WYCHERLEY, WILLIAM

born 1640, Clive, near Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Eng. died Jan. 1, 1716, London English dramatist who attempted to reconcile in his plays a personal conflict between deep-seated puritanism and an ardent physical nature. He perhaps succeeded best in The Country-Wife (1675), in which satiric comment on excessive jealousy and complacency was blended with a richly comic presentation, the characters unconsciously revealing themselves in laughter-provoking colloquies. It was as satirist that his own age most admired him: William Congreve regarded Wycherley as one appointed to lash this crying age. Wycherley was sent to be educated in France at age 15. There he became a Roman Catholic, but, on returning to England to study at the University of Oxford in 1660, he reverted to Protestantism. Leaving Oxford without a degree, he began to study law, although he seems to have preferred a life of pleasure that included study of the theatre. He had earlier drafted a first play, Love in a Wood; or, St. James's Park, and in the autumn of 1671 it was presented in London, bringing its author instant acclaim. Wycherley was taken up by Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, whose favours he shared with King Charles II, and he was admitted to the circle of wits at court. His next play, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, was presented in 1672 but proved unsuccessful. These early playsboth of which have some good farcical momentsfollowed tradition in curing excess by presenting a satiric portrait of variously pretentious charactersfops, rakes, would-be wits, and the solemn of every kind. The Plain-Dealer, presented in 1676, satirizes rapacious greed. The satire is crude and brutal, but pointed and effective. In The Country-Wife, acted a year earlier, the criticism of manners and society remains severe, but there is no longer a sense of the author hating his characters. Wycherley, who had led a fashionably dissolute life during these years, fell ill in 1678. In 1680 he secretly married the Countess of Drogheda, a rigid puritan who kept him on such a short rein that he lost his favour at court. A year later the lady died, leaving her husband a considerable fortune. But the will was contested, and Wycherley ruined himself fighting the case. Cast into a debtor's prison, he was rescued seven years later by King James II, who paid off most of his debts and allowed him a small pension. On his deathbed, Wycherley received the last rites of the Roman Catholic church, to which he had apparently reverted after being rescued from prison. Additional reading Studies of his life and works include Katharine M. Rogers, William Wycherley (1972); B. Eugene McCarthy, William Wycherley (1979); W.R. Chadwick, The Four Plays of William Wycherley (1975); and W. Gerald Marshall, A Great Stage of Fools: Theatricality and Madness in the Plays of William Wycherley (1993).