SOURCE: Street, G. S. “Etherege.” In Miniatures and Moods, pp. 34-9. London: David Nutt, 1893.

In the essay below, Street praises Etherege's display of comedic talent in The Comical Revenge, She Would If She Could, and The Man of Mode.

When you read Wycherley, you recognise a master of theatrical effects, the able exponent of a robustly vile humanity; then you feel a trifle sickened, and anon are downright bored. He is no cynic, not held by any ethical convention; if in his pages the world be a thing grotesque, obscene, it is because to a modern apprehension the man was even so: honest he was, as well, and, therefore, with little satisfaction for a splenetic mood. Congreve, of course, is pre-eminent in wit and diction; and because there is a malicious subtlety in the wickedness of his world, and his way is to see evil in everything, while...