“Considerately woven out of our selves”: The Attractions of Speech in Thomas Killigrew’s Comedies

• Main Author: J. P. Vander Motten
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Société d'Etudes Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 2016-12-01
• Series: XVII-XVIII
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/1718/762

Even in his own lifetime the dramatist Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683) acquired the reputation of an accomplished and witty conversationalist. Despite the renewed interest in his works and the vague recognition that raillery is the forte of his dramatic characters, modern criticism has paid scant attention to the manifestations of this wit in the language of his plays. It has been my purpose to assess the nature of comic speeches and the uses to which they are put in The Parson’s Wedding and Thomaso; or the Wanderer, more particularly in relation to Killigrew’s characteristic copiousness of expression and the “literary” ambitions underlying the 1664 edition of the plays.