignified; he treats
love with an objective rationalism that is quite apart from the concept of lechery. His comedies
are concerned, as comedies have been through the ages, with love and money, frequently
complicated by parental opposition. His approach, however, is balanced: Love without money
would be a problem, but money without love, the cynic's aim, is not the goal. Likewise,
Congreve abhors the sentimental attitude that love will result in the individuals' somehow
being submerged in each other; he insists that lovers preserve their integrity as individuals.
Love is not metaphysical, not sentimental, not a form of sacrifice. On the other hand, within this
context, it is not merely carnal nor a thinly disguised lust; it includes trust, dignity, and mutual
respect.

The Problem of the Plot

Because of its striking characterization and brilliant dialogue, The Way of the World is generally
considered to be the finest example of Restoration comedy, as well as one of the last.
Nevertheless, it was not successful when it was first presented in 1700. Although the English
audiences, unlike the French, were accustomed to plots and subplots and to a great deal of
action in their plays, they were confused by the amount of activity crammed into a single day.
The Way of the World had only a single action to which everything was related, but it included a
scheme, and a counterplot to frustrate the scheme, and then moves to foil the counterplot.
There were too many episodes, events, reversals, and discoveries, most of them huddled in the
last acts, and they demanded too much of the audience. If the difficulty was ever overcome in a
performance, it was only when actors and director were completely conscious of their problem.

Every play must start, in the traditional phrase, in medias res; that is, some events must have
occurred before the opening curtain. The devices, called exposition, used to inform the
audience or reader of these events could be as obvious as a character addressing the audience
directly, or could be an important part of the action, as in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex or in Ibsen's
plays, or in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. In Restoration drama, exposition
was usually straightforward; two characters might meet and gossip, or a man might talk to a
servant; but in The Way of the World, exposition is highly ingenious and long withheld. In Act I,
we are told that Mirabell is in love and that there are obstacles to the courtship, but most of
the significant facts are hidden until Act II so that the first part of the play is obscure. Then, just
as Mirabell's scheme becomes clear, it loses significance, for Fainall's counterplot becomes the
machinery that moves the action forward. It is, therefore, worthwhile to trace the story in
chronological order.

Loose Ends of the Plot

Although there seems to be the usual happy ending to this comedy, The Way of the World
leaves a number of loose ends that add to the confusion.

It is difficult to see where Mrs. Fainall's future is satisfactorily resolved. At one point in Act V,
she says that this is the end of her life with Fainall; that is one comfort. But at the end of the
play, it seems that she will continue to live with Fainall in an obviously very awkward domestic
situation.

It is not clear that Fainall is completely foiled. He could still demand control of Lady Wishfort's
fortune or disgrace her daughter. Mirabell's statement that "his circumstances are such, he
[Fainall] must of force comply" is hardly adequate.

Some problems of motivation in the play are not clear. Why didn't Mirabell himself marry Mrs.
Fainall when she was a widow? Mirabell is not wealthy, and Mrs. Fainall apparently inherited a
considerable fortune from her first husband.

Is the affair between Mirabell and Mrs. Fainall at an end? She married Fainall only to forestall
scandal if she became pregnant. If it is at an end, why has it ceased? Why should she help
Mirabell with his wooing of Millamant? Has he perhaps convinced Mrs. Fainall that he is
marrying Millamant for money?

Apparently Mirabell had wanted to marry Millamant the year before, but the match was
forestalled by Mrs. Marwood's interference. Fainall suggests that, had they married, Millamant
would have lost half her fortune. Why then the elaborate plot now, to save the 6,000 pounds
that Mirabell was prepared to sacrifice before?

There no real answers to these questions. They seem to be loose ends that the dramatist never
bothered to tie together.

Character List
Mirabell A young man-about-town, in love with Millamant.

Millamant A young, very charming lady, in love with, and loved by, Mirabell. She is the ward of
Lady Wishfort because she is the niece of Lady Wishfort's long-dead husband. She is a first
cousin of Mrs. Fainall.

Fainall A man-about-town. He and Mirabell know each other well, as people do who move in
the same circles. However, they do not really like each other. Fainall married his wife for her
money.

Mrs. Fainall (Arabella) Wife of Fainall and daughter of Lady Wishfort. She was a wealthy young
widow when she married Fainall. She is Millamant's cousin and was Mirabell's mistress,
presumably after her first husband died.

Mrs. Marwood Fainall's mistress. It does appear, however, that she was, and perhaps still is, in
love with Mirabell. This love is not returned.
Young Witwoud A fop. He came to London from the country to study law but apparently found
the life of the fashionable man-about-town more pleasant. He has pretensions to being a wit.
He courts Millamant, but not seriously; she is merely the fashionable belle of the moment.

Petulant A young fop, a friend of Witwoud's. His name is indicative of his character.

Lady Wishfort A vain woman, fifty-five years old, who still has pretensions to beauty. She is the
mother of Mrs. Fainall and the guardian of Millamant. She is herself in love with Mirabell,
although she is now spiteful because he offended her vanity.

Sir Wilfull Witwoud The elder brother of Young Witwoud, he is forty years old and is planning
the grand tour of Europe that was usually made by young men to complete their education. He
is Lady Wishfort's nephew, a distant, non-blood relative of Millamant's, and Lady Wishfort's
choice as a suitor for Millamant's hand.

Waitwell Mirabell's valet. At the beginning of the play, he has just been married to Foible, Lady
Wishfort's maid. He masquerades as Sir Rowland, Mirabell's nonexistent uncle, and woos Lady
Wishfort.

Foible Lady Wishfort's maid, married to Waitwell.

Mincing Millamant's maid.

Peg A maid in Lady Wishfort's house.

Critical Essays Themes in The Way of the World

The precise statement of the theme of a work of art is always a little unsatisfactory. The pithy
sentence must omit a great deal; it always does violence to the whole work. Nevertheless, it is
worth making the effort to determine a theme, or themes, in a play as a guide to study or
analysis.

As a point of departure, it is valid to say that the theme of this play is given us by Congreve in
the title, The Way of the World. All the events and characters of the play can be related to this
central theme. The obvious criticism is that the same "theme" can be ascribed to unlimited
numbers of other, and quite different, novels and plays. Further, Congreve does not, in this
play, seem to take a consistent position. Sometimes he is direct, sometimes ironic; sometimes
he deplores, sometimes he approves; at times he is amused; and most of the time his position
is a compound of all of these attitudes.
To get a more satisfactory statement we might use a different approach that would give a
better sense of the texture of the play. Most Restoration playwrights supplied their plays with
alternate titles, or subtitles. Since Congreve did not, we might seek for the different subtitles
that are appropriate. Each one would suggest a theme, although not the theme. These may put
flesh on the bare bones the title gives us.

Love a la Mode
Certainly, the play can be seen as a dramatic presentation of varieties of love in the England of
the year 1700. Central is the delicate handling of the love game as played by Mirabell and
Millamant. They represent the ideal of the Restoration attitude, intense yet balanced, their love
based on mutual esteem with no surrender of individuality. Contrasted with it are Mirabell's
earlier and quite ambiguous love affair with Mrs. Fainall; the illicit love of Fainall and Mrs.
Marwood, presumably passionate, but wholly without mutual trust; the spurious court young
Witwoud pays to Millamant; the direct and somewhat coarse approach of Sir Wilfull; and, at
the opposite extreme completely, the aging and undignified longings of Lady Wishfort, vain,
unrealistic, over-eager, desperate, and a little pathetic.

Love and Money

Such an approach is closely related to that of love a la mode, although they are not identical. In
the world whose way is presented here, love and money are values to be taken into account at
all times. The sincerity of Mirabell's love does not make him lose sight of the importance of
Millamant's fortune. Fainall marries for money to support an illicit love; apparently the thought
of marrying Mrs. Marwood without adequate money (however "adequate" might be defined) is
unthinkable. Money is Lady Wishfort's sole hold over her child and her ward. Even the marriage
of the servants is built on a promise of a handsome sum of money. This is the world's way. Love
without money is an impossible sentimental dream, although money often corrupts what love
there is.

A Gallery of Portraits
Congreve's statements in the dedication, the prologue, and the epilogue suggest that this might
be a valid subtitle. Since it is the way of the world to put a premium on youth, Mirabell and
Millamant stand at the center, representing all that is to be commended. Mirabell is the beau
ideal: polished, poised, rational and balanced, witty and perspicacious without being what we
might today call over-intellectual. Millamant is the belle: feminine, beautiful, witty, not prudish,
but with a sense of her own worth. She has avoided the messiness and humiliation of sexual
intrigue. Opposed to Mirabell are would-be wits, worthy but graceless boors, and deep
intriguers. Opposed to Millamant are women who engaged in adultery and an old dowager
without decorum. Every character reveals himself in action, and together they produce a gallery
of self-portraits.

Jungle of High Intrigue

This subtitle would focus attention on some of the values of London society. Everyone is
engaged in intrigue: Mirabell intrigues to gain consent to his marriage from Lady Wishfort, and
this involves intrigue within intrigue, for he does not trust Waitwell. Fainall intrigues in turn.
Everyone is involved in one or the other of these schemes — Mrs. Fainall, Mrs. Marwood, and
the servants. Even Lady Wishfort in her willingness to marry Sir Rowland has a devious purpose
— revenge on Mirabell. When Mrs. Fainall married her husband, that was part of an intrigue, as
was his marriage to her. And as we see in the play, victory goes to Mirabell, not because of his
virtue, but simply because he is the most successful intriguer.

Certainly all these possible subtitles, rather than any one, add up to the ironic commentary on
society that is in the title, The Way of the World.

Critical Essays Style, Wit, and Irony in The Way of the World
In the most common use of the word describes the author's use of language within the shorter
rhetorical units, the sentence or at most the paragraph. It includes the choice of words and the
rhythmic and musical quality of the sentences. Since it also includes a discussion of the relations
of language to thought, fact, and reality, at some point it becomes identical with a discussion of
wit and irony.

If irony is included in the discussion, then arbitrary limits must be set because from some points
of view, irony pervades The Way of the World. The title is ironic; the action is ironic; the
relationships of the characters to each other are ironic. This section, however, is concerned only
with irony as a function of the speeches of characters, not as a function of plot or theme. It is
concerned with that kind of irony that is closely related to style and wit.

Congreve avoids attempting any definition of wit, although, in the dedication, he distinguishes
between true wit and false wit, the latter a product of affectation. Another comment of
Congreve's on wit also casts some light on his practice. In "Concerning Humour in Comedy," he
writes:

Every person in a comedy may be allowed to speak them [pleasant things]. From a witty man
they are expected and even a fool may be permitted to stumble on 'em by chance. . . . I do not
think that humourous characters exclude wit; no, but the manner of wit should be adapted to
the humour . . . ; a character of a splenetic and peevish humour should have a satirical wit. A
jolly and sanguine humour should have a facetious wit.
In practice, all of Congreve's characters speak "pleasant things." There is not a speech that does
not have its biting edge of wit, satire, or irony.

Discussions of style and wit in a play are in some ways simple. Certain kinds of problems do not
have to be discussed since they do not exist. Unlike novels, plays have no long passages of
description which may or may not be well written; there are no elaborate expositions of
motives. There is no reason to consider whether the author is inside his creatures' minds or
external to them. The characters speak; what they say can be examined. To talk of style or wit
in a play is to talk of the different styles and different kinds of wit of the characters.

Congreve wrote so that his characters were sharply differentiated by their speech patterns and
their wit. As Congreve used style and wit as one of his ways of characterization, the material in
this section may be considered additional data for study of the characters, collected here so
that a rather technical subject can be treated in one place.