Comedy of Manners

This cutting converts the three-act version of Wilde’s play into an abridged two-act version that runs just over two hours (including a 15-minute intermission). The cutting reduces the number of scene changes by keeping the last scenes in the garden, rather than moving into the manor house. After a colleague had asked to share this cutting with a high school teacher, I decided it would be useful to post this online in case other directors might find it helpful.

This research is about Kate's role in play She Stoops to Conquer, which was written by Oliver Goldsmith in 1773 in England. It is a comedy play which consists of some ethical themes. In this play, women's role and rights are focused on, in the eighteenth century in a patriarchal society and also it talks about the relation between women and their reflection in English Literature.The purpose of this research is to analyze Kate's role, whether she has a good role or not and how does she play her part. Kate generally has a good role in this play, considering all the abnormalities, eventually she could resolve, helping others, and achieves her own ambitions. Thenthe role women played in the eighteenth century will be explored. An Analytical Approach has been used to analyse the play.

After an eighteen-year theatrical hiatus due to the Civil War, England witnessed the revival of performative arts with the Restoration of Charles II to the English throne in 1660. In view of the fact that the Civil War was a hegemony struggle between two masculinities – aristocratic and Parliamentarian – to determine the future of the country, the Restoration was a period in which the king and his courtiers, upon their return from France, attempted hard to re-establish a noble, aristocratic and upper-class masculinity which would be known as “libertinism.” In theatre, the genre of comedy of manners was created in which new codes of manliness were presented to the society with the character of rake. Under the light of theories of men and masculinities, this paper, thus, aims to articulate the libertine masculinity given in George Etherege’s "The Man of Mode" (1676) in the socio-political context of the Restoration.

The plays of a comedy of manners, a genre which emerged in the Restoration period, draw attention through the presentation of colourful couples and pairs, set-scenes, the satirical approach to upper-class manners and certain themes such as material pursuit and a cynical attitude towards love and marriage. This type of comedy, however, met severe critical remarks after the Restoration, as its moral context was questioned as a result of social, economic and governmental changes in the country. Effectively, the second half of the 18 th century is laced with the rise of sentimental ideals in that sentimentalism formed the core of the works of the time. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) is one of the literary figures who dwelt upon the new dynamics of the age, and he adapts the conventions of the comedy of manners to his new reader/audience in his play entitled She Stoops to Conquer, or the Mistakes of a Night (1773). While he touches upon the themes of materialism, love, and marriage, he unfolds the idea of parental consent and the quest for true love and affection among the young generation. This propounds the view that the characteristics of the Restoration comedy of manners are meta-morphosed in Goldsmith's age, and the playwright uses and abuses sentimental ideas, although he does not challenge the social norms by means of his characters. This paper sets out to determine the contexts of love and marriage in Goldsmith's age that he affirms in the relationships between parental figures and children and in the affairs of couples in She Stoops to Conquer while this play's differences from the Restoration comedy of manners are emphasised. Öz: Restorasyon döneminde bir tür olarak ortaya çıkan töre komedisi oyunları aşık çiftleri, türe özgü sahneleri, üst sınıf davranışlarına olan hicivsel yaklaşımı, maddi arayış, aşk ve evliliğe karşı kuşkucu yak-laşım gibi temalarıyla dikkat çeker. Ancak töre komedisi, ülkedeki sosyal, ekonomik ve politik değişik-liklerin göstergesi olarak ahlaki içeriği bakımından sorgulanınca, Restorasyon döneminden sonra sert eleştirel görüşlere maruz kalır. Özellikle 18. yüzyılın ikinci yarısı duygusal ülkülerin yükselişine tanıklık eder; şöyle ki, duygusallık dönem eserlerinin temelini oluşturur. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) çağının yeni dinamiklerinin üzerine kafa yormuş edebi kişilerden biridir ve She Stoops to Conquer, or the Mistakes of a Night (1773) adlı oyununda Restorasyon dönemi töre komedisi özeliklerini yeni okuyu-cusu/izleyicisine uyarlar. Oyun yazarı, materyalizm, aşk ve evlilik temalarına değinirken aile onayı kavra-mını ve genç nesilde gerçek aşk ve yakınlık arayışını göz önüne serer. Bu ise Restorasyon töre komedisi özelliklerinin Goldsmith'in zamanında değiştiğini gösterir. Karakterleri aracılığıyla toplumsal yapıyı sor-gulamamasına rağmen, oyun yazarı duygusal fikirleri kullanır ve onları suistimal eder. Bu çalışma, She Stoops to Conquer adlı oyunun Restorasyon töre komedisinden farklılıklarını vurgularken, oyundaki ebe-veynler ve çocukları arasındaki ilişkilerde ve aşık çiftlerin ilişkilerinde Goldsmith'in kendi dönemindeki aşk ve evlilik kavramlarını nasıl değerlendirdiğini saptamayı amaçlar.

«Η αποτύπωση της κοινωνίας στην ελληνική κωμωδία του 19ου αιώνα: πολιτική, κοινωνική σάτιρα και κωμωδία ηθών», Διαδικτυακό Συνέδριο «Ο Πόλεμος της Ανεξαρτησίας και η Συγκρότηση του Ελληνικού Κράτους. Σύγχρονες ερμηνείες», 10-11 Απριλίου 2021, Πανεπιστήμιο Δυτικής Μακεδονίας. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCZqd2Y8bNg

ABSTRACT Leisure and idleness in Sheridan's and Wilde's comedies of manners are not merely used as objects of satire. In Sheridan, idleness is presented as a highly productive state that brings forth the society that takes part in it. Idleness here is the prerequisite for social games like gossiping and play-acting, which far from being merely frivolous, turn out to have serious consequences for the characters. Idleness is also shown as potentially negative and detrimental for characters who do not master the game proficiently. In Oscar Wilde's plays, idleness is central in both content and dramatic structure. While on a thematic level, idleness is most explicitly addressed and condemned in A Woman of No Importance, all plays feature elements of idleness in their structure. In Wilde's three earlier plays, serious plots focussing on a moral dilemma are combined with idle scenes. The relation between these two aspects differs: the serious plot in Lady Windermere's Fan undercuts and threatens the idle backdrop, which nevertheless is restored in the end; in A Woman of No Importance rather extensive idle scenes form a background to the serious action without any points of contact and with a group of idle characters with no function in the plot at all; in An Ideal Husband, finally, the character of Goring crosses from idle scenes into serious plot and thus exposes the performative nature of idleness. Both playwrights, therefore, do not simply depict idleness but present it as central to the society they are portraying. Within the notion of idleness they are able to show the highly artificial and theatrical nature of upper-class existence, while – especially in the case of Wilde – also alluding to the artificiality of the comedy of manners itself.

With its fetishization of social hierarchies, at first blush mannerpunk, more commonly known as “fantasy of manners” fiction, seems incompatible with a punk aesthetic. One online reviewer writes: “Basically, if you can stick ‘Jane Austen meets X’ in front of your story proposal, it’s got a good chance of being Mannerpunk” (Romano, 2016). Grouping her writings together with the wildly diverse work of Gail Carriger, Cherie Priest, and Sherwood Smith, M.K. Hobson identifies the genre as “[p]aranormal romantic historical fantasy tinged with the Victorian” (Hobson, 2009). Although many mannerpunk novels contain little romance, melodrama, or physical description (Priest’s work is a key example), in the comments Sherwood Smith suggests that Hobson is in fact “describing […] what was called Mannerpunk ten years ago” (Hobson, 2009).

Given the incredibly varied body of texts labelled “mannerpunk”, it would be unfair to claim any description of the genre is definitive. In fact the very diversity of mannerpunk, and the dismissive way this label is often used by authors and critics, raises some interesting questions. From Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint (1987) to Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series (2006–2016), this essay briefly explores how mannerpunk plays with the tropes of speculative punk. Can a literature grounded in protocols, etiquette, and social hierarchies even be “punk”? If so, what is it punking?

Oscar Wilde is a brilliant wit of the 19th century, who still delights us with his literary genius works. Wilde mainly emphasizes the artifice of comedy which he successfully turns into a mirror reflecting an artificial society. In this way the audience can witness the comic criticism which is a basic principle of his drama. Wilde was not just an entertainer but his beautifully written pieces shelter his wit and wisdom of his satire as well. Written in 1895, the twilight years of England’s Victorian Era, one of Oscar Wilde’s well-made plays, An Ideal Husband sets an example of an increasingly conservatism in social mores, the period’s rigid system of mores for instance, notions of familial devotion, propriety, and duty both public and personal with Wilde’s sense of verbal humour enriched with his witty language. An Ideal Husband is a prominent example of comedy of manners which is a form of drama that satirizes the manners and fashions of particular social class and is concerned with social usage and the ability of certain characters to meet social standards and Wilde’s cynicism which obviously deals with the criticism of Victorian society. The aim of this study is to analyze how Wilde achieves to depict the hypocrisy between the classes and genders as well as moral values in his play An Ideal Husband underlying the period under the light of social and cultural background of the 19th Century England. In this way, how Wilde ironically idealizes the social norms and gender relations both within the family and the society is questioned.

The aim of this study is to examine the historical evolution of the British aristocratic and upper-class masculinities from the Restoration period to the late-Victorian era with respect to the theories of men and masculinities and to make an analysis of the transformation of these masculinities in such representative comedies of manners as George Etherege’s "The Man of Mode; or, Sir Fopling Flutter" (1676), Oliver Goldsmith’s "She Stoops to Conquer; or, the Mistakes of a Night" (1773) and Oscar Wilde’s "Lady Windermere’s Fan, or a Play about a Good Woman" (1892). These plays reflect the specific representations and manners of masculinities of their ages. For this reason, at the beginning of the thesis, concepts in the theories of men and masculinities are introduced in order to provide a theoretical background for the analysis of these male characters.

In the first section of the introduction, the development of the studies of men and masculinities is scrutinised with reference to the processes of the problematisation of the concept of masculinity and the challenges mounted to compulsory heterosexuality. Then, the description of hegemonic masculinities is established with regard to the paradigm of masculinity and other gender concepts. In the context of the comedy of manners, the second section deals with British masculinities from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth in relation to certain political events British society experienced like the Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, colonialism, and Industrial Revolution.

In the first chapter of the work, the notion of libertine masculinity is discussed with an emphasis on its socio-cultural significance in relation to the Restoration comedy of manners. Then, it provides an in-depth analysis of George Etherege’s "The Man of Mode." It is argued that libertine culture is the indicator of the masculine hegemony in the context of the Restoration social status.

The second chapter combines the eighteenth-century criticism of the libertines’ licentiousness and their representations on the stage. These criticisms are argued to have provided the basis for the Puritan sentimentalism which would dominate English society for more than a century. In line with this new politics of manners, it is discussed that few new comedies of manners have been produced and staged, one of which was "She Stoops to Conquer" by Oliver Goldsmith, the others being "The Rivals" (1775) and "The School for Scandal" (1777) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. With regard to the defamiliarisation of the stage from the plays of the previous century due to the sentimental concerns of the Whig Puritans, the aristocratic and upper-class male characters in Goldmith’s play are depicted as embodying the elements of sentimental masculinity and libertinism which was refined with sentimental morality and manners.

In the third chapter of the thesis, it is contended that by means of the changing economic power in the nineteenth-century society, the middle classes prevailed over upper classes, and this caused the devolution of drama. It is argued that the new norms of manners enabled the birth of a new aristocratic and upper-class masculinity defined as dandy. At the end of the Victorian era, Oscar Wilde provided the first comedy of manners of the age with "Lady Windermere’s Fan" which includes a multiplicity of dandy characters. Thus, it is discussed in this chapter that, within the framework of hegemonic masculinities, the characters of the play present the transformation of manliness which was primarily concerned with sentimental morality, but later on shaped by the capitalist economic interests.

In the conclusion of this thesis, it is stated, in relation to certain socio-political experiences in Britain, that these three comedies provide a panorama of the metamorphosis of aristocratic and upper-class masculinities which has begun with libertine masculinity, fused with the sentimental, and been remodelled as the dandy.

This paper is interested in commodity fetishism as a signal of collapsing marital mandates in the genre of lad lit. Instead of focusing solely on its late twentieth-century moment of emergence as a response to chick lit, the paper proposes a longer historical view in order to understand the crisis of masculinity that lad lit lays bare in its protagonists’ inherently queer status as collectors. The analysis puts critical pressure on the collectible object by re-reading the “lad” through the literary figure of the fop, who represents a recurring response to similar crises in gender from the seventeenth-century’s comedy of manners to the novels of Jane Austen. The fop’s overinvestment in style and consequent marginalization is considered in Nick Hornby’s novels High Fidelity and About a Boy, in which the protagonists’ obsessive collecting of objects can be understood as both a dominant feature of their masculinity and the roadblock to their participation in heteronormative rituals of romance. Instead of reading Hornby’s characters as straightforwardly queer, this paper focuses on the commodity as a signal of queerness, and in turn its central role in the creation of, and the challenge to, the lad’s masculinity.