COMEDY

54 COMIC IDENTITYCastiglione’s The Book of the Courtier (1528) that declares witticisms‘diverting and sophisticated’, and considers spontaneous displays of witperfect examples of the courtly ideal of sprezzatura, or effortless graceand accomplishment (Castiglione, 1986:172). The plots of Restorationcomedy differ from their renaissance predecessors inasmuch as thedesires of the individual take priority over the needs of the community,as, writes Edward Burns, “‘Wit”—the ability to use social and linguisticartifice for personal ends—overrides “decorum”—the affirmation of anintrinsically self-righting social order—and thus plays reach theirendings on kinds of contracts, not an order re-discovered, presumed tohave been somehow always “there” and hence presented as natural’(Burns, 1987:17). This change reveals a new disillusionment withideologies of absolute order following the social upheavals of theEnglish Civil War. Authority had disgraced itself, it seemed, andsincerity and conviction were currencies debased by ideology. ForJoseph Addison, writing in 1711, people were no longer marked by ‘anoble Simplicity of Behaviour’, but had become expert ‘in Doggerel,Humour, Burlesque, and all the trivial Arts of Ridicule’ (Addison andSteele, 1979, vol. 2:238). With this post-lapsarian cynicism came theenormous popularity of parody and irony as literary modes. This wouldalso account for the centrality of artifice and ‘playing’ as themes in thecomedy of this era, confirmed by its extravagant use of masks,disguises, impersonations, and subterfuges that focus attention on thetheme of credibility. Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Critic (1779)represents the culmination of knowing meta-theatricality of this kind, asthe entire piece, set at a rehearsal, is an extended parody of literary anddramatic conventions continually interrupted by inept discussions ofstyle and merit. William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700)opens just after its hero Mirabell has lost a card game, and it continuesto dramatize the theme of playing for high stakes until it ends. In thisplay, performance, the appearance of action, and the concealment ofintention, is unproblematically offered as the route to gratification andreward. The Restoration comic hero is a male fantasy of libertinage,where wit is a verbal manifestation of virility that presides over the fopsand the Witwouds, gaining wealth, respect, and women as returns.The arch-sophistication of Algernon Moncrieff, the louche aristocratof Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), presents afurther development of the witty, noncommittal, and ‘performed’ comicpersona. Algy, utterly self-absorbed, exists in a perpetually ironizedrelationship to the society in which he lives, in which contradictions arethe foundation for knowledge: ‘More than half of modern culture