The Gentleman Dancing-Master. A Comedy, Acted at the Duke's Theatre

The uncommon second play by poet William Wycherley (1640-1716), a satire and romp of French manners centering on a rebellious and single-minded young woman named Hippolyta. In 2005 one Variety critic wrote of the play: "Wycherley's play belongs to a genre that's very tricky to stage. On the one hand, words fly out of characters' mouths at breakneck speed, often spinning complicated metaphors that require careful attention to be understood. On the other, almost all that fancy language describes gleefully immoral sex, so the cerebral control of language should be matched with lusty comic timing. Everyone, in other words, needs to be thinking with what's below the belt as well as what's above."

ESTC R12858; Wing W-3744; Pforzheimer 1099; NCBEL II, 742.