Naming and Entitlement in Wycherley, Etherege, and Dryden¹

Authors

Derek Hughes, University of Warwick

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the essay follows:

This decisive appeal to a man estranged from his family and social responsibilities (namely from his roles as husband and gentleman), strikingly similar to the appeal which less permanently recalls Dryden's Antony to his roles as husband and Roman, occurs towards the end of George Wilkins' domestic tragedy The Miseries of Inforst Marriage.² The triumphant reconciliation between the protagonist and the duties implicit in his titles is one of many instances in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama in which the recovery of social and moral identity is associated with a recovery of name or title, the recovery demonstrating the natural and inescapable interdependence of linguistic and moral order; perhaps the best example is the unnaming and renaming of Edgar in King Lear.³

Recommended Citation

Hughes, Derek (1987) "Naming and Entitlement in Wycherley, Etherege, and Dryden¹," Comparative Drama: Vol. 21: Iss. 3, Article 5.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/compdr/vol21/iss3/5