LET us first examine briefly the soil in which this comedy
grew.

The most hasty student of history regards the quarter-
century succeeding the Restoration as one of unbridled
licence, in which everybody from the king downwards was
corruptible. He learns that morality was in abeyance, or
at least submerged under a flood of not altogether joyous
wickedness, and that 'polite' society was engaged in con-
sciously living to the top of its bent, determined to extract
what pleasure it could out of life. But this, of course, was
not true of the whole community; it never could be,
because always, somewhere beneath the surface, the normal
life continues, quiet and self-possessed. Even about the
court such men as Evelyn could exist, such women as
Dorothy Osborne and the one who became Margaret
Godolphin. But the lurid picture is at least superficially
true of the society with which we have to do, that is, the
society which patronized the theatre; amid the galaxy of
wit and fashion all was at sixes and sevens, in politics,
religion, and social convention.

We need not concern ourselves with the political and
religious outlooks, for these are reflected in the state of
society, and it is the last which interests us as students of
the comedy of the period. Here we find that the elegance
of court life, 'which for its politeness and pomp astonished
Grammont, accustomed though he was to the magnifi-
cence of the French court', scarcely covered the complete

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