Restoration Drama: An Anthology

This exciting new anthology captures the variety and richness of Restoration Drama. It provides annotated and judiciously modernized texts of the following plays: "Tuke, The Adventures of Five Hours" (1662); "Howard, The Duke of Lerma" (1668); "Dryden, The Conquest of Granada" (1670); "Buckingman, The Rehearsal" (1671); "Wycherley, The Country Wife" (1675); "Wycherley, The Plain Dealer" (1676); "Etherege, The Man of Mode" (1676); 'Behn, The Rover" (1677); "Dryden, All for Love" (1677); "Lee, Lucius Junicus Brutus" (1680); "Otway, Venice Preserved" (1682); "Congreve, Love for Love" (1695); "Cibber, Love's Last Shift" (1696); "Vanburgh, The Relapse" (1696); "Congreve, The Way of the World" (1700); "Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer" (1706); "Farquhar, The Beaux Stratagem" (1707); and, "Centlivre, The Busie Body" (1709).The volume offers a representative sampling of many of the different types of play put on in the period (sex comedy, moral comedy, heroric drama, Shakespearean adaptation and political history). At the same time, the even distribution of the plays throughout the period encourages students to reflect on the development of the drama over the full fifty years covered by the anthology. It includes plays by both men and women, as well as dramatic ripostes such as "The Rehearsal" and "The Relapse", which evoke so vividly the adversarial and dialectical world of the theatre in the second half of the seventeenth century.