William Congreve: Love for Love

NB: Orders that include this product may take up to one month to ship, based on availability.

New Mermaids is a series of over sixty modernised and fully annotated classic plays, with an active program of new editions. New Mermaids are edited and updated by experienced teachers who are internationally recognised as authorities in their field. They are ideal for, and accessible to, actors, theatre-goers and students and are printed in a clear, easy-to-use format, with annotations below the text and a comprehensive introduction. 

More successful in its day than The Way of the World, which is now accounted Congreve's best play, Love for Love (1695) is a comical farce manifesting the verbal polish and the theatrical wit that audiences so enjoy in Congreve.

Valentine, Sir Sampson's dissolute eldest son, finds himself at a standstill; the only way out of his financial difficulties is to give in to his father's pressure to renounce his right of inheritance. While this suggestion immediately increases the chances of his bluff younger brother Ben on the marriage mart, Valentine's own chances with his beloved Angelica would proportionally decrease. To avoid having to sign the renunciation Valentine puts on an 'antic disposition' and pretends to be mad. Angelica, seeing through him, provokes him back into sanity by pretending to agree to marry his
father. Valentine recovers, the lovers reunite, and Ben, too, has meanwhile found the girl of his heart.