The Recruiting Officer
play written by George Farquhar
The Recruiting Officer is a 1706 play by the Irish writer George Farquhar, which follows the social and sexual exploits of two English Army officers, the womanising Plume and the cowardly Brazen, in the town of Shrewsbury (the town where Farquhar himself was posted in this capacity) to recruit soldiers. The characters of the play are generally stock, in keeping with the genre of Restoration comedy.
Characters
Plot
The play opens with Captain Plume's Sergeant Kite recruiting in the town of Shrewsbury. Plume arrives, in love with Sylvia, closely followed by Worthy, a local gentleman who is in love with Sylvia's cousin Melinda. Worthy asked Melinda to become his mistress a year previously, as he believed her to be of inadequate fortune to marry but he changes his mind after she comes into an inheritance of £20,000. Melinda accepts an invitation from Captain Brazen, another recruiter, to annoy Worthy, as she was offended by Worthy's previous offer. However, her maid Lucy meets Brazen, pretending to be Melinda, hoping to marry him herself. Melinda and Sylvia argue after Melinda says that the money she has inherited makes her more desirable. Sylvia, who is more down to earth, is infuriated by Melinda's newly haughty behaviour.
Sylvia leaves her father's house to mourn her brother Owen's death.
“The Recruiting Officer” enters the record as play written by George Farquhar. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Recruiting, Officer and play can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7759830. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1706.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Recruiting Officer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.