Love for Love (1695) is the third of Congreve’s comedies, following close on the heels of The Double Dealer (1693), whose humor proved uncomfortably sharp to late seventeenth-century audiences (it was not a success). Hoping to broaden his pallet, Congreve’s third comedy moved out of the claustrophobic setting of a single room and placed all of London on stage; besides the fashionable drawing rooms of the beau monde, it is also highly topical, name-dropping scandalous locales such as Knightsbridge and World’s-End (one a haunt of highwaymen, and the other an infamous inn). Congreve also invokes the world beyond Europe through the character of Ben Sampson, who speaks of Antegoa …
2141 words
Citation: Grasso, Joshua. "Love For Love". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 December 2017 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3838, accessed 21 November 2024.]
