SOURCE: Gosse, Edmund W. “Sir George Etherege: A Neglected Chapter of English Literature.” Cornhill Magazine 43, no. 255 (March 1881): 284-304.

In the following essay, Gosse considers Etherege a principal founder of modern English comedy, particularly focusing on Molière's influence on the dramatist. The critic also provides an intimate glimpse of the author's later years through an examination of his personal and official correspondence in a recently discovered Letterbook.

That Sir George Etheredge wrote three plays which are now even less read than the rank and file of Restoration drama, and that he died at Ratisbon, at an uncertain date, by falling down the stairs of his own house and breaking his neck after a banquet, these are the only particulars which can be said to be known, even to students of literature, concerning the career of a very remarkable writer. I shall endeavour to show in the following pages...