William Wycherley

The Plain Dealer, a Comedy, in Five Acts; Altered from Wycherly, by Mr. Bickerstaff: As It is Performed at the Theatre-royal, Covent-garden. a New Edition William Wycherley

Publisher Marketing: The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. The eighteenth-century fascination with Greek and Roman antiquity followed the systematic excavation of the ruins at Pompeii and Herculaneum in southern Italy; and after 1750 a neoclassical style dominated all artistic fields. The titles here trace developments in mostly English-language works on painting, sculpture, architecture, music, theater, and other disciplines. Instructional works on musical instruments, catalogs of art objects, comic operas, and more are also included. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT042360Considerably altered from Wycherley's original version. With a final advertisement leaf. London: printed for W. Lowndes, S. Bladon, and W. Nicoll, 1786. [4],81, [3]p., plate; 8 Contributor Bio:  Wycherley, William William Wycherley (1640-1716) was an English playwright of the Restoration era, whose bawdy and satirical plays contain elements of biting social criticism. Despite their harshness, his works enjoyed a great vogue, and Wycherley became a favourite of King Charles II. Congreve was amongst those who saw Wycherley as an essentially moral writer appointed "to lash this crying age." As a young man Wycherley studied law but became bored and abandoned it: his first play, "Love in a Wood, or, St James's Park", was produced at Drury Lane in 1671. He followed this success with "The Gentleman Dancingmaster" (1672) and his two great plays "The Country Wife" (1675), and The Plain Dealer (1676). However, as a result of his somewhat dissolute lifestyle, he spent seven years in debtors' prison until rescued by James II.