‘the matchless Orinda’, has already been mentioned. Mary Astell (1666–1731) and
Delariv ière Manley (1663–1724) wrote variously and at length, as did Aphra Behn
(1640–1689),thrown into authorship by the early death of her Dutch husband. The
merry banter of Behn’s sex comedies gave scandal, though not to other playwrights,
with whom she was on good terms, nor to Nell Gwynn, to whom she dedicated The
Feign’d Curtezans. She shows the other side of libertinism, notably in The Rover,
where Angel lica Bianca, a ‘famous courtesan’, truly loves but experiences the disap-
pointments of free love. Behn’s adventures as a colonist in Surinam, a royal spy in
Antwerp, and a woman of the Restoration theatre also got into her fiction. Her
‘nove l’,Oroonoko,or the History of the Royal Slave, is an ideological romance: a noble
African prince cruelly enslaved by colonists is redeemed by the love of ‘the brave, the
beautiful and the constant Imoinda’.
William Congreve
The literary century closed with Congreve’s comedy The Way of the World, a clas-
sic intrigue of manners, love, money and marriage. William Congreve
(1670–1729) polishes the mirror of society to a new brilliance. Mirabell woos
Millamant, neice of the widow Lady Wishfort, while being gallant to the aunt. This
the aunt is kindly told by Mrs Marwood, whose advances Mirabell has rejected.
Lady Wishfort now hates Mirabell ‘worse than a quaker hates a parrot’, and will
disinherit Millamant if she marries him. A plot by Mrs Marwood and Fainall, Lady
Wishfort’s son-in-law, to get the inheritance, is foiled by an entertaining counter-
plot involving servants, a country cousin (‘rustick, ruder than Gothick’), and a late
legal surprise. Love and virtue outwit villainy, though wit shines more than virtue.
In this double-dealing wor ld,integrity (when in love) has to assume the mask of
frivolity. The audience need the clues in the characters’ names, yet the lovers’
THE RESTORATION 177The new St Paul’s Cathedral
replace the rather larger Old
St Paul’s (see p. 140), the
Cathedral of the City of
London. Begun in 1675,
completed in 1709. The
architect, Sir Christopher
Wren, had wanted a dome on
a central drum, but had to
incorporate a traditional long
‘Gothic’ nave. © Ocean/Corbis.