PLAYWRIGHT IN PRISON

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18629, 26 July 1930, Page 9

PLAYWRIGHT IN PRISON

WOES OF “B3AWNY WYCHERLEY.” It was the Earl of Rochester, the friend and boon companion of Wycherley. who referred to the author of ‘‘The Plain Dealer” as “Brawny Wycherley,” and Mr William Connely has chosen “ ‘Brawny’ Wycherley” (Scribners, 10s 6d) for the title of his biography of this brilliant star of the Restoration. It is, perhaps, not a very happy title, for though Wycherley was brawny the epithet is not very appropriate to his work. But that is a small point. The book is a careful and picturesque study of the man who was the most popular playwright of his age—conscientious artist, extravagant gallant. a not too constant lover but a faithful friend. Early Days in France. When little more than a boy he spent more formative years in France, more or less a member of the household of Julie d’Angelinas, Marquise de Mantausier. that daughter of Madame de Rambouillet who kept a kind of court at the Chateau d' Angouleme, and was the inspirer and leader of that coterie which Moliere made merry over in “Les Preeieuses Ridicules.” Later Wycherley borrowed from Moliere some of his characters and plots. Having mastered French, learned elegant manners and that graceful deportment of the body which made him a rival, in those respects of the amazing Duke of Buckingham, Wycherley returned to England, soon to take London by storm in his first play, “Love in a Wood,” to become one of i the many lovers of the fiery and in- i satiable Duchess of Cleveland, and a ! favourite of Charles 11. “No woman,” says Mr Connely, "could readily forego a man whose wit was so robustly graceful and whose person was so gracefully robust.” Fame and Debt. His second play was a comparative failure,., but the third and fourth, “The Country Wife” and “The Plain Dealer” (he wrote only four) set him on a pinnacle. He lived in the blaze of fame and the shadow of debt. His marriage to the Countess of Drogheda, instead of making him master of a great fortune. involved him in law-suits and deeper debt. Besides, the Countess was so devoted that she would hardly let him out of her sight—a most painful experience for a free-lance and tav-ern-man. He spent some years, and much of his strength, in Newgate and the Fleet Prison; no friend came to res -ue him. As he lay in durance “The Plain Dealer” was played to crowded houses, but no royalties came to him; lie was a ‘ _entleman writer,” not one of those poor wretches who had to write for a living. However, he managed to live to the age of seventysix. and not long before the end he married a girl whose jointure, he thought, would enable him to die free of debt. He begged her to grant a last request. She promised. “My dear,” he said, “it is only this, that you will never marry an old man again.” One feels that it is impossible to condemn Wycherley as some moral censors have condemned h . in some respects he was better than his period. Mr Connely concludes: “He was a great lover, if only he had ever loved.”