Show how William Congreve’s The Way of the World exemplifies many key features of the Restoration Comedy of Manners.

Show how William Congreve’s The Way of the World exemplifies many key features of the Restoration Comedy of Manners.

The Comedy of Manners:--  The comedy of manners, the glory of the Restoration Period, prospered in England during the 17^th century. It is so called because it presents the habits, manners, conventions and follies of a particular section of society- the gay, elegant and carefree aristocracy. It makes fun not so much of individual human beings as of social groups and their fashionable manners. Love, marriage, adulterous relationship, amours and legacy-conflicts are the major contents of such kind of comedy, all of which form together the orbit round which the life of the gay aristocracy circles round and the characters that generally include are fops, fanatics, fools, imitators of French customs, conceited wits, and flirts. It found a rich flowering mainly in the hands of Etherege, Wycherly and Congreve.

‘The Way of the World’ as a Comedy of Manners:-   Congreve’s The way of the world is the most suitable example of comedy of manners. Actually this comedy contains almost all the qualities which we find in a Restoration comedy and thus representing the peak and the perfection of this type of comedy. It *(The Way of the World) presents a vast vista of contemporary social morality and principles. This play maintains a satirical tone from the beginning to the end. It gives us valuable information about the sophisticated class of society in England at that time. How they were involved in their Life style; and how women of that period were crazy about fashions and love-affairs, such sort of things have been brilliantly depicted in The Way of the World.

Loose morals; illicit relationships:--  The Restoration was a period of loose morals, and The Way of the World gives us an adequate idea of the prevailing morality. Illicit love and adulterous relationships are fully conveyed to us through Fainall, Mrs. Fainall, Marwood, and even the hero Mirabell. ................

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