SOURCE: Dobrée, Bonamy. “Etherege (? 1635-91).” In Restoration Comedy, 1660-1720, pp. 58-77. 1924. Reprint. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1981.

In the following essay, Dobrée characterizes Etherege's comedies as lighthearted, unsophisticated works intended mainly to delight and amuse Carolinian audiences.

The air rarefied and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of a gay quickedness: these agree well together.

—Zarathustra.

Seen through the haze of time, Etherege appears as a brilliant butterfly, alighting only upon such things as attract him; a creature without much depth, but of an extraordinary charm and a marvellous surety of touch.

He was professedly no student. ‘The more necessary part of philosophy’, he once wrote to Dryden, ‘is to be learn'd in the wide world more than in the gardens of Epicurus’; and again, to Lord Dover, ‘The life I have led has afforded me little time to turn over books; but I have had...