playwrights' views on marriage provide, as Robert D. Hume has noted, "an important key to the shifting ideological stances" of the period ("Marital Discord" 248). Although tragedy is potentially a more literal vehicle for political debate on the public sphere, comic themes are metaphors for, and consequences of, social and political changes. Actually, many characters define their domestic, private situations with images of political authority, sovereignty included. For instance, in Etherege's She Would if She Could (1668), Ariana and Gatty, two unmarried girls, agree to "become absolute tyrants,* should their gallants behave "like lawless subjects" (I.ii. 177-81). If their gender inversion of the male/sovereign analogy is a fantasy derived from the languages of premarital courtship and precieuse gallantry,1 in the same play Sir Oliver's likening his wife to an usurper of his "empire" (II. ii. 176-79) reveals his assimilation of both patriarchal and patriarchalist discourses the subordination of women to men and monarchic power being analogous to familial authority respectively (see, for example, McKeon). Gender relations are often defined through political metaphor. The Ladies Dictionary (1694) states that "a Beautiful Woman fixes her unshaken Empire in the hearts of her Admirers" (59), but, as Mary Astell warns her female reader in 1700, a man "may call himself her Slave a few days, but it is only in order to make her his all the rest of his Life." Actually, those "who make the Idols, are the greater Deities" (44-45). My purpose is to examine the gendered power relations of the private sphere (courtship and marriage) in Vanbrugh's two major plays, and the use of political analogies to define them. Vanbrugh's realistic portrayal of post-Revolutionary times reveals

Courtship, Marriage Vows, and Political Metaphor in Vanbrugh's The Relapse and The Provoked Wife

Vanbrugh's relapse reconsidered

The Provoked Wife, a Restoration comedy by Sir John Vanbrugh was first staged in 1697. It opposes marriage to adultery; virtue to vice and desire; and happiness to misery. Lady Brute is at the center of the action. She is an English aristocratic Restoration lady in an unhappy marriage, struggling with her desire to abandon virtue. Her character is complex and paradoxical. Through her relationships on three different levels, she reveals that complexity as the essay moves from unhappiness in marriage, through desire and indecision as a nascent adultress to the intimate friendship with her niece. The essay is divided into three main chapters where each chapter is devoted to one relationship. The first chapter studies Lady Brute's marriage with Sir John; the second chapter is devoted to her liaison with her hopeful lover, Constant; and in the third chapter her friendship with her niece, Bellinda, comes under scrutiny. This study reveals three different facets of Lady Brute, a complex English Restoration lady. Each chapter starts with a study of the characteristics of Lady Brute in the relationship which is being studied in that chapter, followed with an analysis of the nature of the relationship in question. Then the use of wit in the characters' dialogues is studied specifically, where the main interest is in the use of the repartee for “verbal fencing”. At last, a close reading is done of selected sections of the play in order to expose any contradictions or hidden meanings in the text. Lady Brute's words are dissected, but some expressions of the other characters are also the subject of the study, where appropriate. Use is made of poststructuralist ideas, notably Derrida’s deconstructive methods in order to look for binary oppositions in the text; to analyse how Lady Brute and the other characters express their ideas; and to bring to the surface any possible paradoxes and concealed meanings. Lady Brute claims to be a virtuous lady. This essay shows that she is also a complex character and has a darker side.

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A Provoked Restoration Lady. A Study of Vanbrugh's Lady Brute in The Provoked Wife

The soft stones of Blenheim by now need constant care, but Vanbrugh's playshappily the word is more durable-have weathered unharmed more than forty years of rare and sporadic attention. Perhaps The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697) would be better left as they stand, unencumbered by the scaffolding of busy critics. But the conclusion reached by Bonamy Dobree in 1928, after he had edited not only Vanbrugh's original plays but also his translations, has not yet, it seems, been adequately shaken. "Since his work is not very difficult or subtle, and conveys no unique outlook, there does not seem to be very much to say about it," said Dobree; and whether successive students of the plays turning to the four volumes from the Nonesuch Press have been cowed by this pronouncement or not, only a few of them have ventured into print.' Writing for the most part in the additional shadow of John Palmer, they have tended, like him, to see Vanbrugh as a transitional figure between, as Palmer had put it, "two kingdoms" of comedy. While they have been kinder than Palmer in judging the plays, dropping, for instance, his accusation that Vanbrugh is "immoral," still, I believe, they have failed to do him justice.2 For, judging from the two original plays he completed, Vanbrugh had, if not a "unique outlook," then one that for its subtlety and seriousness of purpose deserves a better reputation.3

Lincoln B. Faller

Papers

Between Jest and Earnest: The Comedy of Sir John Vanbrugh