Plays, Written by Sir John Vanbrugh, Volume the First

John Vanbrugh wrote these plays at the twilight of the Restoration, and they burn with all the wit, cynicism, and moral provocation that made the era's best theater legendary. "The Relapse" drops us into a world where a man who has found domestic contentment is temptation by his former self - and whether he succumbs becomes both hilarious and unexpectedly dark. His wife Amanda, left alone in the city's dangerous atmosphere, must navigate a society designed to test her virtue. Around them spins a cast of rakes, fops, and climbers, none more memorable than Lord Foppington, whose absurd pretensions mask a sharp commentary on aristocratic emptiness. "The Provok'd Wife" takes marital warfare to its comic extreme: a wife who refuses to be subjugated and a husband whose jealousy renders him ridiculous. These plays endure because they are genuinely,wickedly funny while asking uncomfortable questions about desire, fidelity, and what society pretends not to know.