Love for Love

Consider the role of agency in the play and how different characters attempt to exercise their agency in various ways. How do these characters’ attempts at agency conflict with the various social and ideological systems within the world of the play?

Love for Love has several prominent female characters, all of whom occupy different social roles: Mrs. Foresight is a married woman, Mrs. Frail is single and anxious for a husband, Miss Prue is young and unworldly, and Angelica is a woman of independent means. What do these different roles tell us about gender and womanhood within the play, and what insights can we gain into wider Restoration conceptions of gender through our reading of the text?

Ben and Valentine are brothers, and yet they are very different in terms of personality, social aspirations, and their role within the family. Compare and contrast the brothers: how are they different from one another, and why? What is the significance of their differences? What changes have occurred in their lives by the play’s end, and how have these changes affected their roles?