Hero longing for heiress. Obstacles in the way. Marriage eventually secured. It sounds simple. But the lasting appeal of this, one of the most performed and discussed of all …
'A silent and loving woman is a gift of the lord' This 'excellent comedy of affliction' enjoyed enormous prestige for more than a century after its first performance: for John …
More successful in its day than The Way of the World, which is now accounted Congreve's best play, Love for Love (1695) is a comical farce manifesting the verbal polish and the …
Carnival time in The Rover is a period when prohibitions are temporarily removed, privileges and rank suspended, and women - from convent girls to courtesans - take the initiative. …
In this late Restoration comedy Vanbrugh not only pushes the unhappily married couple, which had been good for no more than a raucous subplot in earlier comedies of manners, …
This 'lamentable and true tragedy', as it is announced on its title page, dramatises a domestic murder of the sort that nowadays scandalises and thrills the readers of tabloid …
The action of She Stoops to Conquer (1773) is largely confined to a night and a day in Squire Hardcastle's somewhat dilapidated country house: Young Marlow, on his way there to …
The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is a Jacobean closet drama by Elizabeth Tanfield Cary. First published in 1613, it was the first work by a woman to be published …
One of the great Renaissance playwrights, Middleton wrote tragedies essentially different from either Marlowe's or Shakespeare's, being wittier than the former and more grittily …
Written in defiance of Jeremy Collier and the budding fashion for sentimental drama, this late Restoration comedy exposes the reformed rake Loveless to the temptations of London …
