Sir George Etherege

Sir George Etherege (c. 1636 – c. 10 May 1692) was an English dramatist. He wrote the plays The Comical Revenge or, Love in a Tub in 1664, She Would If She Could in 1668, and The Man of Mode or, Sir Fopling Flutter in 1676.

George Etherege was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, in about 1636, to George Etherege and Mary Powney, as the eldest of their six children. Educated at Lord Williams's School, where a school building was later named after him, he was rumoured to have attended the University of Cambridge, although John Dennis states that to his certain knowledge Etherege understood neither Greek nor Latin, thus raising doubts that he could have been there.

Etherege served as an apprentice to a lawyer and later studied law at Clement's Inn, London, one of the Inns of Chancery. He probably travelled abroad to France with his father, who stayed with the exiled queen Henrietta Maria, and may have witnessed in Paris performances of some of Molière's earliest comedies. An allusion in one of his plays suggests he may have been personally acquainted with Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy.