{\b William Congreve}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: Jan. 24, 1670

{\b Date of Death}.: Jan. 19, 1729

{\b Works}.

Restoration dramatist and novelist.  Congreve's first published work was 
a novel, Incognito, or Love and Duty Reconcil'd (1692).  He also 
published a prose narrative entitled An Impossible Thing  (1720) and a 
defence of contemporary theatre, Amendments of Dr Colliers False and 
Imperfect Citations (1698), written in response to the aforementioned Dr 
Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Prophaneness of the English 
Stage (1698). However, Congreve is best-known for his plays, of which 
the greater part are comedies of manners. These include The Old 
Bachelor (1693), The Double Dealer (1694) and Love for Love (1697).  
They were followed by his only tragedy, The Mourning Bride (1697), and 
his best-known comic piece, The Way of the World (1770).  His still later 
works include a masque, The Judgement of Paris (1701), and an operatic 
piece entitled Semele (1710) which furnished Handel with part of a 
libretto for an oratorio.

{\b Featured Works}.

'The Way of the World'.

{\b General Comment}.

Congreve was born to a military family at Bardsy near Leeds in 1670.  
After his father had been granted a military post in Ireland, Congreve 
attended school at Kilkenny, the Irish equivalent of Eton, and then went 
on to study at Trinity College, Dublin.  In 1688 the Congreve family 
returned to live in England and two years later William enrolled as a law 
student at the Middle Temple.  

His first work, the novel Incognito (1692) brought him immediate renown 
as a man of letters and he quickly became Dryden's protégé.  In time he 
would also become friends with other major literary figures of his time 
such as Swift, Pope and John Gay, the author of The Beggars Opera. 
His first real literary success came just one year after the appearance of 
his early novel with the premiere of The Old Bachelor, which ran for an 
unprecedented fourteen days.  His next play, The Double-Dealer, was less 
successful, as indeed was the more tragic The Way of the World at its 
premiere in 1700. Congreve then gave up writing for the stage, became 
involved in the management of the New Haymarket theatre in 1705 and 
subsequently took on a whole series of civil service posts; he was first 
Commissioner for Licensing Hackney coaches and then Commissioner of 
wine licenses, before becoming Secretary for Jamaica in 1724.  In his 
latter years Congreve suffered somewhat both from gout and an incipient 
blindness.  His life came to an abrupt end when he was run down, 
ironically enough, by a carriage in the streets of Bath.