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What did William Congreve say was the purpose of a comic poet in the dedication to The Double-Dealer?
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William Congreve
William Congreve, oil painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1709; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
In the dedication to his play The Double-Dealer (1693), William Congreve stated: "It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of humankind."1
While this statement is often associated with the traditional didactic theory of comedy—implying that a dramatist exposes these flaws to correct them through ridicule—Congreve himself remained silent on that specific moral purpose in the text.1