Meet the Restoration playwrights | Royal Shakespeare Company

Thomas Otway (1652-85)

Born in the Sussex village of Trotton, Thomas Otway seemed destined for a career in the church before financial difficulties saw him abandon his degree at Oxford and move to London.

There, he met the playwright Aphra Behn and began a short-lived - and notoriously unsuccessful - career as an actor. He decided that his talents lay elsewhere and began writing plays, often inspired by his muse, Elizabeth Barry, the great unrequited love of his life.

After a stint in the army, Otway worked on both adaptations and original plays, gaining his greatest successes in the early 1680s with the tragedies The Orphan and Venice Preserv'd. However, his critical acclaim did little to raise him out of poverty, and he died at the age of just 33.

Image: A portrait of Thomas Otway by the artist William Blake.

Painting by William Blake © Public Domain Browse and license our images

John Vanbrugh (1664-1726)

John Vanbrugh was born in London but spent much of his childhood in Chester. In the late 1680s, he worked undercover to help bring about the Glorious Revolution, and ended up spending almost five years in prison in France for espionage.

Once he was back in the country, he became known both as the architect behind Blenheim Palace and as a playwright. His first major theatrical success came with his comedic farce The Relapse (1697), which was written as a sequel to Colley Cibber’s hugely popular Love’s Last Shift.

This was followed in 1697 by The Provoked Wife, which originally had renowned tragic actor Elizabeth Barry in the title role. With its suggestion that a woman may consider leaving a marriage or betraying her abusive husband, the play proved controversial to the contemporary audience and made Vanbrugh one of the main targets in Jeremy Collier’s pamphlet, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698).

Image: An oil painting of John Vanbrugh by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

Painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller © Public Domain Browse and license our images

George Farquhar (1677-1707)

Like Thomas Otway, Farquhar was another son of a clergyman who abandoned a life in the church for one in the theatre. He left Derry for Dublin to work as an actor at the Smock Alley Theatre, where, also like Otway, he was relatively unsuccessful, once severely injuring another actor when he forgot to replace his sword with a foil.

After this, he headed to London to write, premiering his first comedy, Love and a Bottle, in 1698. It was well received and cemented Farquhar’s desire to write for the stage, although he is best remembered for his later comedies, particularly The Recruiting Officer (1706) and The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707). He was already quite ill as he wrote these final plays, and suffering financial difficulties after apparently being tricked into marriage by an older widow who falsely claimed to be very wealthy. Farquhar died less than two months after The Beaux’ Stratagem premiered in London, at the age of 29.

Image: Portrait of Farquhar, artist unknown.

Artist unknown © Public Domain Browse and license our images

William Congreve (1670-1729)

Congreve was born in Bardsey, Yorkshire, but spent most of his childhood in Ireland where his father was a soldier. After studying at Trinity College in Dublin, he moved to London nominally to study law, although he was always more drawn to literature. He met John Dryden through the London literary circles, with the poet supporting Congreve’s work throughout his life.

Congreve’s comedies of manners shaped Restoration drama, focusing on sharply-written dialogue and satire, and with his main female roles often played by the popular Anne Bracegirdle. However, he only wrote five plays in total, all during the period from 1693 to 1700: The Old Bachelor, The Double-Dealer, Love for Love, The Mourning Bride and The Way of the World. The latter, performed in 1700, is often considered his masterpiece, and is still regularly produced on stage, but it wasn’t particularly well-regarded at the time. Like Vanbrugh, Congreve was also called out by Jeremy Collier for the immorality of his work, accusations against which he publicly defended himself.

After moving away from the theatre, Congreve took a series of political appointments and continued to write poetry and translations until his death in 1729 following a carriage accident.

Image: An oil painting of William Congreve by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

Painting by Godfrey Kneller © Public Domain Browse and license our images

George Etherege (1636-91)

Etherege was the eldest of six children, born in Maidenhead around 1636. He studied law in London and may have seen performances of Molière's early comedies in France with his father, setting him on his own path as a writer.

His first comedy, The Comical Revenge, or, Love in a Tub, was performed in London in 1664 but it is his 1676 play, The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter, that he is best remembered for. Widely seen as one of the greatest comedies of manners, it was hugely popular at the time, partly because it was believed to satirise well-known contemporaries including the notorious Earl of Rochester. Despite his success, Etherege moved away from literature, quickly losing his fortune to gambling. He later married a wealthy widow and spent time abroad as an ambassador for the king.

Image: The title page for The Man of Mode.

Aphra Behn (1640-89)

Behn is remembered as one of the first English women to earn her living by writing, yet firm details about her life are hard to come by. There is evidence that she was a political spy in Antwerp for King Charles II, turning to writing afterwards to pay her way. Her first play, The Forc’d Marriage, was staged in 1670, with her most popular work, The Rover, following in 1677.

Nineteen of her plays were performed during her lifetime, making her one of the most prolific Restoration playwrights. She also wrote poetry and fiction, with her short 1688 text Oroonoko sometimes seen as one of the first anti-slavery or anti-colonial novels.

After her death in 1689, Behn was buried in Westminster Abbey, though not in Poets’ Corner with fellow Restoration writer John Dryden.

Image: A portrait of Aphra Behn by Mary Beale.

William Wycherley (1641-1716)

Wycherley was born in Shropshire to a family with a modest estate and spent some of his formative years being educated in France. He served as a soldier and briefly studied Law, but was always more interested in the stage. His first play, Love in a Wood, was produced in 1671 to instant acclaim, with his last two bawdy comedies, The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer, cementing his long-term reputation.

Like many of his contemporaries, he suffered from financial issues throughout his life, spending seven years in a debtors’ prison before King James II paid off most of his debts.

Image: Title page for The Country Wife.

John Dryden (1631-1700)

The eldest of fourteen children, Dryden grew up in the Northamptonshire countryside and received a classical education at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge.

He is generally remembered more for his poetry and literary criticism than for his plays. However, he began to write for theatre after the end of the Puritan ban in 1660 and his plays quickly became his main source of income. He led the way in Restoration comedy, most notably with Marriage à la Mode (1673) but also produced a number of dramas, including All for Love in 1678, which was based on Antony and Cleopatra. He is buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Image: Dryden by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

Mary Pix (1666-1709)

Pix’s life seemed to be following a traditional path until she was 30 years old. Born to a rector in Buckinghamshire, Mary Griffith became Mary Pix when she married a merchant at 18. She had two children in the early 1690s, one who died in infancy, then published her first and only novel, The Inhumane Cardinal, when the family were living in London in 1696.

Her first stage production came in the same year, with her plays finding great success with the contemporary audiences. She is now best remembered for her comedies, particularly The Beau Defeated, which was played at the RSC in 2018 as The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich.

Image: A portrait of Mary Pix by an unknown artist.

Meet the playwrights

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