The most successful of all dramatic genres produced for the Restoration theatre is the comedy of manners. The birth of the genre is once again directly associated with Charles II’s court, the earliest specimens being written by courtiers. More particularly, William Wycherley and Sir George Etherege are usually credited with the initiation of the new genre, both of whom belonged to the King’s coterie. Their most famous comedies, Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676) and Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675), obviously reflect the morals and manners of the Restoration court. The principal character in The Man of Mode, Dorimant, was for example generally recognized by contemporaries to be a portrayal of the Earl of Rochester (see above). Etherege and Wycherley being courtiers and men of fashion did not depend on writing for their living or consider themselves poets in the first place and wrote less than a handful of plays each. Some scholarly surveys have even shown that comedies of manners were not even the most typical plays written for the early Restoration stage. However, these few early plays brought into being a genre that is perhaps of the highest literary value of all the dramatic output of this period and in this sense it is surely typical of the age.