Farquhar and the new comedy, 1695--1710 (George Farquhar).

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The transition from what critics of an earlier generation called “Restoration” to “Sentimental” comedy remains a subject of enormous confusion. A generation ago A. H. Scouten pointed out that 1670s comedies and 1690s comedies are quite different. Recent scholars have denied that there was ever a unitary “Restoration comedy” and have either denied the existence of “Sentimental comedy” as a genre altogether, or placed it in the second half of the eighteenth century. Yet virtually all writers on the subject have agreed that a major “change” occurs in comedy around the end of the century, and the characteristics of new comedies are substantially different circa 1710 than they were circa 1695. I propose to abandon obsolete and discredited generic categories and to approach the subject of “the change in comedy” afresh. Multiple kinds of comedy exist at all times between 1660 and 1800. My object is to find new and more helpful terms in which to trace the shift in generic norms that occurred over a fifteen year period—a period that more or less precisely coincides with the brief career of George Farquhar. This study covers the works of several playwrights—Congreve, Cibber, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Steele, and Centlivre. Farquhar is foregrounded because he alone wrote plays across the complete spectrum from the “old” comedy (1690s imitation of 1670s sex comedy) to the “new” comedy that became dominant around 1710, and his last two plays—<italic>The Recruiting Officer</italic> (1706) and <italic>The Beaux Stratagem</italic> (1707)—exemplify this shift to new comedy.