ld tragedies. These
improvements were in a great measure owing to Sir William's long
residence in France, which gave him an opportunity of reading their
best writers, and hearing the sentiments of their ablest critics upon
dramatic entertainments, where they were as much admired and
encouraged, as at that time despised in England. That these were
really improvements, and that the public stood greatly indebted to Sir
William Davenant as a poet, and master of a theatre, we can produce no
less an authority than that of Dryden, who, beyond any of his
predecessors, contemporaries, or those who have succeeded him,
understood poetry as an art. In his essay on heroic plays, he thus
speaks, "The first light we had of them, on the English theatre (says
he) was from Sir William Davenant. It being forbidden him in the
religious times to act tragedies or comedies, because they contained
some matter of scandal to those good people, who could more easily
dispossess their lawful sovereign, than endure a wanton jest, he was
forced to turn his thoughts another way, and to introduce the examples
of moral virtue written in verse, and performed in recitative music.
The original of this music, and of the scenes which adorned his works,
he had from the Italian opera's; but he heightened his characters, as
I may probably imagine, from the examples of Corneille, and some
French poets. In this condition did this part of poetry remain at his
Majelty's return, when grown bolder as now owned by public authority,
Davenant revived the Siege of Rhodes, and caused it to be acted as a
just drama. But as few men have the happiness to begin and finish any
new project, so neither did he live to make his design perfect. There
wanted the fulness of a plot, and the variety of characters to form it
as it ought; and perhaps somewhat might have been added to the beauty
of the stile: all which he would have performed with more exactness,
had he pleased to have given us another work of the fame nature. For
myself and others who came after him, we are bound with all veneration
to his memory, to acknowledge what advantage we received from that
excellent ground work, which is laid, and since it is an easy thing to
add to what is already invented, we ought all of us, without envy to
him, or partiality to ourselves, to yield him the precedence in it."

Immediately after the restoration there were two companies of players
formed, one under the title of the King's Servan