nce ... nor was the minutest motion
of a feature, properly changing with the passion or humour it suited,
ever lost, as they frequently must be, in the obscurity of too great a
distance." The platform-stage, with which Shakespeare was familiar,
suffered no curtailment in the English theatres till the eighteenth
century, when the fore-edge of the boards was for the first time made
to run level with the proscenium.

III

One of the obvious results of the long suppression of the theatres
during the Civil Wars and Commonwealth was the temporary extinction of
play-writing in England. On the sudden reopening of the playhouses at
the Restoration, the managers had mainly to rely for sustenance on the
drama of a long-past age. Of the one hundred and forty-five separate
plays which Pepys witnessed, fully half belonged to the great period
of dramatic activity in England, which covered the reigns of
Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. John Evelyn's well-known remark in
his _Diary_ (November 26, 1661): "I saw _Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_,
played; but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age,"
requires much qualification before it can be made to apply to Pepys's
records of playgoing. It was in "the old plays" that he and all
average playgoers mainly delighted.

Not that the new demand failed quickly to create a supply of
new plays for the stage. Dryden and D'Avenant, the chief dramatists
of Pepys's day, were rapid writers. To a large extent they carried
on, with exaggeration of its defects and diminution of its merits,
the old Elizabethan tradition of heroic romance, tragedy, and
farce. The more matter-of-fact and lower-principled comedy of
manners, which is commonly reckoned the chief characteristic
of the new era in theatrical history, was only just beginning
when Pepys was reaching the end of his diary. The virtual leaders
of the new movement--Wycherley, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, and Congreve--were
not at work till long after Pepys ceased to write. He records only the
first runnings of that sparkling stream. He witnessed some impudent
comedies of Dryden, Etherege, and Sedley. But it is important to note
that he formed a low opinion of all of them. Their intellectual glitter
did not appeal to him. Their cynical licentiousness seemed to him to be
merely "silly." One might have anticipated from him a different
verdict on the frank obscenity of Restoration drama. But there are the
facts. Neither did Mr Pepys, nor (he is care