Abstract
Congreve wrote his plays just before the twin disciplines of literary and theatrical criticism were properly established. Throughout the seventeenth century, literary criticism was primarily viewed as a prescriptive activity, concerned with determining the basic norms and rules of a neoclassic approach to writing. The function of a literary critic was therefore to lay down guidelines and precepts for writers rather than to interpret and explain the work of writers to a reading public. This was as true of an English neoclassicist such as Ben Jonson at the beginning of the century as it was of a French neoclassicist such as Boileau at the end. Even Congreve’s own essay, Concerning Humour in Comedy, belongs within this prescriptive tradition.
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