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William Congreve was born at Bardsey, a village near Leeds, in January 1670. Four years later his father, commissioned for the purpose, was sent to command the garrison at Youghal in Ireland, but was later transferred to Carrickfergus. From there, in 1681, Congreve attended the famous school at Kilkenny, proceeding in 1686 to Trinity College, Dublin, where he was again with his older school-fellow Swift. In 1688, probably because of the Revolution, the Congreves moved to the family home at Stretton in Staffordshire, where he wrote the first draft of The Old Bachelor to relieve, he said, the tedium of convalescence from an illness. In 1691 he went to study at the Middle Temple in London, but he never worked seriously at the Law, preferring to write; and in the next year he had printed, over the name 'Cleophil', Incognita, his novel if it can be so called. He soon mixed among men of letters, and had some verses printed in the popular anthology of the day, Gildon Miscellany. He was immediately noticed by Dryden, always ready to encourage young men, who invited him to contribute to his translation of Persius, which the publishers issued headed by Congreve's complimentary lines 'To Mr. Dryden'.
By this time, then, he was already a coming young man, and the next year he 'arrived' splendidly when The Old Bachelor was acted in March at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, generously god-fathered by Dryden. It was tremendously popular and ran for a fortnight, longer than any play ever had before. But his next play, The Double Dealer, acted in October at the same theatre, did not meet with popular approval. Eighteen months went by; there were great battles in the theatre world, and a new company hived off to set up its standard at Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Congreve's next and perhaps best acting play, Love for Love, was acted in April 1695. This restored his reputation, putting him firmly in the front rank of dramatists. He became one of the managers of the new theatre, promising to write a play for it every year, which promise, however, he did not succeed in carrying out.
Being now established, Congreve was very much part of the literary scene, contributing his quota of Odes and public verses, mourning the death of Queen Mary in a Pastoral, celebrating the taking of Namur by William III, and so on. He also, at the request of John Dennis, a rising young critic, wrote for his collection of critical essays published as Letters on Several Occasions (1696) one 'Concerning Humour in Comedy', which showed the way his mind was working in these matters. At this time he began to enjoy the benefits of a society in which men of some importance in the government could reward men of letters with minor posts, which if not exactly sinecures did not involve much labour. Thus in due course Congreve became one of the commissioners for licensing hackney coaches, occupied a post in the Customs, and finally, in 1714, was made Secretary of the Island of Jamaica. Thus, having a small patrimony, and collecting something from the theatre and from his royalties, he was, though never rich, always very comfortably off. Early in 1697, as an earnest of redeeming his promise to Lincoln's Inn Fields, he gave for acting his one tragedy, The Mourning Bride, which, strange though it may seem to us, unaccustomed as we are to the forms of that day, was immensely popular, and enormously enhanced his reputation. But in 1698 he was involved in the tedious business of trying to answer the attack on the theatre made by Jeremy Collier, a non-juring parson, who in April published his notorious A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage etc., which appealed both to the still strong Puritanical anti-theatre feeling, and to the not unnatural dislike the citizenry of London felt at the way the comic dramatists had treated them. There was nothing new in this sort of attack: even Sir Philip Sidney, in 1595, could com plain of theatrical 'scurrility, unworthy of any chaste ears': Prynne had delivered a violent diatribe against the theatre in Histriomastix (1632). Such voices are not altogether stilled to-day. Many answered, and, somewhat against his will Congreve was persuaded to join in the battle. Thus, arguing purely on his own account, leaving the larger issues to one side, he produced his Amendments to Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations, a not altogether feeble, but not very convincing defence of certain of his expressions. But he was not the man to take an effective part in this sort of literary fisticuffs. . .
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