es of the French school--with rhyming lines
and artificial sentiment--for comedies of intrigue and equivoque,
after a foreign pattern, in lieu of our old English plays of wit,
humour, and character. Plagiarism, translation, and adaptation took up
a secure position on the stage. The leading playwrights of the
Restoration--Dryden, Shadwell, Durfey, Wycherley--all borrowed freely
from the French. Dryden frankly apologised--he was required to produce
so many plays all could not be of his own inventing. The King
encouraged appropriation of foreign works. He drew Sir Samuel Tuke's
attention to an admired Spanish comedy, advising its adaptation to
the English stage: the result was "The Adventures of Five Hours," a
work very highly esteemed by Mr. Pepys. The introduction of scenery
was due in a great measure to French example, although "paintings in
perspective" had already been seen in an English theatre. But now
scenery was imperatively necessary to a dramatic performance, and a
sort of passion arose for mechanical devices and decorative appliances
of a novel kind. Dryden was no reformer--in truth, to suit his own
purposes, he pandered laboriously to the follies and caprices of his
patrons; nevertheless, he was fully sensible of the errors of the
time, and often chronicles these in his prologues and epilogues. He
writes:

True wit has run its best days long ago,
It ne'er looked up since we were lost in show,
When sense in doggrel rhymes and clouds was lost,
And dulness nourished at the actor's cost.
Nor stopped it here; when tragedy was done,
Satire and humour the same fate have run,
And comedy is sunk to trick and pun.

* * * * *

Let them who the rebellion first began
To wit, restore the monarch if they can;
Our author dares not be the first bold man.

And upon another occasion:

But when all failed to strike the stage quite dumb,
Those wicked engines, called machines, are come.
Thunder and lightning now for wit are played,
And shortly scenes in Lapland will be laid.

* * * * *

Fletcher's despised, your Jonson out of fashion.
And wit the only drug in all the nation.

Actresses, too, were introduced upon the stage in pursuance of
continental example. But for these there was really great necessity.
The boys who, prior to the Civil War, had personated the heroines of
the drama, we