Marriage A-La-Mode

Description

"Marriage a-la-Mode" was an early and influential comedy of manners, later to be developed by Etherege and Wycherly. During the play Dryden deploys verbal and theatrical wit which is in experimental contrast to a loftier vein of poetic tragi-comedy. With its unusual combination of two plots, this play affords a complex exploration of the language of social exchange and personal feeling between typically well-born men and women of the late-17th-century English world.

John Dryden (1631-1700) was an English poet, critic and dramatist, responsible for nearly 30 plays. He was noted both for his elegant comedies and his heroic verse dramas, which introduced the principles of French neoclassicism to England. Dryden turned to drama following the reopening of the theatres at the Restoration; his first attempt, the comedy The Wild Gallant, was presented in 1663 at Drury Lane. The success of his heroic drama The Indian Emperor established him as a leading playwright. Following Aureng-Zebe (1675), perhaps his best heroic work, Dryden abandoned the use of rhyming couplets, producing the oft-revived blank-verse tragedy All for Love (a retelling of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra) in 1677. Dryden was the first to write drama criticism in an informal modern style and the first to attempt a history of English drama in his essay Of Dramatick Poesie (1668). He eventually tired of playwriting and his final plays, such as the tragicomedy Love Triumphant (1694), were written to relieve financial problems after his fortunes fell with the abdication of James II.