SOURCE: Hynes, Peter. “Against Theory? Knowledge and Action in Wycherley's Plays.” Modern Philology 94, no. 2 (November 1996): 163-89.

In the following essay, Hynes describes how Wycherley's protagonists use knowledge to gain the upper hand.

The foundation of comedy, wrote Richard Steele, lies in “happiness and success.”¹ Not so much a provocation to laughter as a conventional plot structure, comic drama is a form in which protagonists make their way from exile to integration, both adapting to and mastering the social world. Validation is its stock in trade; hence Steele's attention to “success.” Given this emphasis on acceptance and inclusion, comedy might well be expected to thematize the “how-to” of social action, and one of the ways it traditionally does so is by suggesting that effective action springs from knowledge about how society works. The standard premise of the “outwitting” plot is the astuteness of the hero, the heroine, or a...