The Way of the World is a Restoration comedy of manners by William Congreve. It follows the courtship and social manoeuvring of fashionable Londoners, where love, marriage and money are entangled. It is worth hearing for its sparkling dialogue and satirical portrait of private and public conduct.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
Transcribed from the 1895 Methuen & Co. edition (Comedies of William Congreve, Volume 2) by David Price, email [email protected] THE WAY OF THE WORLD A COMEDY Audire est operæ pretium, procedere recte Qui mæchis non vultis.—Hor. Sat. i. 2, 37. —Metuat doti deprensa.—Ibid. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE RALPH, EARL OF MOUNTAGUE, ETC. My Lord,—Whether the world will arraign me of vanity or not, that I have presumed to dedicate this comedy to your lordship, I am yet in doubt; though, it may be, it is some degree of vanity even to doubt of it. One who has at any time had the honour of your lordship’s conversation, cannot be supposed to think very meanly of that which he would prefer to your perusal. Yet it were to incur the imputation of too much sufficiency to pretend to such a merit as might abide the test of your lordship’s censure. Whatever value may be wanting to this play while yet it is mine, will be sufficiently made up to it when it is once become your lordship’s; and it is my security, that I cannot have overrated it more by my dedication than your lordship will dignify it by your patronage. That it succeeded on the stage was almost beyond my expectation; for but little of it was prepared for that general taste which seems now to be predominant in the
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