[ENGL 3203] The Way of the World apparently means replacing saucy china scenes with legal jargon.

For this, I weep.

We were warned that things would get less saucy, but even with the lack of blatant sexual innuendo this was a fun play to read. I will agree wholeheartedly with the preface - the most difficult part of reading this play, BY FAR, was keeping straight who loves who used to love who hates who. Seriously, even if you've read the play, the Synopsis on Wikipedia and the Dramatis Personae will make your head spin. I was also continually forgetting that "Fainall" meant MISTER Fainall, not Mrs Fainall, and I kept thinking that Mirabell was Millamant and vice versa.

Maybe this is just me, but there was a pervasive feeling of "sameness" lurking about most of the women and most of the men characters. I'd be lying if I said every single character in every play we've read so far has popped out as a distinctive snowflake or anything. But it was difficult for me, until the play was quite far along, to "feel" the difference between, for instance, Marwood and Mrs Fainall, or Mr. Fainall and Mirabell. In this sense I'm sure that the costuming (along with the interpretations of the actors, of course) would probably have been quite helpful. A lot of the characters' true colours don't really come out until late in the play, so a visual aid (involving colour, of course!) early on would help to appreciate the different characters.

A theme that arises late (Act V) is "prudence", particularly of the type a woman should subscribe when she enters married life. Lady Wishfort apparently took some significant pains to preserve Mrs. Fainall's innocence:

... I promise you, her education has been
unexceptionable. I may say it, for I chiefly made
it my own care to initiate her very infancy in the
rudiments of virtue and to impress upon her
tender years a young odium and aversion to the
very sight of men. Aye, friend, she would ha'
shrieked if she had but seen a man till she was in
her teens. (V, 191-198)

[...] And can I think after all
this that my daughter can be naught? (V, 214-215)

Of course, Wishfort is continually shown to be something of a bumbling, short-sighted, not particularly prudent old bat. She falls for the "Sir Rowland" hoax hook, line, and sinker. Previously, she fell for Mirabell's false advances. Not much of a poster child for her own method of rearing her daughter, eh? In the end, "prudence" takes on a whole different meaning when Mrs. Fainall is able to keep her money thanks to a clever legal trick. Even though Wishfort tries to lay claim to teaching her the way of the world, "Oh daughter, daughter, 'tis plain thou hast inherited thy mother's prudence." (V, 588-589), it's obvious that there has been a shift in values from one generation to the next.

And the mastermind behind this trick? Mirabell, the reformed rake, who took such nice care of his former lover. And now he's made up with Wishfort and has her blessings so he can both marry Millamant AND get the cash. Actually, it's through his reformation that he's set up to marry and be happy in the end - if he hadn't had the "Mrs. Fainall's fortune" card to play, he would have been out. And because he DID play this card, EVERYBODY wins (except Mr Fainall and Marwood, who pay for their falsehoods - while Mirabell's are completely forgiven, notice?)

There is definitely a sanctioning of the reformation of rake-like characters (and by extension, actual people) here - and in a way, also a sanctioning of the rake-like behaviour to begin with. Just settle down, own-up and marry eventually, and everything will be a-okay for eeeeeverybody.


Number of plays read: 5
Ladies-dressed-as-boys: 5 (No breeches roles in this one! For this I weep as well!)