Restoration comedy has been a bête noire for literary critics and
historians for several centuries. No other literature seems as
likely to propel its critics either into paroxysms of moral indigna-
tion or rhapsodies of lyrical praise. The vigorous and conten-
tious dispute about the moral issues raised by the comedies is es-
pecially interesting, for in the last three centuries critics have
argued vehemently for or against such diverse theses as: 1) Res-
toration comedy exposes the reader to the infectious disease of
moral turpitude with which the dramatis personae are termi-
nally ill; 2) Restoration comedy is entertaining (or boring) but
nothing more; 3) Restoration comedy is a bracing tonic, a health-
ful and stimulating criticism of sterile and repressive social con-
ventions; 4) Restoration comedy allows the reader to enter a
rarefied world of gallantry and rococo manners--such an es-
cape from the mundane world is salutary; and 5) Restoration
comedy is a treasure chest for the historian who wants an accu-
rate picture of late seventeenth-century social conditions, values,
and mores in England. The first four theses pertain directly to
the moral effect of imaginative literature, in this case Restora-
tion comedy, on the reader; the fifth attempts to avoid the moral
issue by focusing entirely on the sociological and historical rela-
tion of drama and society, though few of these "neutral" critics
can avoid waffling on the moral issue. But despite the abun-
dance of moral judgments about the comedy, no critic has exam-
ined closely the critical and moral assumptions behind other
critics' ethical responses or, more broadly, has analyzed thor-
oughly the assumptions behind an ethical judgment of litera-

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