Farquhar’s words were produced in a few years of comparative immaturity between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-nine and he was in the full flush of production when his life was cut short.

He was much less nauseous in his coarseness than Wycherley, Congreve and Vanbrugh; he showed clear traces of an advance in moral sensibility, nowhere discernible in the other three; and the alleged lack of “sparkle” in his dialogue in reality means a return to nature, an instinctive revolt against the sterilising convention of “wit.” The ethical standards of The Beaux' Stratagem cannot certainly be called high, but there is a general tone of humanity which is far above the level of the age and even above that of Farquhar's early plays. There are traces in this play of an actual interest in moral problems, wholly different from the downright contempt for the very idea of morality which pervades the Restoration Comedy as a whole. When Farquhar seriously (and wittily) set himself to show that a certain type of marriage was loathsome and immoral, he broke once for all with the irresponsible licentiousness of his school. He admitted a moral standard, and subjected social convention, not to mere cynical persiflage, but to the criticism of reason. Having reached this point at twenty-nine, how far might he not have advanced if another twenty years had been vouchsafed him? ”

(Extracts taken from William Archer's book on George Farquhar.)