"A more pleasant way of writing" : the aristocratic ideology of for split-plot Restoration tragicomedies, 1664-1671

This study attempts to assess the ideological significance of four "split-plot" Restoration tragicomedies produced in the period of 1664-the season just before the year-long closing of the theaters again for plague-to 1671, when Dryden's production of Marriage à-la-Mode proved to be the last tragicomedy in the Fletcherian aristocratic tradition. The four plays are The Comical Revenge (1664) by Sir George Etherege; All Mistaken(1665) by Dryden's brother-in-law, James Howard; Secret Love (1667) by Dryden; and Marriage à-la-Mode . "Split-plot" plays alternated in scenes of a comic plot-involving witty and desirable aristocrats who evince a fashionable disdain for marriage even after agreeing to it-and a romantic plot depicting royalty or aristocratic families coping with destabilizing intrusions into their midst while trying to maintain a social order from the time of Charles I. The disjunctiveness of the plots in these tragicomedies has always been a critical problem. I argue that these plays employ various dialectical strategies where the comic plot reinforces the romantic plot by pretending to resist ironically the latter's affirmation of aristocratic-royalist ideology-only to give in at the resolution. My treatment of Howard's All Mistaken is the only detailed study of the play to date.