Written proof is a motif throughout they play. Repeated instances where written proof delivers a plot twist foreshadow the resolution of the play, when Mirabell reveals that has the deed to Mrs. Fainall's property. For instance, in Act 1, Scene 2, a servant delivers Mirabell the news that Waitwell and Foible have been married:
SERVANT: Married and bedded, sir; I am witness.
MIRABELL: Have you the certificate?
SERVANT: Here it is, sir.
Mirabell needs to see the certificate to confirm that the marriage and consummation have taken place. Congreve thus begins early on playing with the idea that a marriage plot is a legal plot at least as much as it is a story about love and romance. He needs the documents to blackmail Lady Wishfort later because they are what will prove that Waitwell and Foible are married. By the end of the 17th century in England, written contracts were playing a huge role in marriage. Marriage was still a religious institution presided over by religious leaders, but it was also a legal proceeding. Even when people married for love, marriage was (and largely still is) the main way to consolidate wealth or move into a new social class based on acquired wealth. The legal documents people sign upon marriage were and are what courts rely on to prove that marriages have taken place and that property has changed hands on the wedding day. After all of Waitwell's feigned advances toward Wishfort, the marriage contract will serve as a final trump card that can't be refuted if Wishfort questions which of Waitwell's relationships is "real."
But Congreve's play is full of surprises, and Wishfort turns out to be worse at recognizing written proof than Mirabell may at first have thought. Besides the marriage contract, another piece of written proof that plays a big role in the play is Marwood's letter revealing Waitwell's true identity. The fact that Lady Wishfort is easily convinced that the letter is a fake reveals that she is not especially adept at navigating the modern world of courtship, where the truth lies in documents. Actually forged documents play a small role in this play: deception largely happens on people's faces, not on paper. Wishfort, who is depicted as behind the times and a bit old for courtship, still believes what people tell her and what she sees on their faces instead of the written proof thrust before her.
The repeated use of documents to manipulate Lady Wishfort foreshadows how Mirabell gets his way in the end. He manages to get everything he wants because he has his papers in order. Not only does he have the marriage certificate for Foible and Waitwell, but he also has the deed to Arabella's home. He manages to give Arabella some independence and leverage in her marriage, confirming for Millamant that he will help her retain some independence when they get married. He even manages to get Lady Wishfort's approval for his marriage to Millamant after everyone comes together the explain to Lady Wishfort just what all these papers mean.
A motif throughout the play is the idea that lovers and suitors are accessories people can use to satisfy their vanity and demonstrate their desirability to the world. In Act 2, scene 5, Millamant describes using love letters as curlers for her hair:
Oh, ay, letters – I had letters – I am persecuted with letters – I hate letters. Nobody knows how to write letters, and yet one has ’em, one does not know why. They serve one to pin up one’s hair. [...] Only with those in verse, Mr Witwoud. I never pin up my hair with prose. I fancy one’s hair would not curl if it were pinned up with prose. I think I tried once, Mincing.
As Millamant says here, she only uses poetry (not prose) to curl her hair. Audience members who were paying attention during the prologue will remember that Congreve has already demonstrated that poetry is especially suited to putting on a show that draws people into a trap. In the prologue, writing in poetry allowed Congreve to flatter the audience while subtly making fun of them. Millamant thinks of her "thousand lovers" as accessories that help her project an air of desirability without letting anyone get too close to the real person beneath the artful curls and the visage she presents to the world. Millamant seems to think she has drawn Mirabell into this trap: he wants her because she seems desirable, but she intends only to taunt him, not to marry him.
In Act 1, Scene 8, Witwould describes how Petulant also accessorizes himself with (supposed) lovers. He pays women to call on him in the chocolate house, where everyone can see that he is getting attention:
You shall see he won’t go to ’em because there’s no more company here to take notice of him. – Why this is nothing to what he used to do; before he found out this way, I have known him call for himself.
Petulant has even been known to leave the chocolate house and come back to call on himself, as if people are after his attention even when he's unavailable. In this scene, he doesn't go out to the coach because there is no one around to notice. His focus on onlookers emphasizes that Petulant, like Millamant, doesn't necessarily want the romantic attention so much as the image he can project to the rest of the world by appearing to be sought-after. Loving Petulant is also a trap because he, too, collects lovers like accessories.
This motif of lovers as accessories allows Congreve to explore the complexities of romantic relationships in the Restoration era. People pursue romance for a variety of ideas: love, money, reputation, and vanity are all reasons for relationships in this play. Rather than laud one particular motivation over all the others, Congreve portrays many relationships that are motivated by a mix of all these reasons. For instance, Waitwell and Foible get married to facilitate Mirabell's marriage to Millamant, but they also seem to love each other, or at least enjoy each other's company. In a world where reputation and money matter, Congreve seems to think it is only practical to pursue these things in a relationship. Problems only arise when relationships are also devoid of love and respect.
A motif throughout the play is the idea that lovers and suitors are accessories people can use to satisfy their vanity and demonstrate their desirability to the world. In Act 2, scene 5, Millamant describes using love letters as curlers for her hair:
Oh, ay, letters – I had letters – I am persecuted with letters – I hate letters. Nobody knows how to write letters, and yet one has ’em, one does not know why. They serve one to pin up one’s hair. [...] Only with those in verse, Mr Witwoud. I never pin up my hair with prose. I fancy one’s hair would not curl if it were pinned up with prose. I think I tried once, Mincing.
As Millamant says here, she only uses poetry (not prose) to curl her hair. Audience members who were paying attention during the prologue will remember that Congreve has already demonstrated that poetry is especially suited to putting on a show that draws people into a trap. In the prologue, writing in poetry allowed Congreve to flatter the audience while subtly making fun of them. Millamant thinks of her "thousand lovers" as accessories that help her project an air of desirability without letting anyone get too close to the real person beneath the artful curls and the visage she presents to the world. Millamant seems to think she has drawn Mirabell into this trap: he wants her because she seems desirable, but she intends only to taunt him, not to marry him.
In Act 1, Scene 8, Witwould describes how Petulant also accessorizes himself with (supposed) lovers. He pays women to call on him in the chocolate house, where everyone can see that he is getting attention:
You shall see he won’t go to ’em because there’s no more company here to take notice of him. – Why this is nothing to what he used to do; before he found out this way, I have known him call for himself.
Petulant has even been known to leave the chocolate house and come back to call on himself, as if people are after his attention even when he's unavailable. In this scene, he doesn't go out to the coach because there is no one around to notice. His focus on onlookers emphasizes that Petulant, like Millamant, doesn't necessarily want the romantic attention so much as the image he can project to the rest of the world by appearing to be sought-after. Loving Petulant is also a trap because he, too, collects lovers like accessories.
This motif of lovers as accessories allows Congreve to explore the complexities of romantic relationships in the Restoration era. People pursue romance for a variety of ideas: love, money, reputation, and vanity are all reasons for relationships in this play. Rather than laud one particular motivation over all the others, Congreve portrays many relationships that are motivated by a mix of all these reasons. For instance, Waitwell and Foible get married to facilitate Mirabell's marriage to Millamant, but they also seem to love each other, or at least enjoy each other's company. In a world where reputation and money matter, Congreve seems to think it is only practical to pursue these things in a relationship. Problems only arise when relationships are also devoid of love and respect.
The idea that marriage changes a person's identity runs throughout the play as a motif. Millamant is particularly concerned about losing herself when she gets married, but it is not only women who experience this transformation. For example, in Act 2, Scene 9, when Mirabell asks Waitwell if he will be able to disappear into the role of Sir Rowland, Waitwell says that he has already disappeared into the role of a married man:
MIRABELL: Come sir, will you endeavour to forget yourself, and transform into Sir Rowland?
WAITWELL: Why sir, it will be impossible I should remember myself – Married, knighted, and attended all in one day! ’Tis enough to make any man forget himself. The difficulty will be how to recover my acquaintance and familiarity with my former self, and fall from my transformation to a reformation into Waitwell. Nay, I shan’t be quite the same Waitwell, neither – for now I remember me, I am married, and can’t be my own man again.
The way Waitwell brings up his identity crisis is important. He suggests that finding "the same Waitwell" after he is done playing Sir Rowland will be difficult or impossible because marriage has made him no longer "my own man." Marriage appears here to be a charade, much like Waitwell's charade as Sir Rowland. In fact, for Waitwell, the charades are one and the same: he become Sir Rowland and Foible's husband to please not only Wishfort and Foible but also to please Mirabell, his employer. He is "waiting well" on Mirabell and is Mirabell's man through and through. Waitwell now belongs to several people before he belongs to himself.
The idea that marriage is a performance, where people become actors who disappear into their new roles under the direction of others, does not necessarily mean that marriage is a sham. As always, Congreve is interested in the idea of social performance and the way everyone is performing, all the time. The difficulty everyone faces is embodying some authentic version of themselves within these performances. Waitwell truly does need to get reacquainted with the person he is in his new role. Millamant's ultimate challenge is learning how to embrace a new role for herself without feeling like she has completely lost herself.
A motif that recurs throughout the play is the idea that characters have an authentic self and a performance that they put out for the world, and that distinguishing between the two can be difficult. In Act 3, Scene 5, Foible comments that Lady Wishfort has cracked her makeup by frowning, but that it can be easily fixed to make her look more like her picture again:
I warrant you, madam; a little art once made your picture like you, and now a little of the same art must make you like your picture. Your picture must sit for you, madam.
The picture was fashioned after Lady Wishfort, and now Lady Wishfort must use makeup artistry to look like her picture. The image she wants to project to the world is that of her younger self, but that self no longer exists in reality. Indeed, the fact that the makeup needs to be fixed to disguise a frown demonstrates not only that she is covering up her age, but also that she is covering up the genuine emotions she feels. She does not want anyone to know that her private self is a human woman who ages and whose feelings are dynamic and complex. Instead of her actual face, she only lets the world see a screen of makeup. But because this made-up face is the only one she presents to the world, it is hard to tell what the "real" Wishfort is supposed to look like. Maybe she has become her picture after all.
This motif comes up as well in Act 2, when Marwood has to hide her face so no one will see her true emotions. Marwood is one of the villains of the play, but her behavior all stems from her love of Fainall and his poor treatment of all the women with whom he is involved. Congreve more than hints that there is more to Marwood than meets the eye. In fact, she is one of the few characters who gets a soliloquy to share her inner thoughts with the audience. But if the vulnerable person she is behind her mask never shows up to the rest of the world, Congreve seems to ask the audience, which is the "real" Marwood?
More than any of the other characters, Mirabell wears his emotions on his face. He has an elaborate plot to manipulate Wishfort into allowing him to marry Millamant, but his plot relies more on other people's performances than his own. Mirabell is clear from the beginning of the play that he is in love with Millamant and wants to marry her. This clear presentation of his inner feelings seems to be praiseworthy in Congreve's view. Mirabell is clever, but he does not lie about his real feelings. His witty yet genuine nature is what makes him the hero of the play.
