The Wild Gallant

The Wild Gallant is a Restoration comedy written by John Dryden. It was Dryden's earliest play, and was premiered on the stage on February 5, 1663, by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. As Dryden himself stated in his Preface, it was "the first attempt I made in Dramatique Poetry."

Like the earliest works of many authors, and also like many other Restoration plays, The Wild Gallant is a derivative work: Dryden borrowed from several previous authors and plays, as far back as Ben Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humour (1599).^[1] Dryden admired the versification of Sir John Suckling, and quoted and paraphrased Suckling in his play.

In his Preface to the first edition of the play, Dryden admitted that "The Plot was not Originally my own...." Critic Alfred Harbage, judging on internal resemblances of plot, style, and subject matter, argued that Dryden likely based his play on a lost comedy by Richard Brome.^[2] If this argument is valid, it contains a measure of irony — since Brome and Suckling were theatrical rivals. [See: Aglaura; The Court Beggar.]

Dryden composed a set of verses addressed to Lady Castlemaine, the mistress of King Charles II, crediting her with "encouraging" this early play. Dryden's first effort was not, however, a success with its original audience; "the greater part condemn'd it," as Dryden himself put it. Samuel Pepys saw it, and in his Diary called it "so poor a thing as ever I saw in my life almost...." (Pepys complained that even at the end of the play he could not tell which character was supposed to have been the Wild Gallant.) Yet the comedy was somewhat more successful when it was revived in 1667.

The play was first published in 1669, in a quarto printed by Thomas Newcomb for the bookseller Henry Herringman. Other editions followed in 1684 and 1694.^[3]

References

^ Adolphus William Ward and Alfred Rayney Waller, eds., The Cambridge History of English Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1912; Vol. 8, p. 18 n. 1.
^ Alfred Harbage, "Elizabethan:Restoration Palimpsests," Modern Language Review Vol. 35 No. 3 (July 1940). pp. 287-319.
^ Hugh MacDonald, John Dryden: A Bibliography of Early Editions and of Drydeniana, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1939, reprinted Kessinger Publishing, 2006; pp. 99-101.

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[1] Adolphus William Ward and Alfred Rayney Waller, eds., The Cambridge History of English Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1912; Vol. 8, p. 18 n. 1.

[2] Alfred Harbage, "Elizabethan:Restoration Palimpsests," Modern Language Review Vol. 35 No. 3 (July 1940). pp. 287-319.

[3] Hugh MacDonald, John Dryden: A Bibliography of Early Editions and of Drydeniana, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1939, reprinted Kessinger Publishing, 2006; pp. 99-101.

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