ÐÇ¿ÕÓéÀÖ¹ÙÍø

Restoration comedies were written and performed from around 1660 to 1710 in the period following the restoration of the Stewart monarch, Charles II, to the throne. Theatres had been shut under the former Puritan rule, but Charles reopened them with a flourish and took great delight in lighthearted, flirtatious, and often risque comedies. This guide will explore the re-establishment of theatre during this period, the style and subject of the Comedy of Manners, and the typical characters featured in the plays.

Terminology

• Boxes: enclosed areas of seating usually found to the side of the stage, limited to a small number of people.
• Duke’s Men: a theatre company chartered by King Charles II at the start of the Restoration era and founded by William Davenport.
• Fop: a popular, flamboyant, and vain character in Restoration comedy.
• Gallery: the top level of seating in the theatre, containing the cheapest seats.
• Heroic couplet: paired, rhyming lines of poetry (usually iambic pentameter) favored by poets in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
• Prose: the ordinary form of written or spoken language, without any use of rhyme or meter.
• Puritanism: a religious reform movement in the late 16th and 17th centuries that sought to “purifyâ€� the protestant Church of England of remaining elements of the Roman Catholic Church.
• Rake: a popular character representing the intelligent, seductive man about town.

Key Dates & Events

• 1660 - Restoration of King Charles II to the English throne.
• 1660 - Charles II reopens the theatres in England for the first time since their closure in 1642.
• 1660 - First “letters patentâ€� granted to Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant.
• 1675 - William Wycherley publishes The Country Wife
• 1677 - Aphra Behn publishes The Rover, making her name as the first successful female playwright.
• 1685 - Death of Charles II (childless) and accession of his brother, James II.
• 1688 - The Glorious Revolution and deposition of James II; William and Mary of Orange take over the English throne.
• 1700 - William Congreve publishes The Way of the World, marking the end of the Restoration period in literary history.