Three Restoration Comedies

Artificial, irreverent and bawdy, the Restoration theatre came as a violent reaction to the strict ordinance of the Commonwealth. Played before the most cliquish and cynical audience in the history of the theatre, consciously trailing its coat at the puritan citizenry, it has delighted and offended over the centuries in about equal measure. Yet, take it or leave it, it offers a morality of its own, in which elegance and wit are the chief virtues, and folly, meanness and hypocrisy the butts of its genial satire. At its best, as in the three plays included here, it produced some of the greatest comedy of all time, holding up to its age a mirror whose image, however partial, is 'bright, sharp and pertinent, undimmed with the breath of years'.