While science is the main interest in this play, the other accepted traits of the learned woman are not neglected. Catchat, for instance, has been nurtured on the Grand Cyrus and theoretically accepts its cold guidance in matters of love. But her platonic ideals fade before her desires, and she becomes the most impassioned husband-hunter of the throng. Literary criticism is not omitted. Mr. Maggot Jingle's poem "To the Countess of Squeezingham upon her Ague" gains rapturous praise from the ladies. The maid Lucy is about to be discharged for having committed "the horrid, scandalous, and exorbitant Offence" of saying that "Cowley, the wretched Cowley, was as good a poet as the incomparable Sir Maggot Jingle."
The domestic infelicity of Lord and Lady Meanwell is described as a result of the lady's learning. Lord Meanwell says of her, "My wife is a terrible Dragon when she is out of Humour; she makes indeed a High Boast of her Philosophy but she is not a bit the less Cholerick for it, and her Morals that teach her to look upon all Things with an indifferent Eye have not the least Influence on her Passions." Lady Meanwell is a virago before whose hard words her husband shrinks into cowed submission.
As an outcome of their combined wits these ladies are about to open an "Academy of Beaux Esprits," where they may communicate to each other such discoveries as they make, and which shall serve as an "Apollo's Levee" to the Sapphos of the Age, and as a Sovereign Tribunal for all new books.
Congreve's contribution to the learned lady in comedy comes in The Double Dealer (1694), in the admirable figure of Lady Froth, "a coquet pretender to poetry, wit, and learning." Her pet affectation is that of an extravagant passion for her husband, Lord Froth, the solemn coxcomb of the play, and her affections have been bound up with her literary aspirations even from the days of their courtship. She had known love and sleepless nights and whimsies and vapors, but she had also known how to give them vent.
Cynthia. How pray, Madam?
Lady Froth. O I writ, writ abundantly;—do you never write?
Cynthia. Write what?
Lady Froth. Songs, elegies, satires, encomiums, panegyrics, lampoons, plays, or heroic poems.
By virtue of her learning and her lord's title Lady Froth assumes superiority over Cynthia, the modest, sensible heroine.