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The Wrangling Lovers

1676 comedy play by the English writer Edward Ravenscroft

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ107556934
Source-derived summary

The Wrangling Lovers; Or, The Invisible Mistress is a 1676 comedy play by the English writer Edward Ravenscroft.

It premiered at the Dorset Garden Theatre, performed by the Duke's Company with a cast that included Anthony Leigh as Count de Benevent, William Smith as Don Diego de Sluniga, Matthew Medbourne as Don Ruis de Moncado, Henry Harris as Don Gusmun, Cave Underhill as Sanco, Thomas Percival as Ordgano, Margaret Hughes as Octavia, Elizabeth Barry as Elvira and Anne Shadwell as Beatrice.

References

Bibliography

Canfield, J. Douglas. Tricksters and Estates: On the Ideology of Restoration Comedy. University Press of Kentucky, 2014.

Van Lennep, W. The London Stage, 1660-1800: Volume One, 1660-1700. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Wrangling Lovers” is 1676 comedy play by the English writer Edward Ravenscroft. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wrangling, Lovers and comedy, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1676, 2014, 1660, 1800—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1676. For this dossier, Wrangling, Lovers and comedy is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1676 comedy play by the English writer Edward Ravenscroft” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q107556934. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1676, 2014, 1660 and 1800.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Wrangling Lovers”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Wrangling Lovers primary sources, The Wrangling Lovers archive and Wrangling research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Wrangling Lovers”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from The Wrangling Lovers” 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.