In and Out of the Bed-chamber: Staging Libertine Desire in Restoration Comedy

Abstract

This essay examines the bed and its adjacent locales as sites in which Sir George Etherege and William Wycherley stage their rejection of the same baroque aestheticism that scholars commonly associate with Restoration libertinism. It explores what happens when these playwrights, known for their libertine activities in and around the court of Charles II, write a comedy and then incorporate a scene, either onstage or off, in the bed-chamber. It argues that these playwrights sought to control their audiences' responses to activities staged in the bed-chamber, since any such activity could easily signify as male violence against women, male violence against other men, and even female violence against men. It also reads Aphra Behn as a critic of libertines in The Rover and Sir Patient Fancy.

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