Day 27: The Double Dealer, by William Congreve

The notes for this play mention that Congreve was basically arrested for lewdness after this play, and I have to agree it's deserved. The sheer amount of debauchery, affairs, and backhandedness is ridiculous. The cast includes one character who is presumably the titular Double Dealer and it's never entirely made clear what he's actually trying to achieve other than making life for his supposed best friend (who is a total doormat) utter misery to the point he stands to lose a lover, a reputation and an inheritance all in one go. Thankfully he does get found out and hauled off in the end, but only after laughing in the face of pretty much every other character in the entire story.

I csn certainly see this being a fun play to perform, and it's probably a lot easier to follow the various intricate relationships between the characters when seen on stage. I think I've mentioned before that I sometimes struggle with complex social structures in literature. In this case I felt that I ended up following what I felt was the main storyline and probably missed some nuances of the other characters and how they fit into the weave.

The sex themes are really not subtle. There are some wonderful turns of phrase though... "..a man can't drink without quenching his thirst.." bemoaning the situation of wanting to see two women over the course of the evening... and yes, the entire play stays at that level. There isn't a single scene which doesn't contain at least one drunk person and/or at least one person trying to get into someone else's pants.

So all in all, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. As a follow-up to yesterday's Importance of Being Earnest it's certainly more interesting and complicated, though the characters are not much more likeable they are certainly a little bit more three-dimensional. And of course the whole thing is infinitely more raunchy, though that's likely as much to do with the period setting and time of writing as it is with the storyline. Once again (as with the last Congreve play I covered) there are threads of story and character types which are recognisable from Shakespeare, but with far less subtlety.