IF tragedy all through these forty years owed most to the
Elizabethan substratum, taking only some external charac-
teristics and bye-forms from France and from Italy, comedy
may be said to have been even more English still, having
developed along lines which can be traced directly back to
Jonson and to Beaumont and Fletcher. Again, as in the case
of tragedy, we find the theatres playing for the first few years
after the Restoration nothing but Elizabethan plays. From
the first organisation of the company until the opening of the
L.I.F. house, in 1661, the Duke's players acted at Salisbury
Court no less than eight comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher ¹,
Middleton Changeling and D'Avenant The Unfortunate
Lovers. From June 1661 to the closing of the theatre in
May 1665 they produced Shakespeare Twelfth Night, four
comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher ², D'Avenant The Wits,
The Rivals and The Unfortunate Lovers, Middleton A Trick
to Catch the Old One, Brome Sparagus Garden, Cooke
Tu Quoque and Glapthorne Wit in a Constable. Later, from
the re-opening of the playhouse in 1666 to April 1669,
appeared Shakespeare The Tempest (in an altered guise),
Twelfth Night, D'Avenant The Wits, The Rivals and The
Unfortunate Lovers, Beaumont and Fletcher Maid in the
Mill, Women Pleas'd and The Mad Lover, Shirley The
Grateful Servant, The Witty Fair One and The School of
Compliments, Ford The Lady's Trial, Field Woman's a
Weathercock, Cooke Tu Quoque, and Cowley The Guardian.

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