William Congreve achieves sudden fame in March 1693 with the production at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, of The Old Bachelour, written, he said, in 1690 to amuse himself during convalescence.

Warmly heralded by John Dryden, who declares that he has never read so brilliant a first play, though it needs to be given “the fashionable Cutt of the Town,” it is an enormous success, running for the then unprecedented length of a fortnight.

His next play, The Double-Dealer, plays in November or December at Drury Lane but does not meet with the same applause (it will later become the more critically admired work, however).

Its published form contains a panegyrical introduction by Dryden.

Entered in 1691 as a law student at the Middle Temple but never a serious reader in law, Congreve had published in 1692 under the pseudonym Cleophil a light but delightfully skillful near-parody of fashionable romance, possibly drafted when he was seventeen, Incognita: or, Love and Duty reconcil'd.

He had quickly become known among men of letters, had some verses printed in a miscellany of the same year, and became a protégé of John Dryden, the greatest English poet of the later seventeenth century.

In that year, Dryden had published his translation of the satires of Juvenal and Persius (dated 1693), in which Congreve collaborated, contributing the complimentary poem “To Mr. Dryden".

Love for Love almost repeated the success of Congreve’s first play.

Performed in April 1695, it is the first production staged for the new theater in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which was opened after protracted crises in the old Theatre Royal, complicated by quarrels among the actors.

Congreve becomes one of the managers of the new theater, promising to provide a new play every year.

He begins in this year to write his more public occasional verse, such as his pastoral on the death of Queen Mary II and his Pindarique Ode, Humbly Offer'd to the King on his taking Namure; and John Dennis, at this time a young, unsoured critic, collecting his Letters upon Several Occasions (published 1696), extracts from Congreve his Letter Concerning Humour in Comedy.

Congreve's position among men of letters is by this time so well established that he is considered worthy of one of those sinecure posts by which men of power in government reward literary merit: he is made one of the five commissioners for licensing hackney coaches, though at a reduced salary of one hundred pounds per annum.

Through his brilliant comic dialogue, his satirical portrayal of the war of the sexes, and his ironic scrutiny of the affectations of his age, Congreve shapes the English comedy of manners.

The world of London theatergoing in 1700 has changed significantly from the days of, for example, The Country Wife.

Charles II is no longer on the throne, and the jubilant court that revels in its licentiousness and opulence has been replaced by the far more dour and utilitarian Dutch-inspired court of William of Orange.

His wife, Mary II, is, long before her death, a retiring person who does not appear much in public.

William himself is a military king who is reported to be hostile to drama.

The political instabilities that had been beneath the surface of many Restoration comedies are still present, but with a different side seeming victorious.

William Congreve's comedy The Way of the World is first performed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London in early March.

Widely regarded as being one of the best Restoration comedies written, it is still performed sporadically to this day.

One of the features of a Restoration comedy is the opposition of the witty and courtly (and Cavalier) rake and the dull-witted man of business or the country bumpkin, who is understood to be not only unsophisticated but often (as, for instance, in the very popular plays of Aphra Behn in the 1670s) either Puritan or another form of dissenter.

The courtly and Cavalier side had been in power in 1685, and Restoration comedies had belittled the bland and foolish losers of the Restoration.

By 1700, however, the other side is ascendant.

Therefore, The Way of the World's recreation of the older Restoration comedy's patterns is only one of the things that make the play unusual.

The 1688 revolution concerning the overthrow of James II had created a new set of social codes primarily among the bourgeoisie.

This shift in social perspectives is perhaps best shown in the characters of Fainall and Mirabell, who represent respectively the old form and new form of marital relations: sexual power at first and then developing into material power.

The new capitalist system means an increasing emphasis on property and property law.

Thus, the play is packed with legal jargon and financial and marital contracts.

These new legal aspects allow characters like Mrs. Fainall to secure her freedom through an equitable trust and for Mirabell and Millamant's marriage to be equal though a prenuptial agreement.

Later in the month, on the 25th, France, England and the Dutch Republic sign the Treaty of London.

Sometimes known as the Second Partition Treaty, the agreement is an attempt to restore the Pragmatic Sanction following the death of Duke Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria, which had undermined the First Partition Treaty (the Treaty of Den Haag).

Under the new Treaty, Archduke Charles (later Charles VI), the second son of the Emperor Leopold I, is to become King of Spain when Carlos II dies.

Voltaire, during a stay that has lasted more than two years, has succeeded in learning the English language; he writes his notebooks in English and to the end of his life will be able to speak and write it fluently.

He has met such English men of letters as Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and William Congreve, the philosopher George Berkeley, and Samuel Clarke, the theologian.

He has been presented at court, and he has dedicated his Henriade to Queen Caroline.

Though at first he had been patronized by Bolingbroke, who had returned from exile, it appears that he had quarreled with the Tory leader and turned to Sir Robert Walpole and the liberal Whigs.

He admires the liberalism of English institutions, though he is shocked by the partisan violence.

He envies English intrepidity in the discussion of religious and philosophic questions and is particularly interested in the Quakers.

He is convinced that it is because of their personal liberty that the English, notably Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke, were in the forefront of scientific thought.

He believes that this nation of merchants and sailors owed its victories over Louis XIV to its economic advantages.

He concludes that even in literature, France has something to learn from England; his experience of Shakespearean theater is overwhelming, and, however much he is shocked by the “barbarism” of the productions, he is struck by the energy of the characters and the dramatic force of the plots.