Marriage a-la-Mode was an early and influential comedy of manners, later to be developed by Etherege and Wycherly. During the play Dryden deploys verbal and theatrical wit which is in experimental contrast to a loftier vein of poetic tragi-comedy. With its unusual combination of two plots, this play affords a complex exploration of the language of social exchange and personal feeling between typically well-born men and women of the late 17th-century English world.