Wycherley, William

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Wycherley, William (1641–1716). English poet and playwright, aptly said to have ‘fondled his age whilst abusing it’. Educated in France, at Queen's College, Oxford, and then in the Inner Temple before establishing his reputation for witty if risqué satire on contemporary morality with his four plays, Love in a Wood (1672), The Gentleman Dancing-Master (1673), The Country Wife (1675), and The Plain-Dealer (1677), Wycherley incurred Charles II's displeasure by his secret marriage in 1679 to the widowed countess of Drogheda. By the early 18th cent., largely on account of his Miscellany Poems (1704), Wycherley had become mentor to aspiring poets such as Alexander Pope. Wycherley's Posthumous Works were published in 1728. The Country Wife and The Plain-Dealer are still regularly performed.

J. A. Downie

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