SOURCE: Thorndike, Ashley H. “The Restoration, 1660-1680.” In English Comedy, pp. 269-303. New York: Macmillan, 1929.

In the excerpt below, Thorndike maintains that Etherege's comedies reflect a combination of cynicism and wit which springs from an intellectual mind.

The initiation of that particular type of the comedy of manners which reaches its height in Congreve has been universally attributed to Sir George Etherege. “The dawn,” said Hazlitt, “was in Etherege, as its latest close was in Sheridan.”¹ His three plays possess therefore a certain historical as well as inherent interest, and the last, The Man of Mode, has long served as an archetype of the Restoration comedy both for the admirers and the detractors of that species. Of Etherege's life little is known; he apparently lived in France long enough to gain an intimate knowledge of things Parisian; he was a gay man about town, the companion of Rochester...