The general arrangement of this collection remains as it was, but I have taken the opportunity to add the one play that students and colleagues have most often urged me to include, Behn's The Rover. I have also redesigned the Criticism section in order to provide some of the best examples of the kinds of analysis that have become prominent in the past two decades.
This Second Edition builds on its predecessor’s strengths by adding a sixth play, Aphra Behn’s The Rover, a comedy that has clearly come into prominence in recent years. The plays are fully annotated for the modern reader and are accompanied by six illustrations.
The close relationship between theater and society during the period continues to be the focus of “Contexts.” The editor offers contemporary discussions of the following topics: “On Wit, Humour, and Laughter: 1660–1775,” “The Collier Controversy: 1698,” “Steele and Dennis: On The Man of Mode and The Conscious Lovers,” and “Stages, Actors, and Audiences.”
“Criticism” has been revised to reflect approaches in scholarly interpretations. Two seminal essays from the First Edition have been retained—Charles Lamb’s appreciation of the period’s comedy and L. C. Knights’s condemnation of it. New essays by Jocelyn Powell, Harriet Hawkins, Elin Diamond, Martin Price, and Laura Brown have been added.
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
A Note on the Texts
The Texts of the Plays
Illustration: The Country Wife, National Theatre, 1977
William Wycherley—The Country Wife
George Etherege—The Man of Mode
Aphra Behn—The Rover
Illustrations: The Way of The World, National Theatre, 1969
Illustrations: The Way of The World, National Theatre, 1969
William Congreve—The Way of the World
Richard Steele—The Conscious Lovers
Illustrations: The School for Scandal, Haymarket Theatre, 1962
Richard Brinsley Sheridan—The School for Scandal
Contexts
On Wit, Humour, and Laughter: 1650–1775
Thomas Hobbes:
[On Laughter]
[On Wit]
[On Power]
John Dryden—Preface to An Evening’s Love: or, The Mock Astrologer
William Congreve—Concerning Humour in Comedy
Richard Steele: Epilogue to The Lying Lover
The Tatler, No. 219
Joseph Addison: The Spectator, No. 47
The Spectator, No. 62
Oliver Goldsmith—An Essay on the Theater
The Collier Controversy: 1698
Jeremy Collier—A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage
John Dennis—The Usefulness of the Stage
William Congreve—Amendments of Mr. Collier’s False and Imperfect Citations
Steele and Dennis: On The Man of Mode and The Conscious Lovers
Richard Steele: The Spectator, No. 65
The Theatre, No. 1
The Theatre, No. 3
John Dennis: A Defense of Sir Fopling Flutter
Remarks on The Conscious Lovers
Stages, Actors, and Audiences
Emmet L. Avery and Arthur H. Scouten—The Theatrical World, 1600–1700
Elizabeth Howe—The Arrival of the Actress
Emmet L. Avery and Arthur H. Scouten—The Audience
Charles Beecher Hogan—[Scenery and Lighting]
Illustration: Model Reconstruction of Wren’s Design for a Playhouse, ca. 1674
Illustration: The Interior of Drury Lane in 1775
Criticism
Charles Lamb—On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century
L. C. Knights—Restoration Comedy: The Reality and the Myth
Jocelyn Powell—[Visual Rhythm in The Country Wife]
Harriet Hawkins—[The Man of Mode]
Elin Diamond—Gestus and Signature in Aphra Behn’s The Rover
Martin Price—[Form and Wit in The Way of the World]
Laura Brown—[The Way of the World]
Raymond Williams—[Sentimentalism and Social History]
Selected Bibliography