Restoration Drama

Restoration Drama

download pdf we are having an issue with this pape,

specially 1st year note.



Restoration Drama

1

  1. As we previously saw that in 1642 the theatres were closed down.

  2. So no good plays were written from 1642 till the Restoration (1660).

  3. The restoration drama showed entirely new trends on account of the long break with the past.

  4. It was greatly affected by the spirit of the new age.

  5. It laid emphasis on prose as the medium of expression, and an intellectual realistic and critical approach to life and its problem.

  6. The common people had no love for the theatres.


  1. So the dramatist had to cater to the taste of the aristocratic class.

  2. This class was highly fashionable frivolous, cynical and sophisticated.

  1. As a consequence, the restoration Drama could not attract mass appeal. 

  2. Its appeal was confined to the upper strata of the people.

  3. The taste of aristocracy were foreign and extravagant.

  4. Imagination and poetic feeling were not considered to be seen in the 

     dramas.

  1. So the dramatist turned their attention towards actual life.

  2. But as ‘actual life’ meant the life of the aristocratic, the pictures of the whole         

     nation could not be seen in the dramas.

2

  1. The most popular form of drama was the comedy of manners.

  2. This portrayed the sophisticated life of the dominant class of the society.

  3. Its gaiety, foppery, insolence and intrigue were portrayed.

  4. Thus the basis of the restoration drama was very narrow.

  5. Shelley opines of this age as “comedy loses its ideas universality wit succeeds humour… we hardly laugh but we smile…”

3 


  1. The new trends in comedy are seen in Dryden's wild gallant (1603).

  2. Etheredge’s (1635-1691) - The comical revenge or love in a Tub

  3. Wycherley’s The country wife.

  1. We have the plays of Vanbrugh and Farquhar.

  2. But the most prominent dramatist of this age was William Congreve (1670-1720)

  3. The best comedy of Congreve was love for love (1695) and the way of the world (1700)

  4. No English dramatist has written fine prose like William Congreve.

  5. It seems as if Congreve balances, polishes sharpens his sentences until they shine.

  6. Like the other restoration dramatist Congreve dramas also reflects the upper class.

  7. So they do not have a universal appeal but cater as a social document.

4

  1. In tragedy the restoration period specialist in Heroic tragedy.

  2. These dealt with themes of epic magnitude.

  3. The heroes and heroines possessed superhuman qualities.

  4. The purpose of the tragedy was didactic.

  5. These tragedies were to inculcate virtues in the shape of bravery and conjugal love.

  6. It was written in a heroic couplet.

  7. It was characterised by exaggeration 

  8. Neither was it based on the observation of life.

  9. So there was no realistic characterisation.

  10. It ended happily and virtue was rewarded.

5

  1. The chief writer of this age was Dryden, especially the heroic tragedy.

  2. Under his leadership heroic tragedy dominated the stage from 1660-1678.

  3. His first experiment was in his play Tyrannic Love.

  4. But serious and severe condemnation started against Dryden.

  5. This affected Dryden.

  6. His altered attitude is seen more clearly in his next play all for love 1678

  7. Here he writes in his preface “In my style I have professed to imitate Shakespeare…”

  8. He shifts from heroic tragedy and questions the validity of the unities of time, place and action.

  9. He give up the Literary rules of the French dramatists and now followed the English.

  10. One important change in Dryden was seen that he did not give his plays a happy ending.




  .