A Study Guide for William Congreve's "Love for Love"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for William Congreve's "Love for Love," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535827768

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Love for Love

William Congreve

1695

Introduction

Love for Love, by the well-known Restoration dramatist William Congreve, is a racy, broad, farcical comedy, which relies on mistaken impressions, disguises, and deception for much of its humor. Yet it is not the kind of silly drawing-room drama of wit many people imagine Restoration comedies to be. Underlying its complicated plot and clever dialogue is a serious exploration of such themes as good government, sexual ethics, gender roles, the complications of sophisticated society, and the difference between being and seeming.

Love for Love is one of Congreve’s two best-known plays, the other being The Way of the World (1700). In each play, Congreve uses sexual gamesmanship to explore and satirize the complexities and duplicities of his society. The play is also metatheatre, or theatre that is a comment on theatre itself. Many of the characters are playacting parts to each other, and the dialogue negotiates the arena of sexual conquest, gender relations, and the exchanges inherent when marriage is part of a play. Moreover, Congreve’s play enters into a conversation with the theatre of its time; Love for Love is a response to an earlier popular play, Love for Money. Arriving as a writer late in the Restoration period, Congreve uses the stage to comment upon an increasingly complex society and class structure that often seemed frivolous.

Author Biography

William Congreve was born on January 24,1670, in the town of Bardsey in Yorkshire, England. By 1672, the family had moved to London; in 1674, the family relocated to the Irish port town of Youghal, where Congreve’s father served as a lieutenant in the British army. Growing up in Ireland, Congreve attended Kilkenny College, where Jonathan Swift was a few years ahead of him. In 1686, Congreve matriculated at Trinity College in Dublin, where he developed an interest in the sensual pleasures of life. Perhaps more importantly, it was while at Trinity that Congreve became a devotee of the theatre. He likely attended the Smock Alley Theatre, which ran plays that recently had success in London.

In 1689, Congreve left Trinity and Dublin for London. He entered the Middle Temple, an institution that allowed men to study the law and, significantly, to enter into London society. At the time, coffeehouses were the rage in London. Fashionable men congregated there to read pamphlets, broadsides, and other