콩그리브의 이중인격자 읽기: 사회정치적 패러다임의 변화를 중심으로

Abstract

With the Restoration, the aristocratic class wants to reinstate the old feudal order before the Interregnum by restoring their properties and privileges, but it is not possible. Even though the restoration is just a nominal one, it is not denied that power and property are conveyed through patrilineal genealogy. On the surface, it is admitted that the aristocracy has the natural right to rule because they are superior by birth. The sociopolitical paradigm, however, is changed with the Glorious Revolution so it is notified that sovereignty is viewed not as a divine right, but as a trust formed between human beings. Since king and stage were also restored together, theatre became the cultural means uniquely suited to the celebration of monarchy and aristocratic values in the early Restoration period. The audience were not socially homogeneous, but most of them belonged to the aristocracy or the pseudo-aristocracy. After the Glorious Revolution, however, theatre began to accommodate a bourgeois morality wherein the superior are so by good nature. As the major comic playwright in 1690s, Congreve tried to receive the changed paradigm. The Double Dealer(1694) reflects his awareness of the change after the Glorious Revolution. Congreve claimed in his dedication that he had designed ‘the Moral’ of the comedy first, and then invented ‘a Fable' to embody it. From the thematic viewpoint, Mellefont, Lord Touchwood's nephew, is regarded as a hero but Maskwell, who tries to usurp Mellefont's place as a rightful heir, formally acts like a hero while Mellefont is a passive victim until the final revelation. This incongruity between the theme and the form is the product of the playwright's troubles. Congreve tries to reassert the principle of genealogical inheritance as the basis of social order by suggesting the good-natured aristocrat, Mellefont, as the alternative, but he is not able to go against the stream of the times. Consequently, through this play he reveals, unintentionally, the inevitability of the change in the sociopolitical paradigm after the Glorious Revolution.