SIR JOHN Vanbrugh is reputed to have started writing The Provoked Wife when imprisoned as a suspected British spy in the Bastille.

Back in London he finished it years later, after the 1696 success of his debut play The Relapse. That non-linear track record had no effect on his shaping of this archetypical Restoration comedy of manners, in which young men about town hunt down equally willing young women in witty sex games.

The accompanying paraphernalia of masked disguises and cuckolding of gulled husbands reflects the manners and morals of an elite strand of a London society entertained by theatrical images of itself.