The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Comedies of William Congreve, by William
Congreve, Edited by G. S. Street

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Title: The Comedies of William Congreve
Volume 1 [of 2]

Author: William Congreve

Editor: G. S. Street

Release Date: January 7, 2008 [eBook #24215]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMEDIES OF WILLIAM CONGREVE***

Transcribed from the 1895 Methuen and Co. edition (English Classics,
edited by W. E. Henley) by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

THE
COMEDIES
OF
WILLIAM CONGREVE

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

METHUEN AND CO.
36 ESSEX STREET: STRAND
LONDON
1895

{Painting of William Congreve: p0.jpg}

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty

INTRODUCTION

I.

Before repeating such known facts of Congreve's life as seem agreeable to
the present occasion, and before attempting (with the courage of one's
office) to indicate with truth what manner of man he was, and what are
the varying qualities of his four comedies, it seems well to discuss and
have done with two questions, obviously pertinent indeed, but of a wider
scope than the works of any one writer.

The first is a stupid question, which may be happily dismissed with brief
ceremony. Grossness of language--the phrase is an assumption--is a
matter of time and place, a relative matter altogether. There is a
thing, and a generation finds a name for it. The delicacy which prompts
a later generation to reject that name is by no means necessarily a
result of stricter habits, is far more often due to the flatness which
comes of untiring repetition and to the greater piquancy of litotes. I
am told that there are, or were, people in America who reject the word
'leg' as a gross word, but they must have found a synonym. So there is
not a word in Congreve for which there is not some equivalent expression
in contemporary writing. He says this or that: your modern writers say
so-and-so. One man may even think the monosyllables in better taste than
the periphrases. Another may sacrifice to his intolerance thereof such
enjoyment as he was capable of taking from th