Born in 1670 in England but reared and educated in Ireland, William Congreve became a popular figure in the London literary circle of the late 1680s. After publishing a work of prose fiction, Incognita (1692), and several well-received translations of classical poetry, he achieved success on the London stage when his first play, The Old Bachelor, ran for two weeks in the spring of 1693. Congreve wrote another three successful plays before presenting The Way of the World to a lukewarm reception. Though he never wrote another play, he continued to compose literary works: poems, translations of classical works, operatic songs, and journal articles. Throughout his writings, and especially in The Way of the World, Congreve critiqued English society by showing how greed, artificiality, and dishonesty infected social interactions and family life.
The Glorious Revolution. Scholar Derek Hughes says that “[i]t is well known that Congreve’s last two comedies [Love for Love and The Way of the World] recapitulate the Revolution by showing the containment of parental or marital tyranny by law and contract” (Hughes, p. 380). The Revolution to which Hughes refers is alternately called the Glorious Revolution or the Bloodless Revolution, and it involved the 1688 accession to the English throne of William of Orange and his English wife, Mary, who was the Protestant daughter of England’s Catholic king, James II.
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