William Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.
17 Facts About William Wycherley
2.
William Wycherley lived during much of his childhood at Trench Farm, one his paternal family's properties, then spent some three years of his adolescence in France, where he was sent, at fifteen, to be educated on the banks of the Charente.
3.
William Wycherley returned to England shortly before the restoration of King Charles II, and lived at The Queen's College, Oxford, where Thomas Barlow was provost.
4.
Under Barlow's influence, William Wycherley returned to the Church of England.
5.
Thomas Macaulay hints that William Wycherley's subsequent turning back to Roman Catholicism once more was influenced by the patronage and unwonted liberality of the Duke of York, the future King James II.
6.
However, his nickname of "Manly William Wycherley" seems to have been earned by his straightforward attitude to life.
7.
Possibly William Wycherley intended this famous song as a glorification of the Duchess and her profession, for he seems to have been more delighted than surprised when, as he passed in his coach through Pall Mall, he heard her address him from her coach window as a "rascal" and a "villain", and the son of a woman such as that mentioned in the song.
8.
Whether William Wycherley's experiences as a sea-borne officer, which he alludes to in his lines "On a Sea Fight which the Author was in betwixt the English and the Dutch", occurred before or after the production of Love in a Wood is a point upon which opinions differ, but probably took place not only after the production of Love in a Wood but after the production of The Gentleman Dancing Master, in 1673.
9.
William Wycherley's time was plagued by difficulties obtaining pay and supplies for the troops, some of whom, after his departure complained of having had "ill-usage" from their captain.
10.
William Wycherley had no title or wealth, but had by 1675 already recommended himself by his two well-received comedies and had been admitted to the inner court circle, sharing the conversation and sometimes the mistresses of King Charles II, who "was extremely fond of him upon account of his wit".
11.
Charles had determined to bring up his bastard son, the Duke of Richmond, like a prince, sought as his tutor a man as qualified as William Wycherley to impart a "princely education", engaging him in 1679 and it seems clear that, if not for William Wycherley's marriage, the education of the young man would actually have been entrusted to him as a reward for having written Love in a Wood.
12.
William Wycherley never had an opportunity of regaining it, for the countess seems to have really loved him, and Love in a Wood had proclaimed the writer to be the kind of husband whose virtue prospers best when closely guarded at the domestic hearth.
13.
William Wycherley was thrown into the Fleet Prison where he remained, being finally released by the liberality of James II.
14.
In 1689, while his father was still alive, he fled back to Shropshire after the accession of William Wycherley III displaced James II.
15.
William Wycherley was said to have done so in order to spite his nephew, the next in succession, knowing that he would shortly die and that the jointure would impoverish the estate.
16.
The scandalous language and content of William Wycherley's plays restricted their publication and performances for nearly two centuries, and over most of that time the original versions were replaced with bowdlerised versions, such as the adaptation of The Plain Dealer by Isaac Bickerstaffe and a cleaned-up and bland version of The Country Girl by David Garrick.
17.
Voltaire was a great admirer of William Wycherley's plays, and once said of them:.