John Vanbrugh

Sir John Vanbrugh (January 24, 1664? – March 26, 1726) was an English architect and dramatist, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy.

Political activism and the Bastille

From 1686, Vanbrugh was working undercover, playing a role in bringing about the armed invasion by William of Orange, the deposition of James II, and the Glorious Revolution of 1689. He thus demonstrates an intense early identification with the Whig cause of parliamentary democracy, with which he was to remain affiliated all his life. Returning from bringing William messages at The Hague, Vanbrugh was arrested at Calais on a charge of espionage (which Downes concludes was trumped-up) in September 1688, two months before William invaded England. Vanbrugh remained in prison in France for four and a half years, part of the time in the Bastille, before being released in exchange for a French political prisoner. His life is sharply bisected by this prison experience, which he entered at age 24 and emerged from at 29, after having spent, as Downes puts it, half his adult life in captivity. It seems to have left him with a lasting distaste for the French political system but also with a taste for the comic dramatists and the architecture of France.

Related Topics:
1686 - William of Orange - James II - Glorious Revolution - 1689 - Parliamentary democracy - The Hague - Calais - Espionage - September - 1688

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The often-repeated claim that Vanbrugh wrote part of his comedy The Provoked Wife in the Bastille is based on allusions in a couple of much later memoirs and is regarded with some doubt by modern scholars (see McCormick). After being released from the Bastille, he had to spend three months in Paris, free to move around but unable to leave the country, and with every opportunity to see an architecture "unparalleled in England for scale, ostentation, richness, taste and sophistication" (Downes 75). He was allowed to return to England in 1693, and took part in a naval battle against the French in Camaret Bay in 1694. At some point in the mid-1690s, it is not known exactly when, he exchanged army life for London and the London stage.

Related Topics:
1693 - Camaret Bay - 1694 - 1690s

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