'Cunning gamesters': libertine theatrical strategies in Restoration Comedy

Abstract

Libertines’ behaviour does not go unnoticed at Charles II’s licentious court. Social figures of the Restoration age, libertines have a strong Hobbist sense of self-preservation which mingles with an inclination towards the pleasures of life, yet, the inability to find a compromise with society causes their social failure. However, the theatrical dimension seems the only one where libertines, as comic characters, can freely perform their credos. The purpose of this study is to offer a metatheatrical reading of libertine characters drawing on some metatheatrical concerns. The libertine’s conscious appropriation of the genre’s tools unmasks, beneath the fictional stage, a real society made of excesses and creates, in a process which often involves the audience, an alternative theatrical reality. Firstly, the character will be analysed on a plot-level in the roles of the ‘trickster’ and the ‘director’. Secondly, the character’s performative use of language and his overpowering wit shows him mastering language with an awareness alien to the other characters. The final chapter explores the idea of dramatic irony in the aged-old metaphor of theatrum mundi through phenomenological lenses. The study will consider the forty-year period from 1660 to 1700, in particular, selected comedies of Dryden, Etherege, Wycherley, Behn and Congreve will be used to provide examples of the aforementioned concepts.