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12 Facts About George Etherege

1.

George Etherege wrote the plays The Comical Revenge or, Love in a Tub in 1664, She Would If She Could in 1668, and The Man of Mode or, Sir Fopling Flutter in 1676.

2.

George Etherege was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, in about 1636, to George Etherege and Mary Powney, as the eldest of their six children.

3.

George Etherege served as an apprentice to a lawyer and later studied law at Clement's Inn, London, one of the Inns of Chancery.

4.

The success of this play was very great, but George Etherege waited four years before repeating the experiment.

5.

George Etherege's temperament is best shown by the names his contemporaries gave him: "gentle George" and "easy Etheredge".

6.

George Etherege himself was living a life no less frivolous and unprincipled.

7.

Between 1668 and 1671 George Etherege went to Constantinople as secretary to the English Ambassador, Sir Daniel Harvey.

8.

In 1676, Rochester and George Etherege were involved in a brawl with the watch in Epsom that left a Captain Downs dead.

9.

George Etherege was part of the circle of John Wilmot; both men had a daughter by the unmarried actress Elizabeth Barry.

10.

George Etherege was knighted at some time before 1679, and married a wealthy widow, Mary Sheppard Arnold.

11.

George Etherege holds a distinguished place in English literature as one of the "big five" in Restoration comedy, who invented the comedy of manners and led the way to the achievements of Congreve and Sheridan.

12.

George Etherege's biography was first written in detail by Edmund Gosse in Seventeenth Century Studies.