Sex and Morals
Traditional critics objected to the sexual themes in this play. Algernon Charles Swinburne called the work both "very clever" and "very coarse;" Clarence Andrews complained that "the bad characters all end happily; no one suffers for his flagrant immorality; the hero is faithless, a rake, a scoundrel, and a liar."
Modern commentators tend to approach the play with less moral high dudgeon, and have recognized that the play's rough-and-tumble morality, and its treatment of the contrasting roles of men and women in the Caroline double standard, have some overlooked subtlety and power. The play's element of latent lesbianism has also attracted attention.
Read more about this topic: A Mad Couple Well-Match'd
Famous quotes containing the word morals:
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)