THE WAY OF THE WORLD SUMMARY

Mirabell, a young man-about-town, apparently not a man of great wealth, has had an
affair with Mrs. Fainall, the widowed daughter of Lady Wishfort. To protect her from
scandal in the event of pregnancy, he has helped engineer her marriage to Mr. Fainall,
a man whom he feels to be of sufficiently good reputation to constitute a respectable
match, but not a man of such virtue that tricking him would be unfair.

Fainall, for his part, married the young widow because he desired her fortune to
support his amour with Mrs. Marwood. In time, the liaison between Mirabell and Mrs.
Fainall ended (although this is not explicitly stated), and Mirabell found himself in love
with Millamant, the niece and ward of Lady Wish-fort, and the cousin of his former
mistress.

There are, however, financial complications. Half of Millamant's fortune was under her
own control, but the other half, 6,000 pounds, was controlled by Lady Wishfort, to be
turned over to Millamant if she married a suitor approved by her aunt. Unfortunately,
Mirabell had earlier offended Lady Wishfort; she had misinterpreted his flattery as
love.

Mirabell, therefore, has contrived an elaborate scheme. He has arranged for a

pretended uncle (his valet, Waitwell) to woo and win Lady Wishfort. Then Mirabell
intends to reveal the actual status of the successful wooer and obtain her consent to
his marriage to Millamant by rescuing her from this misalliance. Waitwell was to marry
Foible, Lady Wishfort's maid, before the masquerade so that he might not decide to
hold Lady Wishfort to her contract; Mirabell is too much a man of his time to trust
anyone in matters of money or love. Millamant is aware of the plot, probably through
Foible.

When the play opens, Mirabell is impatiently waiting to hear that Waitwell is married
to Foible. During Mirabell's card game with Fainall, it becomes clear that the relations
between the two men are strained. There are hints at the fact that Fainall has been
twice duped by Mirabell: Mrs. Fainall is Mirabell's former mistress, and Mrs. Marwood,
Fainall's mistress, is in love with Mirabell. In the meantime, although Millamant quite
clearly intends to have Mirabell, she enjoys teasing him in his state of uncertainty.

Mirabell bids fair to succeed until, unfortunately, Mrs. Marwood overhears Mrs. Fainall
and Foible discussing the scheme, as well as Mirabell and Mrs. Fainall's earlier love
affair. Since Mrs. Marwood also overhears insulting comments about herself, she is
vengeful and informs Fainall of the plot and the fact, which he suspected before, that
his wife was once Mirabell's mistress. The two conspirators now have both motive and
means for revenge. In the same afternoon, Millamant accepts Mirabell's proposal and
rejects Sir Wilfull Witwoud, Lady Wishfort's candidate for her hand.

Fainall now dominates the action. He unmasks Sir Rowland, the false uncle, and
blackmails Lady Wishfort with the threat of her daughter's disgrace. He demands that
the balance of Millamant's fortune, now forfeit, be turned over to his sole control, as
well as the unspent balance of Mrs. Fainall's fortune. In addition, he wants assurance
that Lady Wishfort will not marry so that Mrs. Fainall is certain to be the heir.
This move of Fainall's is now countered; Millamant says that she will marry Sir Wilfull
to save her own fortune. Fainall insists that he wants control of the rest of his wife's
money and immediate management of Lady Wishfort's fortune. When Mirabell brings
two servants to prove that Fainall and Mrs. Marwood were themselves guilty of
adultery, Fainall ignores the accusation and points out that he will still create a scandal
which would blacken the name of Mrs. Fainall unless he gets the money.

At this point, Mirabell triumphantly reveals his most successful ploy. Before Mrs.
Fainall married Fainall, she and Mirabell had suspected the man's character, and she
had appointed her lover trustee of her fortune. Fainall is left with no claim to make
because Mrs. Fainall does not control her own money. He and Mrs. Marwood leave in
great anger. Sir Wilfull steps aside as Millamant's suitor; Lady Wishfort forgives the
servants and consents to the match of Mirabell and Millamant.

Character List
Mirabell A young man-about-town, in love with Millamant.

Millamant A young, very charming lady, in love with, and loved by, Mirabell. She is the
ward of Lady Wishfort because she is the niece of Lady Wishfort's long-dead husband.
She is a first cousin of Mrs. Fainall.

Fainall A man-about-town. He and Mirabell know each other well, as people do who
move in the same circles. However, they do not really like each other. Fainall married
his wife for her money.

Mrs. Fainall Wife of Fainall and daughter of Lady Wishfort. She was a wealthy young
widow when she married Fainall. She is Millamant's cousin and was Mirabell's
mistress, presumably after her first husband died.

Mrs. Marwood Fainall's mistress. It does appear, however, that she was, and perhaps
still is, in love with Mirabell. This love is not returned.

Young Witwoud A fop. He came to London from the country to study law but
apparently found the life of the fashionable man-about-town more pleasant. He has
pretensions to being a wit. He courts Millamant, but not seriously; she is merely the
fashionable belle of the moment.

Petulant A young fop, a friend of Witwoud's. His name is indicative of his character.

Lady Wishfort A vain woman, fifty-five years old, who still has pretensions to beauty.
She is the mother of Mrs. Fainall and the guardian of Millamant. She is herself in love
with Mirabell, although she is now spiteful because he offended her vanity.

Sir Wilfull Witwoud The elder brother of Young Witwoud, he is forty years old and is
planning the grand tour of Europe that was usually made by young men to complete
their education. He is Lady Wishfort's nephew, a distant, non-blood relative of
Millamant's, and Lady Wishfort's choice as a suitor for Millamant's hand.
Waitwell Mirabell's valet. At the beginning of the play, he has just been married to
Foible, Lady Wishfort's maid. He masquerades as Sir Rowland, Mirabell's nonexistent
uncle, and woos Lady Wishfort.

Foible Lady Wishfort's maid, married to Waitwell.

Mincing Millamant's maid.

Peg A maid in Lady Wishfort's house.

Summary and Analysis Prologue

Summary

The Prologue was a conventional requirement for all plays. This one was delivered by
the sixty-five-year-old Betterton, the grand old man of the Restoration stage. Congreve
did not keep the promises he made in this prologue:

He swears he'll not resent one hissed-off scene,

Nor, like those peevish wits, his play maintain,
Who, to assert their sense, your taste arraign.

The dedicatory letter indicates that he did arraign the taste of his audience because it
did not approve his play (although his scenes were not hissed).

His statement about what is in his play has more value: "some plot," "some new
thought," "some humor too," but "no farce," the absence of which, he adds, ironically,
would presumably be a fault. The fact that he describes his play as having no farce
indicates that he planned the Wilfull-Witwoud scenes and the Lady Wishfort scenes as
less broadly burlesqued than some of his contemporaries might have wished.

Summary and Analysis Act I

Summary

The curtain rises as Mirabell is defeated by Fainall in a desultory card game at the
chocolate-house. The conversation reveals that Mirabell is in love with Millamant but
is intensely disliked by Millamant's guardian. Lady Wishfort's dislike seems to have
some justification: Mirabell at one time pretended to court her in order to conceal his
love for her niece. She is fifty-five years old, and her vanity was offended when she
discovered that Mirabell did not love her.

When Fainall leaves for a moment, a servant enters and informs Mirabell that his valet
married that day. Mirabell is pleased because his marriage is a necessary prelude to
some secret scheme — which is not revealed. Witwoud and Petulant then enter, and
we gain the additional information that Witwoud's elder brother is coming to town to
court Millamant. Witwoud and Petulant are also both courting Millamant but only
because she is the currently reigning belle. There is further talk of an uncle of
Mirabell's who is coming to court Lady Wishfort. The men leave for a walk in the park.

Analysis
The summary of this act points up one of the difficulties in the structure of the play.
The first act does not seem to move forward. It contains only partial exposition so that
the reader has trouble following the play. The relations between Mirabell and Fainall
are not made clear. It would be the actors' task to suggest the strain between them.
The skilled and, we might say, suspicious reader may glean as much from the lines.

Fainall distrusts Mirabell, with good cause. He suspects the nature of the friendship
between Mirabell and his wife before their marriage. He also suspects that his
mistress, Mrs. Marwood, loves Mirabell. Mirabell is aware of Fainall's suspicions and,
of course, suspects that Mrs. Marwood is Fainall's mistress. When Mirabell says that
"for the discovery of this amour, I am indebted to your friend, or your wife's friend,
Mrs. Marwood," the actor will put the emphasis on "or your wife's friend" so as to
suggest that the innocent comment is barbed. Fainall pointedly replies, "What should
provoke her to be your enemy unless she has made you advances which you have
slighted? Women do not easily forgive omissions of that nature." The actor must read
the lines properly on the stage, and so must the reader.

Other lines also demand careful reading. The talk about Lady Wishfort is not merely
casual: She is very important in the subsequent action. The comments about
Millamant's character are highly significant. Despite Mirabell's wit and irony, we must
realize his sincerity. The speech beginning "I like her with all her faults" is a highly
ironic yet thoroughly convincing admission of love. The rather mysterious concern with
Waitwell's marriage seems strange until later developments.

Witwoud and Petulant are a pair of the fops and false wits that abounded in
Restoration London, or at least in Restoration drama. They have no part in the action
of The Way of the World; at most, they serve to suggest Millamant's train of suitors.
Congreve's deftness of line is such that, over the years, critics have complained about
the brilliance of some of Witwoud's speeches — for instance, "a letter as heavy as a
panegyric in a funeral sermon" is not a bad line. But we can see that Witwoud lacks the
style and the dignity that is so marked in Mirabell, the ideal Restoration gentleman,
and he is so self-satisfied that he is unable to distinguish between legitimate raillery
and the personal insults directed at him by both Mirabell and Fainall. As Mirabell
ironically states: "He has indeed one good quality — he is not exceptious; . . . he will
construe an affront into a jest, and call downright rudeness and ill language satire and
fire."
Petulant is a clearer case. He comes closer to the kinds of characters one observes in Jonson.
The foppishness of both characters can be reinforced by the arts of the costumers and the
actor.

Summary

In St. James' Park, Mrs. Fainall and Mrs. Marwood discuss their favorite subjects, men
and how to manipulate them. Beneath their apparent friendliness, they are wary of
each other as they talk of Mirabell. Mrs. Fainall suspects, quite correctly, that Mrs.
Marwood is in love with him.
After Fainall and Mirabell enter, Mirabell and Mrs. Fainall stroll off and leave Fainall
and Mrs. Marwood alone on the stage. We now discover that Mrs. Marwood is
Fainall's mistress and that he only married his wife for her fortune so as to finance his
amour. However, their love includes neither faith nor trust. Fainall is sensitive to the
fact that Mrs. Marwood's seeming enmity of Mirabell covers her attraction for him.
The scene ends with mutual recrimination and a reconciliation as they leave the stage
when Mirabell and Mrs. Fainall return.

The conversation of Mirabell and Mrs. Fainall supplies new revelations. Mirabell and
Mrs. Fainall were lovers; she married Fainall as a cover for her affair with Mirabell.
Mirabell, during their stroll, has told her of his scheme to trick Lady Wishfort and
marry Millamant. As he does not trust Waitwell, he arranged for a marriage between
Waitwell and Foible, Lady Wishfort's maid. (The news of this marriage arrived in the
first act.) After all, having wooed and won Lady Wishfort, Waitwell might plan on
actually marrying her.

Millamant now makes her first entrance, accompanied by Witwoud and her maid,
Mincing. She is thoroughly aware of her own charm and her power over Mirabell, and
toys with Mirabell's love at the same time that she returns it. She is apparently quite
prepared to go along with Mirabell's plot, which Foible has revealed to her, a clear
indication that in the end she intends to have Mirabell.

After her exit, Waitwell and Foible appear. Waitwell will woo Lady Wishfort in the
guise of Sir Rowland, Mirabell's imaginary uncle. As Sir Rowland, he would be a fine
match; in addition, the marriage would serve Lady Wishfort as a way to be revenged
on Mirabell for his earlier slight, for presumably Mirabell would be disinherited when
Sir Rowland married. All exit, with Waitwell making wry, typically Restoration
comments.

Analysis

In this act, the tensions between the characters are exposed. Just as Fainall and
Mirabell, presumably friends, engaged in a verbal duel that hid a real one, so Mrs.
Fainall and Mrs. Marwood now fence. There is good reason for Mrs. Fainall and Mrs.
Marwood not to trust each other; it is true that Mrs. Marwood is the mistress of Mrs.
Fainall's husband. By the same token, she is in love with Mirabell, Mrs. Fainall's
former, and perhaps present, lover.

One can, from a modern point of view, question the nature of the love of Mirabell and
Mrs. Fainall. After all, if he had loved her, why had he not married her? She was
presumably young, beautiful, wealthy, and available. Interesting also is the affair
between Fainall and Mrs. Marwood. Fainall seems to love Mrs. Marwood after his
fashion. That love should include trust does not even occur to him. As he says, does
she think that the lover will sleep, though the husband may nod?

The scenes between Mrs. Marwood and Mrs. Fainall and between Mrs. Marwood and
Fainall present a real challenge to the actors. Before the audience is given the
information that makes it possible to follow the play, the actors must convey the
currents of feeling, essentially cynical and unpleasant, which underly the very polished
manners and high style of the exchanges of wit.

The act includes important revelations of character. A clue to the character of Mirabell
is presented when Mrs. Marwood accuses Mirabell of being proud. Mrs. Fainall reacts
strongly: Pride, she says, is the one fault he does not have. We may have some
difficulty interpreting the term "proud"; it would appear that he is gracious rather than
arrogant.

Fainall describes himself as having "a heart of proof and something of the constitution
to bustle through the ways of wedlock and this world." He is, we might translate, a
man who can adjust to circumstance. Mirabell describes him as "a man lavish of his
morals, an interested and professing friend, a false and designing lover, yet one whose
wit and outward behavior have gained a reputation with the town, enough to make
that woman stand excused who has suffered herself to be won by his addresses."
These observations are ample preparation for Fainall's future actions. His suspicions of
others are accurate because he recognizes his own faults in them.

Millamant is a contrast to all others about her. She is surrounded by intrigue, and,
together with her fortune, she is the object and the potential prize of much of it.
However, she is not herself active in any intrigue. Her banter and wit are usually good-
natured and direct. She does not have the cynical opinion of human nature which is so
important a part of the attitude of everyone else in the play. She delights in teasing
Mirabell, with the justification that she thinks of him as already her property. She is
vain but amused at her own vanity. She can play the game of wit and make jokes about
pinning up her hair with letters written in poetry — prose, of course, would be
completely unacceptable. She is an ingénue of a type that could only have been
presented on the Restoration stage, and she is without question the most successful of
her kind.

The love story of Mirabell and Millamant differs from what might be expected. In most
love plots, the male has to overcome the unwillingness, dislike, or simple reluctance of
the other party. In The Way of the World, all the problems connected with the love
affair are external. There is never any feeling that these two are not in love. Millamant
postures, primps, and teases; it is fun to be desired and desirable. But these lovers
have no internal conflicts.
Topics

As a point of departure, it is valid to say that the theme of this play is given us by
Congreve in the title, The Way of the World. All the events and characters of the play
can be related to this central theme. The obvious criticism is that the same "theme"
can be ascribed to unlimited numbers of other, and quite different, novels and plays.
Further, Congreve does not, in this play, seem to take a consistent position. Sometimes
he is direct, sometimes ironic; sometimes he deplores, sometimes he approves; at
times he is amused; and most of the time his position is a compound of all of these
attitudes. To get a more satisfactory statement we might use a different approach that
would give a better sense of the texture of the play. Most Restoration playwrights
supplied their plays with alternate titles, or subtitles. Since Congreve did not, we might
seek for the different subtitles that are appropriate. Each one would suggest a theme,
although not the theme. These may put flesh on the bare bones the title gives us.

Love a la Mode

Certainly, the play can be seen as a dramatic presentation of varieties of love in the
England of the year 1700. Central is the delicate handling of the love game as played
by Mirabell and Millamant. They represent the ideal of the Restoration attitude,
intense yet balanced, their love based on mutual esteem with no surrender of
individuality. Contrasted with it are Mirabell's earlier and quite ambiguous love affair
with Mrs. Fainall; the illicit love of Fainall and Mrs. Marwood, presumably passionate,
but wholly without mutual trust; the spurious court young Witwoud pays to
Millamant; the direct and somewhat coarse approach of Sir Wilfull; and, at the
opposite extreme completely, the aging and undignified longings of Lady Wishfort,
vain, unrealistic, over-eager, desperate, and a little pathetic.

Love and Money

Such an approach is closely related to that of love a la mode, although they are not
identical. In the world whose way is presented here, love and money are values to be
taken into account at all times. The sincerity of Mirabell's love does not make him lose
sight of the importance of Millamant's fortune. Fainall marries for money to support
an illicit love; apparently the thought of marrying Mrs. Marwood without adequate
money (however "adequate" might be defined) is unthinkable. Money is Lady
Wishfort's sole hold over her child and her ward. Even the marriage of the servants is
built on a promise of a handsome sum of money. This is the world's way. Love without
money is an impossible sentimental dream, although money often corrupts what love
there is.

A Gallery of Portraits

Congreve's statements in the dedication, the prologue, and the epilogue suggest that
this might be a valid subtitle. Since it is the way of the world to put a premium on
youth, Mirabell and Millamant stand at the center, representing all that is to be
commended. Mirabell is the beau ideal: polished, poised, rational and balanced, witty
and perspicacious without being what we might today call over-intellectual. Millamant
is the belle: feminine, beautiful, witty, not prudish, but with a sense of her own worth.
She has avoided the messiness and humiliation of sexual intrigue. Opposed to Mirabell
are would-be wits, worthy but graceless boors, and deep intriguers. Opposed to
Millamant are women who engaged in adultery and an old dowager without decorum.
Every character reveals himself in action, and together they produce a gallery of self-
portraits.

Jungle of High Intrigue

This subtitle would focus attention on some of the values of London society. Everyone
is engaged in intrigue: Mirabell intrigues to gain consent to his marriage from Lady
Wishfort, and this involves intrigue within intrigue, for he does not trust Waitwell.
Fainall intrigues in turn. Everyone is involved in one or the other of these schemes —
Mrs. Fainall, Mrs. Marwood, and the servants. Even Lady Wishfort in her willingness to
marry Sir Rowland has a devious purpose — revenge on Mirabell. When Mrs. Fainall
married her husband, that was part of an intrigue, as was his marriage to her. And as
we see in the play, victory goes to Mirabell, not because of his virtue, but simply
because he is the most successful intriguer.

Certainly all these possible subtitles, rather than any one, add up to the ironic
commentary on society that is in the title, The Way of the World.