lodrama. High poetry
gradually disintegrates, and the way is prepared for the Restoration
comedy.

In reflecting upon the effect of a closing of the public theaters for
nearly twenty years (1642-1660) the student will appreciate what a body
blow this must have been to the true interests of the stage; and find in
it at least a partial explanation of the rebound to the vigorous
indecencies of Congreve and his associates (Wycherley, Etherage,
Vanbrugh, Farquhar) when the ban was removed; human nature, pushed too
far, ever expressing itself by reactions.

The ineradicable and undeniable literary virtues of the Restoration
writers and their technical advancement of the play as a form and a
faithful mirror of one phase of English society will reconcile the
investigator to a picture of life in which every man is a rake or
cuckold and every woman a light o' love; a sort of boudoir atmosphere
that has a tainted perfume removing it far from the morning freshness of
the Elizabethans. And consequently he will experience all the more
gratitude in reaching the eighteenth century plays: _The School for
Scandal_, _The Rivals_, and _She Stoops to Conquer_, when they came a
generation later. While retaining the polish and the easy carriage of
good society, these dramas got rid of the smut and the smirch, and added
a flavor of hearty English fun and a saner conception of social life; a
drama rooted firmly in the fidelities instead of the unfaithfulnesses
of human character. These eighteenth century plays, like those of the
Restoration--_The Plain Dealer_, _The Way of the World_, _The Man of
Mode_, _The Relapse_, and _The Beaux Stratagem_--were still played in
the old-fashioned playhouses, like Drury Lane, or Covent Garden, with
the stage protruding into the auditorium and the classic architecture
ill adapted to acoustics, and the boxes so arranged as to favor
aristocratic occupants rather than in the interests of the play itself.
The frequent change of scene, the five-act division of form, the
prologue and epilogue and the free use of such devices as the soliloquy
and aside remind us of the subsequent advance in technic. These marks of
a by-gone fashion we are glad to overlook or accept, in view of the
essential dramatic values and permanent contribution to letters which
Sheridan and Goldsmith made to English comedy. But at the same time it
is only common sense to felicitate ourselves that these methods of the
past have been outgrown, a