第6章　玄学派诗人与复辟时期戏剧

1Tell the unique features of the “Metaphysical Poetry”.

Key: They departed from the traditional poets by favoring dialectic ideas, paradox and incongruity, by choosing a novel way to associate thoughts, and by their preference to adopting a speaking voice in poems. But they are most famous for the application of conceits, or comparisons between things that are not really related.

2Choose one poem by metaphysical poets and discuss it as well as you can.

Key: Take The Flea for example. It is a short poem about a young couple making love. The man asked his mistress not to kill a flea. The poetic persona says:

Here, Donne’s comparison is very peculiar, extraordinary and very extravagant. A flea and the love relation of man and woman are originally absolutely unrelated things. However, metaphysical poets are fond of using such unthought-of comparisons. Also, the three-in-one comparison points in a sly way toward the Holy three-in-one, that is the Trinity, and Donne is particularly good at mixing up the secular and the sacred, even to the extent of profanity, in order to shock the reader and to give some depth to his poem.

3Introduce the historical background for the emergence of the Restoration drama.

Key: During the Puritan rule, drama was regarded as harmful and the theatres were mostly closed down. When Charles Ⅱ came back, London had only two theatres left, Theatre Royal, or The King’s Theatre and The Duke’s Theatre. The returned monarch, who had acquired a taste for French drama, was responsible for the revival of drama performance in the country, and especially in London. But the drama of this period was very different from those by Marlowe and Shakespeare. It is called Restoration Comedy.

4Choose to comment on one Restoration comedy writer and his play(s).

Key: William Congreve was born near Leeds in a well-established old family. His father was an army officer stationed in Ireland and as a result he was educated at the Trinity College of Dublin, where he came to know fellow students like Swift. Afterward he entered the Middle Temple for law training, but finally gave it up to devote himself to literature. He held a number of government posts and had made friends with writers such as Swift, Steele, and Pope. He was the most outstanding dramatist of the Restoration period and was buried in the Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey after death.

His representative works including The Old Bachelor, The Double Dealer, Love for Love and The Way of the World etc.

In his comedies Congreve concentrates on showing social pressures on love and marriage with wit and subtlety. In fact, he has turned away from the playwrights before him in taking a more serious attitude toward social and family issues, and there are less libertine games in his plays.

The Way of the World is Congreve’s last and best comedy. It is again about how young lovers contrive to remove the obstacles on their way to happiness laid by the older generation, and by the girl’s aunt in this particular comedy. The young gentleman Mirabell resorts to deception to get the approval of Millamant’s aunt to their marriage, but ends in exposing a real threat to the elderly lady’s property, which is a conspiracy made by a villain and his lady friend. The aunt is grateful to the young suitor of her niece and approves their marriage. Congreve creates the comic effects with a gallery of fools to highlight the central contrast between the passionate and sinister liaison of the greedy villain with his lady culprit on the one hand and the delicate progress of the young gentleman when approaching the niece he loves. As always, Congreve’s dialogues are brilliant and the theme is by no means amoral or profane as accused by Collier. On the contrary, some critics remark that the play is a study of the battle between good and evil. In this sense, Congreve’s comedies are closer than those of the Restoration comedy writers before him to the comedy of social manners (or society comedies) produced in the 18th century and later.