“Essays on the Court Wits as individuals, however well done,” John Harold Wilson observed a few years ago, “have always been somewhat unsatisfactory because of a natural tendency to treat the subject of the essay as a phenomenon taken bodily from his cultural environment.” Sir George Etherege has suffered as much as any other important Restoration writer from this critical failing of examining a literary figure outside the context of his own age. The result has been a totally attenuated picture of Etherege as a rather superficial rake; and this has been paralleled by an equally attenuated understanding of his plays. This critical failing is due in large part, I think, to the lack of information about his life.
