MARRIAGE COMEDY AFTER THE 1688 REVOLUTION: SOUTHERNE TO VANBRUGH.

This article discusses the role of marriage comedy after the 1688 revolution. English comedy rejuvenated itself after the 1688 revolution with unpredictable vigor. By the early 1680s the energies of the first wave of restoration comic playwriting had waned, and few notable comedies were premiered in the middle years of that decade. By the mid-1690s, however, the situation was again transformed. A group of writers, some of them newcomers to the stage, had mapped for themselves fresh possibilities in dramatic situations already extensively mined by their predecessors. Marital disharmony proved especially fertile ground for them. In particular, between 1691 and 1697, four talented dramatists namely Thomas Southerne, John Crowne, Colley Cibber and John Vanbrugh, each wrote about a wife's reaction to her husband's infidelity and neglect of her in ways quite distinct from any earlier treatment of the same theme. Watching contemporaries learn from and react to one another is itself a fascinating process, but it also helps in charting more securely how much works close to one another in date hold in common as well as how far they diverge. The comedy of the later seventeenth century has too often been subjected to summary generalization.