could easily be applied. The misfortune was that they were tests
which proved nothing. Such as they were, they were employed by the
dominant party. And the consequence was that a crowd of impostors, in
every walk of life, began to mimic and to caricature what were then
regarded as the outward signs of sanctity. The nation was not duped.
The restraints of that gloomy time were such as would have been
impatiently borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be
saints. Those restraints became altogether insupportable when they were
known to be kept up for the profit of hypocrites. It is quite certain
that, even if the royal family had never returned, even if Richard
Cromwell or Henry Cromwell had been at the head of the administration,
there would have been a great relaxation of manners. Before the
Restoration many signs indicated that a period of license was at hand.
The Restoration crushed for a time the Puritan party, and placed supreme
power in the hands of a libertine. The political counter-revolution
assisted the moral counter-revolution, and was in turn assisted by it. A
period of wild and desperate dissoluteness followed. Even in remote
manor-houses and hamlets the change was in some degree felt; but in
London the outbreak of debauchery was appalling; and in London the
places most deeply infected were the Palace, the quarters inhabited by
the aristocracy, and the Inns of Court. It was on the support of these
parts of the town that the playhouses depended. The character of the
drama became conformed to the character of its patrons. The comic poet
was the mouthpiece of the most deeply corrupted part of a corrupted
society. And in the plays before us we find, distilled and condensed,
the essential spirit of the fashionable world during the anti-Puritan
reaction.

The Puritan had affected formality; the comic poet laughed at decorum.
The Puritan had frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet took
under his patronage the most flagitious excesses. The Puritan had
canted; the comic poet blasphemed. The Puritan had made an affair of
gallantry felony without benefit of clergy; the comic poet represented
it as an honorable distinction. The Puritan spoke with disdain of the
low standard of popular morality; his life was regulated by a far more
rigid code; his virtue was sustained by motives unknown to men of the
world. Unhappily it had been amply proved in many cases, and might well
be suspected in many more