RESTORATION COMEDY (1660- 1700)

For B.A. Honours Part- 1

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Topics Covered-
1. INTRODUCTION TO THE RESTORATION AGE
2. NATURE OF RESTORATION COMEDY
3. WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS
4. APPEARANCE OF WOMEN ON THE ENGLISH STAGE
5. PERSISTENCE OF ELIZABETHAN PLAYS
6. PARODY OF HEROIC DRAMA
7. COLLIER'S ATTACK ON THE STAGE
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"THEN came the gallant protest of the Restoration, when Wycherley and his successors in

drama commenced to write of contemporary life in much the spirit of modern musical comedy.

. . . A new style of comedy was improvised, which, for lack of a better term, we may agree to

call the comedy of Gallantry, and which Etherege, Shadwell, and Davenant, and Crowne, and

Wycherley, and divers others, laboured painstakingly to perfect. They probably exercised to

the full reach of their powers when they hammered into grossness their too fine witticisms just

smuggled out of France, mixed them with additional breaches of decorum, and divided the

results into five acts. For Gallantry, it must be repeated, was yet in its crude youth. . . . For

Wycherley and his confreres were the first Englishmen to depict mankind as leading an

existence with no moral outcome. It was their sorry distinction to be the first of English authors

to present a world of unscrupulous persons who entertained no special prejudices, one way or

the other, as touched ethical matters."

-- JAMES BRANCH CABELL, Beyond Life.

FROM 1642 onward for eighteen years, the theatres of England remained nominally closed.

There was of course evasion of the law; but whatever performances were offered had to be

given in secrecy, before small companies in private houses, or in taverns located three or four

miles out of town. No actor or spectator was safe, especially during the early days of the Puritan

rule. Least of all was there any inspiration for dramatists. In 1660 the Stuart dynasty was

restored to the throne of England. Charles II, the king, had been in France during the greater

part of the Protectorate, together with many of the royalist party, all of whom were familiar

with Paris and its fashions. Thus it was natural, upon the return of the court, that French

influence should be felt, particularly in the theatre. In August, 1660, Charles issued patents for

two companies of players, and performances immediately began. Certain writers, in the field

before the civil war, survived the period of theatrical eclipse, and now had their chance. Among

these were Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant, who were quickly provided with fine

playhouses.

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In almost every important respect, Restoration drama was far inferior to the Elizabethan. Where

the earlier playwrights created powerful and original characters, the Restoration writers were

content to portray repeatedly a few artificial types; where the former were imaginative, the

latter were clever and ingenious. The Elizabethan dramatists were steeped in poetry, the later

ones in the sophistication of the fashionable world. The drama of Wycherley

and Congreve was the reflection of a small section of life, and it was like life in the same sense

that the mirage is like the oasis. It had polish, an edge, a perfection in its own field; but both its

perfection and its naughtiness now seem unreal.

The heroes of the Restoration comedies were lively gentlemen of the city, profligates and loose

livers, with a strong tendency to make love to their neighbours’ wives. Husbands and fathers

were dull, stupid creatures. The heroines, for the most part, were lovely and pert, too frail for

any purpose beyond the glittering tinsel in which they were clothed. Their companions were

busybodies and gossips, amorous widows or jealous wives. The intrigues which occupy them

are not, on the whole, of so low a nature as those depicted in the Italian court comedies; but

still they are sufficiently coarse. Over all the action is the gloss of superficial good breeding

and social ease. Only rarely do these creatures betray the traits of sympathy, faithfulness,

kindness, honesty, or loyalty. They follow a life of pleasure, bored, but yawning behind a

delicate fan or a kerchief of lace. Millamant and Mirabell, in Congreve's Way of the World,

are among the most charming of these Watteau figures.

Everywhere in the Restoration plays are traces of European influence. The Plain Dealer of

Wycherley was an English version of The Misanthrope of Molière; and there are many

admirable qualities in the French play which are lacking in the English. The Double

Dealer recalls scenes from The Learned Ladies (Les femmes savantes); and Mr. Bluffe, in The
Old Bachelor, is none other than our old friend Miles Gloriosus, who has traveled through

Latin, Italian and French comedy. The national taste was coming into harmony, to a

considerable extent, with the standards of Europe. Eccentricities were curbed; ideas, characters,

and story material were interchanged. The plays, however, were not often mere imitations; in

the majority of them there is original observation and independence of thought. It was this

drama that kept the doors of the theater open and the love of the theater alive in the face of

great public opposition.

3. WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS

Soon after the Restoration women began to appear as writers of drama. Mrs. Aphra

Behn (1640-1689) was one of the first and most industrious of English women playwrights.

Her family name was Amis (some writers say Johnson). As the wife of a wealthy Dutch

merchant she lived for some time in Surinam (British Guiana). Her novel, Oroonooko,

furnished Southerne with the plot for a play of the same name. After the death of her husband,

Mrs. Behn was for a time employed by the British government in a political capacity. She was

the author of eighteen plays, most of them highly successful and fully as indecent as any by

Wycherley or Vanbrugh. Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Susannah Centlivre, both of whom lived until

well into the eighteenth century, also achieved success as playwrights. The adaptations from

the French, made by Mrs. Centlivre, were very popular and kept the stage for nearly a century.

4. APPEARANCE OF WOMEN ON THE ENGLISH STAGE

It will be remembered that great indignation was aroused among the English by the appearance

of French actresses in 1629. London must have learned to accept this innovation, however, for

in one of the semi-private entertainments given during the Protectorate at Rutland House, the

actress Mrs. Coleman took the principal part. The Siege of Rhodes, a huge spectacle designed
by Davenant in 1656 (arranged in part with a view of evading the restrictions against theatrical

plays) is generally noted as marking the entrance of women upon the English stage. It is also

remembered for its use of movable machinery, which was something of an innovation. The

panorama of The Siege offered five changes of scene, presenting "the fleet of Solyman the

Magnificent, his army, the Island of Rhodes, and the varieties attending the siege of the city."

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5. PERSISTENCE OF ELIZABETHAN PLAYS

With this influx of foreign drama, there was still a steady production of the masterpieces of the

Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. The diarist Samuel Pepys, an ardent lover of the theatre,

relates that during the first three years after the opening of the playhouses he saw Othello,

Henry IV, A Midsummer Night's Dream, two plays by Ben Jonson, and others

by Beaumont, Fletcher, Middleton, Shirley, and Massinger. It must have been about this time

that the practice of "improving" Shakespeare was begun, and his plays were often altered so as

to be almost beyond recognition. From the time of the Restoration actors and managers, also
dramatists, were good royalists; and new pieces, or refurbished old ones, were likely to acquire

a political slant. The Puritans were satirized, the monarch and his wishes were flattered, and

the royal order thoroughly supported by the people of the stage.

Richard Boyle, Earl of Orrery (1621-1679), seems to have the doubtful glory of re-introducing

the use of rhymed verse. Boyle was a statesman, as well as a soldier and a dramatist. During

the ten years or so following the Restoration, he wrote at least four tragedies on historical or

legendary subjects, using the ten-syllabled rhymed couplet which (at the moment) he borrowed

from France. It runs like this:

"Reason's a staff for age, when nature's gone;

But youth is strong enough to walk alone."

No more stilted sort of verse could well be contrived for dialogue. Monotonous as well as

prosy, it was well suited to Orrery's plots. He took a semi-historical story, filled it with

bombastic sentiments and strutting figures, producing what was known as "heroic drama."

Dryden, who identified himself with this type of play, described it as concerned not with

probabilities but with love and valour. A good heroic play is exciting, with perpetual bustle and

commotion. The characters are extricated out of their amazing situations only by violence.

Deaths are numerous. The more remote and unfamiliar the setting the better; and the speech

should be suited to the action: hence the "heroic couplet." Pepys saw Guzman, by Orrery, and

with his engaging frankness said it was as mean a thing as had been seen on the stage for a

great while.
 6. PARODY OF HEROIC DRAMA

Other writers, Davenant, Etherege, and Sir Robert Howard, had also produced specimens of

heroic plays, and by the time The Conquest of Granada reached the stage these clever

gentlemen had grown tired of the species. Compared to Dryden they were nobodies in the

literary world; but among them they contrived a hilarious burlesque called The Rehearsal, in

which these showy but shallow productions were smartly ridiculed. Dryden is represented as

Bayes (in reference to his position as poet laureate), and his peculiarities of speech and plot are

amusingly derided. Though The Rehearsal was condemned as "scurrilous and ill-bred," yet it

served a useful turn in puncturing an empty and overblown style.

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7. COLLIER'S ATTACK ON THE STAGE

Although the Puritans had lost their dominance as a political power, yet they had not lost

courage in abusing the stage. The most violent attack was made by the clergyman Jeremy

Collier in 1698, in a pamphlet called A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the
English Stage, in which he denounced not only Congreve and Vanbrugh, but Shakespeare and

most of the Elizabethans. Three points especially drew forth his denunciations: the so-called

lewdness of the plays, the frequent references to the Bible and biblical characters, and the

criticism, slander and abuse flung from the stage upon the clergy. He would not have any

Desdemona, however chaste, show her love before the footlights; he would allow no reference

in a comedy to anything connected with the Church or religion; and especially would he

prohibit any portrayal of the clergy. Next to the men in holy orders, Collier had a tender heart

for the nobility. He said in effect that if any ridicule or satire were to be indulged in, it should

be against persons of low quality. To call a duke a rascal on the stage was far worse than to

apply such an epithet to plain Hodge, almost as libellous as to represent a clergyman as a

hypocrite. Collier made the curiously stupid error of accusing the playwrights of glorifying all

the sins, passions, or peculiarities which they portrayed in their characters. He had no

understanding of the point of view of the literary artist, nor any desire to understand it.

Collier's attack, unjust as it was, and foolish as certain phases of it appear today, yet it made an

impression. The king, James II, was so wrought up over it that he issued a solemn proclamation

"against vice and profaneness." Congreve and Vanbrugh, together with other writers, were

persecuted, and fines were imposed on some of the most popular actors and actresses. Dryden,

Congreve and Vanbrugh made an attempt at a justification of the stage, but it did little good.

D'Urfey, Dennis, and others entered the controversy, which raged for many years. The public

buzzed with the scandal set forth in The Short View, but did not stay away altogether from the

playhouses. The poets answered the attack not by reformation, but by new plays in which the

laughter, the satire, and the ridicule were turned upon their enemies.

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